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. 00:41 You know, so like my work with Tru Tera and the regenerative journey that we're on along with the high yield journey, I very much believe now 00:49 that they're the pa those paths are converging and the regenerative space in the United States is very interested in reducing nitrogen. 00:56 Well, no farmer is gonna do that if it costs him money. You've got to show that grower how they can be regenerative and not just maintain their yield level. 01:06 They have got to make more money because you're asking 'em to do more things. You're asking 'em to change. Change is scary. 01:12 Change can be expensive. So I find it super interesting that the high yield journey I'm on with trying to balance this crop also comes 01:20 with a reduction in nitrogen. I'm, I'm not reducing this nitrogen to try to be organic. I'm not reducing this nitrogen 01:26 to chase these sustainability dollars or regenerative dollars. I'm reducing nitrogen out here, and I'm working on this 01:32 because I believe it's the path to higher yields, which is the path to more money to a better ROI. The fact that it is hand in hand 01:41 with the regenerative space, I think is great, and it's the main reason that I'm involved in it. I can see the way we're going down here. 01:48 Everything is coming together. One of the things we've looked in our research the last couple years is that we have been over planting 02:00 and over applying nitrogen as long as anybody can remember. So when you have a tightly grouped crop tight population 02:07 grouping, and you have a lot of nitrogen fertilizer, that plant just wants to shoot straight up and build a lot of vegetative mass. 02:15 So, nitrogen has always been the golden nutrient everyone wants to talk about. The more you put on, the more you get. 02:20 But what we've seen in our research lately is that that's not exactly true. Too little nitrogen is a problem. 02:26 Too much nitrogen can even be a bigger problem. When you've got too much nitrogen in the soil, you really have thrown outta balance 02:33 to your whole biology, basic chemistry. You're gonna affect your uptake of calcium, potassium, and magnesium. 02:39 Calcium is essential for cell walls. And if you don't have enough of it, you're gonna have some problems there 02:45 that is gonna make your plant more susceptible to insects and diseases, just 'cause it can't build 02:49 as strong of a cell wall. So maybe the solution isn't always to add more pesticides, it's to take away something else 02:57 that's gonna make you more efficient, more profitable, it's better for the environment, and ultimately you're gonna build a better plant. 03:06 Regenerative and sustainable is, are basically two words to mean the same thing. You know, the, the whole goal in a sustainability 03:16 environment are regenerative farming environment, is to do more with less and do it the right way. One thing I'm really proud of we do, 03:23 is we use poultry litter. It's organic, it's sustainable. It's a byproduct of another agriculture practice 03:31 that we're able to use and, and use dearly. We love it. Anytime you can use a byproduct as a main product, I mean, that's a win-win situation 03:40 for the poultry grower, the, the beef grower, the hog grower, and it's a win-win situation for the row crop farmer. 03:48 It's a, it's nice to be able to not use your natural resources and be able to use a byproduct instead of mine 03:54 and potash, you know, just like if it was coal or anything else. I'm substituting that with something that comes out 04:01 of a chicken that come from, originally from the corn that I grew in the first place. When a farmer talks about not wanting to be sustainable 04:10 or regenerative because of the cost that it's gonna inflict upon them, this is the kind of stuff that we need to look at. 04:16 This is the kind of research that is not only important for high yields, it's important for the regenerative space of the United States. 04:22 And we as farmers need to look at this and help tell this story because otherwise, you know, the regulatory burdens 04:29 that temple has in the Chesapeake Bay, those burdens are probably coming. Those regulations are coming to all of us. 04:38 We're in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, um, in the state of Maryland. Um, we have a nutrient management land, um, 04:45 and we, we farm by regulation. We have to be extremely efficient with everything, all of our usage, because we only get one shot at, 04:54 we can only put on so much nitrogen, so much phosphorus. I now believe after my conversations with Temple, one 05:02 of the reasons his yields are so high is because he's already achieving this balance in a lot of ways. 05:08 But a lot of the things he's doing, we're moving to, and he's further ahead than most of us. I would say the farmers in that Chesapeake Bay region 05:15 that are like temple, most of them probably are ahead of us. But I need to learn how to farm like temple 05:19 because number one, the yields are gonna get better, I believe. Number two, the regulations are coming 05:24 and we've got to learn this. But now with the technology and the education we have, the, the products that we have 05:31 high yield and great regenerative practices are very much becoming one for us. And, and it's for the, not just for the good of agriculture 05:40 and, and farm income. It's for the good of the environment and the world, and it's what the consumer's asking for. 05:46 And I'm, I take great pride in being one of the leaders I guess in that space. Amino Grow is an exciting new product put out 06:01 by concept agritech. What we've seen is an increase in fruiting sites as well as branching. 06:07 And this has equated to yield Spot less. Introducing the cleanup for tar spot, gray leaf spot, Southern Rust and more novel next generation at Astria. 06:25 Fungicide from FMC broadens your spectrum and strengthens your residual foliar disease control. Protect your corn fields with a proprietary combination 06:34 of three modes of action. Visit your f fmc retailer or@astria.ag.fmc.com to clean up this season In the heart of harvest. 06:44 Victory awaits. Introducing Dem CO's high speed all-wheel steer. Combine header transport trailers crafted for strength, 06:53 engineered for speed, Demco tailored for victory. Some farmers I know swear by a name, say they never operate anything else. 07:07 Well, here are a few names for my Fent 900 Tractor Fuel Saver, time maximizer Game changer. 07:20 I like those names. BioHealth is a product by concept, agritech made up of a consortium of beneficial biology 07:34 that actually colonized the plant and boost the plant's immune system from the inside. I lost my mom when I was a senior. 07:53 I lost my dad, you know, in my thirties. Uh, lost a lot of people in my life, but I don't know that I've lost anyone in my life 08:02 that had the impact that it had. When what, with what happened to Billy. So if you're around our farm, any length of time at all, 08:18 you're gonna hear the name Billy Garner. And Billy Garner was probably one of the most important people that I've ever had in my life. 08:31 We met, knew each other when we were younger and in high school he turned down a scholarship to go to college because he needed the money 08:40 to have a vehicle and close. So I knew this guy had come from hard work. That's all he'd ever known was hard work. 08:46 But I knew he was extremely smart. So he started working for us, working for me. At that point. He come off a, off an operation that was top-notch. 08:57 It was probably the best farm, you know, in our area. And so a lot of the things that they were doing, he brought with him. 09:03 He brought the knowledge of things they were doing. He and I, for the 25 years. I mean, we, it got to the point where it was kind of eerie. 09:12 The fact that we thought so much the same. We like to hunt, we like to do, you know, we like to go out and eat. 09:19 We like to cook and we love to farm. And out of 30 days a month, we probably probably spent 25 days together. 09:28 Now that was with our wives. That was hunting, that was working. So I started basically giving him more responsibility. 09:38 And every time I give him more, he'd take more and more. And to the point that we were, we were so close 09:44 to being partners, that I always thought if something happened where Lane didn't wanna farm, that, that I would end my career. 09:53 You know, with Billy, I rode with him. Ain't no telling how many miles on a truck we put together, it was kind of weird. 09:59 'cause a lot of people think, man, you're just riding around with Billy, you ain't really doing anything. 10:02 But he was teaching me. And so me and him, we, we, we, we had a bond. It was pretty tight. Yeah. He wasn't part of the family. 10:11 Billy was family. We used to take the side by side and, you know, we'd get a big rain or whatever and he and I would go around and check the crop, 10:24 you know, see what was going on. And it was a four door, what they call a six seater, uh, Can-Am and I mean, we had lift kit on it. 10:34 We had the big fancy tires and rims on it. And, you know, a typical farmer, we had a custom top. So we had the top built really heavy. 10:43 So we had a big heavy top on it with a stereo system, you know, mounted in it. And that was what we'd done a lot of times for relief. 10:50 You know, we'd go on weekends if we weren't farming, we'd go ride trails or, you know, ride the farm, do things like that. 10:57 And One day it was a father's day of 2019 and I called him up. I said, you know, we got this rain last night. 11:08 Do you want to go? You know, go see if these beans are gonna come up. We planted, uh, wheat beans. What? 11:13 They were double cropped beans. He said, yeah, that'd be good. So loaded him up, loaded his wife up, my wife up, went 11:19 to the farm, unloaded looking at soybeans, riding around, just looking at the farm. 11:24 And we got the point where we're about to go back to the truck. I'm looking at the truck to load the truck 11:30 to load the side by side. And, uh, somebody said, let's just go make a round back here in the old muddy field we had. 11:37 And we just turned left just at a right. Went back in the back field, you know, I made a turn, a fairly sharp turn, very slow. 11:47 And the side-by-side went in a deep rut. But when it went in that deep rut, it slowly turned over. It was turning over so slow. 11:58 It was almost amusing in my mind that I thought, we're going to turn this big thing over. We hide our nets up, you know, our safety nets. 12:07 And when it hit the ground, You know, I thought, well, now we've gotta get out the front window. Wives are in the back. And I started to get out 12:17 and his wife said, oh my gosh, Billy's under the side by side. You know, I get out the front window, I look down 12:28 and it's, it's across his chest. We, I had the women there with me trying to help me. And I, I pulled on that side by side 12:38 and to the point that I broke two ver or I cracked two vertebrae in my back. And it just, I mean, it was too big, you know, 12:46 it pretty much killed him. Instantly. I lost, I lost my right arm. I lost my best friend. I lost my farm manager. 12:59 I lost a man that thought so closely the way I think that it was scare most, any, any people. And I lost my, my hunting buddy. 13:10 It was a deep, dark sinking feeling. And I was, I wanted to dig a hole and just crawl in it. I wanted to be closed off from the, 13:18 from the community, from my family. I just didn't know which way to turn. And, and the only thing I knew to do was quit 13:31 Adding Raytheon into your infer application or even an over the top application. Round B three V four can do wonders in helping that plant 13:41 navigate tough soil conditions. As far as nutrient tie up is Control the toughest weeds with overlapping residuals. 13:50 Lock in the longest lasting control for your soybean fields authority brand herbicides such as Authority, edge herbicide 13:57 and Authority Supreme herbicide combine the industry's most effective group, 14 14:01 and 15 active ingredients for a clean start and long lasting residual control. Following up 14 to 28 days later with a post application 14:10 of Anthem Max herbicide through V six establishes a heavy duty economical, overlapping residual program. 14:18 Claims are good and all, but I'm more interested in results. My fent momentum planter delivers them the only planter 14:27 with automatic tire pressure adjustments, weight transfer across its frame, and inline center tandem wheels that eliminate pinch rows. 14:38 It's just another way. I know fence. Got my bottom line. Top of mind. 14:53 Introducing Dem CO's newest dual auger grain cart design, now equipped with the front folding auger 14:59 and available in right side or left side unload options featuring Dem CO's quarter auger design for optimal visibility 15:07 with a 22 inch vertical auger unload at speeds of 600 bushels per minute. Demco outpace harvest time every time. 15:17 Sweet success has been in the product lineup of concept agritech for a while. We've seen it do a lot of things 15:22 that you wouldn't think a black strap molasses product would do. Anytime you could increase the bricks content of your plant, 15:29 the more healthy it's gonna be. It was hard to deal with. I just didn't know which way to turn. 15:41 And, and the only thing I knew to do was quit. You know, I thought, I, I, I, I'm, I'm done. I've lost, I lost interest in farming. 15:52 I lost interest in, um, Anything. That first year was tough. I mean, he, he didn't have the drive 16:04 that, you know, to keep going From the outside. The facade I was building was that, you know, I'm okay after a couple months, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm good. 16:19 You know, I had to, I you think about it, I had landowners, I had employees, I had family members, 16:25 and I had friends all looking at me to see what was gonna happen. It consumed my mind. 16:33 So when I needed to be thinking about irrigating beans, I was thinking about what happened with Billy when I needed to be selling my crop. 16:43 I was thinking about what happened to Billy when I was needing to tell my wife that I loved her or Lane that I loved him. 16:50 I was having to take care of my crop. And it just made me, and I, I, and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to just, I really wanted to go into a depression, 17:00 honestly, and go to my bedroom, turn off all the lights and, and, and not leave my room again. 17:06 I mean, I hate to say it that way, but, but that's the way I felt in my mind. And I fought that every single day. 17:13 And the reason I could fight that was the family I had behind me, the employees I had behind me and, and my son taking over the farm. 17:24 I'm gonna be honest with you. I, I don't know how I kept it together. I, I, I, I'll be honest, 17:29 because I had Did you keep it together? Yeah, I, I didn't have a choice. I mean, I, I had, I had about 10 minutes to 17:35 where I could kind of just, okay, this just happened. And I didn't grieve for a while. I guess if I, if, if any grieving I did, 17:45 I did when I got home after the funeral, I did it on the farm by, by way of just excuse my French, 17:53 working my tail off, working my ass off. Uh, I did it by way of j of work. The the problem with the career that I have is, I'm, 18:05 I'm growing crops. When you're a farmer, you can't stop it. Don't stop. You don't have a choice to stop as bad as you want to. 18:15 You don't have that choice. You don't have that luxury of saying, I'm gonna go home at five o'clock for my job and I'm gonna, I'm, I'm not gonna think about the things 18:23 that's happened or I can just stop completely. I couldn't, I couldn't do that. There was no way to do that. You can't, even if I wanted 18:31 to quit, I wanted to quit farming. I couldn't quit farming in June. You've gotta finish that crop. 18:39 And then if I wanted to quit farming, I would have that crop out of the way those financial obligations met, then I could decide to quit or not. 18:50 Am I over it? No, I'll never get over it. It will never ever leave me. I think about it every day, but I can cope with it now. 19:01 Billy and I got up that morning and said, look, it's rained a half inch lane's. Family's at the beach. I said, Billy said, 19:07 do you think we'll let Lane go to the beach? You know, we we're gonna have a couple of slow days. His family's down there. He is not with his kids. 19:13 He's working. I said, yeah, that'd be a great idea. So we called Lane up before we went on side by side, said, Hey, we doing, 19:19 he said, well, I'm, I'm doing anything right now. Father's Day. And he's not with his family. They're at the beach. Dedication, okay, 19:27 dedication to the farm. At 24 years old, my family's gone to the beach. He knew he didn't have a lot of choice. 19:34 And so we woke up, told him the good news he could go to the beach. He jumped in, the truck took off, 19:39 and he was about an hour from the beach. When he got, when he got the call, he, he slept that night. He got up. He told Ryan, he said, I want you to drive home 19:50 because I've gotta take a notebook and I've got to think of everything Billy done and all of his responsibilities to keep this farm alive. 19:59 He said, it's gonna be up to me 'cause I know what dad's gonna feel like. So it's gonna be up to me to lead these guys, the employees, 20:07 'cause they're gonna be looking at somebody, you know. And he said, it's up to me to get this done. So the six hours back from the beach when he got back, 20:14 he had a notebook full of notes of everything that he had to do when he got home 20:20 and literally started with number one and, and, and ne and never slacked up from there. And there would've been times when, you know, 20:30 during the day, had he not been there. I know that I had a drag on, I know I had a growing crop and it was June. 20:36 June's one of the most important months. We have insects, irrigation. And there would be times when I would wanna drag my feet. 20:43 But I was watching him take hold of all these different things that he was doing. I'm like, I can't fail him. 20:49 You know, I can't fail Sherry, I can't fail these employees. So I kept one foot in front of the other, 21:03 You know, although he was my son and we've got that relationship anyway, now he was my farm manager along with being my son 21:11 Immediately. I'm no longer a tractor driver. I mean, I knew that dad was gonna need somebody to lean on. Mom's gonna need somebody to lean on. 21:35 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 21:43 inside out protection from roots to tassel. A single at plant application provides comparable performance in corn yield protection to that 21:51 of vtr one foliar fungicides against diseases like gray leaf spot, northern corn leaf blight, common rust and more. 22:05 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 22:16 Fuel Saver, time maximizer game changer. I like those names. I've told him this before. 23:09 There's always lemonade in lemons. Every situation. There's lemonade. The lemonade in that situation, if there, if you could ever squeeze any lemonade out of it, 23:19 is the fact that I think without Billy's death lane would've never been able to do the things he'd done because me and Billy were doing them 23:30 Lemonade. Lemonade outta lemons is me and my dad now probably have one of the best relationships a father and son can have. 23:40 I mean, he, he's absolutely my best friend. Tell you a little story. You know, I told him at one point in time when he started farming, 23:48 I let him purchase. I didn't give it to him. I let him purchase 25% of our farm. And I said, you can be a 25% owner if 23:55 you can go to the bank and get the money. So he goes, the bank gets the money, becomes a 25% owner in the farm. 24:02 Before Billy passed away, I said, when you get to the point that you can make 50% of the decisions, 24:09 I will sell you the 25% more of this farm. You know? 'cause he, it seemed like he was starting to do more work than me physical work anyway, 24:18 because I was getting older and he was coming in at the right time. So I thought, you know, the work's cool, 24:22 but you gotta be able to make the decisions. All the 70, a hundred percent of the decisions can't be on me. 24:27 And you get 50% of the farm. The year after Billy died, after that year was over with, I'm like, man, if, if he hadn't met that obligation 24:35 by now, he'll never meet it. And I went to him, I said, son, you, you've, you've earned the right to purchase 50% of this farm 24:44 because you're making, last year you made from June to now you made 70% of the decisions. You kept me afloat. 24:52 And he looked at me, he said, dad, I'm not ready. He said, I wanna stay 25%, let me get another year. And then another year we'll talk. 25:03 How many kids at 24 years old would say, I'm not ready to be a 50% owner. I just, I'll stay 25. 25:12 That told me right there what kind of man he was. You know, I told him yesterday, when we were, when we were going home, I said, I just want you to know 25:22 that you have more than met any expectations I would ever think that you would ever succumb to, and you're only 28. 25:31 I said, where are you gonna be when you're 50? And you know, I don't want to brag on him to the point where he gets a big head. 25:36 But he's the guy that says, no dad, I still got so much to learn. He told me yesterday, I said, I, I, you know, 25:41 I've been having to film this show. And I said, I'm sorry I'm not there. You're taking care of all this. 25:46 And he said, I need your mind. He said, I need your decisions and your mind. He said, if you just answered the phone when I call, 25:52 he said, I got this handle. And the savior for me, excluding God, I mean without God, it, it, 26:03 I would've never been able to function. Period. We find ourselves star God kept one foot in front of the other. 26:13 You know, I will say that, but the team of people I had around me, from my family to my employees, it was like an army. 26:23 And you've heard of, I think the word is faint pH position. Like, you know, where the, where the Roman guys 26:29 or medieval guys used to all put their swords together. You know, they had their spear down and they walked in unison 26:35 and they protected whoever was behind those shields. That's the way I felt like was happening to me with my family and my, 26:42 and my farm, my employees, my friends. They just built a circle around me and basically protected me until I could get well, 26:52 I was sick and they kept me protected until I got well, It changes everything. So says Indiana Corn grower Nathan Davis about innovative xw 27:14 LFR fungicide from FMC Xw brand fungicides are the first and only at plant corn fungicides provide unprecedented 27:21 season long inside out foliar disease protection. Precision is understanding the potential hidden within, decoding the specific nutritional needs of your crop, 27:38 maximizing every nutrient and getting the most out of your yield. We break down the science in a way that works for your crops 27:47 and for you apply less and expect more with precision crop nutrition from agro liquid 27:56 In the heart of harvest. Victory awaits. Introducing Dem CO's high speed all wheel steer. Combine header transport trailers crafted for strength, 28:07 engineered for speed, Demco tailored for victory. Uh, nickel's considered probably a micronutrient, uh, in the agronomy world. 28:31 Uh, it is considered a micronutrient agronomy world and really we, I haven't paid attention much like anybody else in the last recent 10, 20 years to nickel either. 28:40 But recently we've spent more time learning about it, uh, understanding it. 28:45 Uh, nickel's kind of an another one of those need unknown, uh, nutrients that the plant deals with. 28:53 So probably the main thing that I learned about nickel is it's really a key nutrient in the urease enzyme. 29:00 You're going, what's the uase enzyme? So on the nitrogen side of application, uh, in, in in agriculture we use, we'll use urea, which is 46 oh oh 29:12 or a dry granular of nitrogen. So it's called urea. It's the way it's formulated. We use that and we spread it on fields 29:18 for corn more specifically to, uh, give the plant nitrogen. Well, as that comes in the plan, it needs to be broken down 29:25 and converted into a usable form. It's not plant available right away. It needs to be converted. 29:30 So nickel is a key in that urease enzyme. The uric enzyme breaks that ure up, down into ammonium and the plant can use it to do 29:38 its functions within the plant. Otherwise, if it doesn't have that ure enzyme activated in the plant, 29:44 the plant will store it, store that urea in a negative way in the plant and become a kind of a detriment to, uh, plant functions 29:51 and can make your yield go backwards. So it's been kind of neat to, uh, learn about that and do some applications with it 29:56 to know if you're deficient in nickel. There ain't really a good way, uh, that I know of today. I mean, I'm sure there's some tests out there 30:05 probably cost prohibitive potentially to guys. I haven't found one. I found one, uh, way we can measure it and, and really we don't know if we're deficient yet 30:13 'cause it's just so much unknown about it right now as far as uh, what values we need in the plant, 30:19 how much do we need, how much we don't need. So it really is, it's one of those unknown elements of how much we need. 30:25 We're still learning a lot about it. And so if a guy wants to go measure, go, I want to know if I'm nickel deficient. 30:30 Well, you're gonna have to do all of research, kind of do some study on farm to kind of figure out, especially I'd recommend guys that I spend a lot of time 30:37 with urea products. Uh, probably wanna spend a little bit more time researching nickel and if they're using it on the farm 30:43 or if they're not, or maybe try to use some products to see if they get a benefit out of it. Um, but today you just can't go out there. 30:50 I'm gonna take a nickel your test and see a value and understand that I'm short or not. Probably isn't a lot of research out there today 30:55 that would guide you anywhere. You know, beyond that, beyond that nitrogen piece, which is an important piece. 31:01 Uh, you know, nickel has some plant defense mechanisms within the plant. Plant, uh, uses nickel to create some proteins 31:08 to help fight defense. So it's got some plant defense like a lot of the micronutrients do. 31:13 So it's a key in that. Um, and then kind of going, where do you get it? Where's the plant? A lot of it just drive from the soil. 31:20 Um, we've done some tests on Kelly's Farms here in western Iowa and there's a lot of nickel available. 31:26 It's just getting to the plant and that's probably the disconnect there. There's a lot of available, again, 31:31 plant available is another story. So, and, and another way to look at it, uh, is probably a soil pH you know, 31:39 they do not understand the nickel if it's higher, pH probably harder for the plant to get it. Stuff like that. So, you know, go back 31:45 to, uh, why am I sure? What am I doing? We'll, maybe look at some of your soil stuff and research that side that, uh, 31:50 you might need some nickel applications to help you with the program you're running.