Buckeye Ag Testing

Yesterday we made a quick trip 70 miles north to meet Leon to pick up extra inoculant and radish seed to finish up double cropping. The new America's Best inoculant will have Molydenum in it for soybeans because the response to it is excellent in soybeans in many fields across the US, especially in the east and south.

I haven't seen so many bright young people working on a farm in a long while. The owners of Buckeye Ag Testing and Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Roeth near Troy, Ohio. Jeff was the first FFA State Degree winner at Miami East FFA and serves as chair on their Ag Advisory Board. His pride and belief in FFA showed with all the Miami East students working on his farm.

Crews were pulling leaf tissue for analysis, baling straw and hay, planting double crop soybeans and finishing up their wheat plot harvest testing. Two young men pulled up in their Gleaner F3 combine from the plots while others were in hot greenhouse stacking hay and straw.

Jeff was visibly as proud of his chapter as I am of the young teachers and students at Fayetteville, Blanchester and Wilmington here. "The teacher makes the program" was obvioius in our experiences and reminded me of myself 40 years ago this fall when I started teaching at Blanchester.

He said Miami East has 400 students and 170 are enrolled in Ag and members of FFA while Fayetteville has 200 students and half of them are enrolled in Ag and FFA.

There were something like 4 young farmers to take the place of a retiring farmer when I started teaching and only one half of one farmer to start farming today. That means most young farmers holds two jobs and there is lots of opportunity to start farming today if they could only get the opportunity and most of that is financial since the cost of farming is so overwhelming today. That alone inhibits many start up farmers.

No wonder BTO's have taken over farming, that is big time operators. They have an easier time expanding than a young farmer does starting farming.

Yesterday was little Caolin's second birthday and today is dad's 96th. They are forever in our hearts.

Ed