Farm tour to feature showcase of specialty crops equipment

May 16, 2013

URBANA - Want to know what it takes to scale up production on your farm through the use of equipment? Hans Bishop of PrairiErth Farm will showcase specialty crops equipment that he uses to reduce hand work, and improve efficiency and employee job satisfaction on Saturday, June 8, from 2 to 4:30 p.m., with registration from 1:45 to 2 p.m.

“Attendees will see a bed system and how each machine is designed to work within that system,” said University of Illinois Extension educator Deborah Cavanaugh-Grant. “Featured equipment will be the Allis Chalmers model G, a multi-row vegetable seed planter, a water wheel transplanter, a bed shaper, a plastic mulch layer, and various cultivation implements.”

Topics to be covered will include:

-How to improve efficiencies and planning by implementing a standardized bed system for all crops

-What you need to do to begin mechanical cultivation of crops

-Use of plastics in organic specialty crops

A tour of the farm will follow as well as hands-on time-weather permitting-to experience how the machines work, Cavanaugh-Grant said.

Source: ACES

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.