Applications of hand-held technologies to farming and other agribusinesses will be the focus of a Dec. 13 conference, sponsored by University of Illinois Extension. "it4Ag" will be held at the Interstate Center, 2301 W. Market St., Bloomington, IL.

"Farmers have many new delivery systems for information today," explained Dennis Bowman, U of I Extension crop systems educator based in Champaign and one of the conference's organizers. "Increasingly, producers use the Internet and podcasts to get information when and where they need it.

"Now, with hand-held devices like cell phones and PDAs, they can do all kinds of things. For instance, with auto-steering devices on harvesting and planting machinery, farmers can multi-task and be in constant contact with marketing information, making decisions literally in the field."