Think About This: Gearing Up For Go Time
We are in the home stretch for preparing to head to the field in 2018. Yield data have been reviewed. Input decisions for planting are mostly if not all locked in. New practices that were being considered are deployed or getting ready to be deployed. Applicators are finishing up the off-season maintenance on equipment. And farmers are waiting to start up the tractor when spring cracks open.
The circumstances are similar for professional athletes who have trained and prepared for the big game, and then, it’s time to perform. A lot of behind-the-scenes work has been done before the ball is snapped, or before the first pitch, or before tip-off.
Farming gives us all one chance every year, but not all of our decisions are made at one time. No doubt, with information accessible to us at all times via our smartphones, we are constantly learning—or at least consuming—new things. A recent AgPro poll asked our audience how many winter meetings they thought the average farmer attended.
- 66% responded zero to five meetings.
- 30% responded six to 10 meetings.
- Only 4% responded more than 11 meetings.
I guess the word “average” may have tilted the answer to be lower than what my opinion is of how many meetings the farmers I know attend. Or perhaps the average farmer seeks out information from in-person meetings only five times in the off-season.
Maybe we should give each other, and ourselves, the deserved credit for how we have prepared for 2018. This year ahead will no doubt throw a series of challenges our way as obstacles to any kind of an easy victory.
Despite the challenges, it seems everyone is eager to make sure they are on top of the latest, and hopefully greatest, new way to make the crop year a success. We should all think everyone wants to win.
As NFL coach Jimmy Johnson said, “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”
