00:00 We're talking about fast takes and takeaways from Harvest 2023 with Miles Farms In this episode of Extreme Acts cutting the curve. 00:07 Welcome to Extreme Acts Cutting the Curve podcast, where we cut your learning curve with insights you can apply immediately to your farming operation. This episode is presented by Loveland products. 00:18 When it comes to crop inputs, you need products that are field proven to deliver both results and value. For more than 50 years, 00:26 Loveland products has been providing farmers with high performance value-driven product solutions designed to maximize productivity on every acre. 00:34 Visit loveland products.com to see how their innovative products can help you farm more profitably. And now, here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:43 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Mass Cutting the Curve. I've got Matt Miles and Lane Miles, 00:48 and they are just about done with Harvest 2023. The neat thing I like to get with the farm guys, the extreme ag guys, I like to say, Hey man, what'd you see? Because while it's fresh in their mind, 00:59 it's kind of like, okay, what are you going to do differently in 2024? What worked in 2023? What did not work? What thing are you most excited about? 01:08 And what was the big takeaway? Whether it's sitting in the combine, sitting in the grain cart, or like Matt, 01:12 sometimes we'll text us and it's two in the morning sitting in the, the grain, uh, facility, uh, office. 01:20 There's always stuff that's going through your mind. And it's better to get it now because come February you might forget about it. So anyway, lane you go. First big takeaway from 2023, it was a fast harvest. 01:30 What'd you learn? What'd you, what'd you do? Right? What'd you do wrong? What's the big takeaway? 01:36 The, the biggest takeaway, honestly, and, and I guess I didn't necessarily realize it as much, but you know, this is probably being the, the, like you said, the fastest driest, 01:48 right? Maybe one of the hardest harvests we've had. I mean, because, you know, they, they said to plant everything at the same time, right? Well, you do that, 01:57 then you gotta harvest everything at the same time. And, and, and that's been a, that's been a different beast that we've done this year, 02:04 that that normally wouldn't happen. Normally we would cut our corn, be done with that, cut our beans, be done with that. 02:10 Harvest cotton be done with that harvest rise. You know, it, it all in stages. Well, this year it was like, you know this. Yeah, 02:16 Yeah. So spacing up. I mean, you guys have a longer season in the delta of Arkansas than say Lee Lubers does. Up in, uh, you know, the Ndra Lanza, South Dakota. So that's good. 02:28 You, you can say you're not under pressure, but you were under pressure because if the stuff is ready to go and it's not getting harvested, there's the chance of degradation. 02:36 There's a chance of hurricane, uh, you know, uh, after effects, whatever. So like, it's, it's kind of been go time. I mean, I was, 02:44 I was keeping up with the tech stream. You guys, once you started going, it was like 16 hour days. Go, go, go, go, go. Uh, you're still not done. 02:52 So here, we're recording this, uh, September 14th. What do you need to do yet? And what's gonna be the, uh, the impetus moving forward map? 03:01 Well, we're not done, which is a sore subject. So we should have been done Seven days ago or so. 03:10 We're getting just enough rain now to, to keep us outta the field. Just enough rain at the moisture on the beans are too high. We filled our bins. 03:18 We got our bin full. We did all the soybean harvests we could at higher moisture till we got our bins full, then we can't, then we're stuck. So we like a day and a half of, 03:26 of full season soybeans. Of course, we like, we like our cotton, which is only 600 acres this year, and we like our double crop beans. 03:33 What lane's referring to, you know, when we started three corn planters, we started two bean planters. 03:40 The single most influencer in soybean yield in on our farm is early planting. And so we knew this was gonna happen, you know, 03:49 it was a pretty dry spring, so we were gonna have to face this in the end. What aggravated that even more, which I, you know, I act like it's a bad thing. 03:57 It's an absolute great thing if you don't mind working 350 hours in three weeks. But the cool thing, what happened was that it was so intense heat, 04:07 right at the ripening of the, of the crops. You, I mean, you, you've seen the texture threads. I said, we'll be cutting rice on this day. 04:13 We were 10 days early, we'll be cutting bees on this day. We were five days early. Mm-hmm. You know, this heat at the end, 04:20 and I know people get tired of me talking about heat, but that is our number one limiting factor on every crop we got all the time. Yep. And just, 04:27 it just accelerated these crops to where everything was ready at the same time. Which, if you can handle that mentally, it was a mental struggle. 04:36 It was more of a mental struggle this year than ever before. Mm-hmm. All right. So when we talk about big takeaways, you know, 04:44 it's never just one thing. Uh, then I always ask, what thing are you definitely going to do next year because of what you saw this year? Do you have any of those kinds of things? We'll go lane first. 04:56 Anything that you saw this year, they're like, yep, we're going to do more of that next year. Or anything you're like, Nope, we're not gonna do with that at all. Next year. 05:06 The, the, I'm gonna say our biggest, oh, I guess you'd call it a struggle, is that this year doing, you know, some of our things that we've done that we, 05:17 we we're just now getting into, you know, kind of really studying our data that we, that we've gathered all year and we're not necessarily seeing all the 05:26 results we thought we would see, like throughout the year, you know, there would be, I don't know, necessary specifics. There would be plots. 05:35 You're like, man, this stuff looks awesome. This looks, this looks like it's gonna knock it outta the park. Yep. And it'd be the same as what it was on outside of the plot. Uh, 05:44 that's that to me, that's probably one of the biggest takeaways. We've been talking about that for two weeks now. I mean, it's just, 05:51 where do we go from here? What, you know, what are we doing that that either, I mean, outside the plot that's making it as good as inside the plot, 05:59 or what are we not doing inside the plot that's, you know, not making a boost, boost 06:02 Yield. So wait a minute, are you saying that there's stuff that, that disappointed that you thought a month ago was gonna be amazing and it 06:09 wasn't? Is there that, That's probably a pretty good way to put it. All right. So why did it look amazing? And then disappoint once the combine ran, 06:19 I mean, Test weight down. I mean, why you had you almost like, by the way, that's kind of a p****r. You always wanna be pleasantly surprised, 06:27 not negatively surprised you were negative. So like the combine ran, you're like, God, I expected bigger things. Well, 06:32 Let me, let me preface this before we start. We're gonna have record bean yields highest, highest farm average we've ever had. 06:40 We're gonna have record corn yields highest corn farm average we've ever had. So we're griping about things internally, 06:48 inside record harvests. So it's not like we had a crop failure. Right. Prime example, our high yield soybean plot. Alright, 06:58 we pushed those beans absolutely as hard as you can push anything. Yep. To the point that we over pushed them. 07:04 Our high yield soybean plot cut about 10 bushels less than the beans on the outside of the plot. Now all these beans were above 90 bushel. 07:12 Yeah. But so we're not, we you can't gripe about that. No. But we've seen places we're spending money. You know, if, 07:20 if you talk to Kevin or Temple, you know, Kelly, any of those guys, those later r passes that they're making, I was so jacked up about those. 07:29 They absolutely did not work for us. I think there's a point in time either two things are happening, our soils are balanced enough that we've got enough fertility in the ground, 07:39 or number two, the heat just negates all that at the end. You know? And, and it, it, we're confused right now where we're at. Some things worked, 07:47 but some things didn't. And, and it, and we push the plants too hard, By the way. I love it. Before we hit record, uh, to the listener, 07:55 I think it's important to hear this. Before we hit record, I said let's talk about, uh, sort of post-harvest notes, if you will. 08:01 And you said we're confused. I'm like what? You said? Yeah, we're, we're, we got a few things we're not sure about. You just said, 08:08 and we've been talking about this, a bunch of extreme egg. Keep rounding the basis, uh, don't give up on the crop. Uh, it might, 08:16 you might think it's too late, but it's not too late. Obviously Chad and Temple Love, they'd go out there and, and Lane, you know, this, this is not normal. 08:25 They would go out with the sprayer like a day and a half before they go out there with a combine. I mean, they, they love the idea of going out there. Like, 08:33 until you're like, what the hell are you doing? You just said your last passes maybe didn't give you a return on the investment. Let's dig into that. 08:44 Well, and and that's what we're trying to into right now. And I've had multiple conversations with Temple and Chad, you know, 08:52 trying to figure out Kevin. They don't like, by the way, Chad and Temple, when you tell 'em, Hey, going out there, uh, a day and a half before the combine rolls doesn't pay back. 09:02 That's like telling a child. There is no Easter Bunny. I mean, it's really, it's really kind of a problem. I mean, they, they don't like to hear that. 09:08 Well, and the thing is, it does pay back for them. It does pay back in certain areas and, and we're in a Lee Lubers is you, you know, we call it farming on the fringes. 09:17 I I think we're farming on the fringes too. It's just from the south side instead of the the west side, to Be honest. He's on the pull. He's on the pull, he's on the polar, the polar, uh, 09:28 northwest angle. So it didn't pay off. You don't think you got a bump on going out there like at R four and doing treatment? 09:37 No, sir. I don't. And and we we're still digging into this data, but I think I spent some money this year that I could have kept in my pocket. 09:45 If you take a year with more milder. See, the perfect storm for us was, and I should have had enough sense to figure this out when we were fruiting, 09:54 when we were R one beans and we were tassel corn, we had Midwest weather for about 10 or 15 days. I mean, it was absolutely fantastic. That set our crop, 10:04 that's where our crop was set. And then we got the extreme heat on the backside. And, and what's, 10:12 you take a runner and you jack him up on all kind of vitamins and water and whatever he needs. And he runs a cross country race. 10:19 And as soon as he falls out on the finish line, you know how they fall out because they just done all they can do. And then you shove all that stuff in him again. What's he gonna do with it? 10:28 Nothing. A spin. Yeah. Right. The, the, the, the, by the way Lane, you leaned up for that one. If you're watching this, you saw it. If you're listening, 10:37 you should watch this available on a Acres TV and, uh, on all social media, on Facebook, Twitter, and also on our website Extreme Mag Farm Lane. 10:45 You just leaned in. Uh, you like that analogy was the crop spent. Yeah. Yeah. I, I do. And we've, that's, it's funny 'cause we've been, 10:55 we've been saying that for the last couple of weeks. I mean, it's, it's, it's one of those things that it's like, like you said, 11:02 it's like giving somebody an energy drink, you know, two or three energy drinks right there. As soon as they get ready to right to off that finish line, they're like, 11:10 you know, what am I gonna do with it? I mean, it's, it's confusing. We don't really know where to go. We've still got a lot of data to go. 11:17 Like I said, we, we, we do have some, some, some of our plots that are positive. It's not all doom and clum here, 11:23 but the things that we really thought our best, things that we thought were gonna ha were gonna be awesome are a little bit doom and gloom. 11:32 Got it. All right. So pleasantly surprised on the yields, but a little bit like you, you're thinking, okay, it was the, 11:38 you thought it was gonna be even better. That's a nice situation to be in. You've had years where you weren't in record territory and you were not even, 11:45 not, you know, pleasantly surprised. You were like, what the hell happened here? So it's, again, it's not all doom and gloom. What thing really worked? 11:53 What thing did really work late? Last application maybe didn't give you an r o i What thing did give you an r o I Well, we know fungicide gives us an r o i. Yep. We did, 12:05 we did some soil applied nutri charge with our herbicides on rice and, and we got a positive on that. And on the flip side, 12:14 we did a really nice lab with micronutrients and, and extra fertilized. And it showed no positive result. So, I mean, I, you wanna know what gave us positive results? 12:25 And I've said this a long time and, and I'm starting to prove it to myself. And it's counterproductive of some of the things I've said before. 12:33 Basic good agronomy and timing. Yep. That, that's number one for us. If we do it at the right time and we've got good soil fertility to begin with, 12:43 and we do our job planning, and then we take care of that crop. And, and this is gonna sound real arrogant, but it's a, 12:50 and I don't mean it arrogant in any way. We we're hitting walls. I mean, you, you give me a 60 bushel bean field, I can make it better. Mm-hmm. 13:00 Give me a 85 to 95 bushel bean field. I I don't know what to do. I don't, I I I have no idea anymore. Well 13:07 It's, it's, it's kind of that thing, uh, you know, okay, lane was a, I saw a picture. He was kind of a husky guy. Uh, losing, 13:15 losing that first 20 pounds, that's like easy. The next 20 pounds is like, wait a minute, now I gotta do something. It's kinda like you're talking about yields and Chad Henderson talks about this. 13:25 You want to go from a certain yield to the next yield. That's probably just a few practice changes. You know, just tightening up a few things. And then the next one's like, okay, 13:34 that's getting more precision. That's really kind of doing. But then you go to that next level after that. It's like, 13:39 this is going to the gym three times and working with a, a special dietician. I mean, this isn't like laying, you know, 13:45 just having to skip the candy bars once in a while. I mean, so that's where you're talking about. And that's a good place to be. 13:51 You now expect to be 85 bushel beans going above that. That's gonna take some real, that's gonna take some real, going to the gym three times a day with the dietician kind of thing. 14:02 Well, and then that's where it gets confusing because did You like the way I talked about Lane being a Husky kid and laying off the 14:08 Snickers? Did you like that? I thought that was pretty funny. I thought that I'm very proud of him. I've seen him go to the gym at four o'clock in the morning when we had to be at 14:16 the shop at five 30. So he's done a really good job at, he looks Ripped. He's, he's, I said it in a, in the prior recording, 14:23 he's wearing a T-shirt that I think is a si a girl's medium. 'cause it's so tight on him. I mean, he, he looks like, he looks like a, 14:30 he is like a, a bodybuilder looking dude. You ought to see him stand up with his skinny jeans on. And the shirt is two sizes too small. That's what Temple gives him hell about. 14:39 But back to that, uh, you know, talk about the sended twins. Well, they named me the Sended cousin, and I'm like, okay, buddies, 14:48 hold my beer. We finna go get this done. Yep. And I've done everything that's productive for them and I can't find it in my farm here. Not saying they don't, I understand they do. 14:59 That's why I was so excited is they were knocking back some, some double digit yield increases on R five passes. 15:07 Kevin Matthews same thing. And I, I, I, I can't, I can't make it work. You know, we were on the phone the other day and I had a 61 test weight and I was so proud 15:16 of it. Kevin's like, dang, that's all, you know, that's, he said, I, that's all you can get. And I said, that's it. That's the best I can do. 61, 15:23 which is very kind like our dirt deal we were talking about. Yeah. One of them's normal. 61 to me is a big deal. Yeah. 15:30 I don't think you wanna go around complaining about 61 pound test wheat on soybeans. So, uh, all 15:34 Right. Oh, this corn What? 61 test wheat on corn. And they're saying that's not enough. Yeah. That, no, my soybeans are going to be 54 to 58. They're 15:46 All right. So, um, the, uh, the thing that didn't work, you don't necessarily have anything like that. What was, uh, was there any other surprise lane? Did you have anything that, um, 15:56 you like it when we talk about your physique on here? I mean, I think that it's, there's, there's, 16:00 there's a lot of people that are probably tuning in just because of that, You know, if that gives us some more views. Damien, 16:05 I take my shirt off if I need to. How About like a calendar? Was you, like a, a calendar, uh, the men of extreme Ag calendar. 16:14 You won't be very, very pleased with it. I don't look that good. All right. What, uh, speaking of, uh, wasn't pleased with what, what's, 16:21 what the, the pleasant surprise. What'd you, what'd you like? What was neat about this? This is what your, uh, eighth or ninth harvest? Uh, 16:29 full-time? Yeah, pretty much. Uh, I mean as far as, as far as surprises, I mean it's, it's uh, like, like I said, like I said earlier, it's been, it's been the easiest, 16:44 hardest, but easiest harvest we've had. I mean, as far as dryness, Damien mc crab, we bought, uh, I mean you've seen, you've seen, uh, 16:54 harvesters in the past couple years and cutting rice and getting trucks stuck and tractor stuck and all this stuff. 17:00 And so we bought this big nice green cart with tracks and we, uh, probably could have ran a bicycle out there. It was, it was that dry. 17:10 I mean, so that, that to me, that is our, that, that's like the number one best thing that happened to all harvest. 'cause two years ago, 17:17 I think that's the reason why I started shaving my head ball. What did we cut 1300 acres of rice in flat gumbo? 17:26 Zero grade in a swamp? You seen alligator pictures yesterday without one single rutt. Our, our semis were turning around in the rice field to get pulled up to load. 17:36 That don't happen. That's just, just don't happen. That was it. Good for the environment in general for people that are not trying to harvest? 17:44 Probably not, you know, but the mental, the mental aspect of, you know, usually we'll harvest four or five days a week, maybe 10, and we'll get a break. It'll rain and we'll be off a couple of days. 17:57 When I say off, we go to bed at a normal hour, get up at six o'clock. You know, we, we, we logged in 340 hours, 18:04 the first 21 days of harvest that Sunday of the third week. I said, I don't care if it's raining, not raining, no matter what. We're stopping because there become a safety issue. Yeah. 18:18 And a and a mentally issue. You, you think our temperatures are short during the regular season. Put 350 hours in, in three weeks and ask what my guys think about me then. 18:29 So, Okay. So a big takeaway here, I'm going, uh, give you the summary. Um, you got a, it was go time, uh, 18:36 on steroids because of the way the season worked out for you, and it was a dead sprint. Um, 18:42 talk about not planting everything at the same time. It didn't matter because the way the weather worked out. Everything came due at the same time. Uh, uh, 18:50 you talked about the difficulty in going once you've gotten to where you're good and you're not being arrogant, 18:56 but once you've gotten to where your yields are good to go to, that next level requires a lot more fine tuning. 19:01 And then the other takeaway was, and, and the Senate twins don't like this, you're not sure that final pass you made actually gave you an r o i. 19:09 And that's something we've not really ever, you know, extreme ag, they always think we're out here trying to sell products for the companies we 19:14 work with. You just said, I'm not sure that, but speaking of products, what's a product that you use this year that you absolutely are like, man, 19:23 that was a big thing. You said fungicide is now a thing for sure. Is there anything else that you're like, wow, absolutely. 19:30 That's gonna be in our, in our toolbox. We found one the other day that we've been doing plots with concept ag for three or four years now in rice. 19:42 And we keep doing 'em with an airplane and never really found it. Well, we, we actually were able to do it with a ground rig this year. 19:50 It got dry enough to be able to do that a couple times, which is another exciting deal, by the way, in Rice. Uh, did it across three different fields and actually seen a positive r o i in it. 20:02 So something we've been testing that we haven't necessarily seen all these positives, but everybody else tells us how good it is. 20:09 And we see all these green and red yield maps that we did. We did get a few extra bushels this year with it. And we, we, I mean, 20:16 I assume we'll try some more of it next year. Well, and, and I got a good one too. So I we're, 20:21 we're getting to the point we think infer phosphorus fertilizer, you know, is we don't need as much. You know, we we're, we're spending money, 20:31 we don't need to spend. So we literally did a replicated trial of five gallons, three gallons of one gallon to see, 'cause we, 20:37 the most of our crop was one gallon because it's cheaper, like $12 cheaper. We come back. Guess what? Won five gallons. Won five 20:46 Gallons of, what is this Starter fertilizer. Okay. There's total f are first down or Yeah. Um, you know, um, germ, pro germ, you know, 20:57 there's several different top quality. Yeah, sure. Further, but we're, we thought immensely that, you know, we can cut that back. 21:05 We don't need it as much. We can go to less of that and add these other products in. And so I said, well, this was not a sanctioned Extreme Act trial. 21:14 I do several trials on my own of personal stuff that I want to know. Uh, so we did that trial, five gallons, one, no question, 21:23 but it did an r o I like the three, throw the one out for us. The one i, I won't never do one again. I'll spend that extra money. Yeah. 21:32 But I found the hitting point, which Tommy Roach told me that before I did the test what it was going to be, but I gotta prove it to myself. Yeah, 21:38 Right. So one gallons what? One gallon wasn't enough. Five gallons was too much. Three gallons is the right number for the maximum. R o i. All right. 21:45 So I think we got some good takeaways. Uh, starter fertilizer, so yours to starter fertilizer and then, uh, uh, a late, 21:53 a late season aerial treatment using a concept. Agritech product was, uh, lane's, uh, product takeaway, right? Correct. 22:00 And soil applied UltraCharge, honestly. Yeah. And, and that, that helps you on phosphorus uptake. Yep. Yep. 22:08 But We, we thought it had to be in for wide drop and we sold, applied some, and we picked up some double digit yields and rice again, 22:16 record rice harvest, I mean record yield for rice. We, I mean we, we, we, we hit some home runs this year. So you ringing? 22:23 It wasn't necessarily because of our additional products. No, you're ringing the bell and corn on soybeans, on rice. What about cotton? 22:29 You ringing the bell or just average? I haven't started yet. You know, cotton is at, is at its ugliest point right now, but it looks pretty decent. 22:37 I've learned more about cotton since I met you guys than I ever thought I could learn. Uh, you call, you talk about being, 22:43 you said cotton a lot of times looks like a, a 13 year old girl. It's gonna be beautiful someday, but it's not. 22:48 Cotton looks for a reason to die every day. I've learned all about cotton. So, uh, 22:52 I've learned enough to know that I don't think I'd ever wanna be in the cotton production business. All right. Lane, last one's going to you. 22:59 You sent a picture, you were on top of the grain rig. Uh, how high up there were you and what, what problem were you fixing? 23:06 Because it was a beautiful picture, but if you gotta climb up there, it was during the beginning of harvest. What were you doing? 23:12 Oh, I was on the leg. Yeah, I was on top of a leg, uh, coming out of our dryer. I thought it was stopped up. It, it was partially stopped up, up there, 23:21 just raking out old corn husk and bees wings. And anyways, it was a pretty picture that morning. It was also like 80 something degrees that morning, 23:30 so it was nice being up there. Name's lane Miles sitting next to his father, Matt Miles, McGee, Arkansas. Matt's one of the founders of Extreme Ag. If you are new to extreme Ag, 23:40 I encourage you to go and check out literally hundreds and hundreds of videos, stuff like this, podcast, videos, stuff in field, uh, product trials, 23:48 things you can learn and take to your farming operation. That's why we're here. Share this with somebody who can benefit from it. Till next time, 23:54 I'm Damien Mason, and this is extreme mass cutting the curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Extreme Eggs Cutting the Curve, 24:02 but there is plenty more available by visiting Extreme Ag Farm. For over 50 years, 24:08 farmers have turned to the proven lineup of crop inputs offered by Loveland products, from seed treatments, plant nutrition, adjuvant, 24:15 and crop protection products. Loveland has the complete lineup to keep your farming operation productive, and most importantly, profitable. Check out loveland products.com to learn more.