You have to make so many decisions throughout the crop season. Some can make or break your yields. How do you make those choices on your farm?

I’ll give you a simple guiding principle that governs how the most profitable farm operations make these judgments: focus on return on investment or ROI.

When times are tough and commodity prices are in the dumps, it’s easy to say NO to potential expenditures on the farm. If you’re not going to make money, then why throw good money after bad? On the other hand, when crop prices are at or near all-time highs, it’s also easy to throw caution to the wind and spend money on anything that can possibly gain a bushel or two because those bushels are worth so much money! However, in both cases, we encourage you instead to look at your return on investment to make the best decisions for your farm.

FERTILIZER/NATURALS

Let’s take the example of nitrogen, which has hovered around $1 per unit for most of the year. Are you going to take the risk of running short on your corn this year? Most farmers I’ve talked to have said, “Absolutely not!” However, there are some who are trying new natural microbes and taking some risk by cutting their N rates. Kudos to them for trying something new. If you’re trying out some new products that don’t have an established ROI, here are two helpful rules:

  1. Keep it to a small trial to see if it works before committing many acres.
  2. I’d highly recommend pulling a few soil nitrate samples as you get to sidedress time. Nitrate tests only cost $5 a pop, so it’s usually money well spent.

The other fertilizer question we commonly get around this time is about foliar applications. While the cost of fertilizer is high, the return is similar to what it has been in the past because the crop prices are also high.

DISEASE PREVENTION

Last year, tar spot took 50 bushels per acre of corn yield away on many farms. In some cases, it was a complete loss. When you look at a premium fungicide like Delaro Complete, Veltyma, or Trivapro that would run you in the $15-20/acre range, with corn worth $7 is it worth making that investment? This year, it’s hard to argue it isn’t! Say that application fees run $10/acre, and the product you chose costs $20/acre. That’s a $30/acre total investment. To break even, you would need a little more than a four-bushel gain; to get a 2-to-1 ROI, you’d need about nine more bushels than your untreated check strip. Another way to look at it is this – if your risk of loss is 50 bushels times $7 corn, that’s $350/acre. If your total cost to apply the product is $30/acre, you’d only need tar spot one in ten years to justify the cost of treating EVERY YEAR.

NATURALS

Speaking of fungicides – regardless of which crop you’re applying them to, we’ve found a strong ROI candidate to go in the tankmix. It’s Nutex EDA. Nutex EDA is a patented nutrient transport mechanism, plus it contains some zinc. The investment is less than $4/acre, but the multi-year average per-acre return in corn has been 11.96 bushels! In independent trials, it has shown a positive yield response 94% of the time. That’s a pretty easy choice to make and definitely a product to look into if you haven’t already been using it.

As for the PGR’s (Plant Growth Regulators), if they are new to you we’d advise you to follow the rules I mentioned earlier and try things like AC-97 and Inertia on a small scale before making big switches on your farm. The ROI on these products looks good enough to justify using them at certain times, such as the early reproductive stages in corn and soybeans. We’ve used AC-97 for many years and plan to use Inertia for the third year on our farm this summer.

INSECTS

Foliar insecticides are still inexpensive. Products like Mustang Maxx and Lambda Cy are near $2/acre. With crop prices so high, we expect the ROI for spraying insects early to be very good – or to put it another way, it won’t take many insects to reach your economic threshold!

Even though there are numerous additions you could make to your crop plan that should provide a yield advantage, keep your focus on return on investment this year and every year. It’s not what you spend; it’s not what you yield; it’s what you make for a net profit at the end that counts the most.