FARMER-DIRECTED EFFORT TO REVITALIZE

LAND GRANTS, INCLUDING 4-H, & OURSELVES

Gifts to Land Grant faculty/staff

to encourage them to:

DO THEIR COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE: UNBIASED

CROP RESEARCH & MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

Help to couples to start/restart your own

Farm Advisory Board (FAB)

 

Hello, Howard Doster here-we’ve had a great Christmas, even though both Barbara and I learned this was our last.

The heading is one side of our current Corn-Belt Top Farmers, Inc. 501-c3 (CBTF) business card that we incorporated in Ohio in September 2018 and revised this fall after an Ohio farmer phoned to say he wanted to gift CBTF a lot of money.

While doing on-farm research in 2018 and 2019, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and perhaps other Land Grant Agronomists and Ag Engineers found farmers made more money when they maximized site-specific contribution margin recipes (revenue minus variable costs), and not yield, for each of as many soil specific sites as they planned/monitored.  When they grew recipes to maximize yield, the last units of seed, fertilizer, and pesticide did not add enough revenue to cover their cost.

The cost of these extra units is an unneeded expense to farmers.  It is also a source of unneeded nitrogen and phosphate in our streams, rivers, lakes, and Gulf of Mexico.

 

In the August 2019 American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers professional journal article, “Surprise Moment Management, with a Plan”, was published, 15 years after I first submitted it.  I am listed as the first author, and I have co-authors from three land grant universities.  It is vague, and I left out a paragraph.  I want others to learn the details after Land Grants are helping farmers, and their kids, use it.

About 50 miles north of where I’m sitting, a west central Ohio high school teacher started a corn club in 1904 for his students, and their parents also learned in what became the first 4-H club.  This is my/our opportunity to help farmers and others revitalize some Land Grant faculty/staff, including 4-H.

Many multi-national companies now offer to pick site-specific recipes for farmers, a service some farmers like.  I don’t like the consequences for them and their significant others-their spouses, kids, and key employees.

I want CBTF to help a farm couple start/restart their Farm Advisory Board (FAB).  Each will pick another couple they respect professionally, like personally, and don’t compete with for land.  The couples will commit to meet, say, four times per year for, say, three years, on each of their farms; to monitor each other’s  production and financial performances as they share balance sheets and budgets; and do our continuing education, some online, with their significant others.

 

When preparing a balance sheet, American accountants follow their Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rules.  Farm Financial Standards Council (FFSC) also has rules.  I use a lender’s rule in my Surprise Moment Management software.  I think it is the way most persons think/act;  namely, I recognize a change in asset value when I could realize it by trading the asset, but I trade only when I think the replacement will make me better off.

When an Illinois farm software company started to program my budget into their data base soft09ware several years ago, they promised to give me a 4-H version for Land Grants to use.  If they were now offered funds, they would complete it.  The company has a new owner-a cooperative of a few farmers.  They might sell it.

In the balance sheet equation, assets equal debts plus equities.  If there are no debts, assets equal equities, including when a new balance sheet is calculated after each transaction between entities and each event between balance sheet accounts.  I have invited an Ohio State Farm Management Specialist to research the usefulness of my Sources and Uses of Equity Report for a Journal paper.