🌠 Advice to boost profits & Flower Fun

Good Morning. Welcome to the Gravel Road - your weekly agri-news infotainment. We're like the Pringles of newsletters... once you pop, you just can't stop.

Here's what we have this week:

• 💰 Business Tip

• 💐 Top 10 Flowers

• 🐄 Cattle Report

Wisdom

Putting your thoughts out there in the world, whether it's great historical philosophers scribing on scrolls, influential leaders making grand speeches, authors writing volumes of books, or online posts floating through the cavernous internet, one thing is common: some people will agree and others won't.

I recently posed this thought, and unsuprisingly, some reactions were in agreement and others opposed it. However, what struck me as interesting here was those who were loudly against this concept narrowed in on specific details, seemingly ignoring the greater message.

That message is this: focusing more of your time, energy, and resources on high-value priorities within your business will have a much greater payback than lower value tasks which shoudl be delegated or outsourced.

Here's the post; I'll let you draw your own conclusions:

Easy way to boost profit on your farm/ranch--> Spend more time on $100/hr jobs & hire out the $20/hr jobs.

Examples of $20/hr jobs most producers spend too much time on:

• Tractor Driving

• Equipment Maintenance

• Hauling Manure

• Driving Truck

• Moving Snow

• Fixing Fence

• Feeding Livestock

Examples of $100/hr jobs you ought to be spending time on:

• Sourcing Inputs

• Herd Record Keeping

• Risk Management

• Budget Forecasting

• Review Insurance Policies

• CapEx Analysis

• Commodity Marketing

• Ration Balancing

Unfortunately, most of the $100/hr jobs are "office work" tasks that many farmers despise. You don't need to be glued to your office chair, just be honest about which things really move the needle for your profitability.

Focus 1% more on those, each day, to see results.

What do you think?

SEEDS

• 📈 Inflation Woes: Costs for food at home increased 11.3% between January 2022 and January 2023, so central bankers are expecting another 0.25% interest rate hike next month.

• 🌷 Flower Facts: Here's an interesting breakdown of the US flower industry state by state with handy dandy infographics.

• 🥩 Imposter Meat: More big layoffs announced for fake meat company Impossible Foods which marks the third time in a year that cost cutting measures are taking place.

• 🐄 Cattle Numbers: The USDA cattle inventory report came out which showed most categories down and the total head was 89.3 million, down 3%.

THIS WEEK'S TOP 10: Most Popular Flowers

Valentine's Day was yesterday, and I sure hope you either gave or received some flowers. This often overlooked sector of agriculture shouldn't be forgotten about, as it is responsible for some $5 billion dollars of impact in the US alone. Approximately 77% of all the cut flowers sold in the US are imported, with the Netherlands being the world's largest exporter.

Here's the Top 10 cut flowers based on US sales:

1. Tulip | $63M 

2. Oriental Lily | $38M

3. Daisy | $35M

4. Asiatic Lily | $25M

5. Rose | $14M

6. Iris | $13M

7. Sunflower | $13M

8. Chrysanthemum | $13M

9. Snapdragon | $12M

10. Dahlia | $10M

MEME OF THE WEEK

You're welcome for this life hack...

That's a wrap, folks.

THANK YOU to everyone who works off the beaten path to feed our nation.

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