farmdoc daily is One Year Old!
Today we celebrate the one year anniversary of farmdoc daily. And what a year it has been! We have published almost 300 articles (291 to be precise) on an amazing array of topics related to “Corn Belt farm economics.” This has actually exceeded our goal of publishing one original article of research-based analysis and information every business day.
We are also pleased to report that the response to farmdoc daily has been overwhelmingly positive from the outset. This is reflected in Figure 1, which shows monthly page requests and unique visits for the site through February 2012. Page requests now exceed 100,000 per month and visits top 40,000 per month. Both measures of site usage have been growing at a rate of about 8 percent per month during the last year. In addition, our daily email list is now over 6,500 people and we add at least 100 people a month to the list.
Of course, this truly pioneering effort would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of a remarkable team of contributors. This team includes Paul Ellinger, Bryan Endres, Darrel Good, Gary Hoff, Scott Irwin, Nick Paulson, Paul Peterson, Gary Schnitkey, and Bruce Sherrick of the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics and Dwight Raab, state co-ordinator of the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management Association and extension specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics. We are also fortunate to have Chris Hurt, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University, and Carl Zulauf, a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at The Ohio State University, as regular contributors. And none of what you see at farmdoc daily would be possible without the incredible talents of our project manager, Mark Althouse. A well-deserved hat tip to each and every one of them.
While we are pleased by the reception to farmdoc daily in this first year we are not sitting on our hands. Technology continues to evolve at a dizzying pace. Who could have imagined smart phones, iPads, blogs, and social networks just a few years ago? In the next few months we will be launching a re-designed site that fully integrates Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, as well as providing improved navigation through our library of articles.
We sincerely appreciate your use and support of farmdoc daily. We look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with you!
Scott Irwin
farmdoc team leader
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