Project Barley Evaluation - Excerpts from Duke's Mail

"you might consider including the Successful Farming magazine's web site, www.agriculture.com in your commercial listings."

-- Jim Meade, Iowa City, Iowa
"Had a chance to take a look at the barley home page. It looks good. I must say it is fairly intuitive. I feel agri-managers should have no trouble getting around and should find this home page a great place to discover the Net. Weisenburger, Lyster, et al must be commended for helping move Alberta's agriculture into the next century."

-- Ted Nibourg, Kaniteo Information Services, Red Deer
"Had problems catching the wave, but it looks like I've gotten through. Let me know so I don't think I'm just tapping messages to myself."

-- Norm Lyster, Stettler
"I've done my first browsing of Duke and all his relatives and am impressed. You've done a great job in a very short time. Keep up the good work."

-- Jerome Martin, University of Alberta
"The e-mail in particular is extremely useful. The net offers much information in many other areas of Agriculture."

-- Bruce Beattie, West Hawk Holsteins ,Sundrie
"I am pursuing research in the economics of pesticides use in Canada, particularly the price response of pesticide application is of interest to me. Data was available for Ontario in the publication: Survey of Pesticide Use in Ontario which is published every 5 years starting in 1973. Would you happen to know of an equivalent survey for other provinces?"

--Jens Lohmueller, University of Guelph
"I'm interested in getting access to information on farming in the Peace River area. I will be trying to help prospective Dutch farmers get as much information as possible on buying and running a grain farm in Alberta, and particularly the Peace River area because of the attractive land prices. I may have more detailed questions in the future, but I would first like to know if I am knocking on the right door. Can you, for example, provide information on the length for the growing season, average precipitation, seeding techniques, weed and pest control techniques and costs, production costs, distribution and marketing systems, etc.? Can you possibly give me addresses where I may be able to access and extract information via E-mail?"

-- Gilles Chenard, Ministry of Agriculture, The Netherlands
"I think your work in Alberta, particularly the Barley project, is fantastic. You are leading the way for the rest of us and you are helping to turn some bureaucratic heads in the Province of Ontario. I hope that the folks at Ag Canada are paying attention - their WWW site is close to the top of my personal - 'what's not hot list.'"

-- Don Richardson, University of Guelph
"Information on Hon. Robert Fischer needs to be updated to read 13 grandchildren and two expectant ones for the fall of '95. This information is verified by his oldest son! Also, tell John Larson that his cows are out!"

-- Karen Wright, Community Futures Office, Viking
"What would be really helpful to busy farmers, like me, who are not available during govt hours, is an updated district office list. I need to know who is where, what they do, and their e-mail address. This way I could pose my question, at my convenience, and the response would come back and wait for me to get it."

-- P. R. Hawkings, Bentley
"I'm trying to find out whether a software package exists for keeping records of livestock. My parents run a small beef cattle operation (only a couple hundred head) and are seeking software for record keeping that is PC compatible."

-- Peggy Pilgrim, University of Alberta
"I was wondering if you could tell me how to subscribe to the newsgroups. I thought they would all be on here like they were when we did the intro to Barley, etc. in Calgary. If you could let me know I would appreciate it. I haven't had a lot of time to play around with Barley because of all my problems but with winter quickly approaching I hope to have more time."

-- Diana Woolliams, Airdrie
"This is to confirm I am finally up and running. I received a defective win 3.2 upgrade disk and had to get another set. The summer is EXTREMELY busy and directly effects the amount of time I can spend on this. Thank you for your initiative in this area we do appreciate it."

-- J. Grant Durie, Vegreville
"Hello there. I have been trying to get in touch with someone regarding Project Barley, as I have been connected for a couple of weeks. What is going on, and what has been the best way to communicate with others on the project?"

-- Mary Wright, Olds
"I am with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). A sub committee that I am on has been asked to put together a formal proposal for an "official" OMAFRA Internet homepage. I am contacting various agricultural sites, such as yours and FAIRS in Florida, to try and obtain information. Our senior management are looking to us for information in the form of evaluations, business cases, feedback, etc., to justify setting up and maintaining an Internet homepage. Any information, both positive and negative would be helpful. Thank you. Keep up the great work with the Barley Project."

-- David Wismer, OMAFRA
"As far as the concept goes, I did a fair bit of 'surfing' and never came across a source of advice about the growing of any crop that would compare to the barley pages. If this kind of page is developed for other major crops it could be a very useful tool for any farmer."

-- Rob Sommerville, Endiang
"It was helpful to be able to ask questions on the barley_l list and have someone give me an answer. I could do this at night and although it is slow to draft these letters it gave me an opportunity to get the info I wanted without having to be by a phone during the day. And the fact that the answer could come from more than one person broadened the scope of the information I received."

-- Rob Sommerville, Endiang
"I have a problem with long distance charges to my closest Internet connection. I may have fixed the problem now by setting up a phone in another area that I can toll free to forward calls to the service provider but if I have to pay long distance, the Internet is not practical to use. I have been told that in Saskatchewan, they have 1-800 service to the Internet connection which makes the service available to anyone, anywhere. If the Alberta government wants to use Internet to provide extension service to people living in rural areas, some form of nearly universal access would be necessary."

-- Rob Sommerville, Endiang
"As far as making the barley pages better, I would do something to make the pages load faster. It is frustrating to sit and watch a page load and then find out that this is not the page I wanted to see. For some reason, pages from other sites loaded faster. It wasn't a problem when I used a computer with a 28800 modem but sometimes was a problem when I was using a 14400 modem. I would have liked to have been able to load a page, read it, then click from there to another site which could have given me more information about that particularsubject. Perhaps that will come with time."

-- Rob Sommerville, Endiang
"In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that I never found a site anywhere on the net that offered the kind of useful information concerning barley production that I found on the barley pages."

-- Rob Sommerville, Endiang
"Now that my 'free lunch' is over, I must decide if I want to pay for my own Internet connection. The barley pages alone are not enough to justify the cost. The information there, although useful, is available elsewhere at lower cost. My biggest concern about continuing 'surfing' is not the cost of the connection but the time I have spent these past few months and whether or not I can justify that amount of time, about 30 hours a month reading, drafting letters and just plain searching. Thank you for all the help."

-- Rob Sommerville, Endiang
"Firstly, I think this has been an excellent project which will provide positive reinforcement to a lot of people for quite a while. In my case the entire experience has been very beneficial and I feel I have been given an excellent opportunity to learn some leading edge 'stuff'. I joined up more as a favour to the Camrose Ag office staff than any other reason and now am very thankful that I did."

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-- Don Gregorwich, Kelsey
"We have decided to continue with Supernet on our own. I really enjoy the e- mail and am using it for the farm more and more, the rest of the family has taken to the Internet like a duck to water and it is well worth the monthly fee."

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-- Don Gregorwich, Kelsey
"Thanks for the opportunity to view your Internet site, 'Project Barley'. I was very impressed with the system and its potential for the farmers of Alberta.
The explosion of the Internet has occasioned the opportunity to access information and knowledge in a whole new manner. I particularly liked the ability to access research and other production data on barley. Previously, this information would be spread across diverse areas of individual expertise within Alberta Ag, Alberta colleges and universities. I encourage your group to continue the population of such important information on the Internet, making it more widely available.
At DuPont, we are beginning the process of defining our role on the Internet. Your project has given me a number of ideas to bring forward to our management. Ideally, we would be linked via hypertext to your web site so that interested growers could view the products and services that DuPont has to offer the Barley community. We'll be sure and keep you up-to-date on our progress."

-- Robert Drover, DuPont Canada, Calgary
"I think that given time this has a great future, not only in us being able to communicate with each other, but in the dissemination of information and ideas, and the ability to lobby for issues, etc. Up here (Peace Country) I think this technology will be very beneficial for all of us. Is there anything we can do to continue this?"

-- Douglas Dunn, Peace Country

Project Barley Evaluation - Excerpts from Duke's Mail

This information is maintained by the Web Editor Last Revised/Reviewed October 20, 1995

This information is maintained by the Web Editor
Last Revised/Reviewed October 20, 1995