Important Action for 2020

[bucket]

Probably because when those dumbasses looked in the mirror they realized all the extras they are putting in the field and technology is not getting them a better price.. or net return...

And then they seen the dumbasses halfway around the world still using oxen and flailing grain in the air with better support prices....

[blackpowder]

Look, I need the last bushel or I can go drive a garbage truck. I need to know efficiencies by the numbers.
Would I ever pay that much money for advisers and top up products????
Never, those days are long gone.
Any damn fool who gives a damn can figure his crops out on his own.
More valuable info would come from your banker. If he could do an anonymous cost of sales comparison with like operations. Illuminating.

[tweety]

..snip.. If he could do an anonymous cost of sales comparison with like operations. Illuminating.

Imagine how illuminating that is for the guy selling the inputs to get all the numbers from his customer.

I say dumbass because we all have known for quite some time that all this technology is used for the sole purpose of knowing your bottom line to be able to charge most effectively for the products and services you buy. Yet on twitter you constantly see farmers willing giving away their valuable data with a ridiculous smile on their face.

I. Just. Don't. Get. It. Why on earth as a business person would you ever do this to your own business????

[blackpowder]

Elementary business rule to charge what the market will bear.
For the record, I don't share with anyone, but they've always had ways of finding out the basics.
Now of course, the technology exists to count the last kernel. Why anyone would sign away their right to privacy is beyond me. Naivety I guess. Everyone should get divorced I guess.
My point was about cost of sales benchmarking being more telling.

[hobbyfrmr]

Look, I need the last bushel or I can go drive a garbage truck. I need to know efficiencies by the numbers.
Would I ever pay that much money for advisers and top up products????
Never, those days are long gone.
Any damn fool who gives a damn can figure his crops out on his own.
More valuable info would come from your banker. If he could do an anonymous cost of sales comparison with like operations. Illuminating.

I have to agree with your opinion. Every year I figure out how much grain was produced. I dont need to tell everybody, hopefully there enough volume and profit price so I can do it again next year. Thats about it.
The younger generation farmers like the electronic gizmos and data collection thingys because they are good at it. I think they do not understand that they are giving away their privacy and the industry will use that information to profit even more from them. I am on the outside looking in and the retail industry has been accurately described as a parasite-host relationship. Possibly symbiotic if you are optimistic about the future of the ag industry and you are skilled at protecting margins.
You can find comfort in knowing that there are some dumbasses who are out jacking around with 35 year old equipment growing a reasonable facsimile of a crop with no fertilizer, no herbicides and expect to make a living at it.

[blackpowder]

Besides, I can't get the gizmos to work as promised half the time anyway.

[helmsdale]

I have to agree with your opinion. Every year I figure out how much grain was produced. I dont need to tell everybody, hopefully there enough volume and profit price so I can do it again next year. Thats about it.
The younger generation farmers like the electronic gizmos and data collection thingys because they are good at it. I think they do not understand that they are giving away their privacy and the industry will use that information to profit even more from them.

Shit, does that make me OLD? bahaha Im a mighty 34 years old.

I like the "antiques" because I can fix them without having a computer hooked up... Newest piece of machinery is a 2005 highway tractor. Even that I do all my own work on.

I scout my own crops. Devise my own chemical applications based on need. Soil sample my own fields.
Decide on my own fertilizer regime, with input from the "recommendations" that they post on the soil sample results. etc... I try to do EVERYTHING in house! Economics definitely dictate ALOT of that, but even if I was filthy rich, I personally, would not be content producing a crop without being hands on. I derive no joy from "delegating".

Driving the equipment is enjoyable, but oddly the greatest degree of joy i derive from this occupation is knowing that everything has been done properly in the lead up to the actual planting, spraying, harvesting, marketing, etc.

Sure... I've made mistakes. I'll be the first to admit. I try like hell to live my life with no regrets, and surely there are things that I look back on with hindsight that I wont do again, but the no regrets portion comes from being well aware that the decisions i made in the past were appropriate given what I knew at the time.

There is a wealth of information available at your fingertips these days. I choose to be a consumer of said information, rather than a supplier.