00:00 Hey there, we're back talking to Agro liquid about some Labs. They're gonna be done on Myles Farms from McGee Arkansas. If you've 00:06 been keeping up we've got cool Labs going on Chad Henderson and Alabama's gonna be doing one. We got him over at Kelly's in 00:12 Iowa and we got them and Kevin Matthews part of North Carolina. Well now we're talking to Molly Alexander. She's the regional agronomist for 00:18 aggro liquid. She is in covers the southeast so I met her down in McGee Arkansas last year and it was 00:27 actually to cover some stuff about cotton which I know nothing about as she will very clearly tell you and me 00:33 also Molly knows a lot about rice also, she knows about everything and she's gonna tell us what's going on these Labs that they're doing by the 00:42 way dear listener and viewer are so cool to me because we're not talking about in acre, you know, you go to these field days 00:48 where they like playing four rows of corn 100 yards and then like bush hog off the bad parts of it and tell you how amazing is we're talking about big large-scale stuff. So it's a 00:57 real trial where you get real information that you used to make more money on your farming operation the cool thing here. It's rice and cotton so Molly. What are we 01:06 doing at Miles Farms this year rice and cotton row rice to be specific. Yes, so definitely want to make sure 01:14 everybody knows it's Ro rice because it's not a very widely adapted practice yet. It's coming but it's 01:20 not so okay. Well by the way to the person that's like from Iowa row rice, you know beans and 01:26 rice. What the hell we talking about here. What's that even mean? the 01:35 rice and field and then you would flood it where the entire field is underwater. This one is actually planted almost 01:41 like your regular row crop Fields where you bet them up and then you plant it Down The Middle's and then it's flooded down the middle versus the entire field and 01:50 what typically is known as a rice paddy and this is done to help as far as input costs and labor intensive and you still 01:59 have your weed management like what you get with blood rice, but you don't have all the headache of having to maintain 02:05 the levees and constantly flood you can turn the Polly pipe on water as you need to come back cut it 02:11 off. So same concept just pretty much different as far as we're planting it on raised beds versus and Patty. All right. So the experiment here Matt miles 02:20 isn't in the method of planting necessarily it's that I mean, obviously I grew liquid is not a planter company. There are fertility company, you're gonna 02:29 you're gonna put in their product for fertility, but is it also to see if it works? Different degrees based on how you plant it because you don't normally 02:38 do row rice. Is that what I'm gathering? Well, we do do routes at certain times. You know, we've got we've got a block of ground as a mile 02:47 by two miles. It's what we call zero grade rice. There's three Rays to grow rice. There's zero grade. Where when when 02:53 Molly's talking about a Patty it'll be an 80 acre block and there's it's it's like a type of top and then there's your convention your regular rice that we started growing back when I was 03:02 a kid where you have contoured levies based on your elevation. So, you know, when you see rights being grown or pictures of rice being grown, you see these I guess 03:11 you as a midwesterner would call it like a little Mound or a little heal, you know all through the field and they're all sometimes. They're 03:20 they're crooked. Sometimes they're straight depending on the elevation the new way of growing this which is 03:26 Molly hit it on the head is is we finally decided as a as a group of rice producers, you know as well because we're far irrigated, 03:35 so Most of the rice has grown in the area where it's Furrow irrigation. Now you go to California, there's some outliers where you know rice has grown. It's that's not Furrow or 03:44 not in the same practices with our corn and beans. So we've took the rice and put it in a in the same environment as a corn and Bean on the 03:53 raised bed. And what that does is all those Mounds you see in a contoured rice field. It takes a lot of work to get those up a lot of work to get those down and almost 04:03 sometimes with damage your land because you're pulling these big huge heels taking them back down. So you have to rotate it, you know to keep that from 04:12 being being a problem. So this is giving up. The fallacy is at rice has to be grown in water, you know, if you watch a movie about a war movie 04:21 or something in there and some of these countries and it's all flooded. You know, what you taught me this just one year 04:27 ago. You taught me that I thought rice had to be in a flooded area and you told me no Damien, that's before we had good herbicide that was just for weed prevention and we can only conception 04:36 it's for it's it's totally for we we control we figured out on the road rise that we can do this by just keeping the soul wet the thing about a premier herbicide on grass. You 04:48 never need to let that ground crack or check what we call chick because once it breaks the seal then the weeds Mouth through those cracks. So as long as we keep that 04:57 ground moist, you know sealed over it don't have to have a flood of water actually too deep of a flood on on Rice will will actually decrease 05:06 your yield rather than increase it. So that's kind of a Mis fallacy, but that's what we're doing. There is growing it more as a corn and bean type 05:15 in a corned Bean type situation. Okay, so Molly this is a issue then you change in the planting type and the the method and the flooding and all 05:24 that because and we just heard about the three types of planning. Does it change it fertility rice plant still a rice plant. 05:30 It's kind of like wheat, it's a grass right? It needs nitrogen. Does it matter what fertility you put to 05:36 it based on the planting Style? kind of a shot up front and then come back later and maybe dress it a little bit towards the mid-season but 05:51 with being able to put it on rows there's different. You have a little bit different timings that you can come in now, but I will tell you the thing that they 06:00 touched on is herbicide. So if we're going to put a lot of herbicide on Rice that's Prime opportunity to get a fertility package married in 06:10 with that herbicide blend so we may be able to Now in the future with row rice and everything, we have more application opportunities because we'll blend with those 06:20 herbicide tanks where before it was one big shot up front a couple herbicide passes, maybe one mid season and it 06:26 just wasn't really a common practice to try to feed stuff into those herbicide tanks. So I think that was missed and that was something that we put into this 06:35 lab to try to see if we can get a benefit out of it. So when you go through here Matt and Lane, whichever one of you want to take this now what you're telling me is you're going to use a nitrogen 06:45 product from agril liquid. It's called enhance and you're gonna use it multiple times through the season you're use it how at time of planting you're gonna use it when you go and spray 06:54 for weeds, but you told me if we if the ground is moist enough, you're not using that much herbicide. So are you gonna make a password just spoon feed fertilizer can't tell 07:03 me what you're thinking you're gonna do. Well the the railroad gives you an opportunity to run sprayers and not 07:09 always running airplane because you can't right you hit a if you hit a rice lady ten miles an hour with a sprayer Not only would you be through the front 07:18 windshield but the sprayer might be on top of you. So the real rice gives us an opportunity as Molly said this food 07:24 spoon feed all so with that Furrier irrigation, you know, you're yes the question about anything different on fertility. The only thing we've seen 07:33 is on that very irrigation at the top of the field where you're doing having some leaching effects. 07:39 That you know, you have to add a peach bit more nitrogen at that point. But I think what we're doing in this trial is looking 07:45 at micronutrients and that's something maybe been overlooked, you know rice gets nitrogen. Sometimes it gets a little suffer for sulfur for 07:54 sure gets phosphorus or some of the other things the key things that we use to make a higher yield Rises is forgotten or don't have the 08:03 ability to put it out. So that's where you know, we're thinking that you know, if we're pushing these other plants corn soybeans cotton even wheat now 08:12 with these micro packs micro nutrient, you know availability and we're seeing some pretty good results. 08:19 Out of those rice is a grass crop just like corn, you know, so so theoretically it should respond the same way. Correct Lane you 08:28 got numbers. Do you have any numbers on Race? What do we what do we what do we what are we doing our normal rice acres? And 08:34 what would be a goal for this year? Like, what would you think if this lab is a success What's it gonna take for it to look like success money 08:40 and yield wise. So as far as money, I mean I don't I don't have the the numbers on on money. 08:48 But I mean we'd normally I mean, I would say 180 to 200 bushel. That's kind of our not just us just just 08:57 the kind of grower standard around here on you know, our producing rise Acres. Those are bushels. 09:04 Bushels, correct number remember eight the I see rice when I go to the sushi bar. So anyway, you're going to explain this to me. So 180 bushel 180 Bush, right? They 09:13 they sell them by 100 weights. Okay, right. Oh crazy. Yeah rice is such a unique and a weird crop. I mean 09:22 if you go to South, Louisiana, it's measured in barrels. Yeah. And we measured in bushel, some people measured in 09:29 100 weight. So it's a very big specialized crop. So it's gonna be 180 bushel is is run is is what you normally do in McGee Arkansas and then 09:39 if if Molly dials it in right what's it going to be success Molly in Lane what's gonna be is 220 is 220. I'm just thinking 09:48 here. What's a what's a success? What are you gonna say man? This is great. I mean Molly told us the other day that she's gonna 09:54 try to get us and you take 300 bushel. Is that why you Oh, okay prize crop 180 b*******. 10:07 You know that's gonna be the low end of where we think we should be 160s the county average for the 10:13 three surrounding counties around here. We have been we've we've made we've made 232 40 now we're talking about dry. So we've made 232 40 10:22 in isolated cases. By the way, the person listening you mean dry. You mean converted to dry dry 15% bushel. 10:31 Cambridge Island because again, it's always flooded because we'll cut that rye somewhere around 16 to 10:37 20 percent so we can brag all day long about our yields. But when about time you get to shrinkage, you gotta look at dry bushels what you take to the bank 10:46 so, you know the low side 180 we've made some 230 isolated spots, maybe even a little better than that if we can range in that 10:55 200 bushel, we feel like we've done a really good job. So if Agri liquids and Molly can 11:01 get us, you know, anything above that depending on the cost, you know, we haven't went through the cost but as our cotton lab 11:07 was last year, you know it definitely Roi after you pay for the product. So that's kind of where we're looking at Daniel if if 11:16 You know of the 300 bushel things a joke, but you know, whatever whatever she can give us. That's what we're gonna try to get. That's all the three impossible to joke, but 200 to 205 certainly sounds 11:25 like it's not so and any labs, the one thing that we want to stress is we are not trying to cater to the high yield 11:33 high yield producers and everything. So we're designing these Labs that will track across the board whether you farm a hundred acres or you farm 11:42 100,000. So our goal is to find that key piece that will give you an Roi now. It may not necessarily return the big bushel number 11:51 that you want. But as long as it gives you a good Roi and it's good for the crop itself and good 11:57 for your farm and get you kind of that place that you would like to be as an individual farmer. That's our goal. So we're not trying to cater and do this big crazy 12:06 trial. We're going one piece at a time. So this tracks across Farmers as a whole we're not catering to anyone. So I really 12:15 want to push that sometimes bushels don't correlate to Roi so micro nutrients are very overlooked piece of a fertility program, and 12:24 they're usually not very expensive, but if you can Put these things right where they need to be at Key timing and grow stages in that crop. You'd be 12:33 you'd be surprised what you can see. So I just wanted to put that out there bushels are a wonderful thing to get whether it's 12:39 corn soybeans, whatever cotton, you know, we're going for pounds, but we need to look at it on paper as well as an 12:45 Roi and what input is going to be best for you and your farm. So with that in mind with that in mind, I don't even 12:51 know what's a bushel of rice worth. I don't know but do you believe that I mean, are you are we adding on 12:57 costs Molly? Like if they get three more bushels than average? Does it cover the cost I mean for is that what we're shooting for like three or four more bushels of of gain on 13:09 yield will cover this new fertility program. You're pushing that's the time. It's three to five bushels answer your question. 13:16 Roughly be about three to five bushels. But the other thing that I want to stress is there's like the packages 13:22 that we're traveling in Maxfield. So they are like microf500. It has five different micronutrients in it furtherain also has 13:31 an mpk married with some micronutrients. So if you look at it as a a mix of my crows instead of 13:40 singular micro applications that will help you out a lot on Roi as well. So if you go out and just strictly try to put one shot of zinc one shot of 13:49 Manganese one shot of boron and you try to apply it like that the numbers get out of hand. So if you can really focus in and find a custom micro blend 13:58 for you that will go in with any of your practices like herbicide and go that way across the field. You can really dial in your Roi on that as well. I speak 14:07 of Roi Lane, you're the numbers guy when we come back and revisit this first off and I'm such a Northern or a midwesterner because I and if Molly will tell me 14:16 Mind me. I'm a midwesterner. What is the when we even harvested when we harvesting this rice? Man, yes. 14:25 Probably sometime in September. Okay, when we get this harvested I want you to bring me the data and I want to revisit this because I will find out what we learned what we what we 14:34 discovered but really it's it sounds like we're just talking about a new fertility program to grab more yield. That's really what we're talking about in a 14:40 new way of method of planting. I mean, that's really what we're talking. We're really testing for method of planting spoon fitting fertility 14:46 and the goal is yield right? Well, yeah method of planning is something that's just kind of an added bonus. We start talking about this 14:54 Agri liquid trial. So these these micro nutrient packs and the things that Aggregates want to do is is gonna be beneficial no matter what environment right you have and 15:03 and that's one thing I want to mention and what Molly said and we were talking about this last year, you know 100% agree 15:10 with with the the direction they're going here, even when we're doing our high you'll soybeans if we can't make it Roi I don't even try Okay some 15:19 I can improve the soybeans on and make money or at least break even you know, we'll do that. But that that's one thing I like about their program. This 15:28 is gonna be for a farmer that that you know, there's there's guys out there making 100 60 b******* rice, maybe making more net money than we are 200 and 15:37 that around the numbers and figure out where it is. And that's one thing I like about their program in the in the rice level in the cotton lab too. Well, you told me there's another benefit 15:46 that this method of Thing you have more ground application opportunity which means less airplanes which probably pencils 15:54 out making you more money and then having to get on the schedule for an aerial application. All right, we're going to revisit this in September. 16:02 And check on what the rice what the rice Lab at Miles Farms. Looks like I'm excited about I learned more about rice every time I talk to these guys than I 16:11 ever thought. I could possibly learn. My name is Damian Mason stay tuned for the agril liquid Labs. We're doing at McGee Arkansas with the miles brothers. 16:17 That's Lane and Matt, they're not actually brothers. That's Father and Son, but let's call them the miles brothers. And her name is Molly Alexander. She's a wealth 16:23 of knowledge and she's the regional Southeast agronomist for Agra liquid till next time. It's extreme egg.