Rest is rarely on the mind of a busy Illinois soybean farmer. So when winter rolls around—that precious period between harvest and spring planting—it’s a golden opportunity to catch up on slowing down. It’s also an ideal period, experts say, to tune up, reassess, and plan for what’s next in your business.

Those investments of time are valuable no matter how many seasons you’ve operated your farm. But it might be especially relevant for younger farmers as well as seasoned producers bringing the next generation back to work the land. Many haven’t experienced the kind of prolonged ag economy downturn that row-crop farmers are now facing, says Matt Bennett, Illinois soybean farmer and founding partner at AgMarket.net.

“2020-22 were good income years, and it’s enticed a lot of growers to want to grow their operation and update their equipment,” Bennett explains. Yet given the breakeven or even negative returns of the past couple of years, “I think this is more of a time for balance-sheet preservation and diversification on the farm.”

To set your farm up for a successful 2025 growing season, experts advise following these tips to boost your prospects: keep your equipment operating; strengthen your financial position; and expand your sustainability investment.

Machinery Maintenance Tips

To save yourself time, money, and hassle at planting, it’s a good idea to winterize your equipment before a freeze event.

“Not completing these tasks before that time can add costs and reduce productivity in the spring,” says Ryan Stien, Go-to-Market Manager for Digital Technology at John Deere. “It is imperative to thoroughly clean all machines to help improve on-farm productivity and efficiency.”

Whatever the makeup of your fleet, Stien advises starting by performing regular maintenance as outlined in your owner’s manual. Take inventory of components that get a lot of wear and tear. Make a list of parts that need to be replaced, and order those via your local dealer or online.

You can do repairs yourself or schedule an inspection with your dealer, who can make sure hardware and software are functional and up to date.

Study Your Data

With those items checked off the list, you can take a deeper dive into your numbers for the past season, Stien says.

“Harvest is the farmer’s report card, and post-harvest is the time to analyze your data and start making plans for the 2025 growing year,” he says. The John Deere Operations Center platform allows farmers to set up, plan, monitor, and analyze their farm. Data-driven winter activities can include creating work plans for spring that enable you to get into the field faster. You can update records with information on clients, fields, guidance lines, products, rates, and prescriptions, among other data points. Then, when planters roll into new fields in the spring, those work plans will automatically populate on the devices you use to manage field work. “The operator just needs to accept the plan, and they are ready to plant,” Stien explains.

John Deere customers can use the Operations Center with a JDLink modem and a Generation 4 or 5 display to fine-tune their precision ag plans for spring. You can set up an Operations Center account online for free and access your information via the corresponding mobile app.

Evaluate Finances And Marketing

If you don’t already have a diversified financial portfolio, winter 2024/25 would be a great time to evaluate your options, says Bennett, the Illinois soybean farmer and commodity marketing adviser.

“It may be as simple as a husband or wife getting a job that allows them some flexibility to farm but also gives them benefits, particularly health insurance, which is, of course, a big cost for us in production agriculture if we don’t go to town,” Bennett says. “Diversification in tough economic situations—you just can’t overvalue it enough. Diversification in a way that helps us with income flow is key.”

If you’re early in your farming career, it’s also important to remember that Illinois soybean farms are often lean operations with a budget that he compares to a pie. “You can’t expect someone to take a smaller piece,” Bennett says. “You’ve got to find a way to make the farm more profitable or diversify the income enough to the point where you’re not watering down what someone else on the farm has for income.”

Beyond income diversification, you can evaluate your plans for selling the 2024 crop and give yourself several avenues of opportunity.

First, check your mindset and be grateful if you spot a rally in soybean and corn prices. Know your cost of production and seek to make sales that can help you stay in the black or climb into it.

“[This fall,] we were blessed with a soybean rally of over $1 above the August lows,” Bennett notes. “Unfortunately, it seemed like a lot of growers got bullish when the market rallied. I know a lot of selling has taken place, but sometimes when we get a rally in the market, we’ve got to be careful not to snub our nose at it.”

Next, be aware of ever-changing geopolitical and regulatory conditions that can impact farm finances.

“If we don’t book our input costs and we see global unrest continue, and if some of these shipping routes get shut down—I’m talking about the Black Sea region, where a lot of fertilizer comes from—it can really impact the prices of our inputs,” Bennett says.

At the time of this interview in mid-October, Bennett noted, dry fertilizer and potash costs were cheaper than year-ago levels, whereas phosphate remained very expensive. Locking in at least some of your fertilizer purchases can mitigate the risk of price increases.

Simultaneously, growers must balance fertilizer buying with enough corn and soybean sales to avoid “a major pendulum swing on their profit margins.”

“We like to encourage our growers to lock in enough corn, riding an HTA [hedge-to-arrive] contract with an elevator, putting a floor under prices, buying a put option in some cases, and selling a call above the market just on the fertilizer bushels,” Bennett says. “I would be OK if I had to accept $5 for some fall corn next year versus this fertilizer price. What I can’t stand is accepting $4. Buying a put gives us a window where we know we can make money on those particular bushels.”

At the time of this writing, some elevators in Illinois were closing early and, in some cases, not dumping corn unless it was contracted or sold for cash. In that environment, you can “make good use of your bins and take advantage of the basis improving significantly,” Bennett points out.

Other aspects of your business merit attention, starting with an annual review, adds Jake Stahl, a Farm Business Consultant at Illinois Farm Business Farm Management (FBFM). The organization supports farmers with digital recordkeeping, financial and tax management, and more.

“An annual review process for operations both with and without employees is a good idea for those seeking consistent growth and high retention,” Stahl says.

Other winter investments Stahl advocates include:

• Starting or updating your farm succession plan. This equips the next generation for a smooth transition in the event you retire or are unable to continue farming.
• Anticipating tax effects. “Many favorable provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire at the end of 2025, which places importance on forward-thinking income-tax planning,” Stahl explains.
• Evaluating service providers. “I am a huge proponent of at least seeing what other companies have to offer when it comes to seed, fertilizer, chemicals, and equipment at least once every few years,” Stahl says. Ask yourself whether you are satisfied with existing products at their current price point.

Explore Sustainability Investments

Stewardship extends from your farm finances to the sustainability practices you implement on every acre, adds Ryan Heiniger, a fourth-generation southeast Iowa corn and soybean farmer who is executive director of the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC). The nonprofit has worked extensively with Illinois farmers including via the Indian Creek Watershed project and its Conservation In Action farm tour. CTIC champions U.S. conservation agriculture and supports farmers in implementing related practices and technologies.

“The easiest and cheapest investment you can make to ensure your farm’s conservation portfolio continues to grow is seeking new information and learning about new practices or programs,” Heiniger explains. Winter can be the perfect opportunity to check in and learn from a sustainability-minded neighbor or cross-county farmer who has the expertise you need.

Like John Deere’s Stien, Heiniger advises using this season to review data and make sustainability decisions in partnership with your agronomist and other advisers. Compare this year’s crop to past years’ crops to spot trends. Look for red zones located on the margins of fields that are underperforming and could present a conservation opportunity.

“For example, did that low area in the corner of the field hold water for too long and stress the crop, or did that 50 to 100 feet along the timber cause a significant yield drag that, when converted to net profitability, is actually below your cost of production?” Heiniger says. “From personal experience on our farm, it has made more sense to create pollinator and wildlife habitats in zones that were consistently underperforming at an economic net loss three out of five years.”

Pinpointing less-than-optimal acres can actually be a good thing, especially in the current environment of sustainability funding for Illinois farmers. Congressional appropriations have grown for many traditional Farm Bill programs, and new federal and private-sector programs offer additional support for implementation of sustainability practices on farmland. For example, companies such as Fractal Agriculture provide farmers with capital “by taking passive, minority stakes in land farmers own today,” Heiniger says. “Fractal discounts the cost of capital if farmers conduct up to nine different soil health practices.”

Several practices can represent excellent starting points or a Phase 2.0 for Illinois soybean farmers already investing in sustainability, Heiniger says. Among them:

• Cover Crops: “Winter cereal rye is one of the most common species used as a cover crop and is easy to establish, scavenges excess nitrogen and works very well ahead of soybeans,” Heiniger says. “For first-time cover crop users, I generally recommend oats simply because that eliminates the overwintering component and should increase the success on Year 1 with this proven and growing conservation practice to armor the soil and maintain a living root.”
• Reduced Tillage: “Leaving as much residue on the soil surface should be a primary goal to minimize soil loss due to wind or water erosion along with deferring tillage passes until spring where possible,” Heiniger explains.
• Biodiversity: “A practical translation for an Illinois farmer and field would be to plant 20 to 30-plus species of native grasses and wildflowers (forbs) and watch in amazement at the insect- and bird-life response sometime in the first year. These areas are also a great backdrop for family pictures.”

Whatever your winter approach to sustainability, Heiniger affirms it will be time well spent. Be sure to include the next generation in those conversations. You can even explore ways they can pilot their sustainability ideas on the farm.

“Review results, challenge assumptions and develop a plan to explore new options,” Heiniger encourages. “If you’ve had a conservation project you’ve dreamed about or applied for funding in the past but the application was never approved, then take another run at making it reality.”

This winter, make time for yourself, your family—and your plans for the coming season. Reflecting on your data, tuning up your equipment, and deciding on the next steps in your sustainability plan will yield meaningful traction for your farm business year-round.