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NW Illinois | I spread about 10,000 acres a year of dry and a couple thousand tons of lime a year. Realistically only 5,000 acres a year use my recs generated off the platform with rest of the acres either straight spread or recs provided by the farmer. Almost all the lime spread is based off my recs. I've said before here many times, even though I've had an extensive career in VR fertilizing, I'm not sold on it being the sole answer to fertilizing. So I don't test as regular as others do. Usually 4 yr minimum between retesting.
I used to be happy as long as the profit margin from testing covered the platforms cost but as the subscription has risen that has become difficult for me to maintain. Since 2017, Midwest labs hasn't raised the cost of the test, but the shipping costs have tripled. I think I have raised the cost per test, 1.00 per test since 2017 to help cover the cost, but really I've just lost any margin that existed before. I don't like raising my costs to my customers since they don't get anything better for the cost increase. I also have avoided adding cost to the dry application charge until this year. I went from 5.00 to 5.25 an acre. Lime is a service, not a profit center for us in Henry County, Illinois.
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FieldAlytics
