Why Farmers Go Out Of Business? [Academy]

Why Farmers Go Out Of Business?

This podcast should create a lot of controversy, but I’m no stranger to that.

After all, I was first one of all sales trainers to say weigh wagons and test plots were a waste of time.  That created a lot of comments like, “he’s an idiot”. That was more than 30 years ago. I was the first to say farmers don’t buy products on price and never will. They make their decision to buy the most serious input for their farm based only on their belief, likeability and trust in the sales rep. Again, “idiot”.  And again, more than 30 years ago.

So here we are, well into the 21^st century, with the greatest number of high performing seed varieties in history.  They have amazing technologies attached to them and we still can’t seem to milk enough yield potential out of them to keep farmers in business. When the only source of profitability on every farm lies within the varieties they plant, and every variety has the ability to produce 2-3 times what farmers are getting right now, you’d think we’d have figured out how to help farmers harness that potential so they could make a living. But we haven’t. Instead we allow them to blame market prices, input costs and weather, while sales reps try to convince them all they need is a cheaper price or reward program. It’s not the farmer’s fault. He’s been taught to wait to start production planning because seed gets cheaper the longer they wait to order.

Seed companies keep complaining about the decreasing number of farmers, yet they’re the ones who keep driving them out of business. Most seed companies are doing very little for farmers except selling them seed. So many reps aren’t trained well enough to be on the farms of today’s farming professionals. Farmers need leadership. They need help raising more bushels with the tools available but aren’t getting that help. Farmers don’t know what to do to maximize yields because they keep being told yield is dependent on having the latest equipment and technologies. And oh yes, the weather is also a huge factor.  

So what’s the first step to making money in farming today? It’s called early planning. Virtually all of the farmers I’ve helped coach over the years who had the highest yields ever year, despite the weather, all had one thing in common.

They all had their cropping plans in place before harvest...