Farmers are responsible for more of the food that makes its way onto plates at the dinner table, but sometimes, they are unable to meet the demands of the industry due to difficult conditions. In a world where the population is climbing, food production shows no signs of decreasing, which means you might be running a popular production business if you are a farmer. To help you get the most out of your crops, and to ensure you’re maximizing the profit of your yields, there are a few small tips you can follow which will keep you ahead of the game.
Plant crops effectively
When you are starting new crops, you need to capitalize on their potential before the seeds or roots even make it into the ground. Part of this means ensuring you have the best seeds for the job, which need to find a balance between fairly priced and good quality. Finding the best seeds now will mean you have a supplier to rely on for future yields that you can trust. It’s all well and good having the best seeds, but you should also test the soil you intend to plant them in. Acidity levels will affect how many nutrients your seeds take from the soil as they begin to grow, so make sure you plant the seeds in a soil with a pH of about 6-7.5 on the scale. You should also keep track of this throughout the lifecycle of your crop. Most importantly, don’t plant your seeds in bad weather conditions, or at the wrong time of the year which may affect how much produce you can get from your fields. Certain seeds flourish in different parts of the year, such as corn, which in the United States can be planted between April and June. This makes them ready for a fall harvest where you can see the highest yields.
Conduct regular crop checks
Once you have planted your crops, there is much more you can do during their growth to make sure that they are reaching the levels you are anticipating. The only way to see how well your crops are growing is if you walk among them yourself, checking for any signs of weather damage, pests, or unwanted weeds. This may take some time, especially if your crops are large. However, if you walk a few rows and notice a trend in what is prohibiting their growth, then you can rely on larger-scale machinery to help, such as with spraying pesticides on the crops that need them. It is important to note that some pesticides can further damage your yield, rather than protect it, so make sure you choose the right ones.
Make sure you have good water supply
All year round, crops rely on a steady supply of water to keep them fresh and healthy. Though you never want too much water for them, there will be times in the year where you may not have water for an extended period of time. This means that you will need to have a good water supply that you can use as a back up should this problem arise. One of the best ways to do this is by having a water tank either on site or not too far away. Having one of these will help you store your water so that you can use it at any time, and will also help if your general water supply to your crops isn’t sufficient. When you are choosing which tank to have, you should also bear in mind which company you are going for, as this is a huge factor in determining how much your crops yield. This is why you should always go with a trusted company like Darrell Thompson Tank, who have expertise in building strong tanks that are designed to keep your water supply safe.
Use fertilizers
Your crops may grow well on their own, but it is always beneficial to make use of fertilizers to help them grow even more. Your soil might have the right pH balance to grow your crops in, there may be other nutrients missing from it which stunts growth. Even if you have had great yields in the years before, you can’t rely on this, as it could mean that your soil has fewer nutrients left for this year’s crops. Some farmers choose to rely on chemical fertilizers, which provide the necessary nutrients from putting them together in a laboratory, whereas organic fertilizers possess the nutrients from a natural source. Though using chemical fertilizers is beneficial to provide a short-term boost to your crops, it’s best to rely on organic fertilizers to stimulate growth in existing crops, and contribute to the health of your soil in the long run. Using these types of fertilizers as and when you need them will bring immeasurable benefits, but as with most things, if you use too much, it will cause more harm than good.
Don’t flood your crops
This may sound like an obvious point, but where drought can severely prohibit the growth of any kind of produce, so can flooding. The biggest potential problem to be aware of here is that flooding can cause a heightened risk of contamination, so if floods are on the horizon, make sure you move any equipment holding chemicals in them to a place where water can’t pass through them and onto the crops. There are also some mechanisms you can put in place which will reduce the risk of flooded crops, such as creating channels where the water can flow away from your farm and into another, risk-free area. For some crops, it might be better to start the harvest early so that particularly bad floods don’t irreparably damage whatever produce you may have. In order to prevent accidental over-watering of crops, ensure that your fields are getting the same amount of water every day, whether it be from the sky or from your water tank, and that you aren’t sprinkling too much on them.
