Focus on maximizing crop yields and profit

SALEM, Ind. — While weather and markets continue to test farmers, southern Indiana farmer Deidra Roell said there are reasons to be hopeful as harvest approaches.

She discussed this year’s crop conditions, and the importance of connecting consumers with farmers, with AgriNews.

Q: Are you feeling any more optimistic about profitability than you were a month ago?

A: I’m feeling the same as the last time that we spoke about profitability. I’m still concerned with the continuous high input costs without much consistent movement in the grain market futures to balance the costs.

The wet growing season has produced crops that are variable across farms — they may look good in the good areas and really pitiful in the wet areas. The heavy rains, wet end of planting and early growing season has created inconsistency across the farms that has not helped my optimism.

Q: How have current corn and soybean prices influenced the decisions you’re making this summer?

A: Honestly, prices haven’t been as volatile as some years, but definitely balancing out return on investment and timing on things like our fungicide application to make sure that the maximum benefit is gained from this treatment.

Also, looking forward to next year, we are always trying to maximize any discounts on seed and fertilizer and forward pricing any inputs that we can to be as fiscally responsible as possible.

Q: Are there any bright spots you’ve seen this year despite the challenges?

A: One of the definite bright spots is a lot of the flooding could’ve been much worse for us. We are very grateful for the fact that it was not near as devastating as it had the potential to be and/or what some of our friends and neighbors experienced.

Q: Looking ahead to harvest, what would need to happen for this year to be considered a success?

A: As always, we’re looking for highly productive crops with consistent yields. Outside of that, having a safe harvest with minimum breakdowns would be considered success, as well.

Q: Any Indiana Farm Bureau updates or family milestones you’d like to share?

A: We were deeply saddened to lose one of our executive leaders, Janis Highley, second vice president of INFB, in May. She will be greatly missed, but her legacy will continue to shine through the many others that she inspired and impacted across her community, the industry and the INFB organization.

We just finished our county fair here in late June and were busy with multiple activities with our Farm Bureau Inc. booth.

This year we focused on highlighting the International Year of the Woman Farmer and had a theme of “A Walk in Her Boots” with women’s work boots around the booth with community-submitted pictures of women working around the farm.

Each year, we partner with one of the other nonprofit ag organizations, See What Ag Gives, or SWAG, and were able to help represent farmers across our county fair and highlight other women in the multiple diverse fields of agriculture such as cattle, dairy, turkeys, hogs, sheep, crops, specialty, vegetables and so on.

We even had a scavenger hunt for them to learn more about the farmers while visiting the barns around the fairgrounds and completing the scavenger form for a prize.

I was honored to represent corn for the scavenger hunt activity. As always, the fair seemed like a whirlwind, but such a fun time for friends and family to watch our youth showcase the final “product” that they have been diligently working on.