The Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) awarded NODPA a grant of $12,000 for a one year project that will organize the NODPA website archives, making information more easily accessible, searchable and downloadable for certified and transitioning organic dairy producers and professionals serving the needs of organic dairy producers. NODPA continually invests time and money to upgrade its website, e-newsletter, NODPA News printed newsletter and the NODPA Odairy listserve in order to provide up to date information to producers, service providers, the media and consumers.
“The main objective of this project is to expand the scope and accessibility of the Odairy archives,” said NODPA’s Executive Director Ed Maltby. “The listserve will expand its scope by having all archived educational materials and discussions organized by topic and date for increased ease of accessibility for users.”
The NODPA-sponsored and moderated Odairy is an internetbased listserve that assists organic dairy farmers throughout the Northeast, North America, and Europe and beyond, to access information and to hold discussions about:
The listserve facilitates peer mentoring and provides support to transitional and established organic dairy farmers.
Organic farmers can not resort to using chemicals, antibiotics, or buy readily available conventional feed for their animals and land. Instead they must rely on the limited knowledge currently
available among dairy service providers pertaining to organically certified practices. Few resources are currently devoted to organic dairy research, the education of large animal veterinarians, or to Cooperative Extension and NRCS personnel to provide those support services to farmers. Maltby notes that, “transitioning and newly certified organic dairy farmers who have not yet developed the skill base to apply organically certified production and veterinary practices may have limited access to information resources and this project will increase the accessibility of that information. This project will expand the volume of research and education related to organic dairy production that is easily available to organic dairy farmers by making a bounty of archived research and educational material easily accessible in a user-friendly format, either on the internet or in written publications.”
Posted: to Industry News on Fri, Apr 2, 2010
Updated: Fri, Apr 2, 2010