00:00 Hey, it's coming up on the fourth quarter. What does that mean? It means you're almost done for the season, meaning this crop is gonna be going, 00:06 going into the combine into the grain bin very, very soon. But you know what? You can't give up. We talk a lot about that. 00:11 That's what we're covering in this episode of Extreme as Cutting the Curve. Welcome 00:15 To Extreme Acts, cutting the Curve podcast, where we cut your learning curve with insights you can apply immediately to your farming operation. This episode is presented by Loveland products. 00:27 When it comes to crop inputs, you need products that are field proven to deliver both results and value. For more than 50 years, 00:34 Loveland products has been providing farmers with high performance value-driven product solutions designed to maximize productivity on every acre. 00:42 Visit loveland products.com to see how their innovative products can help you farm more profitably. And now, here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. 00:51 Thanks For joining us for Extreme as cutting the curve. I got Ron Calhoun, the plant nutrition manager with Loveland products. 00:56 I've also got Kelly Garrett and I've got Matt and Lane Miles. My buddies from McGee, Arkansas. We're talking about the fourth quarter. 01:02 This is actually, uh, Matt's title because let's face it, always what we do, if you tune into our stuff, we talk about rounding the bases. 01:09 You gotta finish strong. You gotta finish strong. One of Lee Lu's big points, round the bases. Well, you know what? Matt's not a baseball guy. 01:15 Matt's a football guy. So Matt said, let's talk about the fourth quarter. And before we hit record on this, Ron Calhoun said, you know what's interesting? 01:22 We're in the field more than we used to be. We have more opportunities because of that last pass that maybe we would've never taken. Matt even said, you know, he's doing something this year. 01:30 He would've done a few years ago going out there at, uh, you know, R five. Well, let's talk about that fourth quarter. Let's talk about that laugh pass. 01:39 Let's talk about how to go ahead and finish this game strong. So Ron, what are we talking about? 01:44 Well, you know, just whether it's a, a high clearance sprayer or being able to get a, you know, get a helicopter or a plane out there. And the way that the, uh, 01:53 plant health fungicides have kind of changed the way that we approach what we do. We are in the field more. And so, um, 02:01 I think that we can get focused on, you know, just going out there and putting out that fungicide or, or making that pass. But now we have this opportunity to maybe address some plant nutrition things. 02:11 Are we doing some tissue sampling that we can incorporate into that? What are some things, you know, 02:16 in another discussion that Kelly and I had talking about times a year where there's a little bit of a gap on the plant's ability to get at, 02:23 maybe there's theoretically enough potassium in the soil, but there's not enough potassium for these 12 days. 02:29 And so how can we supplement that? Could we put something in that tank that we could go out foliar along with what, what else we were doing? Um, 02:37 making sure that we're addressing micros at reproduction, getting those plants unlocking photosynthesis by making sure that, well, 02:44 you feel silly to have your micronutrients be limiting on your ability to reach your potential. And so I think it's, 02:51 I think it's an exciting thing to be able to sneak some other things into the tank when you're already going through the field. 02:57 Matt and Lane, you guys are doing something that very late that you would've not done just a few years ago. What are you doing? 03:03 You said you were gonna do an R five application? Yeah, so, so, you know, normally I, I say normally here years passed, probably before extreme Ag, you know, it was all just, 03:12 it was throw fur th fertilizer out there, you know, three, four times during, in the V stages. Once it tass you put a put a shot of fertilizer on, 03:21 it was over with. Now we, we tend to do things a little bit different. We take some of these stress mitigation products, fertilizers, fungicides. 03:30 We didn't even use fungicide up till, what, a couple, three years ago? Yeah. Uh, doing that later in the corn's life in that R five range to see if we 03:39 can't bump you up just a little bit. What, what we're seeing is, is if you really pay attention to the demand curves of these plants, 03:47 it's pretty eyeopening. You know, a lot of these nutrients that we front load our, because Kelly uses this word all the time, and I love it. 03:55 We hit the easy button. You know, the easy button is to make sure you get all this stuff done early. The plant's small, you don't have to worry about running over it. It's too big. 04:02 You don't have to hire an airplane. That's the easy button. What we've seen is these demand curves for a lot of these nutrients come way 04:09 later in the season than than what we ever even maybe even thought of or wanted to even fool with. 04:16 And so that's where we've kind of changed our approach. Not only do we spoonfeed cause of our soil types, but those last applications in that fourth quarter are way more important than 04:26 we ever dreamed they were. Once you look at the demand curve of the plants, Kelly, is that accurate? You know, uh, 04:34 the easy button really just meant that what we always did was we front loaded everything. And it's, it's like giving a, you know, it's like giving a, 04:40 a baby all of his nutrition all at once. Like, no, it's got, it's gotta be ongoing, right? 04:45 Espe, yes, especially here with the hills we deal with and things like that. We typically haven't made the, uh, 04:51 foliar applications that Matt or Chad Wood, things like that, because of the lay of the land here, uh, especially in corn and beans, you know, 04:59 the ground rig will go out there. We started putting our fungicide on with the ground rig. That was unheard of here until just a few years ago. Uh, 05:05 now there's other people doing it. We see, uh, advantage there because of the water. We continue to push fertility later. The potassium is needed later and later. The, 05:14 the micronutrients are needed later and later. And, uh, we see a big payoff from that. And, you know, now we're making a V 10 pass in corn. We'll again, 05:22 make a VT pass in corn to put the fungicide on, then we'll make an R five pass. Last year we had about a 14 bushel yield advantage with the R five pass. 05:30 We're gonna expand upon that. Ron. Uh, is that happening on a lot of the farms in America? This many passes? It's probably not right. 05:40 I dunno about that many passes, but definitely, definitely more passes. Matter of fact, there's, you know, there's places where we just don't have the, 05:48 uh, the airplane or the helicopter capacity to try to meet the demand. Uh, because so many people are looking at this, particularly as you see again, 05:58 uh, we talked about those plant, uh, plant health fungicides and what that bring, you know, even if it wasn't for yield, um, 06:06 there's a demand on the plant to metabolize those fungicides to get those well translated through the plant to get them to where they need and have them work 06:14 properly. So even if we're applying nutrition with that to just kind of pay for the energy cost that we're asking that plant to put up, 06:21 to maintain so we can get those fungicides, uh, they don't give 'em away, right? And so to be able to get the most out of that investment, 06:28 partnering that with something that's not necessarily looking to push the plant, but to keep the plant from having another one of those off days. 06:37 By the way, uh, Kelly, you and I said something interesting. Uh, it was, uh, this spring, uh, in your part of the world, uh, 06:45 an entire field had washed away. Mike Evans, your groms, took a picture of it. And I said, you know, what's interesting to me? The person that, uh, 06:51 has that field blames the weather. They don't blame their practices, they don't blame anything. And that's kinda what we're talking about here, 06:57 is that you have a bad year and it's, it's never things that you could have prevented. Again, you can't change the weather, but the stuff you're talking about, 07:04 you're talking about going out there when even just a few years ago, it's not something you would do and you're seeing a return. 07:09 You actually are seeing, you're seeing a benefit of going out there. Hiring a helicopter to go out for $37 an acre of a treatment is something you 07:18 wouldn't have done a few years ago. And probably some people still will think is, doesn't pay off. They'll, you know, blame the weather and, you know, blame whatever other thing, 07:25 not something they could have done. You're doing it. Exactly. You know, only about 30% of the acres even put fungicide on. So that would be your VT pass. We're we're not only making that pass, 07:36 we're making two others and we're seeing an economic benefit from all of it. Uh, again, moving the fertility later, putting stress mitigation products on, uh, 07:46 whatever the crop needs. You know, Mike Evans and my son Connor are out there taking tissue analysis, soil tests, things like that. 07:54 We're constantly analyzing what's going on and making adjustments to the plant. Ron, is that a true number? 30%. 08:01 Only 30% of America's farmland acres get hit with a farm fungicide. Yeah, I I bet Kelly's got a good, a good feel for that. 08:08 I do feel like a lot of the, you know, it is, uh, not widely adapted as much as it seems. It's just grown so much in the last few years. The number seems big, 08:18 but when you look at all the acres that are out there, it's probably still something like that. Didn't it used to be that, uh, you only used fungicide if it was, 08:28 if it was, if the prices were up? Uh, like you, you're convinced. I mean, it's like, almost like they, they had the wrong idea. 08:33 Like instead of doing it as a practice, did it only on certain conditions and it was nothing about the crop. It was about their, their financial situation, wasn't it? 08:41 Isn't that the old story fungicide? We've, we've already had that conversation this morning. That 30% number came from our good friend Mike Buing, 08:48 and he told me how many dollars worth of fungicide he had in his shop that he was figuring on selling. And with all the dry weather here, he was, 08:55 was getting pretty nervous if anybody was actually gonna put it on. And with this rain last night, uh, 08:59 Mike sing is breathing a lot easier today than his fungicide acres will be where they should be. 09:05 Well, and I, It's, it's interesting that sometimes we, uh, we think about investing when the prices are up, 09:12 but I think those are conditions where everybody can be successful. Mm-hmm. When prices are down, all you have is yield. 09:19 Yeah, that's, that's exactly what I was fixing to say, Mr. Ron, is we get so tied up in, well, corn price is good and our yield looks good. 09:27 So let's put on this 10 bushel an acre increase in yield. Mm-hmm. That 10 an acre increase in yield is there, no matter if the price is good, 09:36 if the weather's good or bad, if it works, it works. You know, unless there's some kind of restraining factor that only makes it work in 09:43 certain conditions, you know, we lose the fact that a lot of times we're lo putting dollars on the table by not applying these products cause of certain conditions. 09:55 Yeah. So, uh, this isn't really a fungicide subject, it's more about the fourth quarter. So let's talk about what's going on fourth quarter at McGee, Arkansas. Uh, 10:03 and I think it's interesting. You wanna start with corn since you said you're rather new to the corn game for you? Uh, uh, just tuning in, um, down in the Delta region, 10:12 um, cotton and, uh, and uh, and double crop beans after wheat. But corn wasn't the, wasn't the miles farms thing. So how many years you've been putting corn out? 10:23 A decade? Yeah, we started in 2008. Okay. So 15 years. So in your 16th season of having corn and you're gonna do a fourth quarter pass, you're going to go out there, uh, 10:33 when all the neighbors think that you should probably just, uh, you know, hang it up. You're going out there and what are you putting on? 10:39 Uh, we'll, we'll put on some fertility. Uh, actually I've got exactly what we're put on. We'll put on some potassium, we'll put on a little bit of nitrogen, uh, micro pack, uh, 10:49 humic phobic blend and, and probably some type of sugar with that just to kind of boost that energy and keep that plant going. Now, this is new for us. 10:57 I don't have any data on this other than Kelly and Chad and Temple and different ones that's done it. Uh, Kevin Matthews has done it in the soybeans. 11:05 We did it on both R five on the soybeans and the corn both. And we're looking for some pretty good results. So what we done was we did, 11:13 you know, certain fields that, you know, of course our nnc g a type fields that we're trying to push the yields all we can. Right. 11:20 And we're taking another strip in fields and doing it to that same timeframe. You know, same thing with the VT pass. So we did the VT pass, 11:28 we added a bunch of fertility, and then we, so we're gonna have some real good data, you know, as to both different late fourth quarter applications. Which ones work? 11:39 Cause we're definitely in the fourth quarter right now on, on our, on our soybeans and corn for sure. 11:44 Yeah. So by the way, we're recording this on July 5th. So to put that in perspective, uh, you know, the combines will be rolling in, uh, McGee, Arkansas, uh, what, August 25th or something? 11:55 Probably 30 days we'll be, we're within 30 days of harvest. Okay. Early, early August. First week of August or so. Um, by the way, 12:04 how you putting on this last pass four weeks before the combine's rolling? You're, you're doing it on with a ground rig? 12:09 No, it's all airplane. You're being flown on. And we're fortunate to have a lot of air services. There's one, you know, there's three and I just in within 10 miles of here. 12:20 So as far as the demand that Mr. Ron was talking about, uh, it gets a little hairy at times. We we're very blessed. 12:26 I have plenty of aerial applicators here. Ron said before we hit record that he wants to go and visit the miles farm in McGee, Arkansas. I've been there. First off, uh, you don't, it, it, 12:36 it's very humid. It's very hot. And also what he's talking about, um, if you are like a person that has sort of a post-traumatic stress disorder, 12:44 you don't wanna be there because there are airplanes. Like, I mean, the whole time, like you want a duck for cover, I'm telling you, 12:50 it is just a buzz around there nonstop. Um, all right. Fourth quarter, what are you doing on your fourth quarter, Kelly? The fourth quarter to me, I guess 13:01 Fourth quarter you're talking about going with the air. What you're gonna go over the beans? Cause you can do that with the ground rig, right? Right. Very last pass. Very last pass. 13:08 You're gonna be doing it in your part of the world. I'm gonna guess like for labor day. Um, you know, maybe a little before that. It, 13:15 it depends on the maturity of the corn, but yeah, it'll be, uh, August 15th or so, probably. Okay. You know, 13:22 there will be potentially be an insecticide this year. We might add a a r for the next round, which we've not done before. I believe that we'll do that. 13:31 There will be some potassium acetate and there'll be some micronutrients. All right. What do you, what is your recommendation, Ron? 13:40 Somebody comes to you and says, I want to get bigger yields. Uh, and you say, you know what you need to do, 13:45 you need to go out there and do a fourth quarter pass. What are you gonna tell 'em? Well, uh, again, for me, it's all about maintaining those solar panels, right? 13:53 I want to keep those leaves. I wanna keep those leaves pumping energy into the plant. And so I'm probably looking at something that's a combination of, uh, 14:01 nitrogen and potassium, uh, to kind of provide that, provide that energy. Uh, we have something called maximum impact K, 14:07 which has that potassium acetate like Kelly, uh, mentioned. Um, and the, uh, the nitrogen that's in there is in a trione form. Um, 14:17 and so what you get is, uh, instead of getting a flush, you kind of get a, a nice, uh, a nice feed from that over an extended period. 14:24 Whether that comes out maybe seven, 10 days after you've, after you've put that on there from a micronutrient perspective. Um, 14:32 you know, again, um, I'm probably, uh, I'm probably trying to think about, you know, with the things that we need from moving nutrients around. 14:41 Boron is always gonna be important. When we look at, at new at, uh, tissue, we don't think about, uh, uh, you know, boron that late in the season. 14:49 But boron is this catalyst that helps nutrients move around the plant. And so it's always important. Uh, you know, 14:56 Matt and mentioned a little about N C G A, when I look at, uh, some of the common things between some of those N C G A folks, 15:03 they're putting boron on it every opportunity, right? Cause they, they've seen, they've seen the importance of that. Um, 15:11 and so I guess I would also just say, You need to meet, you need to meet a man named Chad Henderson. He never met. He, he, I'm, I'm telling you, I that guy sleeps with a tub of boron, 15:22 like for a pillow. He's all about the boron. I've, I'm, I'm, I'm telling you, he's, you, you and him would hit it off. Great. All right. Sure. The more boron. 15:29 All right. Fourth quarter. What else do I need to know? You're the, you're the plant nutrition manager. You haven't even talked about your, 15:36 you haven't even talked about your products yet. You're not even out here pitching your products. Do I need to put any your stuff in? 15:40 I'd be, I'd be happy to do that. Uh, well, you know why they're talking about fourth quarter one, I, one thing I would say for third quarter, 15:46 and for some of us that's still gonna be relevant, is, um, we've seen the benefit from radiate, like in furrow. 15:52 We've seen the benefit from Radiate on those early passes. Uh, we have an iteration of that product called Radiate Next, uh, 15:59 which has some additional components in that, that, uh, one of the things that does is it opens up, uh, it opens up some, some, uh, uh, uh, feature in the plant called Aquaporins, 16:10 which are essentially these tubes for pulling water into the plant. And as those things get limiting later in the season, trying to get more, uh, 16:18 water and energy, uh, out of that plant by sort of spoofing the plant, um, that it's getting some photosynthetic benefit, uh, 16:26 by a compound that you put on that tells the plant, Hey, everything's good. Keep going. So in a way it kind of plays into that, uh, that stress space. 16:34 But really it's, uh, so I would call it more the encouragement for the coach. Hey, we got a fourth quarter to come here. I need everything. 16:41 You got time to get back out there and keep going. So that's sort of the messaging that, that radiate next would provide as you go into that fourth quarter. 16:48 And then looking at a good micro pack. And when you pick out a good micro pack, for goodness sake, make sure that it's something that your plant can use. 16:55 Foliar, okay? There's lots of them out there that have a chelation on them that's more appropriate for the soil. 17:01 And sometimes those are gonna be what appear to be less expensive. But if you put on a hundred percent of something that's not available, 17:07 that actually becomes more expensive. All right? So put on a product that's gonna be properly chelated to be able to drive through that leaf. We have a reacts line that uses these, uh, 17:18 really small hyperactive carbon compounds to help drive some of those micronutrients through the plant. We have a product called reacts com, uh, 17:26 reacts, uh, complete. That's a micro product. Um, we also have a product called Nutri Sy Complete. And, and both of those are gonna have a chelation that's appropriate for foliar 17:38 uptake. And they work, you know, they work really well at some of those lower water volumes that we're using. I think it's interesting, you just, 17:44 it was the first time in all the recordings we've done where you said, make sure you get the right type of micro pack, wasn't it, Kelly, 17:49 that you and I talked, uh, you were big on plant growth regulators. You're kind of out there in the front of the curve on that. 17:55 But all pgs are not the same. There's kind that should be going on at time planning. There's time that should be going on, you know, vegetative fr uh, 18:02 stage versus reproductive fa stage. I didn't know that about micro packs. Uh, is this something that you guys knew, or, I mean, is everybody here is uh, 18:09 or is this new to you also? That micro pass can vary based on we, Well, 18:13 we try to shy away from anything that would be called an E D T A and we try to use that or sulfate based is, is what we prefer to use here. 18:23 And ideally we would like to use some that are amino amino acid based. Those would be the best, most plant available ones. 18:30 Is that true? So on the derived from statement, you're gonna wanna look for amino acids. You're gonna wanna look for citric acid chelation. Yep. Uh, 18:37 but if you see things like, uh, E D T A, you see some of these heavier, uh, chelations, 18:42 they're just more appropriate for soil applied and not really gonna give you, uh, the benefit that you're looking from, from a foliar perspective. 18:49 Exactly. Lane. And Matt, you're nodding your head, by the way, you didn't even disagree when I said it was like some sort of a war zone down 18:57 north. All those airplanes flying over. I'm telling you it's a little discombobulating. Um, all right. Fourth quarter. This was your subject, Matt. Get me outta here. 19:05 Yeah, just, just, you know, like we talk about, just keep, keep looking at it. Look at your demand curves. Look at what your plant needs and the timing. 19:12 It needs it. And don't give up. That's what I, I'm, I'm gonna throw it out there. Anybody that wants to answer it, somebody's gonna watch this and they're gonna be inspired. But here's the thing. 19:23 They gotta know. When is it too late? When do I, when am I just, when am I just throwing good money after bad. When, when is it too late? Ron? 19:30 Your per perspective, Matt Lane, Kelly, who's got it. Our R five is as late as you wanna go With anything. Yep. Cause you're, it's, 19:40 there's not gonna be any bang for your buck. And then some people would even question whether that's too late, right? They would, and you know, I'll tell you this, 19:48 some people that aren't putting on the fungicide aren't taking care of the stress and the health earlier in the season. Uh, R five, 19:54 it isn't like it's a magic bullet. R five might be too late because the plant health might not be good enough. You're not, might not be doing anything. You know, it, 20:02 it starts at the beginning. You gotta carry it all the way through. There will be a certain amount of growers that should not do things at are five 20:10 Because it's just, it's not gonna give 'em any, Ben, it's not gonna gimme any bang for their buck. The plants probably already dying because of poor stress, poor health, poor, 20:17 poor nutrition balance. I mean, uh, could be several factors. R five could be too late for a lot of that. 20:23 Yeah. Yeah. Kelly Kelly's right on that. You've gotta start strong and then, and then not get, you know, 20:29 if you didn't start strong and your plant's already weak, Kelly's a hundred percent right, 20:33 you probably will not get to ROI of these products that you will if you've had that healthy plant the whole time. 20:39 Okay? So you Need to evaluate that before you spend the money. And in that case, these, these plants shouldn't be involved in the fourth quarter. 20:45 They should be on the bench. So basically you can only, you can only benefit from a very late fourth quarter application. If you've done some stuff along the way, you're not gonna, 20:54 you're not gonna save it. Is that what I'm hearing? I don't think so. Yeah. I'm gonna save it. All right. Ron, last thought. 21:02 No, I, these, these guys are amazing. Uh, I, I couldn't agree more. Uh, uh, hail Mary at the end of the game is only gonna score you one touchdown. 21:11 And if you're down big, cuz you didn't play well the rest of the game, uh, it's not gonna, you're not gonna see some of the benefit there. But, uh, I just, 21:18 I super enjoy this conversation and the idea that we're thinking about all of the factors, uh, going into this to kind of keep that plant going, um, 21:27 is, is quite enjoyable. I appreciate being able to, uh, join with you guys here today. You're awesome. His name is Ron Calhoun, plant Nutrition Manager for Loveland. 21:36 If you want to learn more about any of this stuff he talked about, go to loveland products.com. I'm Damien Mason, 21:41 joined by Matt and Lane Miles and Kelly Garrett. This is extreme as cutting the curve podcast, otherwise known as the place for agricultural information that uses more sports 21:50 analogies and metaphors than any other agricultural podcast. That's what we do right here at Extreme Ice Cutting the Curve. 21:57 That's a wrap for this episode of Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. But there is plenty more available by visiting Xtreme ag.farm. 22:05 For over 50 years, farmers have turned to the proven lineup of crop inputs offered by Loveland products, from seed treatments, plant nutrition, adjuvant, 22:14 and crop protection products. Loveland has the complete lineup to keep your farming operation productive and most importantly, profitable. Check out loveland products.com to learn more.