When chips hit the pan.

   Spend ten minutes on a farm and you’ll quickly realize: Farmers are problem solvers!

Joseph, Amy, Michelle and I had the opportunity to spend a few hours on a farm this past weekend to get some shots for an upcoming Agfinity video. Being that it was in the middle of harvest time and we wanted to keep our hosts as customers, we did our best to stay out of their way…

In the first half hour, we witnessed the son – elbow-deep in one of the combines – rubbing the burnt rubber left behind by a broken belt. “We basically just started and this happened,” he told us, his smile contrasting the grease-covered situation. “Fixing it was going to take too long, so Dad and I ended up buying a new combine this year.”

Dad was fixing the motor of an auger on the other side of the yard… “We were supposed to be hauling high moisture wheat a couple weeks ago, but it was raining,” he chuckled. “The weather’s good now, so sure enough, the auger isn’t working!”

   I couldn’t believe it… Either these men have an extreme tolerance for stress or I don’t have what it takes to be a farmer… At my desk, a level ten problem is something like slow internet speed. If we used the same scale, a broken combine at harvest would probably kill me!

   Then, when it’s all said and done, if you’re fortunate enough to have a crop to market, grain farmers get to dive into the nitty-gritties of their operation: grades… proteins… falling numbers… green seeds… heated seeds… ergot and moisture percentages… Each component, a chance to lose a little money off the field.

   Imagine a baker having the same inputs as a farmer… Imagine their oven breaking down or their cookies cooking too fast. Imagine their muffins not retaining enough moisture… Then, imagine their customers determining the value of their product based on how shiny and prominent their chocolate chips were, with set discounts for dryness, raisins, and other foreign material…

No offense to any bakers reading this! I love baking. But a baker, like many other professionals, have the luxury of starting over when chocolate chips hit the pan. Farmers do not have this luxury… Instead, farmers require a somewhat priceless ingredient to be hand-mixed into their recipe: perseverance! … There’s no sugar-coating it. Heck, we can’t even fill it with raspberry jelly! Without perseverance, a farmer just might not make it as a farmer.

   We think you’ve got it though… Perseverance… You didn’t just open our newsletter to laugh at a few of the funny pictures. You came to conquer! The grain prices and market update below are just a small piece of the puzzle, but we know they make up their fair share of this crazy profession called farming… And you know, we at Agfinity are proud to be placed wherever you see fit. Like Joseph said last Saturday, “Your pricing is our icing.“