Cotton Farming - Cotton Consultant's Corner

	Click here to ask Randy Machovec a question or submit a comment about this month’s Cotton Consultant’s Corner.

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Randy Machovec
Cenla Crop Care
Alexandria, La.

• Full-time consultant for 15 years
• Member, Louisiana Agricultural Consultants Association (LACA)
• Past president of LACA – 1999-2000 and 2003-2004
• Board member, Rapides Parish Farm Bureau
• I enjoy spending time with my wife Tammy and my children
Holly, Brandon, Noel, Austin, Colton and Faith.
• In my off time I have enjoyed a brief two years playing
professional football in the arena league. Today I enjoy
coaching and watching my children play football, cheerlead,
play little league and now watch one play college baseball.

In this Q&A interview, Machovec talks about a consultant’s
challenges and rewards in today’s ag environment.

What services do you offer and how do they contribute to your farmer client’s profitability?

Cenla Crop Care is a full service company. We soil sample
and provide fertilizer recommendations based on the analysis we receive from various labs. We help producers with variety selections. Our scouting program involves making recommendations for the use of insecticides, herbicides, nematicides, fungicides, PGRs and defoliation. Living and working in central Louisiana allows us a great opportunity to work with many crops. We also work with producers in soybeans, wheat, sugarcane, corn, grain sorghum and rice.

What have you found to be the best approach to processing information/ technology and sharing it with your farmer clients?

We attend many meetings throughout the year that include university, Extension and industry meetings. National and state consultant meetings also provide us the time to share our experiences with other consultants and company reps from Louisiana and often from many other states across the Cotton Belt. On-farm demo trials also allow us to work closely with industry and our producers to gain knowledge firsthand.

How would you describe the future role of the cotton consultant?

Cotton farming is an ever-changing profession. New technologies and new varieties seem to pop up every day. As consultants, we need to be aware of the new changes and how they can better serve our grower clients. Because of new technologies, we’ve been able to boost yields seemingly every year. There is no telling how far technology will take us, but two things remain a constant for the cotton consultant. One is Mother Nature. She always has the last word on whether our crop is to be a good one or if devastation such as a hurricane will ruin our year. And the other constant is the eyes of the consultant. We still need to be out in the field seeing what is really going on.

What has been the most rewarding part of your profession?

Normally, once the cotton gets defoliated, we have made our last recommendation for the season on that crop. However, I like to go back and watch the grower and his workers at harvest. It’s always gratifying to see the smiles abound as they try to find more room on the turnrow to place another module.

But I’d have to say arriving home after a long day in the fields knowing you have done a good job for your producers and seeing the smile on my children’s faces as they run out the door to greet me yelling “daddy's home!” makes what I do as a cotton consultant the most rewarding.