FEATURED GROWER
Tom Machacek
Hi, my name is Tom Machacek and we operate Tall Land and Cattle. We have been on this farm for 33 years, but it has been in our family for almost 100 years.
What I’ve come to learn lately is that we have less control over what happens on this operation as time goes on. Mother nature plays a huge impact on our crops and on our livelihood, and we do our best to work with her. And most of the time we succeed, and sometimes we don’t, but I think learning that we have less control over our future than we probably think we do, or wish we have, is something [I’ve done].
I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that we are huge enterprises -- that we have nothing but assets, and cash, and extra product laying around. When actually, our operations run on really tight margins, and we are hugely capitally invested, and we need to see returns on those investments. We are like any other business – we need to make a profit at the end of the day.
The roundup ready crops that we raise improve our bottom line: it increases the number of sugar beets we harvest every year, the more sugar / acre we can produce. But it also works well with the rotation that we have -- it’s taken a lot of our problem weeds out of our rotation [such as] wild oats.
We used to have a wild oat issue and we used to be constantly fighting with wild oats. But with the rotation we have now, and with the biotech advantages we get from our roundup ready sugar beets, wild oats are virtually eliminated on our farms. And that’s a plus!
Now, not to say we haven’t had other issues with weeds - there’s always a weed coming up that we have to pay attention to - but it’s been a very distinct advantage on our operation.
The reason our farm raises sugar beets is that it’s a good fit on our operation. The location we have, the rotation with other crops is important, and it is a crop that has netted us a significant amount of our income on our operation. It is profitable, it is something that we can grow, and it grows very well here with our long days and our cool nights. And we take full advantage of our growing season – it’s usually the first crop we seed and the last crop we harvest.
The most beneficial technological advantage I have found in my experience has been the research done on sugar beets. Moving to the roundup ready beet has reduced my effort and my expenses tremendously. It has helped me maintain a higher sugar content and a higher sugar /acre on our farm.