If you’re a farmer or rancher, you deal with the realities and challenges of agriculture in your daily life. And you probably have ideas of how to do things more sustainably. But farms and ranches are very complex, and making a major change—whether it’s in growing a crop, managing a pest or marketing a product—comes with risk because you don’t know how it’ll turn out. This is where research can be a valuable tool.
The purpose of research is to generate information to answer questions. In many ways, the very best people to conduct research are producers themselves. You understand what kinds of information you need to help you make sound decisions, streamline your work, and take excellent care of your land and water, your animals, your crops and your family, while also staying profitable. A research project on your farm could give you the answers you seek and help others as well.
This workbook is designed to help your research project succeed! 10 Steps for Conducting Research on Your Farm or Ranch will help you:
- turn your ideas into a clearly defined research project
- create a detailed plan for carrying out your project
- draw useful conclusions and share your results with others
Dig Deeper Into On-Farm Research
This workbook will help you create a plan for your own research project. It’s a companion to SARE’s technical bulletin How to Conduct Research On Your Farm Or Ranch (www.sare.org/research), which provides more detailed information on some of the key lessons outlined in this workbook. For example, we recommend you refer to How to Conduct Research On Your Farm Or Ranch when learning about complex topics such as experimental design and statistical analysis of data.
