The presentation will focus on providing the basic and advanced steps when implementing on-farm research studies with the goal of providing responses to questions: Why participate in on-farm research projects? How many studies are needed to develop useful information? Do we need to follow protocols and guidelines provided by experimental designs? How critical is the process of data collection? How do I analyze and integrate all results in order to provide a meaningful outcome from these studies? The utilization of advanced precision Ag tools can provide a better understanding of the data collected and empower the interpretation and potential extrapolation of the results obtained in a specific environment to the rest of the field.

Most data sets for evaluating crop production practices have too few locations and years to create reliable probabilities from predictive analytical analyses for the success of the practices. Yield monitors on combines present the opportunity for networks of farmers in collaboration with scientists and farm advisors to collect sufficient data for calculation of more reliable guidelines for crop production practices. However, the creation of sufficiently large data sets requires the pooling of data from numerous farmer networks, but such pooling of data is not possible because there are no standards for sharing data across networks. Writing and publishing standards for sharing data from farmer networks will encourage the creation of large data bases of results from replicated strip trials. The more reliable guidelines for crop production derived from the large databases combined with the unique local knowledge of farmers and farm advisors about field-scale production of food will improve the efficiency of crop production.