THE USE OF INTERACTIVE COST OF PRODUCTION IN EXTENSION AND TEACHING AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT-LINKING HAWAIIAN AGRIBUSINESS TO THE WORLD VIA THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Innovative Techniques in Teaching Agri-marketing and Management. The website, HawaiianAgriculturalProducts.com, was developed and run to help students learn how to market agricultural products through the website, estimate their cost of production, and improve management and marketing skills. The overall goal of this project is to provide hands-on experience for agribusiness students and farmers in the area of marketing and management. The first objective is to compare different ways of introducing capital budgeting to farmers and students using innovative, interactive cost of production methods. The second goal is for the farmers to apply this technique to their own farming enterprises. The third goal is to use the website to teach e-marketing of agricultural products to farmers and students and apply that same information to market their own products successfully. The website will be used as a training site for Native Hawaiian, rural, underprivileged high school students and their families to help in marketing their products and improve their chances for business success. Extension agents and educators can then use the interactive cost of production program to teach various financial principles. Students and growers can now estimate cost of production at their leisure. The website features interactive cost of production programs. These programs can be customized for many different crops. Eventually, the website will be used to teach various market principles with e-commerce, to teach students how to improve the distribution efficiency of different products. This website could be duplicated by other universities as a model to serve their community