Harvest Profit Podcast: Recent Episodes
Harvest Profit Inc.
A podcast for Harvest Profit customers and followers. We share what we're up to at the company and how we're shaping our mission to help farmers put more profitable systems in place on their farms.
Our mission is to give you better visibility into the numbers side of your farm. Better visibility leads makes it easier for you to make more confident, proactive decisions on your farm.
If you're interested in taking more control of your farm's financial outcome, you can sign-up for a free trial of Harvest Profit here: https://www.harvestprofit.com/
Dr. David Kohl is a thought leader on all topics related to farm management best practices.
He recently gave a presentation where he discussed four pillars related to what he calls farming's Business Model of the Future. I dive into these four pillars on today's podcast. To see the specific slide I refer to in this episode, visit the link below.
https://twitter.com/NickHorob/status/1306593734918696969/photo/1
In this podcast, we discuss a poll of nearly 1,000 ag lenders where give the traits that they see in producers who are resilient and agile. The slide comes for a recent presentation by Dr. David Kohl.
Here are a couple resources we discussed in the episode.
- Substack: https://substack.com/
- Mailchip: https://mailchimp.com/features/website-builder/
The spreadsheet discussed in this course is available in our Business of Farming course which we open once/year. It will be open this year on August 17, 2020.
To learn more, go here: https://www.harvestprofit.com/launch
In this episode, Nick discusses his thoughts on how/why you should build a culture of experimentation in your farm. He discusses a six-step framework for tracking agronomic experiences and a seven-step framework for tracking grain marketing/risk management decisions.
Tracking these tests/decisions in a structured format can reduce the impact of the biases that often impact the learning of on-farm trials.
Focus on your farm's "small" data!
In this episode, Nick discusses a powerful formula which should be the building block for many of the management decisions you make on your farm. It's the Expected Value formula.
You can learn more about it in this Harvest Profit blog post: https://www.harvestprofit.com/blog/you-need-a-statistical-framework-for-farm-management-decisions
It's likely that you've heard of Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
It's less likely that you know why July 1st is one hell of a day of the year for retired Major League Baseball player Bobby Bonilla. He gets his annual payment of $1.19 million from the New York Mets today.
That's what we discuss in today's podcast and the applicable farm management lessons.
In this podcast, Nick talks about the impact regret has on grain marketing decisions.
This topic was inspired by this blog post by grain merchandiser Cullen Wilson: https://www.harvestprofit.com/blog/no-regret-crop-marketing
Cullen understands that making grain marketing decisions is much easier said than done. The concept of a "shrinking pie" when it's related to grain marketing decisions is especially powerful.
Enjoy the episode and we'll be increasing the frequency of our podcasts in the coming weeks!
We have launched our as-applied integration with John Deere. You can now import your as-applied data from John Deere into Harvest Profit and we'll automatically calculate the cost of those applications. We then add them to your farm's cost of production and profit/loss calculations.
To "kick the tires" on our software, you can sign up for a free trial on our website here: https://www.harvestprofit.com/
This episode is based on a newsletter we came across from Phil Luce at White Commercial Corporation. Phil talks about the ever-present uncertainty in agriculture and what we can do to fight against its impact on our decision making.
Here's the newsletter: https://twitter.com/PhilWCC/status/1262479290093928449?s=20
Also, check out White Commercial if you have any interest in commercial brokerage and/or education: https://www.whitecommercial.com/
In today's episode, Nick talks about a free tool that we have at Harvest Profit that allows you to stress test your farm's profitability.
We're going to be adding tools to this feature that will assign probabilities to each cell in the matrix. This will allow you to objectively analyze the probability of certain profit outcomes. The goal of this is to minimize your farm's "risk of ruin".
You can check out the P&L stress-testing tool here: https://www.harvestprofit.com/matrix
In today's episode, we talk about how you and your farm should be in a position to analyze different scenarios and their ability to cover your farm's overhead.
Being able to do this type of analysis quickly throughout the year is a key system/trait of a long-term profitable farm. You need to have the visibility into the financial side of your farm to be able to make confident, proactive decisions.
This type of analysis can be done via a spreadsheet or a tool like Harvest Profit. We recently added a scenario analysis tool to make this type of analysis a breeze! If you'd like to see if the software is a fit for your farm, you can sign up for a 14-day free trial on our website -> https://www.harvestprofit.com/
Given the recent social media uproar regarding the startup Tillable, we wanted to share our thoughts on the topic.
These thoughts aren't exclusive to Tillable given that there will always be companies trying to disrupt your relationships with your landlords.
Our mission at Harvest Profit is to help you strengthen the relationships you have with your landlords. You can try a free trial of our software to try out the landlord reports that we offer here: https://www.harvestprofit.com/sign_up/freetrial
In this episode, Nick and Jaryd discuss a recent bug in Harvest Profit. They also discuss the new scenario/shapshot feature that Harvest Profit released as well as the methods the company employs to prevent bugs. Unfortunately, there will always be some that slip through the cracks!
In this episode, Jaryd and Ben discuss a big new feature we are working on which allows you to do a ton of scenario analysis on your farm.
The beta version of Harvest Profit's scenario analysis tool will go live soon. With this feature, you'll be able to answer questions such as:
- Budget vs. actual
- Rotation changes
- Adding/removing farms
- Adding/removing payments
- More selling/hedging
- Any combo of the above!
This is probably the most beneficial feature we've added to the software in the last couple years!
n this episode, we continue our interview with Ben Longlet. Ben is a younger farmer from E ND and works on the Harvest Profit customer support team.
Today, we speak with Ben Longlet who's a customer support specialist at Harvest Profit. He also farms with his family in Cass County, ND.
Ben is a great asset to the team at Harvest Profit and we're excited to share with you more information on his farm and background.
In today's episode, we wrap up our discussion on the Greeks by digging into Theta and Rho. One is vitally important to understand in regards to option prices and the other is more applicable to farm sensitivity analysis!
Also, here's the Tweet from Phil Luce at White Commercial Corporation that we refer to in the podcast: https://twitter.com/PhilWCC/status/1204746580441653248
In today's episode, we discuss the greek Gamma!
Gamma measures how sensitive an option's Delta is to movements in price. It's a very important greek to consider if you ever sell options. It's also the most complicated greek to understand so our apologies for how "dense" this episode is!
In today's podcast, we discuss the greek Delta!
Delta measures an option's sensitivity to movements in the underlying price of the financial instrument.
It's the easiest to understand greek (in our opinion) and it's the most applicable to measurements of your farm's overall risk profile. Applying the principle of Delta to your farm's overall price risk is a powerful way to "reframe" how you think about your grain marketing.
In today's episode in our Week of Greeks podcast series, we discuss vega!
Vega is used to measure an option's price sensitivity to implied volatility. We also discuss the concept of implied volatility, and its seasonality, in grain markets.
We're kicking off a daily podcast series that dives into how options are priced, with a focus on "The Greeks".
This isn't meant to give you an "edge" in your hedging, rather an education on these metrics. Option prices are sensitive to numerous market factors and we will be going through the main four: Delta, Gamma, Vega, and Theta.
Someone recently pointed out an issue they had with our Terms of Service. They thought we were in the business of selling our customers' data.
That couldn't be further from the truth!
In this episode, we discuss the change we recently made to our Terms of Service. This change more closely aligns with our values as a company.
You can view the Terms of Service here: https://www.harvestprofit.com/terms-of-service
In this episode, we discuss how reframing your grain marketing decisions can help you win the battle against uncertainty on your farm. Whether it's tracking them on a spreadsheet, in software, or on pencil and paper...reframing your grain marketing actions can greatly help you fight the biases that easily trip up your decisions.
In today's episode, we discuss the timing of grain marketing decisions with a look back to 2010.
Our Spreadsheets for Farmers email course is free for the next few days!
This email-based course includes 25 lessons delivered via email that cover all aspects of farm-focused spreadsheet use cases. We cover both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.
Visit HarvestProfit.com/spreadsheet (coupon code = free) to sign up and begin the course!
In this episode, Nick shares a story about the day someone stole the mouse from his computer. And why that was a game-changing experience for his career....
In this episode, we fill you in on some Harvest Profit news. We are going to make our Spreadsheets for Farmers course free this coming week!
This is an email-based course that covers 20+ farm-focused tutorials in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. 1,000+ people have taken this one-of-a-kind course that's focused on putting your farm financial skills on steroids!
There are going to be more and more farms trading hands in the next year. Probably the most we've seen in a decade or more.
Are your numbers in order so you can quickly evaluate any situations that you come across?
In this episode, Nick talks about a couple of situations he's seen where growers sublet a rented farm to another grower. And both of them see a positive net income benefit from the transaction.
In this episode, Nick talks about applying the performance methods of an elite athlete to the career of farming.
This 4-step methodology comes from an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast. You can listen to that podcast interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44
In this episode, Nick talks about the potential of AgTech integrations and some notes of caution. There's never been more willingness by companies to work together on data sharing via APIs. But this comes with issues related to each platform's different use case. As an industry, we need to be thoughtful in how we built integrations so we aren't actually creating more work for the farmer.
In this episode, Nick has a wide-ranging conversation with Jake Humphrey! Jake is a software developer on the Harvest Profit team.
In this short episode, Nick discusses why we have changed the way we calculate your fertilizer, seed, and chemical expenses.
In this episode, we are taking a break from employee interviews. Nick talks about some experiences he's had hiring "experts".
In this episode, we introduce you to Cody Elhard. He's a software developer at Harvest Profit.
Cody started as an intern with us and will be joining us as a FT employee after graduation from the Computer Science program at NDSU.
In today's episode, we talk to Harvest Profit's first employee: Jaryd Krishnan. Jaryd is a Senior Software Developer for Harvest Profit.