What is your farms biggest return on investment?

Question

Give me your top 3.

Answer

1. Tile
2. Conventional corn
3. The correct market adviser

Answer

Tile
Bins
Independent agronomist

Answer

Quality Employees. Grain handling system.  Sprayer.

Answer

1. Definitely land
2. Hopper bins with airation 
3. High clearance Sprayer

Answer

Tile

Sprayer/Floater

Bins

Answer

Dryer 
Grain Bins
Tile

Answer

Employees

Tile

Sprayer/dry machine if you purchase wholesale cash

Answer

1.  Tile
2.  A good record system to give us our cost of production and returns per acre so we can make better business and marketing decisions
3.  Great people to drive the bus. You know when you have them. You miss them when you don’t.

20 years ago, Roundup would have been on this list. It was a game changer for us at the time. Things change.

Answer

Tile and Lime

Answer

Grain bins, sprayer, high speed planter

Answer

Grain trading account #1

Answer

********** soil sampling, and sprayer.

Answer

1. Drainage

2. People (employees)

3. Relationships with business partners

Answer

Tile plow. We bought a tile plow probably 20 years ago. To date we have put in 150,000 feet of tile all on our own land and not done yet. Put in 7500 feet just last week.

Answer

1 cover crops, 2 farm storage/shop, 3 self propelled sprayer

Answer

Good question and discussion!  I think it is interesting that the sprayer is mentioned so many times.  Often we see operations running larger sprayers than they need.  Tendering systems need to be efficient to make a sprayer efficient.  A link is below to some research we did on efficiency and sprayer operating costs.  Also stay tuned for a new YouTube channel from our farm called "Inventive Farmer."  We will feature some spray tender trailer ideas, sprayer operating cost thoughts from some experts, and many of the things we build on our farm.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15MAO4ID6i-oscLsdhcq43gwQ4LyvCJQb/view?usp=sharing

Answer

Till drainage 
Sprayer

Answer

GRAIN

Answer

In Australia a Portable Seedcleaner in the paddock.  Getting our grain into a higher segregation has made us a fortune.  Sp Boomspray: not waiting for contractors to spray things like aphids  in canola. Road train:  for carting our grain. Same thing not waiting for a contractor. Don’t want those headers stopped.

Answer

Wheat soybeans and finished steers

Answer

Biofuel investments

Answer

My kids
Grain dryer
Marketing

Answer

Tile, high speed planter

Answer

1.  Tile drainage
2.  Manure application
3.  new technologies:  Draper header, Precision monitoring, hyd. downforce, etc...

Answer

1.  Grain bins
2. Sprayer
3. Corn and bean hybrids that work on our soil.

Answer

1. Nitrogen/manure 2. Tile plow 3. Selfpropelled Sprayer

Answer

1. Labor
2 Bins
3 Sprayer

Answer

Grain bins

Grain marketing professionals

Planter

Answer

Autosteer

Bins

Self propelled sprayer

Answer

4650 jd I bought 15 years ago. Its pre-emmission. FBN direct.is good. ********** 4245

Answer

1 tile 
2 dryer
3 more tile

Answer

1. Rotation/agronomy
2. Marketing
3. Grain bins/dryer

Answer

Tile tile tile

Answer

1- Fertilizer

2- Grain Sorghum

3- Sub Surface Drip Irrigation

Answer

1  drain tile
2  grain storage
3  sprayer

Answer

1) Grain Storage/Dryer
2) Sprayer
3) Knowing Cale *******

Answer

alfalfa
sprayer
fast grain conditioning equipment

Answer

1 Tile
2 Grain Storage
3 Our own sprayer

Honorable mention: FBN

Answer

Semi and grain hopper
On farm storage

Answer

1. On farm grain storage/dryer
2. Machinery storage
3. Good hired help

Answer

1. Quality and happy employees 
2. Quality grain broker that works as if it’s his grain/money
3. Quality insurance to cover the risk from all angles.

Good management will always win over equipment purchases.

Answer

Drain tile 
At least one speciality crop
Good workers

Answer

Good land
Quality help
Sprayer

Answer

1 Wife/ Family 
2 Regenerative Farming practices saving me significant sums of money, paying less interest on operating notes and showing better ROI
3 growing seed corn and seed soybeans independently and conditioning the seed (then licensing and legally turning around and growing my own seed) Grow your own seed! Its better quality and cheaper! 
4 Plant breeding, growing plants that are naturally breed to have a higher nutrient density than the seed we are all buying from Pioneer, Asgrow, Dekalb, Channel etc.
5 taking all the things listed above and utilizing them to connect direct with customers cutting out many middlemen and providing higher quality, more nutrient dense regeneratively farmed products from food and feed ingredients and for seed, feed and human food consumption
6 You tube Channel GROW THE FARM UP - it is a great marketing tool helping me a lot to connect with consumers that are looking for farm to table purchasing opportunities.  check it out

Answer

Tile and a grain system. Nothing else is even close.

Answer

1. Variable Rate on three products single pass
2. Self Propelled Sprayer with a 5k gallon sprayer tender w/ premix chem tanks.
3. Fully outfitted service truck

Answer

1) Drainage, right now all I have is surface but I bought a tile plow this spring.

2) a talented full time mechanic, I haven't had a service call in 1.5 years

3) sprayer, I spray every acre I farm myself, the timing is critical when applying product I have seen  a yield bump on my farm from it. I have also a major cost savings from custom app.

Answer

1) NKLA puts
2) ECP from 2018
3) TSLA calls
No serious, this year is a wash. It is terrible. I never knew a year could be so bad

Answer

1-Land roller (lots of rocks on this farm)
2-Sprayer
3-Grain dryer

Answer

1. Sprayer

2. Scraper

3. Dryer

Answer

My new rock picker made by ********** (17 ft wide)

Answer

Due to drought:
Crop Insurance
Government Payments

Also: GFY.ag paired with trading accounts.

Answer

Conventional corn

Grain bins and dryer

Answer

1. CS690 Cotton stripper, faster and more efficient, went from 12 people at harvest to 2.

2. 3 well qualified driven employees, instead of 5 average employees.

3. Grain Bins

Answer

Litter, 4wd Tractors, Vertical Tillage

Answer

1.Deer fences
2.Actually having time to run drainage ditches

Answer

1 - Self Propelled Sprayer
2 - High Speed Planter
3 - Employees that can operate and repair equipment

Answer

1. Pen, paper and calculator 
2. Manure
3. Sprayer

Answer

1- Agronomist 
2- Correct seed varieties
3- Marketing prior to planting 
4- Trustworthy custom farmer

Answer

FBN Membership and everything it entails.
Grain system.
Good help.

Answer

Cover crops
Planter upgrades
F2F corn

Answer

1. Drying and storing our own crop
2. doing our own service work as much as possible and run older high hour equipment.
doing our own spraying

Answer

I know there’s not a lot of wheat growers in here but a fungicide application on wheat at flag leaf has the biggest ROI in all agricultural... sometimes $13/acre can be the difference in 50 Bu... in 12 years we have never had light wheat and never lost money doing it

Answer

1. Drain Tile
2. H2-A workers
3. Grain Bins
4. FBN Seed Finder

Answer

1.  Grain bins
2.  Sprayer/ floater dry fertilizer 
3.  Cattle

Answer

1. Knowledge - we set a personal record yield on a field this year using a totally different fertilizer program from last year. The high yield wasn’t farm wide but if we got started planting a week earlier I suspect it would’ve been

2. Alfalfa

3. Conventional corn

Answer

Tile, Planter, Sprayer

Answer

Top Notch Hired Man

Center Pivots

Sprayer

Answer

Hydraulic down pressure
Drainage tile and ditches
Trials and weekly tissue testing
Going into 2019 I'm focusing on 
The perfect planter pass
More potash
More effort on cover crops

Answer

1.Barns  / Sheds

2.Corn pickers and Gravity Wagons

3.Grain Bagger and Grain Vac

4. FBN

Answer

1- pen and paper

2- labor and agronomists

3- sprayer

Answer

This year prevent plant(not even close, tile couldn’t save me)most years my two employees of over 25 years who love farming and think of mine as there own!!

Answer

Interesting that so many feel like a sprayer is very high on their list. I would be interested to hear why that sprayer brings so much return? Is it a practice that you are doing on your own acres? Or is it a custom spraying scenario? I was actually contemplating getting rid of our sprayer. Seems for the custom rate that I can have it done timely it was a no brained to have someone else out there doing it. My operation has limited man power and it seems there is a lot going on right in the middle of spraying season? Thoughts?

Answer

Wife
She does all the banking ag department paperwork and the rest of the government paperwork and still finds time to launch my boat!!

Answer

1) Managing Wheat and Corn in-season nitrogen using N-Rich strips and GreenSeeker ($10-$20 per acre added return in avg year for $15,000 1-time equipment investment)

2) Kuhn Knight PS270 manure spreader with AccuSpread ($70,000 1-time equipment purchase. $50+/acre lower litter cost this year with ability to spread wet, sticky layer litter that company could not sell to other farmers - 95% of farmers in my area can only spread dry poultry litter)

3) Self-propelled sprayer ($250,000 1-time purchase in 2014. Avg $5/ac savings through flexibility to buy chems from any retailer. About $2/ac lower cost (including depreciation) to run my own vs custom hire. Hard to value but REALLY BIG - my fields are always first in line to be sprayed!)  I log acres covered - 11,000 to 12,000 per year - so direct savings are $75,000/yr not counting application timeliness bonus.

Answer

After last year nothing wheat was a bust with half of the crop winter killed the other half yielded less than half what it should have, all because of late planting an harsh winter and lingering cold into late late spring, corn planting didnt start till june 2 with only 1/2 of the acres expected gotten planted only average yield and 51-52 lbs test wt only average price, beans were late with yields high 30's low 40's  hay was short because of cool wet saturated ground, corn is usually our saviour but at this point nothing looks good!

Answer

1. Improving my personal health-loosing 80 lbs, daily 5 am workouts at the rec center
    The greatest asset you will never find on a balance sheet is you…       
       maintain your health better than you do your equipment… you can’t be traded off at John Deere…

2.  Investment into Legacy Farmer-**********(knowing my numbers inside and out, making decisions based on data, not emotion)

3.  Sticking the tile plow in the ground every chance I get and transition to organic agriculture on 1/4 of my operation acres.

4. Cut out custom work.. the definition of custom work should be the act of wearing out equipment just to make a payment, so you can start all over once it is paid off..

Answer

1. Sprayer
2. GPS/Autosteer (maybe in this era that is a given)
3. Cattle. (Cows and farming complement each other so much IMHO)

Answer

tile
 tile
 tile.
  dryer,  
 grain bin

Answer

1- Drain tile

2- grain bins

3- Sprayer

Answer

Wife

Answer

1 grain handling equipment (dryer and bins)
2 sprayer
3 FBN membership

Call (844) 200-FARM

What is your farms biggest return on investment?

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