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farmdocDAILY: A decade of farm business analysis

The University of Illinois farmdoc project is celebrating 10 years of providing original farm business analysis articles online every business day through farmdocDAILY.

Team leader Scott Irwin tells Brownfield their popularity has grown tremendously.

“We’ve gone from a few hundred thousand unique visits per year to now well over 2 million visitors.”

Just as they transitioned to websites in the beginning, Irwin says they have recently invested in webinar content.

“That is a major place we are going to continue to innovate, basically digital delivery of meeting and leveraging that video material through social media.”

Their anniversary article includes a list of the top 20 most popular articles they’ve published over the past decade, which he says really encompass the topics they focus on.

“If you like old-fashioned Corn Belt economics, that’s what we do. Things like the cost of producing corn and soybeans, projected returns for crop producers, even things like machinery costs and there is a lot of interest in our analysis of federal policies.”

The majority of regular farmdoc authors are from Illinois, but team members also include Michael Langemeier of Purdue University and Carl Zulauf of Ohio State University. More than 150 guest authors from across the country have also contributed to the more than 2300 farmdocDAILY articles published so far.