Podcast: Continuous Corn - Strategies for Success in Corn-on-Corn Systems

00:00:00 Management changes when your rotation goes to all corn. Yep. You've heard about corn on corn, but what decisions go in 00:00:06 and what happens behind the scenes to make it a success? That's what we're covering this episode 00:00:09 of Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. Welcome to Extreme ags Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:00:16 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:24 Hey, welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ask Care on the Curve. Got a great one for you today 00:00:28 because maybe you are contemplating cropping decision changes for 2025. A lot of things go into that. 00:00:34 Firstly, the business, then there's the agronomy, then there's just the management behind the scenes. How do you pull this off? 00:00:39 Well, in places like Iowa, corn on corn, continuous corn, whatever you wanna call it, is not something 00:00:44 that's completely unheard of. Uh, but Kelly Garrett made the decision looking at 2025 after working with his financial, uh, agronomic 00:00:51 and financial consultants that he could make this work and he needed to from the business standpoint. So we got him, we got Clint Freeze, and we got Mike Evans. 00:00:59 Uh, and we're talking about how to manage and how to make this a success. When you go to all corn, you're going to all corn in 2025. 00:01:05 In 2024, you did very little soybeans and you historically had been one that you always thought, I'm gonna be a 50%, 50%, 50 50 corn and soy mix. 00:01:13 You, you changed in 24 because the money wasn't there. Talk about the business and then we're gonna talk about how to make it all work. 00:01:20 You know, I, I started working with Jared Creed of JC Ag Financial, um, in around 2021. And at that time we had been probably say, two thirds corn, 00:01:29 you know, depending on the year, things like that. Two thirds corn, one third beads. And I was going to move back to, uh, I was working 00:01:36 to move back to a 50 50 rotation, uh, because I felt that the, the corn yields were better following beans. 00:01:42 I felt that I was making some money on beans, uh, you know, things like that. Jared pointed out that and showed me I was wrong. 00:01:49 I wasn't making money on beans. And I told him, agronomically that 50 50 rotation was the best idea. 00:01:56 And he said, well, agronomically, it might be for where you're at right now, but financially you're wrong. And after we sat down and looked 00:02:02 at the numbers, he was right. So this has kind of been a multi-year process as we figured things out to get to 25, 00:02:08 which is basically a hundred percent coin for, There are people that are already saying, yeah, you know what, he, he's, he's not doing that. 00:02:16 Right? 'cause you already got it. You got it from your own extreme Ag buddies, Matt Miles, 00:02:20 and Chad told you, you're, you are doing something wrong because it can't be that expensive to plant soybeans. 00:02:25 You already heard that. So address that before we even get into the, the, the part about making it all work. 00:02:31 They did. You know, uh, we're gonna have a challenge plot here at our field day next year. 00:02:35 So we are gonna have 90 acres of beans. And it's because Matt, Chad and Temple say they can come here and make beans profitable. 00:02:41 I sure hope they're right. Um, their, their yields and their land costs and their fixed cost, things like that are what, uh, 00:02:50 or what is different for me. You know, here, 65 bushel beans is a pretty good deal. We get up to 70 bushel beans. It's really nice. 00:02:57 Things like that. Matt's raising 85 bushel beans all day long. Matt's land costs are half of what we are. Right. 00:03:04 You know, the share crop rent, things like that, for example, um, I'm pretty solid on the cost here because of working with Jared and Jeff 00:03:11 and, uh, beans don't pencil. Yeah. So they, they believe that somehow you just didn't put, uh, 00:03:19 the right numbers into your formulation, but you actually did. And as you said, you were putting incorrect numbers in, 00:03:24 and Jared Creed helped you with that and got your cost of production actually with what it is. And there's, I think there's a lot of farmers 00:03:29 who are guilty of that. We talked about that in a different episode, right? Lots of farmers don't count their cost the way they should. 00:03:35 Yes. You know, we've talked about that in the last podcast we did, Damien, and, and you, you've asked Jeff, uh, Jeff Jansen that works 00:03:42 with Jared, where, uh, where was I wrong? And I'm wrong on a lot of the fixed costs. We don't include everything. 00:03:47 We don't include cost of living, we don't include all the machinery costs, all of the interest costs, things like that. 00:03:53 Um, so we're really probably wrong on some of the corn costs as well. But corn has a greater margin than soybeans 00:04:00 because of the yield, things like that. And it's, you know, it's region specific to a degree, but beans don't pencil. 00:04:06 So you're gonna go to all corn. And by the way, go back and check out that episode. We've talked about this a couple of times. 00:04:11 If you're listening to this and you're still questioning it, remember there's a lot of farm operations that fail 00:04:16 to attribute and allocate expense properly. Well, I don't really have any expense in that 'cause it's paid for. 00:04:22 Well, well wait a minute. That's, that's not true. If you've got a piece of machinery that's paid for, there's still expense against that. 00:04:27 I mean, it's the same, you know, counting your time, uh, return to the capital, et cetera. 00:04:33 All right. To make this work. Evans, you said, no problem. You've done continuous corn before. 00:04:39 You're from Iowa, the cornest of all corn states. But the thing is, you gotta make a lot of decisions differently from a fertility. 00:04:44 And we're gonna go through machinery, the manpower, the labor managing, the quantity, the timing, the expenses. And in the marketing, you're the fertility guy. 00:04:52 Take us there. Yeah. I mean, when you decide to go all corn and, and a lot of it's gonna be corn on corn, Kelly's no-till. 00:05:01 So that adds a little different degree of di difficulty and decision making. Um, we gotta handle residue, which is a big deal. 00:05:10 And, and then, then it's the nutrition that goes along with raising a profitable corn crop. So you got ni you know, nitrogen needs your p 00:05:18 and k needs, um, balancing the soil. Um, there's other management factors, agronomic. All right, let's talk about the first thing. 00:05:25 FOD and residue. He's a Crawford County. Iowa is 220 bushel corn all day long, except for when it's like a severe drought 00:05:32 and you guys push the limit on that. Sometimes you guys set a record. One of yours was 335 bushel, 3 25 bushel on the, uh, 00:05:39 low nitrogen point is to get in that 300 bushel range, you've got a lot of fodder, a lot of great big stalks, and now you're gonna go and just put it in there again. 00:05:47 So seed to soil contact, the time of planting with no till is gonna be an issue. Breaking down that residue and getting the nutrients of it. 00:05:54 Tell us your plan. How do you make it work? Well, there's two ways we look at it, mechanical, and then from a biological standpoint. 00:06:01 So mechanically, we have the devastator in the corn head to, to lay that down. And then road cleaners on the plant are a must, 00:06:08 high quality ones, um, to be able to do that. But the, from the biological expert aspect, we gotta be able to get the products on the corn fodder to break it down. 00:06:20 So we use, uh, biology in the fall with Kelly's plant food application to get a head start on that. 00:06:28 And that allows to get some degradation in the fall. Um, using, using biology to break that apart, break it down, make it easier, um, to manage when it comes springtime. 00:06:39 And then probably the other side of it that Kelly brings into it is just the cattle herd. You know, rotating those cows on the stocks is a tremendous 00:06:47 value from an agronomic pers perspective. For one, they, you know, lessen the fodder out there 'cause they chew it out. 00:06:54 But the other side of it is they clean up all the, you know, anything corn that's laying on the ground, 00:06:58 then you don't have to worry about, you know, volunteer corn and corn on corn, which some people worry about. 00:07:02 Um, we use the cows highly just to make that a better seed bed. So where you are, Clint, where it's like $40,000 an acre, 00:07:12 flat, prairie, black ground, you've never, when they speak about cows and hills, I mean, this is all, this is like going 00:07:19 to Zimbabwe for you, I'm assuming, right? So let's just not even get into the, the cow part of this. From fertility standpoint. 00:07:25 You've advised a lot of clients on this kind of thing. What's your first piece of advice? Somebody comes in your door, they finally have gotten 00:07:32 past the business side of it. Like, Hey, you know what? I think Kelly's right. Uh, I'm not making much or I'm losing on soybeans. 00:07:38 I'm gonna go to 80% of my acres are corn, 90%, whatever. What's your first thing you tell 'em? 00:07:45 I think residue management is key. Um, obviously where we're at with, with a lot of flat dirt, it gets done mechanically, you know, with rippers and disc 00:07:52 and stuff to, to bury that residue. I think it that depends on, you know, what a farmer's set up for, but residue management is key. 00:08:01 Um, and keeping that residue outta your furrow. So as Mike stated with the row cleaners, most of our early season disease management issues 00:08:08 and corn on corn come from a working a little too wet, pushing it, uh, too soon, and b, pushing the residue down in the furrow. 00:08:16 I think if we can eliminate those two things, we set ourself up for success. By The way, if you're listening to this and you, uh, 00:08:22 you know, Clint, and you know, Evans and their partner Jared Cook, they are calibrated agronomy. And I've been doing a video series for them, 00:08:28 and one of 'em, we talked about disease management and bringing a disease management program into the 21st century. 00:08:33 So this is very 21st century doing a better job of corn on corn. The knock on corn, the reason we rotate, uh, is agronomic, 00:08:40 but also pests. So you just talked about it. What are you, what are you gonna do? Do I have to go out there and just insecticide the hell out 00:08:45 of this to keep the rootworm problems and any other bugs at bay? No, we can do that all with biology now. 00:08:51 Uh, it's, it's come a long ways in the implementation side and the understanding of how to use biology. 00:08:57 So from a pest and disease management, I think we can do it more holistically with biology. 00:09:02 But the fundamentals of not putting your crop in too wet, we getting the residue right out of the furrow. 00:09:08 Whether you're burying the trash with rippers or doing a no-till environment like Kelly, keeping that residue just out of that seedling, you know, 00:09:15 in the furrow zone is, is critical in my mind. Evan, is that accurate? Is 80% of the disease problem with corn on corn 00:09:23 because of residue mismanagement? Oh yeah. A hundred percent seed all day long. Um, tar spot, big one. 00:09:32 They talk about that, that lives on the residue lives in the soil. If we're not taking care of that residue, uh, eliminating 00:09:38 that host for the next year, um, we're gonna have the issue show up again if we get, get the disease triangle right. 00:09:44 So it, it is very, very pertinent to pay attention to that. All right, Kelly. Um, would it be easier to do this, 00:09:51 to pull this off if you were a tiller, if you were a conventional, does the no-till add a new factor into being successful 00:09:57 with no-till or with, uh, con continuous corners that matter? No, I don't think it matters. I really think it's easier 00:10:03 being no-till to do this. Uh, rather than the expense, uh, the expense of the tillage, the expense of that machinery and that pass, 00:10:12 and then also, uh, dealing with that residue that's going underneath, and then the erosion that we have, uh, 00:10:17 in the, in the geography. Now in clinch geography, you know, that might be different. But where we live here in the hills, I think no-till is, 00:10:24 uh, is the way to go. Uh, most profitable way to go. Now that being said, we, you know, we're blazing a little bit of a trail here. 00:10:31 We're we're trying to figure this out. So there, you know, there'd be a few hiccups along the way, but after you get it figured out, 00:10:37 I clearly think this is the path. It used to be a yield drag that, I mean, yeah, we're corn on corn, you know, even with Iowa soils. 00:10:46 But there was always a perception, whether it was reality or not, I don't know, you guys are the experts. 00:10:50 Wasn't there always a perception that you started getting a yield drag, if not in year two by year three and certainly by year four because, 00:10:56 or you got, or now the old answer was, well, if you're gonna do continuous corn by year four, you're gonna just be out there flinging. 00:11:01 Well, of course nitrogen was the old one. Is there a reality to that? There there is a reality to a yield dragging corn on corn? 00:11:08 I think some of it still exists. I think that in, in, in some cases we have erased it. Uh, but we can't, um, uh, 00:11:17 we can't definitively say that all the time. Uh, you know, we, we did see some things this year. Uh, some of it was the how wet the spring was, 00:11:25 and under those corn stalks, it's harder to get it to dry out, things like that. I think that that part of that is the challenge. 00:11:31 I think Evans, to tell you those other ideas, I felt like after last year it was pretty dry 00:11:35 that we'd erased a lot of it. Uh, my oldest son Connor tells me I'm wrong. We have not, and 00:11:40 after this fall, I would have to agree with him. We haven't erased all of it, but it's still Leo dragged. So Clinton's 00:11:45 nodding his head, first off, he had a little bit of a, a problem, and it may have not been because of continuous corn. 00:11:52 It might been wet spring with no till. It lays wet and it doesn't absorb temperature by May. And so you've got that problem. 00:12:00 And also the spigot shut off toward the end of the summer, which meant it might've not given, 00:12:05 you know, the, the right finish. Or it could just be that there's the, so it address the yield drag. 00:12:09 And you think it was because of corn on corn because of the other environmental issues. You know, it could, it could be potentially 00:12:15 with the no-till situation. But I think the environmental conditions probably outweighed it in my mind. 00:12:20 Where, where we're at a lot of times, even if we're strip till corn on corn and not doing a lot of heavy tillage, 00:12:25 if we can just change the seed and ratio carbon and nitrogen ratio, right? Where we put the corn plant, we typically don't see, uh, 00:12:33 as big as a yield drag, but that's still not as forgiving as ground in rotation. So I, I think getting your timing down 00:12:40 and making sure you're doing a good job there is, is probably one of the biggest, uh, challenges to be patient and wait for the ground to be ready. 00:12:49 So you're just told a bunch of farmers to not go out and plant even though their neighbors are, and you realize that's a losing battle, right, Clint? 00:12:57 I do. Mm-hmm. I do. Alright. Speaking of planters, I wanna talk about the machinery. You got a, a different, uh, machinery, 00:13:05 uh, game to play here. So I wanna hear about the machinery and then also managing the labor. 00:13:09 But before I do that, I wanna remind our listeners about Nature's. Nature's is one of our business partners here at X Extreme 00:13:13 Ag Awesome people to work with. We're gonna be at Commodity Classic in their booth. If you tune into our new show, the Grainery, you'll see 00:13:20 that the first several episodes sponsored by our friends at Nature's. And if you haven't checked out the 00:13:23 Grainery, it's a great program. After you get done watching and listening to this, go over to extreme ag. 00:13:28 Dial up the greenery episode shot at my on-farm, uh, hang out in Tavern, where we sit around the farm guys of extreme ag and we talk about real issues 00:13:35 impacting agriculture. So nature's, uh, it's been providing sustainable farming solutions and helping farmers for a long, long time. 00:13:42 You've got to look at your dollars and since you've gotta look at how you can utilize your investment to get the right crops, 00:13:47 well, you know what, what if you did nature's spoon feeding? We've talked about this a lot. Putting the product out 00:13:51 there, the fertility that's gonna give your plants the best potential they can ever have. 00:13:55 And you're gonna do it right at when that plant needs it versus just going ahead and putting it in the soil and never gets absorbed. 00:14:00 So nature's products are powered by Bio K, that's a fertility powered by Nature's bio. Okay? You can target specific periods 00:14:06 of influence throughout the growing season. You reduce stress, you enhance crop yield, and most importantly, you boost your 00:14:10 farm's return on investment. It's all about business. Gotta keep the thing going. Go to natures.com to learn more, man machinery and manpower. 00:14:18 Um, I gotta have different equipment and I also got a a different timing. Uh, I can't extend this into like, uh, 00:14:26 1st of June, like soybean planning. There's a lot more that goes on here. A little more critical. Kelly, 00:14:31 Well, like Evan's talked about, we have the devastator on the corn head to size the residue there. 00:14:35 We do a lot to size the residue. Uh, we, we also have added an airway, which we try to run over some acres. 00:14:43 And airway isn't a tillage tool. It just kind of sizes and chops the stalks up a little to a degree. Uh, you know, crimp some to, to allow for more breakdown. 00:14:51 And then of course the no-till coulters on the planter. Um, things like that. Um, the in furrow on the planter I think is important. 00:14:59 Uh, a lot of the, you know, a lot of that to give that plant a good early start because as Clint said, that was a great phrase. 00:15:06 It's not as forgiving and we've gotta be dialed in. Um, I almost think that you could say that we could really get by with two planters 00:15:14 for the acres we cover, but we have three because I feel that the window is smaller because it's not as forgiving, things like that. 00:15:20 But we don't have the tillage equipment, you know, I mean, you're, you're reallocating those costs. 00:15:24 It, it really is necessary for us to be no-till. So I, I feel like everything that we're doing is important because of the conservation aspect. 00:15:33 Kelly just, Evans Kelly just gave accolades to Clint for having a funny little phrase. He hasn't even been on with Jared Cook. 00:15:39 Jared Cook is like that old man that always like, he's like the, he, he is like the Yogi Berra of agronomy. Like he's always saying some quippy 00:15:46 statement, you know what I'm saying? Alright. Young people Google Yogi Berra. Anyway, uh, Evans, did you have an influence on this? 00:15:55 Did you tell Kelly, Hey, you know what, if we're gonna go corn on corn, here's the equipment changes we need to make. 00:15:59 Because to pull this off, we need this. Is, are you involved in the machinery aspect of it? Yeah, we've had discussions. 00:16:05 I mean, like Kelly said at the beginning, it's been a multi-year process of trying things out and getting to the point where, you know, when he came 00:16:12 to me this, this fall, I'm saying, Hey, we're gonna go all corn next year. We, I felt pretty comfortable, like we could handle it 00:16:18 'cause we've done the work and got the equipment where we think we, we want it to be successful at that. So it, it took some time, took a little trial 00:16:26 and error to figure out what worked and what didn't. But, um, we've gotten there. Speaking of doing no work, um, it's a lot more condensed. 00:16:34 Corn starts to lose, uh, bushels of yield after planting date of X. I've been hearing this my whole life. 00:16:40 Uh, and so you've gotta get it in, you gotta wait until it's dry, according to Clint. Then you gotta run like crazy 00:16:46 and you got a lot of acres to cover. Um, and uh, it seems like you got a lot more to manage on the spring and particularly on the fall, uh, 00:16:54 when you're going all corn. Talk to me about managing that labor. Kelly is probably you. Alright, wait. 00:16:59 Um, I'd like to address what you just asked. Evans, Evans brought the devastator, Evans brought the airway, 00:17:04 Evans brought the narrower gauge wheels to fit inside there. Uh, the machinery aspect at Mike has been instrumental in 00:17:11 the biological aspect that we talk about. Clint has been instrumental in, these are the two guys that make me look smart. 00:17:17 And so then the management that I go for after that is, you know, the marketing, uh, you know, like, are we gonna run the three planters? 00:17:24 You know, the, and, and adding up all that stuff. It, uh, it, it really hasn't been as big a deal, uh, or as tall of a mountain 00:17:32 as I thought it was gonna be when we started. Well, it pushes, you see soybeans, some guys are going out and putting soybeans in like when it isn't good condition 00:17:40 to put in corn because the soybean can be more forgiving. So now you've just condensed your labor in the spring 00:17:44 to a lot tighter timeframe. So does it mean longer days? Does it mean bigger equipment? Does it mean one more hired guy? 00:17:50 Does it mean you pull somebody, you pull somebody off another job? What's going on? To me, it means, like I say, 00:17:57 potentially it means one more planter. I, uh, you know that, that the fact that corn loses yield and that people don't want to get into the second half 00:18:05 of may with corn and things like that. I, I don't think that that's relevant. I think you need to manage your varieties. 00:18:11 Uh, I think you need to manage moisture. So the corn's coming out of the field, that's the correct moisture. 00:18:16 And you know, like I said, we probably could get by if we wanted to really string it out, we could get by with two planters. 00:18:21 Well, we run three planters, right? That's the management change that we make to get it done in that condensed window. 00:18:27 Okay. So a person's considered doing this, uh, if they say, well, I only have one plant and I don't think I can afford a second one, may, uh, uh, 00:18:33 hire, hire the neighbor to do a few year acres or something like that. Hire The neighbor to do a few acres. 00:18:38 Uh, look at something like that. Or, you know, we, we condensed two years ago we had 1800 acres of beans last year. 00:18:44 We had a thousand next year we're only gonna have 90. Don't make the jump all at once. Yeah. Do it transitionally or obviously you could take your one 00:18:51 planter and, and then expand, you know, make it get the next size bigger guess get a bigger plant. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I, I got one thing 00:18:58 to add on Kelly's labor is like, one of the reasons we've moved to the new planters through the planners or the planners that he's getting is 00:19:05 'cause they'll be in John Deere on the op center connected, and essentially we'll run two 00:19:11 of 'em together in the same field. So you got two guys in the same area working, um, that you don't have to tend three 00:19:18 different guys at three different places. So we've kind of done that in the past and it's worked really well. 00:19:22 Well, and the guys like it and they efficiencies go up. So there's another thing we've looked at as well. And Kelly's farm is just those little using 00:19:30 technology to help us out as well. Yeah. Better than we've ever had. All right. Uh, speaking of labor and timing bushels, three 00:19:38 to four times the amount of output per acre to a hell of a lot more grain cart. It's a lot more semi, 00:19:44 it's a lot more demand on the grain facility, the dryer, the, I mean, and then also the trucking. 00:19:50 So you, this is, this is I think one of the bigger management, uh, aspects of it is the, the bushels. 00:19:58 Well, we, uh, you know, we put in a new dryer and, and now the dryer is not a bottle of leg at all. We will start with some 103 to 105 day corn. 00:20:07 We'll go all the way up to some hundred 18 day corn to, to push it out. Uh, we're lucky in the area that we live in 00:20:14 with the different ethanol plants, uh, two of them specifically, um, that will have a, a wet corn program 00:20:21 and they'll have a very advantageous ba uh, basis when we get started in September. Uh, we've also, uh, started working here this last year 00:20:29 with a large, uh, feedlot and he wants corn over 25%. Um, you know, and we're gonna deliver bushels to him again next year. 00:20:37 So different, uh, connections, uh, you know, business relationships that we built, that, that part's pretty easy. 00:20:43 Uh, you know, uh, with the trucking line we have, you know, we have, we run three 12 row heads, uh, 00:20:49 and we have uh, we have eight, uh, hoppers ourself, uh, grain trailers, plus there's a couple other people that we hire when we need to, to flex out 00:20:58 and go to town and things like that. All of those things have, uh, um, have been made, uh, you know, throughout this, you know, 00:21:04 call a three year journey. Clint, you got anything on this? You haven't still responded. 00:21:10 He gave you credit for having quippy statements. I said, you're not quite as clever as our man Jared, and he just goes in and repeats stuff that he's heard. 00:21:18 Let's face it. Yeah, No, I, I think the big thing for, for me, the fall on the trucking side, most farmers in my area, 00:21:27 you know, it's a easy decision like Kelly said, to hire 'em one on for that busy time and, and get that crop out. 00:21:33 So to me that's a, a minimal expense as a whole on the, uh, labor side. So 00:21:40 What else have we not covered? You, you've been, uh, off the side here. Nutrient Management. Nutrient management. 00:21:46 Yeah. Nutrient, Yeah. Nutrient management. How, how that changes a little bit. It can, it can definitely, all the residue I think 00:21:53 has a impact. And the guys that are doing corn on corn consistently, I think one of the big things is split plant nitrogen. 00:21:59 Whether that's, you know, fall applied with, with, on the planter or pre-plant or a side dress. Uh, lots of variations and ways to do it, 00:22:08 but I think consistency goes up split planting your nitrogen and corn on corn Expenses. It's more expensive 00:22:15 to plant, uh, a bushel of, to plant an acre of corn than soybeans by a considerable factor. 00:22:21 So, um, there's some people that probably are going to avoid doing this because they say, yeah, I gotta come 00:22:27 with a lot more money to do that. I'm not gonna do it. And you're gonna say, go and fight the battle to try and get the money 00:22:32 because you're gonna make more. Versus, uh, it costs me less to put in soy, but you lose. So I think I would make the decision to go ahead 00:22:39 and have more, uh, uh, financial, uh, outlay. But I'm sure there's somebody that would disagree with that. The net is the most important number to look at. 00:22:48 And if you know that soybeans are gonna be in the red, why, why do you wanna do that? You're setting yourself up 00:22:55 to fail financially, in my opinion. If I, if I'm gonna have to go to the bank and get some more money, a couple, $300 an acre, more 00:23:02 to put in the corn, but I can make a profit. The net is where is what the net is what's most important. Yeah, I think that's right. All right. 00:23:11 What else did we not get here on, on the management side of it? Evans? So you sat down, said, okay, we can make this work. 00:23:16 We talked about fertility, talked about machinery, talked about manpower, timing, managing the quantity. What else was a consideration? 00:23:25 Um, I think just managing, I think it goes back to what Kelly says, managing your hybrids, widening out your varieties. 00:23:34 Um, and then that comes into the next part of, you got a hundred day, 118 days. So you gotta look, 00:23:40 you gotta be more SA little more disciplined on your scouting, taking care of the crop too, because you got those wide windows. 00:23:46 Some things will be ready before others. And you know, if you're planting half your crop, you probably got 110 day to 115 day 00:23:53 and it's all bunched in a window. So you, it does create a little bit more legwork on the corn crop. 00:23:59 I mean, but obviously you don't got the beans to go chase around either. But there is management things that go along 00:24:04 with it in the in-season applications. All right, Clint, uh, going to you. So he said, all right, first off, hybrids, if you're one 00:24:11 of these people that always just pushes the easy button, you know, your, your seed rep comes in, you just buy 00:24:15 that now, you gotta actually say, wait a minute. Not only potentially different hybrids, different companies because of different timings, you know, 00:24:21 this farm over here is gonna be the one I can get on the soonest and it's gonna be this kind of variety. 00:24:25 I mean, there's a lot that goes into this, I think. 'cause you're also matching not just the timing, but also where you farm. 00:24:34 Absolutely. And I think, I think, uh, we try to structure when we go into an area, our hybrid, our maturities, uh, so when we go in, 00:24:41 everything's ready in one area, and then we come to another area as we're, as we're moving that, that's an important thing to think about, 00:24:47 um, as well. So You guys are over there and, and, uh, you know, that kind of like you, you guys pretty much you farm about two weeks in the spring, 00:24:54 two weeks in the fall, and then the rest of the time just kind of hang out. They, they call us CBOs, corn beans, 00:25:00 and the Ozarks where we're at. All right. So from the standpoint of, uh, from the standpoint of the, uh, other decisions, 00:25:09 there's the marketing, you got a lot of, you got a lot of different stuff to sell. So you just told me how you got rid of all you, 00:25:13 you've got a feed yard guy, you got, you know, the ethanol plants, et cetera, et cetera. So the person listening to this, are there any 00:25:20 new decisions they've gotta contemplate when they make the choice to go all corn? 00:25:25 Well, I'd like to tie two of the previous topics you talked about. You talked about plant health and things like that 00:25:30 because the, you know, the disease control, uh, that comes into play. And then the, uh, um, you know, the, the, 00:25:37 the corn on corn yield penalty, things like that. And back to what Clint said about nutrient management, um, you know, where Clint lives, 00:25:45 the split applied nitrogen is key. Where we live, we don't need, uh, in my opinion, the last thing I need is split applied nitrogen 00:25:52 because the soil's producing so much. And I think, you know, what Evans and Clint and I accomplished in the NCGA yield contest shows that, 00:25:59 but nutrient management is key. And the, the reason I bring this up is where Clint lives split applied nitrogen, where we live, 00:26:07 the last thing I need is more nitrogen. I need micronutrients, I need P and k, I need things like that. 00:26:12 We're gonna need to take that s test to balance the nitrogen assimilate. And that's where we talk about balancing the 00:26:19 soil and balancing the crop. So as a grower, when you want to do something that's gonna make it just a little bit tougher like corn on 00:26:25 corn and it's less forgiving balance that nutrition to keep the plant healthier, that's what will erase a lot of that corn on corn yield penalty. 00:26:32 And you know, the, the, the 324 bushel yield we attained with only 150 pounds of nitrogen. 00:26:38 Uh, the credit goes to these two guys. Mm-hmm. Uh, it's not me. It's these two guys. And what we attain by assimilating that nitrogen 00:26:45 and balancing with the SAP test. So nutrient management is probably the most important thing. It erases the disease control, 00:26:52 or should, I shouldn't say erases, but it helps with the disease control, helps with the corn on corn penalty, helps 00:26:58 with the cost of it all. 150 pounds of nitrogen is far less than what I think most people think they're gonna need 00:27:03 to grow continuous corn Evans, you're nodding your head, Clint. Go ahead, Clint. Well, to Kelly's point, you know, through sap, 00:27:11 one trend I've seen on corn, on corn, potassium needs go up. And it's not because corn on corn plants require more, 00:27:17 it's because we have it tied up. So even Kelly that's does such a fantastic job with his residue management 00:27:23 and getting that back into a plant available form, all that residue, we're still supplementing potassium through the season to help balance that plant. 00:27:31 So, great point. And I think it's, it's key. Sometimes, uh, you know, goes all goes back to the residue management. 00:27:38 The better job we do there, the less penalties we have from a nutrient perspective, from a disease perspective, um, 00:27:45 and kind of putting it all together. But the key is the SAP test, Damian, because without the information from the SAP 00:27:52 test, we don't know what we need. Clint in his area knows he needs nitrogen. We know we need micronutrients, 00:27:57 we know everybody needs potassium because of that. And I mean that, that you've got to have good information to make good decisions. 00:28:04 Evans, uh, do you think that this is five years from now you're still doing this and you say, Hey, here's one thing we didn't foresee, 00:28:11 or do you think it's sustainable? Can you do this for five years, six years, eight years? Oh, yeah. I mean, There's a naysayer, listen 00:28:18 to this right now that's questioning whether this could actually, because remember it's different. And so they're gonna say, ah, you know what? 00:28:23 That won't work here. So address that. Yeah, I would, I would say the other thing that made us very comfortable is Kelly Farms. 00:28:30 You know, uh, some ground stuff with Dunlap, and that was last time it was beans this year. Last time was beans. I was 2016. 00:28:36 So that would've been what, like eight years corn on corn no-till down there. 00:28:40 And it's still one of the better producing farms in that when it was, was all corn on corn. So yeah, I, I mean, I don't, 00:28:49 I don't see any issue with it. Basically, you Don't buy into the long-term harm 10 years from now, we'll, wish we hadn't done this kind of a thing. 00:28:55 No, because take for example, this year we had some winners and losers like everybody else when it comes 00:29:00 to the corn harvest and the farms that were, to Kelly's point more in balance, more, uh, more healthy basically in the end 00:29:08 of the day, that gets too technical. Were the farms that did pretty well and we were pretty happy with the farms that we were like, 00:29:15 holy crap, these really sucked what happened? They were the ones that were more out of balance, whether that be potassium, out of balance, 00:29:20 calcium out balance in the soil. Those are the ones we struggled with. And it was a little bit of an eye-opening experience of, of 00:29:26 like, okay, this is where we're starting to head is making sense now. So it's, it's, it's all doable. 00:29:33 It's a little bit more work, agronomically, plant health, SAP testing, boots on the ground kind of stuff. 00:29:39 But it's the, the payoffs there. Yeah, I totally believe It. 00:29:44 Uh, you got anything else to wrap this up? Uh, Mr. Kelly? Oh, it, uh, uh, uh, it really has been a journey. 00:29:51 I don't know that there'll ever be a destination, uh, because we're gonna continue to learn. I think we've only barely scratched the surface. 00:29:57 And it, you know, uh, nutrient management, residue control, residue management, those are the, 00:30:03 those are the keys in having good information. If you take care of that residue and get it to, uh, degrade, then you've released a lot 00:30:10 of potassium back into your soil, a lot of other nitrogen, and you de you've, uh, 00:30:14 destroyed the food source for the diseases. Mm-hmm. And then, uh, that SAP test, and then to have good information to manage your nutrition. 00:30:22 What's your old man? What's, what's your, your 71-year-old dad that's an Iowa native that farmed on those hills from the time he was a kid, 00:30:31 what's he say about your decision to go, uh, acorn? Well, at first when we started talking about this, and I told him beans weren't profitable, his, uh, quote, uh, 00:30:40 was I, I'll, let me dress it down just a little bit. But he said, uh, uh, how in the hell did you get $900 in a bean crop? 00:30:47 And I, and he, you know, he thought I was chasing yield or something like that. And I said, well, dad, everybody has $900 in a bean crop. 00:30:53 Nobody's just figuring it appropriately. You know, and I, and then when we, you know, he, he very much is good with numbers. 00:30:59 It amazes me the math he can do in his head. And when we showed him all the numbers, uh, you know, it's hard to argue with that black and white logic. 00:31:05 And then after we explained everything to him and we started transitioning that way, uh, he was fine with it. 00:31:10 And at the end of the day, big Gene loves his cals, and now he's got all kinds of s stock fields to put those cows in. Yeah, 00:31:16 You're gonna to go buy more cows. Yeah, you're gonna have to go buy more cows because to cover, you know, 7,000 acres with cows, uh, 00:31:23 on corn stalks, you're gonna need more cows. That's, and he, the, those corn stalks are free feed. So let's go get some more cows. So now he's on board. 00:31:31 All right. I like it. All right. His name's Kelly Garrett. He's one of the founders for Extreme Ag. 00:31:34 He's joined by Clint Freeze and Mike Evans who, uh, uh, have a venture called Calibrated Agronomy. And we also shop instructional videos for you that want 00:31:43 to dig deeper on agronomics and how you can calibrate your agronomy. That's the name of that series. Reminder also, uh, 00:31:48 that if you like what we do here at Extreme Ag in these videos, there's hundreds. I've been shooting these video, 00:31:54 these podcasts now for three and a half years. They're available as audio, as video, and they're all free. Go to Extreme mag.farm. 00:31:59 It's a free library of information you can apply to your farming operation immediately to help you farm better and more profitably. 00:32:05 And then also our new show, the Grainery. I'm really excited about it. Uh, it's coming at you from my farm, 00:32:10 and we've got episodes in the can. They'll be releasing, uh, all throughout 2025. And it's really a lot of fun. So pull up a chair, 00:32:16 pour yourself a drink, and enjoy the conversation at the Green. Until next time, thanks for being here. 00:32:20 I'm Damien Mason with Extreme Ag in the Curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme Ag Farm 00:32:28 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 00:32:31.565 --> 00:32:32.845