To know whether your crop is good, and whether it got better since last season, write three things on one sheet. The first is what quality means on your farm: one factor and the way you measure it. The second is your own number for that factor on the last lot, and the third is a public reference for the same factor, with its source and date.
The gap between your number and the reference, read again every season, is what turns “it looks better” into a comparison. For grain, the reference usually exists already: an official grading standard, such as the one for corn published by the US Department of Agriculture, sets a limit for each named factor.
On many farms, what counts as quality has never been written down. The only word on it is the buyer’s remark when the load is settled, or a private sense that the last load looked fine. Neither can be pulled out next year to show whether the crop got better or worse.
The sheet in this article has three parts: the factor and how you measure it, your number from the last lot, and the public reference with its source and date. It is a page you can read again a year from now, because on each line you wrote where the number came from and when it was true.
Why must a reference be a written number, not an opinion?
The comparison needs all three pieces: a factor you define, your own measured number, and an outside reference to set it against. Many farms have none of the three on paper. Checking your figures against a fixed mark like this is what benchmarking means.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) explains in its guide to agricultural marketing why the reference has to be written: grades and standards contribute to operational and pricing efficiency by providing buyers and sellers with a system of communicating price and product information. A remark names no factor and sets no limit, so it cannot serve as a reference.
Why doesn’t the buyer’s opinion count as a reference?
The person who most often tells you the product is good is the buyer, and his opinion is the one thing you cannot use as the reference. It names no factor, carries no number and has no date, so you have nothing to set your own reading against and nothing to look up next season. He also pays less when your grain grades lower, which does not make him dishonest, but does make his word the wrong thing to keep as a standard.
His discount schedule, the table of how much he takes off the price for each factor, does not serve either, because he wrote it too. In another article in this library, on the buyer’s grade standard, you copy his factors and limits to check each lot before you sell; that copy is useful, but it is still the buyer’s table. The sheet in this article needs a reference he did not write: the official grade, published by a public body that buys nothing from you. What the buyer says can still tell you which factor is worth measuring.
Why define what counts as quality the same way every time?
A number can be compared only when the factor behind it means the same thing every time you measure it. The FAO guide sets the condition in one line: if produce is not in well defined units of quantity and quality then the pricing mechanism fails as a device for communicating consumer wants to suppliers.
On your sheet, that means naming the factor and the method together: not moisture, but moisture read on this meter, at the gate, on the loaded lot. With that definition, this year’s number can sit honestly beside last year’s and beside the reference.
Why must the reference carry a source and a date?
A reference with no source and no date is not a reference, because you cannot tell who set it or whether it still applies. Official standards usually carry both. The US corn standard, for example, ends its table with a source line, 60 FR 61196, Nov. 29, 1995: the Federal Register notice and the date that version was published.
That date matters because standards are revised, and a comparison with last year holds only if both years name the version you read against. Outside the United States, you copy the same pieces, factor, limit, source and date, from the official grade that applies where you deliver.
Why check that the reference measures the same thing you do?
A comparison misleads when the two numbers are not really measuring the same thing. An average of other farms, for example, mixes farms of other sizes that measure in other ways, so a gap against it can reflect those differences rather than the quality of your grain.
On your own sheet, before you read a gap as a quality problem, check what else differs: the same grain class, the same factor, measured the way the standard measures it. An official grade helps here, because it is a fixed limit, not an average of other farms, so the size of your operation does not enter the comparison.
What can you read from the gap, and what not?
From the gap you learn where you stand against the reference, and no more. If the last lot had two percentage points more damaged kernels than the limit you copied, you will not find the reason on the sheet; that is a question about harvest and drying, and you know that ground better than any sheet. Writing down where you stand is a management task. Changing the crop to close the gap is production, and a different job.
One lot is one harvest, not a verdict on the farm, and reading a trend into a single number misleads as much as trusting the buyer’s word. With the dated sheet, next season’s reading means something, because it sits beside a defined number and a sourced reference instead of a memory. Comparing a result with a mark written in advance is one of the jobs of running a farm, and this sheet does it for one quality factor.
Where to start
Thirty minutes, with the last grading result and the official grade for the crop on the table.
A buyer who tells you the product is good has paid you a compliment, and a compliment cannot be filed, dated or read again next year. An official grade can, because a public body wrote it and its date is printed on it. With your own number written beside it, in units you defined, “better” stops being a feeling and becomes a figure you can check next season. Other articles on selling the crop are in the marketing library.