00:00 We're switching up the rotation at Garrett Land and Cattle. From corn to soybeans to corn to cattle. That's right. 00:06 No soybeans going in the rotation. That's what we're talking about in this edition of Extreme Ag. 00:12 Cutting the Curve. Welcome to Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:20 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. This episode of Cutting the Curve is brought to you by cloth 00:27 where machines aren't just made, they're made for more with a wide range of tractors, combines, foragers and hay tools. 00:35 Cloth is a family business just as driven, demanding, and dedicated is yours. Go to cloth.com 00:41 and start cutting your curve with their cutting edge equipment. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:47 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme as Cutting the curve. Got an interesting message this week from, uh, 00:53 Mr. Kelly Garrett, one of the extreme Ag founders. He said, I've been talking about this with, uh, creed, which is one of his financial consultants on the farming 01:00 operation and, uh, making decisions. And Vern, his son, otherwise knows Connor Garrett and said, you know what? We're going to not do the corn and soybean rotation. 01:08 We're gonna do corn to cattle. We're gonna put in cover crops. We're gonna, we're gonna stick cows in there 01:12 because it looks to me like we're gonna lose money if we put in soybeans. I said, that's really interesting. You're in Iowa. 01:17 There's one thing that we know about the eye states. They grow two things, corn and then soybeans. Sometimes they just grow corn. And then corn. 01:23 What they generally don't do is go corn to cover crops with cattle. Lots of cut noises right there. 01:28 But if you've ever been trained in comedy, cut is always a humorous thing. So I know you like that. Anyway, Kelly, 01:33 would you please answer me or ver let's start off with you. Um, is this gonna work? 01:38 And secondly, before we go to that one answer, the second one first, are we surely to, God, we're not doing this on all the acres. 01:44 This is just an experiment, right? You're gonna do this like on 40 acres to see if it works. You're not going to, you're not gonna not produce soybeans. 01:51 'cause no self-respecting Iowa farmer would do that. Uh, it's experimental for this year. We, we feel good about it. 02:01 We've got numbers behind it, but yeah, you can't make that jump all in one year. But when, I mean, when we're looking at it, we lost 02:08 so money on soybeans last year, and we've still got some soybeans planned for next year. But the way it's forecasted, there's, 02:15 we're not gonna make money again. And we don't want to go to all 100% corn on corn because of agro agronomic reasons. 02:23 We don't want to just totally commit to that. We want to keep some diversity in there. And I said, why don't we look at other options, 02:29 cover crops and cattle? How can we change that into the rotation to increase profitability and keep that diversity program 02:38 that we wanna want in the, in the rotation? Alright, so here's the thing. Uh, the traditional answer would've 02:46 been, I would just go ahead. I'm an Iowa, we grow corn here. Go corn on corn on corn. Uh, Vern says agronomically, that's a challenge. 02:54 It's not always, it is not a challenge. It's just that it's been overdone and sometimes it presents some, uh, parasite issues, uh, 03:01 disease issues, whatever, whatever. Fertility. Um, are we going away, Kelly? Are we gonna do no soybeans at all across the 03:08 entire farming operation? No. You know, this year we had talked about being about 65, 30 5%, 65% corn, 35% beans. 03:19 And then with the bean yield we experienced last year, our, our beans overall last year, Damian made about 54 bushel. 03:25 Some of that was drought, some of that was variety, and some of it was hale, but it was a $300 an acre loser. And then when we looked at the profitability of corn, 03:33 which was quite good, we ended up changing from 65 35 to about 80 20, 80% corn, 20% beans. That 03:43 Was gonna be the plan. That was gonna be the plan coming into 2024. We're recording this right now. 03:47 At the end of the year, 2023, your intention until, like within the last week, your intention was 80% corn in 2024 crop mix gonna be 03:57 80% corn, 20% soy, uh, and, and then whatever the balance, no, no balance, no wheat, no. Well, 04:03 You know, there's a, you know, there's a couple hundred acres of winter wheat in there, but essentially it's, you know, it's 80, it's 78% corn, 04:11 uh, 18% beans and 4% wheat probably, you know, and the wheat's gonna stay. But, and we did that 04:18 because of, of the soybean, the soybean problem, if you will, the soybean income problem. And then when I took Connor 04:26 and Kale down to Creed, you know, I I will tell you, I wouldn't be as confident or optimistic of this plan of these numbers if it wasn't, 04:34 you know, I'm not trying to advertise. But for JC marketing services, everything that goes through our bank account is accounted for. 04:43 And I'm so confident of these numbers. Yeah, that it's easy, it's easy to make. You know, like you're, you're viewing this as a, 04:51 a difficult switch to make because it's so outside the box and it's, but I'm so confident of these numbers. 04:56 It makes it a lot easier. And it takes the emotion outta it. Vern, uh, you don't have as many, uh, years 05:02 of entrenchment by the time you get to be your old man's age, you're, you're supposed to be pretty entrenched that you're, you're supposed 05:07 to grow corn than soy and then corn than soy unless you continuous corn. Was this your idea or his idea? 05:12 Who, okay, you went down, you talked about the numbers, then who came up with this, uh, idea? It was you, wasn't it? 05:19 Yeah, I threw it out there And you said, we should just plant cover crops. And before I hit the record button, I said, 05:24 that's a neat idea for the soil and the wildlife and all that, but it don't make any money. And you said, 05:35 We're not losing. Yeah. If we're gonna lose money on soybeans as a soil health program, 05:42 why don't we just lose money on cover crops as a soil health program? Why don't we lose less? And 05:48 When you throw the capital in there, we're gonna lose less. That's, that's the idea. 05:52 Are you gonna lose money because I don't like losing money. Are you gonna lose money? So right now, the person 05:57 that's a skeptics listen to this saying, well, why, what, do we have any other turn 06:01 alternative other than to lose money On soybeans? I'm skeptical if we do, you know, like, so in 2023, we raised 54 bushel beans. 06:12 And with the over overall price we, we received, and I feel that we did a very, you know, I feel that JC marketing did a good job on the marketing. 06:21 We lost $300 an acre. I would tell you right now, I would expect to lose a hundred dollars an acre on beans of 24 mm-Hmm. 06:29 I would also tell you that over the last couple years, we've made about $300 per cow. Now, the land cost is significantly less on the pasture, 06:40 on the pasture ground that goes into that $300 figure than what we're talking about on this cropland. 06:47 And it's about 120 to $150 difference per acre. Mm-Hmm. So when we're talking about $300 a cow, but the land is $150 more expensive, I'm expecting, 06:58 I'm expecting to make $150 per acre on the cow program versus penciling in a hundred dollars loss on beans. Now beans might take off 07:08 and they might go higher, things like that. But I gotta tell you, hope is a terrible marketing program. Yeah. He know that the way, the way that the, you know what, 07:16 today we sit here and the November 24 bean contract on the, on the board of trade is 1265. 07:23 It'll take 72 bushel be Yes. 72 bushel beans to break even. Our cost to put in beans is gonna be about 920 bucks. Yeah. 07:31 And, and we, this, you know, we, we talk about expanding the cow herd anyway. And we talk about, you know, that's 07:38 what extreme ag is about, is improving the ROI, this is an outside of box way to improve the ROI, uh, you know, 07:44 like Damien, off, off camera before we came on here, you said, well, you need to defend the idea that it costs you 07:50 to put in the cover crops too. And you're right, what I have thought of now, this first year on these 40 acres, we're gonna have 07:56 to seed something this spring to get it started. But provided that we decide to go forward with this next fall in the fall of 24, we'll combine a, 08:07 we'll combine some corn, and rather than going back to beans, we'll put the cover crop in behind corn. 08:12 We'll put in some perennials, and that seed will be there. And we're already in a cover crop program. 08:17 So we'll put in some perennials behind that corn. And then in the summer of 25, if we decide that field is gonna go fallow to for cattle, 08:25 there is no seeding expense because it's the cover crop from last fall. Okay? So back to the original question, Vern, 08:31 how many acres are we gonna do this on? What do we have a plan on 40. About 40 right now. 40. Alright. So this is, this is definitely an experiment. 08:40 Now on the other acres, are we going corn on, corn on the, are the other 18% of the acres are we gonna go? 08:47 Why, why not go bigger if we're this convinced of it? Why not do 400 versus 40? Uh, because we don't know. 08:56 We don't know how many extra cows we want to keep. And we're, we're dipping our toe in it and it's gotta be the right farm. 09:04 It's gotta have decent fence, it's gotta have decent water. You know, and this is, this is just kind 09:08 of the way it works out this year, really. You know, I mean, 'cause this, this is also gonna take a cow herd expansion 09:14 to do this, things like that. So we're gonna keep around 40 or 50 extra cows to do this. And I mean, if we go 400, the idea of keeping 400 extra cows 09:24 around, I, I don't know that we should just snap our fingers and make that happen. It becomes a little bit more management. 09:29 It's not like just right. It, it's, you got some, all right. So we're talking about a pretty small experiment, frankly, 09:36 on the number of acres and the number of cows and everything you have. Um, what's your projection on this, Vern, 09:42 by the way, Vern, I gotta tell you. Uh, you have so much, you remind me of that Brady Bunch episode when the light on the camera turned 09:50 red and then Peter Gregory got very, very nervous. You got so many numbers. Would you just stop looking at the red light on the camera 09:58 and stop being Peter Brady? Um, these numbers, these numbers work for the long term. If soybeans stay where they are, if 2024 is actually 10:07 where we're going to sit, which it might be commodity price wise, is this gonna be the scalable, um, alternative? 10:19 Yes. Could be. We need more data. It's an experiment this year. What about then the question of, uh, 10:32 you're not gonna be planting this stuff now 'cause here we're recording this almost New year's. You're, you're planting this stuff like in April, 10:38 you're gonna go out there and plant this stuff. So these acres don't do anything for you in the meantime, but you're gonna make your, just, 10:43 just like a traditional crop, you're gonna get the stuff established and then you're going to put cows out there in May 10:49 after it's got six weeks of growth on it, or June or whenever. This is all, this is all really happening come spring, 10:58 Right? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. This is, you know, this is a plan we just have come up with in the last couple weeks. 11:03 Uh, I'm happy about it because, uh, you know, losing money on beans at 23 and then looking at 24, knowing that there's a potential, 11:12 knowing that there's a big chance of a potential loss coming, that's not very exciting. You know? And, and here we are with a plan 11:21 to do something that's profitable. Uh, Connor and Kale talk about the desire to increase the cow herd anyway, here's a way 11:28 to increase the cow herd without, without it taking on more land expense. And Are you gonna increase a cow herd by buying 40 cows 11:35 between now and May 15th? Or are you going to just keep, uh, 40 might be calls back. We'll probably keep 40 calls back. 11:45 It'd be a con, you know, we have extra cows now anyway, 'cause we'll buy 'em to run 'em on the socks and then we will, we'll pare down 11:51 or cold down to the, the manageable number for the grass acres we have. We just will coal a little bit less. 11:58 When you get to Vern, I got, you gotta answer this question. When you get to, uh, July and it turns dry, 12:04 or I was there in June, it was dry, dry, dry, dry, terrible dry, uh, you are gonna say, okay, this isn't working because we got too many cows 12:12 for the amount of growth out here. We're gonna have to get rid of 20 of these. Is that what's gonna happen? 12:18 You know, that could happen. Um, we're, we're gonna have to see how it goes, but I'm pretty confident 12:25 what we're looking at is doing a really diverse cover crop mix here. We want to have some grass crops to put that, 12:31 put the extra carbon out there. But then we also wanna look into a legume, maybe red clover or something for a little more nitrogen. 12:39 And I, I think when we're looking at six to eight species, at least in this mix, 12:44 and I'm pretty confident with that diversity that will hold a lot more water on that acre and we won't see quite as much. 12:52 We won't, we won't beat the grass down like we will just a standard bro pasture. I think with this diversity, we're 12:59 gonna have a lot better growth. And as we're gonna mob graze it as the idea, uh, really heavy rotation that we're gonna have nice, decent, 13:09 um, recovery in that grass. So Gabe Brown wrote the book Dirt to Soil. You read it. So did I, and he talks a lot about the way this works is 13:19 you, you, you absolutely do mob graze it. So you're gonna be moving, are you gonna take 40 cows and go out there with electric wire 13:25 and move them on two acre paddocks, uh, every day? We're probably not gonna nine Acre paddocks. 13:32 Yeah. We're not gonna get that scaled down with it. But we're gonna have to see what's gonna work best for our operation, what we can manage 13:39 and how, how all the paddocks will work out on this piece. So you guys, Kelly, are intensive managers of crop land 13:48 and obviously it pays off. Some people are not as intensive and, and they're fine. They have less expenditure, 13:53 they have less upside, et cetera, et cetera. You're not quite intensive managers of the beef, if this is gonna work, 14:00 if you're gonna be taking Iowa $15,000 an acre farm ground and putting it into cover crops 14:06 and cattle, I would think that you would need to be as intensively managed on the beef side as you are on the corn side and, 14:16 and to say the least, am I right? Yes, absolutely. And you know, Gabe Brown is something that you and I and Connor all talked 14:23 about, you know, off camera. Uh, Mr. Brown has a, uh, couple YouTube videos or more than a couple out. 14:30 I watched one this morning and, uh, you, you know, when you made me smile, when you reference what if it gets hot in July? 14:37 He has suggestions and it, it depends upon your, your latitude. But he has suggestions for cool season mix, uh, 14:45 cover crop mixes, warm season mixes, and uh, you know, with dealing with Austin Teal, who you and I have recorded with before, uh, you know, when I talked 14:54 with Austin this morning after watching this podcast and texting him when I was excited, Austin thinks that end of March, beginning of April, we need 15:02 to put in the cool season mix. And then when we get to the end of the May, we need to re-drill in the same pasture, in the same land, 15:09 the warm season mix. And, you know, and that's following Mr. Brown's, uh, you know, kind of plan of action. 15:15 And it something I found very interesting in watching Mr. Brown this morning. He said, the amount of rain you receive is irrelevant. 15:22 If you manage the grass, manage the land correctly with the livestock, the amount of rain you receive is irrelevant. 15:29 And he said, I promise you're receiving enough. The problem you have is you can't store enough. And that's on you, not mother nature. 15:35 Okay? So the point is, the point is, like ver you're talking about a a seven-way mix. Gabe's in his book talks a about you get exponential. 15:44 It's like one, one kind of one species of cover crop is good for the ground versus fall tillage, uh, versus no cover crop 15:53 two have a synergistic effect. A legume like you talked about, an aite clover, I think you said, or a red clover at 15:59 a, a rye grass, let's say. And then you start talking about a, a hairy vetch, uh, uh, you know, uh, I don't know, 16:09 Sorghum, Sudan, grass and the brass. Yes. And list goes on and on. You're right. You're right. So, so, so the point is 16:17 this is more than just a profitability experiment on one year because of the soybean thing. 16:22 Vern, this is, this is you starting to insinuate yourself into soil decisions around Garrett land and cattle. Is it safe to say that? 16:31 Yeah, definitely. Uh, the, the beef is there to enhance the profitability of the rotation. But really, we've been looking at cover 16:39 crops for the last several years. We've been using them. And this is kind of expanding the program. 16:43 It's making it bigger. It's expanding that diversity. It's, it's doing all the things we love cover crops for all season long. 16:51 So the seven way or eight way mix you're talking about, you can do stuff, you could do a, a planting in June or in March, 17:00 and then that stuff is what you put the cattle on, say by May 1st. And then you can graze the hell out of that 17:07 and then change up the planting. You could move the cows, put in something and then have, you could have three different cover crops 17:13 between now and, uh, the snow flying next winter. Am I right? Correct. Same group of cows. 17:22 Three different cover crops on that. So it's intensive manage of that field. Uh, what about then the optimism about 17:30 what you think the soil does? So this is the experiment on the soil, not just the economics. 17:34 What do you, what do you wanna see happen With that diverse mix and those cows? I mean, they're gonna trample some of that in, 17:45 they're gonna apply manure to that field. We're gonna see nutrient input into that field. And I think soil health will improve by every metric. 17:54 Um, we should have more organic material. We should have better water infiltration, better water holding capacity. 18:02 By enhancing that plant diversity. We're gonna enhance the microbial diversity, which is gonna enhance rates of nutri mineralization, nutrient storage, 18:10 and all factors. And, uh, I'm pretty excited to see what exactly happens, but I, but we'll have to see what happens. 18:19 Got it. All right. So, uh, the person that's contemplating this, that most people are gonna be skeptical this would work, 18:25 then there's other people say, well, that's fine. He's already set up with cows. I don't have cows. Should somebody go out and buy cows and try this? 18:33 Um, yeah, I I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. You know, I, I mean, or, you know, running some stalkers 18:40 or feeders or something like that, you know, to try to improve plant health. I don't know. I mean, would see what Vern thinks, 18:47 but I believe the corn will be better next year following this than they will following soybeans. 18:51 Well, that's part of the reason to do it. Not to go continuous corn. Next year's corn will be even better because of this. 18:57 Mr. Brown talks about water holding capacity of six to eight times more than in just a mono cropping system System. Yeah. So all 19:05 of a sudden, if we, if we go this region idea here is that you're actually, it's, you're, you're building the bank. 19:12 You're, you're making the investment that the bank account and it's the accrual of interest over time 19:17 and this being soil health. So you could, if you got 5% more corn off of this in 2025, that offsets, that offsets the lack 19:28 of revenue on this year. I mean, that's kinda what you're talking about. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. 5% more corn. 19:32 Four, I mean, that's $46 an acre right there. Yeah. And 200 bushel corn, 10 bushel times four 60. All right. Um, the person 19:44 that you're recommending you say, do this. Uh, is there anything I haven't thought about that when I, when I go through this, uh, 19:49 from this experimental crop rotation change that you are already considering that I haven't asked you, Vern, what do you got? 19:59 Um, you know, I read one study that, uh, a thousand pound animal, be it a cow or a steer or whatever, ran a ran for a day will produce 20:12 a quarter pound of nitrogen 0.15 pounds of phosphorus and a half a pound of potassium. Um, so if we can mob graze it, thickly enough, you know, 20:21 we're gonna have that, those 40 extra cows there running those all over that acre in that day. 20:27 I mean, you're talking about a serious amount of fertility that can be applied if you, we can get them thick enough. 20:32 And I, I'm interested in that factor as well. Bern, I always wonder if I hadn't asked that question, were you gonna just let that piece of data 20:41 that's probably critical to this entire episode not be shared? 'cause that's the kind of thing 20:46 that actually a person listeners might say, holy crap. Now it's starting to make more sense to me. It's not just the porosity, the soil amendments, the, 20:54 the soil enhancement, if you will. It's not just the potential for more corn next year. Those are numbers that you just had. 21:01 Rain man style again, we're what, A quarter pound of nitrogen 0.15 pounds phosphorus and a half a pound of potassium about roughly. 21:14 And that's daily. Yeah. Daily manure. Daily. Yeah. And, and it's not, and, and so that, that's obviously coming off 21:24 from the green growth. So is that stuff, is that soil enhancement that was already there and I'm just recycling it? 21:30 In other words, in other words, did we, is that new or is that just, we're keeping it there. Okay. Make It more available. 21:38 This is one of the things that, you know, talk about sustainability. Cattle do not create or destroy carbon. 21:45 They just speed up the process. Mm-Hmm. So that what, what he's talking about is coming through the back end of the cow 21:51 and it's ready to go back to work for next year's crop. And you also have the gain on the cow. Yeah. That calf or that cow has already extracted its feed 21:59 and that fertility's going back in the soil and it's the nutrient avail availability of it is second to none. 22:06 Yeah. Cool. All right. I think we about got this. Kelly, is there anything else on this? Uh, it's a, it's, it's an experiment. It's a cool idea. 22:15 Uh, if soybeans stay where they are and there's speculation that we're gonna be in a, and maybe we might be moving into a break even agricultural 22:24 environment, I think, and that's where, like Gabe's book, he talks about hell, he, he went broke for four years, couldn't get, couldn't get. 22:31 He, he, he couldn't get any money loaned to him. So he starts getting pretty experimental. If we have a situation where we're plotting 22:39 around treading water, this might be an opportunity because you can obviously sell the beef. Um, but this isn't unique to you just 22:48 'cause you have your own direct to consumer beef. No. The person that doesn't have a direct unique, can still make money on cows. 22:54 No. You know, we very much are, are looking at, at what Mr. Brown has done, and we're, we, we wanna expand our cow herd. 23:02 We're looking at what Mr. Brown has done. We're looking to increase the profitability of the farm. You know, uh, again, Austin, 23:08 when we visited about this this morning, Austin talked about a man in South Dakota that's running a million pounds of beef per acre 23:14 because of his intensive management. Which is, you know, the way, the way that we run our corn acres, the way 23:20 that we run our bean acres are very intensively managed versus, shall we say, the average grower. And now our, our, we're talking about our pasture, our, our, 23:31 our cow acres and the price of land isn't driving force behind this. You know, you referenced $15,000 land the way 23:37 that we manage our grass needs to catch up to the way we manage our corn. Yeah. That's, that's a, that's a, a great point. 23:46 And the hell of it is, um, I think that the person's going to say, well, I don't know 23:51 how this works on Iowa type farm ground. I can see this working in, in, uh, you know, the rockier parts of the foothills 23:57 of the Appalachian Mountains or something. But I don't see how it works there. But the hell of it is, you're not taking just rough pasture ground. 24:03 You're taking farm ground that would grow 60 bushel beans and making it cow ground. 24:09 Yes. I mean, whoever would've thought that you'd be saying that, and, 24:12 and I know that there's gonna be some people raise their eyebrows, but I assure you that if we, 24:17 we talk about approaching a million pounds of beef per acre, you can make that profitable on 15,000 ground. 24:23 I, I apologize for being I prepared. I don't have that, don't have that quantified, but I'm pretty confident that that'll work. 24:30 Yeah. Well, I, I don't know if you're gonna, we'll know more after we get through a season on this. We'll talk about it then. Do you think, 24:37 Vern, what do you think, Vern, You know, integrating livestock into your operation can enhance your, enhance your cropping operation. 24:48 And we're just trying to take that to the extreme as making it part of the rotation and see what we can accomplish. 24:53 Yeah. It's profitability driven and we'll see what we can do. Yeah. And I, you can make the argument 24:59 that the asset improvement also, you can make the, a argument that the asset gets improved and, and the time to improve it. 25:06 If, if you were going to, if this is gonna cause you to go broke, yeah, I got really good soil, but also went broke. 25:12 But actually this is preservation from going broke. 'cause you decided the soybean numbers don't work Hundred percent. 25:20 What else you got, Kelly? You know, it, it, this is a great experiment. This is what extreme mag is all about. 25:28 How many times have you heard me say I'm on two different roads, the sustainable road and the high yield road, 25:33 and they're converging. Tell me this isn't the very definition of that. It is indeed that. And you'll catch 25:39 more on that discussion. We always talked about how the high yield and sustainability do not have to be divergent. 25:44 They can be convergent. And that's exactly what we're talking about. They're all going down the same path together. 25:48 His name's Kelly Garrett. He's with the son Connor, sometimes known as Vern Garrett. And, uh, one of the most knowledgeable people in all 25:56 of Crawford County, Iowa. If you can just get him to share what he has up in his no and changing the rotation from corn 26:01 to soybeans to corn to cows. Um, we'll stay tuned on this discussion because there's gonna be other people 26:07 and he makes some hard decisions about this when we're moving into a 2024 with some depressed commodity prices. And there's gonna be some hard decisions. 26:13 It might be a little bit outside the box thinking. And this is exactly what we're talking about right here. We do this all the time. 26:20 Hundreds of cutting the curve episodes, also hundreds of videos these guys have shot. Go check it out. It's all free Extreme Ag Farm. 26:26 If you wanna take your farming game to the next level, why don't you become a member $750 a year, get you a membership. 26:32 You get exclusive uh, content. You also get, uh, access to the stream ag guys on a question and answer platform. You get offers like you go to Commodity Classic for free, 26:43 and you also get the data at the end of the year for seven $50 a year is a small investment to make for huge returns on your farming operation. 26:50 Thanks for being here. Till next time, that's the Garrett Boys in, uh, Crawford County, Iowa. I'm Damien Mason. 26:56 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme Ag Farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 27:04 of your farming operation. Cutting the curve is brought to you by cloths where machines aren't just made, they're made. 27:11 For more. Visit cloths.com and start cutting your curve with cutting edge equipment.