Growers Benefit From National Farm Managment Project

Farmers nationwide have spent years developing a data intensive Farm Management Project, which is a cyber infrastructure that allows producers to run tailored field trails and collect specific data on the acres they want to manage. Dr David Bullock, a professor in the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois, shares more on how the project is helping farmers make data-driven decisions.

“It's a website where you or a farmer or a crop consultant can go on there. They can design their own field trials, which a lot of people do with SMS or something, and they'll do little, simple things. But this is a tool that makes it really, really convenient to create on Farm Research, agronomic field trials, but it also is a place for data. It's a place where, you know, I don't know how many farmers I've heard say I've got all this data, I don't know what to do with it. Well, we don't collect every piece of data in the world. We collect what we think is the most important data, and we keep it fairly simple, but we have a pretty good idea about how to do with it.”

Dr Bullock says they've made it to where farmers can increase their profits and manage our imports more efficiently by doing trials on their own fields.

Many farmers will get what's called a prescription, and they'll put it into their, you know, computer on their machine, giving a realistic visual, a picture of field, and it's divided up into various zones and and so it's, you know, it's a way to do site specific agriculture.”

Ag Economics Professor, Dr David Bullock.