Barclay Poling - small fruit specialist
February 26, 2001
Message from Barclay Poling:
Welcome to BERRYagent, a web site that was initially an in-house intranet product for North Carolina Cooperative Extension Agents. Since BERRYagent opened for business last September 19th, it has became apparent that agents from surrounding states were needing this kind of support as well, so in January 2001, the site was opened to Virginia Cooperative Extension Agents. Charlie O'Dell, Fruit and Vegetable Extension Specialist, VA-tech, has been a leading contributor to this site, and it only made "good sense" that we share this resource between the two states.
In recent weeks, Extension Computer Specialist, Scot McCollum (Web Specialist, CALS Information Technology) has enabled us to open the site up further, and now we can provide grower access to BERRYagent (http://intra.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/berrydoc/). After several months of work on the site, we hope that we have been able to improve it enough so that it can really add some value to agent and grower decision-making. We seem to be in a remarkable transition where more and more strawberry plasticulture growers (or, their children!) have adopted computer technology throughout the region. It is exciting to see how computers and the internet have so dramatically altered the way we communicate.
Many parts of this site are still "under construction" - we
have been slow to add other berry crops - in time! Advisories are the
main hub of activity on BERRYagent - click on strawberries and
you will see what I mean! Please feel free to submit digital images (jpegs
preferred) from your operation. We'll be glad to get them posted. The
agents and I greatly appreciate your support of Extension.
Keep'em Growing!
Barclay Poling, Extension Specialist (Small Fruits)
