“Anybody's Dream”: A Decision Case of Marketing Alternative Crops

Abstract

Decision cases have been used in the USA for both classroom and extension education within agriculture and natural resources. Use of cases has sometimes been limited by the extensive amount of time that may be required to assign and analyze conventional, text-based cases. Availability of video decision cases, which are visual and do not necessarily require reading, could foster the use of cases on "short notice" for diverse education audiences. Although "video-enhanced" cases exist, these rely on appreciable amounts of reading and can still be time-consuming to use. Anybody's Dream is an entirely video-formatted decision case that considers an agricultural situation and is suitable for extension, classroom, and experiential education learners. The case presents the story of a group of farmers in central Minnesota as they attempted to diversify their cropping systems by producing buckwheat (Fagopyrum sagittatum Gilib). One of the challenges these farmers faced was a need to resolve questions about how to best organize for processing, storing, and marketing their buckwheat crops. The case was developed using a "documentary" format and includes interview segments with representative farmers from the Buckwheat Growers Association. These farmers describe their perspectives on the challenges they faced in producing and marketing an alternative and uncommon crop. This article describes the Anybody's Dream video and considers how it can be used for classroom and extension learning situations. The article further offers perspectives on the process of developing a video case.

Incorporating Case Studies into a World Food and Population Course

“…C ase studies, decision cases, or case-based learning are often used as a strategy for engaging students more actively in the subject matter of a course. Examples in the agricultural sciences are Crookston and Stanford (1992), Ha and Shively (2005), and Simmons et al (2005). Active learning has been identified as the preferred method, over lecture-based passive learning, for teaching higher order thinking, motivating students, and inspiring changes in attitude (Bonwell and Eison, 1991).…”