Air March 14, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. More rain over the weekend. This time more frost was out of the ground and we had less runoff and more infiltration. Unless you have chores to do or cows to calve, things are looking up! We’ll just have to wait and see what this afternoon and the next couple of days brings us now.

Last weeks meeting on increasing profitability by controlling crop production costs was excellent to say the least. I won’t even try to go in to all the details that they did. I’ll hit some of more important and thought provoking ideas. First of all energy - price for fuel, and anything made from oil or natural gas will be up again in 2001. Possibly not as much of an increase as from 1999 to 2000, but up a hefty amount all the same. The general feeling was, that on a per acre or per bushel basis, the cost of fuel was a small enough proportion that one should just carry on like normal. I would temper that by adding that there may be a few tillage passes made that aren’t necessary. Examine each field operation that you do for your field and decide how necessary it really is! They discouraged a sudden switch to reduced or no till just to reduce fuel costs. If you want to switch to no-till then make a plan and approach it in a well thought out fashion, not a knee jerk reaction because of fuel prices. The one point that I really want to drive home is the whole idea of profitability. Profitability is somewhat size insensitive. There are profitable big and little producers. Many producers get really hung up on only yield and price per bushel. Granted, these are important, but a lot of times they are quite out of your control. Where the most profitability improvement comes from is in the cost per unit of production. What is your per bushel cost and where can you reduce that cost. Sometimes it may be changing your yield goals by adding or reducing fertilizer - and by the way, optimum fertilizer rate is very cost insensitive, so don’t cut back on fertilizer thinking it will save you money. The only way to know cost per bushel is to keep good records. Ooooh, there’s that nasty R word again, records. Only through good records are you able to track those costs and know where you rank with others like yourself. If you’re interested in more details, give me a call at the Extension Office. The best times for planting potatoes this month is not the 17th (it’s going to be too wet anyway), but the almanac says March 18, 19, 23 and 24. The next good period will be April 7, 8 & 9.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

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