 might as well get started here, I think all folks who did get in class who have made it this month. So thank you for coming everybody. My name is Ray Glencze, I'm the local track chair for the government non-profit education track here at Drupal. So this is one of our future talks, I'm really excited to have Jory Gordon from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Start to Farm program. And I'm going to talk for someone that Jory did an interesting step. So welcome. Thank you very much. When I found out I was going to speak at Drupal Con, I was really, really excited. I was like, oh wow, this is so neat. This is a new opportunity. And then I kind of had this delayed reaction of, oh my gosh, I'm going to speak at Drupal Con. What on earth am I going to talk about? But to farm, which I'd love to talk about, but normally I talk to farmers and farm educators about it. So this is a totally different audience. So I hope that what I put together here will be a value to you. I thought what I should start with is introducing myself or more specifically what I do. So you see where I'm coming from as I describe this project. First, we all have very specific ideas about librarians and what they do. Usually I get one of two reactions. Either I say I'm a librarian and their eyes glaze over and they just go find something else to do, or I'll get really excited and start telling you about all their wonderful times in a library. So I talked to this one gentleman. I explained I was a librarian and he says, oh, oh, my first job, my friends and I at lunch would get in these debates over trivia, like movies and historical events and all these things. They would bet each other over who got it right, who said what after was right or whatever it was. And the way they would settle their bet was they'd call the library down the street. And he's like, she knew everything. She always answered our questions. She always did it perfectly, because you guys just know everything. So we don't know everything, but and this is an important part, we do know where everything is. So that's the trick. We also know who put it there. We know why it's there. We know what form out it's in. We know who's looking for it. We know why they're looking for it and how frustrated they are trying to get to it. And we know what format they wanted it. So we do have a lot of information to contribute to information. My particular background, I work in data management and knowledge management, generally by accident, but I quite love it. So kind of gather information in from the parkour as a public service librarian. So I have spent many long hours on the reference desk answering questions from people like the guy who, you know, would call up his library at lunch, information literacy. So teaching people how to find information, also very importantly, how to evaluate the information they find to just its authoritative measure to reliability. I'll be just going to talk to you about SCA is really to me very much a library gathering information and making sure it's organized. And very importantly, this is where the public information comes in, making sure it's available to the people who need it. And I think that's really as we've got to get into the piece. So start to farm. And this is our gorgeous logo. It is part of a larger program within the USDA, which is the United States Department of Agriculture, called the Beginning Farmer Rancher Development Program, which we call BFRDP. So if I say that, I always try to be very careful about the alphabet, too. So if I work for the government, I want to make sure I don't lose anybody. BFRDP Development Program was set up, administered through the USDA to help create more farmers. Here's the situation. Farmers are getting older, and I go, you know, we're getting older, but no younger new farmers are replacing them. So we're actually losing our farmers. So why do we need new farmers? Well, there's lots and lots of reasons for that. But I'll talk about three really quickly, our businesses that contribute to the economy, both locally and nationally and internationally, so this is good for the economy. There's also a security issue. So if food, so let's take, for example, fresh produce. Most of our fresh produce is either flown in for overseas or it's just produced in very specific regions of the country. If there is a social or natural disaster in these areas, we're cut off from our food supply, and this drives the cost of food up, it drives the availability down, and this especially affects people. And the last one I'm going to talk about, again, there's many, many more, is social. So in the last few years, a lot of people have been very interested in where their food comes from. And with the introduction of farmers markets and people actually being able to go out and meet farmers is that they're eating healthier. So they also are going out to these places and be more active. So there's a lot of benefit about why we need the next slide. I actually want to talk a little bit about our program again, is we have a partner, which is the American Farm Bureau Federation, so that's part of our unofficial partner. So this is our web developers who divide and develop the sites, switch to media, do our local unofficial partner, but definitely here in the so great, it's switch to media. So in 2002, Congress decided, yes, indeed, we need new farmers. So they added some legislation into what's called the Farm Bill, and this is actual law. It says the Secretary of Justice shall establish an online clearinghouse, available to beginning farmers or ranchers, education curricula and training materials and programs, which may include online courses, the idea of these online courses, you know, and five easy lessons. But what happened then is, of course, it goes to the Secretary. What I should say, this was put in the law in 2002. In 2008, Congress actually gave it some money. So this actually started in 2008. And they sent it to the Secretary of Agriculture and of course, the USDA's responsibility is to make these things happen. So where in the USDA, the National Institute of Food and Agrograms that come through USDA, they administer quite a few of them. So that's really their function is to kind of, you know, get this, these different programs or research or whatever it is, they send in their applications saying what they will get this money, we're going to do this, this and that. See, is it more to this law saying that these, there's other programs. And so since they're together, there's kind of this assumption of how they should work together. But we'll see. Now the National Institute of, sorry, the National Agricultural Libraries, even I get lost in alphabetcy, the National Agricultural Library applied for a special grant. So most of the grants under this program are, then there's one special one for this clearing. And here's what we promised to do. So I am, I am assisted. So beyond, is actually out there in the country for beginning farmers and ranchers. We promised to build these next two parts were referred to the other grants. So they're certain assumptions that I find are very pervasive. We look at the different parts of what you understand, what I mean, what I refer to them. And the reason I really want to take a minute of time with them is because I don't only see these in this project, I see these in every universal oneness, this idea that everyone looks for information the same, they react to information resources the same, they use the same terms and mean the same thing. This is just, everyone, there's a lot of talk here about molten, there's just, does not work anywhere else. You're familiar, there's a European fairy tale called the Elves and the Shoemaker. And the Shoemaker, he's such a, a good man before you always work for him and eventually he's able to become, the idea of the hardworking elves is really pervasive, especially when you're talking about public information, which is government and education and non-profits, the fact that they have no constraints, you know, nothing stops them, because they don't have to be paid. So to give you an example of hardworking elves, 2008 when we had several corporations are looking for ways to stay, like you say, their cost. So they went and they looked at their library function within their corporation, whatever way that was manifested. They said, we'll get rid of this, what is this? And they threw it out. But you remember what I said about librarians is we know where everything is. So then they realized they need somebody who knows whatever everything is. So they looked through the corporation, people they already had, because they didn't want to spend any information else. On the other hand, you have technology elves. I was working in another organization, they wanted to build an institutional repository for research that was produced in the institution. So we start developing the plan on how to make this happen and there was some funds that might come up and I saw the proposal to go after these funds. And under the list of personnel to build this repository, it listed three students, so that was the list of personnel. Student assistants, and I'm sure they would have been just, you know, eager and do the best, the organization of some kind. And they said, oh, we need a new one. Probably one of them. And then the second one is the idea that everything is available, that consumers society. So we tend to think of our information in the way we think of any other product to think I need some information. I'm going to go to the shelf with the information I need. I'm going to put it in my basket and we'll go home and make it. The information is split and it's actually hidden around the whole store, all the different shelves. Everything isn't where you can get to it. And it always defines what already exists. And this is discovery. And there's two reasons we did it. One is to find content for the database. So we have this grant program and we have to work with them. They're going to produce materials, but to the start to farm database, our job is to find everything in the hole and also to design this database. So this is what we're, what's happening with this first section. I did, when I arrived on the sand, I did a very library, basically giving a shape to what we were going to do. And to give you an example, so we think of like community development is very wrapped up in farming. Or the local food movement even is very wrapped up in farming. But they're not really about getting the question we did is how do I get money? It's out of the farm. Taxes as a farmer is very different. And if you understand where they're coming from that they can talk to, they need mental. So they said, these are the four classifications of what we're going to get. And then you have things. You have manuals and worksheets or nontangible things like databases. We're going to call those resources. And those are two resources are either created or distributed by organizations. So this is our basic database structure. These are our three content. But if you had to throw everything else out, this is just kind of the foundation. Lot, we looked at reference questions we get at the library. So we have to get started in farming. So we look back through the questions they were asking. And we came up with a tax on operatives, incubators, all these things. We're talking about training beginning. Develop this taxonomy. So this taxonomy plus the three content texts I showed you. This is the foundation. Some strategy, of course, the wisdom of content strategy says you need to define your audience and to give everyone this picture that these people are not beginning farmers and ranchers. And there's a clever and subtle way you can tell. And that is that they're clean. If they were farmers and ranchers, they would be filthy. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It's a tough job. And you have to get out there and you have to really do it. We're going to come up with this. And you said, okay, so are the people who are going into farming, are they young people fresh out of college? I'd say yes. Yes, they weren't retirees. I'd say yes. Disabled people, yes. Immigrants and refugees, yes. You said, okay, well, are they people who grew up on a farm? Public information. We don't have the luxury of really narrowing our group down. If we were selling purses, you know, farming is one of these things that I either are trying to bring these things together, you have to keep it. And of course, you know, homepage real estate, that's such a, you know, big, scary topic. But I said, okay, so Paul, she ends up with this room with big doors and a little door here. We have this spotlight section, which I won't go into, but that's really for policy makers. That's not necessarily there than the two groups. And one of the groups are people who have already started farming. So there's this unofficial definition of beginning farmer, which says, can you affectionately refer to these people as dreamers? We wanted to give them a special way into wonderland. So from into a very short tutorial, and what this tutorial does, all it does is it asks them some fairly serious questions. Why do you want to farm? So it's short, we spend their savings. So we want, we want to kind of gently leave them already farming. This is our classifications again, and this is also the way to browse our sites. So these classifications learn how is that education training a short list of some of the resources in our database. And we try to make you short list programs that are national in scope. We don't always have enough to sit in there yet. But we try to make use it. So once you've found a successful plan, which you should always start with a plan, there's another door in another, and that's what they're actually doing. Because of course, that's our goal. Nice pretty picture of the title. We have the description of what it is. I already used to be an executive. Folks are trying to create and just say, okay, if you are going to your FSA office, here's all the programs they have to offer. It gives you a description of what they are. You can walk in there and say, what about this one? We're going to be making some more development. So this is definitely a site in progress. Those include, we're going to be adding solar on the library because they get excited about the source. But it's like they need to be working that into the platform as well to get into this site is to help people find things by where they're located. So current geolocation, and if you're a rush spot chain, that's fantastic. So for instance, there's a program that is kind of headquartered in Colorado in the West, but they also work in Washington State and I just to the, to outreach. But I will say that this is one of the hardest things there is to do. We, again, this is a universal oneness assumption. Everyone isn't looking inside of that digital library. Getting information to them is so fragile. Our education system, which may function in the back end, is data entry. So to get things into this, the second one that says, search here first, I named them that because it's a reminder, don't put something in the database it's already there. Does it work? We still have Google Fit records, all the different instructions on how to do data entry. For the data entry, twice written instructions as well. So again, this is a wide user base, so we want to give them multiple options. We also, so NIFA, our administrators, they do things like how to do the reporting, the reporting systems, and those webinars are also available here. So anything else we think that the branches need, we add them to this library for them. I would never show it to anyone. So you'll have to get a log in and it'll be it's blowing through this website. So, you know, this has, this has been a source of serious emotional upheaval for me. It's been very frustrating. Primarily because kind of the message you get from NIFA, the administrators, is that, you know, obviously you didn't build it right. But we go back over it to share, to get emails from these, each other, so there's an assumption there that says that anyone who received a grant is required to contribute to the database or to participate in the actual event. And so there's two schools of thinking. One is that if it's not written down, it does make sense. So they suggest, do what they get you of, I want to show up in these forums, why wouldn't they? We have a diversity of six grant writers on staff. They have little to no access to technology. And they need to do certain things when they have to sit down out of a reporting system that, first of true, it was developed before the internet. Huge text boxes and it's so funny because everyone's talking basically that. And people just dump massive amounts of text, actually, as I say this. So if you did all this amazing stuff, you only get to report half of it. So it has a lot of limitations and a lot of difficulties. But basically people offer to you about what they did. They do this every year. And we proud to assist with reporting, which apparently means that, and she created her own database for that, trying to keep track of everyone and what they did. And just painstaking. And the issue that she ran into with this, what one of the issues is all kinds of issues over this. But people showed up to our courses. This percentage of people, so she go through all of this to kind of fight. So what they can do then is each year, they don't feel that they can explain it otherwise. They can supposed to bring in this demographic and train them. So here's your chance. Structure data. We should have been able to go in and say, and here's what you're going to do. If you're starting in the middle, if you're trying to gather all these people in from the four corners and stuff stuff and what did happen. The future is one of the reasons NAL got this particular grant is because they can see, we want to use this as a law force, not be usable. It should be start to farm. Definitely a success on the one hand. It's curious, there's an executive order to make kind of government data, machine readable. Really, it's not quite good. I've got to start this farm specifically, or kind of sites like yours, really kind of smaller sites. What's the expectation is that their data, machine readable, what's that mean for, they start to farm or for other smaller sites. Is that on your radar or what's- Well, one of the issues with a lot of the directives that come out of the government is they can mean so many different things. And until there's real guidance, it's very hard to stay. In my opinion, start to farm in machine readable. Public site and also like you saw in the verification set is to make this into structured data. So ideally it would be a little more structured and we could, that's what I would love to see happen to the government. Unfortunately, and this is the issue, is this data management. There's no one saying this is how we're going to manage it. Excellent. I'll alert some of the deaths. There's no guidance on that. Well, great job on the site and organizing the information. Having dealt with USDA organic certification and FFVP programs, it's extremely difficult to get the resources together to find it, organize it. So that's a big task. So the next question is, do you find other traction in the USDA in programs like that, the FFVP or organic certification where there's a movement to kind of, I guess along that streamline and use similar formats of display and data? Well, part of the issue, and I think this is every organization is, is we can have silos. So I come to an event like this and I hear about other programs that are going on and doing it or to stop that from happening, to start talking to each other and saying, okay, what are you doing and what are you doing and what are you doing? But my question is whether we should wait and let USDA do it, we do it, and let them do the weather. I have a question. You're one that you want to come up with? Hi, I'm Ben Heideck and I work for Special Media and I'm one of the developers and specifically answer that question. We're using search API, has the framework for the search and then search API itself has extension modules to that called passive search. And then there's a couple of other modules that are doing things like rewriting URLs. Thorpe for government. And I'm curious how do you measure success for this type of question? This is, I think, another thing that is just really universal. How do we sit down and say how did we, you know, how did we do? It's hard for us with under, it's probably familiar with the Paperwork Reduction Act and what that is is that controls all of the data gathering for the entire federal government. And it actually stops us from doing things like we are using Google Analytics and we see, if you spike for me personally, I am able to travel around to different conferences and talk to people. And I do measure quite a bit of success from that. Do they know about me and or me? Start a farm. It's not just me. Sometimes it feels like it's just me. But, you know, do they know about us and are they using us? How do you tell when you're successful? But we are using analytics. I want to use your site. It was great. Or I use your site and I can find anything. Me through Start a Farm for contact information that you would like. And thank you so much for coming out this afternoon. Have a great afternoon.