The Method | The XtremeAg Show, S1. Ep 13.
18 Jun 2430m 49s

Farming goes beyond cultivating crops; it's about using modern farming tools to boost profitability.

Kelly, Chad and Matt use utilize different methods to increase ROI after the crop is harvested. Matt's experience with rice farming in Arkansas is shared, emphasizing the sustainable practices used and the heritage value of rice farming in his area.

The XtremeAg Show is presented by Concept AgriTek.

Season 1 | Episode 13

Copyrights © 2024 All Rights Reserved by XtremeAg.Farm, LLC

00:13 This episode of the Extreme Ag Show is presented by concept Agritech Cowboy is the game changer, getting it in 00:22 through the leaves and into the plant circulatory system. That's why this product is 00:26 so effective at delivering both calcium and boron to plants at critical times when they need it. The most 00:40 Great grain bins are invaluable for a farmer. Storing and managing the inventory of their crop is of course, the obvious benefit. 00:49 But for Kelly, he's out in the field capturing ghosts and boosting his ROI in the process. Well, here in the Midwest, 00:57 we primarily use the grain dryer for corn. I'm gonna start combining corn at a 25 to 27% Moisture. Industry standard is 15%. That's considered dry corn. 01:10 Corn above 18.5%. Moisture without air on it won't keep. And really corn above 18.5% air without, for any length 01:20 of time above 18.5%. Moisture won't keep it all. You get below 18.5 and you run air on it, just regular air. 01:27 It, it, you can keep it, it's fine, but it's safe to store long term at 15%, 16%. So what the green dryer does is we'll combine corn at 25%. 01:43 We'll come, the trucks will come, they'll dump the truck, it goes up the leg into the wet bin, 01:48 and then the computer will keep the dryer full. It'll kick it, it'll kick the augers on and off to keep the dryer full. 01:55 Dumps the corn in the top of the dryer and it, and it fills up and it goes down slowly through there. There's meters at the bottom 02:02 that are turning at the precise speed to get the corn dry. And there's large fans on there along with, uh, 02:09 propane burners is what we would call 'em. And they'll be, say, at 200 degrees, 210 degrees is how hot the burners will be. 02:16 And it's forced air through the grain to dry it down. And when the corn comes out the bottom, it'll be dry. You know, if we wanna dry it all the way down to say 15, 02:28 you know, you're gonna bring 25% corn in, we'll probably set it to come out of the bottom of the dryer at 17. 02:34 And then when it goes into the, uh, the cooling bin, which are the other two bins on the east of us here, goes into those cooling bins. 02:41 You'll air dry at the last couple points and, and it'll cool down, dry down, then you can keep the corn. But a lot of times we'll be bringing this corn in 26, 20 7%. 02:51 We'll be drying it to say 2025. And, you know, between 2025, we'll be hauling it to the ethanol plant. 02:57 The ethanol plant. Uh, our end user will have different, uh, marketing opportunities throughout the year, 03:03 and we're just wanting to bring the corn in, dry it down, and then ship it. Uh, other times of the year, 03:08 you know, we're gonna wanna store it. And you, you could in the old days, old day, you know, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, 03:15 you would just wait till the corn was appropriate to put in the bin. Well now with the amount of acres we're farming 03:21 and with, with more new technology, new knowledge, I don't ever want to combine corn below 19. Uh, they talk about ghost bushels. 03:30 When you get below 19% moisture and then the combine is threshing the grain off the cob, the point of the kernel will break off and stay with the cob 03:39 and then go out as residue with the, uh, with the trash, with all the stalk and you. 03:44 So you can never find the yield loss, but that's what we call ghost bushels. So you get down below 19%, you combine 15% corn, 03:51 it won't yield as much as combining say 20% corn and drying it mechanically with the dryer. The dryer pays for itself in yield to the tune of 10 04:02 to 12 bushel to the acre. In my opinion. And I've seen this, uh, as a younger man, we'll be combining early corn, hauling it 04:08 to the ethanol plant, and then my dad will come and say, boys, it's time to combine beans. You'll shut the combines off right there. 04:14 Take the corn heads off, put the bean heads on, go combine beans for two weeks. Come back, go back into the same field, the yield drops. 04:22 There's your ghost bushels and you can't find it. You could never figure out why. Well, it's because you went from combine 04:27 and say 23% corn to 17% corn. That's how the dryer pays for itself. So, you know, our customer, the ethanol plant, which uh, 04:38 typically is Anderson's ethanol and Denison, we're lucky it's only about nine miles away. They won't take corn over 25. 04:47 And then during harvest, when everybody gets to rolling, there'll be a lot of wet corn come in 04:52 and their dryer, which is much larger than ours, their dryer might not keep up. And they might have, they might be full of wet corn 04:59 and they'll only take dry corn, which is 15. So then all of a sudden they'll shut the wet corn off and go to dry corn. 05:04 Well, with this dryer, we now have the ability to dry corn to 15 and take it to 'em, 05:10 and they'll give us a premium on those bushels when they want dry corn. So that's when I talk about a marketing opportunity. 05:16 That's an example of the marketing opportunity. You know, used to be before when the ethanol plant didn't want wet bushels 05:23 anymore and they would shut you off, you just had to quit combining. Well, we really don't want that to be an option. 05:28 We wanna be able to keep harvesting and get done in a timely fashion. And the the dryer allows us to do that. 05:43 Amino grows an exciting new product put out by concept agritech. What we've seen is an increase in fruiting sites 05:51 as well as branching. And this has equated to yield Spot less. 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BioHealth is a product by concept Agritech made up 07:16 of a consortium of beneficial biology that actually colonized the plant and boost the plant's immune system from the inside. 07:37 One of the biggest tools we have for us in our toolbox for harvest is grain bins. The tool of the bin is instead 07:45 of being in a line at the elevator with 200 trucks, you're at your own grain bin facility with however many trucks you're running, you know of your own. 07:55 So it gives you a chance to dump quicker, it gives you a chance to, to harvest earlier. If you harvest corn at 22% moisture, 24% moisture, 08:05 there's gonna be a better yield there than if you harvest it at 15. Definitely got a yield increase, you've definitely got 08:13 a quality increase. It just makes things so much easier to manage. Then instead of, instead of having 08:21 to worry about shipping it out, then you put it in a bin, you ship it in January, Hey, I wanna sell my crop in January 08:29 when I'm not doing much else. You know, it's cold and wet and there's nothing else going on. 08:33 Another thing too, as I talk about, you know, managing for hurricanes, we get 10 days earlier harvest because we have bins that's 10 days less weather 08:43 that we don't have that we're not exposed to those environmental concerns. There's tons and tons of advantages to having bins. 08:52 This is my typical three bin loop system and we have pipes right here. These pipes go through the bin, this pipe comes out here 09:03 and then it comes up here and it comes across. Okay, so when we're talking about a loop system, this is theoretically what it looks like. 09:10 So it's moving grain like this. So you've got a door here, a door here, a door here, alright, this is your truck dump. 09:20 The corn is falling into a pit and it's traveling down this loop. So what you do is you say, okay, I want this corn, 09:29 this corn's 15% and I want it in bin two. You open this gate on bin two and this corn's gonna fall in here. 09:39 If that gate's not open and this gate's open, he's gonna pass, he's gonna pass that one. 09:45 Oh, that one's open and it's gonna fall in there. The corn's gonna go to the leash resistance. So same scenario, you've got this bin, 15% corn, 09:54 and you've got this bin, 20% corn, you're wanting to go back into the truck. So you've got another door here we're loading out. 10:03 So when we load out, you've got a gate under this bin, a gate under this bin, and a gate under this bin. So you say, okay, I want to, I want my corn 10:12 to be 17.5% moisture. So here's the truck ready to receive the grain. You open this one halfway and you open this one halfway. 10:22 Theoretically, if you've done your job on moisture management, you're gonna, you're gonna have half the corn coming out of here, 10:29 half the corn coming out of here. So you're able to do some blending between this bin and this bin. 10:36 And you can even do it with three. So the cool thing about a loopy is I can pull out of this bin and this bin and this bin at the same time. 10:43 I can load back into these bins all at the same time, or I can load into one or load into the other one dryer's sitting back here in, in 10:53 that scenario, this is your wet tank. You've got augers behind this bin, bringing it up and bringing it into this dryer. 11:01 Then the dryer's sitting over here with a leg and this leg has a pipe to here, a pipe to here and a pipe over to here, 11:09 which goes into my next loop system. So as you're drying this grain, it's free flowing, it's this valve is underneath this loop 11:18 and it's free flowing into this bin and you're steadily filling the bin up with dry corn. Once that corn comes out of there, 11:26 it's probably gonna be somewhere around 120 degrees. You turn your fans on, which are located on the sides of your bins to cool the, you want 11:34 to cool the temperature down on the corn. You know, you really theoretically want it to be about 75 degrees at the hottest when it's secured. 11:41 So that's kind of the explanation of what is called a loop system, which is a really unique, efficient way to use bins compared to the old system 11:51 where you had just say you had bins sitting in what they call a semicircle and you had a, you had a pit right here 11:58 and this pit's going into auger and this auger's sitting here. So he, you can feel this bin up, 12:04 but you can't feel this bin up and this bin up at the same time. Or say you're shipping out, 12:11 you can only pull from one bin at a time back into the truck. You can't pull from two at the same time 12:16 unless you've got two augers. By the time you set this up to do what this would do, it'd be cost prohibitive. 12:22 So that's the reason for the loop system. Adding Raytheon into your infer application or even an over the top application round V three V four, 12:42 can do wonders in helping that plant navigate tough soil conditions. As far as nutrient tie is concerned, 12:50 Control the toughest weeds with overlapping residuals. Lock in the longest lasting control for your soybean fields authority brand herbicides such 12:59 as authority, edge herbicide and authority supreme herbicide combine the industry's most effective group 14 13:04 and 15 active ingredients for a clean start and long lasting residual control. Following up 14 to 28 days later with a post application 13:13 of Anthem max herbicide through V six establishes a heavy duty economical, overlapping residual program. 13:22 Claims are good and all, but I'm more interested in results. My fent momentum planter delivers them the only planter 13:31 with automatic tire pressure adjustments, weight transfer across its frame and inline center tandem wheels that eliminate intros. 13:41 It's just another way I know fence got my bottom line. Top of mind. Introducing Dem CO's newest dual auger grain cart design 14:01 now equipped with the front folding auger and available in right side or left side unload options featuring Dem CO's quarter auger 14:08 design for optimal visibility with a 22 inch vertical auger unload at speeds of 600 bushels per minute. 14:16 Demco outpace harvest time every time. Sweet success has been in the product lineup of concept agritech for a while. 14:24 We've seen it do a lot of things that you wouldn't think a black strap molasses product would do. 14:29 Anytime you can increase the bricks content of your plant, the more healthy it's gonna be. 14:41 It's the end of corn harvesting for Chad. He's down to the last fields and it's late in the season and there's a method to his madness. 14:49 But of course this is farming so nothing goes according to plan. This corn is tired. 14:56 The reason that we haven't already shelled this corn is where we started is we strategically placed certain fields where we can use the bagger. 15:04 We've had a been blessed with a good crop this year and we'll be somewhere around a hundred to 140,000 bushel over what our bin will hold. 15:14 Well we don't have a real good source of getting rid of the corn right now, it's below what market is. So we are decided, you know, that we're going to bag corn. 15:22 We put it in a bag, so we want it dry to where when we get it out bag, all of our corn goes to chicken feed. 15:29 So it needs to be 14 and a half, 15% under 15%, you know, and moisture is, like I said, the percentage of wetness 15:42 or moisture as you would call it, that's in a kernel and in and as the corn drives down 15:48 and as you see it on when you're driving back in the road in car and it going from green to kind of off green 15:53 and brown to completely brown, the plant itself has give up. So the moisture is leaving the plant, 16:00 therefore leaving the ear. And it's had its full life cycle. It's produced what it's gonna produce. All of our corn goes. 16:09 Chicken feed, well the crusher at the chicken, it needs the corn dry. They don't really have the ability, you know, all 16:15 of 'em don't to, to put in drying systems and to dry it all down. They really need it to be dry 16:20 whenever they receive the corn in from the farmer. We need this corn to be under 15%. So this corn is running like our field. 16:29 We're 13 four right now, 14% corn. And, but it's because yeah, we losing money on that, but it won't be near as much money 16:36 as I lose if I have to go sell it right now. So again, the reason this field is looks like it looks is because we've waited on it to dry to put it in bags. 16:47 Instead of harvesting this at 18 or 19% where we've got our best bang for our buck, then we had to wait a little 16:54 bit to get it to where it's dry. So that's the reason that this corn looks rough is it is. And out here, you know, hadn't already shelved this corn. 17:03 So I'm sure if y'all farmers are like me, you're gonna be like, golly, what was that fool doing? I wanna get these crop outta the field. 17:09 All the rest of my corn don't look like this, but this 300 acres, it took it like a chimp. So We started bagging and the first bag went okay, 17:20 and then we had a problem. So I'm on the combine, right? And I'm, I see this thing running, the bagger's running, 17:27 great things are going, we're moving right along and I look up and things come to a halt. I mean the grain carts stop, 17:34 there's no grain carts, the combines are full. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? And I called dad, dad Jackson, a couple more 17:42 of the guys were over at the background. I called dad like, what's up over there? Y'all taking a break? What's going on? 17:45 He's like, no, the bag come off the end of the bagger. I'm like, what? And he was like, yeah, I don't really know what happened, 17:55 but the bag come off then. So I think our cord, the electric cord broke or some part 18:00 of it come unhooked when it come unhooked the bag, all the bag come off when it did the corn run out the end, as they say down goes Frazier. 18:14 The best part about the bag breaking up, which is never a good part, right? The best part was that we was close to a farm of a friend 18:21 of mine, a great friend of mine that had a vacuum. So when we got went and got his back, we started sucking out because it don't matter what happens when you run out the 18:30 end of a bag or you mess a bag up to me on our farm, it's about 500 bushel. It's 500 bushel of scoop, 500 bushel of a backhoe, 18:39 or 500 bushel of a vacuum, whichever one you want, a 500 bushel. We, so we sucked about 500 as we start sucking this out to 18:46 where we can seal the bag up because the corn's just out the end of it. So we have to still seal it off 18:51 because we plan on keeping this corn till maybe march. And uh, so we seal it, get this thing to seal up when we're in the process of vacuuming, 18:58 I broke the hose so we're repairing the hose, we get this thing repaired. It's hotter than the devil, hotter than the dickens. 19:06 And uh, we get this thing repaired up, got the backpack going, get the bag sealed up off to the races. 19:24 Go long for season long foliar disease protection that starts at plant active ingredient flu Triol moves through your corn plants as they grow for 19:33 inside out protection from roots to tassel. A single at plant application provides comparable performance in corny yield protection to that 19:40 of VTR one foliar fungicides against diseases like gray leaf spot, northern corn leaf blight, common rust and more. 19:55 Some farmers I know swear by a name, say they never operate anything else. Well, here are a few names for my Fent 900 tractor 20:06 fuel saver, time maximizer game changer. I like those names Down in the delta of Arkansas. 21:01 The first crop that comes to mind for most people is cotton. Matt does grow cotton, but he loves growing rice, 21:10 but not in the way you've seen it in the movies. And he's not the only one who loves the rice fields. This is one of my favorite places to be. 21:19 Rice is one of the things that, that I kind of feel like is a, a heritage thing for farming. Uh, this is something that goes straight to your table. 21:28 This farm here, specific farm is very sustainably grown. So it's, it's really cool to me to be able to do 21:35 what we're doing here, put this food on your table and um, do it in a sustainable way. So the cool thing about Arkansas 21:45 is it is the number one rice producing state in the United States. Uh, a lot of people don't know that rice has grown here, 21:52 but it is absolutely one of our major crops in Arkansas. So rice is harvested similar to wheat. 22:06 Uh, it's grown, you know, we planted with a drill. It's harvested with a, you know, with a regular draper header. 22:12 The differences between wheat and rice is we have so much foliage as you can see here, that you know, that we have to deal with. 22:19 A lot of stove goes through the combine. Rice is very abrasive, uh, to the combines, to the grain bin. 22:26 Everything we do, you know, you hear a lot of people in the Midwest say, whatever you do, don't buy a combine that's spinning rice. 22:32 And, and to be honest with you, I don't disagree with them. Rice is a lot like wheat, but it's very abrasive 22:39 and it will wear your machinery out and you've gotta go a lot slower. We're probably running, when they quit today, 22:45 they were probably running a mile, a mile and a half an hour. Wheat you can run, you know, two 22:50 to four mile an hour depending on what your moisture is on your wheat. So rice is such a unique product from the harvesting 22:56 to the planting to actually going on the table. When you plant a corn plant, you got one ear up at the top. When you plant a soybean plant, you have 23:10 pods growing from the node one or node three or whatever, all the way up. When you grow rice, it, you know, 23:16 the plant grows, it tillers out. And what I mean by a tiller is it'll be like one guy and then he'll have five guys 23:23 around him that come up with him. The same thing with wheat. You know, it's a tilling process. And then when you get through, you've got a head on it like 23:29 this and um, you know, all you have to do is be about four or five inches below that head and, and you get it all done. 23:36 You end up, you end up leaving this stubble out here. And this is a problem. This is a problem we have to deal with as a stubble, 23:43 but we've got ways to do that and, and, uh, you know, get it back into the soil. A lot of people think that rice 23:53 has to be grown in the water. If you watch a lot of the movies, maybe you watch Rambo and uh, you know, you see the rice grown in the 24:00 patties and everybody's in the water. Rice don't have to be grown in the water. There's a lot of row rice now grown, which is a new adaption 24:08 that we've made to being able to grow. Rice. Water is used for weed control. So the cheapest weed control you can have in rice is 24:17 to actually flood the field because grasses will not come up as well if you're, you know, if you're flooded. 24:22 So we'll keep a light flood on this, on this crop. Now the the crazy thing is, you know, when you plant the rice, you still gotta have the same dried 24:31 round as you would if you were planting corn, soybeans or anything else. Rice can actually come up in water 24:38 and it can come up in mud, but it can't come up in both. So it's kind of tricky how you do it. 24:43 A lot of some people will water seed it. Uh, so you'll flood the field with water, then you'll drop the seed in the water, 24:50 the seed will sprout. You'll let the seed kind of attach to the soil and then you'll drop the water and the seed to be there. 24:57 That's not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is with a drill and plant it. And if, if you get a big rain 25:04 and a flooding rain, you've gotta go out there and actually drain the water off the rice just like you would if you were planting corn and soybeans. 25:10 So it's kind of a unique product that that can stand water. But in the same sense, it's not, 25:16 water's not its a hundred percent friend, it's just mainly used for weed control. So when we get through harvesting these fields, 25:25 we'll come in here and Kelly diamond, the the fields and get the stubble down. We'll automatically put a flood on it. 25:31 And then I think we're, uh, home to more than 200 species of waterfowl. 25:37 So rice attracts ducks and we love to hunt ducks. We love to grow rice. So having rice on your table and a place to, to uh, to duck hunt, you know, 25:47 in the winter is two things that we really like about the rice. It changes everything. 25:59 So says Indiana corn grower Nathan Davis about innovative XY way LFR fungicide from FMC Xw brand fungicides are the first 26:07 and only at plant corn fungicides to provide unprecedented season long inside out foliar disease protection. 26:15 Precision is understanding the potential hidden within decoding the specific nutritional needs of your crop, maximizing every nutrient 26:29 and getting the most out of your yield. We break down the science in a way that works for your crops and for you apply less 26:40 and expect more with precision crop nutrition from agro liquid In the heart of harvest. Victory 26:46 awaits. Introducing Dem CO's high speed all wheel steer, combine header transport trailers crafted for strength, 26:56 engineered for speed, Demco tailored for victory. We are gonna talk a little bit now about chloride, which is basically what I call salt sodium chloride. 27:09 Here in the delta we have a lot of problem with salt in our water. So when you get into more of our high clay soils 27:16 and you get over in the eastern part of the county, you know, there's literally salt. We're pumping salt out of the wells. 27:22 So if we're flushing rice, and when I talk about flushing rice, we'll we'll dump that water on the rice and it'll go down 27:28 and hit the levee and come back. We'll let it out in the next levee and so on. Then we let all that water go. 27:34 If you see a lot of times we'll actually see white on the side of our levee and that's basically salt, which is chloride. 27:41 So we deal with that, it's a problem. Um, murated pot ash, you know, that's the most well used or the most popular source 27:50 of potassium that you can have. It's called potassium chloride. About 47% 27:55 of potassium chloride are potash, is chloride. What chloride does is it actually robs, um, it robs moisture. 28:04 I mean, you think about it, you know, if you think about salt, what do you use to cure meat? You know, if you're gonna cure a ham, you put salt on it 28:11 and so it actually cure and dry it up. So chloride actually will also fracture the soil and it it'll kind of bust up the soil particles 28:19 and that allows more compaction. So there's a lot of negative things, uh, with chloride. I just assume nothing I have have, have chloride in it. 28:28 When we're looking at these different, uh, infer phosphorous fertilizers, one of the things we look at is the salt content. 28:34 You know, so that is one negative nutrient that we don't need. You know, that's something we have to pay a lot of attention 28:41 to, especially down here. We get water samples and you know, we want see the pH of our water. 28:46 We want to see the salt content of our water in a lot of these salty areas where they, where these irrigation wells. 28:53 Pump pump salt, then we will get reservoir water. But you will still be surprised at the amount of chloride that'll be in your reservoir water. 29:01 'cause that water's coming from here. It's runoff water from the wells and stuff that's been pumped into the drains 29:08 or the, into the bios. And then we pick that up, put into the reservoir. Surface water is still gonna have a salt content in it. 29:13 So that's something we have to pay a lot of attention to. If we're on a real salty farm, we've gotta have a bean 29:20 that is a salt ex excluder and they breed some beans that will actually negate the salt and keep the salt from going into the plant. 29:27 And so when we're looking at some of these higher clay soils and bean varieties, one of the big issues is, 29:33 is it a salt ex exclude or is it not? You know, when I was a kid, I started farming a buckshot farm down in Chico County 29:39 and I had a guy come by the neighbor and, and you know, we're sitting there on a turn road talking and he said, boy, your beans look good. 29:45 And I said, I said, yeah, they look pretty good. And he said, uh, he said, well, you know, what variety did you plant? 29:51 And I told him and he said, well I hope it's a salt excluder. I said, what's a salt excluder? 29:55 Now I was as naive as you could be 'cause I was a cotton farmer that come down here to plant some, some buckshot 30:01 and grow soybeans on it and rice. And uh, he said, uh, we got a lot of salt down here. So honey, he said, if you don't have a salt 30:08 ex exclude, you'll be in trouble. So I panicked, I'm a kid, barely got a crop loan just starting to farm. 30:14 So immediately I went back to the shop, got all my records to find out what bean I had. 30:19 Luckily all, it was about a thousand acre farm. And luckily all but 40 acres was salt, exclude beans. Now that wasn't because I picked salt excluders, that was 30:28 because God looked down and blessed me on what varieties I picked. 40 acres made about 30 bushels 30:33 and the other ones made about 60. So, uh, that shows you the difference If you don't have a bean that will resist salt.

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