Wildy Family Farms, the 2015 Arkansas Farm Family of the Year, understands the benefits of allowing on farm research projects. 

“We do a lot of on farm research,” said David Wildy, owner of Wildy Family Farms in Mississippi County. 

“We do a lot of trials and stuff ourself and do a little bit with some private industry. But our biggest emphasis is with the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University where we allow them to come into our fields and do research because we feel like, again, referring back to some things I learned from my dad, he said, ‘David, you should surround yourself with people that are smarter than you are.’ And so by doing that we can learn from this experience,” Wildy explained.

Dr. Tina Gray Teague recently led a team of students from Arkansas State who were conducting a project on the Wildy’s farm. She said they have been very cooperative and working on real-world farms provides data and results they are not able to obtain on campus. 

“The Wildy’s have been just marvelous in providing us opportunities in their fields and their equipment to study at the field scale some of the decision guides we make with small plots,” Teague said. “

So we move from small plots, experiment station to large scale production agriculture and they’re amazing partners. This is a great field for our study and we’ve been here since 2011 looking at this field.”

Brittany Barnes is a graduate student at ASU who has learned a lot by participating in the research project.

“This has been a very valuable experience for me. It’s more of a farm-scale size research opportunity where I’m used to just a research plot. So it puts it in a perspective for the farmer and also for someone that’s trying to help them out,” Barnes said.

Wildy Family Farms is one of several in Mississippi County that are participating in a cooperative research program through the local extension office that has helped arrange college projects on their farms.

“There’s an advantage to doing on-farm research that we see real world problems,” said Ray Benson, staff chair of the Mississippi County Cooperative Extension Service.   

“Farmers see an advantage to it, they see first-hand new findings, new discovery. All of the farmers have been very cooperative. They’re interested in that. They do realize that sometimes research can be intrusive at probably two of the most critical times, at planting and at harvest. So we try to make them be aware of that.

“It’s a good relationship and the farmers have always been, the ones that we work with, have always been willing to sacrifice a little bit of that time to help make it happen,” Benson explained.

“It’s just a two-way street where we can talk them and they can learn the needs of the farmer and we can also learn from them on new things that are coming down the pike so, we feel like it’s a very good relationship and hope to continue it in the future,” Wildy said.