Strategy
Building a farm data stack that pays for itself
Yield maps, soil tests, and application records only earn their keep when they are collected to a standard and connected into one decision flow.
Tanya Brooks · April 27, 2026
Strategy
Strategy covers commitments made a season or more in advance: crop rotation and acreage allocation, forward contracts and storage, hedging decisions, land rental and purchase, and diversification into new enterprises. Each analysis works through the assumptions on cost and price that the decision depends on, and what happens when those assumptions fail.
Strategy covers commitments made a season or more in advance: crop rotation and acreage allocation, forward contracts and storage, hedging decisions, land rental and purchase, and diversification into new enterprises. Each analysis works through the assumptions on cost and price that the decision depends on, and what happens when those assumptions fail.
Strategy
The honest economics of farm processing
USDA's Value-Added Producer Grants cap working-capital awards at $250,000 — useful capital, but the economics stand or fall on throughput, margin, and compliance cost.
Tanya Brooks · April 5, 2026
Strategy
Diversify or specialize: run the numbers
The 2022 Census of Agriculture records farms earning income from multiple enterprises — but scale and management capacity decide which strategy fits a given operation.
Tanya Brooks · March 13, 2026
Strategy
Input buying without the price guessing
Seed and fertilizer are the largest direct costs in university row-crop budgets — the buying strategy that manages them is about structure and timing discipline, not forecasting.
Isabel Duarte · February 18, 2026
Strategy
The storage math behind holding grain
Commercial storage in Iowa runs 9 to 16 cents a bushel for the first three months and 2 to 4 cents a month after that — the numbers a store-or-sell decision has to beat.
Tanya Brooks · January 26, 2026