What the world needs is a good Web site for
agriculture. At least that’s what Crop
& Soil Sciences graduate student Stuart
Pocknee figured. When he arrived in Tifton from Australia
in 1993 to begin work on his doctorate on soil spacial
variability
in precision farming, Pocknee already loved the Internet.

From the ‘Land Down Under’ to Sandy
South Georgia

When
your family and friends are half-way around the world and you’re
living on a grad student’s income, e-mail is a natural fit for
communicating long-distance, Pocknee says.

Soon he was looking to the Internet for more
than letters from home.

“I was interested in news, sports, anything
not in the local media, and the Web had so much,” Pocknee
recalls. “But it didn’t have a lot of information on precision
agriculture.”

Brainstorming with Major
Professor

Pocknee’s major professor, Craig
Kvien, agreed. They decided the listservs and a few other
sites just weren’t enough. And they knew the Web could be a great
way to get news out about precision agriculture. So Pocknee
developed
a small scale information resource on the Web – a compendium of
information linked together.

“None of this is difficult, it just takes
time,” Pocknee says. “So I decided I needed to write
programs to automate the process. The programs collect links and
look after them and make changes that make the Web site more
efficient.
It worked well but then we wanted to make applications bigger.
That’s where AgriSurf came
from.”

Especially for
Aggies

AgriSurf is designed for farmers, agribusiness
people, farm press, educators and others to find out what they
need to know about agriculture rapidly. The Ag Index lists 12,751
sites in various categories. Pocknee’s automated system allows
groups to add their site to his index themselves.

You can also check ag news, ag weather, ag
shows, ag sounds and an ag forum. Add your vote to the poll,
which
asks, “Who feeds the world?” Farmers cornered 91 percent
of the vote, but visit the comments section to find out why
people
cast their votes for politicians and researchers as well. Check
out the archive
s
for some fascinating facts.

Over a Million Hits a
Month on a Shoestring Budget

And while you’re there, notice the advertisers.

“They about cover the costs of keeping
up the site,” Pocknee says. “Their dollars cover the
connection costs, the news feed and computers. I tried to come
up with a system that gave me the most control and still be cut-
throat
cheap with the best technology I could afford.”

The site may run on a shoestring, but it doesn’t
look cheap. Not to the 35,000 regular users who account for 1.2
million hits a month.

“That’s pretty good for a little site
with only word-of-mouth advertising,” Pocknee says.

But Pocknee isn’t done with AgriSurf yet.

“What I want to do is expand the search
capabilities,” he says. “Right now it’s more of an index
but it doesn’t search these sites for the information they
have.”

AgriSurf. That’s what a little ingenuity and
technology will get you.