Developing An On-Farm Research Network.

The Ohio State University Agronomic Crops Team is a multi-disciplinary group of County-based Extension Educators, State Specialists and Researchers from Ohio State University Extension, The Ohio State University and Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.  The Team actively conducts on-farm research to improve farm profits, reduce environmental impact and increase agronomic crop production.  A standing committee of the Agronomic Crops Team has provided leadership to establish communication and timelines to coordinate the overall efforts of the on-farm network.  The network has been developed to provide planning, analysis, peer reviewing and reporting of applied research.  The research protocols originate from locally driven needs and/or regional/state needs.  The network includes 25 county-based Extension Educators working directly with cooperating farm operators, eight county-owned farmers where Extension Educators conduct on-farm research and five university owned research facilities.  The network utilizes team members for their strengths and specializations to fortify the research effort.  This team input provides proper plot design, literature review of the research questions, personal experience, existing university data, statistical analysis, report writing, authoring professional publications and communicating results to Midwest farm producers. The Agronomic Crops Team has been successful in obtaining support funding from the Ohio Soybean Council to provide payments to cooperating farm operators as well as coordinating input materials needed to conduct on-farm research.  On-farm research reports are published at the team’s website, referenced in the Ohio Crop Observation and Recommendation Network (C.O.R.N.) newsletter and used at various agronomy conferences and meetings to educator farm operators.