So Much!

There is so much to absorb here and so much to tell you about.  Rob Heyen from Nebraska just explained how to guarantee your crop income with crop insurance.  Many of you are ahead of me on risk management and marketing but they do work hand in hand.

Dr. Michael McNeil demonstrated the results of the new Nitrogen real time program that uses soil history and rainfall accumulation from NEXRAD to predict the day your soil is out of water and when you need to apply more nitrogen.  This program is from Cornell and I promise to post a link and play with it myself to help us all utiilize this new technology.

They key to this whole program and to my profit and yours is how much calcium we can put on our soil to make the water pump work to maximum efficiency all summer like I saw it work on a few farms in my travels this summer.  This includes gypsum or power lime every year.  You and I must figure out how to get this done so we can use the other features of this sustainable but yield and profit maximizing asset on our farm.  I would say 99% of us are not near where we need to be at this point late in 2012.

What will 2013 bring?  No one knows but the drought goes on in the midwest and there will be only so much moisture to work with.  We must store every drop and learn how to bring it back to the crop next summer.  That is why I am here and most of the other people I have met and yes there are ladies here, too.  One third of agriculture is controlled by the opposite sex and I promised LuAnn I would blog about that in the future, too.

We have to build our number one asset and that is soil to grow crops and feed livestock and people.  Calcium is the key to turning our soil into the Oxygen pump we need to flow deep water next year.  I see I have a lot of work to do and I'll have more work explaining this to you as I learn.  We have not arrived and never will on this earth.

There is so much to ponder but even more to do!  For me it all started when someone nominated me for NoTill Innovator of the Year.  Thank you, my life has never been the same since I was selected for this honor!  Many of the people that I have met since that day are here in the room with me now!

It is a beautiful sunny day in Iowa and I can't wait to get out in it.  I hope it is at your place, too.

First, I need to learn from these two young Dutchmen how to improve my tissue testing results with their new technology dubbed SAP testing.

Ed