We had what I think was an excellent Indiana Farm Management Tour June 26 and 27. Of course I've never put one on before so I don't have much of a basis for comparison but all of the comments I've received have been positive (though I imagine people who hated it decided to keep their thoughts to themselves). We managed to keep things pretty much on time, the weather cooperated and most importantly, I think we had five very good host farms who had a fair level of diversity in how they go about their business and were able to communicate some of what they do and why they do it to the audience. Plus the food was very good.
As a quick review for those not familiar with the tour, each year the
Purdue Ag Economics Department puts on an
Indiana Farm Management Tour. This year was the 81st annual tour. The tour rotates around regions of the state and is hosted in one or two counties, with Clinton County hosting this year. Four or five farms are selected and two days are spent traveling to these farms. At each host farm Purdue Ag Economics Staff conduct a general interview with the farmer and his/her family and following this the audience breaks up into smaller groups and rotates around to what are called mini-tours which are short (15 minute or so) sessions where an aspect of that farming operation is discussed.
I'm about to set out to summarize this year's tour. As a qualifier, as host my number one job was making sure the tour ran, not that I could hear all of the presentations. I heard some and on some farms I was scrambling around taking care of something. I also want to mention that I had a ton of help. The Clinton County Pork Producers helped out a lot with sponsoring a lunch and moving tables and chairs around. Clinton County 4-H Junior Leaders served as the tour "crew" hauling a bunch of stuff around, helping with parking, handing out water, etc. And I had a lot of my fellow Extension Educators from other counties who helped with parking, as tour guides, and doing whatever needed to be done. The Purdue Ag Economics staff was great, in particular
Alan Miller who was the overall Tour Director.
1 And of course the biggest thanks goes to our host farmers. This isn't the kind of thing you just agree to do. Facilities need to be cleaned up and prepped, presentations prepared, and there's a fair amount of media attention ahead of the event. Host farmers, their families and staff put a lot into this.
I could have found another 10 Clinton County Farms which would have made very good host sites. What I was looking for were operations where I knew the farmers had given some thought to how and why they made decisions and took their farms in the direction they had, and that they would be able to articulate this to an audience. I hoped - and I think succeeded - that there would be differences in the farms and how they went about doing things. It wouldn't be a very good tour with five farms where everyone had identical management systems, goals and objectives, decision-making processes, etc. And when selecting them, it obviously helped if it was someone I'd worked with before and that I was at least somewhat familiar with their operation. As we are a major pork producing county, I thought it was important to make sure this was included as well.
 |
| This year's Farm Tour Sites |
With all of the preambles out of the way, let's get on with the summary. And even though it's a summary, this will be a pretty long post.
We opened the proceedings at Noon on Wednesday, June 26 at Hawley Farms with Jay and Sue Hawley. They operate a side business, Grandpa Jay's Pork and we were able to feature this with a pork picnic co-sponsored by the Clinton County Pork Producers and
Indiana Pork. The main menu item was Grandpa Jay's porkburgers. I don't have an exact count but we had 240 chairs set up and some people were standing so I'd call it 250.
 |
| The lunch crowd at Hawley Farms |
Hawley farms consists of 720 acres of cropland, mostly in corn and soybeans with a little bit of wheat. They also sell feeder pigs from 250 sows and raise some food grade corn and seed soybeans. A major component of the operation is Grandpa Jay's Pork. Jay and Sue process their cull sows and gilts to produce whole hog pork products. These products are for sale in some retail stores, they visit farmers markets and have a health department approved grill so they can serve porkburgers at various events, farmers markets, street vendor opportunities, etc. Jay can also be found traveling around with coolers delivering pork to customers when he can spare the time from the rest of the operation.
 |
| Jay and Sue Hawley with Purdue Ag Economist Chris Hurt |
I didn't get to hear much of the interview or mini-tours. As might be expected at the first tour stop, I was scrambling around a bit trying to make sure things were set for the next two days. I know one of the mini-tours was a discussion of adding value to farm products and locally grown foods. Another was Josh Trenary from Indiana Pork and Jay discussing the importance of farmer involvement in public policy and taking local leadership roles. This is a topic that's near and dear to my heart and I was happy to see it included as part of the tour.
The second stop of the day was at
Windy Lane Farms, operated by Ty and Hal Brown. Windy Lane Farms is a bit of a contrast to the day's first stop as they farm nearly 5300 acres in a corn and soybean rotation. Their soybeans are all grown as seed beans and 100% of their corn is non-GMO. They use conservation tillage on virtually all of their acreage and in 2013 expect to plant cover crops on about 4300 acres. In addition to the farm enterprise they are a Drago corn head dealership and are exploring becoming a dealer in tillage equipment.
The farm is intensively managed with a high emphasis on keeping track of costs and returns. They own and operate their own excavator to do land improvements with and have a great deal of grain storage and drying capacity. The mini-tours at this farm included; Ty talking about risk management, Hal discussing cover crops, a walking tour of an old hog barn they converted to a shop and their containment facility, and a tour of their office facilities.
Again, I didn't attend many of the mini-tours but I did listen to Hal Brown talk about cover crops. I've heard him speak several times. He does an excellent job and every time I learn something new. The Brown's have been working with cover crops for several years, experimenting with different mixes and have several which they use. Hal gave an excellent demonstration of how cover crops help reduce soil erosion and he gave a very interesting demonstration I hadn't seen before showing why they prefer 28% over Anhydrous Ammonia as Anhydrous has a tendency to remove carbon from the soil.
 |
| Hal Brown during his cover crops presentation |
I didn't stay for the
Master Farmer Banquet sponsored by
Prairie Farmer and the
Purdue School of Agriculture which was held in Brown's shop that night. The next morning we opened the tour at Neal farms, owned and operated by Gary and Larry Neal. Neal's farm approximately 6,000 acres in a corn-soybean rotation annually with about twice as much acreage in corn as in beans annually. Neal's have been early adopters of quite a few different practices and technologies. Two areas that stand out are in grain handling, drying and storage, and in upgrading their equipment. Their grain system can be controlled remotely through the farm's network and they are continually modifying equipment so one person can operate large machinery. They are also one of the few Clinton County farms to have an irrigation system on some of their acreage.
 |
| Gary and Larry Neal with Purdue Ag Economist Craig Dobbins during the general interview |
Mini-tours at Neal's included a discussion of their grain system by Gary, their irrigation system by Larry, and a tour of their shop, including some of the modifications they've made to their equipment by Brandon Neal.
 |
| Brandon Neal (barely visible in the background) discussing Neal Farms' shop and equipment during a mini-tour |
Stop number four was at Need Farms, owned and operated by Jeff and Kent Need. Actually they are the two primary owners but the entire family participates in the farming enterprise.
2 The Needs farm about 1500 acres in a corn-soybean rotation. The vast majority of their acres are farmed with continuous no-till and they have been experimenting with tillage radishes as a cover crop for several years. They use quite a bit of technology with their operation including GPS and auto-steer, an automatic scale on their grain auger cart and Jeff has started using an app with an iPad during planting.
 |
| Jeff Need discussing some of the technology used on the farm |
The mini-tours here included; Brandy Daggett and Susannah Hinds from NRCS giving a soil health demonstration, Dave Need and Josh McCarty discussing cover crops, Kent Need talking about their automated grain auger cart, and Jeff gave a presentation on the technology used on the farm. Once again, I only heard all of the cover crops program though I was able to catch part of the soil health mini-tour.
 |
| Kent Need giving a mini-tour presentation on the farm's automated grain auger cart |
The final tour stop was at Meadowlane Farms, operated by Mike and David Beard and Chris Pearson. We opened with lunch and hopefully everyone was OK with us serving pork at both meal stops, considering this is the main livestock enterprise in the county (though we do have a couple of large poultry operations as well). This operation consists of about 1900 acres of cropland in a corn-soybean rotation, with about twice as much corn planted as beans. They also contract finish about 33,000 hogs annually and David and Chris operate a commercial manure application business, Waste Application Services. The name of this is actually a bit of a misnomer as they manage their manure as a resource, not as a waste product, and try to help their clients do the same. They have adopted a risk management through diversification strategy with three enterprises and income sources; field crops, hogs and the manure application business. Most of their soybeans grown are seed beans, a common theme with this tour.
I've always appreciated Mike's involvement in the community and his dedication to educating others about agriculture. I've often taken local officials or high school students to his operation to help them learn the real story, or truth, about agriculture. Apparently
Mike addressed this during the program. I'm sorry I missed that part of it.
 |
| Mike Beard discussing diversification strategies with Purdue Ag Economist Elizabeth Yeager |
The Meadowlane farms mini-tours included; Mike discussing diversification strategies, David talking about the economics of manure application, Chris presenting on their manure application systems and equipment, and a discussion of their seed soybean production. I managed to hear both Chris and David. I didn't take a lot of notes but their application systems are designed to inject manure with minimum tillage and a figure David mentioned is that the nutrient value of their manure is five cents per gallon which got everyone's attention.
 |
| I haven't posted many audience shots but thought I would throw in this one of the people listening to Chris's presentation as you can see some of the equipment he talked about in the background. You can see about half of Chris on the left |
That's my 2013 Indiana Farm Management Tour Wrap-up. We had a good two days, visited some great farm operations and the weather, while warm, was cooperative. I don't have numbers for the tour but we think we fed about 250 at Hawley's and 262 at Beard's (the caterers count better than us). I didn't know it at the time but after the tour, in addition to trying to find operations which had thought about why they do what they do and how they do it, two other themes became dominant. One was value-added. Most of the farms tried to add value to what they were doing, from growing crops for seed or as non-GMO's, to feeding grain to hogs. The other is diversification. Again, not universally but several of the farms had branched into multiple businesses ranging from selling food products to applying manure commercially to selling farm equipment. As margins tighten (does anyone think the last 3-4 years can continue indefinitely?) this is an option which farm families will likely explore even more. I apologize for not providing more details about the mini-tours. I didn't realize how few of these I attended until I was putting this post together.
In my opening to this post I mentioned that I had a lot of volunteer help in putting this on. I'll repeat that my greatest debt of gratitude goes to the host farmers. They helped make this an excellent tour and I hope they feel they got something beneficial from it too. I also want to thank those who provided financial support. The easiest way to do this is by posting one final picture.
3
 |
| Thank you to all of the 2013 Indiana Farm Management Tour Sponsors. I suppose I should add the standard disclaimer that this does not imply Purdue University's or Purdue Extension's endorsement of any of the products or services provided. However I very much appreciate their support |
1 I found out when I opened the
2013 Indiana Farm Management Profiles book that my official title was, "Host Extension Educator & Local Arrangements Director." I've always had a theory, developed in college when being an "Assistant Animal Technician" meant I spent most of my time in a barn with a shovel, that the longer your title, the less important you actually are. ;)
2 I think it's important to note that all five of the farms on this tour are family farms. All five of the farms on this tour are also corporations. For those less familiar with ag who may come across this page, you sometimes hear people criticizing agriculture with terms like, "the vast majority of all farms are corporations." They're technically correct but this is because incorporating is important for tax purposes and insurance and liability reasons. This doesn't make them any less of a family farm. The vast majority of farms in Clinton County (and I'm pretty sure in Indiana and the US) are both family farms and corporations.
3 If you want to see more tour pictures, I've posted some
on my Facebook page. I think this is set so the public can see them.
