Ten years ago I switch our home phone service that Qwest provided to a VOIP service, which stands for “Voice Over Internet Protocol.” The VOIP service works the same as the old-fashion phone except it used high speed internet to carry the conversations vs. the traditional phone line. Five years ago I was so pleased with how the home phone VOIP service was working that I subscribed to the service in our offices. This new technology costs a fraction of what traditional phone services cost and comes with many amazing options to help you’re ag business communicate with clients and employees.

One of my favorite features are Answering ruleswhich route calls based on the time called, caller ID or the number called. Imagine having a system that routed calls based on the caller ID, let’s say your company has a grain broker that you communicate with often and when he calls, the system automatically routes his call to your desk and cellphone at the same time, this potentially saves your broker, the secretary and yourself time and money. How about that important farm client that you want routed directly to you; they would really be impressed?

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TODAY’S AGENDA

1. Meeting with John Doe in Waterloo to go over grain contracts
2. Meeting with Bob Doe in Valley to go over 2012 grain programs
3. Board meeting in Main Office to discuss new storage facility
4. All company safety meeting at Duncan location
5. Present 2013 Budget to General Manager in Main Office

Does this type of schedule look familiar to you? It’s hard to get much done in a day when you are running all over the country. Today, you can become more efficient if you utilize the new communication technologies that provide web meeting services.

A Web meeting will work great to conduct your meeting with John Doe, discuss his existing grain contracts by sharing the screen on your computer with him or let him take control and share his screen with you. If you really want to add the personal touch you can even activate the camera on your computer and show your face.

Click here to read the full article by Mark Frank

Photos: Drought Disaster 2012

http://www.weather.com/news/drought-disaster-photos-20120713

Today agricultural professionals spend more time than ever before on the computer reading email, searching the internet, working with software applications and entertaining themselves. Keeping your digital life organized continues to be a challenge with emails you want to keep, web pages you want to save and documents that need filed.

EVERNOTE is a software application that has made its way to the top of the digital organization industry. Evernote can be installed on your smart phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Once installed you have access to all the digital information you have organized in one convenient place no matter what device you are using.

Click here to read the full article by Mark Frank

A very neat video on farming. Went viral with over 6.5 million views!!

With land prices as high as we have seen in our lifetime there are a few key factors that should be considered.
#1 Current financial position – Are you flush with cash or will you be taking out a loan?
#2 Land Valuations – Where do you think land values will go in the next 1-3-5 years?
#3 Interest Rates – Where are they headed and what is the prospect of borrowing today vs 2 years from now.

Read more on this subject in the April edition of Corn & Soybean Digest –

http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/issues/math-land-buys

On November 10^th, 2006 corn prices had just broke out of their 10 year trading range, and started a period of wild volatility.  I was on my way to meet my friends and family for the annual deer hunt.  Like many committed deer hunters, we spend as many hours setting around the fire pit as we do hunting the 30-point buck.  This year, the fire pit topic was how to help farmers manage risk in a fast-paced and volatile market environment.  I was in the consulting business, helping farmers create marketing plans and market their commodities.  November had been stressful with corn markets marching higher and clients asking me “how much will it rise?”  I had no inclination how high the prices were going, but I did know these were extremely profitable prices and my job was to help clients manage these profits.

The main tool I used to keep the focus on profitability was an excel spreadsheet. While the job got done, it had many limitations.  First, I had to manually update the futures, options and value of unsold cash grain.  Unfortunately, the prices were often outdated as soon as I clicked the save button. Another nuisance was many clients either had an out-dated version of Excel or did not have Excel on their computer.  Finally, many clients struggled to navigate an Excel spread sheet due to the complexity of the sheets I had constructed.

That weekend at deer camp, I discussed my ideas with my deer hunting pals and there was a clear agreement that a better way to manage risk was needed.  It was those conversations that drove me to the drawing board when I returned home.

Until next time…

-Mark

Every two years the USDA publishes data on farm computer usage, including computer access, farm business use, and internet access.  It’s interesting to see how the U.S. Farmer has become dependent on the computer and internet access. 

Internet changes way farms do business – Omaha.com.

http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1062

Omaha World Herald