Rural Decline

This morning I learned a high school classmate's dad passed away. Leo ranched and farmed and commonly combined resources with his brothers to build operations that would support their families. I went to school with his sons Darren, a classmate, and Dustin, a year ahead of me in school, both ranch in the area. These are some of the very few that I went to high school went that chose a career in production agriculture.

Thinking about them today, a problem that will soon effect rural America in the next few years became clearer. Many farmers and ranchers are approaching retirement age and many do not have another generation to take over.

For many decades we've told rural kids that there wasn't a future for them in rural America and they needed to go to college and move to the city. In fact we give college scholarships to the brightest to ship them out even faster. The kids took the rural work ethic with them and many have been successful. As a result our rural towns and communities are declining in both population and leadership.

Reversing the decline and increase opportunities in rural America will take input from many people with diverse areas of expertise. Rural development plans can not be a one size fits all and will need to be tailored to each location.

New Markets??

As I look forward to the long hours and near madness of seeding wheat starting this week, I also think about how to market it. With much debate and interest in local/regional food the question I find myself asking is, "How can I take advantage of marketing it to bakeries and restaurants in Kansas City and Wichita as flour?"

Normally we sell all of it, except for a small portion that's kept for seed, as a commodity to either our local grain elevator, which in turns markets it to a multinational grain company, or we haul it directly to the multinational ourselves. Multinational companies offer many advantages such as a variety of forward contracts that allow us to capture potentially favorable prices and peace of mind of getting paid timely .

On the other hand a small flour mill offers the opportunity to market the grain as a finished product to bakeries, restaurants, and the public that want closer contact to the farmers that produced it. A small flour mill is another opportunity to add a few needed jobs in rural America, it won't provide enough jobs to stop the out migration though. The potential downside is a small mill could be slow paying and lack the economies of scale for longevity even when charging a premium price.

Shepard's Grain is an excellent example of a group of farmers in the Pacific Northwest working with an ADM flour mill to develop flour products to their specifications and then marketing the flour to bakeries, delis and other commercial wheat flour users. Using a cost plus pricing system creates a very transparent pricing scheme and rely on farmer owners to help with promotion allowing end users to meet the farmer owners. Mid-scale food value chains case study: Shepherd’s Grain gives a detailed look at how Shepard's Grain works.

Rainstorms on the plaines

Farmers aren't the only ones that stare at distant lightning wondering if it's going to rain, and if it will be nice a gentle rain or gully washing down pour.

Tonight I drove to one of our irrigated fields to turn off the irrigation system, the last watering for that soybean field for the year. When I pulled in to field I noticed eyes glowing in the headlights and saw the outline of deer. It's not uncommon to see one or two deer there at night, they usually run out of the wheat stubble and into our soybeans. This time there were several deer, just standing there watching the lightning to the north and west, completely unaware of me. Then on the drive back home I nearly ran into two deer that were standing beside the road, just staring at the lightning.

As I finish writing, thunder is rocking the house and I can hear rain pounding the roof. This isn't one of those nice rains that soaks in. Rather it pounds the ground faster than the soil can let it in, running off of fields taking precious top soil with.

Corn harvest

Life down on the farm has been slow, but very shortly things will be busy with fall harvest and wheat seeding.


This old girl is the combine that we harvest corn with.

We have started harvesting our non irrigated corn this past week. Most of the corn goes to our local "neighborhood" cattle feedlot. We sell some of our corn there directly from the field and they are very competitive on the price they pay for corn. They use corn everyday as a part of the feed ration to cattle, so they can take some corn that is too high in moisture for long term storage. When the moisture inside the kernel of corn is above 15% it will deteriorate over long storage periods and warm temperatures speed up the process.


Here is a partially harvested field of corn. We are cutting non irrigated portion of the field, foreground. The irrigated portion in the background will be harvested at a later date.

Our irrigated corn is longer maturity, planted a few days later, and had water when the planted needed it the most so it matures slower. Corn has an amazing ability to maintain grain quality and not fall down while standing in the field so it might not be harvested until November after soybean harvest and wheat seeding. Much of our irrigated corn will be stored on the farm and sold later to either the "neighborhood" feedlot, one of the feedlots within 100 miles of the farm, or an elevator that might blend higher quality with lower quality corn and will most likely sell it to a feedlot or ethanol plant. The demand for corn in my part of Kansas is higher than the supply which allows us to take advantage of good prices.

Late July update from down on the farm

The past few weeks has found me finishing planting sunflowers after wheat and now keeping sprinkler irrigation systems running.


Here is a field of sunflowers I planted in early July. I was surprised at how much they have grown the past few days.


Our early planted sunflowers in bloom. The blooms last for about a week and then the petals fall off as the seeds start developing. We will harvest them mid to late September. The seeds will go to a processing plant where oil will be extracted for a no to low trans fat cooking oil.


The grain sorghum has pushed it's seed heads up. It seems early to me, but with nice rain and hot weather has sped up it's maturity. Grain Sorghum is a crop from Africa so it thrives on the hot weather and hot, humid nights that we're having now. Corn on the other hand thrives on cool nights.


This is not a sight that any farmer with irrigation wants to see when crops need irrigation. Lightning struck the electrical connections at the center and disassembly was required to get the replacement part in place. We then spent several hours the next couple of days diagnosing other problems with this system. It felt good to get it running right.


This was a great sight on a hot summer evening. After being out in the heat and the frustration of diagnosing an irrigation system that wasn't working it was refreshing to see this one putting water on soybeans. The soybeans are using just under a half inch of water a day, and we're applying 1 inches every 2 to 3 days.

Wheat harvest down on the farm

We started harvesting wheat June 20th and finished July 2nd. There was only one day that the weather didn't cooperate with us and we couldn't harvest. Wheat doesn't have the ability to stand in the field after maturity like many crops can, so wheat harvest begins as soon as the crop is mature and we try to finish as quickly as possible to reduce weather related quality problems. The wheat yields and protein was respectable, we were a little concerned about the quality reports coming from Texas and Oklahoma before our harvest and quality related discounts. The first week I was in a combine and the second week I was planting and catching up on other work after I helped get the combines and crew running each morning.


A picture of all 3 of our combines working in the same part of a field during wheat harvest. Our combines are older, but they still get the job done.


Here I am unloading wheat on the grain cart while it's unloading on the semi. We commonly dump like this rather than waiting for the grain cart to finish unloading, besides Tyler does a great job of loading the trucks.


One of the combine's header is too wide to transport on the combine so it's transported on a trailer. I thought it would be neat to snap a picture of it looking in my side mirror.


We store some wheat on the farm. This happens to be Hard White Winter Wheat. White wheat from a farming perspective grows nearly identical to our Hard Red Winter Wheat. I think the berries have a sweeter taste, I love to grab a handful to snack on while unloading.


We also started irrigating our corn during wheat harvest. Weather that allows for a good wheat harvest is not the best for corn. Depending on how much rain we get between now and sometime in mid August, when corn reaches physical maturity, will dictate how much irrigation water we apply.

An update from down on the farm

This is always a challenging time of year for us wrapping up spring planting while getting ready for wheat harvest. Adding to the challenge this year is that it seems like we get about a 1 1/2 days of planting between rains.

All the corn and early planted sunflowers are in and doing very well. Soybean planting seems to be dragging along and grain sorghum planting is right on schedule for us. Most of the wheat that was planted early is golden and nearly ready for harvest, later planted wheat is still green and needs more time to mature. It isn't uncommon for me to sneak away the first day or two of wheat harvest to finish planting grain sorghum.


In the down time between planting we got the combines out and washed up. Last fall's harvest got them very dirty. Then they all got a preharvest inspection.


Here I'm changing the planter over from sunflowers to grain sorghum. The seed metering disk is changed and with the one laying on top of the yellow seed hopper.


One of our tractors and our soybean planter. I snapped this picture while catching a ride to the seed truck. The old concrete road was US81 at one time, built in the 1910's.


A field of soybeans that are just starting to come up. I was surprised at how fast they were emerging from the soil. These are planted in last year's corn stubble.


Sunflowers starting to come up. Everything is coming up nicely right now, warm soil and plenty of moisture helps things pop up out of the soil. We planted these into last year's grain sorghum stubble and will plant wheat into it next fall.



This was the first corn field planted this year. This is the first time we have ever planted corn on it, possibly the first time corn has ever been planted since this part of Kansas is primarily a wheat producing area.