S4E13: Reducing Costs, Increasing Profit on the Farm

Recorded: 1/15/2026 

Are you wondering how you can reduce costs and increase profit on your commodity farm? In this episode, we tackle this question by introducing the utility of an enterprise budget and invite Clint Schroeder and Rachel Cochran, extension specialists at Ohio State and hosts of the Green Fields Green Dollars Video Series, to discuss creative production strategies to save money.  

Hosts: Ryan Spelman, Justin Brackenrich, and Dwane Miller Penn State Extension
Guests: Clint Schroeder, Rachel Cochran OSU Extension

Links:
Agronomy Highlights Podcast: Become a Sponsor!
Enterprise Budgets
FINBIN
Green Fields Green Dollars

Photo credit: Ryan Spellman

Sign up for our newsletter, Field Crop News, and follow us on Facebook!

Transcript

Ryan Spelman (00:56)
Welcome to another episode of the Agronomy Highlights podcast. I'm your host Ryan Spellman and actually we have the band back together today. We have both Dwayne Miller and Justin Brackenrich who are co-hosting today. So guys, how are you doing?

Dwane Miller (01:11)
I'm doing great, Ryan. Here we are in the, in the, no, maybe it's not the depths of winter, but gosh, it's a little chilly here in the middle of January.

Ryan Spelman (01:21)
Goose, how are you doing?

Justin Brakenrich (01:22)
Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Ryan, how about yourself?

Ryan Spelman (01:24)
Well, Justin and Dwayne, I'm living the dream. are staying warm inside. You're right, Dwayne. It is kind of cold outside. today we're going to think about the warmer season and we're going to start to think about how do we budget for our production year. So today is going to be all about enterprise budgets and understanding the cost of your operation. you could probably make a joke like how many extension educators does it take to save you a buck?

⁓ you know, I guess three plus we'll have two on from Ohio state later. So, so maybe five of us.

Dwane Miller (01:58)
I mean, all kidding aside, hey, it's a great time of year to sit down and start to look at some of these things because those of us that are in production ag or associated with production ag, I was down in Delaware earlier this week at their ag week listening to an ag economist. They flew them in from Kansas and marketing, grain marketing. Everybody knows this is not like the rosiest time for

for those folks in row crops. Hey, we'll talk about forages as well, but you gotta look at saving a buck, saving two bucks. Where can we find that cost savings? And I think this is a great opportunity for us.

Justin Brakenrich (02:38)
I think we'll talk about this some, how in depth do we have to get what's most important, what's not. But maybe Ryan and Duane, you could answer this question too. But if you talk to your producers, often this question comes up about like, what does it cost you to raise an acre of corn or an acre of beans or something? And I think that's what we're trying to hash out with these enterprise budgets. I know with yield,

drags and a ⁓ really bad growing season this year, it's probably not the most enjoyable thing for you to sit down and figure out what this cost was. But before we can reduce cost, we have to know what it is.

Ryan Spelman (03:12)
Yeah, I think that's ⁓ a great point. I think far and away as I'm working with with farmers and and seeing their their operations and kind of having some of these conversations, it seems like the cost of production, it continues to creep up. And you know, the the actual price of the commodities, it's just not it's not rising at the same rate. Right. And so

Far and away, like a lot of operators are also outsourcing more and more of that decisions on what the nutrient pack they're using, what the options when it comes to their fertilizers, but there's a lot that goes into those decisions. There's a lot of economical choices that goes into some of that. And the more you can sit down and actually pencil all those costs out, you can see, okay, what are some of these places where I can save money? And maybe it's not on the inputs.

Maybe it's some of these other costs like your machinery costs, your labor costs. And that's what I think the value of that enterprise budget is. It gives you a lot more to think about than you might've thought of otherwise for how to save cost.

Dwane Miller (04:14)
Yeah, there's no question. You open up an electronic budget, you open up a paper budget, and man, there are a lot of lines on there. like exactly to what your point was, Ryan, there's probably things you didn't think about that have a cost. And even though we may not pay ourselves an hourly wage for the farm or associate costs of buildings,

⁓ storage issues those costs are real so they have to be accounted for in some in some fashion

Justin Brakenrich (04:46)
So I think looking at these, right, and let's just kind of jump in and for anybody that's interested in looking or hopefully not following along if you're driving, but whatever you want to do, we're gonna be kind of basing these off of Ohio State's enterprise budgets, right? And so that reason is because we're gonna be joined by some folks from Ohio State later in the show that are working in economics. So we want it to be as close to them as possible. But.

I'm gonna start this and then you guys jump in wherever you think you want to take it over. Because if we open these these budgets up, you have three things you're really looking at. It's kind of these larger count, excuse me, categories. And those are things like receipts, right? So this is the income. This is what you make when you sell your corn. Any other kind of payments that you can kind of count on. That's that's the big one, right? That's the one we have to have that we're subtracting everything from.

And then we have these two larger categories of variable and fixed. We'll talk a little bit more of what goes in these, but the variable ones are just that. Things like fertilizer, right? Fertilizer is openly traded, it changes daily sometimes, right? Fixed costs are gonna be the things that you have to have. Now, labor, land, miscellaneous equipment, et cetera. And granted, those may...

quote-unquote change, but those are the ones that we can guarantee and count on having to pay for every year.

Ryan Spelman (06:11)
Yeah, sure. And so just to kind of start with the receipts, right, that this is kind of a tricky part of the enterprise budget. maybe I want to hear from maybe some of either of you, because I don't have a great answer for this, is how we decide what goes into this column before the season, right? Do we account for any of this? I don't think you can, right? So the receipts, think we can easily, if I'm looking at this budget, we know the cost of our seed, right?

That's a receipt that we can predict, right? And then we know.

Justin Brakenrich (06:44)
So we don't necessarily know a variable cost we can predict receipts would be income like our seed cost would be something going out.

Ryan Spelman (06:52)
Sure, sure. Sorry, that's what I meant. The income we can predict maybe I account for this many bushels, right? So maybe we're basing it off of that your actual profit, right? And then those other things, the crop insurance, any ARC payments, any other market driven payments that you might get if you have a bad year, those go in there as well, but

I think we need to account for this based off of, you know, a reasonable year, right? I don't know, Dwayne, it seems like you have something to say there.

Dwane Miller (07:25)
Well, I think that's really important place to start is you don't go in. It is a crystal ball shot, Ryan. know, what, what do we think that price is going to be come fall harvest or that's a pretty tough thing to pinpoint when we're doing that. But I think it's important to look at in the case of the Ohio State budgets, you might have

a different yield scenarios. You might run a scenario where you say, hey, we've got a ample amount of moisture, things are looking great. And then we might run a scenario where things aren't as rosy.

Justin Brakenrich (08:03)
I think that's right, you know baseline Estimates on this I think so one of the the concerns or one of the educational points I've been making is Your best yield in the last ten years is not where this should be right If we're not making money or if we're not staying afloat in the worst year in ten years What we're not gonna be around here to find the next one And so I think exactly what you're saying the excel sheets make it really easy to do that

Dwane Miller (08:28)
Yep, they can be very flexible. Type in a couple numbers and bada-bing bada-boom does the calculation for you. You save that scenario and you plug in another one and run those as well. Yeah, so from the receipt side, yes. Brian, you were talking about the variable costs. At this point, would be, I think I'm fair to say that

the majority of folks, you've got your seed already purchased for the year. Those seed salesmen, they're knocking on the door early. It seems like earlier and earlier in my situation too to try to get those seed orders down. So you know that cost. Justin, you mentioned fertilizer. Some folks have likely locked in fertilizer inputs. Some folks may not have. I know

In conversations with the tough economics of last year, sometimes fertilizer and chemicals get put to the back burner a little bit. Seed maybe takes that front step to, hey, we're always trying to purchase our seed before the end of the year. If we have money left over, all right, maybe some fertilizer, maybe some chemicals, but usually seed is the one where we know that number at this point too.

Justin Brakenrich (09:38)
I think we've kind of covered maybe this idea of what is an enterprise budget, right? It's a tool for producers. think Dwayne's exactly right. It's a great tool because you can manipulate it to if I shoot for 175 as my farm average, what happens if I hit 200? What happens if I hit 150 or 125? Right. And you can manipulate these numbers once you get them put in. And I don't think there's anything wrong with historical or

you know, kind of quote unquote, like a postmortem of last year's season, right? You can sit down today and you can pull all of the money you spent last year, plug it in there and see how last year sorted out for you and use that as your starting point of what you need. So I want to throw out this question of what

Detail is too detailed right we've kind of bounced this around about how do I plan for fertilizer if I don't know what the cost is going to be what about seed what about fuel etc etc how do you handle some of these things when you're just like you said doing a Crystal ball a Hail Mary on some of this

Dwane Miller (10:44)
I think, you know, some of that can be pretty difficult to pinpoint. If you're looking to try to figure out, hey, exactly how much fuel you may have used in the combine over that course of the 200 acres of corn you ran through. Unless you've got separate tanks for each, or you're keeping some

pretty detailed records of, hey, I pumped in, I pumped in a hundred gallon this day, I pumped in 75 gallon that day. the level of detail, the more detailed you can make that budget, the better off you're gonna be in truly knowing that exact cost of what it's gonna cost to do it. Now, they're gonna, every budget you have,

has estimates in. Everyone that I've seen, whether that's Penn States, whether that's Ohio States, they've got the estimates. Estimates are better than nothing, but they are just that, right? It's like taking a manure sample. If you want to go based on manure rates based on an estimated value, you could be way out of whack. But taking the estimates that are in these budgets, I think, is better than nothing.

Ryan Spelman (11:59)
Yeah, and I will say this is where I mean, I tend to say, you know, err on the side with these budget things of overestimation, right, when it comes to the cost of things, right. So we want to plan for, OK, do I have a little bit of a buffer in the cost of fertilizer? Right. You know, instead of trying to extract every dollar you can on the front end, if we overestimate, we can plan better to be more profitable in the future.

And I think this is also a case where your first attempt at this, it might not be all that successful. But once we get into this process, we do it year over year.

You're going to get better at it. You're going to get better at estimating the costs of your own operation and putting better data into this on the front end. And you're also going to be able to keep a record of that from what you estimated as Justin said earlier to what actually happened. And you'll refine these numbers as you go on if you keep doing it. So don't expect to have all the answers the first time. It'll get better the more you do it.

Dwane Miller (13:00)
I, your, your example, Ryan, about getting better and better and better. I remember going to a hay conference one time and they had a gentleman come up from a little bit down South and this guy had every cost down to the last nit picking thing. And he knew exactly, exactly what it cost him to produce one small square bale of hay. And that type of a manager.

Like you can be a great agronomist and you can be a great farmer and you can kind of be a little bit laxed on the management side, we farmers, farmers need to be good, good managers of their financial situations or else, ⁓ Hey, you're gonna, you could end up on the, on the wrong end of the stick pretty easy. So that, that you're, you're exactly right. This it's not the most fun thing to do.

but it is very, important to understand costs.

Justin Brakenrich (13:58)
So as I sit and look at this enterprise budget and I think I'm going to contrast a little bit what Dwayne said about I think there is a perfect spot in the world for people that know what it costs them to make every square bail. I think that can also drive you insane trying to pin these numbers down to that level, right? So like we're looking for some sweet balance in between there of hitting this nice middle ground. And the way I look at them,

The way that I see this is there's a few places that make kind of the most impact. Your seed costs, right? And so making sure a thousand, two thousand, three thousand planting population can dramatically change seed costs, right? Fertilizer and chemical, right? Both of those are big ones that I think we're starting to recognize now we need to have maybe more field scale operations and we need to be thinking about this as

This field can do 200 but this one can only do 125 right and I think we have to start making these connections Between those types of things in this and then the next one that I see is such a big thing is your land charge My advice to anyone that's that's working in crops is Looking at an ROI on your land, right? If your most expensive land is giving you the least amount of bushels that becomes kind of a no-brainer decision, right?

Kind of dividing bushels by land price and finding out what you're paying per bushel on that acreage is really very important to making sure you're still getting some of this stuff worked out, right if it's $250 an acre for this land and it's giving you 50 bushel. That's probably not your best dollars spent

Dwane Miller (15:35)
Yeah. And there can, in any geography, I'm sure there's a, can be a pretty good swing in land charges between somebody that's saying, Hey, I just, just farm this and make it, make it look nice. You know, maybe I'll hunt it to those folks that are ended up paying, like you said, that $250 an acre for something and understanding the, the difference that that can make in your

and your bottom line is huge.

Ryan Spelman (16:03)
So I think, and I'm glad you brought up that land charge because one thing we kind of went through the receipts and what some of the variable charges are, but land charge would actually, that'd be a fixed cost, right? So a fixed cost in this situation that's for your operation is anything that doesn't change based on how much yield you get that year, right? It doesn't change based on production. You're always gonna have that land charge whether...

you get 250 bushels of corn or 100. And under there too, if you have labor charges that it takes that same amount of effort to harvest and you have labor that $20 an hour for 20 hours a week, you need to account for that. Some other ones, machinery and equipment charges, right? You still have to pay off that equipment if you have, if you're,

have a loan out on it. You still have to maintain those piece of equipment regardless of how much grain you produce. So those are some really important things that can fly under the radar as well. What are some of those overarching, I guess we can call them overhead expenses that we have to cover no matter what, even if you don't get anything off the field deck.

Dwane Miller (17:13)
Just a quick point on the differences in some of these budgets for the individual crops. If you look at something like a forage crop, alfalfa, grass hay, pasture, keep in mind you're looking at a longer term investment for the establishment. You'll have a higher cost for that establishment year. Make sure that those costs then get amortized over the life of the stand. You might have something that we don't

Maybe we don't have a lot of three-year alfalfa, three-year corn silage rotations in dairies, but some of these hay fields might be in for eight to 10 years. Understand that that establishment, you're going to have that establishment budget and then a regular production budget on top of that.

Justin Brakenrich (17:57)
So I think we've covered a lot of the high points. We've explained the enterprise budgets. We've looked at some of the differences between them. So I think now is kind of a good point that we can talk about our guests that are going to join us today.

So we've got Clint Schroeder and Rachel Henry from OSU and they do kind of a video series. It's something fun that I've been watching and keeping an eye on. It's called Greenfields Greener Dollars. And what they're doing is kind of taking a deeper dive into some of these things, right? They've looked at enterprise budgets and now they're pulling them apart. And what we're gonna ask them to do is talk us through some of these.

things, right? The low hanging fruits or areas that they feel we can save the most money on these enterprise budgets. And we've talked a lot of them actually, fertilizer, nitrogen, land, ranch, or ones we talked about. They're going to talk to us about tillage and cover cropping, which, you know, those are two things that we didn't bring up while we were in our conversation here. I think a lot of times we think of everyone's no tilling. And so why not? Right. That's not inclusive, but we need we didn't think about that. And then

What is this ROI and benefit on cover crops? So anyway, I think we should introduce Clinton Rachel and get this started.

Clint Schroeder (19:10)
Alright, yeah, so as you mentioned my name

Clint Schroeder (19:12)
name

is Clint Trader, the program manager for Ohio Farm Business Analysis.

Clint Schroeder (19:16)
program. My team, I work one on one with Ohio farmers looking at ⁓ and how that may be impacted their outcomes for specific enterprise. so, really was designed as full component, but the real neat thing is the data we can track on different, you know,

Clint Schroeder (19:17)
and I we were

their financial records.

enterprise budgets or their outcome.

Our program. Financial.

more data.

Management practice.

Clint Schroeder (19:42)
we can start to develop a benchmark to prepare themselves to other farmers anonymously that participate in our program.

Clint Schroeder (19:44)
marking report so that they can compare.

Ryan Spelman (19:51)
That's a, I kind of, I'm interested to hear, you know, maybe after the show exactly how you guys do that. Cause I think that is a weak part of maybe some of the information that in extension we can offer folks about their operation costs is, know, how does this compare across operations and how can we compare this intense real life farm operations? So I think that's kind of cool what you're doing to build that data set and actually be able to.

help folks in the real world. So that's pretty neat. Now, Rachel, don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Rachel Cochran (20:24)
Yeah, so my name's Rachel Henry. I am part of the OSU Extension Water Quality Team. So there's basically six of me stationed throughout the Western Lake Erie Basin in Northwest Ohio. Currently there's only four out of six of us, so we're running on a little bit of a lighter crew. But luckily for us, we work well together and we don't really stick within our county boundaries. We kind of cover the whole area. We all have different focus areas.

So anywhere from cover crops to wetlands to weed science. And we work with farmers to implement conservation practices on their fields. We do research with them and then we share that research to encourage adoption, which will eventually improve water quality.

Justin Brackenrich (21:11)
So I want to kind of jump in here and get some of these questions started. before we got recording, Clint told us that he's more of the economist and Rachel might be more of the agronomist. So I'm going to maybe keep that in mind as I direct some of these questions, let you all decide how you want to handle them. But to kind of set the stage a little bit of why this is coming up for us is I think within Extension at Penn State, we're starting to get a little bit more involved in not just the

production side of agronomy, but we're really seeing a lot of push from our producers to get us more involved in the economics of it and Really start to consider how can we improve enterprise budgets? How can we improve our recommendations to them? How can we start? Penn State has invested a lot of money in a nitrogen tool right in its targeting economic Maximums and the profitability of your soil not necessarily I got 225 bushels one time. Let's target that one

Right? And so we're kind of taking this direction. so Clint, if someone was to call me and say, Hey, Justin, I'd like you to come out to the farm. I'm going to open up my books. I want you to look at them with me from an economic standpoint. What are the first kind of things that you would talk to a producer with this cost savings or maybe cost savings isn't the word, maybe an improved efficiency or maximum yield or whatever you think would make the most sense when meeting with this producer.

Clint Schroeder (22:32)
Yeah, so that's a question. So as I mentioned, the data we get from our program set, we always look at the average participants participate and then

Clint Schroeder (22:40)
of all the farms that the

top 20 % most profitable farms so when data and it's the one arms ours

Clint Schroeder (22:47)
Then we compare those those sets. Really area where where Excel for the most part.

this the most recent data set the the.

Clint Schroeder (22:59)
average corn yield was

four bushels difference between the average farm and the top 20 % more profitable farm.

Clint Schroeder (23:04)
20 %

and so there's you know, that's a advantage by any

Clint Schroeder (23:09)
tremendous yield means.

So that really was made up by lower costs, cross marketing gains. one of the

Clint Schroeder (23:13)
across the board, maybe some areas

that I kind of pinpoint is a lot of the calculate, you know, how do we divide this up a corn acre versus a soybean acre or a wheat acre. The one that I keep is equipment cost. when I, when I say machinery cost, we generally lump a few different items in there. So depreciation,

Clint Schroeder (23:21)
The overhead costs, they're a lot harder to calc-

I did.

in on a lot of or machinery.

general

Clint Schroeder (23:41)
⁓ on machinery, intermediate debt, and maybe fuel and oil all in there.

Clint Schroeder (23:49)
What was

that number for your farm? you over-equipped or do you have the right size equipment?

Clint Schroeder (23:53)
have a a randomized equipment

fleet for the acres you're covering and and they can be challenged. We see some farms, they hold on that they're really utilizing anymore. Maybe they were diversified and they've still got some hay equipment around that's not being used potential, things like that come into play. So

Clint Schroeder (24:02)
under equipment not

I

up to his full potential.

Justin Brackenrich (24:15)
So Clint, ⁓ I am but a humble agronomist. Could you maybe take just 30 seconds and explain to us a little bit what depreciation means and what was the other one, intermediate debt and what those mean to a producer and how they should be looking at that too.

Clint Schroeder (24:32)
Yeah, so ⁓ intermediate debt, what we kind of consider that is anything that has a

Clint Schroeder (24:37)
life between 2 and 10 years.

Clint Schroeder (24:40)
And so like if you have a loan on a tractor, obviously you might keep that track longer But that's kind of the where it fits in there. So traffic vehicles generally fall in that intermediate category Livestock fences things like that. And so if you have a note on any of those pieces of equipment, you know, what's

Clint Schroeder (24:43)
Tractor than 10 years.

The interest rate, how much interest are you?

Clint Schroeder (25:01)
paying

on those loans each year.

Clint Schroeder (25:04)
So

depreciation is

Clint Schroeder (25:05)
That's a really long discussion that you could have, but the difference

Clint Schroeder (25:09)
between tax depreciation. So I'm taking a section 179, extends this tractor tax income. That's kind of the one method and what I'm talking about when I say machinery economics.

Clint Schroeder (25:21)
depreciation is in

depreciation. So a set value every year for us, we like to. On tractors or other farm implements, so you know what? Whatever that value was. Percent off every year and that 7 % ⁓ is kind of what we consider our depreciation. So that's just how it does it. It's not.

Clint Schroeder (25:29)
to use 7%.

When you purchased it, take seven.

our program on a tax number. It's not a

that shows up on your tax return.

Clint Schroeder (25:50)
return,

it's more of a economic depreciation for, you know, that assets going to wear out eventually and not be worth as

Clint Schroeder (25:53)
just kind of accounts.

Ryan Spelman (25:58)
Now, so you kind of mentioned the word over equipped when you were talking about this machinery costs. And it sounds like this might be a situation that a lot of farms are in. And how do I is there a budget that I can use to decide that right based on my operation? What is the right size or cost of equipment? Because maybe it's not a cost thing. Maybe it's the size of the equipment that I need. How many workers that I have that it seems like that's quite a ⁓

difficult thing to decide and do you have any tools for folks to decide that on their own?

Clint Schroeder (26:31)
Yeah, so, tools that we use, ⁓ so.

Clint Schroeder (26:32)
I don't have any stand-alone tool.

The data that my program's generated, and I know some farms that participate in a similar.

Clint Schroeder (26:38)
Penn State has.

program.

It all gets up to the thin bill with University of Minnesota.

Clint Schroeder (26:43)
uploaded to the UN. ⁓

So there,

you you could go and run a report. A corn acre, what was the average machinery cost?

Clint Schroeder (26:50)
for for ⁓

per acre for a farmer that growing corn, you know, in all the states that report, you know, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Missouri are in there, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the Dakotas. But. Of OK, this is. You. The game was, you know, above average below average above that that average.

Clint Schroeder (27:10)
Really, that kind of gives us a number of the average was and then have to start playing the high low.

significantly. Number

and that can kind of you point.

Clint Schroeder (27:24)
you a starting to

look at it say, okay, you know, and then they also have a, you know,

Clint Schroeder (27:28)
My machinery cost was too high.

Peace.

in-depth breakdown cost items

Clint Schroeder (27:36)
of the different.

So I think they track.

Clint Schroeder (27:40)
17 direct expense line items and 11 overheads. Then you can kind of start to like, why was my number two? Repairs.

Clint Schroeder (27:44)
So look at, was it my readers?

Was I using significantly more fuel and all of those kind of things that go into that and start to look at, okay, what do I need to do different? So.

Clint Schroeder (27:56)
differently.

For some farms, you kind of mentioned the labor for tractors that are relatively high horsepower or model potentially, and I've only got two or three employees means that I'm

Clint Schroeder (28:00)
situation if I've got

be, you know.

like

that at any given time, one or

two tractors is just sitting there doing nothing. And so is that something where we could, next time we make that tractors for one that we could use more efficiently, those kinds of things come into play.

Clint Schroeder (28:19)
that trade trade to trade.

Ryan Spelman (28:25)
Okay, Rachel, we're going to toss the ball to your court here. So from an agronomist perspective, same, same kind of question that Justin posed, you come into a form, they're asking you, all right, I'm looking for some cost savings. What, what, where should I look first?

Rachel Cochran (28:39)
Yeah, so Clint is really good at talking about those overhead costs and all of that stuff. But my mind goes to the direct expenses. So what are you paying for your seed? What are you paying for your chemical program? What are you using? What types of fertilizer are you using and how much? And have we shopped around on price for those things? Are you just using the same things you used last year just for ease, which I completely understand, but

With the way that markets have been, maybe we need to find some cost savings there. Additionally, there's plenty of tools out there, whether we're talking about PSNT tests before side dress, looking at the maximum return to nitrogen tool to determine our most profitable nitrogen rate. And then with Ohio, we've updated our potassium and phosphorus recommendations.

within the last couple of years here through the Tri-State Fertilizer publication. So potentially you might already have enough potassium and phosphorus in the soil. So just kind of thinking about what we're applying and what we actually need to apply and balancing that for economics, but that's also gonna benefit us environmentally too.

Ryan Spelman (29:50)
Great point that, like you said, these don't just have economic impacts. They have environmental impacts ⁓ that oftentimes we don't necessarily think about directly. But they are huge in the long term of the equation.

Justin Brackenrich (30:07)
Rachel you brought up ⁓ nitrogen and the maximum turn excuse me the max return on nitrogen tool Let's talk a little bit about that right so so that's kind of one of the things we've been working at with Penn State is this economic maximum of not every piece of ground is treated the same not every piece of ground is created the same and Talk to us a little bit about how what data you use to come up with that information

field-driven, you know, kind of things that show up there and how a farmer producer can use that to kind of adjust their nitrogen needs and yield.

Rachel Cochran (30:40)
Yeah, great question. The MRTN framework, I mean, there's multiple, multiple states that have data that feeds into that. So specifically for Ohio, we have data coming from the university. So Greg Labarge here at the university has been doing nitrogen rate trials for years and generally adds, you know, five, 10 more site years every year that gets fed into that tool. So that tells us the nitrogen response curve.

when we're talking about corn yield and that feeds into the data behind that tool. Another input on that tool is our corn price in addition to our nitrogen price. So we're using our price structure to figure out where we're most profitable and also where that corn and response curve starts to flatten out. So we kind of triangulate those three and find small range.

where our nitrogen rates gonna give us the biggest return in terms of profit without sacrificing too much yield. I think we're still getting 95 to 98 % of our yield potential at that rate. And then looking at the farmer side, we can plug in what they paid for nitrogen, plug in what they're expecting to get for their corn crop, and then do a nitrogen rate trial with the output. So I did a trial

using that same framework back in 2024, the farmer was already using 160 pounds of nitrogen per acre, which actually was the MRTN output. And we lowered that by 30 pounds and we raised it by 30 pounds and did three nitrogen rates side by side. And turns out that that year, the MRTN rate was the most profitable. It yielded, I think like two bushels less than the 190.

So statistically the same. And they were able to see right there, OK, what we're doing actually works. So that's something if a producer is not sure what they want to do for N-Right, they can look at that and at least have a starting point.

Justin Brackenrich (32:43)
I think something like, I'm sorry, Ryan, I'll let you go and just say, just want to make, when we start using these tools, one of the things we often forget, or I think is producers do, because, maybe this is somewhere between you and Clint, when I start estimating costs for things, I use custom rates, right? And in most of the areas around us with custom rates, say it's about $13 every time you go across a field to fertilize. And that kind of comes back into what you're talking about.

Is there's all this data kind of showing up now that says more nitrogen up front if you don't need x amount secondary, right and Every time you pass right here's thirteen dollars. Here's twenty six dollars. Here's thirty nine dollars an acre That you have to offset somehow so I think these tools have a really good place not just for the economics and the nitrogen but some of these maybe fixed or other costs that we would look at through equipment

Clint Schroeder (33:32)
Yeah, I think that's a great point because the, I know that was always kind of the thing is you, you still have to get it in the ground to make it effective. Or if you're doing a late season application with a, you know, high boy or something like that, there's cost there, but you know, I always looked at it as like Rachel said that far and they put additional pounds

Clint Schroeder (33:36)
with the MRTN.

You've got your nitrogen.

There's definitely a boss.

farm gained 2 bushels an acre, put on 30 of these, and then

nitrogen cost, then nitrogen

Clint Schroeder (34:00)
So it's probably 20 bucks an acre and nitrogen

and they made eight. So yeah, and then you factor in an application So what did they really lose it could have been close to? 24 25 dollars when was all sudden done

Clint Schroeder (34:08)
Station calls.

Ryan Spelman (34:14)
Yeah, I think that's it's great to hear because again, from our agronomy perspective, we're usually looking at that curve in kind of two dimensions, That really one dimension, you know, where is our yield that line starts to level, right? But to put that economic piece into it is critically important, right? Because that's where you're going to make those tweaks. Now,

If we're using that MRTN and Rachel, you kind of mentioned, you you had this farmer trial, the rate that they were seeing, right? And we're big proponents of trial, some of these things, these adjustments you're going to make on your own farm. Because as good as some of these tools are, you never know how your ground is going to react, you know, how capable your soils are. Do you have some advice for a farmer that wants to, you know, find their economic rate of, you know, nitrogen, maybe it's some other?

you know, your NPKs, if there's, you know, a standard, you know, way that I can pick my rate based on that MRTN curve and then say, okay, I want to step by 30 pounds, down by 30 pounds. Is that kind of how I should do it if I'm a farmer and I want to check in to see, you know, does this rate actually work for me? And should I do this, you know, every few years or should I just do it once and see?

Rachel Cochran (35:34)
But you want to take that or you want me to?

Clint Schroeder (35:35)
Go for it, Rachel.

Rachel Cochran (35:37)
⁓ Well, I mean, there's a lot of parts to that question, right? The main thing though is like, what rates are they using right now? What rates have they used historically and how has their yield reacted to it? So if they're doing something that's working for them, that's kind of a different situation than if they're putting on 200 pounds of nitrogen and they're only getting 180 bushels. So. ⁓

In addition to the MRTN framework, it's super important to have an up-to-date soil test. And I mean, you're not going to really see much change year to year there. So making sure you have a soil test every three years to tell you what's there, and then maybe following with the MRTN calculation every year just to see where things are. If we're not seeing a lot of volatility in corn price and nitrogen price, you could probably get away with the same output for multiple years.

But seeing where that MRTN falls in relation to the nitrogen rate they're already using, I think is a great starting point.

Clint Schroeder (36:36)
Yeah, I would jump in. You know, when it comes to a farm wanting to do this in Ohio, one of the public that our team works with a lot is the EFI. And so that really is driven by the research in cooperation with a local education educator. And so I think that's a great way to kind of

Clint Schroeder (36:43)
locations that

fields program.

driven by on-farm or farmer participation research, co-op, and extension.

Clint Schroeder (37:04)
for us that we use those field rate trials ⁓ to maybe inform some decisions. Because I think that's the other thing, know, if you, the buzzword is always, working in silos, but sometimes a small plot doesn't translate to the field scale and vice versa. And so I think that's where, you know, ground truthing some of that on your own farm, maybe on limited acres, you're doing some of these trials and setting up good replicated ⁓ experiments is going to be.

Clint Schroeder (37:16)
what works and

Clint Schroeder (37:33)
⁓ really beneficial for you as a farmer to understand maybe how your soils or how your production practices respond to these different treatments.

Clint Schroeder (37:36)
better understand.

Ryan Spelman (37:44)
Yeah, you're right, Clint. No two worlds are alike, right? So everybody's place is going to behave a little bit differently. Let's transition a little bit. Talk about tillage. So how do we assess some of our costs that may be associated in tillage? And how can we look to save some money from that?

Clint Schroeder (38:04)
I guess I'll start with that one. Over the last couple of weeks, we had a organic grains conference here in Ohio. I think most people when they think of organic grain production, they think some pretty intense tillage practices. it was data sets of organic versus those that were maybe more of a conventional operation. But, know, what

Clint Schroeder (38:06)
with that. So.

not necessarily note what

their fuel oil consumption was

Clint Schroeder (38:33)
and oil was

in a heavy tillage environment. And so, you know, that, you know, if that difference was right around 20, and again, that's being offset somewhat with, you know, the conventional farms are going to have herbicide cost and whatnot. But not necessarily tied to that testing way to look at that. But I know

Clint Schroeder (38:40)
bucks an acre and fuel costs.

so they've got trips over the ground.

So that was kind of an interesting...

Clint Schroeder (38:59)
You know, our data set, like I said, we submit that to the FinBin database with University of Minnesota and.

Clint Schroeder (39:05)
you're able to go in and sort.

Clint Schroeder (39:07)
by different till practices

and kind of compare. And so, they've got 24 data, the 2025 is being collected right now. And not really surprising, I think all of the farms have less than $30 an acre, but looking at maybe a conventional till, no till,

Clint Schroeder (39:11)
The most recent data is the 20.

shallow loss, know.

versus an

Baby

Clint Schroeder (39:32)
five

to $7 an acre difference just based on tillage practice as far as net return when you we put everything together. So, an area and I think the one that that's really interesting to me and I don't know how much you guys have seen yet, but but that's really starting to take off here in Western Ohio, trying to get the best of both worlds. Talking to a farmer a week or so ago at a meeting said,

Clint Schroeder (39:41)
Certainly.

Pennsylvania.

Clint Schroeder (40:02)
I'm on some heavy clay ground and I've tried no-till, I've tried cover crops. It's like I think I got a strip till just because I need that ground to dry out. I need it to warm up faster in those strips. But I don't want to go back to heavy conventional deep ripping every acre, every type tillage operator. So I think that maybe is going to be the best of both worlds.

Clint Schroeder (40:19)
your patience.

going forward.

Rachel Cochran (40:25)
I just want to add whenever I talk about tillage, I come at it from, know, the soil health perspective. And it's hard to put a dollar value on that, but we have to think about is that extra pass worth it when it comes to, you know, potentially tearing up your aggregates, tearing up the roots that are there and the microbes that are living in them. So Clint said something earlier when I was talking to him that stuck with me and he's basically said,

At what point do we go from tillage with a purpose to recreational tillage? And I know every time I say recreational tillage, guys laugh because they know, but it's something we actually need to drill down and think about. And what are we actually doing to our system when we do that?

Justin Brackenrich (41:08)
I've had that explained to me as therapeutic tillage You know you no one they say well no one wants to go into winter with all these stocks standing up It looks ugly out there So I'm gonna go out and get my therapy by getting all these stocks turned over before before we go into winter. Yeah, I think I think that's true and we Dwayne probably would remember better than me because he's been doing this longer, but there's been an incredible transition of

tillage to no-till in the state of Pennsylvania, right? And I think there's a couple demands for this and I wish I could say that it's all based on environmental, but often it's a labor thing too, right? And we've talked about where these dollars and things come in and I don't know any farmer that I talked to that says, we were just doing one yesterday and this guy said, I've got too many people to work on the farm, right? I got people standing around because I got too many of them wanting to show up and help, right? That doesn't happen.

And so when you're looking at spring and you're able to avoid some of the wet and some of the weight because you've got to go through all these practices, now we're talking about the economics, the environmental on and on and on. So I think that is really important for us to think about those transitions. My question is, I hear a lot of producers say, I can't afford to transition from conventional to no-till. Do either of you have a response to that?

Clint Schroeder (42:30)
Wow.

Clint Schroeder (42:30)
that i get a lot and i think the kind of the led us to kind of start this video series that we did was just out there when it's you know comes to adopting a new practice whether it's you know for us it was is really about cover crops is where we kind of started from and you know that you can farm

Clint Schroeder (42:32)
that comment a lot. That was really thought process.

There's so much uncertainty.

Trying to prove that

profitably by growing cover crops.

Clint Schroeder (42:57)
Some people refer to that as ugly farming, but you know that same. To like, you know, yeah. Which is it? The, the soy stubble that you note that the field that's been, you know, conventionally tilled and, and then you planted your corn to it and you know, you don't have the, the patchy colors where.

Clint Schroeder (43:01)
concept kind of applies to the note.

Which one looks prettier? Means... Tilt corn in or is...

into

Clint Schroeder (43:23)
Residue may be moved over the winter or something like that. And so the mindset has to to kind of shift I think that it's one of those things is a lot of arms I'm and if it doesn't work out, it's It's awful. We're not we're not gonna come back and try it again. Unfortunately, and you know, I think Okay once Experience and

Clint Schroeder (43:27)
certainly has

They try something one time

less.

coming from a no-till or a cover crop standpoint, say you tried it once, what did you learn from that and

what could you differently?

Clint Schroeder (43:54)
maybe do differently

and try it again and maybe make it work because I think that's where you know just the end you know if you can eliminate some of those tools and some of those things maybe you can go to a just planner because you know you're only making that one lesson maybe that's worthwhile so I think is and

Clint Schroeder (44:02)
Investment in

Running one beggar

Pass.

think there's some advantages.

Clint Schroeder (44:19)
Yeah, is going to maybe look as pretty or are you always going to have maybe that top end yield ever? But the goal should be profitability, not necessarily having the highest yield, I guess is the way I always look at it.

Clint Schroeder (44:24)
Maybe not.

Rachel Cochran (44:32)
It's important to not overthink it also. mean, we can try this on just one field. We can look at the field that always kind of yields kind of mid in our, in our range and say, I'm just going to try that field in no-till for the next two, three years. Maybe it'll save me time, but can't get much worse, you know? So thinking about it that way too.

Justin Brackenrich (44:53)
Yeah.

Ryan Spelman (44:53)
I

think back to when, when dad was farming and one year he showed up with this planter and I'm not sure where it wasn't from a district or anything like that. The no-till corn planter. And I don't believe it was, I was a young kid, so it wasn't set up right. Didn't do a great job for us. And boy, that, that put the taste in his mouth that he wanted nothing to do with no-till. And till the end of his, uh, you know,

farming career, I convinced them to let's update the planter. Not a new one, but let's get one that has that capability. Let's start easy. Rachel, like you said, let's pick a couple soybean stubble fields that we can kind of sink the planter into pretty easily even on our tougher ground here that we've got to deal with and no till a little bit of corn and be darn, this stuff can actually, can work, can work. But giving it a chance.

chance to prove itself before we make preconceived notions. And I understand how difficult it is. then the other side of the coin is everybody said, well, we got, we only got one shot every year to do this. So if we're going to do it, we got to do it right. And getting over that hump. So good, good thoughts there. Right. Let's, let's move to cover crops. know, Clint, you guys both mentioned cover crops here a little bit and thoughts on.

how we integrate cover crops into a system that can result in us and some savings for us.

Rachel Cochran (46:20)
Well, I can definitely give the advisor perspective. I don't farm, so we'll let Clint give that ⁓ side of the coin. you know, when you're just getting started, it's easy to be overwhelmed with the world of cover crops. There's so many resources out there. There's so many species, so many different goals that farmers can have. But the main thing is, you know, if you have all of these goals and you're thinking, ⁓ man, that

five-way mix that my neighbor had looked like it was really great, maybe let's just start with the basics. You're going to save money by not having extra species added to the mix when you're just getting started. Probably going to save yourself some headache too. And honestly, unless you're in a cost share program that's dictating what seeding rate you need to use, maybe start out lower than you think. So we have guys.

that get enrolled in a program, they've never grown cereal rye before, and they have to plant 60 pounds to the acre. And that can get away from you really quickly. So maybe take a small field, try it at 30 pounds, 15 pounds, 40 pounds, something lower, and just see how that does, see if you can manage it on one field, and make sure you have time to have planned B, C, D, and E.

Clint Schroeder (47:38)
Yeah, I'd say that's been my experience with cover too is it. Management for sure is you have to have a plan BCD and he it's not just like head out there with the fuel cultivator and and tear the field up. And so you know if it's got hired employees, I think I can make it harder because you have to. You know, can you trust your employees to make the right decision?

Clint Schroeder (47:42)
crops increases the manager

plan.

Marjorie Farne

you

Clint Schroeder (48:08)
when it comes to cover crops and, you know, planting is that field would actually fit to plant with cover crops in it. If you're going to plant green or how do we terminate? What's our timing on that termination? So it can be challenging. think, you know, Rachel's spot on, you got to start with a kind of a simple mix. think a lot of, ⁓ you know, there's so many options out there, but it seems like a lot of the ones that we, it is like, ⁓ the blend that's got

Clint Schroeder (48:31)
hear about there's this 15-way cover crop

Clint Schroeder (48:36)
you all these species in there. so, you know, that's, that's not what I would advise a newbie to, to, kind of try out is, you know, the goal, that you hope to get out of this cover, advising that, you know, ⁓ your, your, operation, it might, where before you really see some of the benefits of improved soil health or that soil biology,

Clint Schroeder (48:43)
What's your one specific

and really implementing cover crops into your

might be a two or three year period.

Clint Schroeder (49:00)
you know, for me, look at like, you Rachel mentioned, and, you know, why would you want to maybe plant that thicker? And that's because, you know, I've seen it on our farm as well, but, you know, in other research settings where that thick, more weeds, depression created a, you know, more dense or more trapped in periods of dryness. And so,

Clint Schroeder (49:03)
and cereal ride.

And it

or stand we had to

in moisture

But there

was an advantage there.

Clint Schroeder (49:27)
But

yeah, that first year you do it, it's probably not going to be a good idea to go out there and really plan a thick span without a good idea on how you're going to manage it in the long time.

Clint Schroeder (49:37)
In the spring.

Justin Brackenrich (49:38)
So one of the things I've always heard about cover crop transition is it doesn't necessarily always raise your yield significantly. But what it does do is if you have a yield monitor, you start to see your margins not be so far apart, right? And when you think about conventional tillage, where your wet spots are or around your edges or where you're really ledgy or something.

Those were the ones that the producer may see it. It's 60 bushel corn or 50 or 80 But then you get in the middle of the field and you start to see the 200s, right? And so you have these really wide margins as you start to cover crop the ones that are poor They start to come up closer, right and it starts to close that gap but the stuff that's already really good It's not like you're gonna add 80 % more right if you were at 200 in the middle of the field You're not gonna get 300 now

but you still start to pull your yield up because you're correcting some of those bad areas.

So, well, I'll stop there. Ryan, don't you jump in here and do something?

Ryan Spelman (50:40)
Yeah, well, as you I'm glad Clint brought up the aspect with cover crops that it will take some time to to also see the benefits because as I'm thinking about this, right, we have to be careful when we're doing some of this enterprise budgeting that we're not just always looking at where we can cut costs, right? Being a crop manager, it's it's about cutting costs where you can, where it makes sense with a focus on yield and output. But

It's also, where do I want my operation to go? Do I want to be able to pull back some of those inputs over time? Do I want to be a steward of my soil health and the environment? That bears weight in folks' minds as it should. And I think you have to manage those goals along with the economic output. So in my mind, cover crops are in the category of things where you might not see that economic benefit, especially in those first few years.

And you're doing it for a lot more reasons than just the economics. And it might make sense, as Rachel's been mentioning, to start small and start to really tangibly see those benefits before you go across the farm and see if it's something you want to adopt. And then just be honest about that cost and work it into the budget over time. Work it into your budget and your operation over time.

I don't know if you guys have any comments based off that, but that's just kind how I'm seeing this in that discussion.

Clint Schroeder (52:06)
Yeah, I would say the, based on the data that we collect on crops have probably $30 an acre. So invested between the seed, the seed pass, if they have to increase the size for a termination or, know, whatever their termination method might be. Um, and so there is a, but the idea is that,

Clint Schroeder (52:11)
and farms that are growing overcrowded, they're generally going to

mean, there's seeding. Maybe a herbicide.

definitely cost for that.

Clint Schroeder (52:34)
that cost is going to be offset by maybe reductions elsewhere in the budget. And we've

Clint Schroeder (52:39)
seen

some pretty strong returns in.

Clint Schroeder (52:41)
Ohio, especially the soy side,

as far as, you know, growing, so maybe a crop. And I think, you know, that's

Clint Schroeder (52:47)
beans after rye cover curry.

That's not

even taking into consideration cost share dollars out there. so it's that balance.

Clint Schroeder (52:54)
that are out there. And so like you said, balancing act

of economic viability versus, you know, environmental sustainability. you know, programs are out there. Is it something through a end user that once they're in a certain method that they deem climate or whatever it might be that those opportunities are there that you might need to pursue?

Clint Schroeder (53:04)
What program?

And then, props grown in

and it's smarter.

Ryan Spelman (53:19)
I guess that was going to kind of be my question for you guys there in Ohio. Are they utilizing that type of a cost share program? Are they enrolled in those programs solely? Or are there folks that are doing it just

Rachel Cochran (53:39)
I would say both. mean, you have your early adopters who've been doing this for longer than I've been alive. You've got the ones that still need a little convincing. And those are the ones, you know, we have H2 Ohio here, which is a program that's supposed to protect water quality. And it's focusing on certain practices, cover crops being one, manure incorporation and injection being another important one.

And those guys maybe need a little nudge and there's practices like that and equip other NRCS practices there to give that to them. And the early adopters, some of them I've talked to are maybe a little frustrated that they're excluded from those programs, but they're gonna keep doing it no matter what. And then you have kind of the middle adopters where some of them started, you know, two, three, four or five years ago doing these practices.

So they're not really included in the programs because they've already done it, but they're not seeing the benefits yet that the early adopters have. So we're kind of across the board in terms of adoption. And because of that, we like to try and partner up, you know, someone who's been doing this a long time with someone who's either just starting out or who hasn't even started yet. In addition to our extension research, we really like the peer

peer learning aspect of things too.

Justin Brackenrich (55:05)
So you all have mentioned ⁓ one that I was unaware with that I've actually been playing around with is this FinBin. It is a really cool place to get information, right? And we're always struggling. We're trying to, nothing against NAS, but we're always trying to fumble our way through NAS data to get some information, right? And every time I have to go to the how-to article that they provide and which dropdowns and which things I want,

But this this FinBin really provides some pretty neat stuff. ⁓ We've talked about OSU and your farm office and your enterprise budgets. Are there any other tools or software or, you know, kind of Clinton Rachel's must haves for things that a farm needs to be to start considering their economic viability?

Clint Schroeder (55:48)
Yeah, so you'd met in that day by farms that do an analysis with a software called back. It is not. It is very.

Clint Schroeder (55:49)
You mentioned FinBEN. That data set is comprised.

in.

really an accounting software, very

specialized. You could use it for some accounting practices, but it's really specialized.

Clint Schroeder (56:08)
to developing a analysis and in there. It's based on the five, you know, was your average call repairs or your average yield over the last five years where we can start to build that out and create for next year. So. ⁓

Clint Schroeder (56:10)
enterprise. There are tools embedded in to create projection of your history of your arm.

cost of

straight projection.

That's the program my team uses for

the work that we do in the farm office.

Clint Schroeder (56:36)
We do mention those

budgets. Our colleague, that is, you know, a very when he does those budgets, those frequently and the methodology that there is that goes into those budgets is, you know, it's not just throwing and seeing what's it's a method for every line of how we got to that number.

Clint Schroeder (56:40)
Very ward that.

serious under tanking and he updates

...prone numbers at the wall... ...sticks?

I'm in there.

the other thing that's included in that is your oper...

Clint Schroeder (57:04)
So right

now about margins being real tight and, you know, the line, especially he's got in there a,

Clint Schroeder (57:10)
fertility.

proper removal rate.

Clint Schroeder (57:16)
of fertilizer and so if

Clint Schroeder (57:18)
If

a farmer goes putting fertilizer on this.

Clint Schroeder (57:21)
year

because prices are high and you know they're gonna back that's fine. We'll have to replace those nutrients you know you can't just draw out of the piggy bank forever there. Those are out there that we like to use like you said sometimes there's just much data out there and find what you actually need can can be a little bit challenging you know whether it's NASA or even in the

Clint Schroeder (57:25)
cut in but at some point you still

There's only so much in there. So I think those are great, great tools that are.

some finding.

and then

Clint Schroeder (57:48)
and running the report that you want to get the for can be challenging sometimes.

Clint Schroeder (57:50)
output you're

Ryan Spelman (57:53)
So if I'm a producer and I'm looking through all these budgets and start looking at your videos and seeing all these numbers floating around and maybe I'm not the best at keeping some records myself, if I'm that guy, like if I start looking at numbers and start to track things, are some recommendations on where do we start? If I can pick a couple, what do we look at?

Clint Schroeder (58:18)
I guess I'll start off. The. I feel.

Clint Schroeder (58:18)
off, ⁓ you know, numbers that I like

every farm should be really tracking. think I mentioned the machine has a good line on that. It's interesting. In our data set, it's a

Clint Schroeder (58:25)
recall having a

rest.

pretty

strong correlation with net farm income up, equipment costs.

Clint Schroeder (58:36)
goes up, machinery per farm

also goes up. So there's that tax implication. We're going to offset some tax burden by buying new equipment. So that's the ones that I always kind keep an eye Coming at it from a financial standpoint is

Clint Schroeder (58:48)
Probably one of the-

Another thing that I think...

When we're in these tight margins, understanding your cash flow. Here in Ohio.

Clint Schroeder (58:58)
⁓ I

know we have a lot of operations that are being and I

Clint Schroeder (59:04)
We understand

wheat is not maybe projected. A corn acre or soybean acre. Wheat has the advantage of it generates cash flow in the.

Clint Schroeder (59:12)
to be as profitable as maybe a car or a scooter, but you know,

middle

of the year so we can decrease that operating interest cost if you have you know relying heavily on an operator.

Clint Schroeder (59:25)
First call.

note.

So understanding your cash flow and I think that kind of comes working capital or current ratio.

Clint Schroeder (59:30)
back to, you

You

know my you know if I had

So great in the bin, my paid supplies, know, if I, if I think how much money do I have to pay my, uh, this is, or my debt obligations that are due this next year. And so I think that really, that, uh, you know, dollars for every dollar of year.

Clint Schroeder (59:51)
current expense

understanding that we want to keep them.

closer to two, so two dollars of income, expense in the next.

Clint Schroeder (1:00:07)
I think that's a great way to look at it. I think that's another one that I really have in mind, know, times the cash flow and then the work capital that you have available for the farm.

Clint Schroeder (1:00:10)
other more

Rachel Cochran (1:00:19)
Thinking about it from not even necessarily like the financial side of things, looking at soil fertility, what do you have in the soil that you can use? know, like Clint mentioned, it's not going to be a piggy bank, right, where you can keep pulling and keep pulling, it's going to run out eventually. But if you have a healthy soil, that's going to be able to make nutrients available to that crop over time.

And by adding either leaving your residue on the surface or adding a cover crop in there, you're going to be slowly building that bank back up. So if you know what your soils can provide and what's already there, you can potentially dial back your fertilizer inputs. And then just looking at your operation as a whole, when it comes to herbicides, what's the number of the different modes of action you're using? If you are having something like water hemp,

Maers tail, those are two of our top five here for resistance when it comes to different sites of action. If you're utilizing herbicides that have resistance built up to them, you're basically wasting your money. So trying to look at it that way as well. And then for fungicides, know, using IPM practices to manage for diseases, only applying that fungicide when you actually need it. And then when it actually is going to work instead of

when it's too dry to make a difference.

Ryan Spelman (1:01:42)
That's great. Yeah, Rachel, you covered some of our favorite topics here. IPM, fungicides, timing, we have episodes on that. We have, you know, we just did an episode with Dr. Mulvaney out of Illinois on organic matter. And that's going to build into that equation of like how we can manage our nutrients in other ways than just focusing on fertilizer and maybe on those off years, those down years where we really need to pinch a penny. Okay. Do we, have we built up good organic matter and that's going to come from your crop?

management practices, your cover cropping, things like that. I think that's a really important thing to think about too, when we can get really focused on the year to year part of this budget, but being able to think about this in a long-term perspective and think about what are we building so that we can build in a little bit more ⁓ tolerance to some of these bad times, right, into our system.

So I think this is probably a great place to wrap up here. So unless Justin or Dwayne has anything else to ask, nope. Then we will wrap up here. So thank you, Clint and Rachel for coming in. Do you guys have any last thoughts that you wanna get out?

Clint Schroeder (1:02:50)
No, I think we've covered-

Clint Schroeder (1:02:52)
all pretty good. appreciate you guys having us on and it's always interesting to hear what's going on over there. If you guys haven't seen it yet, consider yourself lucky. You want to keep that out, so to speak.

Clint Schroeder (1:02:59)
don't have water hemp in Pennsylvania.

Word of warning from the West.

Ryan Spelman (1:03:07)
Yeah, I think maybe Justin's area has it. And so do you have water hemp, Justin? Yeah, it's crept into kind of the West. I know on the Western part of my territory, we're starting to deal with it. So we might have to have you guys back in a year or two to really dive into how we manage it.

Rachel Cochran (1:03:24)
Yeah, nothing from me. Just thanks for having us. It's been a blast.

Ryan Spelman (1:03:28)
Yeah, awesome. Thank you guys very much. appreciate it. And again, Clinton Rachel has some awesome video series that they put together. We'll link that down in the show notes. We'll also link the Ohio enterprise budgets. They have these great Excel files that you can play around with this for your own system. And I hope for our listeners that this was helpful for you to start to think about places you can cut in your own operation, costs that you weren't thinking about.

and getting creative about managing that budget. So thank you guys for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Agronomy Highlights podcast.