II

 General Considerations

 Related to On-Farm Trials


 Management practices and field conditions on most
farms differ from those found on experiment stations.
These differences need to be considered in any strategy to
obtain meaningful experimental data from on-farm trials.
On-farm trials are not meant to try to simulate experiment
station conditions in farmers' fields. Rather, they are
designed to help detect differences under typical farmer
management practices and environmental conditions.
 On-farm research is characterized by farmers'
participation on their own land. This participation
varies according to the nature of the experiments. In
exploratory and site-specific trials, it is limited to
providing the land and some or all of the inputs. At this
stage, farmer participation in information gathering and
decision making is secondary to that of the researcher who
controls the trials. In regional trials farmer
participation is greater, contributing heavily to the
interpretation of results and eventual recommendations.
Finally, farmer-managed trials are conducted by the
farmer, while the researcher becomes the collaborator.
 Researcher-farmer relations, location of trials on
the farm, on-farm experimental designs, and field data
management, including recording, processing, and
standardization, are a few of the many facets that need to
be viewed from a proper perspective when doing research in