Farming Podcast | Are Soil Sensors Worth The Investment? | XtremeAg

00:00:00 Soil and weather monitoring technology to help you farm better. That's what we're talking about in this episode 00:00:05 of Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. It's extreme ags cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, 00:00:11 and improving your farming operation every week. This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 00:00:20 to help farmers do the biggest job honor. And now let's get ready to learn with your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:28 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme as cutting the curve. I have with me today two guys 00:00:35 that have some pretty cool technology. We talked about this at Matt Miles Field Day, and we shot a really short little video 00:00:41 and I said, let's go more in depth on that. I had Jacob Berry, he is with Live Oak Agronomics. He's, uh, an agronomy guy. He's, uh, a farm guy. 00:00:50 He's an Arkansas guy. He works alongside Matt Miles down there, and he's joined by Nick Emanuel, who is, uh, 00:00:57 a founder of a company called Crop Metrics. It's now part of Crop X. Crop X is who we're talking about. And essentially it's like a big corkscrew. 00:01:04 We also did this at Commodity Classic. We looked at it, so I've, I've seen the thing twice. It's a big corkscrew thing. 00:01:10 Nick corrected me before we hit record, uh, on this. He told me, well, technically it's a soil moisture monitoring 00:01:17 probe or something like that. And I said, it's a blue cork screwy thing. It could be purple. I'm colorblind anyway. 00:01:24 And, um, you put this in your field and then you've got this other thing that, uh, you put out there and it's like a rain gauge 00:01:31 on robotic steroids. And all of this ties to your phone. I'm holding my phone right here 00:01:36 because the future of farming is going to be even more precision, even more technologically driven as it continues to be. 00:01:44 And you're gonna use your phone to monitor all this. So Jacob, um, you and I talked about this. We'll get to the product expert here in a second. 00:01:53 You sell these things as a dealer with Live Oak Agronomics, but you also use them, and that's what's cool. 00:01:58 You actually have a, not only a experimental thing, you've got a bunch of these all around the farms that you do with miles. 00:02:06 Yes, sir. We have, uh, 21 or 22 out this year. I actually pulled three this morning because, uh, those fields are gonna be harvested today. 00:02:14 So we had 'em out, uh, roughly three weeks after emergence and ran 'em all the way up till a day of harvest just to try 00:02:22 to gather a full set of data to see what kind of, um, root development and soil moisture we have throughout the season. 00:02:28 If you're watching, if you're listening to this on the audio, because so many people listen to cutting the curve. 00:02:32 You're in a piece of equipment or you're driving down the road or whatever, uh, if you want to watch it, 00:02:37 you can go to our YouTube channel. You can go to Extreme Ag Farm and you can watch this. What I want you to do is, if you wanna know 00:02:43 what this thing looks like, our producer will is dropping in images right now as I'm talking of 00:02:48 what these things look like, it's essentially, it's two, it's two pieces of equipment plus the thing on your phone. 00:02:53 So Nick, you can explain this, the quart screw thingy, which is your technology, it's a soil monitoring probe. You put that out there and I believe it's solar powered, 00:03:03 or it might have a battery, but the point is it doesn't need to be plugged in. Right, okay. It's battery powered 00:03:07 and then that feeds information to your phone. And there's another thing that's more of a monitoring system. 00:03:12 So tell me about the equipment. The, I think it's really three, three things. Yeah. Well, even two, I'll even cut it down to two. 00:03:19 So the first piece is a soil moisture probe, what you just said. Um, very simple to use all in one device. 00:03:27 And like we talked, you know, back there at the Commodity Classic, you go back to the old days of soil moisture monitoring, 00:03:34 and they used to be these big clunky devices that were hard to install and made it technically challenging 00:03:41 to go out there and achieve the ultimate goal, which is irrigation scheduling or or monitoring help you make that decision on when 00:03:50 to water, when not to water. So this is an all in one device, which you call the corkscrew, 00:03:55 which has the soil moisture sensors built into it, um, with a telemetry device right on the top head that can collect all the data throughout the day 00:04:05 and then send that back up to the cloud or that cell phone, uh, app that you said, and provide those growers real-time information, um, daily, 00:04:16 um, even throughout the day if needed to help them make more informed decisions, uh, typically based around irrigation scheduling. 00:04:25 Uh, and then the second component that you mentioned is, is just a weather station. 00:04:30 So it's an all in one weather station that obviously we're gonna be collecting. Rain has a rain gauge on it, 00:04:37 but then adds your other typical, uh, weather monitoring devices such as, uh, temperature and humidity and wind speed and direction. 00:04:46 And when you bring all of that together and brings it all into that app all seamlessly, it helps you make more informed decisions, again, 00:04:54 on a daily basis to help improve, uh, productivity and make your life easier. If I don't irrigate, which in my part of the world, 00:05:04 there's probably 1% of the acres around here in Indiana that are irrigated, almost none of Indiana is irrigated. Do I need this device? Jacob, apple, Berry, do I need this? 00:05:15 You're Matt Miles doesn't have one acre that's not irrigated. I, I think, do I need this? 00:05:21 He's got a few more this year that are not irrigated. The the thing I would say as much as anything is if you're able to monitor your soil moisture in a non-ED 00:05:31 situation, you can at least start seeing some tendencies. And you may not make a decision this year, but 00:05:38 after you see the data over a couple of years, if you start seeing at critical growth stages that you don't have a certain amount of soil moisture, 00:05:46 it may be a way to help manage, you know, financial inputs. If you don't have the, if the fi, if the soil's not 00:05:56 have the moisture set that you need, and you know, you can't make yield after that because you're at, you know, ear set or you're at R four 00:06:04 or R five, whenever you're filling those pods and, and finalizing your pods, um, you may back off the last of the last of the season, 00:06:13 you may may not put out a pret tassel application because you know you're not gonna get a return on investment there. 00:06:18 Now I have not dealt with a non-irrigated situation, so there may be a lot of things I'm not thinking of, but that'd be the two things I would think of 00:06:27 looking at it outside in. So from the standpoint, uh, Nick, most of the is the newer company, newer technology, it works. 00:06:35 Uh, I mean, we've already seen it. Mr. Jacobs showed us that he, he's, they're using it and it's working in Arkansas in terms 00:06:43 of the technology's best application. Is it best, um, utilized in an irrigated environment? So that is the majority of the business today. 00:06:55 But yes, there's other tool sets and software features around that can be benefit to the dry land acres. 00:07:04 And even when, when we talked about kind of the irrigation technology, Jacob was just telling me a great use case, um, that, uh, 00:07:11 I'll hit to Jacob right here that, uh, you forgot to mention right there, but it was your pre-season planning where you said you guys found a lot of value 00:07:19 of installing those moisture probes out ahead of the season to really tell you, okay, when is the optimal time 00:07:26 to plant which field to plant and then even potentially make your fertility, uh, decisions on how much you're gonna push 00:07:33 that crop moving into the start of the season. And so we are seeing a gradual increase in, uh, interest in those dry land acres 00:07:45 for a certain scenario like that also. Well, here's The thing, it's mobile. I mean, it's, this is not, 00:07:53 we're not hard wiring this into the grid. It's a, it's a three foot long probe that I, IM guessing 00:08:06 that, that if it's not giving me any return over here, I can just move it or give it back or whatever. Right. Jacob? I don't know. 00:08:17 Whenever you uninstall it and you go and reinstall it somewhere else, it takes about 48 hours for it to acclimate to that area. 00:08:23 Um, yeah, there's, there's no reason you can't move it around. Your data set isn't complete throughout the season if you 00:08:31 did that versus having multiples may sound like a sales pitch, but it's not the sales pitch idea. 00:08:37 It's more of, you know, what are you looking for for agronomic data to make a complete decision or to look back at your data at the end of the season 00:08:44 and figure out how to do better next year. When I, uh, when I look at doing this, and we did this in, in Arkansas, 00:08:52 there's two different components. There's the weather station thing, right? And I, this, the, the probes, I'm putting those, 00:08:59 you've got 22 of them and, and that's monitoring how many acres. Uh, I've got my stuff pulled up 00:09:07 and we, we've got 18,000 acres in our, our program right now. I'm, uh, I've got stuff for Matt. 00:09:14 I've got a guy that has two in Mississippi, one in Louisiana, uh, I'm helping Johnny with his a little bit in Tennessee, 00:09:22 and I'm helping, uh, Danielle and Kevin out in North Carolina. Okay. And you're doing that with, 00:09:28 because then the question is gonna be, well, how, how many, how dense do I need to put these probes? 00:09:36 Do I need one every a hundred acres? Do I need one every, because there's gonna be a lot of variation from one part of a, a field 00:09:43 or a township or whatever to the next? What I've kinda said for, for our area, now, obviously this changes, you know, you go in different areas 00:09:53 is one per farm per crop, and if you have a bunch of different soil types, maybe you need to have one in every, in every soil type. 00:10:07 So if you had a place that had, you know, two different crops on it, three different soil types, you might have four to six probes on 00:10:14 that farm if it's a couple thousand acre farm. So it is, it's just a matter of, of how dense you want to be. 00:10:21 Where we have taken care of it is we have it in the, in the three separate four separate farms that, that Matt Lane have. 00:10:28 Um, and then we covered both, both or all three crops, actually four crops. We have one in rice learning how to use it in rice, 00:10:36 and then looking at the predominant soil type or predominant two to three soil types on that farm. So I can't say you need one every 200 acres 00:10:44 or one every a hundred acres. Um, Nick may have better data on that than, than we do this being year one for us. 00:10:50 But that's kind of how we approached it, is let's try to cover the predominant soil type or, or predominant two or three soil types and the crops on that farm. 00:11:01 Yeah. And I'll just, yep. I was just gonna add onto that. I mean, you know, we also have 00:11:06 to take in per perspective here that, you know, every area of the country has different management 00:11:12 or irrigation practices. Yeah. You know, whether you're here in Nebraska, like myself, front and center pivots predominantly, uh, 00:11:20 down south, or it might be predominantly gravity flow or then you get all the way to drip irrigation. What we commonly say 00:11:27 or typically say is, you know, one per irrigation system, you know, so if that's a center pivot, one probe per 00:11:35 that center pivot, if it's a drip field, one per your main drip zone, not a Jacob's point. Yeah. Even under a center pivot, for example, you know, 00:11:45 we may have two or three different soil types. Mm-hmm. Ideally, yes, we would love to put a sensor in every one of those soil zones 00:11:55 and then start to do some variable rate irrigation with that center pivot, which we do have the capability to do. The, the economics on that is, is, you know, 00:12:06 a little bit tough to manage that sometimes, unless it's extremely variable. But, so in that case, 00:12:12 when we're still doing one moisture probe per center or pivot, uh, what he said, we're gonna go with that predominant or what I often say the majority, uh, 00:12:21 soil type, and we're gonna water for that majority soil type, and that's how we're gonna maximize profitability on 00:12:28 that total field. Mm-hmm. So, and without getting too techy, how's this work? I stick this in the ground after 48 hours to acclimate, 00:12:37 or it has the information and it kicks it to my app. I install an app on my phone and it's got a battery. That's it. 00:12:45 Pretty much. It's about a five to 10 minute install the battery. You know, you charge it up in your office. 00:12:52 The battery has a a year long, um, lifecycle, and you just start looking at the stuff, start looking at the data and start trying to figure out, 00:13:02 you know, where you need to be and, and where your, uh, where your fuel points and, and refill points are based off what the software tells you 00:13:10 or if you need to make some adjustments yourself to fit the situation, whether you're looking at different soil zones, um, 00:13:16 on your probe based off where your majority root zone is. Got it. Well, Nick, what do you tell people when they, 00:13:23 they're scared of the, this is, seems like it's pretty simple. Well, and you know, to add on to that, you know, 00:13:30 we're talking a lot about the hardware right now. I think what Jacob just said there at the end on, you know, being able to adjust it, adjust 00:13:38 and customize on the software mm-hmm. Is the key. The, the software is really, you know, the, the bread and butter behind it, you know, the, 00:13:47 the hardware is a tool that you can physically see. Mm-hmm. But a lot of times the grower themselves never see that actual hardware because the dealer 00:13:56 or the consultant is installing and removing it for them. But where all the, where all your money is made is in the 00:14:04 power of that software. Just like any really, you know, all the technology today, AI and software is driving everything 00:14:11 and it's, it's no different here. The crop X software is what makes it extremely easy to use. Uh, you know, we use all our AI 00:14:19 and machine learning to take all that data and information from all the different components, throw it in a basket, spit out an answer 00:14:27 that precisely tells you when to irrigate and when not to. Yeah. And so, like I said, to the non-ED person, 00:14:34 it's more gonna be monitoring the conditions in that field. If I'm thinking about a treatment, if I'm thinking about, 00:14:39 uh, or, or somebody like you, a consulting agronomy type person could say, Hey Damien, you know, this is what your data is telling you to do. 00:14:47 How do I go about, um, making this make sense financially? So how much I know you sell these Jacob, so 00:14:54 how much do you sell 'em for? And then when someone asks you point blank, I need to know what my ROI is, uh, when do I get my money back? 00:15:00 What do you tell 'em Locally? We sell 'em for a thousand dollars a year for a three year deal. 00:15:08 Um, that's A three year I commit, I'm committing to a thousand dollars a year for three years. Correct. Okay. 00:15:14 Um, that's us installing them, uninstalling them, um, winter, I, you know, putting 'em up for the winter, helping you set up, um, helping you monitor 'em. 00:15:25 Yep. If you have questions, you know, either getting you to the right person to fix it, if we can't fix it ourself 00:15:32 or fix it, get ourselves, um, if there's a warranty issue, we take care of that. I, I think I could see this, I'm guessing Nick, a lot 00:15:40 of this is part of a consulting agronomist or a hired professional agronomist package. Like, you know, uh, yes. 00:15:49 Part of the deal, part of the deal is I give you advice, I do scouting, um, I help you with, uh, experimenting 00:15:56 with new products if you're going to do that. Uh, and then also we use this as a tool in our toolbox, right? 00:16:01 It's just like soil, it's like a, it's like a taking soil samples or anything else, Right? And if 00:16:07 you go and incorporate that with a weather station to where you have a more complete picture of what's going on with hyper-local data, that just makes it that much better 00:16:15 for you whenever you're, whenever you're doing experiments and saying, well, why did this work? 00:16:19 Well, my nighttime temperatures are too high or whatever. I mean, there's a whole list 00:16:23 of reasons why things can go right or wrong. Yeah. And I like the weather station. I thought that was a cool little device. 00:16:28 So how many of those do, do you recommend? So if you got a certain number of the probes, how many of those weather stations do I need? 00:16:34 Do you, Nick, how many do you have spread around your Nebraska operation? You know, that that all comes down to how dense you like 00:16:43 to receive your weather data. You know, we have some guys putting one in every field because they want to track that rainfall in every field. 00:16:50 Yep. And, you know, and the more we see how, how varied that rainfall could be, um, you know, we've got farms can all around me 00:16:58 and, you know, we will have a half to an inch difference from a mile or two apart. That knowing that with accurate data collection 00:17:08 to these weather stations makes it beneficial. Yeah. And then, uh, soil temperature that matters at planting for germination. 00:17:17 When it's time to go after that, it's kind of a moot point. So really it's about the moisture. 00:17:22 Does temperature matter after, after emergence? To your point, that's probably the, the biggest benefit. What we use it for is, you know, you can start 00:17:34 to also understand, uh, crop health or crop stress when you're able to integrate that soil temperature, uh, in combination with how 00:17:43 that soil moisture is being used on a daily activity. Um, and I can see Jacob's his head, but So that matter, that matters to you even past emergence. 00:17:52 I mean, I can see it mattering in southeast Arkansas in February when Matt's getting itchy to go out and do some, uh, planting. 00:17:59 But by July, like, we're recording this in July, it's hot. So what, 00:18:07 You know, if nothing else looking at, at, uh, you're looking at and seeing if you have a crop canopy, not necessarily a crop canopy issue, 00:18:14 but if you have good crop canopy and keeping the soil cool, then that's keeping the plant happy, keeping the plant happy 00:18:20 and healthy and, and things like that. I, I nick's right about being able to, to monitor plant health with it in a way. 00:18:27 Um, that's what I was thinking. It just hadn't, couldn't figure out how to explain it before Nick started explaining it very well. 00:18:34 So if I wanted to say, you know, temperature isn't a major driver, but it's another monitoring point we have to kind 00:18:41 of backtrack and look at if there is an issue. But with that crop health, you know, the big thing that I see that, that I've personally found a lot 00:18:50 of value on my own farm is, um, watching the rooting activity. So it's more than just a full soil moisture profile, 00:18:59 how much moisture's in that soil profile that's driving our irrigation decisions. But when we're able to watch the rooting activity from 00:19:07 different depths so that the, the core sensor that you're talking about, the vertex has three sensors, um, you know, space throughout that, uh, two 00:19:17 and a half foot profile, you can see how that rooting activity is and see how active that root is. Uh, or that rooting development. 00:19:26 And often that'll correlate directly with plant health. I mean, I've seen it so often that the overall plant health and that crop health is a direct indication of, 00:19:38 or I should say the rooting activity is a direct indicator of our overall plant health. 00:19:44 And it helps you understand better, you know, one between management practices, what's working, what's not working, uh, products and product placement 00:19:53 and all the way to your fertility program. You know, I've learned a lot through the fertility and other products that I've tested 00:20:00 and tried, um, you know, one of your, uh, previous, uh, podcasts here, um, you've had a few of 'em the last few weeks on fertility management 00:20:10 and increasing or making it making, um, more efficient with the fertility we you're using. And you can really understand all of that 00:20:19 through these soil moisture probes by that rooting activity and the level of the in depth 00:20:24 information that you're seeing there. I appreciate you making the economic as well as the, the fertility thing. 00:20:30 Um, I, I'm not popular sometimes, Jacob, you might be there with me. I'm not popular sometimes. Well, you're not the real farmer. 00:20:38 You're not an agronomist. I said no, but I am a person that really pays attention to the marketplace. We're gonna have regulations on how much fertility 00:20:46 because period, when I was in western Nebraska, Nick states with, with our guy Temple Roads 00:20:52 and, uh, our friend from Agritech, USA on a panel, and they were talking about bringing a heavy hammer of regulation because nitrates in the water in the wells 00:21:01 were like three and five times what they are, what the deemed to be safe. If something like this technology can allow us 00:21:08 to cut applied fertility, which any person that's being honest, we have generally over applied, over applied for what we actually got the benefit 00:21:19 of, I guess is the right word. Yes. This technology can allow us to apply less because we're realizing we're, what is it 00:21:26 'cause of timing, you know what, whatever, what what's the reason? But am I right about this, Jacob? 00:21:30 This will allow a reduction in applied fertility because we're doing it with better information. That's what I would think. 00:21:38 You have more complete picture of information. And whenever you look at the software, there are, uh, what they call insights that gives you leaching advice. 00:21:46 Um, if there's plant disease opportunities based on, again, local weather data to, to be able to 00:21:53 better manage whether you've had an event that would, would, uh, lose nitrogen, 00:21:59 whichever three ways you wanna talk about, mostly in this case, leaching or if you have a plant disease opportunity based off of, 00:22:07 of temperature and humidity, um, that you're either getting from weather data from a local weather station, 00:22:13 or if you're getting weather data based off of NOA or something like that, whenever it, it starts showing where the probe is at 00:22:20 and basis of whether information off of that probe location. Do you, do you agree? And Damian, 00:22:27 Do you agree? Do you agree that we've over applied fertility and we're gonna have a heavy hand 00:22:31 of regulation coming our way? Uh, when, when the people in Iowa as agricultural, the state as there is, are screaming about nitrates in the Raccoon 00:22:40 River running through Des Moines, and they say 87% of it is derived from agriculture. Th this ain't Massachusetts, this is, this is ag country. 00:22:48 I think there's gonna be some, i I think technology like this is where we have to get better. 00:22:54 Yes. Well even add onto that, Damien, I mean, I, I think you're exactly right on the fertility, but water is in the exact same position. 00:23:02 We've typically overused water thinking it's, uh, you know, infinite resource, which it's not. 00:23:09 It's our probably number one most valuable resource that we have available. And just the, the common practice has always been 00:23:18 water more mm-hmm. Than, you know, to keep that crop happy because the, the risk of running our crop dry is, 00:23:27 is more than just over watering typically. And so that's typically where we see our biggest bit in these heavy irrigated 00:23:36 regions is being able to cut back our irrigation. We'll save trips, so we're saving money that way. But when you do all of that, you're making 00:23:45 that crop more efficient. You're not pushing that fertility through the, through the root zone. 00:23:51 You're not leaching nitrogen, you're improving the whole system capability. But it all starts with water first and foremost. 00:23:59 Uh, I would say that, um, and I've been on the record when I do speaking engagements in places like Nebraska that rely on a lot of irrigation. 00:24:06 There's more center pivots in Nebraska than about any other state. Aren't there? But, um, yeah, 00:24:11 that when we start viewing water as a crop input, just like nitrogen or fungicide 00:24:19 or anything else, when we start viewing it like that, we'll finally turn the corner because generally we've treated it like it was 00:24:25 free, as you say. And, uh, yeah. So anyway, on this stuff, speaking of the water, what if I happen to be listening to this 00:24:32 and I'm a specialty crop person, can I justify this more or less? We're talking about broad acre stuff. 00:24:37 Does a pecan grove need this? Does a blueberry field need this? I don't know. What do you think, Jacob? You, you're nearer 00:24:43 to maybe that kind of stuff. I'm in corn and soybean country in northern Indiana. You said you're experimenting with it with rice. 00:24:49 What, what difference does it make with the crop that you could use justify the use or not use of this technology? 00:24:59 Yeah, pecan grove, I see how it could be used. Obviously there's no way that a 26 inch probe is gonna take care of a, you know, 00:25:10 a tree that's got 20 foot deep root system. Um, but being able to, to see what's going on there might not be 00:25:19 disadvantageous blueberries. I can see where it'd be even be even more useful just to, to try to manage it 00:25:25 and maybe using it to manage, um, not manage stress, well manage stress, but also to manage, uh, disease pressure, being able 00:25:36 to monitor and manner manage disease pressure better. Um, obviously they aren't, those particular plants, maybe not are as resilient to disease as the crops 00:25:45 that I'm used to dealing with. Nick, when you invent this technology, I guess the question is always who do you, you know, 00:25:52 it's like when you, when I wrote a book, who is this for? You know, and then who's it not for? 00:25:58 When you invent this technology, who'd you think it's for and who'd you think it's not for? 00:26:02 And or, or has there been a surprise, like, holy crap, I didn't think about this. Um, well, you know, coming from the Midwest here, the, 00:26:10 the target was always our heavily irrigated regions within the US and, you know, my experience was always the, 00:26:17 the standard commodity row crops. So that's what we, we started targeting first and foremost. But, you know, to your, to your point there, 00:26:26 those specialty crops, just as Jacob said, are often more sensitive to water than anything. And it doesn't take a whole lot of overwatering 00:26:36 to push 'em over the edge where that crop health all starts to play a factor crop health and reproduction. 00:26:43 So obviously if we're limiting our reproduction, if we're over watering a little bit, that's gonna, uh, invite disease and, uh, greater disease pressure greater, 00:26:54 all of that pays off with precisely monitoring your irrigation scheduling and improving on it. 00:27:02 And obviously with those specialty crops, the ROI percentage just grows wider because, you know, 00:27:09 they're not farming these cheap commodity crops, but they're, they're a lot more Than they did have much, much higher revenue. 00:27:17 Not necessarily margins, but the much higher revenue per acre. And so you get a bigger bang 00:27:22 for your buck on a per acre basis with better technology. Correct. There to 00:27:27 Go back just like everything to be safe, To go back to the irrigation and, and water using, seeing water as a, not as a, 00:27:37 just a free resource, but as an input. When you look at local budgets, irrigation here is somewhere between 35 00:27:45 and 45% of your budget, of your, your total budget. When you turn that around and mat lay picked up two farms this year. 00:27:55 One set of wells are 1500, 1800, 2000 gallon minute wells, great wells water, great. Everything went well this year in irrigation. Mm-hmm. 00:28:06 Then you turn around and look at this other farm and the wells were significantly lower. So the management practices of using the probes to be able 00:28:15 to say, I've gotta start watering this low output well earlier to get across a lot easier versus these higher output wells, I have a little bit more time there. 00:28:25 I can let the, not let the crop stress, but I can use a little bit more soil moisture up before I have to worry about refilling. 00:28:32 And to me, that, that makes the budget work out a little bit better, whether, so you don't, again, underwater or over water, 00:28:40 but you are there more timely and use that resource that is costing a good bit of our budget nowadays. 00:28:49 Better. That makes sense. Or is that, yeah, no, I got It. No, I, I, I got it. 00:28:54 And then the other one, I, I guess speaking of the water I hadn't even considered in an irrigated situation is more common per nick 00:29:01 that you are overwatering versus underwater. You've got the stuff and so you just figure what the heck I Right. 00:29:06 Err on that. And we know, and I'm not the one, you guys are both more agronomically, um, uh, knowledgeable than me, 00:29:13 but they taught me in FFA soil judging, you're supposed to have 50% particle, 25% air, and 25% water for maximizing your roots, et cetera. 00:29:23 Well, if, if, if it's all water and particle and there's no air, that's just as bad as it being dry. And, and like you said, it's not only bad 00:29:30 for the plant health, it's bad for disease. Yes, Absolutely. And there's, you know, typically when we're seeing these big 00:29:39 savings, um, is is the start of the irrigation season earlier in the year and then finishing the irrigation season late in the year. 00:29:48 That's usually on a new grower when we typically save one to two passes on each ones of those ends. 00:29:55 Because when we get in the heat of it, you know, at TA and moving into reproduction, you know, we can water all day and that crop's really gonna suck it right out, you know, 00:30:05 utilize it throughout the year, but when it's, when it's using very little at the beginning of the year, and that's the biggest challenge is, okay, 00:30:13 when do I start irrigating? You know, how much is actually in the profile mm-hmm. This year, because obviously year to year varies 00:30:22 we'll see the biggest advantage, uh, advantage there early in the year, knowing when to start, well then we can just keep pushing the crop 00:30:30 during those heavy water usage, uh, reproductive stages. But then as we start to finish, 00:30:37 we don't wanna quit too early because we wanna make sure that we get all the grain fill and the grain weight we can to finish that crop properly. 00:30:45 But at the same time, we don't want to be over watering and adding water when the crop is already done using it. And then, because all that does is create compaction issues 00:30:56 and everything else when the harvest equipment starts to roll in. So there's multiple advantages from that front end and, 00:31:04 and the back end that we typically see our greatest savings. Yeah. And even during, when you're in heavy water use, 00:31:11 being able to see that coming maybe a little bit earlier than than you would without a probe is very useful as well. 00:31:21 Or being able to say, you know what, I've got enough to last because there's a, a very good rain chance coming. 00:31:27 Maybe I can wait 48 hours and save this irrigation. Um, instead of going, you know what, I'm unsure, I'm gonna water and then get a rain 00:31:35 and have a, an over irrigation or an over watering problem like you were talking about. Mm-hmm. It, it, it lets you have a little bit more freedom 00:31:43 of decision of, yes, I'm good, or no, I'm not good. One customer asked me, um, right around, he said he was a weak from Blackberry, said, 00:31:50 do you think I need to water again? And after a decent conversation, we decided not to water, and it ended up seemed like it's gonna work out for him. 00:31:58 He feels good about, about skipping that water. Yeah. Uh, because he had enough soil moisture to make it to black layer, and he felt comfortable after that. 00:32:06 And one thing we see too, Jacob, that always surprised me, you know, after 15 years 00:32:10 of using this myself on my own farm is, you know, the different hybrid and variety differences. Oh yeah. You know, we, we start to see where field side 00:32:20 by side or across the road from one another, one hybrid may be using more, and the other one's really hosting. 00:32:29 Yeah. It, it changes the irrigation practice and the management style to really maximize that specific crop or variety or hybrid. 00:32:38 Exactly. Here I am been saying forever, there's no difference from one seed to the next. And you just, uh, told me 00:32:44 that there might be a difference on water utilization. So I stand correct, like the man that returned from the chiropractor. 00:32:49 I stand corrected. All right. So, um, I, uh, I I think that we got a lot of technology in this business 00:32:58 and some of you're like, yeah, it's too much, or it's, I don't, I don't see how this is really going to make much of a difference. 00:33:06 This is affordable, and I can see where you can, especially under irrigation, uh, or to the point about maybe specialty crops 00:33:13 where this thing is very utilizable, like the utility, um, factor on this is, I, I can see it being pretty significant. 00:33:23 What are your people saying? What are your people saying, Jacob, you get the last word. 00:33:25 What are your people saying? You're, you're setting 'em up and saying, Hey, this is a new thing. 00:33:28 What do you think Being first year, they're a little bit apprehensive, but they know that with this technology, 00:33:38 they're gonna get a pretty decent return on investment. Year one. I mean, like we were talking about earlier with budgeting, you know, you save one, one watering 00:33:46 or you save two waters, you save one up front, save one at the end, you pay for it just like that easily. What we're looking at now is can we go out of the fall 00:33:55 after you get all your fall fertility down, whatever tillage you're gonna do, get your crop or get your ground ready for next year and go 00:34:01 and install these then. And having a data set to where you can look at how early can I start planting in 26? 00:34:10 Mm-hmm. How much can I get ahead of heat? How much can I get ahead of disease, insects, other stressors that take away from yield 00:34:17 and, you know, planning date, unless you have a major weather event like we did in April this year, uh, planning date is free, you know that 00:34:27 that's an opportunity for free bushels right there. So why not take advantage of it there by using something like this that gives you a definite 00:34:35 day over day, this is what my soil temperature is, this is what my soil moisture is, here's some other things 00:34:40 that are going on in the ground to be able to say, yes, this is a good idea to plant two weeks ahead of what you really usually plant at maybe three weeks 00:34:47 and gain that opportunity. Yeah. I, I like it. All right, Nick. I told him he was, get the last word, but you know what? 00:34:55 You came all the way in from Nebraska. I mean, what the hell? Maybe, maybe you need to tell me what I need to know. 00:35:01 Well, I was just, I'll, I'll talk from the grower standpoint. Um, you know, as, as we've all been talking, nobody wants 00:35:08 to spend an extra dollar at this time in our, our current, uh, commodity prices and in profit margins. 00:35:15 We all know it's tight, so we don't wanna spend an extra dollar. But where, especially in irrigated country, 00:35:21 everything starts with water, water's the driver, not only from an irrigation standpoint, but from everything else we talked about fertility 00:35:29 management, you know, the more efficient we are with our water, the more it improves. It makes us a more efficient crop. Mm-hmm. 00:35:37 Which ultimately improves our ROI and our profitability. So this, as Jacob said, you know, this is a technology 00:35:44 that has instant ROI you put it in. When you save two or three irrigations throughout the year, that's, uh, easily paying for itself plus some, 00:35:56 and then you get the advan, uh, uh, added advantage of potential yield improvement or productivity from all the efficiencies we're gaining. 00:36:06 Mm-hmm. As water being a driver, you know, to improve everything else. The product is crop X, the company's called Crop X. 00:36:14 Uh, and then you can go to their website. I just pulled it up on my phone. Where do they go, Jacob? They go to 00:36:20 Crop x web.com, Crop x.com. I just pulled up crop x.com. It's the complete digital agronomy platform, 00:36:26 precision hardware and software design for a new age of farming. Anyway, check it out. I was joined by Nick Emanuel, 00:36:32 Nebraska Farmer and originator of this technology, and he doesn't like when I call it naska. Anyway. It's all right. It's a good place. Good place. 00:36:41 The one thing I do like is I did hear you say, um, I made you stand corrected today. Yeah, there you go. We mark that one in the books. 00:36:48 That's right. Uh, it's always a good thing. And I, and I'm, and I'm willing to, I'm well, I'm willing to let people correct me and, uh, Jacob, a apple berry with, 00:36:56 uh, uh, live Oak agronomics. That's, uh, a businesses in conjunction with down there, Matt Miles in the Delta region of Arkansas. 00:37:03 So next time, thanks for being here. If you wanna learn more, go check out Crop X. And also when you're scouting around the web, go 00:37:09 and check out all the cool programming we're doing. I've been doing this now for four years, hundreds of episodes of cutting the curve, thousands of videos 00:37:15 that these guys shoot in the field, uh, stuff that we do at the veal days, like one with Jacob to talk about the technology 00:37:20 or new innovations these guys are experimenting with at extreme ag. And then remember, our YouTube 00:37:24 channel won't subscribe to that. It doesn't cost nothing. Just go on YouTube, type in extreme ag. 00:37:28 And while you're there, check out our new show, the Grainery. It's me and the guys from Extreme Ag in my on-Farm Tavern 00:37:34 discussing everything from the personal to the professional about the industry that we all work in. It's a great time. Pull up a chair and join us the Grainery. 00:37:40 Till next time. Thanks for being here. I'm Damien Mason. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. 00:37:46 Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:37:54 This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 855 00:37:59.625 --> 00:38:01.725