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Certified Crop Advisor Training Program
| Name | Russell Duncan | | Situation | Today's agriculture professionals daily face the need for current information regarding crop production, nutrient management, pest management and soil and water relationships. One method of maintaining a high degree of professionalism is to become a Certified Crop Advisor. The CCA program requires its members to receive continuing education credits each year in order to maintain their accreditation, and thus their stature within the agricultural community. CCA's are required to attend classes and meetings totaling at least 20 hours of certified instruction in the 4 competency areas mentioned above in order to maintain their certification. Currently there are 91 Certified Crop Advisors in South Carolina.
Locating and attending trainings and meetings which offer enough of the correct educational certification hours is a very difficult task for the professional agricultural advisor. Five hours of intensive training in each of the focus areas is required, and busy professionals often were coming up short on hours. This problem had the potential to undermine the integrity of the CCA program in South Carolina. | | Response | Six years ago Russell Duncan and Charles Davis, County Agricultural Agents, decided to offer the opportunity for CCA's to get all of their
training hours at one time through the development of a three day
certification meeting. This would only require the concentrated effort of a three day meeting as opposed to trying to juggle meetings all across the state for an entire year in order to meet the strict CCA requirements. The first training was offered in Santee in February of 2001. Twenty (20) CCA's attended. It was very well received by the participants with excellent evaluation marks. The main comment was a request to continue the training. They requested that the date of the next training be moved to the fall and that it be increased to three days, which we did. The next training was held in November of 2001 in Santee with 45 in attendance. The 2002 training was again held in November in Santee with 63 participants. This became our permanent time and location with that meeting. In 2003 there were 53 participants. The
2004 workshop had 50 in attendance. The 2005 workshop was attended by 46 Certified Crop Advisors. Training is done in conjunction and with support from the S.C. Fertilizer and Agri-chemicals Association. We added an International Certified Crop Adviser Exam Training Workshop in December, 2005. The purpose was to help potential CCA's prepare to take the ICCA certification exam that was offered this past February. This
workshop had eight participants. | | Impact | As a result of these trainings, nearly half of the CCA's in the state are trained each year. The 46 Certified Crop Advisers in this year's training earned a total of 852 hours of continuing education. 100% of the participants reported an increase in knowledge as a result of attending the workshop. 80% either will adopt or plan to adopt new practices as a result of what they learned. Approximately 900,000 acres of crops are affected by the participants in the Santee CCA Workshop.
The training sessions provide a platform for interaction between CCA's from across the state and across the region, as some out-of-state participants attend. It improves communication between the agricultural professional community and Clemson University, and has been instrumental in opening dialogue between groups that had before been operating independently of each other. More importantly, the training addresses a need that was created with the CCA's requirement to hold its members to high professional and ethical standards, that is the need to have adequate training opportunities in South Carolina to meet the strict certifications standards of the CCA Program.
The 2005 workshops generated $6,811.00 in gross fee income for the Calhoun and Clarendon County offices. |
Last update2/29/2008
This website is maintained by Russell Duncan.
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