Farm Horizons
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April 4
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Page 12
Be better and farm the best
Micheal Swanson, Ag Economist for
We all have land that is never our
Wells Fargo, has a saying, “Farm the best
highest-yielding, but is it more profitable
Myron Oftedahl than others?
and leave the rest.”
Farm Business
Another quote along this line is from
The point that Swanson makes is that
Management Instructor,
South Central College
David Kohl, “You have to be better beyou cannot pay the same amount of rent
fore you can be bigger.”
for poorer or marginal land. An acre is
Being better means getting education,
not equal to an acre in many cases.
and understanding how decisions impact
I had a college professor use the quote,
other things in your operation. Being better means to “Productive land is always fertile, but fertile land is not
have accurate enough records so that you know what is always productive.”
the best.
There is a lot of truth to that statement; some of the
Do you know which fields or farms make you money most fertile land in the US and other countries is the river
year-in and year-out? Do you have an enterprise on your bottom land where flooding deposits the silt carried from
farm that is continuously subsidized?
other areas – that silt carries a lot of nutrients with it. The
It can be a hard decision to get rid of an enterprise that pr ؛[H\