Prairie CCA - Members

April 2004

The Prairie Certified Crop Adviser Board continues to seek guidance on how to improve the CCA program for their membership, their customers, and their employers. Over the winter months, the Board has collected a great deal of feedback on this subject directly from the producer community. As part of a communications campaign, several volunteer CCA's asked for opinions, suggestions and critiques of the program and gauged the awareness of the CCA designation from growers visiting various winter agricultural trade shows. The results from this questionnaire will form the basis for the Board's new CCA marketing plan. Some of the findings from the questionnaire are as follows:

Over 80% of growers were aware of the program as the surveyed group was accustomed to dealing with industry agronomists. In total, 75% of those surveyed regularly used their CCA's opinions in making cropping decisions.
Growers were aware of how the 4 "E's" (exams, experience, ethics and education) form the basis of the CCA program. When asked to rank their importance, the "code of ethics" and "years of experience" in advising growers were the 2 most popular choices.
Growers indicated that given equal service costs, twice as many would choose to do business with retailers whose staff were CCA certified.

Based on this information, growers are recognizing the value of the CCA program. In addition, this feedback is a clear example that more and more producers are using the catch "are you certified?".

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