Field Crop News

Changes to Field Crop News

Dear Field Crop News subscriber:

During our April in-service the agronomy specialists and agents who form the Penn State Crop Management Extension Group (CMEG) decided it was time for a change. Some colleagues from Ohio State were over telling us how they do their C.O.R.N. newsletter and we liked the idea. We wanted a newsletter with more timely topics built around field observations in different regions of Pennsylvania. Until now, the specialists located in Centre County usually came up with the topics for Field Crop News which appeared every other week. It was hard to anticipate issues two weeks down the road, so articles tended to address more long-range topics. Topics often originated from the interests of the specialists and did not always reflect field priorities.

In the new newsletter, topics will be a result of observations made by our agronomy agents who are stationed throughout Pennsylvania. Every Tuesday morning 8am the CMEG professionals will have a teleconference call during which agents share field observations and “hot topics” for that week. After discussion, article topics and authors will be agreed on. The articles will be sent before 5pm that day to the editor. In the new set-up, editors will be agronomy agents who will serve for two weeks after which another agent takes over from them. These agronomy agents have volunteered to be on the editorial board of the new newsletter. The editor will compile the newsletter and send it out early Wednesday morning to the CMEG-listserve, so that turn-around time between the conference call and publication of the newsletter will only be about 24 hours. One of the specialists will serve as newsletter liaison to maintain strong specialist support to the newsletter. Distribution of the newsletter will be through email because of the need to get the information out quickly.

For those reading the newsletter on our Web site, Field Crop News will be posted to the site on Wednesday mornings. Older issues of Field Crop News will continue to be archived on the site.

We have taken the liberty to subscribe all those who received Field Crop News by email to this list-serve. However, we also invite anybody with an interest in timely field information to subscribe to this list-serve. The target audience for the new newsletter includes producers, crop management advisors etc, besides agronomy agents and industry reps, who were our “traditional” Field Crop News audience. To enable those with a slow email connection to receive the newsletter, it will be the body of an email message. Pictures would increase the size of the document and will therefore be embedded as links instead.

We as CMEG are exited about this new move. Like all of you, we adapt to changing circumstances, making use of new opportunities and accomodating new challenges. Our aim is to serve field crop producers better and trust this new newsletter will help us do that. Again, we encourage all field crop producers and those assisting them to subscribe.

Greetings,

Sjoerd W. Duiker
Soil Management Specialist
CMEG Newsletter Liaison