Those who have played baseball or softball have often heard the sage old advice from their coach as they stood in the batter's box: “Don't take your eye off the ball.”

Well, I've played and coached baseball and softball over the years, but the phrase has connotations well beyond baseball this spring. It has to do with what many retailers are concentrating on throughout the country this year: soybean rust and helping their customers handle it.

So much has been written about rust — in our magazine, as well as in competitive magazines and newspapers, on radio, television and Web sites — that I'm not going to do it here.

What I am going to talk about is not the potential opportunities for products to control soybean rust. Mine is much more basic: These next few years are critical for full-service retailers; if you aren't organized, efficient and know your customer, there may be no ball and bat to play with.

As glyphosate use continues to rise with corn acres, are you ready to defend the value of that corn acre? Are you carefully analyzing the crop inputs of your grower-customers? Are you investigating the importance of seed treatments? Whether it's a corn or soybean acre, you owe it to your customers, your employees and the future of your business to be the specialist your customers want you to be without “giving away your bat and ball” to eke out a profit.

It's difficult to do, I realize that. I grew up on a farm and know the challenges farmers face to minimize their costs. My dad did it for years. But don't drop your price at the drop of a hat and do face the reality that every customer is different. Every customer has different needs.

So here's the ending baseball metaphor: Make the right and, sometimes, hard decisions now. You'll hit a home run, win the game and come back to play another day. It's one acre, one grower at a time.

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