From the Fields: Working together

The idea of cooperation is not new to a farmer. Farmers pooling resources and, in turn, seeing returns on that investment — it’s an agricultural practice going as far back as 1810, particularly in the dairy and cheese segments of the industry. There’s a lot to be said for this old practice, and I think farmers today can use it as a framework for increasing on farm profitability.

Within our farming operation, my brother, Jerry, has established similar cooperatives with our neighboring farmers. This began initially with our dairy operation and hay equipment and led to the grain operation with planters. This week, Jerry purchased a 90-foot boom Case IH 4430 sprayer with AIM command. This replaced a 1999 RoGator 854. We continue to look for ways for our operation to remain efficient with smarter investments of our dollars and in ways that can be advantageous for our farmer neighbors, too.

We are looking forward to using the new boom on the corn and beans as they received 3 inches of rain this week. The corn and soybeans continue to respond exceptionally well.

The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture weekly trade data for July 10-16 was encouraging for the United States. China imported hundreds of thousands in sales and physical exports of U.S. soybeans, corn, wheat, sorghum, cotton and pork. As a soybean farmer, I still have hope that we can maintain that market as the No. 1 exporter of our crop. In the spirit of cooperation, I hope that positive trade trends are on the horizon here and in other parts of the world because I think most of Illinois will find that we have another big yield crop on our hands at harvest.

Greenville, Ill.