What...Ag is a business?

Out­side of the agri­cul­ture world, most just see trac­tors, cow­boys in jeans, and smelly pigs. How­ever, those who know this part of the world will tell you dif­fer­ently.
You could say that clas­si­fy­ing the farm­ing com­mu­nity with trac­tors, cow­boys and smelly pigs is a stereo­type. Sure, all those things are asso­ci­ated with and are used in the farm­ing com­mu­nity, but that is just the tip of the ice­berg.
The word farmer by def­i­n­i­tion is a per­son who owns or man­ages a farm. When one owns a farm, from small scale to large, it take more than just feed­ing and plant­ing to keep it up and run­ning. There is a lot of time, energy and of course money, put into farms every year to have pos­i­tive yields and high car­cass value on ani­mals.
Farm­ers are always work­ing to mak­ing the biggest profit, just like big-name com­pa­nies. How­ever, the biggest dif­fer­ence between the farm­ing busi­ness and the cor­po­rate world is the pas­sion that is put into farm­ing.
All busi­nesses want to meet that bot­tom line of profit, and this is also true in the farm­ing busi­ness. How­ever, in the farm­ing com­mu­nity it is not just about the money, it is about doing some­thing you love that has been passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.
Farm­ing can be a big busi­ness or small scale fam­ily busi­ness. When talk­ing of big busi­ness in the farm­ing world, crops can bring in major cash flow, espe­cially in the Mid­west. In 2010, Ohio was ranked 8th for corn, 6th in soy­beans, and 11th for wheat nation­ally. The United States as a whole in 2011 ranked 3rd, with China lead­ing the world in agri­cul­tural out­put.
Yes, crops are the main prod­ucts from farms in gen­eral, how­ever they are not the only thing that is pro­duced.
Crops are prod­ucts that are very impor­tant not only to the farm­ers, but to con­sumers as well. For farm­ers it is a pay check, for con­sumers it means foods such as flour, oil, tex­tiles, sorghum, and sub­stances for med­ical uses.
For a farmer, the num­ber one goal is to feed Amer­ica. Crops can give us many things, how­ever ani­mals are just as ben­e­fi­cial as crops, with food being the main use.
The first things that come to mind when you think of ani­mal byprod­ucts are milk, bacon and steak.
In 2010 Ohio was ranked nation­ally 25th in cat­tle, 10th in milk cows, 9th in hogs, and 13th in sheep. Ani­mals not only pro­vide us with food, they also can pro­vided med­ical and sur­gi­cal needs. Pigs cur­rently are being used to pro­vide humans with heart valves, aid in skin grafts, and some­day soon researchers are plan­ning for the use of pig lungs in humans.
Aside from those uses, ani­mals, just as crops, can pro­vide tex­tiles, like hair being used in belts, the under­side of pig skin to make pig suede fab­ric, and the wool of sheep used in the pro­duc­tion of cloth, thread, yard, car­pet­ing, felt, and uphol­stery.
With all the human needs for ani­mals, their byprod­ucts, food and other con­sumer needs, it is no won­der why farm­ing has evolved into a busi­ness.
From the begin­ning of time from the Chan Dynasty down though the ancient Egyp­tians, there has been a need for these same items as we now use, except now we have evolved a bit more with the thanks of the tech­no­log­i­cal advances of this world and of course, time. How­ever the same basic prac­tices are still being used today.
Farm­ers really are the jack of all trades if you think about it. Farm­ers can be seen as a stock mar­ket ana­lyst, exper­i­menter, elec­tri­cal tech­ni­cian, farm equip­ment mechanic, ani­mal breeder, mete­o­rol­o­gist, and a con­trac­tor.
The stock mar­ket watch­ing is not just for Wall Street these days. Stock mar­ket prices are being watched every­day by farm­ers all around, with the same motto: buy it low, sell it high. Items such as corn, soy­beans, cot­ton and rice are just a few items that can be found under the Com­mod­ity Exchange.
The Com­mod­ity Exchange is traded world­wide based on agri­cul­ture prod­ucts and raw mate­ri­als. Raw mate­ri­als include items such as sugar, rice and more. This mar­ket dif­fers from oth­ers because it can also be con­tract based, mean­ing that a seller can sell future prod­ucts, such as just-planted corn — on deliv­ery the price would be guar­an­teed from the time the con­tract was drawn.
Farmer…the exper­i­menter?
You might be scratch­ing your head on this one, but it is a com­mon thing. Think about it…take a ride into the coun­try and you are likely to see sev­eral dif­fer­ent types of signs pro­mot­ing the seed com­pany that farmer is using, whether it is a tra­di­tional seed or hybrid, the cul­ti­va­tor of that par­tic­u­lar land is try­ing pos­si­bly the newest seed for­mula or try­ing an old method.
Why is this done?
When it comes to plant­ing, the most impor­tant thing is know­ing your land. The best yields come from know­ing what type of soil you have. This is the one most impor­tant thing and a great tool to the farmer.
Soil type will deter­mine what types of seed to use, the depth the seed needs to be in the soil, and the type/amount of fer­til­izer used. Soil also directly con­trols the health and qual­ity of the type of crop that is being planted in a field. The bet­ter the soil, the bet­ter the chance the yield will be good.
There are so many dif­fer­ent types of soils and dif­fer­ent tech­niques out there, know­ing what works can be an exper­i­ment. A seed com­pany can and will rec­om­mend what is best for a par­tic­u­lar sce­nario, how­ever it does not always work the way it is expected. There­fore, farm­ers may “exper­i­ment” with dif­fer­ent types of sce­nar­ios to find what is best for them.
As with cars, main­te­nance must be done on farm equip­ment. Dur­ing the win­ter, or the off-season, farm­ers are tin­ker­ing with their toys. Man­ual labor items such as engine work, sprayer hoses, and gen­eral tune ups are cur­rently being done to pre­pare for the upcom­ing plant­ing sea­son that is sneak­ing up very quickly.
Many will seek out­side help from their deal­er­ship con­sul­tants to help aid them in get­ting a leg-up on next year’s yield, such as GPS track­ers, yield out­put devices, com­put­ers, grid sys­tems — the list can go on.
Nowa­days, the demand for tech­nol­ogy will con­tinue in the agri­cul­ture com­mu­nity. Not only are planters, trac­tors, and har­vesters becom­ing more computer-based, but the ani­mal pro­duc­tion side is catch­ing up at a high speed. As we look to the future, you and I will con­tinue to see more devel­op­ments in high prof­itable ani­mals such as hogs and cat­tle.
More and more peo­ple out­side the agri­cul­ture com­mu­nity are gain­ing inter­est in what exactly goes on in our world. The suc­cess of any busi­ness depends on pro­mo­tion, mar­ket­ing, sup­port, and aware­ness. The more of these items we see in the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties, the bet­ter off they will be.
Farm­ing truly is a way of life, a pas­sion. The more pas­sion that is put into some­thing, the more it gives the per­son a sense of enjoy­ment and self-gratification. The farm­ing busi­ness is not just about money….yes that is impor­tant — but the bot­tom line of why farm­ers do what they do is that they love it, and would not trade their life for another one.