The Purdue Top Farmer Crop Workshop is to help commercial producers achieve their goals through improved management. The workshop provides:

• information on the newest crop technology and management practices
• tools that help farmers decide if a technology or management practice fits their operation
• a forum to debate cropping strategy with scientists, agribusiness leaders and other large scale growers.

The 41st annual Top Farmer Crop Workshop will be held July 20-23, 2008.
Put this date on your calendar now.

Purdue Top Farmer Crop Workshop Celebrates 40 Years

To commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Top Farmer Crop Workshop, six individuals who were present at the first workshop were recognized. They are listed below with their present affiliation, and their role at that 1968 workshop:

• Mike Boehlje, Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics, then a graduate student Teaching Assistant
• Howard Doster, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, then an Assistant Professor specializing in machinery economics
• Catherine Malady, currently a member of the Ag Econ computer support staff, then functioning as a keypunch operator
• William Richards, Ohio farmer, former USDA/Soil Conservation Service Chief and currently serving as the Co-Chair of the 25×’25 Steering Committee, then participating as a farmer
• William Uhrig, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, then an Associate Professor specializing in marketing
• Sam Swinford, a Flat Rock, Indiana farmer who was a farmer/participant at the first workshop

The concept of the Top Farmer program took form in 1967 as an effort involving five departments in the College of Agriculture to meet the needs of some of the most progressive commercial farmers who had largely outgrown the traditional forms of extension work. The first Top Farmer Crop Workshop was held at Purdue for three days in August, 1968. 90 enrollees paid $50 to participate. At this workshop small teams made selections from numerous tillage and equipment systems and then developed the appropriate inputs to support the system chosen. When this information was fed into a computer, it returned decisions for optimum planting and harvest period, acres to be farmed, how much labor to hire, and other management problems.

Since 1968, the workshop has assisted over 7,000 farmers interpreting more than 25,000 budgets generated using Purdue’s PC-LP linear programming model. The 40th workshop was attended by farmer participants from Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

From left:   Swinford, Richards, Boehlje, Malady, Uhrig, Doster

The History of the Top Farmer Crop Workshop is now available online.