Farming is tough on the wallet

The money to run this type of research farm is very tight. Looking at the books make me wonder how committed various government agencies are to this. Our biggest financial support does come from a government agency, but if we had a crop failure or a major equipment breakdown I wonder how we could finish out next year. That's not the best way to try and set up projects for the farm or to entice employees to stay or even start at the farm.

SouthEast Research Farm earns it's money mainly from field trials we run for industry, producer groups and university research. Every year (Dec. to March) we go looking for the funds (trial/demos) to pay the bills. This past year was tough, we had about $85000 worth of projects down from $100,000 average over the last 2 or 3 yrs. As an added stress on the books we replaced the motor in our combine. The rebuilt Volkswagen diesel was a $10,000 touch that really hurt.

I'm just getting going on trial proposal writing. This is a very creative part of the job, along with being the "life's blood" for the farm. So far we have 2 new projects for industry lined up. I think we will have to have about 20 different project to make the $100,000 we need for income. I don't want to make it sound that horrid, about 10 projects are pretty much guaranteed. Things like multi-year trials, or variety trials that run every year are trials we are pretty sure we will get. But this coming year we need to do some marketing to ensure we bring up the income to a more sustainable level. I think we have got good start and I do feel we will reach our objectives.

There that makes me feel better! I have my problems off my chest and given you a little bit of in site into the farm.