by Justin Schaefer  JustinS@agpartners.net

I didn’t have the opportunity to grow up on a farm, but I did spend an awful lot of time out at my grandparent’s farm. Unfortunately, before I was old enough to run big machinery, or help with field work, or milk the cows, my grandparents were ready to retire, and the farm was sold. My ‘help’ to the farm was limited to helping grandpa get feed ready for the cows, getting them into the right stalls, riding around in the skid loader bucket, ruining round bales by constantly running around on them with my brothers, and getting the occasional shock from the electric fence, which may still be noticeable at times. Looking back years later, I’ve found that my time on the farm at a young age helped me with so much more. The most important lesson I learned was that hard work and trust in others is critical to farming success regardless of your size of operation.

Change is constant and is needed to stay successful and ahead of the curve. However, hard work and trust in others stays constant in all successful businesses. At Ag Partners, we work for you and never has it been more important for us to be your trusted advisor in our partnership. Like it or not, precision agriculture is becoming a huge player in our industry, with that comes sharing of more intimate information about your operation and the trust that the information will stay with those you work with at Ag Partners. We need to earn your trust over time and we recognize that in allowing us to join your farming operation, you indeed are opening up your livelihood to us. Once trust is earned, there is nothing more rewarding for an Agronomist then to do everything we can to help you exceed your expectations and push forward in production. Using your farming expertise and knowledge of your operation in combination with our AYS precision ag and variable rate technologies, we can continue to reach new highs while utilizing spending where it best fits and returning the best ROI.

In closing, thanks to all of you for making our work fun! I often tell myself and have had conversations with growers about how lucky I feel to have a job where I can live farming experiences with you growers because of your willingness to take me along for the ride. Let’s continue our success by sharing information needed to keep us all going in the right direction. Wishing you all a great 2018 with more great yields, but higher grain prices!