Cover Crops, Farm Bill and Thoughts

I ended the title of this post with thoughts but I'll start there and mention that I'm multitasking from the Indiana Livestock, Forage and Grain Forum. This is a great annual event and this year's theme is Big Data and Agriculture. There's been plenty of discussion of what to do with/how to manage ag data and I think one of the interesting questions is how much data is useful for farmers, where does overload come in and how much value is there in paying someone to manage and make recommendations based on data?

Most farmers have tackled these questions, at least a little. Many use a commercial service to pull soil samples, look at yields and soil types and make recommendations based on this. GIS has introduced producers to a new realm of digital information. This may be the next area where we need to look at how best to manage and use information and how to make judgments about diminishing returns - when is there too much data and how do we avoid letting data run farms rather than using data as a tool to help run farms? Information overload is real and has been documented. We aren't there yet in farming (I don't think so anyway) but eventually we'll need to be able to make those decisions.

Since startling in Boone County I've had conversations with several people who are interested in learning more about cover crops. I'm planning to do some programming this summer and programs and field days are already taking place in other parts of the state. The National Cover Crops Conference was held February 17-19 in Omaha. The recordings from that program are available at the National SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) site. If you have the time and are interested in this, I encourage you to listen to some of these.

National Cover Crops Conference Recordings.

Finally, there's an Extension organization from the Western United States, Ag in Uncertain Times, which has developed a webinar series on the Farm Bill. I viewed the first program on March 3 and it was pretty good. They have four additional webinars scheduled, as follows:

• March 17 - Livestock Disaster and Dairy Programs
• March 24 - Commodity Programs
• March 31 - Environmental Programs
• April 7 - Food and Nutrition Programs

The March 3 and 17 programs are both scheduled to run from Noon to about 1:30 p.m. so I expect the others will be set for the same time. To view the live webinars or recordings, click on the link below.

Ag in Uncertain Times

Managing Your Ag Business Webinar and an Announcement

Purdue University is hosting a webinar, "Managing Your Agricultural Business in 2014" on Thursday, December 19, 2:00 p.m. Purdue Economists Chris Hurt, Mike Boehlje, Michael Langemeier and Jim Mintert will lead the webinar and address the following questions. What’s the crop and livestock outlook for 2014? What are the expected returns for corn and soybeans in 2014 and what are the implications for cash rental rates and farmland values? Are there key strategies farm and agribusiness managers should focus on in the year ahead? There is no cost for this program.

For additional information and to register, follow this link: Managing Your Agricultural Business in 2014

Also, for those of you who haven't heard, my last day working in the Clinton County Extension Office will be Friday, December 13. Beginning on Monday, December 16 I will start my new position as Extension Educator for Agriculture and Natural Resources and County Extension Director in the Boone County Extension Office in Lebanon.

I've very much enjoyed my last 21 years working in Clinton County and am looking forward to new challenges and opportunities in Boone County. I'd say I'll miss working with Clinton County farmers but Boone County isn't too far away so hopefully I'll still see some of you from time to time.

This blog will continue but with a different title. I expect the content will be similar though with a focus on Boone instead of Clinton County.

Land Lease Program II

A little while back I posted about a Land Lease program, "Farmland Leases: Finding Balance in Farmland Lease Contracts." If you couldn't make the September 9 program held in Logansport, this will be held again on Thursday, December 5 in Danville, Indiana.

I attended the September program and it had very good coverage of basic principles. For additional information, see this Ag Answers Story.

2014 Purdue Crop Cost and Return Guide Now Available

The Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture has released the 2014 Purdue Crop Cost and Return Guide, based on September price and cost estimates. This document typically is updated from time to time through the fall but this is a first look at what they expect. The most significant numbers from these are that Purdue is projecting a substantial reduction in the profitability of growing corn next year. For example, rotational corn return has dropped from $660 in 2013 to $491 in 2014 on high productivity soils and from $483 to $345 on average productivity ground. Soybean returns have also dropped but less drastically.

This is important information both as you start planning what to plant next year and in case any of you are involved in renegotiating leases. Keep in mind as you look at these that these are not overall farm budgets, just projected numbers for one aspect of a farm operation; getting a crop planted, harvested and sold. There are substantial ownership and overhead costs not accounted for. In this guide, you will not have paid yourself or included family living expenses. Land costs are not included. Costs of machinery ownership are not included.

This guide is handy for looking at trends and projections but to really assess your operation, you should have a budget for your farm using your numbers.

I'm including three links; to the article discussing the 2014 guide, to the 2014 guide, and to the 2013 guide if you want to use it for comparison.

Purdue Article on 2014 Guide

2014 Guide

2013 Guide

Input Costs Down for 2014?

I want to share a news release from the Purdue Ag Economics Department. In it, Alan Miller discusses the prospect for reduced input costs for the 2014 crop year. As has been the trend, with lower commodity prices comes some reduction of inputs. In particular fertilizer costs are down and Miller believes these may continue to drop. Fuel costs should also be down so long as the Middle East is relatively calm.

Of course this isn't true for everything. Pesticide and seed costs look to stay flat or slightly increase and the latest Purdue Cash Rent and Land Values Survey shows no sign of a reduction in the cost of land in the short term.

See the following link for the complete article: 2013 A Transition Year for Grain Farmers

2013 Purdue Custom Rates

Between the State Farm Management Tour and the County Fair, posting about this completely slipped my mind. Purdue has issued an updated Indiana Custom Rates publication for 2013. Fewer responses were collected for the survey than for last year's so some operations were not included in this year's results. For this reason I'm including links to both this year's and last year's surveys.

2013 Purdue Custom Rates Survey Results

2012 Purdue Custom Rates Survey Results

Ag Outlook Webinar

Purdue Extension Economist Corinne Alexander will be presenting an Ag Outlook Webinar on Friday, September 13 at 8:30 a.m. I won't be able to host a session here as I'll be at the Land Lease Program in Logansport that morning but anyone with a good internet connection should be able to view it.

The link to view it is: Ag Outlook Webinar. You may find additional information on the program at this link.

I will likely have an Ag Outlook program here later this fall as we've done for the past few years but I haven't scheduled it yet.

Land Lease Program

The Purdue Land Lease Team will be sponsoring a program, "Farm Land Leases: Finding Balance in Farmland Lease Contracts" on Friday, September 13 from 9 a.m. to Noon at the Ivy Tech in Logansport. I've attached a link to the program flyer below.

To register for the program contact Howard County Extension Educator Paul Marcellino at 765-456-2313 or you can e-mail him at pmarcell@purdue.edu. There is no cost for the program.

Farm Land Lease Program Flyer

Clinton County Locally Grown Foods Tour Summary

On Saturday, August 10 we held the first Clinton County Locally Grown Foods Tour. This program was developed to promote locally grown foods operations in Clinton County (Indiana) and to inform participants about locally grown foods options. We had four host sites for the tour; McWhirt Family Produce, Rule's Golden Honey, This Old Farm and The Farming Engineers.

For this program, participants had the option of either riding a bus which went to each site or driving themselves. Somehow we managed to stay on time. Having good weather that day didn't hurt. I'll mention one item before I get to the tour; Each of the host farms discussed locally grown foods by promoting their operation, what they do, sell, and why they do it rather than trying to talk down or criticize traditional agriculture. For myself, I don't have a lot of patience with people who try to build themselves up by tearing others down. I expected this approach from our host farms so it certainly wasn't a surprise. Unfortunately it contrasts with approaches I've seen elsewhere.


Tour participants at McWhirt Family Produce

The first stop was near Michigantown at McWhirt Family Produce. McWhirt's started selling produce they raised on very limited acreage at a Tipton County roadside stand in 2001. Within a few years they had outgrown their space and purchased more acreage in Clinton County where they developed their produce business. McWhirt's sell all sorts of vegetables throughout the growing season ranging from early season crops such as lettuce and cabbage to fall crops such as pumkins. They sell produce from their home by appointment and have been selling at the Frankfort Farmers Market since it opened. For the past couple of years Rick has been the Market Manager of the Market in Frankfort.

We received a nice tour of their garden areas and afterwards everyone enjoyed looking at the Boer goats the McWhirt children raise for 4-H projects. For their garden they do not control weeds chemically but rely on tillage and hand-pulling of weeds.

Mike Rule demonstrating some of his honey processing equipment

Stop number two was just a couple of miles up the road at Rule's Golden Honey. Mike and Cathy Rule have raised bees for quite some time and began selling honey about 6 years ago once it became large enough that they couldn't just give all the honey to their neighbors. They have also been selling at the Frankfort Farmers Market since 2007. In addition to honey they sell produce and home baked goods. We received a nice tour of the farm including where Mike keeps his bees and afterwards he explained how he does his processing.

From Rule's we travelled to Colfax and This Old Farm, owned by Erick and Jessica Smith. We were served an excellent lunch consisting entirely of local foods. Indiana State Department of Agriculture Director Gina Sheets spoke to the group, as did Erick. Afterwards Jessica gave us a tour of their processing plant.


Jessica Smith talking about This Old Farm's meat processing facility

This Old Farm is the largest local foods operation we visited with 23 people employed in various aspects of the operation. The Smith's raise produce and pastured pork from their own farm. They also operate a federally inspected meat processing plant which they use to do custom processing as well as to process products which they sell from their store and online. As one of only two certified organic meat processors in Indiana they are very busy. They also operate a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). In addition, they have established a farm alliance which allows them to work with over 50 Indiana producers to help promote and market their food products. 


A few of the residents of The Farming Engineers operation.

The final stop for the day involved a long bus ride to the other side of the county, near Pickard, to visit The Farming Engineers, Lisa and Matt Burke. The Burke's raise produce, grown outdoors in a garden as well as in a hoop house. They also raise pastured poultry and sell eggs. While they do sell products on farm, The Farming Engineers' primary business focus is their CSA where you can sign up for weekly delivery of produce and/or eggs.

Lisa took us through various aspects of their operation. As they raise everything to organic standards and the price of organic feed for the chickens is quite high, they are currently studying the effectiveness of raising sprouts as a substitute feed whith the help of a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant. This stop involved the most walking as the pastured poultry are truly out on pasture but it was fun.

This was a fun, enjoyable tour. The four tour hosts deserve special thanks for agreeing to allow us to visit their farms. I was unaware until recently that Clinton County has as many local foods producers as we do though once I started thinking about it, we border some communities which provide a good client base for this type of operation. As one of the top agricultural counties in the state, it's not surprising that we would have a strong presence with these types of farms.

If you would like additional information on local foods, I've put up a page on our Extension Office site. We also have a Clinton County Local Foods Producers Directory.

Clinton County Extension Locally Grown Foods Page

Local Foods Directory

Farm Drainage Program Report

The Clinton County Extension Service with support from the Clinton County Farm Bureau and Clinton County Soil and Water Conservation District hosted a program on August 8, 2013, "Farm Drainage for the Environment and for Profit."

This was a good program and we had about 50 people in attendance in the morning and a few more popped in for the afternoon (when PARP credit was offered). As usual, I had to perform my duties as host so I only caught about half of the programs but I'll report on what I have notes on.

Jane Frankenberger from the Purdue Ag Engineering Department opened with, "Making Farm Drainage Decisions." I don't have a lot of notes from this one as I was still scrambling around but the two items I did jot down were that in a long-term study they've been doing at the Southeast Purdue Ag Center (SEPAC) in Jennings County tile drainage at 66' spacings had shown basically the same yield response as tile spaced at either 33' or 16'. Another practice she's been working on is called Drainage Water Management. This document explains this far better than I can but basically a structure is installed within the tile system where you can close off the flow of water out of the tile and conserve water for use in the field. The item I noted for this is that each structure can control water for about 2' of field slope from where it's installed. Within that area the long-term yield impact ranges from 5.8% to 9.8% depending on which study you look at.

Clinton County Surveyor Dan Sheets was up next with "Clinton County Drainage Permitting." Dan talked about how any time a farmer ties into a county drainage structure, either field tile or an open ditch, you need to contact the Surveyor's office BEFORE you start work on the project. There is a permitting process and fee which is not too much and far less than the fine (and costs of possibly having to redo the system) if you do work without getting one. The Surveyor's Office would like to be notified when you're doing the work so they can inspect where it outlets into the county system and also so they can GPS it. The key points I took away is that they want you to use sub-mains and not make too many outlets into the county system. The big message is that county drainage is a public utility owned by the taxpayers and needs to be treated like any other public system.

The next speaker was Justin Schneider, formerly Staff Attorney and now Director of Public Policy for Indiana Farm Bureau speaking on, "Legal Aspects of Farm Drainage." I'm going to leave this alone as I simply don't have the space here to fully discuss it but if you're interested in one perspective, you can take a look at this paper by Gerald Harrison of the Purdue Ag Economics Department.

After lunch Eileen Kladivko of the Purdue Agronomy Department spoke on, "Tile Drainage and Nitrogen Management." In contrast to every other presentation, I have a full page of notes for this one so I'll hit a few highlights. Much of this presentation focused on studies Eileen has been involved with at SEPAC for an extended period of time. First, Nitrate is not lost from the system in July-September. The vast majority of it is lost from November through May. It's important to note that this is different from studies done farther North. For example, in Minnesota 100% of Nitrogen is lost in April-June as before this the ground is frozen and no water flows through field tile. This is not the case most years in Indiana.

The key variable here is the amount of water which flows through the tile. The concentration of Nitrogen in the water is the same whether it's a wet or dry year, just that in wet years the quantity of water is much greater so more N is lost. Also, in recent years they've been experimenting with cover crops and fields with cover crops show a reduction of 5-20 lbs per acre per year over fields without. Studies in Iowa show that cover crops reduced Nitrogen loss from about 45 lb/ac/yr to about 18. So cover crops do seem to help conserve Nitrogen.

Ben Reinhart from the Clinton County SWCD and Kerry Smith from Howard County NRCS gave the final presentation, "Tillage and Conservation Cropping Systems for Drainage, Fertility and Weed Control." This was another presentation where I took very few notes however Kerry did some demonstrations showing how effective cover crops and no-till are at reducing erosion. Ben's discussion was on some of the practices such as no-till and cover crops which increase water holding capacity of soil and may reduce the need for drainage.

I may not have taken many notes for this session but I did get a nice picture of Kerry Smith and two assistants (one is Tom McKinney, I didn't catch the name of the other gentleman) demonstrating soil erosion differences between no-till and conventionally tilled fields.

The final presenter for the day was myself talking about Pesticide Drift (this was different from what was on the agenda). My main point was that I've been receiving a fair amount of drift complaints in the office this year and farmers need to be willing to talk to their non-farmer neighbors. If you aren't and something happens, instead of calling you about it, their call might be to the State Chemist's.

I have a page up on our Extension Office website which includes PDF's of some of the presentations. I encourage you to take a look at them when you get the chance. Thanks again to Farm Bureau and the SWCD for their sponsorship of the program.

Farm Drainage Program Page

August Clinton County Extension Ag Programs

I have three programs in the first half of August I'll provide a quick post about with a link to the flyers, for the first two anyway. I'll be making longer posts on these in the near future, either during a slow moment during the fair or afterwards.

Farm Drainage Program
On Thursday, August 8 we'll be having a Farm Drainage program, officially titled, Farm Drainage for the Environment and for Profit. We have some great speakers lined up for this program, which will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Clinton County Farm Bureau, Clinton County Soil and Water Conservation District and of course the Clinton County Extension Service. There is no cost to attend and lunch will be provided. Because we're serving a meal I need to have pre-registrations in by August 1. This program has been approved for Private Pesticide Recertification (PARP) credit. The following link is to the program flyer which includes additional information:

Farm Drainage for the Environment and for Profit

I will be sending letters out to all Private Applicators who need classes for recertification before their license expires.

Locally Grown Foods Tour
We're offering an exciting new program on Saturday, August 10. This will be the first Clinton County Locally Grown Foods Tour. During the day we will be visiting four sites in Clinton County which grow, raise and sell food products for the public. We have some pretty good variety with producers of produce, honey, meat products including pastured pork, and poultry and eggs. I will have much more information on this and am planning to put a website together in the near future. You can either participate in this by riding a bus through the day or driving yourself to as many sites as you like. Registration is $10 if you will be eating lunch and $20 if you will be eating lunch and riding the bus. A link to the program flyer which includes additional information is here:

Locally Grown Foods Tour

I should mention that two of the tour host sites have their own web sites, This Old Farm and The Farming Engineers.

Adult PQA Plus
The final program will be an Adult PQA Plus program on Tuesday, July 13 at 6:30 p.m. at the Extension Office, 1111 South Jackson Street in Frankfort. I will be offering both PQA Plus and Site Self-Assessment Training. There's no cost for this program. Some of you may have heard of changes to the PQA Plus program which includes a "test-out" opportunity. This is true but they've also revised the curriculum so you're only eligible for the online testing option once you've taken the new course in person.

I'll have more information on the first two of these in the near future. Don't forget that the Clinton County and 4-H Fair will be held July 14-20.

Indiana Farm Management Tour Summary

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.

2013 Indiana Farm Management Tour

I apologize for not adding anything new in some time. I'm hoping to get back to more regular posting in the near future.

For those who aren't aware, Clinton County is hosting the 2013 Indiana Farm Management Tour. We have five excellent host farms. These represent a wide variety of Clinton County Agriculture. There is no cost to attend however you need to register so we have a meal count. For additional information on the tour and to register go to: The Purdue Ag Economics Department's Farm Tour Page.

March 1 Ag Outlook Breakfast and Meeting

The Clinton County Extension Service will be hosting an Ag Outlook Breakfast on Friday, March 1 at 7:30 a.m. at the Clinton County Extension Office, 1701 South Jackson Street, in Frankfort. Purdue Ag Economist Chris Hurt will be presenting his Outlook for 2013 including crop and livestock prices, the overall US Economy and farm business management strategies.

A breakfast, sponsored by The Farmers Bank and Regions Bank, will be provided. Please contact the Clinton County Extension Office at 765-659-6380 or 765-296-3511 or e-mail me at cemanuel@purdue.edu by February 26 if you plan to attend. There is no cost for this program.

Irrigation Workshop Report

I want to give at least a little bit of information from the January 22 Irrigation Workshop. First I'll point out that one of my duties was to serve as host of the program so I was able to devote my full attention to no more than half of it, at best, as I had to spend some time distributing handouts, loading presentations onto the computer and just chatting with others involved.

But I was able to pick up a few things. The first thing is to direct people to Lyndon Kelley's page of irrigation resources. Seriously, if you're interested in this, go there now. I'll wait.

A few items of note besides this. First, if you're getting started in irrigation, once you've analyzed the economics, the next step is to determine if you have water. Mark Basch from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources talked about this and said that in Central Indiana, we have sufficient groundwater. By and large, by installing irrigation you don't need to be worried about somehow causing a community-wide drought. Now you may negatively impact wells of some neighbors, particularly those with shallow wells, but the fears about this are greater than the reality. In many cases when someone's well goes dry and they blame a large capacity water user, investigators will look five miles away and find that similar sorts of wells are going dry when there isn't any irrigation going on nearby. In essence, in many of these cases people's wells go dry during a drought because of the drought, not nearby irrigation. This doesn't mean that irrigation never has an impact, just that this doesn't take place nearly as often as rumor would have you believe.

However, even though we have pretty good groundwater supplies in Central Indiana, this does not mean that you'll be able to find sufficent water to irrigate with just anywhere. Mike Chapman from Peerless-Midwest discussed how he investigates to determine if a well will be able to deliver the 300 gallons per minute necessary to irrigate with. While there are some geographic guidelines which will suggest where are good places to look, only by boring a test well can you be sure. One of the issues is that in Clinton County there just aren't that many large capacity wells in use. In some areas there may be a well every mile and you can be pretty sure nearby areas have sufficient water but that isn't the case here. IDNR's Water Well Record Database is a good place to start checking. Select the "Enhanced Water Well Viewer" link for an online map.

Screenshot of Large Capacity Wells in Clinton County from the DNR Water Well Viewer

I'll add one other personal note. From an efficiency perspective, once you've drilled a large capacity well, installed pumping equipment and provided power to the site, it makes sense to irrigate as much ground as possible. While we have some large fields in Clinton County of 160 acres or more under one owner, this has become the exception rather than the rule. Give some thought to partnering with a neighboring farmer to share costs and operate more efficiently, at least initially, if you're going to be irrigating smaller parcels.

I have heard less discussion about irrigation over the winter than I did last summer and fall however if you're interested you should look at Lyndon's web page. There is another Irrigation Program scheduled for February 12 in Vincennes. I don't have any additional information on it but you can contact the Knox County Extension Office to find out more about it.

Ag Drought Program July 13

I've set up an Ag Drought program for Friday, July 13 from 2-4 p.m. This program will be held at the Clinton County Fair in the entertainment tent at the fairgrounds. The entertainment tent is located between Clinton Hall and the 4-H Building.

The program is titled, "Making Decisions in a Difficult Crop Year." The focus is not on what's going on in your fields (most farmers have a pretty good handle on that) but how to make decisions going forward in what's looking to be a short crop. I don't have precise titles for each of the speakers (quotes means I do), however here's the planned schedule.

• 2:00-2:45 p.m. - Purdue Ag Economist Chris Hurt will discuss marketing and economics
• 2:45-3:00 p.m. - Brittany Shepherd, Clinton County FSA Director, "Drought Assistance Through USDA”
• 3:00-3:15 p.m. - Gary Gray from Crop Insurance Specialists discussing Crop Insurance
• 3:15-3:30 p.m. - Rod Miller, CCA from Crop Fertility Specialists, “Crop Input Decisions in Historical Hot and Dry Conditions”
• 3:30-3:45 p.m. - Curt Emanuel, Final Thoughts - I intend to talk to some Purdue Specialists a day or two ahead and I'll share anything they think is important
• 3:45-4:00 p.m. - Questions

The program could last a bit longer if necessary though the chairs we'll be sitting in will be used at the 4-H Auction which begins at 6 that evening so we can't stay there forever.

The fair doesn't begin charging for parking until 3 p.m. so there should be no problem with anyone getting onto the grounds. The carnival doesn't usually start until around 5 so we shouldn't have a lot of casual fairgoers trying to see what's going on. It will likely be warm in the tent but we'll have some fans. I'm at a conference the week after the fair so I didn't want to hold off any longer to have a program.

If you have any questions your best bet is to e-mail me for additional information. With the fair coming up it's doubtful anyone will be here to answer the phone much of the time. Don't expect quick answers by e-mail but I will be checking it as I have time.

I also want to share the Purdue Drought Page with everyone. This has links to information about field crops, livestock and horticulture issues.

Purdue Drought Page

Purdue Farm Management Tour

The 2012 Purdue Farm Management Tour will be held on June 20-21 in Marshall County. This is fairly close to us this year and I'd encourage you to think about going if you can work it out. I've been a couple of times (I'm teaching GIS at a summer youth camp then and can't go this year) and it's a great way to find out what other people are doing and do some brain-picking.

You can find additional information at the Purdue Farm Management Tour page. Right now you'll mainly find the program flyer there but a detailed agenda, farm descriptions, etc., will be available soon.

Clinton County Farm Emergency Planning

For the past 8 months I have been working with Clinton County Central Dispatch and Fire Chiefs on developing a Farm Emergency Plan Program which would be usable by Emergency Responders on a real-time basis if they were called out to an emergency. We are looking at providing Central Dispatch with a GIS-based Farmstead map and some additional information which would be on the Central Dispatch computer system as well in every emergency vehicle in the county. With this program we believe we will be able to more quickly and effectively respond to farm emergencies and improve the safety for Responders.

I believe we are ready to roll this out over the winter. I have developed a web page with much more detail about this. The link to this is at the bottom of this post. Developing a detailed farm emergency plan is a good idea in and of itself and there may be some financial benefits as well. I encourage you to take a look at the web page and associated information, including a sample plan, and contact me if you have any questions or are interested in developing a plan.

Clinton County Farm Emergency Planning Page

It should be clear but just in case I'll add that I'll only be working on this for Clinton County, Indiana farms.

Flexible Cash Rents

I am not a farm rental contract guru by any means. However over the past couple of weeks I've received several calls requesting what is an appropriate cash rent level in Clinton County. Obviously this depends on several factors which I'm not going to cover here. Instead, I want to talk a little bit about, or at least offer some resources on, flexible cash rents.

Among the calls I've been getting has been one which generally asks, "How do I put a rent together which lets both me and the farmer take advantage of really good years?" My response has been to take a look at a flexible contract. Flexible contracts set a floor or base rent for cropland with the landowner capturing a certain amount of income above a set level.

As an example, a landowner and farmer may set a base rent of $200/acre based on 200 bushels of $5 corn (I'm using these figures because it makes the math easy) or a gross revenue of $1000/acre.

If corn price is $6 and yield is 200 bushels, then the gross is $1200 and in a flexible rent system the landowner would receive a certain percentage of the $200 overage. The same type of overage might apply with a very good yield - say, 220 bushels at $5.

These systems are pretty simple in concept but because of the uncertainties they can be pretty complicated in practice. A key point is, How do you set the price? Is it a)local cash price twice a year b)averaged on a certain day of each month through the year, or c)some other way? From a farmer's perspective this type of rental agreement fails to take input costs into account. Crop prices may look very good but input costs have this pesky habit of rising when prices are good so this isn't the entire story. Also, if you want to share in the potential upward benefit, you should be prepared to share in some of the downward risk as well.

I'll also caution landowners that a 50-50 split of the overage isn't appropriate (at least that I can see). Keep in mind that for every additional bushel of grain harvested, the farmer has some costs associated with it. That bushel must run through the combine and be hauled to the elevator. For corn it will usually need to be dried and, in theory at least, each additional bushel will require additional fertilizer.

Rather than summarize what people more experienced and informed than I have to say about this, I'm going to refer you to an online resource (initially I was going to include links to Ohio State, Illinois and Iowa State but those are on this page).

Purdue's Farmland Leasing Page - This page has a variety of land rental resources including a link to the cash rent and land values survey. Toward the bottom of the first section are a couple of Purdue resources including a flex rent calculator. If you move further down the page under "Flexible Cash Rent Leases" you'll find information from other Universities.

Flexible rents can be a useful way of allowing landowners and farmers to share in profitable years. I do caution people to remember that to date, these agreements do not typically account for variations in input costs, something which will have a tremendous impact on profitability. Hopefully in the future this type of adjustment may also start being factored into agreements.

ACRE Deadline Approaching

Most of you have probably had other things on your mind than whether to sign up for the Average Crop Revenue Election or ACRE program this year but if you've held off the past couple of years and are considering it this year, the deadline to sign up is June 1. If you're not familiar with them, I want to encourage you to look at the FAST Tools available through the University of Illinois. These are downloadable spreadsheets covering a wide range of topics where you load the Excel template to your computer and enter your data. They have a couple of ACRE Tools on the site. Texas A&M also has information and a calculator at their site. You can find additional information at the National FSA ACRE/DCP site.

Cory Walters and Greg Halich, University of Kentucky Ag Economists, have posted an ACRE article. This is for Kentucky so some of the specifics will be different but it makes a nice review of the program.