Contest focuses on yield's profitability

Monday, October 15, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

The Agricultural Management Institute has launched a new competition to find the Ontario farmer growing the most profitable acre of corn or soybeans.

Ashley Honsberger, Institute communications and client services lead, says farmers can enter either the corn or soybeans contest or both but they must provide two separate entries. There isn’t an entry fee.

“The idea is we’re going to factor out what the return on investment is,” she says. “Regardless of what you’re growing, you have profit margins that we’re looking at.”

Entry forms and more information is available at: www.takeanewapproach.ca. Entries are due by Nov. 23 and the results will be announced in early December.

The contest is open to all Ontario corn and soybean farmers except for Institute board members and their families.

Honsberger says farmers need to provide receipts for input purchases for the field they’re using for the contest plus a signed harvest form from a verified surveyor of the harvest, such as a seed supplier.

The entries will be narrowed down to four finalists who will be asked to provide further documentation to ensure the accuracy of their entry form. One grand prize winner will be chosen from among the finalists. The top prize is a trip to the 2013 International Farm Management Association congress in Poland.

This is the first year for the Most Profitable Acre challenge. “There wasn’t really another contest that I could find in Canada or even in the United States that’s quite like this,” she says.

The competition takes a more business approach to a high yield type of contest, she notes. “It looks at the business side of farming versus the production side.”

The Agricultural Management Institute, a non-profit government funded agency, promotes new ways for farmers to think about farm business management and aims to increase awareness, understanding and adoption of beneficial business management practices. BF