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All posts for the month February, 2015
As a consultant there are really only two things you need to do. You need to be right much more than you are wrong, and you need to ensure your message hits home.
The former is hard enough but the “communication” piece is where it can all break down.
As someone who is constantly trying to measure wins vs losses, the Rotation Rater has definitely been a win. The exceedingly low incidences of: Aphanomyces, Chasing Last Years best prices and Growing poorly adapted crops is well below the norm in our area. We have had a number of Retail and Chem Company agronomists note this about our customers. We have been promoting a 1/6 year Lentil rotation since 2010, in today’s environment and where the 1/2 year guys have been forced out, things like that get noticed.
One area, I feel we are losing our way on as agronomy consultants however, is Input costs and Input Efficiency.
So starting with just Fertility – as this will be a pretty massive undertaking that we won’t be able to cram all the facets of, into before seeding – we will be phasing in a “Resource Rater” to begin grading operations on their ROI and Efficiencies of Input Utilization and Resource Management – much as the Rotation Rater does on rotations.
We will try to launch Fertility fully or at least in part at our March 5, 2015 Pre-Seed Primer in Assiniboia. Ultimately we will eventually measure: Seed, Herbicides and possibly even land, labour and capital efficiencies, if we decide to bring on some Accounting help, but we will start with Fertility.
From setting poor yield goals, to depleting soil reserves, poor product choices, lack of soil stewardship, or simply just inefficient placement systems, The Fertility Rater portion will draw on the good practises and experience of the group, our agronomists and our local area network to help promote stronger fertility agronomy as a whole and to help guys see where they are in the fertility game verses their peers.
I will be hitting you all up for some Fertility data in the coming days. If you wish not to participate that is completely fine.
