4th Quarter - Belzoni

SSPC Snapshots
Silent Shade Planting Company
December 2014
To see more pictures of what’s going on at SSPC, like us on Facebook and Instagram!
Volume 2, Issue 4
Happy New Year from Silent Shade!
Cindy Hood, Dodie Ainsworth, Laura
Lee Jack, Stacie Koger and Elizabeth
Jack decked out in pink for breast
cancer awareness.
Joe Young on the
cotton picker with
Lorrin Etka-Shepherd
from Marketry.
Elizabeth Jack and Stacie Koger with
their peer group members at the Executive Women in Ag conference in Chicago.
Jeremy, Stacie, Laura Lee and
Willard showing their support for 4H
during National 4H week.
422 Old Silver City Rd.
P.O. Box 534
Belzoni, MS 39038
Phone: 662-247-1214
Fax: 662-247-1217
TF: 800-844-1213
Photo taken at Silent Shade and Willard Jack Trucking Appreciation Dinner on November 6.
“Your present circumstances don’t
determine where
you can go; they
merely determine
where you start.”
Our new employee, Kenyone
Banks, with his family at the
Employee Appreciation Dinner.
Our new employee,
Robert James, working at the grain bins.
Emma Grace and Audrey Koger
working the name tag table at the
Employee Appreciation Dinner.
Trey Koger, Austin Henderson,
and Anna Lauhon at the Employee
Appreciation Dinner.
~ Nido Qubein
Silent Shade Planting Company
P.O. Box 534
Belzoni, MS 39038
Optimist or Pessimist
Jeremy Jack
With commodity prices
falling and input prices
higher than they have ever
been, it is hard not to become a pessimist even for
the most optimistic of farmers. I always enjoyed the
story of the optimist and
the pessimist that worked
together. The pessimist
said that things couldn’t get
any worse, the optimist disagreed, he said things
could get a lot worse! It is
how you look at your challenges and opportunities
This fall, Guaranty Bank
and Trust sent me with a
few other local business
men to a training course
called Inner Circle Entrepreneur. The class was at High
Point University (HPU) in
North Carolina, and one of
the speakers was Dr. Nido
Qubein, President of HPU.
Before this trip, I had not
heard of either of them, but
after two days on campus, I
became a lifetime fan. Dr.
Qubein took HPU from
1,450 to 4,300 students,
increased faculty from
108 to 260, and led the
construction of 51 new
buildings on campus - a
total investment of one
billion dollars. He did all
of this in less than a decade and during a recession. Across campus
were
banners
with
Choose to be Extraordinary on them.
As we start a new
year and a new crop,
remember that whether
you’re an optimist or a
pessimist, your outcome
is up to you, regardless
of your circumstance.
We Work Harder in Pink
Gysie du Plessis and
Kevin Van Heerden
#farmingforacure #SSPC2014
During the month of
October, we wore pink for
breast cancer awareness.
The shirts, which were designed in the color “safety
pink” to increase visibility
and safety in the fields,
say “I work harder in pink.”
Next to skin cancers,
breast cancer is the most
common cancer among
women, and according to
cancer.org, approximately
1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with invasive breast
cancer during their lifetime.
While the shirts may not
really make the employees
work harder, Silent Shade
hopes that these shirts remind women to be aware
of the breast cancer risk
and get checked regularly.
Tony Young showing off our
breast cancer awareness shirt.
Page 2
Message from our Partner
Wade Inc.
Dr. Trey Koger Joins the Silent Shade Team
Dr. Trey Koger will
be serving as the Chief
Agronomist for Silent
Shade Planting Company. His role is charged
with managing agronomic inputs for the
farm including managing fertility requirements, hybrid and variety selection, pest man-
agement,
irrigation
management, harvest
scheduling, tillage and
field preparation selection, as well as agronomic data management. Trey will also be
responsible for managing
research
and
demonstration activities
for SSPC. He will collaborate
with
other
members of the SSPC
management team to
develop and maintain
the agronomic portion
of the annual crop
budgets.
Trey graduated from
Oklahoma State University (OSU) with a B.S in
Agronomy in 1996 and
a Masters of Science in
Weed Science in 1998.
He graduated from Mississippi State University
with a PhD in Weed Science in 2001. His career
with the USDA-ARS,
Mississippi State University, and Syngenta has
focused on research
and development of new
crop protection products
as well as new seed varieties and hybrids. He
has been awarded numerous awards from
various professional and
grower level organizations, including the Outstanding Young Weed
Scientist from the Southern Weed Science Soci-
ety as well as the Outstanding Innovator and
Leadership awards from
Syngenta. He is a member of the Southern
Weed Science Society,
Weed Science Society
of America, American
Soybean
Association,
Mississippi
Soybean
Association, and American Society of Agronomy. He is a deacon at
the First Presbyterian
Church in Belzoni. He
enjoys spending time
with his family, duck
hunting, teaching Sunday school at church,
and working.
By Johnny Marshall, Wade Inc.
In the past, farmers
kept up with their information in a note pad—
keeping planting dates,
varieties and weather
conditions for each field
planted and tracking
emergence dates, chemicals applied, rain and
irrigations dates all the
way through harvest. If
you lost that notebook,
then you lost everything.
Today we have the ability
to record every trip
across the field, track the
truck driver, and Joe
Young, a team leader,
for their ten years of service to Willard Jack
Trucking
and
Silent
Shade Planting Company, respectively. Also,
Albert Viviers and Kevin
Van Heerden, who have
both provided excellent
pictures of the farm in
the course of their farm
duties, were awarded
wrapped canvases of
their winning pictures.
The following night,
we invited our landlords
and their families to our
shop in Belzoni for dinner and a farm update.
Alison’s Restaurant provided dinner, and Trey
Koger, our chief agronomist, presented “Feeding
the World One Farm at a
Time.” Trey’s presentation focused on the
world’s growing population and how the U.S.
agriculture industry is
working to meet this
challenge. One of the
biggest factors in tackling this issue is the
land, and we wanted
our landlords to understand how their investment in their land and in
us is all a part of this big
picture of feeding the
world. A lot of times, it
seems that farmers are
given all the credit for
“feeding the world;”
however, there are so
many others that are
contributing to this goal.
In a nutshell, we truly
are thankful for the relationship we have with
our employees and
landlords, and we enjoy
having this one night
each year to visit face-to
-face, answer questions,
meet their families and
enjoy a fun night of
food and fellowship.
was previously kept on a
note pad to be recorded
on the displays in the
cab.
Once this information is recorded on
the machine, it is wirelessly sent to Silent
Shade’s MyJohnDeere
account (the cloud).
From MyJohnDeere, Silent Shade can analyze
the data themselves or
they can send it to any
trusted advisor of their
choosing. MyJohnDeere
is a secure account that
hosts all of
Silent
Shade’s John Deere Financial
information,
parts, and operator’s
manuals as well as
equipment location,
speed, fuel usage, andmuch, much more. With
all this information stored
in one place and being
web-based, it can be accessed at anytime from a
laptop, iPad, iPhone or
any mobile device, thus
allowing for quicker decision making in critical
times. Not only can Silent Shade receive information from their equipment, they can also send
information such as
planter and sprayer prescription rates to the
equipment. From a notebook to a cloud, where
will it head next?
For more information, visit
wadeincorporated.com
Find Us Online!
November Is a Month to Say Thanks
November is a month
to be thankful, and each
year, we like to take two
nights to show our appreciation for our employees and landlords.
On November 6, we invited our employees and
their families to our machine shop in Belzoni for
dinner,
entertainment
and awards. We ask that
employees bring their
families so that not only
can we meet them, but
their spouses and children can see where our
employees work and the
type of large machinery
that they handle on a
day-to-day basis.
This year, Alison’s
restaurant in Belzoni catered a delicious barbecue dinner which was
followed by a magic/
comedy show by Dorian
LaChance. We recognized James Chaney, a
amount of diesel our
equipment burns, and
even see how long a
tractor was running but
sitting still (not working).
The amount of data can
overwhelm
anyone.
What do we do with all of
it? How do we get this
information to the right
person?
How do we
make the best decisions
based on this data? How
do we make sure that
everything is secure?
All of Silent Shade’s
John Deere equipment is
equipped with JDLink,
Remote Display Access
as well as Wireless Data
Transfer. This enables
all the information that
Page 3
In October, we rolled
out our new and improved website.
With
the help and guidance of
Infinite
Concepts
in
Greenville,
Elizabeth
Jack and web designer,
Jimmy Pearson, put together a multi-page site
that gives web searchers
a comprehensive view of
Silent Shade Planting
Company.
In the process of constructing this website,
the question was often
asked – “Why would a
farm need a website?”.
First, agriculture is
under attack daily by
people who are completely removed from the
family farm. We need
more farmers telling their
story rather than allowing others to do it for
them. Our hope is that
our website will be just
one way that we can talk
about our mission, our
values, our crops, our
employees, and anything else exciting and
positive that is going on
at Silent Shade.
Second, we are a
growing company. We
are always looking for
bright, hard-working employees with a passion
for agriculture to come
join our team. While we
already have a Facebook page, this website
would provide another
venue for potential appli-
cants to find out about
job openings and learn
more about the company
and the community in
which we work.
Third, the majority of
the land we farm is rented. Some of our landlords live locally and others live in states as far
as California. Additionally, we are always looking
for new opportunities to
grow. Our website provides an easy way to
access general information about our company. Potential landlords
can look at pictures of
our current farms and
read about our conservation practices, land
improvement practices
and landlord relations.
Lastly, we are always
trying to discover new
ways to increase yields,
conserve water, improve
fertility and try new farming techniques. We work
with
Sanders,
John
Deere, Pioneer, Bayer
and Mississippi State
University (just to name a
few) to discuss and research new products,
practices and equipment.
People want to work with
people they know. The
website is just one more
way we can show them
who we are.
In today’s world, we
are all plugged in, and
businesses, large and
small, have a presence
on the internet. We are
really excited about this
new chapter in our business, and we hope that
you will visit the site often
and that it will give you a
new perspective of the
“family farm.”
For more info, visit us at
www.silent-shade.com.