50 / SEEDWORLD.COM OCTOBER 2017 DO YOU KNOW how much time you, or plant breeders within your company, spend looking at spreadsheets? It might surprise you. I’ve recently had conversations with leaders at one large seed company who estimate breeders there spend about 20 percent of their time looking at spread- sheets. That’s more than two months out of the year. I have to ask: What does that cost the company? And what does it cost the plant breeder? As a breeder, losing 20 percent of your time to managing and analyzing spread- sheets is significant. How else might you spend that time? Reading journals and scientific literature. Keeping up with industry innovations. Evaluating the data and making better decisions. If you don’t have time, or your time in these other areas is limited, your profes- sional career might be jeopardized or hindered. I often hear breeders say they don’t have enough time to go through and compare data, especially if they have a lot of data, across a lot of traits and years. Imagine if one of those months was spent carefully looking at and evaluating the data. Would different decisions be made, and how might that affect the direction and success of your breeding program? This ultimately impacts the quality and number of hybrids or varieties a company might bring to market, and the value they deliver to growers. As a company, if your breeders aren’t spending time reading journals and sci- entific literature, they’re not bringing new knowledge and ideas into the company. Both the plant breeder and the company might be missing out on opportunities to get in front of a technology, in terms of education, adoption and implementation — and not even know it. How tragic! Furthermore, by not adopting `plant breeding software, companies might be hurting their recruitment and retention efforts. For young plant breeders or those coming from other companies where they’ve been exposed to or used soft- ware based on a relational database, it’s extremely frustrating to go backward and have to work in Excel spreadsheets. They know there are better and more efficient ways that are far more powerful. Think about it — would you give up your smartphone of today for the old phone that used to hang, or still is, on your kitchen wall? No. It’s clunky. It’s only good for one thing. And you’re limited as to how far you can go from the receiver. Don’t allow your PhDs to push spread- sheets. There are far better things they can do with their time that will ultimately help the overall company. Pushing Spreadsheets with your PhD? WHEN IT COMES to agricultural equip- ment, so much of it is bulky, intended for only one or maybe two purposes, and is used for only a few months of the year. As such, some of the most progressive owners and managers have been custom-hiring more and more of their production tasks. Financially, it just makes sense not to have capital tied up in expensive equipment that is only in operation for part of the year. I’m mostly referring to planters, combines and sprayers, but you get the point. If you’re expanding storage and holding capacity, why not consider something that gives you flexibility to store different products throughout the year as needed. Most contractors and design engineers will encourage you to consider a site plan that is flexible, growing with you as the business grows and adapting to new technologies that come onto the market. When you’re planning the placement and type of storage bins, that very same thought should be taken into considera- tion. Do you want to put a bin in a place where it’s hard to access and can really only store a single product? In some cases, the answer will be “yes,” depend- ing on the operation and task at hand. However, most of the time, having the flexibility to add more bins to a site and store multiple products will provide the best ROI, both short term and long term. Meridian’s SmoothWall hopper bins’ exterior has a premium powder coating which is also available on the interior, so they can store a multitude of products. For example, in the spring leading up to planting you can store fertilizer. Then, during the fall, they can be cleaned out and made ready to store seed or grain through the winter months. Consider your operation. How many turns or cycles would you be able to get out of a bin that can store a number of products? I’ve seen these things with everything in them, ranging from seed to feed, and from cereals to fertilizers and other agri- cultural inputs. If storing multiple products in a single bin throughout the year makes you cringe due to the possibility of contamination, the hopper’s SmoothWall design makes for a much easier cleanout and helps to ensure nothing is left behind from the previous product. In a low commodity price environment and a world that is ever-changing, we must be able to grow, pivot and adapt to what’s needed. Building in the flexibility to do so will make that change a little easier, and save some dollars. Haul Safe, Be Safe KEVIN MALICA MERIDIAN MANUFACTURING NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER kmalica@meridianmfg.com • Meridianmfg.com DIETER MULITZE AGRONOMIX PRESIDENT, CEO AND FOUNDER @Agronomix • mulitze@agronomix.com • agronomix.com