Farming Podcast | Are You Overspending On Crop Protection?

00:00:00 Are you spending too much on crop protection? You probably are. We're gonna help you in this episode of extreme Ag Cutting the curve. 00:00:06 Welcome to Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. 00:00:16 And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. You know what? This is a great episode because you probably are overspending on crop protection. 00:00:25 That's a very critical, uh, problem to address right now in this low commodity price environment, which frankly we might be in for a while. 00:00:32 I'm joined by Johnny Re, extreme Ag Tennessee Farmer and Keith Miller, regional sales manager for Alba. And we're talking about this very topic, all right? 00:00:41 We know that it's always this thing. How can I peel back the spend? How can I peel back? The spend wasn't as important in 20 21, 20 22, 00:00:48 and we're having literally record farm income. You could get a little sloppy, you could be a little less judicious right now. 00:00:54 You better have your numbers dialed in. I know that you're a numbers guy. Do you think you're spending too much 00:01:01 on crop protection still? Yeah. I don't think there's a farmer out there that says that they're not right. 00:01:05 So, you know, a lot of inputs, we can't control the crop protection side. A lot of times we can, we can shop it around, look around 00:01:12 for different products out there. You know, the, the neat thing about some of the things going on is a lot 00:01:17 of the products we've been using for years are getting rebranded, getting more access. You know, instead of just having one 00:01:22 or two options, now you got five or six. So, Well, that's where you come in all ball's. A manufacturer of post patent products. 00:01:28 You've been in this game for a long time. We talked about last night dinner. You started your career in, uh, 88 with one 00:01:35 of the 41 companies we named that no longer exists, I think. Right? That's true. Yeah, that's true. And 00:01:40 You gotta be our age to even remember those companies. And you, you and I went through and the young people at the table said, 00:01:44 ah, I never heard of them. Never heard of them. Never heard of them. Yeah, That's right. That's right. A 00:01:47 lot has changed over the last 40 years in this industry. It's consolidated quite a bit. 00:01:51 A lot of products that were new chemistry back in those days, it was discovery time. A lot of companies were, were doing 00:01:57 that they're bringing to the market. It was a lot of branded things. Um, over a period of time that's all changed though. 00:02:03 Those companies have gone away by consolidation. They've had to chase other things. They got into seed and things like that. 00:02:10 And now those old chemistries, they're still around though. That's right. So they're just being offered in a different 00:02:15 way for our growers and that is a way that they can save some money. So, um, that's good. 00:02:21 So you're talking about going the route of, of post patent products, which obviously is what you do. That's one route I want 00:02:28 to get into all the other ways we can reduce the spend on crop protection. Um, so from a farmer's perspective, yeah. So okay. 00:02:34 Well we, we obviously going the route of getting yesterday chemistry in a different package. That's the easiest way. 00:02:41 Yeah. And I, I think you look back at how farmers evolved the last 20 years. We had one product that you could 00:02:45 spray that took out everything. Mm-hmm. So we stopped using a lot of products that we had that were working very well. 00:02:51 Well now it's like we can go back to those products that are out there, you know, through companies like them that, that are available to the farmers now 00:02:57 that do the exact same thing they used to do to do work very well. You don't have the resistance built up in those. 00:03:01 And you got multiple modes of action that honestly we hadn't used in a long time. So being able to partner with companies like that, 00:03:07 that have those options out there now is a big deal going forward. Because the one button, the one button we used to push 00:03:12 that took care of everything doesn't work anymore Because we overused it. The glyphosate. Glyphosate, 00:03:18 Yep. I came back to the farm and I said, what the hell is this wheated? I was, I mean, I used to name my weeds when 00:03:25 I was an intern for DuPont. I could be like, lamb's quarter ragweed. I go velvet leaf, like I've never seen this before. 00:03:30 And then everybody said, well, you haven't been around for a few years. Um, we got a whole bunch 00:03:34 of weeds that you've never seen before. So anyway, there are weeds that came about and I never even thought about it 00:03:40 until obviously I started hearing from my farmer friends. I said, yeah, those are all because of glyphosate overuse. 00:03:45 So now we have a bunch of, I said, but that wasn't, that's not just a resistant one. That's a new one. We started seeing new ones. We, 00:03:52 We did, we saw 'em in bigger numbers. Bears teel or whatever. Yeah. That's what they'd been around forever. 00:03:58 They've been in the soil. They've been, they've been either south or north or east or west. 00:04:02 They've been around. And they just moved into a void when there was chemistry that wasn't controlling them. 00:04:07 Mm-hmm. They, they proliferate re established themselves in your fields like 00:04:11 Starlings. Yeah, they do. You can't say they're migratory like starlings might be or birds might be, 00:04:17 but they definitely move around and birds and animals and everything else do a good job moving those. Yeah. Uh, those weeds. Alright, 00:04:23 So we're gonna reduce the spin 'cause we opened up by saying we could help and we are gonna help the farmer that's watching, listening 00:04:28 to this, how they can reduce spend on crop protection. Okay. We're going down the route of using a post patent product. 00:04:34 Uh, where did you start? Okay. I mean, we're not using lasso and dual anymore to go back to his era. 00:04:40 Did you like that? I came up with 40-year-old products. Yeah, it's very true. Very true. I think at the end of the day, we, we really 00:04:45 are starting to use those products. A lot of times farmers don't even realize, you know, working with companies like what he's involved with, 00:04:51 that we're using their products every day. Mm-hmm. And it's just 'cause they're packaging 'em for 00:04:55 other companies that we're already using. Mm-hmm. But we were talking beforehand, we listed off three or four products that I was using on my farm this year 00:05:01 that they're, they're manufacturing so they're out there. I think the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway is farmers 00:05:06 that used to be able to hit one button that took care of everything. Yeah. And then we transitioned into, you know, you got some 00:05:11 of these name brand companies that had a product that did a lot of things for us that are 15, 20 bucks an acre. 00:05:16 Now we can go back to doing some of these off patent things, cut that cost in half and still get the same thing. 00:05:21 We're looking for a lot of times the same modes of action. Okay. Where else can I start peeling back? 00:05:26 Um, first off, the array of products is there's less companies, fewer companies than there were back in the golden age. 00:05:33 Right. You and I talked about it at dinner last night. Mm-hmm. But the array of products is as great as it's ever been. Yeah. Right. 00:05:39 The war chest is big, the war chest is, it really is. And I think that's what they're trying to do is just keep coming out with new things that, 00:05:46 that have already been out there, but get those products back to the marketplace. Well, if you go historically, what used 00:05:51 to happen is you'd have a company that had three, four, or five different products and they would try to build a herbicide program for you 00:05:58 around their products. Yeah. And that was your, your alliance with a rep or alliance with a dealer, whoever it was. 00:06:05 Uh, that was where their comfort zone was at. And you bought into that resistance. Different things have happened, consolidation, all that. 00:06:12 But a lot of the basic companies still stick with their small portfolio of products. You come to a company like what All By has to offer 00:06:18 as products have become off patent. We actually have 50 ais in our portfolio that we can pull from to help build a program 00:06:26 for you on your farm to control. Mm-hmm. Not only the easy weeds, but the very tough weeds. Yeah. And when we do that, by combining all those, 00:06:33 we do save some money to the grower, either on the upfront cost or in the production itself by eliminating pressure's money. 00:06:41 And they give us multiple options too to buy from. Yeah. You know, it's not like they're just packaging 00:06:45 for one company or re You know, well, it becomes brand diagnostic. And that's kind of, I mean, in other words, 00:06:50 in like the old days, they wanted you to use our stuff, our stuff, our stuff obviously. And that was the, you know, the package. Mm-hmm. 00:06:57 I always kind of save money on crop inputs. All right. I'm gonna go, uh, and throw it out here on crop protection, I should say. 00:07:02 Uh, are we overusing? I think sometimes we are for sure. A lot of times there's something in there, 00:07:07 there's an active in there that we really don't need. And so going back to the old school ways where you're able to buy the individual ones is a big step. 00:07:14 Fungicide overused. We've asked this question before. Is fungicide, is fungicide overused in American agriculture? I don't think so. I think there's a lot of opportunity yet 00:07:23 for fungicides to be used. The problem that we a lot of times come into is the economics of it. 00:07:27 Yeah. We got, some of 'em are very high price when you get into products that are 20, $30 an acre. Yeah. 00:07:33 And you can go back to a $10, We can go to $10 off of the same modes of action and the same control. 00:07:38 Yeah. I think we now have an opportunity to actually treat more acres when it's needed. We don't wanna treat when it's not needed. Do 00:07:44 You think that we should be using fungicide more systematically? I do. I do. Uh, is Insecticide overused? 00:07:54 No. Insecticides are slightly different. Insecticides are more responsive to whatever the pest shows itself. 00:07:59 Mm-hmm. Um, in the Midwest, we're not a big insecticide user. Yeah. We're a big herbicide user. Mm-hmm. 00:08:06 It's becoming, uh, bigger and fungicides. Uh, but insecticides is responsive. And we have not probably had the outbreaks that's right 00:08:14 of pests. Like maybe we had 10, 15 years ago. But when the threshold's there, you gotta spray. So, you know, if the threshold's there out there, 00:08:21 then I don't think you need the insecticide. And I think that's what he's saying. But as things are evolving, it seems 00:08:26 to be more and more common too. I saw a thing, uh, at a meeting once where they showed a 00:08:30 soybean and they have that little diagram. 'cause I thought, my God spray those soybeans, they said, oh, that's not that bad. 00:08:35 Because it, it only, it it looks worse than it actually is, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I've cut you off. 00:08:40 You're getting ready to give an example of fungicide. What was I herbicide? You said we use a hell of a lot out here in the Midwest. 00:08:51 Are we overusing it? We got three weeds out there per acre and we're going out and we're still putting out, uh, 00:08:55 $24 of herbicide treatment. Well, everything has changed again when we talk about herbicides because now 00:09:01 where we in the past maybe used a $20 an acre program, uh, or life is they made it easy. 00:09:07 Now we have to go back into that toolbox and pull out multiple different modes of action and probably Go and probably go over it at least twice 00:09:14 We have to. Because if a, if a, if a weed has become tolerant, we definitely need to use a full rate on it. 00:09:21 And maybe we need to use a second mode of action as well, depending upon how well it's growing, how tall it is, 00:09:26 how big it is, what the weather conditions are, all things like that. So I think as a general rule, 00:09:31 or industry's done a very good job of stewarding the usage of herbicides that we're not overusing them, 00:09:36 but we're using more of the modes of action to actually get the end result of which is control. And, and I'd go along what he's saying. 00:09:43 I think a lot of times though, a lot of the products are made for the Midwest and they're brought to the south for us to use 00:09:47 and we don't have the same issues that they do. Mm-hmm. And so being able to come back and go back to your basics 00:09:52 and use just the products you need, and it might be cheaper, it might not, but I'm not having to use some of the active ingredients 00:09:57 that don't even benefit me at all. And so I like that aspect of it too. It's kind of like, why spray 00:10:02 for something if you don't need it? All right. How can I save money on crop inputs? If we said that you probably are spending more than you need 00:10:08 to on crop, uh, protection than where besides the products we got the going to some, uh, post patents and all that stuff. 00:10:19 Finding modes of action at work help me save some money. Also, we're kind of, I need to save $10 an acre, Johnny, 00:10:24 I come to you and one of your customers. How do I save $10 on this? I think you just start building out a program from start 00:10:29 to finish and actually know what tools you have actually out there available to use. And so by doing that, you can start off 00:10:35 with your herbicide program, your IDE program, your fungicide program. And at the end of the day, you start doing all those 00:10:40 and using some of these generics and stuff like that, that are, that are been out there forever, just kind of rebranded. 00:10:45 The money's there to be saved. And I think the perception of of using generics has changed so much in the last 10 years. 00:10:51 Yeah. Probably the last five years for sure. Yeah. Used two people didn't want to use those 'cause everybody was pushing to use the new products. 00:10:57 The marketing was good on the new side. They were like, you gotta use this new stuff when we're sitting down realizing we 00:11:02 don't, we don't have to have all that. A lot of the stuff that's in there we're not named today. So being able to go back to our roots 00:11:07 and starting back over what used to work for my, for my dad 20 years ago is where we're at now. And I think that's where the moneys to be saved. 00:11:13 We were talking about glyphosate, right? You can buy name brand glyphosate, or you can buy generic glyphosate. 00:11:18 It's a huge price difference. But they both work the same. Both of'em have the same active pounds in them. So by 00:11:23 The way, if you're listening to this or if you're watching this, we have another episode at some point they're gonna 00:11:28 all both be out and you can find 'em. We talked about the trust factor and the trust factor is if you're doing the rigorous testing 00:11:33 and you're doing the trials, uh, like Alba does, then it's what are we, what are we risking here? Yeah. 00:11:39 Well they they've got a name back in the brand. And that's something that you didn't see years ago like you do now. We, 00:11:44 We grew up the point with his man, Brian. I said, uh, talk about generics. I I don't even know that, that I know 00:11:49 of a name brand of two four D. That stuff's been around since like World War Ii. It's called two four D is the 00:11:52 name. We're all, we're all kind of spending money on crop inputs or crop protection. Well, 00:11:57 I'm gonna go back to your comment about what your dad used. So if I think back to the day of 1988 when I was 00:12:04 starting in this industry, we were selling bicep at a price in the marketplace. It was a good two way combination of metolachlor atrazine. 00:12:12 And it did a great job back in the day. Fast forward to today, 2025, I'm selling a product that has both of those ais plus Meza reon in it 00:12:21 for about the same cost per gallon. So if you go through that almost 40 year period of time, what can we do to save price, save costs, save money 00:12:32 for a grower, use the same technology, maybe even better, but a price point that it's four years 00:12:38 Ago, 1988 Levels. Yes. I There's not a whole lot that's at 1988 levels right now, Unfortunately. The corn price. 00:12:44 Yeah. Right. That's, that's why we got tool farmers Might have to take two or three products to make one as you could buy in a jug, but it's 00:12:52 a whole lot cheaper doing it that way. So You don't think we overuse stuff? You don't think there's and you don't think that 00:12:56 that we're out there putting stuff out unnecessarily? I don't, I think we do a good job in our industry for And You don't think our rates are off? 00:13:03 No. Okay. I think the only thing that becomes a challenge is using the right modes of action when you need to. 00:13:10 And this we're back to a learning curve that maybe your dad knew back in the day, but over the roundup ready period, 00:13:18 we lost some of that knowledge. But it's coming back as we're having to take a look at the portfolio 00:13:22 of tools we've got and how to use them. And we're getting much more educated. So we're getting better at it. 00:13:27 Is the crop, uh, production business. In the other recording, uh, our guy Brian talked about compatibility. 00:13:33 That's always a thing where some folks blame the product instead of blaming themselves 00:13:39 because they put stuff together. That's incompatible. That certainly is gonna add to the cost of crop input. 00:13:44 Crop protection. Yeah. Because it could have a failure or it's not gonna work. Incompatibility would then reduce efficacy, 00:13:50 which would then mean I spent money on something that didn't work. Okay. Yeah. 00:13:54 And I would think that's exactly a lot of people you Don't think that's an issue? Well, are you talking about incompatibility on, 00:13:59 on the tank mixing ability? Yes. Yeah. It, it can be an issue with certain products. Definitely high quality products make a difference. 00:14:07 When you take a look at what your options are out there, when you can go buy something, 00:14:10 make sure it's got a good reputation, make sure that they have done the testing, make sure that they, uh, are aware they've done the trials, all that kind of stuff. 00:14:17 Because that pre-work that they've done as what we do at all Ball makes it simpler for you as a grower. Don't be the person that discovers the problem. Yeah. 00:14:26 But having a good surfactant, having your water pH correct on the farmer's side really helps make all these products 00:14:31 a whole lot more compatible too. And I think that's, that's something that farmers are really starting to learn right now is a lot 00:14:36 of our issues is coming back to stuff that we can control that has nothing to do with the manufacturer itself. 00:14:41 They get blamed. They get blamed because that's the easy. But I mean, I don't, it doesn't bother me that you get blamed, 00:14:46 but uh, but I know that you get blamed the pH and the water thing. I think I this is is what, you know, if someone says, 00:14:52 what have you learned since you worked with fixed Dream ag? The pH in the water thing is huge because, 00:14:57 and I think about the hundreds of thousands of dollars of crop input to get dumped into that tank and they make sure they got the right ounces 00:15:04 and they go through all that stuff and never think, oh, the pH in my water essentially degraded its effectiveness 00:15:12 by 50% before it even got to the field. Well, we were talking about fungicides, right? You get a high pH fun or high pH water 00:15:18 and put a fungicide in it and you've got minutes or hour before it's the efficacy's gone. 00:15:23 Yeah. And so we didn't realize all that years ago. My dad didn't realize that. I Didn't realize until this year. That's 00:15:27 right. And it's really changed. But I think when you figure out that how that program works on your farm, what you need to do 00:15:32 to fix your water for it to work right, when you add other products in the tank mix is always gonna work a whole lot better. I mean, 00:15:37 Mean this is, it is a little bit off topic, but it's not really 'cause we opened Are you overspending on crop protection? 00:15:43 Well, if your water's bad, you're overspending because you ain't getting any value out of the product. That's 00:15:47 Right. That's very true. That's right. Very 00:15:48.965 --> 00:15:49.125 True. And it doesn't matter what 00:15:50 you save on the product if it's not working. Yeah. You can buy the cheapest. You can buy the, you get the best deal in town on, 00:15:54 on the crop input. There's something like if your water is over eight on pH that glyphosates half life is like 50 minutes or something. 00:16:03 Like you couldn't even stop and grab a Coke and then get the field before it's already, did you hear, have you 00:16:08 heard this? I just found out, out This year there are some classes of, of chemistry that do have a rapid insecticide 00:16:12 rapid response and, and breakdown. Yeah. Your Insecticides, your fungicides are really fast. If your pH and 00:16:17 I don't even know what my pH my water is. Well a lot of people tell I tasting it. No, Not me. No. 00:16:22 If it's, if it's city water, municipal water, it's gonna be a higher pH almost every time. Hardness is a factor too. Hardness 00:16:28 Is a big deal, but there's a lot of things that you can control and, and really make these products work. 00:16:33 Last thought on crop inputs and how to make sure that I'm getting my bang for my buck because we already, we covered it. 00:16:38 The products we talked about looking your water and then we talked about making sure, and you're convinced that everybody's rates and, 00:16:44 and they're not overusing it. So you really don't think that's the big, the, the big, the big chance to save a nickel, isn't there? 00:16:50 You think the big chance to save a nickel is on the product mix? Yeah, I do. Yeah. 00:16:53 Well I think that we learned this lesson a few years ago when Roundup came out. We actually started using lower use rates 00:16:59 of pre-emerge herbicides. Yeah. And that became part of our problem. Yeah. So we, we invented a Frankenstein. 00:17:06 It was cheaper than using a pre-emerge. You could reach spray cheaper than, yeah. It was, so that's what caused 00:17:11 It. So we saw a lot of half use rates and then the, the roundup over the top. And then now we've got this problem weed 00:17:17 that we don't control with a heavy enough rate on pre-emerge. And then the resistance today as we've moved to 00:17:24 where we're at, I believe the full use rates are common. Yeah. That people are saying, I can't afford to do 00:17:32 what I did 20 years ago because that lesson burned me and I I won't do that again. Yeah. So he's out on the full half U shirt. 00:17:42 Which is good for sales. Good for sales, right. Yeah. Use the full rate. Any last thoughts on how we said we're gonna help somebody? 00:17:48 We think that most people are probably dropping a couple of dollars unnecessarily on crop protection. Yeah. And so 00:17:55 Yeah, I just think it starts back at the beginning to have a plan in place and that way you can go out and find the products that are available 00:18:00 that you haven't heard of in a while or figure out where you can get 'em at because they're out there. 00:18:03 You just gotta figure it out. And we're already using a lot of 'em. We just don't realize it. It's great to see all that stuff 00:18:08 come back from the eighties, isn't it? It is. And I can still remember the names. It's it, we're gonna do a separate video just about that. 00:18:13 Yeah. Name all the 1980s chemistry you can name. Yeah, it's back. Yeah. Alright, We're gonna leave it right there. His 00:18:19 name is Keith Miller. He is a regional sales guy for Aloff. I wanna learn more if the viewer 00:18:23 and listener wants to learn more about the lineup of products that can help them save money on crop input protection, uh, where do they go? 00:18:30 They can go online@alba.com. Alba.com. He's joined by Johnny Rol with Extreme Ag. We're hanging out here and doing this very special episode 00:18:39 in person of extreme ag cutting the curve. You wanna take your learning to the next level. Remember, there's a library of information, hundreds 00:18:45 of videos, podcasts, just like this audio and video@extrememag.farm. We also are on YouTube. We encourage you to go there, 00:18:52 hit subscribe, doesn't cost anything. While you're there, check out our new show, the Grainery, which is shot right here at my on-Farm Tavern 00:18:59 with the guys from Extreme Mag and industry guests. It's always a lot of fun. Pull up a chair and join the conversation. 00:19:03 So next time. Thanks for being here. I'm Damien Mason with Extreme Ag. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. 00:19:09 Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 00:19:15.485 --> 00:19:16.765