Many county Cooperative Extension agents, state Extension and research specialists at Penn State, and consultants of other governmental agencies constantly work with producers to plan and conduct applied research on private farms. The need for these activities only increases. Many in the College of Agricultural Sciences also have recognized the need to improve the efficiency of on-farm activity and that an organized program should be developed. The OFR program is college-wide and is facilitated through Cooperative Extension with daily activities directed by the program coordinator. The focus of the program is to bring service to agricultural producers in the Commonwealth through an increase in the knowledge available to producers for making farm management decisions.

The overall success of the program is highly dependent on the input of producers and others who work with them.

Producers constantly search for improved practices and products for use in their farming operations. While the system of land grant universities provides many recommendations for improving farm performance, some growers conduct their own tests to compare current practices or inputs with potentially better ones to make better future decisions. OFR program staff work with producers, farm advisors, county and state Extension personnel, agribusiness, and others to identify applied research questions that can be developed into projects which are then conducted on private farms. On-farm testing is essentially custom research. It enables producers to develop some of the best recommendations possible because the research is conducted under the conditions of the producer's soils, climate, management, etc.

The OFR program supports local research efforts by assisting in the various phases of the research process. Staff are available to provide advice for developing objective experimental methods, some labor in conducting the experiment, and assistance with analysis of results. The OFR staff and others at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences are able to team up to pursue special funding necessary to conduct some on-farm projects.

It is important that results of on-farm studies are made easily available to all who are interested. The Research section of this site contains summaries of studies as they become available. Also, when possible, local field days will be conducted at host farms to provide producers and others with interest the opportunity see work in progress, to learn about the results, and to speak first-hand with those involved in the projects.

The program is intended to serve primarily those who work at the grassroots level of production agriculture. Although producers, county agents, state specialists, industry, consultants, and other governmental advisors need to become involved for the program to be successful, the most important participisant the producer. Financial resources for many areas of agricultural research are limited. Producers need to be involved in establishing research priorities by communicating their needs. The OFR program is one such way is to become involved. They can do so by contacting OFR staff either directly, or through their local county Extension agents, or with the help of other private advisors. Information for contacting program staff directly can be found at the My Access section of this website

In this program, involvement really means active participation. Some of the ways one can contribute to and benefit from the program include:

1. identify areas of needed research and communicating those needs to OFR staff.
2. offer to conduct an experimental study on your farm.
3. participate in the collection of data from a nearby study.
4. discuss the results with others in the community.

On-farm research projects can vary greatly in complexity from the most basic to those which are very complicated and time-consuming. However, most are relatively uncomplicated and are designed to provide information needed to address one applied question. Studies might consist of comparisons between a standard input and one or two alternatives believed to have the potential to perform better than the standard. Other studies might seek to measure a previously unknown quantity of input, output or loss from a producer's system. The results are useful as they serve as one more source of information when making future management decisions. Consideration must be given to the amount of detail (time) necessary to answer the question. The OFR coordinator can make suggestions for developing the study in a way that will generate results helpful to answering the question while striving to minimize the amount of time and disruption to daily farm activities that occur during the conduct of the study.

A word of advice:
To be answered adequately, some questions demand that many observations are taken during the course of the experiment. On-farm researchers need to be honest in their estimate of how much time they are able to commit to a project while it is in the planning stages. It may be wiser to reduce the scope of the study and do a good job of addressing one question than to have a more complicated study abandoned after it began because it was too demanding. Investigations of this scope might be better suited for study at the experiment station.