(edited)Agronomy
What is your farms biggest return on investment?
Give me your top 3.
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My kids
Grain dryer
Marketing
Biofuel investments
Due to drought:
Crop Insurance
Government Payments
Also: GFY.ag paired with trading accounts.
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Wheat soybeans and finished steers
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.
GRAIN
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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. Stic...
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Till drainage
Sprayer
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
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My new rock picker made by ********** (17 ft wide)
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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 Farme...
1. Sprayer
2. Scraper
3. Dryer
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1-Land roller (lots of rocks on this farm)
2-Sprayer
3-Grain dryer
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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
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1 cover crops, 2 farm storage/shop, 3 self propelled sprayer
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Our hill ground has high erosion potential. We were losing (est.) 2 tons of soil per acre prior to cover crops. With cover crops, more soil stays in place, water infiltration is higher, and soil structure is improved. Paying todays price for good quality land, then allowing tons of soil to leave the farm each year seems crazy too me.
Could you explain the positive returns to your cover crops and how quickly do you see the return?
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.
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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.
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1. Drainage
2. People (employees)
3. Relationships with business partners
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Yes, my sprayer has a much higher rate or return that the planter. Being able to go spray on my schedule and not wait my turn in line is huge. I can hire custom planting for $12-14/acre. There's enough guys looking for custom work that my acres would get planted in a reasonable time frame. Custom applicators here aren't plentiful. So you either wait in line and maybe miss your window, which then l...
My response to a sprayer is that many people have their spraying custom done. It’s not considered an essential piece of equipment like a planter. Combines are a horrible investment but compared to custom hire, do provide a positive ROI for most operations. Combines are expensive to own, expensive to operate, expensive to repair. Sprayers are the exact opposite in most cases. Very easy to recoup co...
********** soil sampling, and sprayer.
Grain trading account #1
Grain bins, sprayer, high speed planter
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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...
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Tile and Lime
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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 farm...
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Wife
She does all the banking ag department paperwork and the rest of the government paperwork and still finds time to launch my boat!!
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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.
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I agree with the Roundup comment ...now we are going back in time to those old chemicals that cost 3 times more per acre and need a bigger sprayer to keep up.
Employees
Tile
Sprayer/dry machine if you purchase wholesale cash
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
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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
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Tile and a grain system. Nothing else is even close.
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Mr anonymous, I think drain tile sucks! Lol. Waiting on a rain in Nebraska!!! Wish I had to put drain tile in some years You can't make it muddy around here
Hiring a market company is close.
Cover crops
Planter upgrades
F2F corn
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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 ...
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Dryer
Grain Bins
Tile
Tile
Sprayer/Floater
Bins
1. Definitely land
2. Hopper bins with airation
3. High clearance Sprayer
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I agree. Renting land has allowed our operation to grow tremendously, while not being held back with large amounts of long term debt.
Land is an awesome ROI, IF you can make it through that 15-30 year period to pay it off. It's like paying double to triple rate cash rent for my area.
Good land
Quality help
Sprayer
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Drain tile
At least one speciality crop
Good workers
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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.
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1. On farm grain storage/dryer
2. Machinery storage
3. Good hired help
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Semi and grain hopper
On farm storage
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1 Tile
2 Grain Storage
3 Our own sprayer
Honorable mention: FBN
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alfalfa
sprayer
fast grain conditioning equipment
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Can you Explain your thoughts on alfalfa. Do you sell it all as dry hay? Or putting it through cattle? Renting out some acres to big dairy? I have been thinking about alfalfa lately, but can't figure out how to do it In a large scale rotation with equipment needs and time to put it up....We have maybe 5-10% tillable land in rotation, have small discbine, bar rakes, and roundbaler. Thanks Sprayer ...
Wife
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FBN Membership and everything it entails.
Grain system.
Good help.
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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 ...
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Thanks guys after posting I also read the post about sprayer specific ROI and much of the same was mentioned there.
For us, it’s more timely to do it ourselves than have someone else come spray it. We will spray 8-21k acres depending on the crop rotation, input prices, & commodity prices. Doesn’t take long to pay for a 130k setup (sprayer & tender setup & you could do it for even less probably) when custom rates start at $5.50/acre.
My reason was bc the custom application was not getting done timely(losing yield from weed pressure) Also in my area it's only the coops that do custom spraying so I was stuck buying chemicals from them not able to shop around. I'm saving big$$$ on chemical now with my own sprayer.
1- Agronomist
2- Correct seed varieties
3- Marketing prior to planting
4- Trustworthy custom farmer
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1) Grain Storage/Dryer
2) Sprayer
3) Knowing Cale *******
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That’s a good looking mug on a good looking mug!
😎
1 drain tile
2 grain storage
3 sprayer
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We are blessed to have high quality employees that make it possible to all the work done.
Quality Employees. Grain handling system. Sprayer.
Tile
Bins
Independent agronomist
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1- Fertilizer
2- Grain Sorghum
3- Sub Surface Drip Irrigation
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Would be interested in more information on your drip irrigation
1. Pen, paper and calculator
2. Manure
3. Sprayer
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1 - Self Propelled Sprayer
2 - High Speed Planter
3 - Employees that can operate and repair equipment
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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!!
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1. Tile
2. Conventional corn
3. The correct market adviser
Tile tile tile
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1. Rotation/agronomy
2. Marketing
3. Grain bins/dryer
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1- pen and paper
2- labor and agronomists
3- sprayer
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1 tile
2 dryer
3 more tile
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4650 jd I bought 15 years ago. Its pre-emmission. FBN direct.is good. ********** 4245
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1- Drain tile
2- grain bins
3- Sprayer
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1.Barns / Sheds
2.Corn pickers and Gravity Wagons
3.Grain Bagger and Grain Vac
4. FBN
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tile
tile
tile.
dryer,
grain bin
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Autosteer
Bins
Self propelled sprayer
3
Yep. when farming flat quarters and half sections, auto steer pays every single time. When the wind is blowing and you can't see the end of you implement very well, auto steer pays. When trying to pickup a small millet windrow and the wind is out of the wrong direction and you can barely see past the pickup header going in that direction, auto steer pays. When you can't see the other end of the 2 ...
Autosteer?....I have seen no return on investment on mine..maybe GPS and Mapping
Grain bins
Grain marketing professionals
Planter
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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
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1. Labor
2 Bins
3 Sprayer
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1.Deer fences
2.Actually having time to run drainage ditches
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1. Nitrogen/manure 2. Tile plow 3. Selfpropelled Sprayer
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1. Grain bins
2. Sprayer
3. Corn and bean hybrids that work on our soil.
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1. Tile drainage
2. Manure application
3. new technologies: Draper header, Precision monitoring, hyd. downforce, etc...
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Top Notch Hired Man
Center Pivots
Sprayer
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Litter, 4wd Tractors, Vertical Tillage
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Tile, Planter, Sprayer
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Tile, high speed planter
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High speed planters save time but increase in row see spacing which reduces yields. Check your seed spacing vs mph and see if there is a variance in spacing and therefore yield.
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
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What did you do different with your fertility?
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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
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1. Grain bins
2. Sprayer/ floater dry fertilizer
3. Cattle
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1. Sprayer
2. GPS/Autosteer (maybe in this era that is a given)
3. Cattle. (Cows and farming complement each other so much IMHO)
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I think that depends on where you're at. Where I am it takes a lot of acres to sustain free range cattle so you need a lot of ground and a lot of cows to be profitable, same goes with the farm side with limited cropping options with marginal return/acre so anymore guys are having to get so big at one or the other that they don't have the time or resources to do both.
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1. Independent agronomist (servi-tech)
2. My team of employees.
3. Niche crops that offer a premium. (Seed corn, plenish soybeans, non GMO white corn.)
1. Drain Tile
2. H2-A workers
3. Grain Bins
4. FBN Seed Finder
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Conventional corn
Grain bins and dryer
2
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1 grain handling equipment (dryer and bins)
2 sprayer
3 FBN membership
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