Farmers seek help from drought on the Net

| Monday, July 24, 2006

Previous Page

Share

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• NewsVine
• Fark

Print

Email

MITCHELL (AP) — A Web site that matches hay sellers with hay buyers is getting more attention as drought conditions spread in South Dakota.

Feed Finder, a South Dakota State University Cooperative Extension Service program, is drawing an increasing number of Web site hits, according to Rick Anderson, assistant director of the SDSU agricultural information technology unit.

“We typically average about 100 page views a day,” Anderson said. When natural disasters occur, those hits can increase fourfold, he said.

Anderson said hits to the site increased to 2,500 a day after a television story about the service but dropped to 1,000 to 1,200 page views a day afterward.

“The areas hardest hit by drought are the north-central portions of the state, but there are some locations that do have decent amounts of hay,” George Williams, deputy state secretary of agriculture, said.

Williams said an increasing number of grassland fires that could pose a threat to feed reserves is becoming a concern.

Feed Finder has been around, in some form, for about eight or nine years, said Rick Anderson, assistant director of the SDSU agricultural information technology unit.

“It used to be an old telephone bulletin-board system,” Anderson said, “but it’s been Internet-based since 1997.”

He said a “Harvest Finder” spinoff, which connects harvesters with those needing their services, was instituted a few years ago, but is not as popular.

He said the Feed Finder service was a critical service for farmers and ranchers in the wake of flooding that came after the rough winter of 1996-1997.

“Its biggest benefit is being able to put people in touch with each other at their leisure,” Anderson said, noting that a message on the Internet site is not as intrusive as a telephone call.

“There’s no concern about bothering someone,” he said.

On the Net:

http://feedfinder.sdstate.edu:8080