00:00:00 Do you even know what is in your seed treatment? You might say you do, but do you really, we're gonna dig into the nitty gritty on seed treatments in 00:00:07 this special episode of extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome to Extreme Ag 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 there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Acts Cutting the Curve. I got a great one for you today 'cause I got a great guest. 00:00:29 He's, uh, a 30 year veteran of this industry. He's out of Fargo, North Dakota, and he actually was in my audience at least several times 00:00:38 when he worked for a different agricultural company when I was speaking at those functions. 00:00:42 His name is Paul Johnson. His title is Seed Treatment Portfolio Manager. Seed Treatment Portfolio Manager. 00:00:49 And you know what, in four and a half years of me doing this job for Extreme Ag in the hundreds and hundreds of Cutting the Curve podcast, 00:00:56 and also the videos that we have done on the farms of the extreme Ag guys, and then being at places like Commodity Classic 00:01:01 and Farm Progress Show, the one topic we have never covered, we've talked a lot about food, soil balance, 00:01:06 and we've talked a lot about different herbicides and how to cut back on $10 of spend and fertility. You know what, we've never talked about seed treatment. 00:01:15 And what did you say before I hit the record button? If you're gonna start building, if you're gonna build a house, 00:01:19 what's the most important thing you do? The most important thing you do get the foundation, right? So you have a quality house 00:01:29 and you said, Paul seed treatment is the foundation for a plant. And I think that's brilliant. 00:01:37 Yeah. Thank you Damien. Uh, seed treatment certainly is the foundation. Uh, you know, it's got a support to everything. 00:01:43 You know, once the seed is in the ground, it's, you know, suspect to various pestilence out there, 00:01:48 environmental hazards or weather climate pests or whatever. So if you can start your seed, seed off growing, 00:01:54 start strong, it's gonna hopefully get out of the ground, grow quicker, a little bit bigger, bigger, you know, 00:01:59 the one aspect of it is generally when growers are walking fields or even at harvest, they don't see anything 00:02:05 what happens below the soil, right? So you're relying on your seed treatment, do everything below ground, and just because your seed is treated 00:02:13 and is colored, because that's the law, you don't really understand what's on unless you ask. And so there's a big education process with UPL here 00:02:21 to make sure people understand what are you actually getting on the seed you buy. So when I asked the question, 00:02:27 and again, I'm not in any way being mean, when I said I opened a thing up, Paul and said, do you even know what's in your seed treatment? 00:02:33 You might say you do, but do you really, and that's no way being mean. If you're a farmer, you've got a lot of things 00:02:38 to keep up, okay? The tractor, you've got your pricing, you've got your marketing of your crop, you've got, uh, relationships with all of your, uh, landlords. 00:02:46 You've got to manage your, uh, employees or family or whoever. And then you've got the seasonality of it, 00:02:53 and then you got the crop inputs. And so you can see where this sort of digging into seed treatment gets a little bit dropped 00:03:02 through the cracks because of all the priorities that I have. But like you said, it's a little bit like 00:03:08 not monitoring whether your basement is got, uh, you know, a a foundational water problem or something. 00:03:15 You ignore it because it's not sexy and it's maybe not top of mind, but it sure as hell is important. 00:03:21 Yeah. You know, every grower, you know, they're doing their farm planning, business planning right around harvest risk time for the next year, right? 00:03:27 A lot of 'em are buying seed, booking their seed company, buying with their egg retailer. 00:03:31 You know, the simple question is, is a lot of times you just see check the box. Do you wanna treat it or not? 00:03:36 Well, okay, you're gonna buy fungicide only or fungicide and insecticide, or do you want amides with it? 00:03:41 Inoculants, you know, I think people need to understand just a little bit better for what they're getting. 00:03:47 You know, it's this stuff, the technology today is so, uh, so much improved. What's happened over the last, you know, 00:03:54 50 years in this business. I mean, there's so many good products out there, and they're such high, high loads, 00:04:01 or you wanna call high active on low use rates, so they don't take, take up any space. Mm-hmm. You know, you're not planting na 00:04:07 or na uh, we call it naked seed anymore. You know, the stuff we're using doesn't plant. I mean, all these growers are getting bigger. 00:04:14 They're going faster, you know, precision planning, high speed planters when you're going 8, 10, 12 miles an hour, throwing that 00:04:21 and trying to get seed singulation in there. I mean, all this stuff goes into what a good seed treatment is and does and how it acts. 00:04:27 And so the big thing is to understand the actives, right? Because if you're gonna be, 00:04:32 let's say you're planting in Northern Indiana and the soil temperature's 41 degrees, I mean, in all likelihood, you could have a pythium problem 00:04:38 that could result later down the road and if phyto there or, or SDS or any of that. 00:04:43 So making sure you understand what you're planting into is core to understanding what you need to have your have put on your seed to start. 00:04:50 And the thing is, first off what you just said there, so I appreciate the personalization, Northern Indiana where I am, and there is a lot of seed 00:04:57 that gets put into ground that I, I don't think in the old days you did that, and we've gotten away with it because of the genetics and, 00:05:06 and we're pushing envelopes and getting out there earlier. You know, grandpa out there with his, uh, you know, 00:05:13 model B uh, wasn't out there planting into 41 degrees soil. Um, by the way, another episode of the greenery, 00:05:21 we talked about that with one of our guys. And, uh, he said, tell you why half the bad decisions get made that are sins against the soil cab detractors. 00:05:29 Nobody was out there planting into 41 degrees soil when it was 38 degrees ambient air temperature when you had 00:05:35 to do it on a John Deere 40 20 with open cab. Jesus, you wait, now you got a comfortable cab, you can do all that. 00:05:40 Anyway, so we, we arguably need seed treatment now than we've ever needed it because of all these reasons. 00:05:48 And there's the pressure to spend less on, uh, all, you know, all your insecticides and then environmental pressure. 00:05:55 And the good news is, I think the technology is there, but you tell me. Yeah. You know, like the one big thing that, you know, 00:06:02 I think everybody understands the seed cost is insurmountable, right? You know, precision planting 00:06:06 where seed singulation we're specifically now targeting a number of seeds per acre used to be bags, right? 00:06:12 Or used to be throw a couple bushels in there. I mean, it's not that simple anymore. And the seed treatments for the cost of them are 00:06:19 so relatively inexpensive versus the value of the seed. Yeah. So when you know the whole on ensemble of products you have on there, you you really want every one 00:06:29 of them seed to grow, okay? And you get 'em germinate and you want 'em to come out of the ground uniformly okay? And, and grow, grow vigorously. 00:06:36 And that's what these seed treatments are doing. I mean, and if you come into problems like nematodes, you know, you can prevent a lot of that. 00:06:42 I mean, a lot of the resistance that's built into the genetics is no longer working. You know, it hasn't, it's been around 00:06:47 since literally sixties. So it's resistance is built up. So we need other alternative measure 00:06:53 to control some of these pests. You know, the advent of neonic, right? All the neonics in the market we're controlling 00:06:59 below ground insects and up and above ground insects. Well, if you think about treating an acre of seed, you're talking maybe six, seven pounds of seed, right? 00:07:07 Or up to 20 whatever, versus a foliar spray for some of these insects where you're covering a hundred percent of that acre. 00:07:13 So the, the exposure to the, you know, to the actual crop is pretty minimal, you know? And then the, the other thing is labor. 00:07:20 How many times can you re you know, if you're flying somebody over in an airplane or air or a ground rig, if you can control with a seed treatment, 00:07:27 how much labor costs that save the growth. Yeah. That, yeah. Yeah. So let's kind of go within from the beginning, 00:07:36 you know, you said, all right, we, we've got, we know the need for it. And like you said, from a cost, I can make the, 00:07:42 probably the argument, you can probably make the argument of everything that you're doing that's a crop input, 00:07:47 the cheapest, biggest return is seed treatment. Is that, is that an accurate statement? Very much so. I mean, I use the 00:07:54 analogy at work all the time. I mean, I'm sitting in meeting rooms with people that sell crop protection, fertilize 00:07:59 or herbicides, fungicide and insecticides. And I always tell 'em, guys, the first thing you need to be talking about is the seed treatment stuff here, right? 00:08:05 Because if your crop doesn't come outta the ground, there's no need for you. 'cause you're not gonna be able to sell anything. Mm-hmm. 00:08:10 So we assure, you know, our whole premise is to make sure the grower gets the crop off to a good start, good stand that's, you know, 00:08:17 evenly even across the, off across the field. And one big thing that people overlook too, when you have a seed treated field, 00:08:24 I would almost assure you that the row's gonna clo clo close a little quicker. Okay? If you can shade out more disease, it, I, 00:08:30 it just lends itself to better weed control because it's more uniformity, less gaps in the field, just overall uniformity of the crop. 00:08:38 Let's talk about the fact that, uh, most seed, you said most seed doesn't get planted naked. Any in this day and age, you know, 00:08:44 we're recording this here at the end of 2025. Um, it's, I know this is not news to the people that keep up with extreme ag. 00:08:51 It's probably completely news to the folks that live in the suburbs, but yes, almost everything you tear into that expensive genetics, 00:08:57 those bags, but they come with seed treatment on 'em. But a lot of times it just comes that way. I, I don't have a clue as to 00:09:03 what the hell is on that. Am I right? A hundred percent. I mean, a lot of growers I know pull up to the store at the retail where they're treating their 00:09:09 beans, having their overtreated on corn or you know, on beans, and they'll just say, I want treated seed. 00:09:14 Well, they're gonna get, you know, whatever preference color that retailer is using, 00:09:18 whether it be red, blue, pink or purple. I mean, they're gonna get the seed, but I would just ask that they ask the dealer, 00:09:24 what are you actually putting on there? Right? I mean, there's a whole cupboard full of fungicides, like our base zip conazole, there's 00:09:31 insecticides like neonics and there's ides like our ne neum side neis. So it's always good to ask. 00:09:37 So three things that get that put on a seed are a fungicide, a neum side, and a neonic Insecticide, fungicide, insecticide, nematicide, 00:09:46 and then rice, sodium, mono, a lot of soybeans. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And the point is, someone's listening to this says, I don't make that decision. 00:09:54 I just, whatever comes on my seed, right? Correct. Most most producers are just getting whatever they, whatever comes from where they buy their seed. 00:10:02 Correct. So does a farmer need to not only then ask what's on it, but then if it's not got what you think it should have, 00:10:11 where do they then do, should they, because I know some our producers have their own seed treatment, uh, seed treater on their farm, right? 00:10:19 So tell me what, what, what, what do we do next? Well, The big, big thing is it's no different than crop planting if they're retail, right? 00:10:25 If you're gonna go out there and plan for what weeds you're always gonna anticipate on, you should be planting for the same thing on your seed 00:10:31 that you're gonna plant in that field. Maybe not every field is gonna act the same way. It's no different if you have a weed in one area 00:10:36 of your farm versus the other area, you need to basically write prescriptions based on what you're gonna plant. 00:10:42 I mean, the, the, the best way to describe this, and I know farmers have a short mentality. I grew up on a farm. I was no different. 00:10:48 My dad was no different. And harvest time is the best way to keep track of, you know, what, what the, the problems in the field, right? 00:10:55 You know, it's out there at harvest time. You can make notes of it or what you observed through the growing season, make notes, 00:11:00 and then next spring when you're planting, you can plan out to prescribe the right products for 00:11:05 that typ that area of your farm. You know, what They, so that's the other thing. So, um, I I, do you think 00:11:13 that more producers should have a seed treater on their farm? Probably. Probably. So you're the seed treat. 00:11:18 You're, you're biased. I'll, I'll, uh, admit, but, and you'll admit, but it seems like, again, it's a pretty low cost of all the s**t that goes on 00:11:27 around a farming operation. The bang for the buck probably is there? Yeah. You know, there's a, 00:11:32 there's some nuances of treating, right? Treating is not a science, it's an art. Okay? It's not easy to do. It's not the easiest step process. 00:11:40 I think there's a shift, though. As growers become bigger and manage more acres, they're taking more control. 00:11:46 So we see we're seeing a big shift in the marketplace where growers are now buying their own equipment, treating their own seed. 00:11:52 And that's up to in each individual grower. You know, generally speaking though, these retailers that are downstream treating for the seed, you know, a lot 00:12:00 of them treaters are 150, 200,000 unit dollars a unit, right? I mean, they're putting on precision type application rates. 00:12:07 'cause when you're looking at products that only require, you know, 0.05, 0.08 ounces per hundred pounds of seed, 00:12:13 you need some pretty delicate equipment to make sure it gets put on, right? So it's not for everybody to do it themselves, 00:12:19 but it's certainly worth looking into. Yeah. And like you said, a larger operator that has, uh, does that's, you know, doesn't hire out their spraying 00:12:28 and doesn't hire out, you know, their trucking and all that kind of thing, then they, they would be the ones that would be, 00:12:33 but it doesn't, it's not exclusive to them. But the point is, if you're a smaller operator, you just need to have a more active say 00:12:39 in what is being put on it. And there are plenty of retailers that I think would, would they change what's on it? 00:12:46 Would they, would they do a special order? Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of more demand like, uh, you know, nematodes, right? 00:12:54 Or the number one disease or issue against soybean growers in the us right? They take, uh, they, uh, reduce yield by the biggest pest 00:13:02 of anything in the US outside of any crop, uh, pest we're working with. I don't think a lot of people are asking 00:13:07 for nematicide specifically. And you know, where you're coming in, you know, you got nematodes, you've tested them, you need to ask 00:13:14 for the neite, right? Like our amax, uh, if you go in there and you're getting a standard fungicide 00:13:18 and insecticide, you need to ask the gentleman or the person running the equipment or your, or your business planner at that retail store. 00:13:24 What, what nematicide are you offering? I need to be looking at cytes, you know, or added in a prime example is with Pythium or Phyto, right? 00:13:33 The core active ingredient is metalaxyl or meth oxide. In certain areas of the world, we might not have an issue, but where you do have 'em, we want higher rates, right? 00:13:41 So if you have a known area, you gotta have an increased rate. Generally the treaters set it a certain amount, 00:13:46 but you need to ask, Hey, I know I'm planting over on the north side of the north 80, and I know I got bad phyto. 00:13:52 I need to add more meth, anox oxygen to that to add control. It's no different than spraying of wheat 00:13:57 for weed control. Yeah. And the thing is, this is one of those that I, as a producer you can understand 00:14:02 where they wouldn't even know. I mean, I get it. I'm not the, the real farmer here and the guys listening to this might disagree, 00:14:09 but it's a lot to even know what thing. I mean, you, you might know how to treat a weed or how to, you know, how to do those things, 00:14:16 but, uh, treating a seed is a different story there because of that. I didn't even know. You can vary the rate, you can put, 00:14:22 of course you can, you can put more on a seed. I, I don't know why I didn't think that I stupid. I feel I feel like 56 years old 00:14:31 and I just learned another thing. But I do that every day. I learned something new. Well, In the old days when products were really heavy, 00:14:36 there's a lot of volume, you couldn't really do that. Right? Because there we call it real estate on the seed. Yep. Okay. It can only hold so much. 00:14:42 Right now with these highly active products where they're ultra low rates that are super active, we can put more products on and get more Bain for the buck. 00:14:50 I use the analogy, and I know you'll remember this, you remember seeing the old pictures of how many kids you can get in the 00:14:55 Volkswagen before they spill out. Yep. That's how it looks like with the product on the seed. You know, it can only hold so much. 00:15:00 And then we, once you get it on the seed, you have to be able to plant it, right? You can't, we don't wanna obscure planting. 00:15:05 So everything we're doing when we're treating, it's all been tested and thought through to make sure we don't obscure plant bills. 00:15:13 Got it. So from the standpoint of then the product that goes on there, I can have a say. So, I mean, your job is, 00:15:23 you're the portfolio manager for seed treatments. Is it your job to sell that to the retailers or is it your job to sell that to the operator 00:15:31 that has their own ability to do this on the farm? Because as we said, most don't most get the seed this way. Who's, who do you talk to? 00:15:38 Well, we talk mainly our distribution channel partners. Our seed companies, right? We sell through distribution through their retail network. 00:15:45 We sell directly to them. And then there's certain seed companies that we sell direct to where they're treating their own seed with our products, 00:15:51 and then they, you know, have their own dealer network they go through. We won't sell to growers directly. Mm-hmm. 00:15:56 Uh, we go through the channel like any major chemical company would. What's the mistake that you see then? 00:16:01 You think it's just not, not knowing what's on it, just kind of checking the box. Yep. I bought treated seed. 00:16:07 Is that the biggest mistake that the producer makes? A hundred. A hundred percent. Right. They, you know, they want, well, I need treated seed. 00:16:12 Okay, what do you got? Well, we got this stuff. Well what, okay, what is that stuff? I mean, yeah, it's really not that complicated, 00:16:20 but have a base understanding, right? Are you getting a good fungicide? Like I con are you getting a good insecticide, you know, one 00:16:26 of the neonics either you know, lopate or thym, or are you getting into nematicide like the maxa just to have in your bases covered the basics? 00:16:33 I mean, they all work pretty good, but it's just levels of control, right? One is gonna do a little better than the other 00:16:38 and, you know, as a stair step in control, You know? What about then, um, climatological, you're in Fargo, 00:16:45 North Dakota, I'm guessing you have a hell of a bunch of different, I mean, you might grow soybeans in which I don't know why 00:16:51 North Dakota became a soybean state, but it did. Um, and then my buddy Matt Miles down in the delta of southeast Arkansas is the seed treatment. 00:17:00 I gotta think that there's a big call for changed seed treatment between McGee, Arkansas and Fargo, North Dakota. 00:17:06 Yep. So that's, I I'm glad you asked that question because the one thing about diseases and different things, right? 00:17:11 They work in various soil types and temperatures. Okay? Yeah. If you look at Pythium, where it's warm and little cooler and wet soil where 00:17:19 phy toler comes in warm and wet. So it really doesn't matter where you're planting if you're in Fargo 00:17:24 or if you're in Stuttgart, Arkansas, right? You're always gonna have stresses that you plant your soil, your seed into whether it's warm and wet, cold and wet. 00:17:32 You know, there's various insect pathogens or insects throughout the field no matter what. But the biggest thing I've always remembered all my years is 00:17:39 that once you have your seed treated, you plant in the ground, it's done right? There's nothing you can do about it. It's in the soil. 00:17:45 We've always had the best results with weather events after within three to four days of something happening after you plant. 00:17:52 Mm-hmm. You can't control the climate. Rainstorm comes in in Indiana, doesn't your temperature drop 20, 30 degrees virtually 00:17:58 that's gonna cool the salt temperature, it's no different anywhere. So we find some of the biggest attributes 00:18:04 after the seed is planted. Okay. You just can't control that stuff. Um, the, there was, I, I actually, 00:18:13 for my trial at my place, I did get a bag of soybeans that were untreated. Um, yeah. And, and, 00:18:19 and I, I said I, I thought all seed came treated and uh, the word was later in the season, we don't put seed treatment on it 00:18:28 because we might have to take this back. And so that was the word that I got. Is that a true statement? And 00:18:34 I, you're, I think that is true from a standpoint, that was the analogy and the farmer mentality and the dealer mentality for forever. 00:18:40 Okay. But now with all the on demand trading, right, you can treat up on demand and that's what people are doing. Uh, like I said, the biggest thing, 00:18:48 if you leave the last 40 acres untreated because you're worried about not carrying over any seed, what, I mean, my biggest thing is, well, 00:18:55 what happens when you have that rain event two, three days after planting? Right? Or it gets super hot 00:18:59 and dry for 10 days with this on demand plant, uh, treating equipment that everybody has equip. I mean, you can go and get an extra bag. Yeah. 00:19:05 I mean that's for, you know, a to, I mean it's, I think I call them excuses. Yeah, Exactly. I mean, you're 00:19:11 not talking about that big of a hassle and it's also not that much money. What am I talking about From a cost standpoint? Okay. 00:19:16 Bag of seed corns what, 350 bucks? Yeah. Alright. And how much is it? Okay, how much is, how much am I gonna treat a bag 00:19:24 of a unit of seed corn with It's, you know, it's all over the board. Corn, generally it's gonna come included 00:19:29 in the price of the seed, right? Sure. But if you want over the top Noma electron, no, max, you're talking four or $5 an acre. 00:19:36 Okay? Okay. It's for an additive because corn companies are really good about putting really good products on all the way from 00:19:42 fungicide to insecticides, right? Yeah. They want, I mean, you gotta think of it this way too. They're not gonna put crap on their seed. 00:19:48 'cause when they go against their competitive seed company Yeah. They don't want their stuff performing under pots. 00:19:53 Yeah. They, they don't want, they don't want, again, just like they know they're getting a hell of a bunch of money for a bag of seed. 00:19:59 Let's not cheap on the, you just said four to $5 for an acre. Well that's, that means, uh, 00:20:05 and a bag of seed goes 2.3 acres or something like this. Yeah. You're talking you another four bucks an acre 00:20:11 for cyte and that's really not that pat of a deal. Yeah. So You're talking eight, there's $9, nine to $10 worth of, 00:20:16 uh, seed treatment in a bag. Yeah. Yeah. Generally speaking, nine to 12 bucks. Yeah. Okay. Um, I did trials on my farm, um, 00:20:25 with a company called TID Grow. And uh, that was part of the extreme ag thing. And one of the plots we did on soybeans was just putting 00:20:33 seed treatment on, 'cause we bought naked seed. Well, we actually got donated from us, not to us, from channel. 00:20:39 Um, I don't know if it was just the seed treatment, but it was 20 bushels better than the control. That seems like an incredible return. 00:20:47 Almost like unbelievable. But I was there, I did it, I did the seed treatment, I did the planting, and I did the, 00:20:52 I was there in the combine when my guy harvested it and we waited. Is this like a, is this like a, 00:20:59 a statistical anomaly or do you hear this all the time? Well, I think that's an anomaly. Okay. 20 bushel is this, I'll just say that 00:21:07 I'm not surprised you're getting a yield, you know, increase on, generally speaking over the whatever, 50 years, you'll see three to five bushels from a fungicide, 00:21:15 fungicide, insecticide application on seed. Okay? We're generally talking anywhere from four to $9 an acre per soybeans. 00:21:21 Okay. You get three to four bushel, what are you talking 30, $40 return. Yeah, that's pretty good. Return on investment. 00:21:28 And then also $20 is pretty extreme damage. And We just used a corn example. You said nine to $12 of the bag 00:21:33 of seed is treatment on a, on soybeans. Um, is it the same thing? Am I talking a few bucks an acre? Yeah, 00:21:39 You're talking three to $6 an acre generally for a good fungicide and insecticide another $4, $5 for an nematicide. 00:21:46 So all in you should be under nine bucks. Okay. Nine bucks. And so we just did the, and, and again, I, one of my questions here 00:21:52 for you was the economics and the return on investment. So for nine bucks on soybeans, I, you, you have enough years of experience. 00:21:58 When you say it's four more bushels per acre, you're not bullshitting, it's you No. You're like, no, it's probably good 00:22:03 for four bushels and that's 40 bucks. Yeah. You're, you're so four to one return. Yeah. For a, for a true good system fungicide ide ide, 00:22:11 you shouldn't, there shouldn't be any issues with that whatsoever. You've been in the seed treatment thing for a long time. 00:22:16 I got a question for you. Um, it's, you know, I'm, I'm my Arizona house right now. So my suburban neighbors out here got told, uh, a decade 00:22:23 or so ago that GMOs were evil and they heard Dr. Oz, uh, talk about this. And then they would have to, Hey, you're a farm person now, 00:22:30 uh, tell about these GMOs. Well, what they didn't know was that we allowed because of genetic traits and, 00:22:38 and genetic breeding, I'm sorry, genetic, um, modifying, we made it so that we don't have to use, uh, 00:22:46 insecticide to kill cutworm. 'cause we genetically made a plant that is resistant to that. 00:22:51 And so the suburbanites didn't know that they thought GMO equals chemical. And I said, actually GMO reduces chemical. 00:22:58 We could get there on seed treatment. It seems to me, you, if I'm sitting there with you and Paul, you say, Hey man, the one thing 00:23:05 that's gonna happen before I hang up my cleats and retire, the one thing that's gonna happen is we're gonna get to where we have seed treatments that make it so 00:23:10 that we don't even have to use, uh, herbicide because we're gonna put something on this plant that then it causes that plant to, once it gets growing 00:23:18 to secrete, um, a suppressant that, uh, makes it so other plants can't germinate. I, what am I, am I off on a, am I out here in, 00:23:25 in like some kind of crazy sci-fi world? Or am I really onto something? Well, there, there's two parts to that question. 00:23:31 The one on the secrete thing is like alien, like in the desert. You're in the desert right now looking at cactuses, right? 00:23:36 They're, they have allopathy, right? So there's only a cactus, like certain variety every so many square feet. 00:23:41 'cause they give off the chemical signal from em, you know, there's thoughts around that. 00:23:44 And in alfalfa, right? They can do that. But the reality is I don't think we'll ever see fully year yearlong control from any insect in, in a crop, 00:23:53 from a seed treatment, right? But we get pretty much season long past the stage of the insect doing any damage. 00:23:58 I think someday that'll be there. You know, the, the best thing about it is the, the number of seeds plant planting per acre, right? 00:24:07 When you, back in the day on your farm, a lot of guys were planting 150 pounds of beans an acre, right? 140 or 60 pounds. 00:24:15 Right now it's 140,000, 130,000. So the big Population, so yeah, Population, we're reducing the seed costs so much for the grower 00:24:23 because of stand establishment, right? Uh, there's attributes, like I said, closing the roll quicker, which shades 00:24:30 out, weeds, different things. Uh, there's just so many benefits. Root structure, the biggest thing I think you're gonna see 00:24:35 evolution from a seed treatment standpoint is nutrient, uh, uh, ability to uptick nutrients, right? 00:24:42 Because if you have a stronger root hair, root fiber mass underneath the plant, it's gonna utilize moisture 00:24:47 and nutrients that much more efficiently. Yeah. I think the next big thing in seed treatment is nutrient inefficiency. 00:24:53 We're gonna probably be allowed to reduce our nitrogen phosphates because the plant is using it much more efficient. I think that's, 00:25:00 Oh by the way, this, this ties into something that we've covered in infinitely, not really infinitely Yeah. 00:25:05 But a lot at extreme ag and you know, our, our guy Kelly and all that, like, uh, cut back on nitrogen 00:25:12 because you know what, you don't ever do an agriculture. You don't ever cut back on nitrogen 00:25:15 because by God in American agriculture, we grow corn to grow corn nitrogen. We have over applied Paul the heck out 00:25:21 of particularly the big three n pk, uh, particularly np probably. And so when you say seed treatments can tie into this, uh, 00:25:31 I'd say there's all kinds of things that tie into it. Probably our practices, um, you know, just, uh, improving it organic matter so that the water's not, um, uh, 00:25:41 you know, running off into the ditch and getting rid of our nitrogen and phosphorus that way. There's all kinds of things. But 00:25:46 how does seed treatment help me reduce, uh, applied fertility? Well, look, currently, you know, 00:25:51 if you're using the good cyst fungicide insecticide system with ne cytes, and generally if you're doing root scans 00:25:57 and digging up the plants, right? Because most generally, if you're walking a field dam and you're not digging rus, right? 00:26:01 You're looking above the ground. Yep. But below the ground, on average, we're finding 25 to 35% more weight mass on a root. 00:26:09 Okay? All that weight masses from root hair, root fiber. Okay? And that's where all your water 00:26:14 and nutrients are, you know, absorbed through the, for the, to support the plant. 00:26:18 So if we're utilizing water and nutrients more, I think in time there'll be products that will e eventually help utilize the nitrogen 00:26:26 and current minerals and nutrient capacities in the soil to utilize them more efficiently. 00:26:31 You know, you're seeing it from phosphate efficiency. There's a lot of products coming on the market. They're gonna be nitrogen more efficient, you know, 00:26:38 to basically absorb more of what's in the soil instead of it all being bound up for whatever, whatever pH whatever reason you utilize it more efficiently. 00:26:46 That seed treatment. You know, we talk about like for instance, a lot of fertility, and this is one of the things we've, 00:26:52 I've learned with XtremeAg is putting it out there all in the fall. Well, there's no way in hell it's gonna be there come July. 00:26:57 How would you expect that to happen? What about seed treatment? Is it only good? It's really only good for until we get, uh, 00:27:05 past germination, right? Yeah. Generally to current fungicide and insecticides that we use. 00:27:11 Uh, they're good on the seed. You plant the seed, it grows generally by the time three four leaf of any plant comes around, it's, 00:27:16 it's more, its use off, right? So the whole intent is to get the seed out the ground and growing uniformly and vigor 00:27:23 As quickly as possible. Yep. Yeah. And uniform and uniformity, because that's the other thing. And 00:27:27 Then yeah. Carry over on seed, right? So on corn, you have a lot of product that, you know, you get bags that are carried over, right? 00:27:32 That product normally does not go bad's carried over. It doesn't hurt the germ on the seed for the next year. You know, so the, 00:27:39 the technological improvements over the years have just, um, just iner just quite remarkable how they've advanced. 00:27:48 What did I not ask you? What thing did we not cover about seed treatment? Since you're the, you're the expert here, 00:27:54 is there anything we didn't cover about seed treatment? Well, I, I wanna mention one thing around nematodes, right? 00:28:00 So nematodes is the biggest yield robber for the American soybean grower. And, and generally speaking, 00:28:05 I don't even know if people know they have them, okay? Right. If you look, if you looked at the map across us where they're at, they're all the way from Winnipeg, 00:28:13 Canada all the way down to Florida. Okay? Okay. They're the biggest and nobody really knows. And so there's a, there's an, uh, 00:28:22 a collaboration effort out there called the Soybean Cyst Coalition Network. Right. And it's a, it's quite remarkable. 00:28:28 It's a collaborative effort between university extension hematologists, uh, chemical manufacturing companies and renowned experts. 00:28:36 Right? And you can go on there and so you, let's say you live in South Cass County, North Dakota, which is where I live in Fargo. 00:28:43 I can type in the zip code from where I live, and you can look on the database for all the nematode counts that have been tested in the soil to, 00:28:50 to find the number of nem totes. Okay? You're gonna get a general idea of the nematode issue in your county at your zip code. 00:28:57 That's for the whole us. This is free to the American grower, okay? And you can even send in, get your own soil tested, 00:29:03 have nematode counts, but it's the biggest yield robber out there. And the one thing, you know, they're little buggers. 00:29:07 They're, they're microscopic. You can't really see 'em. But I look at it this way, nematodes are chewing on root hair, root fiber. 00:29:14 They're scarring on the plant, right? And they're scarring all through the season, generally attacking when it's drier. 00:29:19 Yep. A little sandier later in the summer. But as they're attacking the plant, they create a wound. Okay. And all of a sudden that wound, 00:29:26 it creates an infection point for other diseases and pathogens to go, you know, to infect the plant. So I think that's the most under underutilized thing 00:29:34 that soybean growers are not using today. Nematode protection, uh, as a seed treatment, because you don't realize the risk and, 00:29:42 and your, uh, your plants that are su are your seed is su uh, sustaining a wound. And it's arguably costing well again, does it go back to 00:29:52 that four or five bushel? Yeah. You know, generally speaking and you're seeing a minimum of three 00:29:57 to five bushel decrease on every acre. Yeah. You know, nematodes are patchy in the field, but you start adding these patches up, they add up. 00:30:04 Yeah. Last question though about this, from my standpoint, um, we know we built up, uh, herbicide tolerant weeds 00:30:13 because of our overuse of glyphosate, and some would say overuse, but under rate, uh, glyphosate, in other words, putting, 00:30:22 thinking you're cheap and by only using a, a little bit of a rate, and then all of a sudden all it does is it, it, it, 00:30:28 it bangs the plant back and by God it comes back stronger. It's like giving it a vaccine, right? Yep. 00:30:33 Do we run that risk on seed treatment? Do we run the risk of creating, um, tolerances and resistances with, uh, seed treatment? 00:30:41 'cause as you said, we don't plant naked seed really anymore. No, it's a great question. I get asked 00:30:46 that quite often over a lot of number of years. The, the, the reality is probably not, because you gotta think about we're only treating the seed 00:30:52 and the ex the exposed outside of the seed. Okay? That's in a designated area of the field. You're planting 20 inch row corn or 28 inch row 00:30:59 or 30 inch row corn. Yeah. You're not treating the center of the row, you're only treating around the, on the seed 00:31:04 that's the, in that seed zone. So the likelihood of resistance is virtually n Because really it's 00:31:09 because of dilution, what you just said, right? Yeah. In Your, in your, you're only treating that zone 00:31:12 of protection right around the Yeah. Seeing a zone of protection is the size of a kernel. And exactly in a, in the scope of a a square foot, 00:31:18 there's a hell of a lot of stuff that then is not treated. So that's why you think that we 00:31:22 don't build up the resistance. Whereas with herbicide tolerance and resistance is because every weed got touched with the chemical's, 00:31:29 just a matter of did they get touched enough to kill it or to again, give it like a vaccine treatment. Yep. Interesting. Last thought. 00:31:39 You think that there's a, we're gonna agree there's an economic loss being sustained by growers not paying enough attention to seed treatment. 00:31:47 Um, it's one of the cheapest things we can do, uh, for our bang, for our buck. And it's, it starts as simply as asking who are you? 00:31:55 Buy your seed, what the hell is on this? And I need to probably be a little bit more, uh, focused on that as a producer. 00:32:03 A hundred percent. I mean, big thing is, is I've always, I grew up on a farm where we, 00:32:07 we raised everything we raised for seed, right? So everything we produce, there was an old sign above the door in the office. 00:32:13 If you, if you plant junk, you harvest junk, right? So your biggest investment is what starts with the seed, right? 00:32:20 So why not start it out with a great foundation like a seed treatment package that we here manufacture at UPL. 00:32:26 Fantastic. If you wanna learn more about this, I pulled up on my website. I wanna make sure that I've got this, uh, the website is UPL 00:32:37 Ltd as in limited, UPL ltd.com. And you go and click a couple places and you can get two seeds for vegetables and crops. 00:32:47 And that's where I learn about seed treatments. Am I right? Correct. I just pulled 00:32:52 up my phone to make sure I can do that. His name's Paul Johnson. If you want to get more into this, you know what, send me a message 00:32:58 and we will cover it, because I'm really excited. This is the first time we ever talked about seed treatments. Uh, if you have any subjects you want us 00:33:04 to go more in depth on here, please do let us know. Remember that the data conference is January 25th and 26th is in Davenport, Iowa. 00:33:10 If you're an extreme Ag member, it is free to attend and you're lodging and your food and drink will be covered as well. 00:33:17 That's right. You come to Davenport, Iowa, you get a hangout at a casino hotel, you get all the information. 00:33:22 You're gonna see people like Jo or like Paul here, for instance. There's gonna be several of our companies that we work with. 00:33:26 Our business partners are gonna be there to answer questions. We're gonna share all the data where I'm gonna be on 00:33:30 stage on the Sunday night. So I'm talking to you about the future of agriculture. If you're not a member, you can become a member 00:33:36 of extreme Ag for just $750, seven $50 for a year. You get all the access to the data, all the trial work, all the direct link to agronomy people that can help you 00:33:44 and answer your questions all for just seven 50 bucks a year. Plus, you can go to Commodity Classic for free 00:33:48 through our relationship with, uh, natures. And again, you can come to the data conference Company's UPL, we just talked about seed treatments. 00:33:55 His name's Paul Johnson. Thank you very much for being here, my friend. Thank you, Damia. Till next time, I'm Damian Mason. 00:34:01 This is extreme ag cutting the curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm 00:34:08 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 00:34:12.005 --> 00:34:13.245