The OFE-C is consolidating occurrences of farmer-led research, farmer-centric on-farm experimentation, living labs, or the like. Our goal is to map and feature these initiatives all around the world. Drop us a short notice about what and whom you know! 

The Living Laboratories Initiative is an integrated approach to agricultural innovation that brings farmers, scientists, and other partners together to co-develop, test, and monitor new practices and technologies in a real-life context.

This 2018 book chapter by Kyveryga et al. is about On-Farm Replicated Strip Trials. It provides a brief overview of how to plan, design, and conduct on-farm replicated strip trials. Practical considerations are listed when using different types of equipment. Examples are presented on how to summarize data from individual locations, as well as how to interpret experiments conducted. Applicable keywords are data analyses, economic analysis, environmental conditions, modern precision agriculture equipment, on‐farm replicated strip trials, research hypothesis, result interpretations, sustainable farming, within‐field management history, within‐field variability.

What is farmer-led research? What are some examples and the benefits? The Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO) has experience and share its learned lessons in this guidebook.

Data from commercial oil palm operations were analyzed for a whole plantation to rank individual blocks according to their ability to respond to applied fertilizer. The ranking was used to guide fertilizer management by diverting fertilizer from unresponsive blocks to those that are more responsive. Although the inferences lack statistical validity, they appear robust from a practical viewpoint. They are easy to evaluate in the field, since they require no upscaling from or interpretation of experimental data. [Oberthür, T. et al. Plantation Intelligence applied Oil Palm operations: unlocking value by analyzing commercial data. The Planter 93, 339–351 (2017)]