Suggestions for Young Farmers?

This spring I had the pleasure of interviewing a diverse group of established cash crop farmers for a Sustainable Corn Project video. These farmers strongly recommended purchasing crop insurance. Farmers run the risk of losing a large amount of money in just one or two growing seasons, but crop insurance will help cover this potential loss. These farmers also emphasized stewardship: taking good care of the soil for profitability, for sustainability, and for future generations who will farm that soil. Some of these farmers also suggested that young farmers consider farm management practices that build crop resiliency to minimize the potential impacts of extreme weather.

What advice would YOU give to young farmers? What would you tell a young person who wants to go into farming in the future? (Click on the “conversation bubble” above or leave a comment below to share a suggestion.)

Days suitable for field work in the Corn Belt

Tillage, planting, fertilizer application and harvest all require field work to be completed. The timing and sequencing of these activities are critical for crop development, field dry down and farm profitability. Members of the Useful-to-Usable team have compiled weekly reports of days suitable for field work and planting and harvest progress from the state offices of the National Agricultural Statistics Service to understand the historical trend in days suitable during planting and harvest. An important objective of this research is to construct a predictive model of days suitable as a function of weather and soil type at a given location. We are using historical field work and weather data, together with soil information, to construct a statistical model that explains as much of the variation in historical field work days as possible so that we can use this information in the development of decision support tools to aid farmers in:

  • Selecting what size of machinery to purchase,
  • Determining the risks and rewards of alternative fertilizer application timing, and
  • Predicting how we expect field work days to be different in the future based on predicted climate change.

Over the period from 1980-2010, there is an overall trend towards fewer days suitable per week during the planting period and more days suitable during the harvest period. There are differences across states, as is shown in the table below.

Table UPDATED 8/30/2017

Table 2 Mean Weekly Days Suitable for Fieldwork, 1980-2010

 

Entire
growing
season

Planting Period1

Harvest period1

State

Mean
(S.D.)

Mean
(S.D.)

Difference between 1980-1994 and
1995-2010

Mean
(S.D.)

Difference between 1980-1994 and
1995-2010

Illinois

4.8
(1.8)

3.7
(1.9)

( – )***

5.2
(1.5)

( + )***

Indiana

4.6
(1.8)

3.5
(1.9)

( – )***

5.1
(1.5)

( + )***

Iowa

4.6
(1.8)

3.8
(1.9)

( – )***

5.0
(1.5)

( + )***

Kansas

4.7
(1.9)

4.1
(1.8)

( + )***

5.0
(1.8)

( + )***

Missouri

4.6
(1.9)

3.5
(1.9)

( + ) **

4.7
(1.8)

( + )***

Table notes: All values are weekly reports of the number of days between 0 and 7, averaged over all USDA Crop Reporting Districts in a given state. ** and *** denote <5% and <0.1% confidence levels for t-tests of the directional (+, -) difference in means between time periods.
1 Weeks when planting and harvest take place each year based on USDA-NASS weekly crop progress and condition reports issued by state NASS offices.