Are Your Customers Prepared to Raise the Best Crop [Academy]

How many of your customers realize the importance of this year’s planting season?

Do they know it’s the most important planting season of their entire career? It’s the next, single, biggest opportunity they will ever have to counter all of the marketplace challenges they’re facing, especially rising input costs and variable market prices? They have one opportunity to conquer their challenges by producing as many bushels as possible. In fact, farmers need to focus on growing record yields if they’re going to make it easier to stay in the game.

But do they KNOW they need to do it?

Too many growers don’t have raising a top crop foremost in their minds as their way to make more money. Instead, they’ve been focusing on saving money, lowering input costs, and getting deals. That’s because many suppliers have led this line of backward thinking and have gotten growers to follow. But what kind of impact would an extra 35 bushels per acre have on profits? If a farmer took his average corn yield from 200 to 235 by increasing his bushels per 1000 plants in his 35,000 plant stand by just 1, he would gain that extra 35 bushels per acre without changing anything except how he planted his crop. At $4 per bushel on a 1000 acres of corn a grower would take in an extra $140 per acre and a total of $140,000 extra.  

If your customers are planting right now, I hope you have them focused on following the Top 5 Factors to Produce a Top Crop. Especially numbers 1, 2 and 4. Soil conditions at planting, seed placement and planting the right variety in the right field. Getting them to focus on following the Top 5 Factors will remind them that 100% of their yield is determined when they plant. That means planting in perfect soil conditions, placing the seed perfectly and planting each variety in the right field are critical. That’s why planting in as perfect conditions as possible, in the right field are essential regardless of the date on the calendar. They need to know that early planting is NOT the secret to high yields but perfect planting in the right field IS the key. 

If your customers are done planting and the crop is growing, have you been monitoring the progress of the varieties you sold them? Are you focusing them on factor number 5, post planting management, that is, what they are doing and are going to do to protect the crop throughout the season?  

It’s essential to do the best job planting the crop as possible, but even with a perfect stand and highest bushels per 1000 established at planting, if the crop is not nurtured throughout the season and protected from the 1000 variables, perfect planting won’t have the kind of impact it could have. 

Don’t let your customers get caught up on input costs and miss the most important opportunity they will have this year, to produce the best crop possible. They will get once chance to attack this market and take control of their expenses by taking control of their income and that is how many bushels they raise. And don’t let the weather interfere. You know it’s the really healthy crops that withstand all effects of weather the best. And if they do things right they will be able to pay down debt, expand their operations, bring a son into the business, become debt free and even retire early. This is one of the most important planting seasons farmers will ever have because it’s the NEXT ONE.

Happy Selling,

Rod