Where to cut expense in tough times! Row crop agriculture now faces that question. Big company solutions to this dilemma are already resulting in massive layoffs or job cuts.

If you’ve ever traveled to London and been a passenger on their subway system, the "tube," you’ve heard the phrase “mind the gap.” It’s kind of funny because that’s not how Americans would say it. We’d probably say “watch your step.” The long straight cars and the curves in the tracks cause the gaps between the train cars and the loading platform; therefore, passengers are warned to “mind the gap.”

At the inaugural Ag Data Conference, Aaron Rahe, one of our Premier Crop advisors, shared his perspective on how he works with his grower customers. Premier Crop was fortunate to hire Aaron is an Iowa farm kid, as he finished his MBA after his five-year stint with the U.S, Navy. Aaron carries his military and business training into how he approaches his work with growers.

It's almost the time of the year when making New Year's resolutions are popular. Ever make a business resolution? If you haven't been using your data to make decisions, how about making that your resolution?

Agronomically, most of us are “land grant” educated. Land grant universities were established with the Merrill Act in the 1860s and served to make the higher education affordable to the masses, including a lot of farm kids. By design, they had an agricultural focus – both in research and education. Even if we did not attend our state’s Land Grant or follow their sports teams, they are the foundation for most of the industry’s agronomic knowledge.

Sometimes life events leave a mark for generations. The Great Depression created generations of frugal farm family survivors. Feeding a family was a challenge – holding on to a farm was almost impossible for many. The "frugal stamp" wasn't just left on the parents but their children and many times passed on to another generation.

I don't like it when people generalize about the characteristics of a demographic group – like when people say, "Bald men are better-lookin." There are always exceptions that make those generalizations flawed.

I'm writing this before one of our great American traditions with agricultural roots – Thanksgiving – originally a time to be thankful for the bounty of the harvest. The 2017 crop year harvest has been a surprise to many. How is it possible to produce so much with such adverse growing environments? Here are just two Iowa examples:

The age-old agronomy equation is, "Yield Equals Genetics (G) by Environment (E) by Management (M)." There is a lot of focus on using data to measure hybrid and variety performance, in other words, to sort out the "G" part of the equation. That can start with your own data and but it can also include being part of "group, pooled or community" data. This allows you to anonymously see yield results from both genetics you planted and didn't plant. Being able to filter results by rainfall, GDU's and soils helps to address the factors that make up the "E" factor and get closer to apples-to-apples comparisons.

Sometimes “averages” can be your worst enemy.