In times when margins are tight, the economic well-being of most growers and their families depends on making strategic agronomic decisions.
When the going gets tough, the tough get growing. Perhaps that should be the mantra of 21st-century farmers like Franz Rowland. After more than 40 years on his south Georgia farm, he knows a thing or two about resilience. But that kind of longevity doesn’t come without challenges. The past three years have been particularly trying.
“My operation was 100% cotton when cotton prices were higher,” Rowland says. Then a streak of misfortunes beyond his control changed all that.
“Hurricane Irma came through here in 2017, and we made about 300 pounds less cotton than we would normally make. Then the next year Hurricane Michael hit,” he says. “On top of bad weather, the tariff war heated up last year. I can’t remember a time when it’s been as difficult to make a dollar on this farm as it’s been during the last three years.”
Despite these challenges, Rowland perseveres. A self-described “fanatic” about record keeping, he uses data to help him make the right agronomic moves — a task made easier since he added AgriEdge® to his farm’s toolkit. The whole-farm management program from Syngenta comes with record-keeping software that Rowland finds indispensable for gauging the overall success of his farm and the value he’s receiving from individual agronomic practices and crop inputs.
After using AgriEdge to run the numbers from last season, he has decided to change his crop makeup for the first time in a decade, adding peanuts and wheat to increase his profit margins. It’s a bold but necessary step to keep his operation viable.
“The numbers showed that the risk of not making this move was far greater than keeping everything the same,” Rowland says. “That’s the beauty of making decisions grounded in agronomic facts. I can sleep better at night knowing that the direction my farm takes is not based on a whim, but on a well-laid plan.”
Sources from syngenta-us.