Things that make you go "huh??"

[dnach]

Recently I had a visit with some local farmers about grain farming in our area. These two guys were complaining about everything from land prices to seed costs to bugs and so on, but one thing strikes me. Here we have two younger farmers who pay at the very top end for land rents, one is a seed grower and one a wanabe BTO. The seed grower had some ligitimate complaints, overall he is being squeezed out by the multi-nationals in the seed business. The wanabe BTO left me strtching my head, on one hand he pays very top dollar for land rent, yet in the other he seeds canola with bare seed, which they had to re-seed last year, uses very little fertilizer, and refuses to spray for insects. Why would one pay top dollar for rent, seed a high input crop like canola, then walk away?
This type of crop insurance abuser burns me up, yes in the long term he is only hurting himself, but in the short term he will cause crop insurance premiums to escalate further for all of us.

[boone]

dnatch: I agree with what you have said here and it does seem wrong, but maybe he was just trying to strike a blow against the HELIX Mafia that is charging usuary values for a product. When you do the math and your going to be spraying 2-3 times anyway, spring frosts, poor germ on some coated seeds(cold dry springs especially) you get the drift. Perhaps his capital risk is more manageable than our INVIGOR HELIX pay through the nose combo. It's a bit like a pool game. You must leave your self some shape.