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Wisconsin survey seeks custom farming information

The University of Wisconsin is asking farmers and custom operators to share information about custom services.

Economics professor Paul Mitchell tells Brownfield that instead of relying on USDA data, they’re doing their own survey. “This time is our second time ever doing one and we’re hoping to get good responses again and to build our reputation for doing a good custom rate survey for all of the various operations that farmers traditionally hire out.”

Mitchell says the focus this year is to improve reporting on forage operations, along with tillage, harvesting, manure management, and transportation costs.  He says that includes neighbors helping neighbors. “A lot of farms do a lot of things for their neighbors, friends, and families and such, so we also want to capture people who are farmers who hired people to do work for them or are doing it for other people.”

Mitchell says more farmers are looking for sources of income, while others realize they’re better off outsourcing some or all of this work, so capturing data about custom operations and neighbor agreements is important.

More information about the survey can be found here.