Maybe we need to start a call center?

"Help, I'm addicted to big corporations and am sick of it." That'd be the mantra of my new call center. We'd take inbound calls from distressed farmers who's production practices are being prescribed by the same corporations that engineer their seed.

Now if this doesn't sound like a cataclysmic opener to an organic leftist tribal chant, I'm not sure what does... however, I must say that I'm starting to lose respect for the "rugged independent" nature of the American farmer. Heck, even in Ancient Rome they used to hold up the farmer as a necessary occupation in society that was able to voice their opinion without threat of customers leaving them.

I've come to learn and respect a few of the "agvocates" still out there. The AgChat Foundation is delving out some pretty nice dialogue and blogs via Twitter, Facebook and more. These organizations appear to be led by some fantastic people who have a grounded approach. My concern however isn't so much about the education of the non-ag community, but rather the education of the farmers themselves.

For the last hundred years or so, our land grant universities have provided a third party resource of replicated trials to improve farm practices and advanced cropping systems. As the industrialization of ag has evolved so has their funding, and now the only research that gets done is somewhat tainted by the requests set out by the funding grants, often deployed by the same multi-national corporations.

Trade publications are also a source of information for many farmers... particularly favorable to the advertisers therein. No doubt these folks have to make a living through ad space but do they really have large enough budgets to advance the science of farming? No, their role is to give a comprehensive presentation of what the goings on are in ag are at the present moment.

Some 15 or so years ago many people thought farmers themselves would develop more on-farm research protocol through the use of precision ag technologies. Farmers were expected to lay out large block trials and then scout and record yield data... even process the data in the winter for new insights. The trouble with this is the same in other commodity industries like mining or t-shirt manufacturing... they simply cannot leverage the R&D necessary to convert the investments in significant research into value on the other end of the production chain. It is simply in their best interest to adopt early and deploy cost saving measures widely and quickly.

The trouble with zero R&D and early adoption being the best business model is that as we enter the information and communication age of agriculture the rate of adoption will actually accelerate and the margin for competitive error will erode. As land changes hands the production systems go into fewer hands and become necessarily closer to their vertical suppliers. Perhaps that is just natural but I'm just not certain I trust the stock market and government to oversee the stewardship of our land.

The good news is that I've met a growing segment of medium/large growers that have built both cash reserves as well as fixed equity and are turning toward technology to garner greater insights into the actual needs of their farm. With faster information flow these growers are leveraging their own management of their systems and becoming better managers of water, soil health, sunlight and other basics that are very, very low cost to acquire compared to their long term benefit to their business. As landowners recognize the separation in their systems approach they are acquiring land under favorable terms and setting themselves up with a multiplicity of suppliers with more equal yoking.

If anyone happens to read this article and feels compelled to join me in the call center, please let me know. I'm not much for sob stories but would appreciate helping a few people use their brains.

Using Precision Ag to Save Money or Yield More?

A recent publication from PrecisionAg.com http://www.precisionag.com/article/32148/soybean-research-summary-downloadable-pdf-now-available  inquired of the reasons farmers use precision ag. The main thing that stood out to me besides row crop farmers love of machinery, is the fact that there are really only two reasons to adopt any type of increased precision in your farming system.

1. Cost savings - these normally amount to reduced input application. GPS soil testing and VR fertilizer application are used to avoid over application of P & K. Most early adopters of variable rate seeding have done so to reduce total units of seed purchased, either through guidance, row shut off or reduced populations on their thinner soil types. From my point of view these motives are fine but are somewhat short sighted and not very inspiring, particularly for the high yield kings of the neighborhood that know the best way to reduce ALL input costs is to raise higher yields.

2. Increased yield - Fewer people, but still a significant amount, responded that their main reason for adopting variable rate was yield gains.  Of all aspects the stand out was variable rate seeding with nearly 60% indicating yield gains were main reason for adoption.  Still, guidance, row shut off, and other implement controls were touted as a means to increase yield by improving placement.  This is unfortunate but very revealing of the state of the industry.  Variety to soil matching or variable rate seeding was not touted.

What do we need to change this?  Please comment!