Farmers continue to weigh input costs against income potential for this season – looking to achieve more of the latter by reducing their use of the former.
It is a tough balance to strike this year, said a panel of independent crop consultants who spoke during the recent Field Advisor Forum in Champaign, Ill. The event was funded by the Illinois Soybean Checkoff Program.
Kyle Stull, owner of Stull Agronomy, says his farmer customers in Wisconsin have established baselines for their input purchases and, at this stage, are finetuning budget decisions.
Based on his calculations, Stull anticipates corn-soybean growers there who are able to turn a profit will see it pencil out to around $100 an acre, on average.
With profitability in mind, Stull offers this recommendation. “The biggest place to cut is on any extra products – the add-on stuff, where you can easily spend a lot of money,” says Stull, a certified crop advisor (CCA). “You don’t want to go out and gamble 30% of your family’s net income by buying a $30-an-acre product you might not need.”
Karen Corrigan, a CCA and partner in McGillicuddy Corrigan Agronomics, also weighed in on product purchases but offered a different perspective. She advises farmers to address their No. 1 yield-limiting factor before investing in products that may or may not help.
“People might want to sell you micronutrients, for instance, but if your problem is potassium, micronutrients aren’t going to help much,” says Corrigan, an independent field agronomist based in Illinois. “So, you really have to know for your own operation what you need to address.”
Don’t Make Blanket Cuts To Fertilizer
Corrigan says farmers always look to reduce fertilizer use in lean times but that decision can be short-sighted.
“You can’t know what to cut unless you know where you are. So, one of the best things you can look at is the soil test,” she says. “Maybe you need to spend more on one farm for fertility and less on another based on what those levels show.”
Keep in mind that having the right soil pH can improve the availability of essential nutrients to your crops, adds Kelly Robertson, CCA, Precision Crop Services, based in southern Illinois near Benton.
With a good soil pH, farmers can improve crop yields, nutrient uptake, weed control and herbicide persistence, he notes.
“Compared to all the other inputs, limestone is very cheap. I can often get the biggest ROI from adjusting soil pH,” says Robertson, who participates in the Soy Envoy program, an initiative by Field Advisor and the Illinois Soybean Association.
Employ the 5% Rule. The concept was developed by Danny Klinefelter, who was a professor and economist with Texas AgriLife Extension at Texas A&M University and the long-time director of The Executive Program for Agricultural Producers.
Klinefelter stated the rule this way: “A 5% increase in price received, a 5% decrease in costs, and a 5% increase in yield will often produce more than a 100% increase in net returns. The effect is cumulative, multiplicative and compounding.”
Robertson says he works with farmers to identify areas where they can make small improvements, and a 5% adjustment isn’t usually overwhelming. “If we can make small improvements in price, production and expenses, we can go from a negative return per acre to a very positive return very quickly,” he says.
As Klinefelter pointed out a decade ago, “We’re in a commodity business with tight margins, so every time you make a positive change to your revenue or expenses, even small ones, it can have huge positive effects on your bottom line.”
Get Tough On Weeds. Corrigan says she is always worried about weeds and their impact on yield potential.
“If we can get in fields in a timely manner and get our residual herbicides down, we’ll be OK. But last spring, we were super wet here, and that pushed everything back,” she recalls.
In that scenario, farmers couldn’t necessarily rely on their plan A for weed control. It’s why Corrigan advises farmers to have plan B and even a plan C ready to implement, if needed.
“Don’t be afraid to switch things up, because it might be necessary in order for you to stay profitable,” she says.
Corrigan encourages farmers to use full rates of herbicides and products that address the specific weed spectrum they have, which can differ from field to field.
“We have done fertilizer prescriptions and seed population prescriptions, but we still try to spray every field the same. I think we need to treat fields individually, like we do for other aspects of crop production,” she says. “If you have specific weed problems in specific fields, make sure you use the products needed, but don’t put them across those acres that don’t have those problems.”
Also, consider what chemistries you’re putting in the tank and whether those products are compatible. Some products won’t cooperate in a tankmix.
In still other scenarios, a surfactant can make all the difference in whether two products will work together.
“There’s nothing magical about surfactants. They are simple and relatively inexpensive to use as long as they don’t have a fancy name and the word proprietary next to them,” Corrigan says.
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