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JustTheTip said:
It's not something I view as right, so I'm not going to change my moral standards just so I can make more money. If other people want to grow it, that's fine, but I just couldn't do it and be able to look in the mirror and be proud of who I am.
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I figured as much and respect that.
 
Great thread.

I think nobody cares if you selectively breed good stock or any ag line, we've been doing that since the stone age, at least.

I took a class from Mario Cappechi years ago, and he was pretty good about how to clip, snip, insert and rearrange anything. I think what most people consider GMO might be understood as the GE that takes, oh,say some pig gene and inserts it into corn... oh, say, to increase disease resistance or get, hey, eight crops a year. The proteins associated with one class of organism could very well have some presently unknown autoimmune effects..... which generally could be related to almost any disease in any species somehow. Just a whole lot we don't know about that.
I have determined not to use pesticides or GMO in my operation. no GE, no GMO, no pesticides the fields, and no antibiotics pretty much as the recent WHO recommendation. I am isolated enough I have a fair chance of being essentially paleo ag.

and, Log, cow vaginas have absolutely no erotic appeal to real men.
 
What part of the country do you farm? I always have questions for farmers, I even has mee summm ideas
 
Saint Cy of JFC said:


You got these problems?
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Dawg. Great question.

Yeah, everybody has these problems. They are overstating it though. There are a lot of things that I simply cannot repair on a modern tractor, I do not have the tools, or the capability. It's crazy/cool, you call a mechanic out, and they come with a laptop and all their tech gear, and then the tools. I guess you could say there is a monopoly on repairs, but it's not as extreme as this video is stating. Now that's not to say that I can't fix anything on a tractor. Outside of major, major issues, I am capable of fixing stuff on the tractor. This guy saying that to get stuff fixed you have to haul it to the dealer is full of crap. I have had to have a tractor hauled in once, and that was because the entire head of the engine had to be replaced. That's not something I'm going to do by myself. Now had I asked the dealer to, we could have parked the tractor in my shop, had their mechanic come out and do all of it in our shop. Would've cost a lot more though, and just not been worth it.

Now, maybe I'm crazy, but there's just some stuff I don't want to fix on a tractor. Just for an idea, a brand new tractor with close to 400 hp is going to run ~$360k, on a discount. We just bought a 2012 tractor with a little less hp with 800 hours (which is not a lot btw) for a little under $200k. These are expensive machines, to say the least. I'm not going to trust some hacker program, or even a legit program and fix it myself. I'm going to call my dealer, have a mechanic come out and run a diagnostic and tell me what's wrong. If it's something minor, they will show me how to fix it and guide me through the process. If it's something major, I'll have them fix it. They will drive out and repair it on location. I certainly don't like how the software is protected, and in John Deere's case, owned by John Deere. I would definitely like to see that changed. I'm also not that worried about it.

I'm going to finish with something my dad, who is a great mechanic, has always told me. "JTT, you will never make money fixing your own equipment. You might save some money, and it's important to know how everything works/functions, but you make your money farming. Let somebody else handle the fixing." And he's right. During harvest, we often run into frost towards the tail end. If we run into a frost with our specialty crop, even a day or two can easily cost us over $100k. So when it comes to that, I'm going to let the professionals handle the repairs, they're going to get me a loaner, and I'm going to finish up my harvest.
 
JustTheTip said:
Dawg. Great question.

Yeah, everybody has these problems. They are overstating it though. There are a lot of things that I simply cannot repair on a modern tractor, I do not have the tools, or the capability. It's crazy/cool, you call a mechanic out, and they come with a laptop and all their tech gear, and then the tools. I guess you could say there is a monopoly on repairs, but it's not as extreme as this video is stating. Now that's not to say that I can't fix anything on a tractor. Outside of major, major issues, I am capable of fixing stuff on the tractor. This guy saying that to get stuff fixed you have to haul it to the dealer is full of crap. I have had to have a tractor hauled in once, and that was because the entire head of the engine had to be replaced. That's not something I'm going to do by myself. Now had I asked the dealer to, we could have parked the tractor in my shop, had their mechanic come out and do all of it in our shop. Would've cost a lot more though, and just not been worth it.

Now, maybe I'm crazy, but there's just some stuff I don't want to fix on a tractor. Just for an idea, a brand new tractor with close to 400 hp is going to run ~$360k, on a discount. We just bought a 2012 tractor with a little less hp with 800 hours (which is not a lot btw) for a little under $200k. These are expensive machines, to say the least. I'm not going to trust some hacker program, or even a legit program and fix it myself. I'm going to call my dealer, have a mechanic come out and run a diagnostic and tell me what's wrong. If it's something minor, they will show me how to fix it and guide me through the process. If it's something major, I'll have them fix it. They will drive out and repair it on location. I certainly don't like how the software is protected, and in John Deere's case, owned by John Deere. I would definitely like to see that changed. I'm also not that worried about it.

I'm going to finish with something my dad, who is a great mechanic, has always told me. "JTT, you will never make money fixing your own equipment. You might save some money, and it's important to know how everything works/functions, but you make your money farming. Let somebody else handle the fixing." And he's right. During harvest, we often run into frost towards the tail end. If we run into a frost with our specialty crop, even a day or two can easily cost us over $100k. So when it comes to that, I'm going to let the professionals handle the repairs, they're going to get me a loaner, and I'm going to finish up my harvest.
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Would be super creepy if your dad called you "just the tip"
 
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