My daughter and I grow 4,200 acres of corn and soybeans with one full time worker and three or four part-time seasonal workers. We seem to do just fine during the less busy times, but our time management and efficiency seems to really slip during planting season. These are the days when our time is worth the most. How can we ramp up time management? G.L. – Iowa

Very timely question. Let's first address a reasonable spring field operations benchmark to achieve Maximum Economic Yields (MEY). Midwest land grant universities study the historic spring weather data and conclude that we have about 7 days on average to plant our corn, and 7 days to plant our soybeans in the optimum timeliness window. A recent update of weather patterns suggests those windows might more accurately now be 6 days. 

Accordingly, most of us have ramped up labor and machinery capacity to achieve this level of productivity. However, a major “fly in the ointment” has surfaced the past few years: high yielding soybeans need to be planted weeks before the date on the calendar that our grandfathers thought was prudent.

This means we no longer have two separate 7-day planting windows. Most of the central Midwest will start planting corn and beans on nearly the same date. The penalty to planting corn too early will be weighed against the yield drag to planting beans too late- as we all try to stretch the new, combined 7 days total for the greatest MEY for both crops. 

Don’t give in to temptation

That means early planted, high yield soybeans have just doubled your incentive to "ramp-up time management" in the spring. It will be very tempting to farm fields too wet, run the planter too fast, even forget the importance of details and safety (don’t). Openly fight these urges as the stress ramps up proportionately.

If you have a cold rain coming in, it's a 24-hour stop needed for beans and a 48-hour halt for corn to keep these seeds from imbibing the toxic cold drink at germination. Talk about redefining stress. You may need to shut down the planter on a gorgeous sunny day because of impending bad weather, all while your neighbors are all still going strong! 

Getting your act together in the spring is all about organizing, prioritizing, planning, and incentivizing. It begins with a comprehensive winter equipment maintenance program that eliminates down time caused by worn out parts. We want to only deal with down time caused by unavoidable accidents, like field obstacles, versus tires, bearings, and frayed wiring harnesses. The maintenance program ends with a critical assessment of the inventory of parts and supplies needed for your historic routine repairs like tires, hoses, bearings, wiring harnesses, hardware, spare planter units or seed tubes.

This is also the preseason time to plan for major downtime contingencies, such as a tractor going down in the field, a seed trailer failure, a highway transport blowout, sticking tillage or planting equipment in the mud, short-cutting a field entrance, hitting a pole or tree, and most importantly monitor\GPS\ tech system failures.

Delegate tasks

Though we highly recommend the team approach to people management, delegating primary responsibility for each spring function or input is critical. These assignments might include: marking field obstacles, soil conservation structure maintenance, field scouting for spraying and tillage priority order, seed and fertilizer inventory control, and monitor maintenance. Organize, prioritize, plan.

Finally, it takes people hours in the fields to get the job done timely. This is where you get creative in rewarding the operators and support team for their "24 hours in a day" mentality. Spring field operations timeliness is worth big, big dollars in the end. We take special care to see the night shift is fed better, catered to more, and earns considerably more wage and bonus potential than the "eight-hours-a-day” employees.  At all costs make the spring push safe and fun, but create a vested interest for your entire team.

- Jerry and Jason Moss operate Moss Family Farms, Inc., a first generation corn and contract hog operation in western Illinois. Have a question for Manager's Notebook? Send emails to [email protected]. All published questions will be printed as confidential.