Partnerships for Livestock Environmental Management Systems National Stakeholders Roundtable

Questions for May 31 Work Groups

Instructions

Your starting point is yesterday's questions and answers from the participatory process, including the roles and purposes Livestock Environmental Management Systems, and Necessary or Desirable conditions or expectations for their effectiveness and credibility. You will receive a description of your work group's focus question when you sign up for a group upon arrival May 31. You will also have a list of the opening questions or concerns from the morning of May 30. You may wish to refer to these to help ensure a comprehensive discussion.

It will be helpful if someone in your group is willing to be assigned the task of time-keeper, and someone else (besides the group facilitator) is willing to make note of group responses and later report them to all Roundtable participants. The facilitator will keep his or her notes as well, but the facilitator's primary job is to keep the group on task, to answer briefly questions of information that may arise, and to ensure the conversation remains respectful of honest differences of opinion and perspective.

In your groups after introducing yourselves, please first take 10-15 minutes to review the information you are given with your focus question. You might use this time to write your own responses to the questions below (especially #1-6) in the spaces provided. As you then discuss each question in your group, the facilitator and your group's reporter will record conclusions that emerge from the discussion. The facilitator will have additional copies of these worksheets available. If you complete discussion of Questions 1-6 before the end of the session, please move on to questions 7 and 8.

We would like to collect and learn from every individual's responses, in addition to the group conclusions that will be reported in the final session. If you would like this worksheet back later, we'll be happy to make copies at the hotel before you hand it in; or you may put your name on this page and we'll mail it back to you in a couple of weeks.

  1. What are the most important issues to be addressed under this focus question that influence livestock EMS acceptability and credibility to key stakeholders? For the group's report, please note both those issues all group members agree are important, and those they do not.
  2. What alternatives should be considered to address these issues? (Are there any on which the group agrees?)
  3. What documentation and evaluation will be needed to effectively respond to your focus question and address the issues and alternatives identified in Questions 1 and 2?
  4. Are there existing tools or programs should be considered as models or meshed with the livestock EMSs developed in this project? Please name them and describe why.
  5. What agencies or organizations should continue to be consulted as the project team addresses the livestock EMS issues, alternatives and evaluation needs you've identified with Questions 1 through 3? Are there agencies, organizations or other personnel you would like to see integrated into the project team?
  6. How might the organizations you represent assist in developing and pilot testing livestock EMSs?

    7. Bonus Questions

  7. What other sorts of data (besides those considered in Question 3) will be needed to document and evaluate a livestock EMS's success? What would be the measures of success?
  8. How would you recommend the project team promote the application or use of a (dairy/poultry/beef) EMS?

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This project and this meeting are funded through a USDA Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems (IFAFS) Yr2000 Grant, and additionally are supported by the Environmental Protection Agency Non-Point Source Control Branch, and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.