This Week in Ag #37

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

One of the greatest inventions in history is the combine. The concept of threshing and separating grain in one operation revolutionized our food system, as well as redefined our labor force. Consider that in the mid-1800s, 90% of the US workforce was involved in some aspect of farming. Now it’s under 2%. To think my grandfather harvested corn by hand and threw the ears in a wagon! He used the pull-behind model in the 1940s to harvest small grains (that’s him, Fred Nichols, combining oats on our family farm). My mother still talks about dad wearing a Jesse James style mask while operating their first self-propelled combine without a cab. [Read more…]

This Week in Ag #36

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

#Harvest23 is in full swing. You probably have a sense of what farmers are currently doing. But what are farmers currently thinking about? Well, at this time of the year… A LOT!

Harvest logistics. Just as they do for planting, farmers prepare detailed plans for harvest. The two are carefully intertwined. Crop selection, varietal selection, field location and planting dates play a huge role in the “picking order” of what fields are harvested when. Field conditions also play a big role. Fields notorious for having wet holes could be moved up or down the picking order, based on current and expected weather conditions. You’ll want to get those fields out of the way if it’s currently dry, or delay them if they are currently wet. [Read more…]

This Week in Ag #35

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Last week I was a guest on the TopSoil Webinar series hosted by Mitchell Hora of Continuum Ag (you can check it out here). I mentioned how western growers seem further along in their regenerative agriculture journey. That’s largely driven by regional attitudes and the food companies, who have pledged to sell products grown using regen ag practices. This has motivated growers of crops such as potatoes, onions, apples, and blueberries to hasten their adoption. But in the Heartland, where commodity crops fill the landscape, these growers have lacked many of the market-driven economic incentives. Until now. [Read more…]

This Week in Ag #34

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Earl Butz, one of the most famous and popular US Secretaries of Agriculture, once told me that a key competitive advantage for US farmers in the global marketplace is our built-in natural infrastructure. [Read more…]

This Week in Ag #33

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

In commodity crop production, we talk a lot about bushels per acre. Because that’s how farmers get paid. But what exactly does bushels per acre mean? A bushel is the unit of measure we use in the USA (other parts of the world use tons or metric tons) to calculate yield, verify shipments and set pricing standards for crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, canola, rice and sorghum. There’s a good chance your grandparents had a bushel basket laying around their house, garage, or barn. If you were to fill that basket to the brim with corn, you’d have one bushel’s worth. [Read more…]

Translate »