Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Getting the word out WAS Re: NNGA membership declines

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: dwoodard@becon.org
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Getting the word out WAS Re: NNGA membership declines
  • Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 00:04:22 -0400 (EDT)

There is a "contradiction" here.

The most knowledge lives in the mind and collections of older members,
often retired, often short of money, usually not interested in electronic
technology, preferring to spend most of their time out of doors doing
things in their garden or orchard.

We have some highly knowledgeable professional members who are unable to
spend much time on NAFEX and can't answer qustions from members (i would
guess they don't have as much time as they would like for their students
and their reseach) but who could provide information for the website.

Most people likely to be interested in membership in NAFEX and able to
make use of it, are landowners. Most young people are not landowners. More
and more, people who are able to buy land are somewhat older. The
proportion of people who can afford to buy land is decreasing and house
lots are shrinking. More and more householders are living in new
developments from which the topsoil has been removed.

Probably a lot of recruits are people whose children have grown up and who
are approaching retirement, who perhaps have bought land which they are
planting up in preparation for retirement. As they retire and have to make
do with less money, their ability to keep up to date with the latest
software may decrease, although they may start their membership well
provided.

A lot of our potential younger recruits, presumably those who want to
learn, are well equipped with the latest computer hardware and software
and know how to use it. The people who can provide the knowledge don't
have the communications equipment or skills. In order to make it easy and
convenient for them to transfer their knowledge, we have to make it easy
for people with old equipment and software to participate. Also, some
interested young people are on tight budgets and use computers at school
or in libraries.

I suggest:

1. We should keep the basic website really basic, primitive if you like,
in terms of software and hardware required.

We might provide links to special pages or an auxiliary site which has
lots of photographs and maybe other stuff needing more recent software and
the hardware to operate it; where photos etc. can forward our mission.

2. We should try to provide lots of resource lists, bibliographies, links
to sites, to help bring new people up to speed; as well as providing
information on our own website.

3. It might be a good idea to try to get the heads and senior members of
the fruit interest groups to provide resource pages on the website.

4. In a few cases, community groups, those managing heritage properties,
and historical sites like "pioneer villages," and conservation
authorities, may be able to establish collections (in some cases quite
smalll) of fruit cultivars for home use. We should try to co-operate with
them and help them. We should also try to link to garden clubs; this is
something that might best be done by local members taking initiatives.
There could be reminders on the website and in the Pomona.

The industrialization and delocalization of the North American food
system, and increasing mobility, have made participation in NAFEX more
difficult (I mean effetcive paticipation by growing woody plants that take
a long time to come to maturity and take skill to propagate) and have
reduced the number of people who value its potential role in their own
lives, and who understand its importance to their society.

I think that as we approach the backsite of the Hubbert peak (oil supply)
this will change, and people in our society will more and more find NAFEX
and its sister organizations useful and relevant to their lives. However,
we have to get through another tough decade or two.

There are a considerable number in absolute terms, of people who want to
grow some of their own food, and who are interested in high quality food
(not always the same people). I think it's possible to make contact with
these people, and possible to get them to join and participate if only by
applying the information that others supply.

It might be helpful if our website could make clear the problems that
purchased fruit and garden centre trees have in meeting the needs of each
group and the benefits of growing your own plus the level of skill and
time investment required. I'm think of things as basic, and hard to find
for ordinary people, as the conflict between levels of nitrogen needed for
high production and profitability of say apples, and the low to moderate
levels which yield best quality but lesser yields and less vulnerability
to insects.

Similarly, labeling cultivars of peaches and plums is something that the
industrial food system hates to do but the special qaulities of cultivars
are essential knowledge for a "consumer" who wants the best taste, while
picking for taste means higher costs and losses in the marketing system.
Selection of locally adapted cultivars for particular home uses is a
perennial problem for those who want to grow their own. The mere existence
of rootstocks as separate entities as well as their selection for local
conditions and individual needs is something that ordinary people find
hard to learn about.

Nobody is going to make money by telling people about these problems which
can be solved by growing your own. There are needs which we can meet.
doing it will require volunteer time and its organization, not easy to
supply.

If we are going to cater to beginners at home fruit growing and try to
develop their skills, we have to make it easy for them and the people who
are more advanced and who are looking for other kinds of information, to
keep from getting in each others' way. However, if we want to maintain and
increase our membership over the next 10-20 years, I think we have to help
the beginners, because the more advanced people are going to be in short
supply with an industrial food system, and a society in which fewer people
have access to land and those who do move more often. NAFEX has depended
for it membership on those who already understand the benefits of growing
their own, or wish to establish or expand personal collections of
cultivars; their existence in appreciable numbers is a survival of an
earlier time and their numbers will, all things being equal, decrease
until the pattern of our society and economy begins to change.

I can see one tricky point: getting people to support the organization
financially, by joining and perhaps making donations, when we are putting
more information in a form easily accessible on the internet. Maybe we
need to have a two-stage website, where there is a good deal of useful
information on the publicly accessible section serving as a come-on to a
section accessible to members only. A problem with this is that it would
need considerable website development, careful design, and probably paid
professional help. The members-only section, and the Pomona, would have to
have enough information and interest to make membership worthwhile.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


> Thomas Olenio wrote:
>> The issue is that the young, innovators and early adopters of society
>> have
>> new computers, have current software, and expect current formatting and
>> content styles in web pages.
>

Mangodance wrote:

> No offense, but you make a bit too much of young, trendy folks with
> great desire to move expendable income being innovators. Like anything,
> little in the trendy arena survives. New tech simply for the sake of
> new tech serves what? Function should always drive pages. Sure, the
> visual is also attractive...sometimes...but it can often be a
> distraction and even a hindrance to site use.
>
>> Asking for the web page to cater to older computers is like asking young
>> people to drive 20 year old cars instead of buying current models.
>
> But a 20 year old car can often be the wiser choice. The newer one may
> only serve vanity. <grin>
>
>> The issue would be to insist your library has more current equipment, or
>> they maintain the software updates better. If you went into the library
>> and
>> they only had last months (last years) newspapers you would complain.
>> The
>> same rule should apply to computers in libraries.
>
> However, if you read surveys on web use, all of them show a large number
> of folks are on dialup, older computers, and using older browsers. No
> web design rags suggest leaving these folks behind. There are a number
> of designers who dump every bell and whistle they come across in their
> websites. The fad buyers can buy all the flash they like, but in the
> end, it is ALL about content, not style. Let's be honest, how many
> growers and/or potential growers are browsing with their phones?
>
> While I agree, there is a great deal to do to market, use our website
> effectively, outreach, etc., I would not do so at the expense of our
> base. I belong to groups who have turned online in order to save
> publishing costs (usually the biggest expense). However, those smaller
> organizations that did so at the expense of their membership not online
> (by stopping their printed pubs altogether), died or are in death's
> grasp. Change without planning and without options can often result in
> irrelevance and slow death.
>
> Finally, I don't want to make too much of the web issue as it is but one
> aspect of the larger issue of membership decline. Don't get me wrong,
> they are one of the best marketing tools an organization can have.
> There are several additional aspects to the greater issue of
> organizational declines.






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page