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One thing about the Internet, if a
nagging question pops into your head at midnight, you can look for
an answer. You might not get the response you are looking for if
you call someone at midnight. The main thing about Internet
information is looking at the reliability of it. Ask yourself some
questions. "Is the information research-based?"; "Is the source of
information selling something?"; "Is the information applicable to
my area?" And I'm sure you can come up with your own set of
questions to add to the list.
These questions really get to whether
you can trust the source of information or not. Many companies
selling products also provide top-notch information that isn't
slanted toward their products. But you will have to determine
which sources are of value to you.
You do have to watch where the
information is coming from geographically. Information is not just
limited to the United States, Midwest or Illinois. There are some
great sites from Europe, New Zealand and Australia, but they may
not apply to your situation for crop chemicals. However, they may
really help you if you are looking at a rotational grazing setup
for your pasture.
To keep myself out of trouble, I'll
list some of the valuable public sites that I use. There are lots
of great private sites, like I said, but the error of omission
would probably get me in trouble.
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this article] |
 Probably the best site for
agricultural economics information is the Farmdoc website hosted
at the University of Illinois. This started as a U of I site, but
more universities now contribute to it. They even use it as a
regional site. Information is available on many topics, including
farm management, marketing, ag law, machinery costs and many
others. The website is
http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/index.html.
A good U of I site for livestock
producers is the Illinois TRAILL site. It contains information and
links for beef, sheep, dairy, horse, swine and poultry. The site
also has an ask-the-expert feature. Check out the site at
http://traill.outreach.uiuc.edu/.
If you are looking for farm reports,
historical production numbers or ag census information, you can
find these and more from the Illinois Agricultural Statistics
Service pages at
http://www.agstats.state.il.us/.
One important set of numbers in the
fall and spring is the soil temperatures. With the National
Weather Service in Lincoln, you can look up the data at
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ncrfc/
html_frames/soiltindex.html.
A couple of great agronomy sites are
at Iowa State University --
http://extension.agron.iastate.edu/ -- and, of course, the
University of Illinois --
http://www.cropsci.uiuc.edu/. There are many others as well,
and links are provided from some of the listed sites.
Hopefully
this "short list" will help you in your quest for "anytime"
information.
[John
Fulton] |
