Pest Management Practices

All right. Hey folks. Welcome to the, uh, extreme Ag Pest Management Practices Webinar. We're gonna get started here in just a few seconds. Uh, I wanna remind you that if you have a question, you wanna be a participant, uh, you wanna converse with the participants, that's what we do here. We wanna make this interactive as possible. So just go on the chat, feature the q and a thing, and type in your question and we will take your question. We want to be participative. We want it to be about you. You know, we got a really good call today. Uh, our man temple out in Maryland got two calls from members just like you, and they gave tremendous accolades and feedback, something that we really value here at Extreme Ag, about the information that they have gleaned from working with extreme Ag that has improved their operation generationally. So Temple got a really cool call, and that's something that redeems us, but also more importantly, tells us what you guys are thinking out there. So thanks a lot. We want this to be participative. We want it to be, uh, feedback oriented. We want to hear from you to make sure that you are getting your needs met. There's the best call that temple's gotten all month. He's really excited about that for people just like you saying, Hey, you guys have helped me make money. So be participant, uh, ask questions, send in your questions, we'll get them answered. Uh, on the call today, we've got Chad Henderson from Madison, Alabama. We got, uh, Vern as he's known, Connor, Garrett up in area in Iowa. We got Matt Swanson, who's driving across Illinois right now. And we got Matt Miles down in Arkansas. I'm your host, Damien Mason, and of course, will Sted is the, uh, he's the guy behind the desk. He's basically the Captain Kirk and the bridge of the enterprise. Anyway, we're talking about best management practices for pest management practices. And I want to clarify right now, we had a little discussion before we hit, uh, record and let you all in. Are we talking about just insects? No, we're not. Let's define pest as anything that yield, that Robs yield potential from you. So we're going to touch on to make sure it's more universal and it might help you yet this season. Fungus, rust, uh, worms, anything that between now and the combines running, you might still have a chance to address and save some yield potential. That's what we're going to get into. So it's a little more wide ranging than just insect control. We're gonna start off with the guys in the south because they have more, uh, to manage than we do. Uh, right when we were getting ready to roll, I said, Matt, I think it's smart to start with you guys in the south. And Matt said, well, absolutely, because let's face it, how many times I spray cotton? How many times we treat rice? Matt's in the Delta region of Arkansas. It's heating up by about, what, by February? It's already in the seventies, right? You planted stuff in February by the, by March it is. You're in the eighties. There's a lot bigger season than say where Connor is up in northwest Iowa for pests. So let's start off with you just some things in general that when you think about pest management, Matt Miles compared to, uh, you know, what we used to do, we're better at it now. I assume you've got better products, you've got better protocols. Talk to me about pest management from the perspective of a guy that farms in the delta. You know, to be honest with you, we have, uh, it, this is, this is kind of sad to say in a way, but we have less, we, we have less products today that really do the job. And that's cause of the environmental, you know, I mean, back when my dad was farming cotton, you know, there was products out there now that are not even, not even allowed to be sprayed anymore. So we've actually had to learn, like Temple had to learn how to farm different on fertilize with Chesapeake Bay. We've had to do that with insects and, and, and, and, you know, what we call poisons, basically, uh, you know, killing the insects. But, you know, the biggest thing here is, you know, with the, with the heat being further south. And that's, that's whether you're here where Chad's at and south of us, uh, you know, they're a, a pest is gonna live in a more warm environment and they will hibernate in that warm environment and be there the next year. So we do face a lot of different pests. And when you're talking about cotton in general, uh, you know, it's, it's atrocious. We, we've actually sat down and tried to decide should we just spray once a week or should we hire a consultant to tell us to spray ever eight days? You know, what's the, what's the cheapest way to go when you get into, you know, squares on cotton and you start, you know, developing the cotton plant, it's basically once a week until you get that plant to the point that the insects can't bother it anymore. So, you know, we fight that on, on every crop, but I mean, it's a way of life for us. We never knew any different. And, and so, um, you know, that, that's just the way it is. Now, we also have other pests like they'll talk about later, but that's, you know, during this time of year when we're in reproductive stage, uh, that's what we have to really watch at. We have thresholds. If you've got nine stink bugs or more than you trigger a spray, you know, there, if you've got 13 worms or more, you trigger a spray. You know? So there's different ways we, we analyze that to decide what to do. We may not always do exactly what the recommended threshold is because we know that, you know, it takes, maybe if you go to the threshold, you'll lose a 20% yield or a 5% yield or whatever that number is. We don't want any yield loss. So, right. You know, we analyze that and try to figure out which way is the best way to go. I'm gonna kick right over all state in the south with Chad. And here's the thing. This is a, a cool question. You're the send it guy, you and, and Temple are the send at twins. You say, if there's a chance that we can throw some product out here, it'll do some good, we should try it. But just last week Will and I and Shelly were at Verell Farms, our buddy Johnny Verell down in Jackson, Tennessee, and we're both wearing the hats. Johnny Rell, uh, and I were in a soybean field, nice looking soybean field, and I said, oh, dude, I said, you better get the rig out here. You've got some bug damage. He said, oh, it's not that bad. I said, looks pretty damn bad to me. And he explained to me, he said, well, it's my learning that until a soybean plant is 25 or 30% riddled, you're not actually losing any yield. And then when we got back to his office, he brought in this thing that one of the chemical companies had given him. Maybe you guys have seen it. It's a little plastic soybean leaf and it shows what 10%, um, uh, insect damage looks like. What? 20% D damage looks like, what? 30%. I just want to throw it then to Chad, do you know what I'm talking about? Because me, I wanted to go out there and spray that field, and I know you do too, but probably you're, there's some times where you don't need to jump the gun on pest management. So kind of take me from the ra soybean field to you. Yeah, that's exactly way, way kind of we're preached to and taught down here. If not, I mean, and, and to Matt's deal, you know, back in the, when we had cotton at the time, you know, the biggest thing we had going was the bowl. We, you know, pig people don't even wanna talk about that no more. That I don't know how many people in here they can talk about it. But, you know, on the bow Weil, you know, we sprayed every three days. Like every three days you run across it with a sprayer. And I mean, that went on all summer long. And, and I mean, it was just, it was a rough deal. But, but back, you know, as, as, as we did the bow weaver eradication and you seen that go through and, and, and it worked and it helped the farmers out tremendously, you know, and then went into other things and genetics, you know, that's helped with all this stuff. Um, then we get to, like you're talking about on a bean plant, you know, and I'm definitely not the bean guy for sure, but, uh, I'm the same way. Like when you see a leaf half eat up, you're like, oh lord, we need to get the sprayer right here. We gotta go. But it takes a lot to get it to where it's above that threshold like Johnny was talking about, you know, and then you got the thing called beneficials, you know, you start weighing that out, you know, as Matt was talking about, especially on the cotton side, when you start spraying it much, I mean, you'll trigger other insects when you start killing all these beneficial. And, and it's definitely a balance to keep all that together and keep it in check and not do damage at the wrong time. You know, Connor slash Vern Garrett is over here nodding his head, do we jump the gun and, and spray stuff unnecessarily, thereby wasting money. So in other words, as best management practices for pest management practices, um, don't, don't overdo it. Uh, yeah, I think potentially that that can happen a lot. You know, you never wanna see your leaf chewed up. You wanna go out there and do something about it, but is that always the best option? Um, I remember in college, I read one study in Iowa State that all these beneficial insects, you know, people don't know how much credit to give them, the more diverse your landscape is, you know, the smaller field sizes. A creek here, a terrace here, that's where the beneficial insects are ha are housed. And those fields had a lot less outbreaks of insect detrimental insect populations in 'em. Right. The, the beneficial insects there that are housed. Um, you don't, you don't want to kill all those. Uh, alright. Right. So, so wait a minute. So if I've got a field, uh, I've been down to, let's say where Matt is, he's got some pretty big large tracks of land. Yeah. Obviously you start going out west, you have large tracks of land, uh, environmental people, uh, do bash on monoculture where we have Yeah. Yep. A 640 acre, you know, mile square section that's all in one crop. Is there some credence to the idea that if, if that field was broken up and there was some fence row that there'd be less invasive, less damaging insects in the field? Is that true? That's what research has found. I mean, I don't think anybody on this webinar is gonna say, let's go take land out of production for that. But I mean, um, when you look at different things like that and uh, there's more studies, um, increasing pollinator habitat improves, soybean yields up to 20%. Right. And if you compare that with an n RRCs program or something to move some marginal acres or, you know, just think about those when you're, I mean, we're as guilty as anybody. We wanna have the biggest field we can, that's more efficient. But there's different things to think about and weigh when it comes to this PE management stuff. So, wait a minute, you Said, oh, I got a question. I got a question. So, Vern, what happens when we put a airplane over top of all that right there, Rob? Problems, problems happen. Alright. And Matt and Matt runs his crop with the airplane. Yeah, well, But there, so, so I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with Connor at all cause I understand that and, and certain areas, but those same terraces and CREs and, and even if we leave he bid in the field, if we've got a field that we leave a lot of he bid in, which is a winter weed that we're gonna burn down with our first application after we plant everywhere there's a vegetative spot, whether it's by the creek, by the woodline, that's where we have to check for the most insects. That's where we're gonna have the lowest yield. Cause that's what harbors the good and the bad insects both. Mm-hmm. So, so let's talk one second then back. Flip it back one more time. Bern, you know, this year I had my worst wheat where I had, and it might have been coincidental, but I had my worst wheat where I run my strip till rig beside my wheat. Okay. Well, anytime I had volunteer, the volunteer wheat I had from the year before, maybe it's a little bit of rye grass, anything green. I had APHIS on that green mm-hmm. Within that, into my wheat field. So you see what I'm saying? Like it's a, it's a, it's definitely a give and take because the, the storage that we had like this year on those farms, we're going to actually spray the meta strips and the ditches with a pyrethroid through the year, through the winter just to, because we've gotta get her ha head wrapped around those aphid problems we've got that's caused, that's helped caused, um, uh, yellow barley yellow wharf. That's what we had on a farm, or two barley yellow wharf. And it really stung me bad. I mean, it took me down 30 bushel a week, you know, on that farm. So let's get back to the other part about it. The neat thing that I saw when I was down at re's, uh, that little thing that I'm sure a bunch of chemical companies have given them out, I thought it was just a cool visual that you could walk out there and say, here's what 10% damage looks like. You don't need to spray right now. Cause 10% damage isn't hurting yield. It kind of makes you wonder, is it still arbitrary or do you think they've truly done test after test after test to say only after 32% of, uh, leaf damage do you start to lose yield? I, I just, I question it. If you're in a business selling chemical, it makes you think that you would say, uh, you know, after about 15% it's time to r roll out the chemical and start buying some stuff. But I don't know Vern's nodding in his head. Do you? Okay, Matt, what do you got? I wanna answer that. So, so what you're talking about right now is leaf eaters. Okay. So we've got these solar panels and there's a bunch of 'em out there, and we can take up to like 60, 70% defoliation supposedly and still have the same yield. But those other insects that are eating the pods, punching the pods, the stinkbugs, you get a four bean, five bean pod and a stinkbug comes in there and punches two of those beans out. You went from a five bean pod to a three bean pod. So leaf eaters will salt marsh caterpillars. That's, that's one of the, the main leaf eaters. They will drive you insane. They will skeletonize your leaves, but they're really not hurting you that bad. But there's so many different insect species, maybe not in the Midwest that we have to deal with. We don't even worry about the, we don't, we don't ever even look at the, the foliar feeding on the leaves because it never gets bad enough because we're having to kill the, the, the badass guys that are underneath that leaf taking the pods out. Hey Swanson, you haven't gone yet, so I'm gonna throw this at you. Uh, and where we are, where you are in West central Illinois, you've got less, uh, insect problems. So you're gonna branch out here and talk about other things based on, you said, uh, in preparing for this, the I P M, which is, what is it? Integrated pest management, uh, protocols. That's correct. Yep. All right. I wanna just throw this at you to get you started. Leaf feeders can do a lot of damage and skeletonize a plant before it costs you yield. If that's the case, then why do we have biological companies that say their biggest role is helping you keep those leaves working as solar panels to bring in more photosynthesis to fill those pods. If the leaves are so invaluable that a skeletonized plant can still work, why the hell do I need these products that tell me they're gonna enhance my photosynthesis rate by having bigger, uh, leaves? So the other, the other part of that, um, kind of where's the yield loss or where's the ROI at? And I know, um, Brian and Darren talk about this a lot on their TV on their radio show is a lot of that stuff is figured on a return on investment type situation. And a lot of the older studies are done. Were You name dropping right there? Are you talking about Brian and Darren Hefty? Is that what you were doing right there? I did, yes. Well, we're, we're friends with them. You can, you can say their last time. Alright, Alright. No, I just, that's something that about Damage Yeah. That Brian talks about a lot. And, and a lot of those studies were done, you know, when you were talking about seven, $8 soybeans, you know, I don't know what they are in the delta, but for us with IP, soybeans and, and seed and, and things like that, you know, we're still, you know, receiving 16, $17 a, a soybean or a bushel for soybeans. So, you know, that, that it's a return on investment thing that it always needs to boil back to. And, and the yield calculation is helpful. But again, it's, it's the same thing we run into on the fertility side. You know, we're not managing the way that a lot of people manage. So when you're, when your target yields are higher, that margin for error is lower, I guess is the way that I would say that. All right. So meaning if you were the, as Chad talks about, if you wanna farm easy, have the co-op come out and spray your stuff, go to the beach, take it easy, don't have, don't work as hard and, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can live a nice life, maybe you can let your damage, uh, rack up and you're still fine with it cuz you're not spending the money on the treatment. But if you're going for intensive management, you're gonna pull the trigger sooner. Yeah. I mean, let's say this, let's say if, if we're, say the average a p H in my part of Illinois for soybeans is 75 bushel, you know, if your're pushing for 75, you can probably get away with more leaf damage, then you can, if your yield goal is 85, 95, a hundred. Well, and I'd like to add to that Damon just a little bit. So we get in this situation all the time with soybeans, we'll have, we'll have a bean leaf beetle, we'll have a stink bug, we'll have a bowl worm, we'll have salt marsh, and all these pests will be at say 45 to 60% threshold. Okay? So if you look at each individual pests, you would say, okay, none of these are trigger a spray. But take all those different pests and add 'em up together. You're like, each one of 'em are taken, you know, and we have a, what, what Matt's talking about, we have an ROI calculator through our universities to say that's where our thresholds come from. So our universities figure out what it's gotta be versus a price of soybeans. And this is when you need to spray, this is how many stink bugs you need to have before you trigger a spray. So that, that number right now is nine and on worms, I think it's 13. But if you've got 10 worms and you've got seven stinkbugs, what do you do? That's the confusing part. Where do you, where do you say, okay, I've gotta go and spray. Well it does, it does seem logical to all of us that have grown a crop or been in a field that there's a cu cumulative effect that yes, I might not have the 10 stink bugs, but by God I got seven and I also got seven of this and six of the s and five of the others. You'd think that there'd be a cumulative effect of negative effect based on what you're talking about. Because it's not just one species. You're talking about 5, 6, 7 different damaging species, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the way we look at it. Hey, uh, I wanna remind you, if you're watching this alive, you can participate by going in the chat feature and sending us a question. We'd love to hear from you. And we also make sure we address your question if it's specific to an area, geography, product or crop. The other thing I wanna tell you, since we're all about learning, and maybe you've already seen this, but it's worth repeating, we are doing an extreme ag scholarship program. This is the second year the guys launched this. It's the thing I'm most proud of that, uh, we're doing here at Extreme Ag, not just some little $500 scholarship. We're talking about $3,000, 10 times, 10 scholarships of 3000 bucks. If you have a kid, a niece, a nephew, a grandkid, a neighbor kid, somebody you want to help get their education in agriculture, it needs to be an accredited college. It does not to be a four-year degree, it can be a two-year degree associates, whatever. It just needs to be an accredited agricultural university or college. And we want to hear from them. They gotta get their deadline, their, uh, entry in by August 1st. So August 1st I printed off, so I made sure I got the dates right, August 1st. It's the extreme AG scholarship for aspiring next generation agriculturalists and we want to help. So make sure you do that. Okay. Um, nothing in the chat. So let's go back to me asking the questions. All right, Swanson, going back to you, you said, Hey, I wanna make sure we're not just talking about bugs, we're gonna wrap up more on bugs. But besides that, right now in western Central, central Illinois, what are you thinking about that's gonna cost you yield that you need to treat next? Yeah, so this year specifically, you know, we're dealing with crops that's at varying stages. So we have still have some wheat challenges with, with, um, crops that have been drought pressured or or short, you know, I've got corn that's tsing right now that's five feet tall. So you're still gonna have to at least be aware on the weed side that if, even if we can't manage it, depending on what the weed is, you're creating a weed bank for next year that you're gonna have to fight, right? So that's a note you gotta put in the book. And then we're also coming into fungicide timing because we've got tasing corn, you know, we're coming into spraying for Japanese beetles and soybean aphids and soybeans potentially. So, and, and of course fungicide, uh, which I think I said already, but here we are. So I got a question about the weather cuz where you are as you, you're suffering from drought light conditions. So this is thrown out there for anybody, particularly the southern guys that deal with, as they say, they're a week away from drought every year. Uh, every, every week 2012, second driest, uh, uh, year in the history of, uh, me being around here, 88 being the first, uh, I had three pine trees, mature pine trees, uh, that all died. They died because of bugs, but it was because they were weakened by drought that then the bugs were able to kill them. Is that an issue for crops or is it just an issue for pine trees? Who can go on that one? I would say my experience has been that the weaker the crop is, and this goes field to field or even area to area, the weaker the crop is, whether it's a fertility issue, a drought stress, any of those things, by and large, the weaker it is, the more pressure you're gonna have or relatively speaking, the more pressure you're gonna have. So you'll have, say you have a field that's, that's short and drought's damaged, so it's short fertility, more than likely that's where your insect pressure is gonna come in first in my experience. All right, Vern, you're nodding your head. You're the guy that's most recently out of the, uh, classes at university. Uh, you got a a decent year going now cause you caught some rain. It was pretty tough two weeks ago when I was up there, we were singing the blues. Uh, does that mean you gotta hit stuff for insecticides sooner? Cause those plants have even less resistance when they're under stress or does it matter or the bugs or is it too dry for the bugs? Um, our insecticide's gonna go in when our fungicide goes in. That's just kinda the way, the way the management goes up here. So we haven't quite pulled the trigger on it yet. Uh, I've been out scouting, we haven't had a ton of pressure yet, but it we're, we're gonna put it in here soon. We've got some corn just starting to tassel and it'll be about time for it. Okay, I'm gonna stick with you on this topic and I wanna hear from the guys down south. Your old man said in a previous recording, your old man being Kelly Garrett, said, you know what? We used to buy the fanciest most, uh, high-end corn with all the traits. It was triple stack and it became quad stack genetically engineered to withstand, uh, cutworm and Rootworm I think were the two big things that they bred into 'em. But the guys that know more about farming can, can, uh, correct me there. Your dad said a couple of years ago, we started seeing less efficacy and less impact because of the genetic engineering. We went back to conventional seed saved 70 bucks a bag and instead just handle it the old fashioned way. With some treatments we're making basically 50 or $70 a bag now, but, uh, a bag meaning what every two and two and three-tenths acres, uh, by just treating them speak to that. Because there's people that say, man, if we got press, if we got pest management to do, the best thing you can do is get these really high-end GM o corn plants seed that are, you know, stacked up for four traits and all that. And your old man says, you know what, that was cool for about a decade and they started losing its effectiveness. Yeah, that kind of started to go backwards. And when you look how far the seed treatments have come and the different plant health things that are available now, rather than having your corn or bean whatever, spend genetic energy on defense, let it focus all that on offense and we'll provide the defense with all these different products we're gonna use. Um, see the different seed treatments, the different plant health things, the fungicide, and um, a lot we're focusing more on balancing the soil now. And like you said, the healthier plant, the less stress plant is less susceptible to disease to pass to whatever. Matt, you're nodding your head. I honestly, that's the first time I'd heard it was from Kelly and I thought that was really interesting. Not because I, I'm, I'm pro gmo. Obviously we're all about technology and utilizing the best stuff. He said you not any problem with the technology other than for the expense. I think I can go back to taking care of what the G M O traits set out to do. What I'm, I'm trying to think. Cutworm and rootworm, two of the big ones. What else was there? Well, earworm that, that's where I was gonna go with this. So, so Kelly's a hundred percent right, and Conner is too, you know, we've looked at the data on, on the different traits and what, you know, what the traits provide. So we Connor hit it the nail on the head. So every time you add a trait to a corn plant or a bean plant or whatever, it has to take the energy away from yield and put it in that trait. So we can actually take, we're, we have to be 20% straight roundup ready. So we can't have any traits in 20% of our in of our corn because of the cotton. It, it all stemmed from, from being able to have pest resistance against cotton. So you can take a roundup ready, a lot of times you get the right variety, no traits at all, and you can out yield some of these triple stack varieties because it's not taking the energy from there. Now triceps made a a little bit of difference, but, you know, we'd, we'd pull back ears and that'd be, you know, worm damage two inches down on the cob and you'd like panic. But when you did the math on what it cost to have the triple stack, you know, the earworm control versus a, a regular roundup variety, your RI is better with the roundup variety because it don't take the energy that it takes to put it in that earworm control, you know, to, to make the yield. So it, it's almost a fallacy at times that we need all this and, and Connor's a hundred percent right? There's so many treatments out there now, whether it's in for our treatments or foliar treatments that we can do to offset some of that here in the south. And I don't know if Chad deals, you know, agrees with this or not, but you know, there's a lot of times where we can take a just a straight conventional, it's not conventional, it's GMO roundup ready? Yeah, Yeah. Yield some of the triple stack stuff that we've been throwing in the past. Yeah. So basically you, you're stopping, you're going halfway there. There's the, the advanced quad stack latest stuff. There's the stuff that's been around for what, 10 or 15 years, Matt that's got the roundup trait and a couple other things, but it's still closer, closer to conventional. There's obviously conventional, you're saying you don't need the fanciest stuff because you can whack that with some chemistry or some other thing and still get bigger yield and bang for your buck. Well, you think about these companies, so if they put a, if they put a trade in the, in the corn, you say they put tricep in the corn and I'm a tricep fan, you know, just because what they do is they take the best varieties and that's where they put these technologies in because you're gonna buy that variety because it out yields the other corn by 20 bushels either way. But when they put that, when they put that trait in the plant, you're not getting that for free. You're paying as much or more than what you would pay to have the damage. You just gotta run the numbers Right. Hey, by the way, send it twin Chad. The zip bother you to hear somebody talking about not sending it, not bringing out the latest stuff because, uh, miles is over here saying it's okay, we, we can just, uh, we can get by with, uh, the less good stuff. So, um, you know, it, it's all according to what kind, what my bad, I had two dogs that you ain't never seen that happen on a webinar, have you? So anyway, um, you know, you know, it's all I'm about to kill. It's all according, did I say that, that we were talk about pest management, we're gonna talk about pest dog management. So, um, you know, it's all according to where you're at too. I mean, let's say you got a farmer that farms 1500 acres in one block. Yeah. He can do what, you know, what burn's talking about, what Matt's talking about, you know, but then you get a farmer that's spread out over 40, 50 miles each direction. They're spot on either side of that that he's gonna have to do, you know, do the same thing we do with fertility. You're gonna have to meet it in the middle with just an average plan because you can't be everywhere at once. So it's all about playing the cards and the hand and the tools you got in the toolbox to what you are, what you're dealt with, you know? Um, you know, it used to be that, you know, where we started with, I, I go back to cotton because like Matt said, I mean if you hadn't never raised cotton, it's something to do every Monday. Like you ain't never sprayed nothing like you've sprayed cotton, you know? So, um, you, you know, we, we would just be, it would be terrible, Matt, around anywhere you had pine trees. I mean, wouldn't it? I mean, the boy would be so bad you couldn't even knock 'em off with a stick, you know? So, so we would have, we would start with those expensive traded cottons in those round those pine trees and then we'd work our way out, you know, where we could manage 'em. It's the same thing with this, you know, if you've got farms, like Burn Said is, Hey, I got this farm, it's in good shape. I got these trees and stuff, you know, I got some beneficial, I can manage this farm, okay, with this other one, I can't. And that's where we get into the management piece of every farm in operation. You know, it's how far are you want to go? Well, if you're the farmer that you know that, that you're just going to farm normal, you're 65 or 70 years old and I'm just farming, heck yeah, put it all in traded, don't worry about it. See you enjoy your life, you know, but if you're on the younger side, you can manage it then go the other way. So it's, it's all according to where it fits each farmer. You know, You, you base it on age, but the point is about activity or, or labor or, uh, financial wherewithal, whatever. Yeah. The point is, well when you guys do intensive like you do where maybe you use or Matt Miles where you're saying we're, or up at Garris, I don't know yet about Swanson, we're using, not not a decade ago technology, but you're using stuff that's not the latest and greatest because you don't need it. And also you can get the pest management. And we're talking about siege, we're talking about traited seeds. You know, what you do is not because you're, you're too cheap to spend it on the seed. You make more money by then treating it with the treatments, you know? So, and We, and we've learned so much. I mean like, like they, like Matt was talking about earlier and, and burn even, you know, too swamp. I mean we've all talked about it. There's so many more products that come on the market and then we're making passes. You know, whether we didn't have in furrow, you know, years ago, well, we couldn't treat that. We had to have the seed. Yeah, well now that we do have in furrow or those practices, then we can treat that and keep from doing it. You know, they cutworm for instance, you know, or things like that when you're planting in a no-till environment. So, you know, there's things that we can treat and things we can't because of the technology and the other tools we have on our farms, you know, far as, you know, practices that we do, mechanical stuff. So it gives a, opens the door for it. Told you if you're watching this live, the benefit you have is you can participate, you can ask us questions, ask these guys to address anything product from a practice, from a, a mistake they made, whatever. Go ahead and send in your send in the chat feature. I wanna also remind you that we are all about education. Uh, you can come to our field days. We've already had two of 'em. We had one down at Chad's on May 11th. We had one a couple of weeks ago at Garrett Landon Cattle where Connor works and, uh, at, uh, in Iowa. And then August 10th is at Matthews Family Farms in Kini, North Carolina. I hope I said that right. And August 22nd is in Centerville, Maryland, our friend, uh, temple Road. So if you want to check out one of our field days, the next one is August 10th, the one after that's August 22nd. That's North Carolina and Maryland. We'd love to see you there. Um, alright, Matt Swanson, uh, to go then talk about then let's get off of bugs for a minute. Uh, I went from bugs to worms, uh, with traits. Take me to the next level. When you think about something that steals yield from you, uh, that's a management practice, a best management practice, and a pest management practice. What's the next thing you're addressing? Well, I I wanna touch on something real quick. So on the, You're not gonna tell me deer, are you gonna tell me deer from the nature preserve that you get? Yeah, we got that Six. You get 36 and ride on the combine and eradicate 'em because they're pests. Are you gonna tell me that? Cause I don't think we should talk about that in public. Well, we've literally taken fields out of production from deer damage. So yes, that is a problem. But, uh, uh, if we go back to the, to the trait portion for just a second, um, you know, there's, it's, it's all a matter of, of of like, you know, uh, gosh, what Chad said about just what is the situation you're in, you know, there's parts of Illinois where I've got guys that are running, uh, quads stack corn with insecticide on top of it because the quads stack is not holding back the insect pressure. And that's a traditionally, you know, a corn on corn, on corn, on corn for 20 years type situation. So it, it just goes back to, to what your situation is. You know, where I'm at, where we grow a lot of food grade corn, a lot of that's conventional, you know, we're using traditional old school management practices and then we're also testing, uh, you know, a product like nivo that's that's not labeled yet, but is for, you know, biological control of root worms and things like that. And I think Connor's got that up there in northwest Iowa as well. So it's just a matter of matching, you know, the return on investment, don't tell me what it costs, tell me what I'm gonna get out of it, right? And then, and, and then matching that to your situation. So right Fungus when Verne says Connor, cuz if the viewer is watching it or they're gonna watch their replay, like why they call the guy Vern, his name's Connor. He's always been a very old soul. He's more like an uncle Vern. Anyway, Vern, answer me this. You're putting on a f fungicide and insecticide uh, treatment here in the next week or so, right? Right. All right. Is it different than when you started paying attention just a few years ago? Are you addressing different problems than you were just a few years ago when you started paying attention to what happens at Garrett Land cattle? Oh, not terribly. You know, each year has a different, every couple years we get a different insect challenge. Uh, I remember a couple years ago was thistle caterpillar, the year after that was Japanese beetle. And then every once in a while you've got this different disease challenges, but that it's kind of the same target as far as that goes. Um, did I answer your question there? Not really, but that's okay. We ain't even brought up hogs. If we're gonna talk about deer with Matt, y'all need to come down and watch these hogs. I better tell the person, the person that's listening to the replay is gonna say, God, I wish I was on this thing live, uh, with all those other people so I could, uh, get in on this. My first and only time to McGee, Arkansas, we were out looking at a bean field and three, they weren't quite feral hogs. They were like a cross between razorbacks, domestic hogs and feral hogs. It was like, it was like, it was like the right there in the middle. Uh, and they were running around and, and I said, Hey man, there's, there's pigs out here in your soybean field. And so it was kind of a spectacle. We'll let you, uh, there was a, there was a gentleman riding a E T V trying to corral them with a 22 rifle. It was really interesting. We didn't get shot. Nobody was injured in the making of this film, but, uh, will and I got to see all that. Hey Matt, um, go back on one thing that's kind of interesting to the person that's younger listening to this. When you talk about best management practices for pest management practices, you said we don't even have access to the good stuff anymore. You're too young for D D T. But it is true. I lived in a house in Arizona once, never had a termite, never once was built in 1971. I said whatever they put in the ground and treated this timber with in 1971 and took off the market must have been amazing. Cuz every house I've had since then, you have to have somebody every six months come out and treat it for termites. The good stuff was in the seventies. Yeah, the good stuff within the seventies. And we still had some good stuff in the eighties, I sprayed LeCron, which was a pesticide to keep on eggs, on worms, on cotton. I sprayed that every Monday with an A oh six open cal with an eight row boom, didn't matter where the wind was blowing. And then they took it off. They took it off the market in about 1990 because it killed everybody. So I'm still kind of surprised I'm still alive. Uh, we touched some pretty nasty stuff back then. Answer me then. The next thing here, uh, since I asked Swanson, what's the next thing we're gonna do on fungicide? Is fungicide on a dry year to it matter as much where you are? Swanson it's not even, it's not even humid. You don't even have any rainfall. Your corn is tasseling, it's five feet tall. Is fungicide a necessary treatment when it's that dry? Well again, it's gonna come back to a return on investment thing. We've had six inches of rain in the last four days, right? So our humidity is right back and it's gonna be, you know, is the crop healthy? What do we think our yield potential is? What do we think the gain is gonna be and what does the next 20 to 30 days look like? You know, if it's gonna be raining every three days, then that's probably a fungicide situation. Even if the yield potential's not, you know, not as good as it was at one point. Is, is this much rain this late? Gonna do you any good? Uh, yeah, it'll do us some good. It's gonna have to keep raining to, you know, Round the basis. All right. Chad Henderson, I wanna keep going on this topic about pest management practices. How have you changed your pest management practices just in the last, say, three to five years? What are you doing differently today than you did five years ago that you were seeing a big positive return or a big uh, uh, shall I say, savings of time and effort or, uh, more on the hopper and you're like, damn, I wish I'd have done this sooner. Um, a lot of it is dealing with a stink bug. You know, when they've become a big deal for us down here, I guess everywhere, all across the country they have, you know. But, um, it's, it's the, the late spraying, you know, I mean, you man, I mean we've sprayed some stinkbugs when, you know, we was a week away from leaves dropping on the soybeans. Matt, Matt knows what I'm talking about. I mean, you just don't quit. You don't quit until the combine's running and and then you'll see it. I mean, we've cut beans before and they'll be in the hopper just jumping around, you know, like soybeans, they'll be in the back. You've been run 'em through there. But so the stinkbug is a big deal and just be careful with those cuz when the corn starts drying down, they're going to something. So keep, keep an eye on your beans every two or three days because you'll have to run out there and you don't wanna do it. And nobody wants to go out there and spray you R six bean, you know, when we've almost got them babies in the hopper. But I'm telling you that that stink bug will do more damage than you could spray three times for what he'll do. You know? So even, Even honestly, when the beans are already in drying down phase, do they, do they? Well I wouldn't say that, you know, I mean I wouldn't say drying down phase. I'm talking pri prior to that. I'm talking two weeks out of desiccation. Oh right in, you know, when it's in drying downstage me and Matt's gonna be done desiccated beat. We're gonna be cutting them, you know, and Matt can speak on exactly where the pod, I don't know Matt, tell us where exactly where the pod could be, where the stink bug won't affect it anymore. Let me tell you this. So we have put out our desiccation. So there's three type of stinkbugs in the delta and probably where Chad is too. There's greens browns and then there's a red banded stinkbug. And that sucker right there, they have turned down loads at the elevators before for too many stinkbugs. So you get turned down for damage, you get turned down for moisture in the south, you get turned down for too many stink bugs in your, in your sample. So we have actually put out a, a application to control red band stink bugs while we're desiccating. Now that was only one year and they got really bad then. And they over winter in those places that Connor's talking about, you know, they over winter in, on, on on freeways and where they, you know, plant stuff for the freeways. They over winter there. We've only had one year when it was that bad. But we've literally, we haven't, but there's been loads turned down at the elevator for too many stink bugs at harvest. Hey, by the way, you said green, brown and red banded. Do they all need the same thing to kill 'em or do you have to use a different thing to kill 'em? Because I'm colorblind and I'm over here thinking, holy crap, if I gotta figure out which bugs I got, guy. No, they're, they're killed with the same thing. The difference is the red band will reproduce within about three days. The greens and the browns. If you spray those, usually you got 10 to 15 days before they come back. And so you can kind of time that with your harvest. But a red band, three to four days, you're looking at 'em again. It had me a little concerned there. Little note to you, 8% of the American males are colorblind in some fashion or another. I didn't know that. Recessive, Recessive gene, recessive gene carried on the X chromosome and people like me red green colorblind. There's no difference between the red lights and the flashing yellow lights at intersections. It's all pretty much the same. You'd be screwed, you'd be screwed on steam bugs then I promise you. Uh, hey, hey Connor Garrett. Uh, I wanna go down this other thing. You said something yesterday when we were prepping for this webinar. You said something about a bricks, a bricks assessment or a bricks meter and how that ties into gauging your pest management efficacy, I believe and also treatment times. So talk about that cuz that's something that's a little over my head. Yeah, I mean, um, we can all talk about insecticides and fungicides that we're blue in the face. Cause I mean they do a great job and they've come a long ways, but what uh, cultural practices can we do to maybe reduce their reliance on them and possibly improve our r o i and maybe regulation could be coming down the pipeline that we have to cut 'em back and we don't wanna get caught with our pants down. Right. Um, a lot of a big problem. We talk about all the time, overpopulation and over nitrogen application and you end up with all that rank growth. What that does is that that spreads you out and it lowers your bricks. Bricks is the measure of soluble sugar in the, in the plant solution, in the plant sap. And uh, when you're above 12, you really won't see any insect pressure. But when the plant, when the plant builds up too much nitrate and it has to grow out, it has to, you know, space out to, to dilute that you're diluting the rest of your sugars and the plant, then the insects can digest that and they'll, they'll latch onto that. And, um, I mean that's a, that's associated with a whole host of other problems. When you've got elongated cells, your cell walls thinner, uh, easier to penetrate by both insects and disease. Um, and like I said, over nitrogen application, once you hit that, then you're affecting your potassium uptake, you're affecting your calcium uptake and calcium's one of the most important things in cell walls and uh, you're making yourself more susceptible there. So it's really a whole snowball effect that, um, ends up creating more problems than you might have had if you, if you didn't have that plant balance. Swanson Swanson's either getting private texts or he is listening to us. He's got, he is got a little smirk on his face. Are you, are you getting ready to contribute on this? Or you got something else going on? That Was me. I was, I was laughing because yeah, I was laughing cuz Vern was killing it and I think Kelly and Mike might need to find a new job. So that's, uh, telling, I'm telling you he gets engaged and now he won't shut up. He's like, tell me Hey, and to the people listening or watching this or watching a replay, yes, Connor got engaged over the weekend and like all smart farm boys, he married himself a school teacher, steady income and great insurance and can work from any rural community. I'm telling you, he's got it figured out. Hey, um, talk about this also, and I don't wanna go to, uh, anybody that'll take this question. You said reducing our reliance on some of these products, we've got pretty good products, not as good as maybe they were in the old days. The stuff that Matt was out there spraying on his uh, open air tractor 40 years ago. Are we gonna end up with resistance? It seems to me that we would, we've got, um, antibiotic resistant bugs. We've got, uh, herbicide resistant weeds. Are we using, are we using enough stuff still? Or maybe we have less stuff to choose from that we're gonna end up with a resistance problem on bugs. So Matt's nodding his head and I think Chad's probably got something. So we're already seeing it. You've already got some resistance, Chad? No. Um, what I'm saying is if that was the case, then I would have a plant that was resistant to nitrogen. Yeah, well I Just messing y'all Over over usage, overuse of a macronutrient does happen. I am not, for those of you from the epa, I do not overuse, I do use via sample recommendations. So, so Chad is probably, his plants are, his corn plants are definitely resistant to boron. I will say that, but to answer your question, Damon, like today we have lambda side, which is a, you know, pesticide for stinkbugs and rice. So the stinkbugs and rice are different. That's not one of the three that I mentioned while ago. So rice has a whole different st stink bug that we have to control. And Lambda side is what we've used for the last 15 years and it's starting to get resistant. Now what we get is we get some section 18, uh, rulings I guess with the e p so we can use different pesticides to take care of that stinkbug. So yes, resistance is a big deal that we have to watch on every pesticide we use. And that's where, you know, like where I said I have to have 20% roundup corn, you know, not not traded corn because these insects are, they're evolving just like the the uh, palmer amaranth or the ryegrass or anything else that Chad and I deal with. You know, you, you have to, you have to manage resistance for sure. That's a big deal. Uh, I I'm wondering though, do we end up getting into a situation, you, you know, the, some of the alarmists would have you convinced that we're just, you know, one stroke of bad luck away from uh, some sort of superbug that no antibiotic will ever kill and they like to then say it's because in, you know, 1975 we put uh, tetracycline in the chicken waters in Alabama or something. I'm like, I'm not sure I quite go on that. How, how, how real is the risk for insecticide resistant bugs actually being a problem, Chad? Well, I mean, you know, that's something that's as that that's always in the back of our minds. It's been there. I mean it's been there for me ever since. Like I said, I hate to go back to cotton days, but I mean, I'm telling y'all like Matt, what Matt deals with with cotton. Like people would quit if they had farmed cotton all over the country. But I mean, it'd be like a tobacco deal. So, I mean, but uh, You know what, wait, wait. It's not like tobacco. Some of us that like tobacco products like, uh, Matt Miles and I'll go through the work of growing tobacco cuz tobacco is good. Nicotine makes you smart. But I can wear polyester. I mean, no offense to the cotton guys. I mean if it's that big of a deal, Yeah, Look at that. See that, You know, you just don't know what you don't know, what you don't know and you don't know. I got a question. No, if we're gonna go there, have you ever dried off of a polyester towel or wear polyester underwear? Uh, it doesn't, it doesn't dry you off as good does it At all? You dry off of a polyester towel, right? I'm about to leave this conversation, So no, but no, it's always been in the back of our minds that, you know, this resistance thing, cause this is a scary deal. I mean, you get this resistance, these bugs. In 95 we had a, we had a worm deal and on the cotton and it put a lot of people out of business. I mean, there was people that were spraying all kind of cotton varieties for the, uh, the army worm, wouldn't it, Matt, his army worm. And it was, I mean, it was a, it was a bad deal and every lick, every time they sprayed it was 10 to 20 bucks an acre. And at some point with six or seven or 800 pound cotton at the time, you got to learn when to say, I got enough's enough and let 'em have it. Yeah. So, so ever since, you know, even before that, but ever when you go through one of those events, like you was talking about 88, you know, what sticks in your mind? 2012 when you go through a event like that, just like a weather event, I'm telling you, it, it don't ever leave your mind, you know, you're always wondering like, hey, could this be the year? You know, Dam Where I, where I use a treatment, it doesn't work. I wanna say something about that. I asked my dad when I was a kid, I said, why did y'all leave Paris, Arkansas, which was north of us? He said, the bo we will run us out. We had 60 acres of cotton and, and the bo we will run us out. So we had to come to the south, you know, to try cause they had chemicals and stuff to deal with it. So resistant pesticides is a big deal. But if we manage 'em, right? It's just like Roundup, you know, Roundup today only kills grass. You know, back in the old days when, when we were farming, Roundup killed everything. So we said, okay, we can use Roundup and we can just spray Roundup on everything. And it killed everything five years later. Didn't kill hardly anything. So you've gotta manage, whether it's a weed, weed control, nide, as, as Matt was talking about, stink bugs, bo weevil, whatever you've got to, you've gotta pay. That's the biggest mistake with a farmer is they're like, okay, this is really good. Let's just go spread on everything. You have to, you have to manage that to keep resistance from coming in, no matter what it is. So, by the way, you've got, you've got somebody here that's also a fan of the Miles Farm shirts, which I'm sure 100% cotton. Uh, Galen Beer, our buddy from Aquid says he didn't know that Miles Farms t-shirts were required apparel tonight, but his luck would have it. He has on a green one. So, uh, that's why he's bypassed any vetting process. And of course, Willow, who's wearing his Miles farm shirt and Matt Miles is wearing his Miles Farm shirt and Matt Swanson's wearing his Miles Farm shirt. You guys are all quite, quite cute together anyway. Yes, but What did I say? I would've gone put on shirt when I seen everybody own. I didn't wanna just take over the webinar. Dad, where's yours Now? You're on mute. You're on mute for the dogs. Remember, you're still on mute because of the dogs. I signed mine. It says Matt Miles. Alright. Hey, I want to get some more, uh, more brilliance from our man, Vern. But before I do, I wanna, uh, I wanna go, is there anything else from a pest management that may be the average person that's listening right now, that you guys now say, Hey, here's something that I've really learned or changed in the last few years. Cause I was, it was a silent loss. I was losing bushels to this thing, and by golly, I didn't even think about it. Didn't even know or didn't know how to handle it. Is there anything that, in the last few years since we're talking about cutting the learning curve around here, anybody got a story of a silent loss of, uh, that now a treatment takes care of? And you didn't even really, wasn't even on your radar a few years ago? Anybody got that? No. Stumping them. Stumping. Don't, don't know what, don't spray when your neighbors do. I mean, if I'm, if I've learned anything, especially in the soybean field, either get you a net or get somebody else to sweep for you. You know, don't just go spray because your neighbors are spraying, you know, know what's going on in your field. You, you've gotta scout your field and know what problems you've got. You know, Hey, everybody's spraying for stink bugs. Let me go get me some spray and spray too. I mean, that's, that's not always the case, you know? Oh, you mean, because you're basically, you might, you might be doing it without even a need. It might be, yeah, early you might be, yeah. Okay. You're, you're just Disappointed. I wanna elaborate on what Chad just said. So y'all are bringing up points. I'm the pest guy cause I have so many bugs, but you know, you see neighbors spraying and their airplanes are going everywhere, and you're like, hell, I gotta spray too. And just what Chad said, go out there with a sweep net. You, those are cheap. You can get one for 30 bucks, 25 bucks. Go out there in your field and sweep and see what you got. Because a lot of times what farmers do is they will piggyback an insecticide. I'm glad temple's not on this video or on this webinar, but they'll piggyback an insecticide with another spray. And if you don't need it, then you're back to where Connor said you're killing your beneficial. So if you've got three stink bugs and not seven, and you're like, well, I'm going over this with fungicide. There's so many times we've run a fungicide and a fertility pass on R three beans. We don't put any, any pesticide in there at all because we don't have the, the, the bugs to have to deal with. We we're gonna spread R six no matter what. But a lot of times you will, the, the mentality of a farmer is the easy button, as Kelly says. Mm-hmm. You know, so if we're going over this anyway, let's put insecticide in here. Not only are you not really don't have the insects to kill, but you're killing your beneficial that will protect you till R six or R five or whenever you have to spray. And, and to Connor's point, you might be actually creating a resistance issue unnecessarily. You know, it's the, uh, these things, the hypochondriac parent that takes the, the kid to the doctor every time the, you know, junior has the sniffles and says, I want antibiotics. Well, you, you know, you don't need antibiotics to, to take on the sniffles and Re and remember for a lot of this, this, one of the cheapest things we'll do. I mean, it's anywhere from a, from 95 cents to $2 and 50 cents. I mean, there's a lot of applications here that's a dollar 20 to a dollar 40 an acre, you know? So I'm like, man, why not ride that train? You know why it's going, because it's, it's pennies, you know? Right, right. All right, get me outta here. Uh, Matt Swanson, you've been sitting there in the parking lot I outside the Walmart where he has a good signal checking out Texas, whatever. Anyway, on his way to Havana, Illinois, he said he was gonna to Havana. I said, pick me up a cigar. Oh, not that Havana. Anyway, get me outta here. Uh, pest management. Yeah, it's actually the Casey's in Hayworth, Illinois is where we're at currently. Um, I mean basically what we've talked about tonight is kind of what the industry or, or the, or especially the universities talk about is integrated pest management, right? It's an understanding of what is our threshold? Can we address it with other things like fertility, like keeping our sugar levels up, all of those things. And you know, Damien, to add to your point about the the resistance thing, you know, we've got places in Illinois where, you know, you've got Smart Sachs corn that's failing because the root worm is resistant to it. I mean, just think about, you know, maybe if, if Matt were to think about, let's think about if you had a, a, a, you know, whatever that stink bug became resistant to an insecticide he's using, you know, that's can you create another boll weevil type situation? Uh, you know, where you've literally got universities as mascots, as the boll weevil, right? Because it had such an impact on the culture. Um, Yeah, it sounds like Armyworm was a close second. So, uh, I'm glad I kind of missed that one. Did it do any, just do cotton it, do it didn't do anything up here, didn't do any damage up here in the Midwest to the corner soy, I mean, army worms, it's an issue, especially if you, if you have certain years or if you're using, uh, like a green cover crop, you know, the, the term Chad was looking for earlier was green bridge, right? So if you've got, uh, hen bed or something in Illinois just isn't like Arkansas, you know that those insects live in that, in that green bridge. So we've either gotta manage them if they're present or eliminate the green bridge. I see. That's interesting. Hey, we got a question from Mitch Bo bogie, bogie bogie, we'll call it bogie. I don't know. I once mis annunciated a person's name on here and then will told me that apparently I didn't understand because it was someone with, I think an Italian last name and, uh, I, I mispronounced it. So anyway, Mitch says, for anyone doing corn after corn rotation on certain years, is there any pest management strategies you do differently? Or is it just based off the pressure of the pest and the season? So corn after corn, uh, Swanson talked about it. Continuous corn was a thing around here in the Midwest for a while. It's less of a thing now, I think. So Vern or, uh, Swanson, what do you got on continuous corn? Well, it's less of a thing in some places because of the rootworm issue and the extended DPAs kind of has also created a challenge there. But, you know, for us, we work with a lot of food grade stuff, a lot of conventional stuff. And we actually take advantage of the fact that people around us largely grow traded corn and spray insecticide because we, they've created kind of a halo for us where we can grow continuous non GMO corn and not have a corn bo issue, not have a root worm issue. So it's to answer Mitch's question, it's really just location specific and you're gonna have to try it and see what happens and try it on small acres, see what happens. And you may find out that it's not the challenge that you think it is because for us, we grow non GMO corn, we do corn on corn and we do it without an app planting insecticide a lot of times and without a corn board treatment. But Matt, don't you have to use more fungicide or make sure you have a fungicide application when you're corn on corn? Yeah, corn on corn no-till you're gonna carry over a lot of those fours, you know, over the winter and that residue. So fungicide, you may be doing two passes, you may be doing three passes depending on the product. And obviously fertility, your fertility makes changes considerably. Yeah. Fertility to me, again, we, I hate to say this, but fertility controls a lot of, well not controls, but affects a lot of these things. If you do a great job with fertility, your bricks is up like Connor's talking about your insecticide pressure's gonna go down. Now at extreme ag, we've talked a lot about managing crops into R three, R four, R five, and you have to understand that when you're raising or maintaining more yield potential into those later stages by adding that fertility, the effect of disease and insect that the university study, well, it doesn't matter at R five, if you've been managing fertility into R five, it very well might matter at that point. And that's why, you know, I'm not saying completely disregard what the university says, but you need to be aware that when you're mar managing fertility into R five, raising your yield potential, those thresholds, things like that may change. Hey Vern, you've been kind of the star of the show by the way. You're too young to remember it, but, um, there was a show called Love Boat back in the 1970s. Guys like Matt Miles and I are old enough to remember the Love boat, the original one with Fred Gun, Grandy and all that kind of stuff. And what would happen is they would bring on a guest star that would be on the, the cruise that week. And all of a sudden it was like such a popular episode. Like Charo was on Love boat episode after episode after episode. So would you be extreme Ags charo? Can you say c*****e c*****e c*****e? Uh, I think I'd get more familiar with the reference before I wanna commit to anything there, but By the way, will, will and me and, and Matt Miles will only three the old enough to remember Charo running around saying c*****e c*****e c*****e. So anyway, enough about that. Uh, he, I think he's more of a fantasy island guy. Anyway, so anyway, get me outta here, Vern, on, uh, pest management, you've, you've, you're the most, uh, you're the most recent outta university that's now seeing it out in the field. Are we teaching the kids the right stuff in the university? Because when we stood in the Wheatfield and I talked to you about stress mitigation, I said, how much do they talk about that in Ames, Iowa? You said, I've learned and talked more about stress mitigation since I came back to the farm than we ever did in four years of college in Ames. So what about pest management practices? Are we on the right path here or are we actually maybe ahead of what's happening in the, in the land grant universities? Um, well I think bo both are true, really. Uh, I think the university does a really good job of promoting that integrated pest management approach approach. Like, um, Swanson was talking about, you know, there's all these different approaches and like these guys were saying, resistance has always gotta be on your mind when we start treating something as a silver bullet, and we'll just lean on that because it's easy that's gonna stab you in the back. So when you come at it from all these different angles, your cultural practices, your mechanical, your chemistry, and you bring it all together and create an integrated approach, then um, that's where you're gonna see a lot of success. And that's gonna, I, I think that's the future for us here and that's, that's what we need to work on. So you stepped into Evans office and you stepped up to the plate, you become our new Charro. You know what, I don't see any reason to have Evans and Kelly and Windrow on this webinar in the future. Man. I think we're gonna leave it right there. Has anybody else got anything? Because I think that he just rounded us out, Swan. So what do you think Matt, Chad will, didn't, didn't, didn't Vern just get us outta here? I think take take over their operation for sure. I think, I think Vern did a great job, but Vern, I think up in and, and Swanson, you know, I think some of that, that rootworm stuff, I think it ain't nothing that a, a mow board plow won't fix. Like we could, we could break half a aisle up there. Shoot, we put 'em back in ice age on bugs. We flip that dirt over, it'd be over with. Uh, by the way, real quickly, uh, is there anything to tillage and no-till changing the way we handle pest management? No, I mean it absolutely does. It changes our weed spectrum. Uh, the no-till does it changes our fungicide or fungus management. Yeah, a hundred percent. It, it increases it, but also it's increasing soil biology and, and generally keeping our soil from eroding away. So we take the good with the bad, right? That's right. I mean it's just, it's just gonna change the spectrum. It's gonna change your weed spectrum. It's gonna change your insect spectrum. Got it. I think we're gonna leave it right there. Unless you guys tell him you otherwise. Mrm miles, you had something to quickly, quickly kick in there on the way out. Just, just make sure you take care of your pests and like we said the whole thing, you know, watch about resistance. Cause that's a big deal. Yeah, it's gonna, well obviously you guys have lived it more than perhaps we have up here. His name's Matt Miles, McGee, Arkansas, Chad Henderson over there from Masson, Alabama. Two of the found founders of Extreme Ag. That's why we're here. Um, we really, really appreciate, uh, Matt Swanson pulling over at a Casey's in somewhere in Illinois, and of course, uh, con Connor slash Vern Connor quote Vern Garrett for pulling in here and, and giving us the good stuff. Um, he's our new, he's our new Charro. I'm gonna send him an image so he realizes who he is gotta live up to. Anyway, Damien, Damien, I didn't, did you, I've learned that. I didn't know there were bugs in Iowa, to be honest with you. I have learned, I have learned that there are bugs in Iowa. I didn't know Iowa had any problems whatsoever. If you listen to the Southern guys, by the way, uh, if you're, if you're enjoying this conversation, if you are a, a subscriber and a member, you've heard this before, the southern guys cannot stop bashing on the guys in the Midwest, particularly Kelly Garrett and how easy it's a farm. Chad Henderson says you could plant in July backwards and still get 250 bushel corn where Kelly Garrett is from. So I've heard that a number of times. Apparently there's no bugs. And the other thing they like to do now that temple's, uh, uh, one of us, they pick on Kelly for where he farms and, uh, how easy it is. And then they pick on temple because Temple not only crawls around the dirt and makes grunting noises with a spoon. He also, he, he also is guilty of saying that you can never use chemical fertilizer where they live. They just have to basically, uh, go out there and like, uh, put two fishes down with every cornstalk like this. Anyway, uh, they, they are fun group. If you wanna see them in action. By the way, August 10th at Matthews Family Farms in North Carolina. August 22nd is the field day at Temple Rhodes, Chestnut Manor Farms, Centerville, Maryland. I'm going to be at that and, uh, we'll be doing some cool stuff there. Reminder also, if you know a college kid, we're all about helping the next generation. It's the extreme high scholarship. There are 10 of 'em for three grand a pop, $30,000 worth of scholarships going to 10 different kids, three grand a pop. Uh, deadline is August 1st. Go to Extreme Mag Farm to get that settled. If you want to join us again because who wouldn't? These are awesome. And if you're watching the replay, come to it live and you can participate. Like our buddy Galen did send us questions about his t-shirt. You can come to the next one on August 3rd, rounding the basis for results with an R five application. Do you hear what I said? We're talking about late season. These guys don't give up on their crop. It's fourth quarter. It's, it's uh, it's, you know, it's time to finally get out there and do it. Rounding the bases for results with an R five application. We're gonna talk about what these guys are doing. That is on August 3rd. Remember, it's the first Thursday of every month are the extreme Ag webinars, August 3rd, then September 7th, join us for the August 3rd one. So next time, thanks a lot for being here. We very much appreciate your participation and we know that this was valuable, it was valuable for you and it was valuable for me, and it was also a lot of fun for all of us. Thanks. Till next time. Damien Mason, on behalf of Extreme Ag.