Farm Profitability Contest: Lessons in ROI Over Yield
10 Jan 254m 7s

A recap of the farm profitability contest held at Matt Miles' farm this season. The winner is??? Large yields don't always equate to big profits.

00:00:00 Galen beer here, uh, along with Stephanie Linco, Kelly Garrett and Matt Miles. And for those of you that have been following along, 00:00:08 we had a profitability contest going at Matt Miles farm this year. So we're going to give a brief overview of how that ended. 00:00:17 And I will let the winner of that contest go first. Miss Stephanie Linco. Yeah, so I'm the lucky winner here as far as yield goes. 00:00:27 Really, Kelly was pretty close to me with less than a bush yield yield difference between the two of ours. 00:00:32 But I did spend less dollars per acre in the fertility program. So that put me ahead in the ROI. 00:00:39 Um, so I had the highest ROI, um, but not the highest yield. So that just shows that you can, you know, 00:00:45 spend the dollars wisely to make sure you're gonna get that greatest return for that fertilizer investment. You know, and that's something that's very important. 00:00:53 Big yields are a lot of fun, but big piles of money are the important piles. You know, big piles of money is more 00:00:59 important than big piles of corn. That's what we have to talk about. That's what a grower needs to look at, 00:01:03 especially in this economic environment. Um, I'm very happy to say going down there and farming in Arkansas 00:01:09 and things like that, man, I really didn't farm in Arkansas. But managing that plot was, uh, a big learning experience 00:01:15 and uh, I kind of feel bad for Matt, but it, uh, it uh, uh, really makes me smile at the same time. 00:01:23 Oh, you want me to go now? I get to go last. If you're wondering why I'm going last, it's because I came in last. 00:01:29 Not only I come in last than you, but I come in last in ROI too. So I really don't even wanna be in this video. 00:01:35 But I was forced to be in it, these guys here. So Now in all seriousness, you know, we talked about this earlier during the year 00:01:41 and Kelly said, what if I kick your butt? And I said, well, the good thing is the lemonade in those lemons is I learned something 00:01:47 and then what I did learn mm-hmm this year is that I can do, I can make equal or more yields with less nitrogen. 00:01:53 That's right. And that's something we've been working on extreme ag. Kelly's been the forefront leader in this is, you know, 00:01:59 you are using too much nitrogen, using too much nitrogen. We always think that fixes all the problems, 00:02:03 especially in corn. Mm-hmm. Same thing in cotton. Yeah. We used to think the same thing in cotton. And so this was a huge learning experience to me just 00:02:11 because I learned that, that you can come down from the Midwest and grow what you should be able to grow better corn. 00:02:17 To me, when you may not wanna do beans or cotton, that might not work out as good, but you can grow the same amount 00:02:23 or better corn with less money, less nitrogen. And all three of y'all proved that, you know, I was sitting there laughing at times saying, 00:02:30 boy, they're fixing to be in trouble. They're not putting out enough patch here. And lo and behold it come out the way that, you know, that, 00:02:36 that y'all thought it would. And, and I come in last. But in all honesty, that is a, that's a good thing for me 'cause it is gonna make me change my operation. 00:02:44 Not whole hog the first year, but it's gonna make me put more acres into that same program that y'all have proven to me that that worked last year. 00:02:52 And you talked about wanting to do it again next year to make sure it wasn't a fluke. And I would love to do it again next year 00:02:57 because I'd really like to beat Stephanie. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. That would work. I even heard another challenge in there 00:03:02 that we couldn't beat him on beans and cotton and I, I don't Know about that, but I know we talked in the meeting 00:03:06 yesterday, I've got a cotton plot and we're already studying, but this is gonna be an uphill battle with cotton 00:03:11 Stay tuned this year. 'cause you're gonna see some fun things out of our labs issue. 00:03:14 And one thing that that didn't get mentioned here that is, is still a takeaway was I did actually win the yield, 00:03:20 but I did not win the profit. And to Kelly's point, you know, it is about profit at the end of the day. 00:03:27 It's hard to know where that diminishing returns is. And so while yield is everything that we all look at and say, that's where we made our money, 00:03:36 it's actually not, you know? Right. My yield was not the most profitable, even though it was the highest, 00:03:42 Most of the times the best yield is the best profit, but not always. Not always. Sometimes You got the lowest yield 00:03:48 and the lowest profit on your own ground. Yeah. So yes, this next year, 2025 will be quite exciting with the cotton trials 00:03:56 and going through the corn trials again and things like that. 00:03:58.945 --> 00:04:02.085

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