Top Farmer Program
from History of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University,
by Lynn S. Robertson, Nov. 1973

Beginning in 1967, five agricultural departments at Purdue with Paul R. Robbins, Bill Morris, Will Candler, N. S. Hadley, Edward Carson, John Kadlec, Howard Doster, Charles E. French and others in the department, began what they designated as the Top Farmer program. It was an effort to meet the needs of some of the most progressive commercial farmers who had largely outgrown the traditional forms of extension work. The venture proved highly successful.

The Top Farmer program involved workshops of several days duration attended by a limited number (average of 52 by 1970) of highly selected farmers who were charged a fee to participate. Usually this fee was $40 but ranged for different workshops from $20 to $150.

The workshops were not only for “top” farmers but they were presented by “top” extension men from the various departments.

Before farmers were invited to participate, a “dry-run” experimental workshop was held at Purdue for Purdue representatives, including area extension agents, to test the methods, to iron out difficulties and to make as sure as possible that the program would fir the needs of farmers to be included.

The first three-day Top Farmer Workshop for which a fee was charged was held in August, 1967. Invitations were sent to 90 farmers. Thirty-nine registered and paid the $50 fee. The first workshop involved a rather wide range of farm problems.

To acquaint the enrollees at the workshop with computers, they were introduced to the “management game”. In the first workshop, participants were given a typical farm situation and asked to make management decisions about such things as kinds of crops to be grown, fertilizing programs, kinds and amounts of livestock, whether or not to buy more land, and several more problems.

These decisions were punched on cards and fed into a computer. When the results were returned from the computer, small teams of workshop participants were encouraged to make decisions.

Linear programming was also introduced to the first workshop group as a high-powered for of budgeting that ground out many budgets rapidly until an optimum solution was reached.

In this workshop, three systems of corn production were compared, as well as hybrids of different maturity dates, several corn planting periods and several harvesting periods. In separate linear programming models, comparisons were made for three hog farrowing systems, two nursery systems and three levels of farrowing intensity. A separate model for cattle feeding compared types of animals purchased, types of housing, degree of mechanization and size of enterprise.

Following the experience of the 1967 workshop, it was decided to give more in-depth presentation of one phase of a single enterprise. Hence, in 1968, corn production was stressed and in 1969 corn harvesting and disposal. “Dry run” workshops were again held before farmers were invited to participate on a fee basis.

In the corn production workshop, with crop technology involved more deeply, representatives of departments other than Agricultural Economics became involved more deeply.

About 300 top farmers were invited to participate in the first corn production workshop which was held at Purdue for three days in August, 1968. Of these, 90 enrolled and paid their fee of $50. 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.

At the conclusion of the corn production workshop, farmers were given an opportunity to run a linear programming analysis of their own individual corn enterprises. The cost of this linear programming analysis was set at $8 per computer run. Most of the initial runs were for the individual's existing system. Subsequent computer runs would reflect the impacts of various changes in management. By the fall of 1970 more than 200 linear programming computer runs had been made on individual farms as part of the top farmer corn enterprise program.

Following these first two successful workshops at Purdue, two day corn production workshops were held at Columbus and Vincennes , with 72 farmers attending each workshop and paying fees of $20.

In February, 1969, Purdue staged its first Top Farmer Workshop on corn harvesting, hauling, handling, drying, storing and marketing. It was another three day meeting with 115 enrolled and a $50 fee.

At this workshop participants were introduced to computer simulation. After a system for harvesting, handling and marketing had been selected, 17 years of weather data were fed into the computer. Thus, in evaluating any aspect of the production or harvesting of the corn crop, it was possible to determine where bottlenecks might develop due to weather. Also, for a charge of $5, farmers were given the opportunity to simulate their own harvesting, handling and marketing operations over a 17 year period. Many did so.

Later, in July, 1969, 70 agribusiness people participated in a four day workshop on the Purdue campus. These professional farm managers, agricultural bankers, PCA managers, and others paid a $100 fee to get segments of both the production and harvest phases of previous workshops.

In the winter of 1969-1970, a series of eight four day area workshops were held in scattered locations over the state. The fee was $40. Attendance varied from 17 to 45.

In March, 1970, a four day workshop was held for a group of 61 farmers enrolled in the Top Farmers of America Association. Only five Hoosiers were in the group, but there were 20 from Illinois , 13 from Iowa , 7 from Minnesota , 6 from Ohio , 4 from Wisconsin , 2 each from Missouri and Nebraska and 1 each from Michigan and New York . These farmers paid a fee of $150, of which $100 went to Purdue and $50 to their Association.

For three days in December, 1970, and three more days in February, 1971 a Top Farmer Program on swine production and financial management was held at Purdue.

In October, 1970, a three day Top Farmer Program on farm planning and financial management was given at Purdue to PCA personnel, with around 100 participants. Purdue representatives then cooperated in a similar program in Ohio .

By the fall of 1970 arrangments had been made for a five day Top Farmer Program on crop and farm planning to be presented in December to about 100 persons in Illinois, with the thought in mind that the Illinois staff would adapt the material to Illinois needs and hold additional programs.

In 1970, plans for the future involved new computer programs on soybeans, wheat, and participation vs. non-participation in the U.S. feed grain program and other features, with the recognition that experience and new developments were bound to result in other programs not yet envisioned.