Farmers are interested in research-based information about resource conservation and certified crop advisors (CCAs) are continually in search of opportunities to earn continuing education units (CEUs) to maintain their certification. Every two years a CCA must earn 40 CEUs. At least 20 of these CEUS must be from sources that have obtained pre-approval and have been assigned an official tracking number.
In order to maintain the base certification, at least five board-approved CEUs must come from each of four categories: soil and water, crop, nutrient and integrated pest management. In addition to the base certification, in certain states (including Illinois) CCAs have recently been offered the option of obtaining a 4-R Nutrient Management Specialist certification, which will require CCAs to earn an additional 2.5 CEUs in both the nutrient and soil and water management categories.
One FREE online resource is available to help provide conservation-related information to farmers and landowners can also help CCAs to obtain non-board-approved CEUs:
Not only is there a calendar of up-coming live webinars, but along the right-hand side of the page is a list of archived webinars divided by category. Many of the archived webinars that may be of interest to farmers and CCAs are listed under the "conservation" heading. Not all of the webinars are geared towards CCAs. Scroll down on an individual webinar page and look on the lower right-hand side of the page and look under the "credits" heading (Figure, red box) to determine whether a course is designed for CCAs.