Researching Relevant Professional Development Learning Task #2 By Nathan Johnson

Sources of information: Successful Farming magazine Top Producer magazine Agweek magazine Farm and Ranch Guide Prairie Grains Journal

These magazines have a variety of articles in them. You will find stories that tell about new innovative ways to farm and the old tried and true ways with a few little wrinkles added. I find these articles stimulating thought about how we can and should be doing things different in extension to meet the producers needs. It is evident that they need to change to stay afloat, are we above that?

Marketing has received a lot of the attention in the news the last couple years. You will find lots of opinions in these magazines about how and when to sell. This information is helpful because it shows that there is more that one way to market a crop. Marketing is definitely not a one size fits all situation. Even with all the marketing information out there the fact still remains that production is king when it comes to maintaining farm viability. Farm business Management, an adult educational program for farmers, has tabulated the numbers and productivity is 4 times more important to the farm than marketing. Not that it is to be ignored but there is more to farming than selling in the top one-third of the market.

These magazines are helpful in how some stories create a vision for what we see happening in agriculture the next 10, 20, 30 years. It sounds like large farms will get bigger and small farms will work by trying to fill niche markets. I am not sure that is what we need for a strong agriculture community in this country. But it appears to be happening that way.

My filing system at this point is to copy the articles I find have relevance to me and place them at the top of each individual subject file. Then I go through the material I have put together and see if there is dated material to the point that is of no value and throw it out. Which at times can be a very time consuming process.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2000