You may not be familiar with the term result demonstration. This is an effort to demonstrate or evaluate certain agricultural practices under local conditions and obtain unbiased data to assist farmers, ranchers and other land managers. These can take a variety of forms or designs and fall into many different categories (field crops, forage crops, beef, horticulture, Integrated Pest Management, etc). The data gathered from these demonstrations can be used by agricultural producers to make management decisions that will ideally optimize profits, serve as a best management practice and conserve natural resources. This can best be described as "on the farm research" where an agricultural producer, county agent and a specialist work together to implement a demonstration and evaluate it.
These reports are available from a variety of sources: demonstration handbooks, cd's and internet websites. Reports from Navarro County agricultural demonstrations are currently available on the internet at http://navarro-tx.tamu.edu/PubCat.cfm?COUNTY=Navarro&CatID=2827. As these reports become available they will be posted here. Other reports from across the state are also available online. A good website for field crop and specialty crop reports is http://varietytesting.tamu.edu/.
It is always important when using this kind of information to compare different locations over time (over several years if possible). The more information you have, the more you can rely on your management decision.
Picture by Derek Scasta
