Evaluating Soybean Production Practice Economics: Best Management Practices Using Agronomic Data.

Agronomic data provides useful information in evaluating the economics and advisability of adopting agronomic practices. Agronomic yield data often is used to provide a profitability assessment through either a full or partial budget. While budgets are informative, they also do not consider all that factors that contribute an adoption decision. Besides budgets, there are five broad set of questions that need to be addressed during adoption decisions.

First, are the results from which the agronomic studies applicable to entire fields? Often, agronomic data is obtained from field trials in a controlled setting. Results from controlled trials often are not replicable in field-level settings. Second, is the practice easily scalable? Practices that require a great deal of time, effort, or management to implement will have less of a chance of being adopted. Third, are there significant fixed costs to the practice? Practices that require new pieces of equipment are less likely to be adopted than those that easily implementable. Fourth, what is the revenue relative to the expenditure? Practices with high costs will have less of a chance to be adopted than those with lower costs. Fifth, does the practice impact a farm’s risk? Those practices that are risk-reducing will have less of a chance of being adopted.