Farm Credit Services of Illinois and 1st Farm Credit Services have jointly pledged $25,000 per year in support of farmdoc. “Many of the 18,000 Illinois farm families and agribusinesses that are members of our two Farm Credit cooperatives find tremendous business value on farmdoc. We know our farmdoc sponsorship is an investment that can help provide all farmers with useful decision making information,” says Dave Owens, president and C.E.O. of Farm Credit Services of Illinois. “We salute the University of Illinois farmdoc team for creating the premier information hub for farmers. We are proud to support this excellent public outreach resource for farm businesses.”

farmdoc is a web-based collection of publications, decision tools, and databases that provide access to a variety of risk management issues related to agriculture. Subject matter emphasis includes finance, marketing and outlook, management, law and taxation, and policy. “The goal of farmdoc continues to be to improve farm decision-making through education and research,” said Scott Irwin, U of I professor of agricultural marketing. “But fiscal realities have led us to seek additional financial resources to make this educational site sustainable.”

Irwin says farmdoc team members rejected the idea of accepting advertisements or switching to a "pay for access" site. They strongly favored maintaining open access to the site and chose the sponsorship model to raise funds as a result. Four levels of sponsorship are available with platinum being the highest level for annual sponsorships of at least $25,000. Gold sponsorships require a minimum of $10,000 of annual support; silver sponsorships require at least $1,000. A new “Friends of farmdoc” program has been established to recruit gifts of up to $1,000 from the farmdoc users.

"Last year, more than one-million individuals visited the farmdoc website accounting for 5.4 million hits," Irwin said. "Visitors to the farmdoc website include crop and livestock producers of all sizes, educators, agribusiness leaders, farmland owners, and many others."

Farm Credit Services is a nationwide network of farmer-owned credit cooperatives. In Illinois, Farm Credit Services of Illinois is based in Mahomet and serves the southern 60 counties; 1st Farm Credit Services is based in Normal and serves the northern 42 counties. Together, the two Farm Credit Services cooperatives in Illinois serve 18,000 farm families, rural landowners, and agribusinesses with $5.5 billion of financing and more than 3,000,000 acres of crop insurance coverage. The Farm Credit System’s mission is to provide a sound, dependable, and competitive source of financial capital and related services to agriculture and Rural America.