From the Fields: The difference between making a profit and not

I had a Tazewell County Soil and Water Conservation District board meeting this morning. I’ve been with SWCD since 2017 or 2018.

We talked a lot about programs for cover crops like the one put out by the Illinois Department of Agriculture, Fall Covers for Spring Savings. We also talked about 45Z, what that means and what guys need to do in terms of reducing tillage, planting cover crops and reducing fertilizer.

There are some really exciting things coming up where if guys are willing to do the work to get into the programs, and if they can navigate it through and find a trusted adviser to kind of walk them through that, there’s some opportunity to capitalize on some of the programs that the government’s putting out there.

An extra $35 to $60 bucks an acre can mean the difference between making a profit and not.

I have a bunch of administrative things to do and odds and ends to catch up on. We’re ready to get back in the fields whenever weather breaks.

I also have to take a sample of some dry spread that we’re gonna put on a couple of our fields — dry humates and ocean minerals. We’ll spread about 100 pounds of each. It’s Sea-90 and the Canadian humates. We’ve seen good results from that in the past.

We’ll get through harvest and continue to take orders for seed and then start mixing up the fertilizer.