Thirteen Land-Grant Universities Collaborate on Production Ag Cd-Rom

Colorado agriculture continues to face tough challenges with an abundant supply of Crops, low global demand, growing concern for labor costs, large supplies pressuring wheat prices, and farm debt up more than 25 percent from 1998.

To help farmers, ranchers and small acreage owners, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension collaborated with 12 other land-grant universities to publish Put Knowledge to Work: Production Agriculture CD-ROM. This CD-ROM, containing more than 2,700 publications, is the largest collection of university research-based production agriculture information.

"The information on this CD will help equip crop and livestock producers with the information they need to increase efficiency and productivity and to comply with state and local environmental regulations," said Reagan Waskom, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension water quality specialist.

Although the World Wide Web offers production agriculture information, not all sources are equally valuable or reliable. This CD provides reliable and immediate information when rural areas face Internet access problems.

"Two of the three Internet service providers in our area are frequently unavailable. With this CD, the information is available literally in seconds," said Ron Ackerman, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension unit leader for Crowley County. ‘The enterprise budgets are extremely valuable to producers in preparing cash flow projections for their bankers. They also provide benchmarks for producers to compare with their own production costs. The record low prices that Crowley County farmers have received over the last several years mandates that they closely monitor and control production costs. This is the one area that they have some direct control over."

In addition to 600 publications on crop production, 569 on livestock, over 700 on farm and ranch management, 457 on pest management and 354 on natural resource management, users can search the disc by words or phrases, and print entire publications or individual pages. The disc includes Adobe Acrobat Reader and is compatible with Macintosh, Windows 95, 98 or NT. It requires a 486 or Pentium computer, 16 MB or RAM, 8 MB hard disk space, and a CD-ROM drive. It also can be used with a Macintosh 68020-68040, 4 MB of application RAM or Power Macintosh, 5 MB of RAM, Apple System Software 7.0 or later, 8 MB hard disk space, and a CD-ROM drive. Support is available by phone or email.

The cost of Put Knowledge to Work: Production Agriculture CD-ROM is $40 for profit and $25 for non-profit organizations (includes tax and shipping). To order, or for information on bulk orders, contact The Cooperative Extension Resource Center at (877) 692-9358, cerc@coop.ext.colostate.edu, or visit the web site at www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/cdrom.html. A complete listing of all the publications on the CD-ROM are listed on this web site.

Colorado State Cooperative Extension also offers Put Knowledge to Work: Home and Garden CD-ROM, complete with more than 2,600 publications from 13 land-grant universities, for an additional $10 with the purchase of the production agriculture CD-ROM.