CREES News
MGA Workshop 2 coming up - 9/8/2010
The Northern Marianas College's Marianas Grazing and Livestock Academy (MGA) will host another series of workshops on the island of Saipan on September 23-25, 2010. The workshops will be held in Room D-1 at Northern Marianas College’s As Terlaje campus. Registration begins at 7:30 am with instructional activities to follow from 8:00 am to 3:30 pm each day.
The Academy is aimed at building local agricultural capacity and educating farmers and ranchers about increasing the economic viability of their products.
The workshops, which require no registration or participation fee, will cover various topics, such as mobile slaughter facilities, reproductive management, grazing animal behavior, animal handling facilities, range and pasture animal nutrition, ruminant digestion, animal health and management, and herd management. Other activities also include farm visits to demonstration sites, field activities, and discussion on industry issues.
The Academy, a project organized through a collaborative effort between the Northern Marianas College- Cooperative Research Extension and Education Service (NMC-CREES) Livestock Improvement Program, and experienced pasture, livestock, and soil specialists from the University of Hawaii, University of the Virgin Islands, and the University of Guam, seeks to enhance the production of high quality meat products, which can serve to improve food sustainability through the adoption of appropriate technologies and practices in grazing and livestock management.
The Academy also seeks to provide local farmers, ranchers, technical resource personnel and other interagency collaborators with assistance and guidance in planning and developing special local projects to improve the economic viability of grazing activities in the CNMI.
To register for the workshops or for more information, contact Claus Bier on Saipan at 234-3691, or Lauwrence Duponcheel at 433-0639 and Dr. Allan Sabaldica at 433-2576 on Tinian. To learn more about the Marianas Grazing Academy (MGA), visit www.marianasgrazingacademy.org.
The Marianas Grazing Academy project has been made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Outreach for Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers program (Grant #2009-51200-19601).