Farmers encouraged to make a budget

Aug 16, 2022

Making a budget is something many farmers often avoid.

IntelliFarm President Brian Voth says even though it's unpopular, sitting down and making a budget is important for your farm.

"Honestly in the last year, year and a half, we could get away without doing a budget because basically we're in a situation where you couldn't not make money. As long as you actually had a crop or some version of a crop. The problem is this last year and half or two years is going to have lasting impacts on farms decisions going forward. Especially because with making a lot of money comes upgrading equipment, buying land, etcetera and things like this have trailing effects over the next five, ten, fifteen years," he explained. "The problem is, if farms are making these decisions and doing this because it made sense only the way things looked in the last year, these are the decisions that end up being the detriment of farms longer term because they can't cash flow, they can't live with the decisions they've made when things were really good, when things go back to normal or back to average, whatever you want to call it."

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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