Networking is the process of interacting with others to exchange information that can positively impact our business or personal life. By chance, you interact with many people simply by communications that occur when one party reaches out to another. This can often occur without intent just communicating with your vendors and business associates. You might be surprised with the number of weekly opportunities, just by thinking about it. Networking with a purpose is to intentionally seek out someone with whom you believe has some knowledge or skill that may be better or different than yours in a specific area…
American farmers along with the companies that provide inputs, equipment and research on practices have been highly successful on the production side of their operations. Gains in quality, yield and efficiency have been remarkable over the past century and more. From 1948 to 2017 total US total “factor productivity growth” for agriculture has tripled while land in production dropped by 28% and labor dropped by 76%. Total inputs have remained flat. Farmers have excelled in production growth! The main driving factor has centered around economics…
You have probably seen green circles while flying over parts of the central and western United States. Large open, flat fields in Nebraska and surrounding states where the center pivot industry began. Using an elevated pipeline that travels around the field continues to be an efficient way to irrigate larger parcels of farmland. The simple fact that a circle takes less iron to cover more acres continues to be a cost-effective strategy. In Michigan and the Great Lakes area, while we may not have as many wide-open spaces, we have two key factors not present where center pivot irrigation was born. We have the most abundant fresh water supply in the world. Due to our climate, we also have diverse growing conditions for many crops and a demand for several kinds of livestock. With an increasing demand for food to feed our growing population, whether directly or through livestock, options exist to grow higher value crops…
With the cost of land ownership and rising rental expenses, we need to look for ways to get more from our existing land base. How can we produce more yield with our existing land base? Increasing plant populations is a logical first step. Squeezing more plants and hopefully more yield from every acre is certainly a reasonable option, but that increases our cost per acre for seed, fertilizer and crop protectants. With this approach, it will clearly take more water as well. While we cannot control the sunshine, water is a controllable input…
A Riverscreen is a brand of suction device that has been time tested for several challenging irrigation applications. Any surface water source is likely to have debris that can cause plugging issues at the smallest orifice in your irrigation system. If you are using pivots, that will typically be in the first few spans.
We are blessed in Michigan during the growing season to get some reasonable precipitation and have access to more freshwater than most. Are you getting the most from your irrigation system? Do you know the gallons per minute entering your system? Do you feel confident that you are maximizing plant yield by getting the right amount of water across your irrigated fields?
