Why You'll Grow Corn Differently: ROI
In late September and early October of 2022, the agricultural press started emphasizing the term ROI (Return on Investment) in certain agricultural publications. These articles stated that in the future, farmers would be examining crop inputs more closely for profitability with less emphasis on total production.
We found the article "Farmers Reap ROI From Field Trial Failures and Successes" which appeared on October 4, 2022 on agweb.com to be very interesting from the Growers program perspective. According to this article, these farmers conduct strip trials related to "variety, variable rate, population, seed treatment, fertilizer placement, inoculant, subsoiling, herbicide, fungicide, and significantly more." The attitude expressed in these articles is that these producers "can't afford to let a single year go by without learning from a bunch of trials."
The quotes in the AgWeb article from the various farmers appeared to come from past editions of The Growers Solution publication. For example: "Yield is the fun thing, but bankers like money more than yield." Or: "Sure, you can argue that a big contest yield is showing the agronomic possibility of a bean, but who cares if you can't pay for it?" Finally: "Yield isn't the quantifier of success or failure. That last statement confuses a lot of guys, but I personally would rather grow 150-bushel corn that made more money than 180-bushel corn that didn't."
The attitudes of these farmers is what the founders of Growers Mineral, Corp. tried to appeal to in 1955. Growers Mineral, Corp. said in 1955, as it does today, that to evaluate GMS or the Growers Program, the farmer needs to put in comparison plots and do yield checks to verify profitable results.
Since 1955, the idea of using test strips to confirm ROI has given Growers Mineral, Corp. many headwinds to contend with. For years the agricultural establishment told producers that they did not have time to properly conduct farm trials. They also contended that proper trials needed to be conducted by individuals with certain educational backgrounds. Since these backgrounds were necessary to conduct proper trials, only certain agricultural companies or educational establishments were capable of conducting proper research trials.
However, with today's run-away input inflation, some farmers disagree with the agricultural establishment and find the Growers test strip idea is a great way to talk ROI.
Incidentally, in 1955, Dr. V.A. Tiedjens told farmers that, if you had to apply statistical analysis to your test strip results to figure out of your treatment had a profitable ROI, then you needed to look for a better treatment. In other words, if your treatment did not make you a lot more money than what the treatment cost, junk that treatment and look for something better at creating ROI.
This is an excerpt from the Winter Growers Solution (2023) written by Jim Halbeisen, Director of Research.
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