00:00 Kevin Matthews here. We got an extreme AG Field Report in the Yadkin River Valley, North Carolina Piedmont area. This 00:06 is a dry land farm. It's a river bottom pretty good ground. The population on this corn is about 26 00:14 to 28,000. I've got Mr. Chad Stanfield here with Agra gold and he's kind of a product specialist. But the 00:23 man that really sets the bar on us. It really teaches us ignorant Farmers, like myself as Mr. Leslie here and agronomist. How 00:32 many years Agronomy 36 36 that's longer and I've been farming. You forgot more and I'll know what you'd like. 80 80. 00:42 Oh you like Jay. Did you've got one we know. Oh, yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah easy for me what one reason that we wanted to have 00:51 is to share today is where everybody talks about gray leaf spot and different diseases and and they questioned sometimes how much we 01:00 stress on the fungicide. So we got it here in the field and I thought instead of any salesman's talking about how good they're corns were or me talking about how 01:09 I thought varieties were listen to learn something. So I kind of I got the man here to teach us and 01:17 You know, we're gonna be spraying fungicide on this next week. We got it. We'll be in here Monday spraying and we'll try 01:23 to leave some off of the variety plot so we can see how it handles the disease all the way through it might be hard for me, but I'll try to 01:32 do that when I spray it. It's not that many acres. Yes. It's not that many acres. I hear you. But you know, what? What 01:38 should we be looking for? I mean, obviously you can see we got speckle coming up. We're already above the early up into the tassel. How 01:47 alarm is that for a grower? So not a not alarming. I mean this is not panic button whatsoever or do a molds of action fungicides. 01:56 There's so much better than we were say 10 years ago where we just had a single mode of action struggle there. And so you're gonna have some Curative as well as 02:05 preventative. You don't want to get any worse. Obviously, you're you're putting onto the right time. But we see so many 02:12 Growers that are pulling the trigger on fungicides. Even before they see anything out there. I'm bad for 02:18 that. I'll be honest with you. Am I doing right or wrong or what? She thought you know, I'm not gonna say right or wrong you sleep better 02:24 at night, you know Insurance you've done everything you can you know, even then if you can but but I also know, you know, we test hybrids we 02:33 test hybrids in a lot of environments. Okay, one of the things we like to see is just like you talked about let's don't put a fungicide here. Let's see how the hybrids 02:42 themselves will stack up because there's vast differences in hybrids. 02:46 so In the case of you know, gray leaf spot. We know that started coming in with the Vengeance some hybrids are going to be more susceptible than others. So if a grower 02:58 waits to see if he's got it he could possibly save himself some money not do some unnecessary applications. We've got Growers. I've been messing up. I mean 03:07 like crazy, you know, hey from sales side to see corn. I like to do as early as possible. Just I like that in church you talked about? Yeah, and it's 03:16 it's definitely it has proved to pay. Yeah. Yeah, and we need to be doing it. The question is when yeah, so there's a 03:25 lot of arguments that the the number one leaf. We need to protect for probably 60 70 percent of our yield is the yearly yeah. Okay. So how well are we going to 03:34 protect that early by waiting until tassel? That's a great question and it's a question. A lot of Growers are starting to ask now that we have drone technology and we 03:43 have the ability. To get in our corn in different ways. It might change where we use fungicides, you know, we tend to avoid some of those 03:53 early applications because we can get some blunt ear syndrome. We can get some issues with those early ones if they're too close 03:59 to tassel make people back away, but protecting that leaf ear is pretty critical. All right, you talk about critical I was at a field day a 04:08 couple weeks ago and they had to demonstration on the year before they had removed each leaf. And if I remember 04:17 right this year Leaf was removing. This here Leaf was almost a 20% yield reduction. Does that sound right? Sounds exactly right? That's a 04:26 lot depends on when you remove it. But yes that a field day in Southwest Georgia a young consultant Caleb trial doing an awesome job down there. Yeah. He's 04:36 amazing amazing. Yeah, you know, he's doing the same thing removing it at different times. Okay, and yeah, it was stunning. 04:45 How much difference we saw in the ear? You could see the difference in the ears. You didn't have that measure. So so yeah, 04:51 that that is a big contributor, you know, most of our lower leaves. They're they're primarily contributing to stock strength. Okay, you know, we like 05:00 to keep them alive, but you have a some hybrids that scavenge nitrogen early and we lose those lower leaves. Anyway, this is not one of those hybrids, but 05:09 we definitely have what we call nitrogen Hogs where you just know you're going to lose those lower leaves, so 05:17 Yeah, protecting, you know from here up. Definitely we want good Leaf area. We want good photosynthesis. We don't want these 05:26 lesions to coalesce. We don't when I start joining each other migrating. It's it's tough. Yeah. So you're you're a 05:35 good time, you know, not sure the product you're using but I'm sure it's got a Curative in it too. It is what we're using Valentina on this right here. So you've got both parts 05:44 covered. All right. Now let's let's say I don't spray the products have improved a lot. Oh, yeah there is and we 05:52 got a lot more options too. Now we have before let's say I Choose You know, my money's tied. 05:58 I'm not sure what my forecast is and I choose not to spray. You know, there's a lot of yield left on the table and let's say 06:07 the disease progresses and How much difference is it in that earweight that we're going to see? 06:14 Maybe it could be dramatic and we were talking before we started filming here about Colonel depth and that's where Colonel depth is going to come from 06:23 is is that late that late photosynthesis and that's from the you know, mainly we're talking from the ear up as what's really going to build that Colonel death. 06:32 That's right. So we want the nutrients packed in there. We hope we've done a good job with that. We don't want to be lacking for anything on that but a big part of 06:41 that is going to be carbohydrates that the plant is going to pack in there after the colonel set. So we are learning Lots about 06:50 current. So we we've increased our own Farm test weights and when we go and put these fungicides out, you know, 06:59 we're obviously won't plant Health. We're wanting to stop this disease progression, but we're also adding 07:05 a lot of folio fertilizer and and good adjuvant that will penetrate and get into these so it can get into the leaves and 07:14 The plant and we feel like that helping to add to that kernel weight and test weight and and we're already driving across the field. 07:23 Yeah, I don't think there's any question, you know prior to tassel. You need to be careful with some of those 07:29 products that you're putting in there absolutely post-hassle wide open. These silts are 07:35 black right here Brown. So you're good to go pretty say everything is set that's gonna be set. So now we're just feeling yeah, and yeah. Yeah, 07:44 that kernel field is is a fast subject that You know, whether it's nutrient whether it's fungal diseases taking Leaf Airy away whether it's hail. 07:54 All of those things enter into that kernel depth Colonel depth as we're finding out is probably the most 08:00 important factor for yield it certainly true if you're comparing hybrids, we're starting to look at that a little more. So I 08:09 don't you know, when I pull off that nice 22 around here and that 44 long and then I pull that 18 round 08:15 and 44 long. You know, I'm going to bed on that 2022, but you're saying I might be wrong we are finding 08:24 out that you might be right. But it could be the opposite. Yeah, so if I got a popcorn card on that 22 that big old 08:32 thumbnail Colonel is gonna kick my butt ain't it? Yes, so judging the book by the cover. Yeah. 08:38 So what we're finding out is we can have two identical looking ears like Chad's got I mean, they're very closely matched. 08:45 but when we sell them we get some radically different Rose. Yeah different volumes same Colonel count different 08:53 volumes. So that's starting to speak volumes to us about what we might be doing to increase and make it 09:01 more like that. So hybrid. Yes. Absolutely. There's there's hybrids that are going to have deeper kernel counts or deeper. 09:07 Kernel depth. All right. But what can we also do to help it along? You know as an agronomist for you know, 09:16 you've got a lot of hats because if you don't get the right seed line up or the right hybrid line up that is performed for us Growers. 09:25 Obviously Chad's gonna have a hard time selling a product because the repetitive is what you want. Yes, you want to 09:31 repeat customer. That's that's true though. Is when you're looking at these varieties, are you looking at this as well when you're going through all because you know, 09:40 you're not into sales. All your into is you want to find the best product for us to grow. Is this something that you look at now? Absolutely, we're doing this on 09:49 every hybrid and every trial we've got We're starting to learn quite a bit the you know, a lot of people say well, why do you do all 09:58 that testing? Don't you just don't you just plant the highest yielding hybrids, not every case that is not the case. If all 10:05 you did was go to your hybrid trials and only plant the highest yielding hybrid. You're going to leave some money on the table because you've got 10:11 different environments on your farm. We test in different environments to see which hybrids are better for those environments. 10:18 So we were at a field day this morning guy asked me. Well, what was what's gonna Top This plot? And I said, I don't care. I literally don't care and I was just Agro. Well, 10:27 okay. Yeah, I could go and it might not yeah, but this is not a beauty contest. I'm Gonna Last something we got something of inventory of oh, yeah. That's what 10:36 made right something. We have a lot of will win. But no, it's that particular environment. Yeah. Thank you telling the story. Okay pretty straight 10:45 up. He is horribly stressed early. He got late rains it saved the corn which hybrid did best in that environment. Okay, 10:54 so that's that's what we we care about. And so when we make a recommendation to a grower, okay, but this on your tough ground we 11:03 We hope we know what we're talking about. Right easiest thing in the world is sell the highest yielding hybrid on 11:09 your best ground. Yeah, I agree. That's just falling off along. Yeah. Okay when you can go to a guy and say, 11:15 okay. What are your worst Acres? And if you can pull his worst takers up by 10 15 percent because you did a better job placing hybrids. 11:23 You've made that guy money, you know, we we was talking earlier about disease and we're kind of coming full circle because we need to know how to manage this plant 11:32 from here up. We're in that third and fourth quarter of the plant of the corn crop and we're you know, we're wanting to win this thing, but let's 11:41 say I'm a grower and I don't have ability to get aircraft in to spray. I don't have the ability to 11:50 I don't have a haggy or a high clearance prayer where I can go in over the top. When I go to look at these varieties, what can 12:00 I look for and say, okay? You know this gray leaf score this Northern Leaf blight or this Southern rust or whatever is normal 12:08 in my area for a challenge. How can I depend on these scores? And and what what kind of score am I looking for? 12:17 And and what's the best way to get defensive to protect it because I just don't have the equipment or the access 12:23 to go over the top spray fungicides. So that's that's a great question and you know if We don't put fungicides on 100% of corn growing the 12:33 United States. It's actually a fairly small percentage. I can believe that yeah, so so the if your Chemical 12:39 Company selling fungicides That's your target is the untreated acre. You're not necessarily trying to knock this product away 12:47 and put yours on it. You're trying to convince the guy on the untreated Acres. So there's a lot of obstacles to people availability of Aviation, you know Logistics of Aviation getting 12:57 it in there, you know drones are starting to change that a little bit the product. I'm pretty excited about for Growers that don't have that 13:06 application equipment is is Highway, you know and a two by one or two by zero or two by two seeing some really good results particularly in you know, 13:15 who's talking to a guy North Carolina that They farmed about 4,000 acres and I think the average size of their field is 13 acres. That's us. Yeah, that's 13:25 right there as we're standing in a 400 acre field. Yeah, but yeah, but now I mean they have a lot of little patches. Well, you can't get an airplane in on those. You can't 13:34 even get a helicopter in those. So that's that's the kind of feels in my opinion that the product lines I always made for so that that's 13:40 will give us some protection. It may not be complete. To answer your question on the hybrid guides every company usually including agrigolds usually has 13:50 a fungicide response table. Is this hybrid likely to respond to fungicide less likely no response at all. Okay. 13:59 So what you'll see very very simple if you want to know that the code yeah is the highest yielding hybrids always respond to fungicides. Yeah. 14:09 That's the racehorses. Okay, the workhorses rarely ever respond to fungicides. I don't want to say rarely ever are less likely to return your dollars. 14:18 Yeah, okay for the further workhorses. Where do we put the workhorses on our lower yielding ground? Yeah. I mean we're talking 130 140 bushel ground and 14:27 so can you afford to put an expensive fungicide on that particularly if application is your limiting factor and answer is probably not and you talked about ratings. The product guides 14:36 are great basis you start looking but boots on the ground seeing walking all these plots. 14:44 Call your local guys. They can provide a lot more information. Yeah. Yeah, there's no substitute for scouting period yeah, you know, 14:52 I was working with some Growers that we've got trials with in Georgia. They said should we spray fungicide? I 14:58 have it. I I still haven't seen any disease in those fields. Nothing like this right still have not they did not apply fungicide. Okay, so they got 15:07 away with it. Yeah any other year any other rain pattern any other disease cycle? We know we have the disease diseases here. We know 15:16 we have the environment favorable for it. Those are Givens. To question is does everything come together hybrid, you know 15:24 susceptible hybrid disease pressure and the environment. So for those guys they didn't get all the rain. 15:32 And they didn't get any disease development and they saved some money. They they kept some money in their pocket. 15:37 I've got probably five or six trials where those fields were not treated with fungicides again. 15:44 I prefer that I learn more. when you put the hybrids kind of naked out there a washer recommendation on getting these crops out 15:53 knowing they've been through real bad drought stress and you're looking at a 15:57 80 to 110 bushel crop, but you're hoping for from an agronomist standpoint. Should we get that stuff out before it dries down? 16:08 So obviously if you have already got a short crop you want everything in your bin. You don't want header loss. 16:15 you don't want late season lodgy now on a crop like that. You're not gonna see there's not a lot of Leverage of that ear. Yeah, so we don't see as 16:23 much lodging. We have one guy that adding insult to injury. He's got a very short crop because of no rain, but he's also got Crown rot. Oh 16:33 sure because of rain early. Yeah, you know, so it's Following over so he's starting to have the the worst of Both Worlds a low 16:39 yield and falling over so explicit what's a good indicator for a guy ain't real familiar if he and he drives 16:45 by and he's got a healthy plant here a healthy plant here. And this is Hammer dead last that's what 16:51 I've always looked at. That's a little late. Yeah by the time you do that. So there's there's the pinch test which means you 16:57 have to bend down and physically pinch. Yeah, which is the older I get tomorrow the less like I'm going to do that. So I prefer to boot the 17:06 boot test. I just grab the stock. Give it a good kick that tells you everything to pinch test does. Okay, so, you know 17:14 if you can't Crunch it. If you can't break it. It's probably pretty sound stalk some of 17:21 the ones with the crown rots diffuseriums and whatnot. I mean, you just kind of touch it with your toe and you you're 17:27 holding the stall. That's a bad day. Okay, and you need to get to combines in the field pretty quickly. So I advise that guy said, you know, you're not gonna like this. 17:36 You don't have a dryer. You're not gonna like this but you're gonna like it less if you leave it anyway, so nothing it's a question of, you know, 17:45 can your deck plates handling can you know combine your better now, but we still get a lot of losses there with no man 17:51 real tight. Yeah, and another two touch point on that is Stone so far. We've been lucky no tropical storms. 17:58 Disease has not moved up through most of my territory because we haven't had fresh storms. 18:04 So we've got a way with not putting fungicides out on a lot of Acres. but 18:10 if these storms do develop these cool these some of these stalks are really really weak. Yeah, and if we see that start materializing we need 18:19 to get them out. So we're talking about stock strength stock drink comes from these leaves. All right, I've been 18:26 in many of those fields Chad starken about those leaves don't exist just burn off. They're burnt off just know looks like you went in there with gramoxone and just that they're gone. Okay, so, 18:35 you know that that stalk like Chad said, Is going to be struggling because that's where you get stock strength as those lower leaves, you know, 18:45 I'm gonna annoy people. That have narrow corn. Yeah, but one fact about narrow corn is it Shades the ground faster? That's correct. True. 18:55 Yep. It also Shades the lower leaves faster. Yep, and you typically have reduced stock strength with narrow rows compared to 30s or even 36 talking 19:04 about me. Now. I know I know I say, he said I make people mad when I say that now you like their 20 inch corn 19:12 But the folks particularly in the midwest that have 20 inch corn they generally gather their corn two points wetter and everybody else because they've 19:18 learned stock strength suffers. So our ratings for stock shrink come on 30 inch rows, you know, when we went from 30s to the narrows at 20s and 22s, we 19:27 started raising our populations and we did and you know that first we started out same population as thirties to 20s and we've seen this big yield bump. Well, 19:36 then we started raising it and it's like our yield started going down and now we went back and we're running the same populations on 19:42 our Narrows that we was at 30s and we're getting that stock stream because we're getting it more spaced out and getting more sunlight down in there. But you're 100% right? You 19:51 got to stay on top of it because it came back. It's one of those things you got to manage and as long as you know that going into it and you don't get caught your pants 20:00 down you can make it work, but it's but it can definitely catch you like Chad says if we get a storm and we've got challenged stalks 20:09 already. That's a tough day, but the Thing is check your stalks and make sure they're sound then you can probably let 20:17 it dry down a little better. Yeah, so the most efficient combine harvesting is probably 22 to 24. Most people 20:23 don't like doing that. You're going to put Less on the ground less head or loss. 20:28 What does everybody try to do Kevin 19? I always start at 28 here in this Hurricane Alley and hope to be done before his 18 if we can but I don't 20:37 know where a lot of people rather than take the dock they started 18 or 19 and they're gonna finish which we got dryers. I 20:43 mean we're set up for you know, I've heard so many conversations today and yesterday about I'm Gonna Get You know this heat this sunlight we're 20:52 gonna let dry down the field go straight to you know, go straight to Market with it and I'm like, okay may 20:58 not be wise, you know this week. We're getting then I talked to our guy down in, Florida. They're getting pop up showers every evening. So 21:07 they're only getting a certain amount of hours per day that they can Harvest Right. That's just you know, yeah, I 21:16 mean, it's just prolong it. That's when it comes to hybrid trials. I mean, we got a hybrid trial off behind here. 21:23 That's where I live. That's where I like to be. It's been a lot of time in cornfields in south, Georgia. That's the best way to get away from Nats 21:29 duck in the corn. Yeah. I need to remember that if you not so the best way is a duck in the corn that don't like corn. So that's 21:39 that. That means that's been even more time there. But now seriously we do hybrid trials for characterization of the hybrids whether it's Disease Control. 21:49 Kernel depth as we're doing more and more whether it's you know, does it handle the tougher situations or does it fold up shop? 21:58 You know agrigold, we we have what we call families and the family can tell you a little bit about that. But the families is only a broad category within those 22:07 families. We've got differences. So testing testing testing we can't do enough of it. I think Growers should always have some type of test on 22:16 their Farms. I know you do extensive testing. Yeah, we're kind of you know, how far yeah. Yeah 22:22 Planters got bigger. I understand it. They haven't done a test on their farm and years. And it'll start to get you. Yeah, because now you're taking everybody 22:34 else's word for it. Yeah, and you don't know. Yeah, you really need to know who that grower is that's doing that research and that testing 22:41 because I've got yeah, I've got a neighbor and I'm gonna pay attention to what he does because I know how he 22:47 does things and it's gonna be right and and that's the reputation that I want to have is you know, we do it as right as we can, you know, whether you're extreme act 22:56 member or not. Anytime you get a chance to hang out with an agronomist That season with the years of experience that Mr. Less you 23:03 really need to take advantage of it because this is how I've learned. I mean I just surround myself by guys like this and and it's amazing what we can learn 23:12 and share with others. Y'all stay safe.