00:00:00 Converting at least 10% of planted acres to grain sorghum in 2025. That's just one of the changes Lee Luber is gonna 00:00:06 make in the new year. We're gonna share it with you how he's gonna make it all work. On this episode of Extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome 00:00:12 To extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. 00:00:21 And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Acts Cutting the Curve. 00:00:27 I got Lee Luber here from Gregory South Dakota. So happy he's coming back. Um, I posed a question to all the extreme ag guys, 00:00:34 and each of 'em gave a different thing. They're gonna do what they're gonna change up in 2025. We wanna get these released, you know, 00:00:40 while it's still winter spring, and you can be contemplating your own decisions. Lee Lubert said, yeah, 00:00:44 I'm gonna do something kind of different. I'm gonna convert at least 10% of my acres, uh, planted this year to grain sorghum 00:00:49 or milo, depending on where you are. I call it grain sorghum because after all the national association's called the National 00:00:55 Sorghum Association, and I've spoken to them anyway, you can call it Milo, you can call it sorghum, whatever you wanna call it. 00:01:00 The point is, maybe you should consider something like this. Also, we're gonna ask Mr. 00:01:03 Lubers why he's making this decision, how he's gonna pull it off, and what outcome he is hoping to attain. 00:01:09 So you've raised it before, you've raised it back when you had hogs in the eighties and nineties, you got away from it. 00:01:14 You're gonna go back to grain sorghum. I'm gonna just throw it out there. And guess the reason is it's less expensive to plant, 00:01:22 Uh, BLD bottom line deal. Uh, we feel there's multiple, uh, reasons that start bringing it back in rotation. 00:01:30 Uh, I know 10% doesn't sound like a lot of acres, but it'll still be a pretty fair chunk of acres to manage. Uh, and we feel it's, it's time to bring it back in 00:01:41 and, uh, we think it'll be a good fit for us. I spoke to the association. I've, I've worked with them. I had 'em on my own business of agriculture podcast. 00:01:51 It's like six to six and a half million acres out of the 360 million acres that we farm every year in the United States, about six 00:01:59 and a half million. So you're talking like, you know, uh, uh, what about, uh, 2% of the acres that are in grain sorghum? 00:02:07 I always predicted it would expand because of water pressure. Meaning if you're in a dry area, it's drought tolerant. 00:02:14 And it seems like there's maybe a, a growth in appetite for something like grain sorghum, uh, in a world that's so proliferated with your normal corn, soy, and wheat. 00:02:23 Am I right? Yeah. Uh, when you start checking into it, uh, grain sorghum is the fifth, uh, 00:02:31 largest crop grown in the world. Uh, it's, it's a huge crop worldwide. Uh, acres kind of went down in the United States, 00:02:39 but I think they are making a rebound. I've talked to more producers that are putting in some grain sorghum, uh, 00:02:45 through this swath of the country, and even going a little bit further east than what I originally expected guys to look at, uh, 00:02:53 raising Milo again. Uh, it just, it starts to make sense. It makes sense because it's cheap to put in. 00:03:01 Um, if you're in an area that requires water and you don't wanna run the spigots because of diesel or electric, it, it's, these, 00:03:08 it needs incredibly less amount of water than normal crops. Am I right about that? It's 00:03:13 A very water efficient crop and, uh, whether you're dry land or in the, uh, Ogallala aquifer area, yeah. 00:03:22 That it's, it's a real important part and, uh, and it's, uh, much cheaper to plant than corn or soybeans. Yeah. And our chemical program is actually going 00:03:32 to be cheaper than, uh, corn or our soybean program. So, uh, less inputs. You know, that's a, that's a nice appeal. 00:03:41 Can you share those numbers? Okay. You can use the land cost or not the land cost. What's it cost to put an acre of corn? 00:03:48 A thousand bucks is a thousand bucks to put an acre of corn. Uh, not counting land costs. Is it 900? 00:03:52 You tell me the numbers. It's like everybody, when you start ting it up, it starts to shock you in a hurry. 00:04:00 Uh, with uh, Milo, we can, uh, lower our seed cost, uh, depending on exactly what we plant. We're gonna try two different seeding rates, uh, 00:04:11 rowing it in 30 inch rows. Uh, we're gonna save, uh, 60 to $65 an acre over our corn expense on seed, uh, on chemical. 00:04:21 Uh, we actually have been raising some milo on food plots about little over 80 acres a year for a few landlords and a couple of 'em. 00:04:29 We fertilize it and we start watching how it stands and how it's performing in the food plots. And we go, we're not even doing anything with it. 00:04:38 And, and it's a hundred plus bushel, milo, maybe we start, should start looking at bringing this 00:04:43 back into the rotation. And, uh, actually they have some, uh, newer pres and chemistries out there. 00:04:50 We can lay down a really good pre-program for about 30% less than our corn program and about 45% less than our soybean program. 00:05:00 Uh, the numbers are real. Yeah. So I just going through, by the way, the person that's listening to this, that might be like working in a 00:05:06 cranberry bog and, uh, I always use as the example, um, food plots, meaning he has, Lee is in a, a very pheasant centric part 00:05:15 of the world where, in fact, in the town of Gregory, they've got a pheasant that's bigger than me. And, and, uh, it welcomes you to town. 00:05:22 But anyway, so your landlords say, yeah, you farm our ground and that's a business investment. 00:05:28 But also you put this chunk over here where I can come and shoot pheasants and that's why you leave the grain sorghum gets planted, it gets treated like a crop, 00:05:35 but it doesn't get harvested. And it stays there for the critters. Exactly. It's strictly for the wildlife. 00:05:40 Um, alright, so you just saved $65 an acre on seed compared to corn. You talk about input. So is it, 00:05:45 is it 200 bucks less expensive per acre to put in this crop? Uh, we can lower our cost well over a 00:05:53 hundred dollars an acre. Uh, but when it comes to raising the crop during the season, uh, we're gonna manage it, uh, similar to our wheat program. 00:06:03 So we're gonna invest more during the growing season. But I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of research on this. 00:06:11 And I feel we can really push yields, uh, by doing some low cost options. Low, low cost options, meaning the, 00:06:18 through the season stuff, yeah, You should just see fertility. We can, uh, You don't have to use as much 00:06:23 fertility. Where do you save? Uh, we'll be considerably less on seed and fertility expense and also lower on chemical. 00:06:32 But during the season, uh, we're going to do some experiment with some in-season fungicides. 00:06:38 Uh, we're gonna do some foliar nutrition, uh, working with spray tech. Uh, we're going to actually, we have a, uh, starter blend, 00:06:48 uh, that we're gonna run in furrow on our grain sorghum. And a lot of people, they just plan it and forget it. 00:06:54 We're gonna look at it like our corn crop. And, uh, we've done a lot of research and we've identified some biology, some uh, bacteria species 00:07:03 that are very synergistic with grain sorghum, uh, proven research on it. We're gonna work with PGRs. 00:07:10 Uh, we're gonna work with, uh, the nutri charge like we do on corn. We're gonna push for yield. Hey, 00:07:16 I wanna point out, you know, a long time ago it might have even been with you, I recorded an episode and said, basically we put all 00:07:22 of our emphasis in growing corn 'cause corn's sexy corn's lovely. You know, we go out there, oh, big, you look over 00:07:26 to yield modern, its throwing 300 bushel up there. It's all, and like, ah, soybeans, who cares? Wheat gets even more mistreated. 00:07:33 Like, ah, hell, you know, wheat can just fling it out there. Um, I think the grain sorghum is 00:07:38 one of those that never got any love. It's like, what? It's itchy, it's ugly. It's not cool. It's not sexy. You put out, 00:07:43 you're treating it like a corn crop. You're actually putting pgr, you're putting bacterias biologicals out there. 00:07:51 Stress pit against. You're doing the whole deal. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, uh, Milo doesn't have a lot of street cred out there in the cropping world. 00:07:59 No. And we want to change that. Uh, I look at the national contest every year. The guys that are at the top, what they're doing, 00:08:07 or they're doing a phenomenal job, they're managing their crop to achieve those kind of yields. Well, why shouldn't we? 00:08:14 And there's low cost options and we can do that. And we feel we can push the envelope and we wanna show people what, uh, 00:08:21 you can do with grain sorghum. We're Determined to, yeah. I wanna hear about, I wanna hear about what, uh, some 00:08:26 of the other practices, 'cause there's probably people listening to this that are like, wait a minute, man, I, I, I've heard about it. 00:08:30 I don't even know for sure that much about it 'cause it's not on that many acres. So I wanna hear more about how you're gonna go about doing 00:08:34 it and some of the finer points. Before I do that, nature's is our business partner, as you know. 00:08:39 In fact, um, I'm recording this in February. You might already, uh, be past the Commodity Classic by the time you listen to this episode, 00:08:45 but we're gonna be in the booth at Nature's. Um, nature's, uh, always has us there. We have a panel. It's always very educational. 00:08:51 In fact, the Nature's paid for a lot of our Extreme Mag members to go to Commodity Classic that offers, uh, up now. 00:08:56 But it's another reason why you should become an Extreme Ag member for just $750 a year. 00:09:00 You get direct access to guys like Lee. You get the data at the end of the year from all the trials these guys are doing. 00:09:05 Then you get special offers from our business partners. Nature's is focused on helping you with your sustainable farming solutions 00:09:11 and also helping you get the most out of your crops, featuring high quality liquid fertilizers powered by Nature's bio. 00:09:17 Okay? You can target specific periods of influence throughout the growing season via precision placement techniques as a means 00:09:22 to mitigate the plant stress, enhance your crop yield, and most importantly, boost your farms. ROI, you know what times are tight right now in agriculture? 00:09:29 Make sure you're getting the most out of your fertility program. Go to natures.com to learn more. 00:09:34 You plant this with a corn planter. Is it on 20 inch rows, 30 inch rows? Is it with a Tool? Uh, you can, 00:09:39 uh, drill it. That's very, uh, common. Uh, you do a touch higher seeding rate, uh, because sometimes your germination level is not as high 00:09:48 and, uh, or you can row it. Well, we are gonna actually row it in probably in 30 inch rows 00:09:55 and we're gonna do two different seating rates, five pounds an acre and seven pounds an acre. Not Very much. That's not very much 00:10:03 Very low. It'll be, it'll be very reasonable to plant per acre. And then we're actually, like I said, 00:10:09 we're gonna run an in furrow starter program with it. I've already lined that up. I talked to our, uh, guy from Agro liquid 00:10:17 and got approval on that. And uh, this next Monday I'm gonna go make Tommy's day through nature's, uh, drain sorghum. 00:10:27 Actually, like every crop can use potassium on soybeans. You, you focus on the R stages on grain sorghum, 00:10:34 you focus on the vegetative stages before it heads, that's when it uses up to 75% of its potassium. 00:10:41 We're gonna play around with foliar potassium on Milo. So you put it in, you can drill this, you can put it on 00:10:47 fifteens, you can put it on thirties. It's, We're gonna put it in 30 intros. Uh, so, and then I obviously you're gonna say, 00:10:53 wait a minute, 30 inches between that or seven and a half inches on a drill. It seems to me like, uh, you should put in more and, 00:10:59 and get more heads, but apparently it, it doesn't work out that way. Uh, you also, uh, Milo has a, uh, phenomenal way 00:11:08 of tilling the tilling effect similar to wheat. So we can totally relate to that in our management programs. And that's what we're gonna focus on. 00:11:16 Uh, on our wheat, we have learned how to bring down seeding rates and push the plants more and with tilling. And we're gonna do the same thing 00:11:25 with grain sorghum, because as we, A person, a person like me that's saying, wait a minute, explain tilling, 00:11:30 Uh, more stocks per produce for seed, uh, with a viable head. And, uh, we're gonna one 00:11:38 Seed makes more than one stock. Yeah. We, we want, uh, multiple stocks coming outta that seed. And we're gonna look at even, uh, 00:11:46 we'll do an experiment sub five pounds. We're gonna take it down really low, see what we can do. Because money saved is money made, lower cost production. 00:11:55 I like it. You're always talk about the money. So that's, that's good. Um, what about then? So this plant, kinda like a soybean will fill an area with 00:12:03 that low of population it'll fill. Uh, but we, there's interesting soybean every, everywhere it branches out, it can put on nodules and pods. 00:12:13 Mm-hmm. A grain sorghum only has the top of it up at the top. So I'm trying to figure out 00:12:19 how being low population, it can actually, We can push more tiller, more stalks out of it. Okay. So you get more than one stalk. 00:12:27 And so it, it ends up being, it, it might only be five pounds, but it's gonna look like it was seeded more 00:12:33 than that because of the tilling Effect. Absolutely. Yeah. We, we want to work on the genetic expression 00:12:38 of the crop in the growing season to see what we can do to try to push more heads. So You harvest this with a grain head, head, you harvest this 00:12:46 with a grain head on the combine? Yeah. It, it will be, uh, no extra harvest expense in that aspect. 00:12:53 Uh, we can take the heads that we use on soybeans and lock them rigid to flex scrapers and run those. And our custom harvester, they've cut a lot 00:13:02 of milo in other areas they do every year. Uh, so the crew has experience with it and they can run with us. 00:13:09 So harvesting is, you know, easy for us. I guess I always thought that it was harvested with a corn head, so I'm wrong. 00:13:16 Uh, you can run, uh, what they call an all crop head, uh, that John Deere used to make. 00:13:21 Uh, they haven't made 'em in quite a few years, but they're very popular and they keep getting rebuilt. And there's also some kits, uh, out of the southern plains, 00:13:31 the southern US where guys, uh, put them onto their corn headss and, uh, are able to harvest milo 00:13:38 with a corn head when they're doing their 30 inch row milo. So, uh, yeah, 00:13:44 I guess I always thought it was harvested corn head. So it's generally harvested, but you're gonna harvest it. Your guys are gonna harvest it. Your custom harvester with 00:13:49 A, we will run a Flex draper. So what's a, what's a good, uh, what's a good yield for green sorghum for Milo? 00:13:56 We're gonna find out. Okay. What do you expect? What's your, what do you, what will, what will make you happy? 00:14:02 We want to see what we can achieve. I mean, we'll, we'll, we're just gonna, as far as a yield goal, we don't have one. 00:14:09 Let's just see what we can do. Uh, we look in our food plots and uh, where we just do base fertility, uh, 00:14:18 and, uh, do a pre-program and, and spray once post for weeds. We look at that and we've got plots well over 00:14:25 a hundred bushel an acre. So it's like, let's start, let's see if we can do the, getting that 1 50, 200 range. Let's do it. 00:14:33 Alright. So if you get, uh, if you're can do a hundred bushels when it's more just for hunting purposes, you think you can at least 50% up from 00:14:38 that to go 150. And then what's a bush of sorghum? Because a person right now that's listening is like, man, I don't know anything about it. 00:14:44 What's a bush of sorghum gonna sell for? Uh, right now the price is down because it's all dependent on when China buys its tenders 00:14:53 of grain sorghum. And, uh, so marketing is a little bit of the wild west, but hey, we're used to it. 00:14:59 Or West River, South Dakota, uh, massive, uh, basis swings. You can be a dollar under the board, 00:15:06 you can be a dollar over. Right now it's a four something per bushel and basis is weak. 00:15:12 So, uh, some guys are really holding back on it. But that's the nice thing about, uh, grain sorghum. You can put it in the bin, wait for basis to rebound, 00:15:22 like I said, real large swings in basis more than our other crops that we raise. Yep. So it's a little bit different dynamic, 00:15:31 but that's where grain storage comes into play. You Have a place that will take it. I mean, if I'm in, or my farm is in northeastern Indiana, 00:15:37 I could grow, I could probably grow it in my fields behind my house in northern Indiana, but I dunno know where the hell I'd go with it. Yeah. 00:15:42 Here, every large terminal within a hundred miles of us, uh, loves to get their hands on it. 00:15:50 They, they'll put a a million plus bushels each one of them on the ground, and then they're waiting for, uh, the tenders to come in from China. 00:15:58 Then they start filling the trains. Okay. So that's exactly what happens. And the bulk of this, like Te Temple grows this, 00:16:04 but he's over there so close to population in the East coast. He grows a little bit of it for two reasons. 00:16:11 Well, first off, it spreads out his workload and it diversifies, um, it's cheap to put in and it's deer resistant. 00:16:17 I guess there's more than two reasons, like four reasons. So, but also it goes to bird seed. 00:16:23 Yeah. Here, there's a small percentage goes to bird seed. There's a couple bird seed plants here in the state 00:16:28 and up into North Dakota. But that's a relatively small market. Uh, Mexico used to be, uh, our largest market for years for, 00:16:37 uh, their, uh, hogs, uh, on their side of the border. But actually China has surged to the forefront and they are by far the biggest customer 00:16:48 that we have for grain sorghum. Yeah. Now that might change, uh, here we are recording this in February of 2025. 00:16:54 There could be some trade disputes, there could be some of that, but by and large, what 80 90% you think 00:16:59 of the US grain sorghum crop goes to China. I think some of the last stuff I read is Yeah, it's right at over 80 plus percent goes to China 00:17:07 And to the person that's, uh, wanting to be educated even more about this, you and I talked before we hit the record button, a bunch 00:17:14 of it goes to booze. Yes. Yeah, it goes to Baiju. It's actually the most consumed alcohol drink in the world. And I'm sure until now, 95, 90 9% 00:17:26 of the people listening never knew it existed. Yeah. And uh, they have a ous appetite for it. That's where it's not just for their hogs. 00:17:34 The bulk of it actually goes to, uh, being fermented for baiju. It's actually preferred over using rice. 00:17:42 Uh, they've actually found that our grain sorghum is the best thing and it can be fermented for weeks 00:17:49 or actually for years. So that can make it anywhere where it's the equivalent of Mad Dog 2020 to Pappy Van Winkle. 00:17:57 Yeah. So it can be bureau Crummy. I, I, people I know that have gone to China for business talk about drinking crappy booze. 00:18:03 Apparently that's the stuff that didn't get the right treatment. Yeah. Uh, there's stuff that's fermented for years that, 00:18:09 uh, it's thousands of dollars per bottle. It's very select. And actually every, uh, region has its own unique recipes. 00:18:17 Uh, they're actually starting to, uh, export it outside of China. I was, uh, reading a real in depth article on that. 00:18:25 And, uh, the, uh, versions coming out of China, now they are on par with pricing with, uh, some of the world's best whiskeys, bourbons, 00:18:35 and cognacs out there. So on the, the market is you got it handled right there. You've got elevators, they'll take it. 00:18:43 You're just playing the basis game. You don't forward contract us. Uh, we will not. On the physical product. 00:18:50 The, the way we do our risk management, uh, how we will manage risk is there, is, there is not actual options 00:18:58 or that we can use for managing risk. So we'll use corn futures. Yep. And you use a one to one. So, uh, with what we're gonna try to push for, for yield, 00:19:09 we're gonna treat it like a corn crop market it like a corn crop. And we will use, uh, our, you know, calls, puts 00:19:17 anything option related or actual futures. We are going to use corn for marketing on our grain sorghum for managing our risk. Okay. 00:19:26 So if a person somewhere is considering this, and they're gonna probably be where it's dry, meaning west of the Mississippi, most likely, 00:19:32 because this is not something that's probably gonna work as well in Ohio or Indiana or Im Eastern Corn Belt. 00:19:37 Uh, unless you have a place to go with it, you don't have to change any of your equipment. 00:19:41 You, you can use a drill, you can use a, uh, a normal planter, you use a normal grain head, uh, use normal sprayer. 00:19:47 There's no, there's no new infrastructure requirements. If you want to produce grain sorghum, we Bought two new sets of, uh, sorghum cups for our, 00:19:57 for our two high-speed planters so we can plant it. That is the only investment that we have. Sorghum Cup? 00:20:05 Yes. Drain sorghum cups. They have small dimples on 'em and then they're, they're made differently for a electric dive planter Okay. 00:20:12 For a normal vacuum planter. So we bought two sets of sorghum cups as they're referred to, to put in our planters for when we are running on Milo. 00:20:21 That's our only investment is for equipment. By the way, since it's at the top of the head, you put the head, it's the top of the plant. 00:20:29 Do you put your, um, do you put your grain head way above the ground and leave the rest of the stock? We will lock our heads rigid. 00:20:37 And we're, we are, we are wanting, that's another bonus for us. We feel, uh, we will be leaving residue 00:20:45 and we'll use that residue. We will plant our no-till winter wheat right behind it, uh, into the milo stalks. Okay. 00:20:53 So this will get harvested like September to October. Yeah. Yep. When we're running on everything else. So it, this doesn't, this doesn't come, 00:21:01 do you plant it in the spring and it takes until September before it's ready to go? 00:21:06 Yeah. Mm-hmm. And do you, do you grab this So you're, you're not, you don't just put the, you you do cut the whole plant off? 00:21:13 Yeah, we'll cut the head and just below it, but we will be leaving, uh, stubble standing and that'll help give wind protection 00:21:20 and to catch snow for our winter wheat. Uh, Okay. So there, there is also gonna be like four to six inches 00:21:27 of stubble above the ground. There Could be anywheres from six inches to well over a foot. And 00:21:33 You're gonna be able to, you're gonna be able to drill wheat into that Absolutely. Because that's, 00:21:37 uh, secured into the ground. So, okay. You're going into the standing stubble. Yeah. So you will, 00:21:44 there will be stubble there that'll help catch snow, which is good for moisture. And then that will, that stubble is not so great 00:21:50 that it will preclude, uh, or get in the way of germination on your wheat. Exactly. Yeah. 00:21:55 There'll be very little residue on the ground. Okay. Because there's not a lot of residue from the head and the bulk of the leaves will still be on stock 00:22:04 and uh, it'll Actually be good for wildlife cover still, wouldn't it? Pardon? It'll still be good 00:22:08 for wildlife cover if it's that tall. Yeah, exactly. And then, uh, that'll help, uh, block the wind, catch snow 00:22:16 and it'll help us on building organic matter. Uh, love soybeans, but we can't build organic matter with soybeans. 00:22:24 Right. You know, here we have the option to, to build, keep building with a high residue crop, build organic matter. 00:22:31 So one thing, you're, you run pretty lean. You've got a couple hired guys, you got you and your brother, and then you hire out, uh, 00:22:36 custom harvesting and you even hire out some planting of soybeans. This does not, you know, the knock on corn, 00:22:42 high yield corn requires also, uh, lots of trucks and lots of manpower and lots of bushels and capacity and all that. 00:22:49 This is not gonna make you have to hire up a bunch of people and you, you're not gonna have to change a lot 00:22:55 of things on the rest of the farm. Um, we will not have to change anything. Uh, we're hoping we have the best problem in the world 00:23:02 and we raise a lot of bushels. So Yeah, we want to raise a lot more bushels than we do with soybeans. So we'll have some more grain to handle problem. So there 00:23:10 Might be some storage issues. There might be some storage. The worst problem is you've, you've got, you, you don't know where to put some stuff. 00:23:16 Yeah. But that'll, that'll be a great problem to have. We'll figure that out in a hurry. Right. Just go and start rent renting 00:23:22 or just, uh, pay for some storage at the elevator or, or sell a little bit under what you want. We'll figure out a way. All 00:23:29 Those things, if someone listening is this wants to consider this, what do that, you used to grow it. You haven't grown it in a long time. 00:23:36 You're coming back into the game. You're not intimidated 'cause you grew sorghum when you were a kid. 00:23:40 Uh, or you're not cons. What about somebody that's saying, you know what, maybe I should do that. 00:23:44 What do they need to know? Try it step outside your box of comfort. You know, that's what we're doing. 00:23:52 Uh, we decided it's finally time. Uh, we, we love raising soybeans, but, uh, just too many years. 00:23:59 We missed that one rain in August. That'll really give us the good yield or make the extra passes we're doing in the R state just 00:24:06 really pay well for us. Uh, our corn and wheat, we look at our 10 year average. It just keeps climbing. Mm-hmm. 00:24:13 Our field, average farm average just keeps climbing, climbing, climbing on soybeans. We're, we're like a lot of other growers that have really, 00:24:22 uh, voice their displeasure with, they're just stagnating. They, they've gotten to a certain point 00:24:29 and the growth is very slow to minimal, uh, to non-existent. And we're looking, it's like, hey, it's like, 00:24:37 uh, we wanna make money. We love soybeans. We're not gonna quit raising soybeans. Yeah. We're just gonna potentially 00:24:44 displace part of those acres. So the big benefit here is diversification. Uh, it's not expensive to put this in. 00:24:49 It's not like something, it's not like a specialty crop that takes $20,000 an acres, some crazy thing like that. It's expensive, it's inexpensive to put in. 00:24:55 It gives you diversification. It doesn't necessarily diversify your workload because it still has 00:24:59 to get planted here when the conditions are fit in the spring. So it's about being planted at the same time 00:25:04 as corn and or soy. Right. Yeah. You can go later with Milo. If you, if we got held up on weather, uh, 00:25:11 we in our environment, we could push it right up to the 4th of July. Okay. So that's the benefit here is, 00:25:17 So this, this gets done after the corn and soy. This can be the last thing to get planted. We can, We, we will be doing it at the same time, 00:25:25 but we do have the flexibility that we can go later, which, uh, we can go much later with grain sorghum than we can 00:25:33 with corn soybeans in our environment because it loves heat. Yeah. And we get the heat. Yeah. 00:25:39 Right. So, and never push it. So it almost might be harming it if you went out there in April, if you had such a thing where an April was fit in Gregory, 00:25:45 South Dakota, it probably wouldn't behoove you to put grains. Yeah. We, we would not be planting in April. 00:25:50 We would wait till into May. Uh, we, that's when we would do early corn and do early soybeans. 00:25:57 And then you don't have to change a lot in the way of personnel. Don't change the way of equipment. 00:26:00 You do have to, uh, restructure some, so, uh, some storage, et cetera. Uh, stupid question, is this a genetically engineered crop 00:26:08 or a non GMO crop? And does it matter for you for marketing Or practices? 00:26:13 We would be, uh, non GMO there are some new chemistries out. There's uh, uh, a new ifl, 00:26:21 but it's, uh, where you can come in post, but it's not, uh, genetics are not bred for our area. They're too, they're too long in maturity. 00:26:30 And then there's uh, another one where you can apply a post chemical, uh, that's a little bit different. 00:26:37 So there are two of them finally that have been adapted, bred over to where they are GMO. 00:26:42 Yep. But the bulk of the market is, is non GMO. And so does that matter on marketing? Does there, is there a premium is associated 00:26:51 with GMO versus non GMOs? Non GMO worth more. Right now there's no premium nor penalty because There's not enough of, Uh, the one thing we're going 00:27:01 to do is we look on our wheat and our other crops. How the way we manage it, we're getting a better product and it mills better, it tests better, et cetera, et cetera. 00:27:13 It's more preferred when we negotiate. Uh, we are actually going to do some tests, do have it grounded a lab and do analysis on it 00:27:24 after harvest and see how we compare versus the standard mean. Mm-hmm. And if we are coming in a lot higher, then it's time 00:27:33 to start try to contact a trade group and see if we can do something that we could market direct, get a premium out of it there. 00:27:41 Interesting. All right. So you might and and that's, do the elevators even know to ask for that? Are you going 00:27:48 No, we're gonna do it on our own. Okay. So you gotta try and find a buyer that's gonna pay you the premium. 00:27:53 Yeah. But we'll have volume. But What's the component? What's the component that 00:27:57 they, you think they're looking for? Sugar, pro protein, We're gonna, we're gonna find out, 00:28:03 I'm gonna do more research on that and see how we can, uh, do the best job that we can to get the highest quality product. 00:28:09 We, uh, again, we want to be, uh, a vendor of preferred choice when it comes to any of our grain. We go and look Why not, or my low 00:28:17 Go and look it up. I did a wheat episode with Lee where we talked about getting a commanding a premium for protein content and wheat. 00:28:24 And so that's been about a year ago that we did that. So go and check it out because Lee talked about how to boost yield, used boost protein within the wheat, uh, 00:28:32 to then command a premium at the elevator. All right. Any other things I need to know? You're gonna put 10% of your acres into this, 00:28:38 maybe more if you've got a wheat failure and here we're recording this in February, by sometime in April, you're gonna know if the winter was harsh 00:28:46 on wheat and you might be growing the acres, you might expand the acres of grain sorghum because of, uh, wheat failure. 00:28:53 Uh, yeah. We could have potentially a worst case scenario, a massive increase in grain sorghum acres. 00:29:01 Uh, we already made the commitment that if we do have wheat acres fail any acres, we're not gonna add acres into soybeans. 00:29:09 We're gonna do it with grain sorghum. Got it. And there's another benefit. You said you can grow, you can increase organic matter 00:29:16 because grain sorghum has a lot of fodder. Uh, and so there's a lot of benefits to this. Yeah, yeah. We feel it could, 00:29:22 it could be a very good fit for us. Got it. His name is Lee Lubert. I'm Dam Mason. We're talking about the, uh, the changes he make in 2025 00:29:30 and it's all about grain sorghum. So I, I hope you were as geeked out and interested in grain sorghum as I was. 00:29:35 'cause I like learning about this stuff and I hope you join right along and learn along with us and that can help your farming operation 00:29:41 if you like keeping up. Remember there are literally hundreds of episodes just like this. It's a free library at Extreme Ag Farm 00:29:47 of cutting the curve plus videos that these guys shoot in the field. Plus then the stuff we do at these field days, when I go 00:29:52 to the field days with them, we talk about stuff that you can take to your farm and apply it immediately. Also, the new show, the Grainery at shot at my farm, 00:29:59 at my on farm, uh, hangout. The guys come there, we talk about, uh, cool stuff. So it's match like a round table sitting there. 00:30:06 And we invite you to figuratively to pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink and, and join us in the conversation. You can find that at, uh, extreme Ag YouTube channel 00:30:13 where you can find it on Acres tv. And you can find all this stuff at Extreme Ag Farm. So next time, he's Lee, I'm Damian. Thanks for being here. 00:30:20 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme Ag Farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 766 00:30:28.885 --> 00:30:30.165