The Combine Forum banner

New Ag term - Agronomizer

3K views 14 replies 11 participants last post by  Mayoollie 
#1 ·
Agronomizer - verb or noun

Definition - An agronomist that maximizes net profit for the crop inputs dealer and not the farmer.
 
#4 ·
Have a brother in law who uses a service like this. Seems he has every disease under the sun requiring many sprayer passes. I asked if they ever left check strips to see if all that chemical makes a difference and he replied that they told him not to leave strips because the disease would spread over the whole field. His chemical bill per acre is more than my whole input bill. Can't see how he can make any money.
 
#5 ·
My idea for Agronomizer



They love to put out high yield challenges. Instead of an acreage fee for service, I would be much more interested in this if they covered the incremental costs of all the extra fertilizer, foo-foo treatments, sprayer passes, extra hail ins of course, bins, maybe, and would be happy to split any of the incremental yield over my insurance crop avg with them. If they get to 100bpa they would have 55bpa revenue to work with. They can even market that incremental yield gain and work their magic there as well.
 
#7 ·
What burns me is when they talk about needing X bu/ac to pay off. If the chemical costs 10 $/ac then 1 bu/ac of canola certainly does not make it back. How about my time, chance of crop loss, hours on machinery, chance chemical doesn't work. Farming looks a lot easier sitting at a desk.
 
#10 ·
Agronomizer=Shill

I put them up there with soil test recommendations. Not saying soil tests are inaccurate but leaving the testing to those who sell you inputs is a little suspect. If you have hilly terrain and the guy doing cores is pulling mostly from the tops how can you trust them if you're not there. Remember when the pool did it you rode around with the guy for company and to ensure cores were taken properly.
 
#11 ·
I work for a small family owned business, we operate on the serviced distribution model that is apparently hated here. And believe me, I can understand why, because I have seen a lot of distributor agronomists who rip farmers off.

Of course like any business we are seeking to make money. That said, I have colleagues who used to work for larger national concerns where they were expected to sell X packs of product Y in a season in order to obtain a bonus, to my mind that is wholly wrong and we don't operate that way, nor would I ever use a product unless I was sure it would be worthwhile for the farmer to use it.

I do not make decisions for farmers. I can only tell them what I have seen and how we best go about managing it. It is and always will be up to the client to decide how to spend his money.

I am salaried so it makes no difference whatsoever if people decide to use a lot of product or seed or fertiliser or whatever.

I have 2 friends who work as independents in the East of the UK. They both work for larger farms that usually grow a lot of roots and cereals. I believe they would charge 8-9 GBP per acre per season and they both have about 10,000 acres to walk and look after. They both think I am nuts. They walk each farm every two weeks send recommendations and the farmer goes and sources his product. Easy peasy with average farm size being in excess of 500 acres and big fields all farmed in blocks.

Not so in my area, where we have mixed farms, mostly dairy, who have 300-400 acres of grass, maybe 80 acres of maize and 50 acres of wheat. You could pay someone to look after the maize and wheat, but if you want your grass looked out to?

Not only that but the field sizes are much smaller and farms more spread geographically. I have an idiot independent chap in my area trying to do the 10,000 acres, but he charges £5 an acre, and guess what? All the recommendations I see from him are near uniform. He tells folk to chuck on fertiliser like no tomorrow. It is textbook, 150 units on wheat, 100 units on barley and so on. The reality is that he isn't walking these crops anything like as often as the rest of us, because unless is he superman, it can't be physically done. Still he is well received of course because he will flog you a can of product £20 less than me. Whether or not you needed that product of course you won't know because all you will see is an email telling you to put it on.

I'm collecting customers (usually the smaller ones who do less acres) from this guy at a regular pace. They call him the invisible man. Because you never see him.

I might charge more money per acre in the long run, maybe not, but at least I'm not doing drive by agronomy- my own conscience won't let me, after all, every time I do a recommendation on my computer the cost of that application is staring me right in the face. As an independent I wouldn't have that problem.

And as for soil cores, I don't do those, I use a spade.
 
#15 ·
They are dairy farmers. They don't have the inclination/interest or time to worry about fields too much. Some of them have a bit of interest, or they will see something and then ring me about it. But I will be there walking their maize every week once it is drilled to be ready to take the weeds out of it and make sure it is growing properly.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top