Evaluating underserved grower needs through a needs assessment of southwest Washington's cranberry and shellfish growers

In early 2023, Kraft stepped into a role completely unfamiliar to her as the Cranberry and Shellfish Extension Specialist for Washington State University. The previous person in this role had retired in early 2019 leaving a wide gap during the pandemic when growers had no faculty in the role supporting their varied research and extension needs. Kraft and Naar, social scientist at UW SeaGrant, spent a year investigating the needs of growers through a semi-structured interviews to develop themes to investigate further in a mailed survey of growers in the region. The team specifically focused on seeking out needs of underserved groups within the population of growers. By specifically sending two surveys to each mailing address and asking growers to include responses from all decision-makers within the household, our team was able to capture responses from female-identifying growers and show that there are gender-based differences in their needs regarding pest management and pain management, which was critical to identify since few female decision-makers speak up during public meetings. Unfortunately, there were too few respondents to share data on needs specific to members of the local tribes anonymously, though the research team is still using this data to write priorities for both of their programs. We present this data as a snapshot of two industries critical to the rural economy in southwest Washington and to explore ways to develop Extension programming suited to underserved groups in the region through the Diffusion of Innovations framework.