Cover Crops, Farm Bill and Thoughts

I ended the title of this post with thoughts but I'll start there and mention that I'm multitasking from the Indiana Livestock, Forage and Grain Forum. This is a great annual event and this year's theme is Big Data and Agriculture. There's been plenty of discussion of what to do with/how to manage ag data and I think one of the interesting questions is how much data is useful for farmers, where does overload come in and how much value is there in paying someone to manage and make recommendations based on data?

Most farmers have tackled these questions, at least a little. Many use a commercial service to pull soil samples, look at yields and soil types and make recommendations based on this. GIS has introduced producers to a new realm of digital information. This may be the next area where we need to look at how best to manage and use information and how to make judgments about diminishing returns - when is there too much data and how do we avoid letting data run farms rather than using data as a tool to help run farms? Information overload is real and has been documented. We aren't there yet in farming (I don't think so anyway) but eventually we'll need to be able to make those decisions.

Since startling in Boone County I've had conversations with several people who are interested in learning more about cover crops. I'm planning to do some programming this summer and programs and field days are already taking place in other parts of the state. The National Cover Crops Conference was held February 17-19 in Omaha. The recordings from that program are available at the National SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) site. If you have the time and are interested in this, I encourage you to listen to some of these.

National Cover Crops Conference Recordings.

Finally, there's an Extension organization from the Western United States, Ag in Uncertain Times, which has developed a webinar series on the Farm Bill. I viewed the first program on March 3 and it was pretty good. They have four additional webinars scheduled, as follows:

• March 17 - Livestock Disaster and Dairy Programs
• March 24 - Commodity Programs
• March 31 - Environmental Programs
• April 7 - Food and Nutrition Programs

The March 3 and 17 programs are both scheduled to run from Noon to about 1:30 p.m. so I expect the others will be set for the same time. To view the live webinars or recordings, click on the link below.

Ag in Uncertain Times