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Sometimes, when opportunities present themselves, you have to jump at them whether you’re ready or not. Such was the case when the opportunity to expand a program that hasn’t really started yet occurred.

The Ohio Agricultural Environmental Assurance Alliance’s (OAEAA) Environmental Self-Assessment Program will launch a series of pilots this winter, and a special partnership agreement through USDA’s Risk Management Agency has allowed the new program to expand to specialty crop growers.

Larry Antosch, OFBF director of environmental research, said the original self-assessment program was designed to address soil and water quality resource concerns on cropland, pastures and woodlands. The new partnership money will enable the self-assessments to expand to greenhouse, nursery and orchard operations and vegetable and other tilled specialty crops.

Funding was obtained through working with Mid American Ag and Hort Services Executive Director John Wargowsky, who had applied for partnership funds through USDA to continue and expand food safety programs being conducted on specialty crop farms throughout Ohio.

"We actually learned we had received some grant dollars, and then the funding agency came back to us to let us know more money was available," Wargowsky said. That’s when he approached other program directors within Farm Bureau to learn if there was interest in applying for the extra dollars. Antosch took him up on the offer and secured $20,000 to expand the OAEAA self-assessment program to specialty crop growers.

Antosch will attend the Ohio Fruit and Vegetable Growers Congress in Toledo in January to present information about the self-assessment program and the intent of piloting a special program for those producers during the summer or fall of 2004.

"The whole concept of the Ohio Agricultural Environmental Assurance Alliance’s program is to engage producers in the process of developing conservation plans to protect natural resources," Antosch said. "The programs we’re developing with these self-assessments is agriculture’s way of demonstrating and promoting the positive things the industry is doing to protect the environment and our natural resources."

Wargowsky’s partnership award for nearly $100,000 also will help the Ohio Specialty Crop Food Safety Initiative continue and expand. The funds will be used to increase commercial Ohio fresh fruit and vegetable producer awareness of good agricultural practices that will reduce producers’ environmental risks.

For information about OAEAA and the Environmental Self-Assessment Program, contact Antosch at 614-246-8264. For details on the specialty crop food safety initiative, contact Wargowsky at 614-246-8286.