Are you a farmer curious about double-cropping? Or a researcher or service provider wanting to conduct on-farm experiments? We’re developing AgConnect for you!
AgConnect is a free, user-friendly, open-data, online platform that helps farmers and researchers collaborate to answer farmers’ questions. It combines project management, data entry, reporting, and more in one central spot, and it gives everyone access to decades of Vermont agricultural research to inform practices, policies, and programs.
On AgConnect, farmers can suggest on-farm experiments, browse and join existing ones, enter and store data, and receive results. Researchers can recruit, communicate with, and learn from farmers; manage on-farm experiments; analyze data; and create reports. Other agricultural stakeholders and the public can use the searchable database of free, open-access reports from research, past and present.
To create AgConnect, the UVM Extension Northwest Crops and Soils Program (NWCS) is team is collaborating with Burlington strategy firm GameTheory and the Food Systems Research Institute at UVM.
A lot has happened since AgConnect’s creation in 2025: Farmers have clarified its value to them, our staff have tested it, and our developers have made some hefty improvements.
In our April 2026 survey, nearly 40 diverse Vermont farmers replied that they value on-farm research. On a 5-point scale (5=strongly agree, 1=strongly disagree), they responded:
they value reliable data generated on their farm or local farms for decision making (4.44),
they use such data to inform decisions and want their research results to be accessible to other farmers (4.35), and
that local on-farm research results should inform decisions that affect the local agriculture community (4.37).
They rated AgConnect’s value to them at 4.19. “Simply put: We like making good decisions and are limited by available data,” one farmer commented.
Credit: NWCS
Many respondents would welcome help with conducting on-farm experiments (3.89). Barriers they identified included the work, time, and money needed to set up trials and collect data. They also want researchers and service providers to guide experiment setup to ensure that data will be meaningful to them and other farmers.
These results indicate farmers’ desire for and willingness to conduct on-farm research, but only if it is inexpensive, doesn’t take too much work or time, and comes with guidance and support.
We’re designing AgConnect to meet those needs. It’s already free to use, and our NWCS team and other service providers will help farmers design high-quality, meaningful experiments. But to be sure AgConnect is on the right track, our staff spent more than 15 hours in September testing it as farmers and researchers. (Many NWCS staff conduct research and run their own farms outside their UVM jobs.)
Credit: NWCS
Our testers suggested a number of improvements, including making it easier for farmers and researchers to communicate, and improving the progress bar researchers use to create new experiments.
This winter, we plan to train service providers in conducting high-quality on-farm research and to recruit UVM researchers to use AgConnect for on-farm experiments in the 2027 growing season. We’re doggedly submitting grant proposals to keep expanding and improving this valuable platform for Vermont’s agricultural community.
We greatly appreciate funding to date from the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships and the Food Systems Research Institute.
Stay tuned! Please contact us at AgConnect@uvm.edu for more information or to participate in the next round of testing and development.