00:00 We're asking the question, how far can you vary from your grower standard practice on your fertility program 00:00:05 and still get yield? In fact, make a bunch of positive return on it. That's the question in this episode 00:00:11 of extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome to Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:00:18 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. This episode is brought to you by Simon Innovation, 00:00:25 protect your crops and maximize yield with a full lineup of innovative precision tools engineered 00:00:31 to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of your sprayer. Visit simon innovations.com and start getting more ROI out of your sprayer. 00:00:39 And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme X, cutting the curve. 00:00:46 I've got a great one for you today because we're recapping a field trial that was done in conjunction 00:00:51 with Agro Liquid at Matt Miles Farms. We took four different fertility programs submitted by four different people. 00:00:58 Uh, head agronomist with Aquid, Stephanie Delinko, you've seen her on plenty of episodes I've done with her Galen Beer with Aquid. 00:01:06 They both put in a different fertility program. Matt Miles, who's on this call, put the actual trial together. 00:01:13 And then Kelly Garrett from Iowa put in what he had as recommendations. You can imagine four different trials. 00:01:19 And this was not like two rows of corn. This was legit, it was done in Arkansas. And they said, Hey, here's what I think we're gonna do. 00:01:26 Matt put in what is his grower standard practice? Each of the other three said, we're gonna tweak it and put in this recommendation on fertility. 00:01:34 The idea is in a sub $4 corn environment, how many tweaks can you make so that you still get the yield, 00:01:42 but then you get the return on investment by putting in fertility in a little different way. So anyway, Stephanie, you're the, 00:01:50 the probably the the go-to on the fertility on this. But I want to talk to Matt first since he's the one that put it in. 00:01:56 This is kind of a cool trial. This is probably my favorite trial that was done in any of the field days. 00:02:01 Various things that happened at field days. This one's different than most. It wasn't just, hey, here's how big my ears are. 00:02:07 Tell me about the trial. Yeah, the trial trial was pretty unique to me. You know, Kelly and I talked about it 00:02:13 once during the season. He said, you're gonna be mad at me if I kick your anyway. I'm not gonna say that on what he said podcast, but, 00:02:20 and I said, no, actually my feelings are gonna be hurt a little bit because you come down in my backyard and done it, 00:02:25 but it's also gonna save me money. And it just kind of trickled along with Stephanie and Galen both, you know, we, 00:02:31 we joked about it at the field day, but I knew then looking at what I was looking at, that I wasn't getting a return outta what I was putting out, 00:02:39 which is a good thing for me to learn. Before we go to Stephanie to talk about some of the, the more agronomy types. 00:02:46 Galen, you and I at each of the field days have talked about, and by the way, if you're listening or watching this 00:02:51 and you didn't make it to any of our field days, go on the Extreme ag.farm website. We've, we've got a bunch of clips 00:02:56 and videos that we do to bring the field day to you. You, but you really should have attended five amazing field days. 00:03:02 Max was at the end of June. Kelly's in the middle of June, uh, great education. But at each one of these field days when, 00:03:09 when Galen would take the stage and, and do a few quick minutes about what they wanted to have as takeaways for the farmers that came to the field days. 00:03:17 You talked about the economics and you said, let's face the reality. We might be in a sub $4 corn environment you could spend 00:03:24 until you, you lose the farm. You also could be really smart and tweak some adjustments to, you know, 00:03:31 tweak some things to your program. And you covered this at each one of the field days, but this one was the f the favorite one 00:03:37 because you actually put what you recommended into that trial. Yeah. You know, we've, uh, we've talked at all 00:03:45 of those situations about is the profit at the top end or is there a point of diminishing returns that is never an exact science, Damien, 00:03:56 and we've talked about that. And so this is just us kind of matching wits, I guess, and deciding where those diminishing returns are. 00:04:06 Um, and I mean, to my own point, my yield was the highest. My profit was not. 00:04:12 And so where did I hit that point of diminishing returns and overspend, uh, that could have, um, you know, 00:04:20 saved me a little bit of money and held my yield up there. And the purpose of this is that education process to say, 00:04:27 don't be, don't be so stuck. It, it is. It's like we, I grew up on a farm as you know, and I'm still involved in farming today 00:04:36 and it's almost easy for me to indoctrinate myself to my own way of thinking and, and things like this kind of get you out of that 00:04:45 to see if there are other ways that you can, you can do things. The benefit of this was that, um, 00:04:52 we've all been to field days. You know, we work in ag, we have field days. I'm gonna go back to being a DuPont intern in 1991. 00:04:59 And, you know, we went to field days and what they usually did was talked about, uh, weed control and how big the crop was. 00:05:05 This one talked about the money. Kelly, I'm gonna go to you and we're gonna wrap with, uh, we're gonna get back 00:05:11 to Stephanie 'cause she's gonna talk about, 'cause she's the winner. I'll go ahead and tell you right now. 00:05:14 Dear listener, she won the competition, but anyway, they got beat by a girl. Anyway, Kelly, you're the money guy. 00:05:21 Um, we just recorded an episode where we talked all about revenue per acre and net revenue per acre. 00:05:27 This is right there. Net revenue per acre, this whole thing. You put in a different package of fertility than Galen did, 00:05:34 than Stephanie did, than Matt did. And you, you dialed it back from grower standard practice. I'm looking here, you you recommended almost $50 less 00:05:44 of fertility spend per acre than Matt's grower standard practice. Yes. And, and a lot of that was nitrogen. 00:05:51 Uh, we, we very much, you know, we've talked a lot about it using the SAP test, trying to make it very detailed, uh, type of conversation, decision 00:06:01 and balance the plant. We wanna make sure that we're using all the nitrogen. The term we use is assimilation. 00:06:06 And that, you know, I think we put on 50 gallons of UAN. Matt would know that we, we put on 150 pounds 00:06:13 of nitrogen was all we put on. We put it on later in the season than I think what Matt thought, uh, was normal for down there. 00:06:20 Things like that. And, you know, that's, that's the reason we use the SAP test. Damien, I, I can't speak enough about that 00:06:27 because we feel that now we can make a very informed, educated decision. By the way, if you are listening to this, I encourage you 00:06:35 to watch it because I'm holding my hand the breakout and the numbers. And we're gonna have, will the producer of all 00:06:41 of our episodes put this graph on here so you can see it with your own two eyes because 00:06:46 it's definitely worth looking at. Uh, I'm gonna give you the quick and then we'll get to Stephanie. 00:06:49 The winner of the competition, uh, grower standard practice on fertility. Matt would've spent almost $195. 00:06:56 Uh, that's obviously per acre, $194 96 cents. Kelly's recommendation was the second cheapest. He recommended a program that spent $145 and 67 cents. 00:07:08 Galen was gonna spend or did spend $156 and 60 cents per acre. Stephanie spent the least amount 00:07:15 and got the biggest return for doing so. $141 and 14 cents. What's fascinating to me is that, Stephanie, you spent 53, 00:07:24 almost $54 less per acre. And then, then, uh, Matt's grosser standard practice and you actually got a bushel 00:07:32 and a third, uh, you, you got 75 pounds more corn out of doing. So talk to me. Well, I think one thing that was interesting about all 00:07:40 of this is we did all yield pretty similar. There was about three bushel difference between that high yield in that low yield. 00:07:46 And that just shows that no matter, you know, what agronomist you're working with, you know, you can get to that same yield, you know, 00:07:53 in this case four different ways. Um, you know, I just got the, the lucky end I guess, that I spent the least dollars to get that. 00:08:02 So that put me ahead when we came to that final calculation by, you know, I wasn't the top yield, 00:08:08 but I was the lowest spend. So that combination made me, made me the winner here. Uh, Matt, you said before, hit the record button. 00:08:17 All of these, all of these, your grower standard practice and then Stephanie is again, 53, 00:08:22 almost $54 difference on the fertility spend, keeping everything else the same, the seed, the diesel, the trips across the field, the return 00:08:31 to capital, all those things. The same $54, almost 53 to $44 less spend. And and you still, all of your, all 00:08:40 of your practices yield an excess of 240 40 bushel corn. You said I can make money at 240 bushel corn period. 00:08:47 Why the hell wouldn't you take her fertility program and get 240 bushel corn versus yours? Is there something that you're worried about next 00:08:53 year, year after year, after? Is there a reason that you would stick with yours versus hers? 00:08:58 Well, in this specific instance, and I'm not making excuses, okay, um, we, it was a Skippy stand. 00:09:05 We actually kept the field because it was the agri liquid plot. So we destroyed all the corner around it. We kept the plot. 00:09:12 Uh, stand counts were very uneven and were, and were lower than what we intended to have. Some of the plots add a little bit better 00:09:20 stand count than the others. I don't know that that made any difference. You know, it depends on emergence. 00:09:24 So you can have a better stand count and uneven emergence and it hurts you. Uh, we had some wind damage coming in. 00:09:30 It affected some of 'em a little worse than the other one. So why would I not take this? 00:09:35 Uh, windrow asked me the same thing on a call with Kelly. Said, well, you gonna do all this next year? 00:09:39 And I said, no, I'm not, definitely not changing. You know, that's a knee-jerk situation. Now, do I think that I can implement this into, 00:09:49 am I gonna do more acres of it? Absolutely, yes. You know, this year was a different year. Kelly put all of his fertilizer out at one time 00:09:58 with the spring range we had and the soles that we have, we leaked some of that nitrogen out, that even Stephanie put some out earlier. 00:10:04 Galen didn't. So if Stephanie had to put all of the hers out at one time, it was the perfect timing for the, for the application. 00:10:12 If Stephanie had have done that, she may have beat this even more because she would've had the full 00:10:16 use of all of her nitrogen. So you can't take a one year trial and knee jerk into a a hundred percent change your farm. 00:10:23 Now, I will do that on a three year, sometimes on a two. If it's, if it's a good firm result in two different years, 00:10:31 I'm gonna increase, I'm gonna increase those acres each year that it beats me. So what this has done is made me open my eyes to the fact 00:10:38 that, hey, you know, maybe these Folgers are not the thing I I, they're farming more like I did when I started with corn. 00:10:47 And then I started getting with, with the program here and trying to increase in furrow and put out fos. And I'm not so sure in my area 00:10:57 that they're paying like they will in areas where you have different, uh, different climate. So I'm, I'm very, very confused on where to go from here. 00:11:05 Uh, as far as a farm wide, You're very confused. We just gave you the numbers. I said we're gonna put this graph out here. 00:11:13 It's very simple. You do what Stephanie Slingo tells you to do and you'll make more money. 00:11:17 Is that what you want your farmer to do? If he had a test on your farm, I want him to do what's right by the land. 00:11:23 I want him to do what's right for him economically so that he can be here and thrive another year, another year, another year. 00:11:29 Because I think you're, that's what your point is. Here's what I wanna know about, uh, by the way, if Matt seems a little testy, dear listener, 00:11:36 he's only had 10 hours of sleep in the last two and a half days. He's trying to beat a hurricane in harvest. 00:11:40 So he, he might just be a little testier than usual. He's always, you know what? Get a hold of him in the wintertime. 00:11:45 He's always in jovial happy mode. Um, answer me this, um, Galen you were nodding your head that you think it's, 00:11:53 it is a knee jerk reaction. You wouldn't recommend that Matt go full tilt and just change everything. 00:12:00 But the truth is somewhere in the middle, somewhere between what Stephanie did and somewhere 00:12:03 between his grower standard practice. Is it time for another trial or what would you do next year? Yeah, uh, it is time for another trial. 00:12:12 And, and look, Stephanie and I are brainstorming things we can do next year that kind of might be a little bit of a continuation 00:12:19 of this educational going forward. But the, the, the, the reason I was nodding my head is, uh, you know, statistics tell you don't make radical decisions 00:12:29 based on a small sample set. And this was one location, one year of weather events. Matt's looking at it, right? 00:12:37 The thing is, is that you gotta look at it and at least question trials like this are just for you to stop and go. 00:12:44 Is there something I've overlooked? And I, and I'm an outside in plant manager? In other words, I'm gonna do everything through the soil 00:12:52 that I can possibly do. I'm not a big out outside in foliar guy. Uh, that doesn't mean they're in the place for it. 00:13:00 And it doesn't mean that I won't learn to do that going forward. But I always challenge myself, uh, inside out, 00:13:06 reduce trips over the field. I like simplicity. Matt alluded to the fact I did one big shot in nitrogen. What if it would've rained and flooded that field then? 00:13:15 So there's puts and takes here. And Matt's point about don't, don't change wholesale based on one year. 00:13:22 Yes, we learned something this year, but is that replicable over the long haul? Matt, did either of these, okay, 00:13:29 we got four different things. And obviously there's a big difference in the spend, but that's just talk about the product. 00:13:35 Did her program have $20 more of a application cost, uh, machines across the field? Did any of them did do any of these numbers? 00:13:47 When I say $141 of fertility spend to your $195 of fertility spend, and then Kelly and Galen were in between those two. 00:13:55 Do any of them carry an extra $30 of hassle, manpower, cost? Uh, if any of 'em be, it would've been mine. 00:14:05 I don't think Stephanie did any. Stephanie, you didn't do a foer? I don't remember a hundred percent. 00:14:10 I don't think she did a foer, which I did. Which increased my cost. I say that. Yes, it did. It increased my cross, uh, my cost. 00:14:19 'cause we, we actually did that with an airplane. So, And that's not on the sheet right here. This is just product. This is not, uh, the, the application. 00:14:27 I mean, if you do give yourself a return for application, machinery, manpower, et 00:14:32 Cetera, that could get greater. Absolutely. Okay, Kelly. Um, you oftentimes have said, I think that we are gonna continue to learn 00:14:41 that we've over applied fertility, we are not getting it in the plant, et cetera, et cetera. You were conservative. You were the second 00:14:48 lowest spend out here. The, the takeaway, I think I continues to reinforce. You did a nitrogen reduction study last year. 00:14:58 This continues to reinforce your thing that we've just been spending too much money on fertility probably for our whole careers and maybe even your 00:15:05 dad's and your grandpa's. I, I agree. You know, we've never had a really good way to measure it. Um, and we, we always wanna make sure we have enough on, 00:15:15 and it's, you know, a lot of, a lot of us, myself included, my farm included my family. 00:15:20 It's the moron method. Moron is always better. And now we're trying to get into that. Uh, we're, we're trying to become into that mentality, 00:15:27 you know, and, and I gotta give a lot of credit to Mike Evans and Mike Windrow. We try to be as detailed as possible and, 00:15:35 and spend only what we're gonna get a, a back on and get a return on investment. Uh, we actually, 00:15:42 because of the, uh, weather mat was having things like that, we actually cut some things out of that 00:15:47 that we were gonna add. You know, it'd be interesting to know, would they have added yield 00:15:51 and added an ROI, uh, you know, I, I don't know. Um, yeah, Matt, Matt shouldn't make it change based on this one, uh, 00:16:00 one test, but I, knowing Matt the way I will, he'll continue to try this and coming down there 00:16:06 and using the, uh, using the practices that we're using up here in Iowa, I didn't know what was gonna happen. 00:16:12 I didn't know that we would make 140 bushel corn necessarily because it's such a different geography. 00:16:18 I was just excited to be involved for the simple education to see what would happen and some 00:16:22 of the things we learned down there, we'll try up here, you know, because, because of how we're learning and, you know, that's the value of extreme ag. 00:16:30 That's the value of working with agro liquid is to, to go to maths, go to temples, go to Johnny's 00:16:36 and all those different geographies and then, uh, uh, try all the different research that you have and, and see what correlates. 00:16:43 Well, Damon, I I wanna say something to add to Kelly's and what, what you're talking about here. I know you didn't call on me. 00:16:50 I've been watching Kelly do this, you know, and for since extreme Act started, or since he started this process, I had like 212 units 00:16:59 of oxygen on, on that 240 bushels. You know what I would've had on it five years ago, 288, I would've had 1.2 pounds of nitrogen per bushel of corn. 00:17:10 And, and so I I, I'm not tooting my horn, but I've improved that just from watching these things happen with Kelly and Kelly's program down to the two 14 00:17:20 or two 12, whatever it was. So just imagine what the spread would've been with my old school, 1.2 pounds 00:17:27 of nitrogen per bushel versus what it is today. It would've been, I don't know how many more dollars a lot. So it's safe to say, I just read some quick little math 00:17:36 with my calculator that is given to me when I went to Purdue in 1988. Um, kids, this is 00:17:42 what a calculator looked like almost 40 years ago. Anyway, is it safe to say before it's on your phone? Is that a 25% reduction on nitrogen just, 00:17:51 just in the last few years? Two 80 to two 10 is a 25% reduction. Yeah, I mean that's, that's, that's, that's remarkable. 00:17:58 So, and the point is, and we might have evidence that you could go another 20% less than that, right? 00:18:06 Well, I was at one 50 and Matt was at two 10, so yeah, there's another 25% that I cut out from where he's at now. 00:18:12 Kelly is 52% of my, what my total would've been five years ago. Yeah, He's half, he's half the nitrogen 00:18:20 that I used five years ago. So Kelly's point, he is made at least on a dozen calls, the holy grail of American agriculture. 00:18:27 You've gotta grow corn to grow corn, you've gotta throw out more in nitrogen. That's what the moron method, et cetera. 00:18:33 And what we just proved is, is in, in a short period of five years, we could, we've proven we can cut nitrogen by half and still not sacrifice, yield. 00:18:42 Yeah. That's the takeaway. Stephanie Kelly talked about geography. Geography. We got everything from Oklahoma to miss to Arkansas to 00:18:51 Michigan for you, to Iowa, for Kelly. We all deal with farmers and we know that the favorite thing I'd say is 00:18:58 that won't work here. You're a central Michigan farmer. You and your husband are a central Michigan farmers. You put together fertility pr, you covered the United States 00:19:08 for agro liquid for crying out loud. But you've heard at every meeting you've gone to, yeah, that'll work up there in Indiana, 00:19:15 but that won't work over here in Nebraska. You hear it all. The point is, you put together a fertility program that made money 00:19:22 and made 242 bushel corn in Arkansas. That's right. And really, you know, you hear that all the time is it's not gonna work, 00:19:32 you know, in my backyard. You also hear it when you switch from crops. You know, guys, that okay, it works on corn, 00:19:37 but it doesn't work on peanuts. You know, in reality, fertility is fertility and plants are plants. 00:19:42 You know, you just need to go back to those basics and look at the soil, figure out what the crop needs are, and then address those, um, accordingly. 00:19:51 And so really, it's not as scary as it seems when you switch geographies or you switch crops. Um, it's, you know, pretty simple fertility 00:19:58 in plant management. You're nicer than me. I was actually picking on farmers telling 'em that they're, that they're all too close-minded, 00:20:04 and they all wanna pretend that it doesn't work there. We sat into Kelly's tool shed two years ago when you and I recorded an episode 00:20:11 and we addressed this exact topic of, that won't work here. You went back to the basics of, well, 00:20:16 agronomy is still agronomy and plant science is still plant science. There's climatological differences. 00:20:22 Yes, there's, uh, soil type differences. But those two things, Kelly, Well, the, again, the value 00:20:30 of a peer group like extreme ag and it won't work here. Yeah, I'd never heard of soybean desiccation before Matt taught it to us. 00:20:37 And now it's one of the greatest things I've ever done. And all of us on here are friends. We all talk about our farms. 00:20:43 Stephanie's texting all of us a couple days ago, 'cause her husband Ryan desiccated beans for the first time. And Stephanie looks calm, cool and collected, 00:20:50 but she's nervous as hell about these beans that they killed we're, and Matt, 00:20:57 Matt didn't think there's any way you could raise 240 bushel corn with sixten of nitrogen. 00:21:01 Stephanie and I had never heard of soy desiccation before. And you know, we've talked with, uh, 00:21:06 Galen about some different PGRs and stuff that we lose that we use and things like that. So this idea that it doesn't work here, 00:21:14 we are really eradicating that thought with extreme ag because Oklahoma, Arkansas, Michigan, Iowa, and we're all sharing practices 00:21:21 that nobody had ever done before. Extreme ag. Yeah, no, it's fun for me. And obviously I am picking on farmers 00:21:25 because I've been hearing it my whole life, just like we all have. That won't work. I've seen it from township to township. 00:21:30 Well, you can do that over in Union Township, but that won't work over here in Lancaster Township. I'm like, how could it be that damn different? 00:21:37 Okay, the soil, you've got a different soil type. That's it. We give Matt a hard time for ing. 00:21:42 And I tell you what, I think Stephanie's his cousin 'cause she's worried about these beans right now. I promise you. 00:21:48 I like that, Matt. You've got Stephanie worried. Well, I warn people all the time. It's not an art. I mean, it's not a science, 00:21:56 it's an art when you're desiccating. So it will drive. Sometimes I I Tell story, uh, speaking of each of us go through here. 00:22:05 'cause this is a great topic. We don't need to beat the, we don't need to beat the horse to death, but I just think this is amazing that we, 00:22:10 we had a $58, uh, difference in the return. That's the other thing. If you, if Will's putting this graphic back up here, 00:22:18 I told you there's about $54 difference on the spend. And then if you're looking at the graph, you might question, well then why does it show a $58 57 cents, uh, 00:22:28 variation from Grower Standard? Who wants to speak to that? Matt Galen the point on that is, Yeah, so that, 00:22:35 and I think that is that the point there is there was a difference in the spend. Um, the that's 00:22:43 $58 might be someone's profit this year. I mean, let's, let's be honest. And, and our economics 00:22:51 and our win was based on the Chicago Board of Trade cash price today. It was harvested. So I do so 00:22:58 that people don't think we're f fledging a number there. But Yeah, so if someone, if you look at this graph, the one 00:23:04 that I'm holding here that we are asking our producer to put on the screen so you can look at it and analyze it. If you're wondering, it says crop value per unit. 00:23:11 They had to have some sort of a number. So they used $3 65 cents, which was cash price. Chicago Board of Traders. 00:23:18 We used to call it CME Group, um, on Day of Harvest. That's why that's there. Go ahead. Yeah, but I mean, that's your challenge isn't, 00:23:26 and uh, at Chad Henderson's Field day, we did plus for four, six and $8 corn for this same purpose. 00:23:32 But the reason is, is when we started the year, I don't know that any of us thought on Harvest Day $3 00:23:38 and 65 cent corn would populate that spot. So it is hard. And that, and this is just again, 00:23:46 us thinking about those costs, uh, and, and how they will impact our bottom line. So I know here where I'm at, I mean, 00:23:54 $50 an acre probably would be a big win this year. Now can input costs adjust? Can I make different decisions? Yeah, I can. But that's, that's why we do these sorts 00:24:05 of things, is to help that process going forward because we may not bounce back to $6 corn by next year. You know, so these, these things, these learnings need 00:24:16 to continue into the future. Galen, I, I'm not the expert on the markets, but you said we may not bounce back. 00:24:23 I might just, Kelly's the gambler on here, I will take half of my net worth and gamble that we will not get to sit. 00:24:32 Well, you better make sure what the basis is. 'cause what if someone has a $3 over basis dam, you're gonna be paying them a lot. 00:24:39 That only happens. And Matt's part of the world where they get $3 over a basis, we know that it doesn't happen up here. 00:24:44 He, because he harvests corn into August. Um, big takeaway, Stephanie, you're the technician. You've, you've put together literally, 00:24:53 I'm sure thousands of studies. It's a big takeaway on this one here. Just the money. Is it just the money or is there another takeaway? 00:25:01 No, it's not just the money. The money, you know, is what growers are concerned about. You know, and that's the fun part of the conversation. 00:25:07 Uh, but like I said earlier, it's, you know, understanding that you can get to the same yield outcome 00:25:13 in a number of different ways. And that kind of goes back to earlier, you know, can I do this in my backyard 00:25:19 or I can't do it in my backyard. Um, in reality, if you know that agronomy and know what nutrients are needed, you can get to 00:25:25 that same endpoint in a number of different ways. And so all of us had different programs, all different, different approaches. 00:25:32 We also got right around that 240 bushel corn. Um, which is good. And so you can do that whether you're in Iowa or Michigan or Arkansas. 00:25:40 Um, I think that take home is just understand that agronomic side and, you know, put those practices out there 00:25:47 to see if you can get that yield. Kelly, did you ever think that you'd be, uh, you know, growing up in Iowa corn, corn, corn, 00:25:53 that there'd be a guy in Arkansas that can vary a fertility program by $60 of spend and still get 240 00:26:03 or 243, 244 bushels of corn? Isn't that remarkable? Yes, it's remarkable. I wish I could raise 243 bushel corn every year. 00:26:13 And then the other part of it is, besides cementing your belief that we have overspent on fertility 00:26:19 and over applied fertility, is there any other takeaway from this trial for you? It is, it's that you can need to continue 00:26:26 to educate yourself on what's possible on your land and your farm. You know, we we're doing trials every year. 00:26:33 Matt's doing trials every year. Yep. And to, to continue to do those trials, to, um, to learn it. 00:26:41 Never, never stop trying to get better. Uh, Matt taught us to desiccate with Gramoxone. We're we're desiccating right now with some copper. Yeah. 00:26:50 You know, I mean, we're just trying, you know, trying to do more things, trying to learn and to do better things like that. 00:26:55 Uh, the, the continued use of more and more calcium. I got a book right here beside me on my desk when weeds talk. 00:27:01 It talks about when you have available calcium in the soil, how much easier and better your weed control gets. 00:27:08 You know, I mean we, uh, extreme ag has opened my eyes that I don't know very much and, and I need to learn more. 00:27:15 And I, and I still don't know very, I look at what we've learned in this trial and I still don't know very much. That's the, 00:27:21 Well, the 20 with the 20-year-old sleeveless shirt tough guy. Look at the 50-year-old version of yourself 00:27:27 and say, this guy's geeked out. He's reading books about weeds talking. I mean, there, there's there, 00:27:32 there's some maturation there. Kelly Ab absolutely. I wish I would've studied this hard when I went to school. Matt. Big takeaway 00:27:39 and then also adjustment you're going to make in 2025 because of this field, uh, trial. We sit down before the year 00:27:48 and to try to decide what we could cut out of our corn budget, you know, overall because of price of corn. 00:27:54 And we go through each different input and say, well, maybe we don't cut this. And before is over with, we cut very little, you know, 00:28:03 from our budget even though the corn was down. I think what we do, or I'm guilty of a lot is, you know, I've changed my program to bare bones prior to 00:28:13 basically extreme ag, to now trying to, you know, have that 300 bushel goal in mind, which I've never done on a whole field. 00:28:22 Um, and then we get to run it scared, or I do, I get to run it scared. Well, what if I don't put it on what, you know, 00:28:28 and then I get to thinking, well, it's fertility. So we know fertility works. These other products 00:28:34 that people call snake oils or whatever. Maybe, maybe not, but this is fertility so we know it's gonna do us a better job. 00:28:40 Yeah. This over my eyes that that's not necessarily true. And, and Kelly talks about this a lot, you know, uh, 00:28:47 everybody wants to dump nitrogen on. Well, if you get your soil out of balance, you better have the micronutrients to support the nitrogen. 00:28:53 Are you gonna go further downhill instead of increase? It's a waste. Go ahead. It's a waste. It it, you know, we all, 00:29:01 we talk about macros and micros and I've said it before. I don't really think there are only two 00:29:06 classifications, macros and micros. You've got nitrogen, then you've got P and k, then you've got the zinc and the sulfur 00:29:13 and the calcium that we talk about. And then you've got the other micronutrients that nobody ever talks about. 00:29:17 They're all important, even though we don't need as much of it, they're all important. 00:29:21 Or if you're just gonna dump on nitrogen, you are wasting the nitrogen. It doesn't result in yield. We need everything. 00:29:27 We need a balanced approach. If you went to the coffee shop where your dad, gene and his 71-year-old buddies all hang out 00:29:34 and told 'em that you, you threw out twice as much nitrogen as you needed to for your whole entire career, 00:29:40 they wouldn't believe you 'cause they wouldn't wanna believe they were that wrong. I agree. Yeah. How about this? 00:29:44 I've now discovered some equipent money that is possible if you'll cut back your nitrogen. And they said that nobody ever takes it 00:29:52 because in Iowa, nobody will ever put on less than 200 pounds of anhydrous with corn on corn. 00:29:57 I'm like, I I will be signing up for that program and the equip money will be coming this direction. So, okay, the adjustment you're gonna make next year, 00:30:04 we're, we're looking at, we're staring down cheap corn, et cetera, et cetera. Matt, you're gonna take some of this into account. 00:30:10 Uh, the truth is somewhere between all four of these, I'm guessing. Yes, I will, I will do this. 00:30:16 Hopefully some, I wanna do this as another side-by-side trial. 'cause that, that, that was one of the funnest things I've 00:30:22 done in extreme ag as far as a trial is have these competition plots. And Kelly and I have talked about maybe, you know, 00:30:28 broadening this out at some different farms, you know, putting some programs temple and I had done this one time, you know, in Maryland. 00:30:33 We took my program up there. I beat him on ROI, he beat me on yield. That was fun to see. Yep. You know, but, 00:30:40 but what it is gonna make me do is take more acreage and go in this direction. I'm gonna keep taking these steps in this direction. 00:30:48 Like I said, from 288 to two 12, it's 25%. How much further can I go? Yep. On a and, and I need to see that on a average, 00:30:57 because our weather changes so much. Everybody does. It was one of my favorite things of all the field days I've worked for Extreme Ag, 00:31:04 this was one of the favorite things, which now brings it to Galen. Galen, what are you gonna do next year? 00:31:08 Because you know what you get. You kept me intrigued and interested with this, uh, this competition. What are gonna do next year? 00:31:15 Well, I mean we're, we're talking about doing a version of this with teams. So maybe pair two people together to get a little 00:31:25 internal debate among teams and then a little external trash talking across teams. Um, it won't, it won't be the same, uh, everywhere. 00:31:35 Like we might, you know, challenge ourselves to put together the best foliar or the best planner applied program. 00:31:42 You know, we're going to shake this up. The idea is just like this one was, what can we learn? What lessons can we pull out of these? 00:31:51 And more importantly, what lessons can the Extreme Act members pull out of these? I Galen doesn't know it, 00:31:59 but I know what he's gonna do next year. I don't wanna raise beans very bad because I can't make it a profitable. 00:32:05 And so Chad and Temple and Matt say that they can. And so I'm only gonna raise 90 acres of beans next year and it's gonna be the four of us 00:32:14 I choose based on past record. I'm choosing Stephanie to be my partner. Ah, I like It. Alright, so we're gonna stay tuned. 00:32:22 Stay tuned. Agri Liquid's going to partner with extreme ag for some cool studies, just like this one. 00:32:26 This was my favorite one, honestly, of all the field day stuff we did. But I gotta say, Matt, you're awesome. 00:32:32 You did a great job with this. I enjoyed your field day. If you miss the field days, you're listening to this 00:32:35 or watching this again, watch it so you can get this graph that Will's put up here a number 00:32:39 of times for you to study it. Uh, Matt had an amazing field day. The Secretary of Agriculture 00:32:44 for the state of Arkansas was there. We had a great panel after our, uh, field day. We came in, sat in the air 00:32:48 conditioning, had an amazing food. Fried, fried, fried catfish. It was, it was awesome. Galen, hey, 00:32:53 I want, I wanna make one more point, Damian, before you go, is that we are thinking of ways to help the grower be educated. 00:32:59 So if you liked what we did here and you enjoyed it, we're trying to ratchet this up a lot next year so 00:33:06 that we can have these kinds of discussions. Well, The competition part makes it intriguing. Like, you know, going to a field day is one thing, 00:33:12 but when you go to a field day and you see there's competition, and then we do the recap at the end like this, 00:33:16 and then we're also gonna do the trial results. I think that this is, it's, it's more intriguing and also it, it brings it home. 00:33:22 The dollar amount brings this home. Yeah, join now, right? So you can see next year's. There you go. Join now Extreme Ag. 00:33:29 You can join Extreme Ag. Become a member for $750 a year. That's a very cheap price. 'cause you get access 00:33:34 to all the data at the end of the year. You also get a direct line to people like Matt and Kelly. You can call 'em up and ask 'em questions. 00:33:41 Also, you can stay tuned on a more, uh, pertinent basis with what's going on. And I'm just gonna go ahead and throw 00:33:45 it out there right now. This is my favorite thing to watch. Thanks for being here. Kelly Garrett Galen beer, uh, Matt Miles 00:33:52 and as I call her Stephanie Lingo, the Caitlyn Clark of Crop Production. I think, I think I'm not stretching it when I say that. 00:34:01 Right. Till Next. A alone next time. Till next time. Thanks for being here. Go Caitlin. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. 00:34:10 Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:34:17 Cutting the curve is brought to you by Simon Innovations. Don't let your sprayer's limitations hold you back. 00:34:23 Visit simon innovations.com 00:34:24.955 --> 00:34:27.055