Farming Podcast | Maximizing Soybean ROI on $50 Fertility | XtremeAg

00:00:00 A hundred bushels soybeans with $50 of post applied fertility products. That's the economic fertility challenge we're doing 00:00:06 with our friends at Agro Liquid. We're gonna talk to you about it, all the lessons that you can apply to your soybean production in this 00:00:13 special episode of Extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome to Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:00:21 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:29 Hey there. This is a very special episode of Extreme Acts cutting curb. We welcome you to it. You know, our partners Agro liquid, 00:00:34 uh, started a thing last year where we did some plots and some challenges and it's really good because it gets the competitive juices flowing 00:00:40 with the guys from extreme Ag causes them to get a little bit creative. And they also are competing with the experts at Agro Liquid. 00:00:47 And this is a really cool thing. We've got low commodity prices, we've got some economic challenges in the farm belt. 00:00:53 It's a good time to talk about how to maximize yield and minimize fertility spend. Not that you shouldn't always do that, 00:00:59 but especially in times like this. So we're doing it across the board on wheat, on soybeans and on corn. 00:01:04 In this little episode, we're gonna talk to you about soybeans. Kevin Matthews put all of the plots in, 00:01:09 but he did each plot based on the prescription that was provided to him from Chad Henderson, from Johnny Verell, from Gabe Saxon, from Stephanie Linco. 00:01:18 Kevin, tell me about the plots. Are they all looking good? Did you actually put 'em in fairly 00:01:23 or did you kind of screw your biggest rival? Chad Henderson, Actually, Chad paid Jim 00:01:29 and I was not allowed to be there, so Jim planted them. Him and Danielle did it all. I I plant corn, they plant soybeans. 00:01:36 Jim does a much better job. So we're all better off with Jim planting 'em over me. What do you think? What do you, what do you think, 00:01:41 what do you think we're gonna learn from 'em? Uh, it's gonna be interesting. We got 'em on two different farms 00:01:46 because the one farm for the field day is very highly productive soils. It's irrigated that don't see much stress. 00:01:54 A hundred bushel beans is fairly easy to grow on that farm. So we've got, uh, our plots there for the field day. 00:02:00 Then we took 'em out and said, okay, we're going to see how good they are and if Stephanie can really beat me 00:02:06 and clay, I don't think she can. But anyhow, we'll see how that works out. So we put 'em on double crop soybeans 00:02:12 and Chad Anderson, what's the one thing you say about double crop soybeans? Ooh, so we got, it's a equalizer. 00:02:21 It's a equalizer. So we got several acres of each trial replicated on those double crop soybeans as well as on the irrigated where you can see. 00:02:30 So we're gonna get some really good data and see what this 50 bucks is really worth. So wait a minute. So you're not, 00:02:35 you didn't do this just on, on one, uh, on stuff that got planted like in April. You did this on stuff that also got planted 00:02:42 after the wheat came off. That's correct. We did our April planting April 27th, and then we did our June, uh, 00:02:49 I believe it was about June 23rd, I believe is when those got planted. Okay. All irrigated? 00:02:55 No, the double crops are not irrigated. Okay. Double crops not irrigated. All right. So did you, okay, Chad, since he threw it to you 00:03:02 completely different prescription for the stuff that got planted in April under irrigation versus the stuff that gets planted after wheat that's un irrigated. 00:03:10 Exact same 50 bucks. Okay, so the exact same prescription, all all of them on uh, same, same prescription? 00:03:18 Yes, sir. All Right. Then I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw it over. We just need to hope that, we just need to hope 00:03:22 that we get some Carolina rains. You're getting them so far. All right. Going over to our friends from Agri. 00:03:28 Look, Gabe, is it a mistake to do to treat your soybeans in North Carolina, uh, with the exact same fertility program, the ones 00:03:34 that go in in April versus the ones that go in after the wheat comes, uh, off in, uh, in June? No, I don't think so. I think we're gonna find out. 00:03:42 I think we're gonna find out we're chasing the same rabbits as far as nutrients when we look at it. 00:03:46 When we go back and look at, you know, going back and looking at potassium and phosphorus and of course a lot of the guys used the micro 500. 00:03:53 So we're all kind of focused in on that same part of it, of what we need. So no, I don't think it's gonna be a mistake. 00:03:59 I think it's gonna be a really good learning experience for us all. Stephanie, you're from Michigan. I'm from Indiana. 00:04:04 There's not a lot of irrigation. Ats my part of the world. I don't think there's a lot of irrigation. 00:04:08 Ats your part of the world. Does it seem like, does it seem like you should treat things differently under irrigation versus not under irrigation? 00:04:14 It seems to me that I would have two completely different programs. They say no. What do you say? 00:04:19 Well, I think geography kind of buffers it. Like we have essentially irrigated ground here in the north. We get enough rain, um, especially this year 00:04:26 that we're getting enough rain that it is like irrigation and we're not as hot and dry. 00:04:30 So I think if you're gonna compare us in the north, um, to those guys with irrigated beans in the south, I think it would be a similar program. 00:04:37 But for them, um, I definitely would treat irrigated beans in the south different than dry land beans, just 00:04:43 because I don't think the yield potential's there. So you could probably save some dollars, um, and cut back that program. 00:04:48 I don't know if the nutrients would change, but I think maybe the overall rate might change. You'd use, you'd spend less money on 00:04:54 There. What she's saying, what she's really saying, 00:04:55.685 --> 00:04:55.925 what she's really saying is the rate would change 00:04:58 because you wouldn't even treat the dry LA is what she's saying. So you, is that by the way, Chad, is that something 00:05:05 that seems like a a, it seems inverse to what you would think? I'd say the dryland stuff needs more love. 00:05:12 The irrigate stuff does not and that's, I'm not thinking right, am I? No, you're right on the money, 00:05:17 but that's the way everybody else thinks. Okay. We'll see. Okay. All right. Johnny, what are you, what are you doing on 00:05:24 your, your soybean? What did you have, what did you pay Jim to do on the soybean trials in North Carolina? 00:05:31 I just paid him to put all their product on mine too, so that way I got, you know, triple the rate. 00:05:36 But the biggest thing I put out there is a big rate of calcium. I spent half the budget just on that one product. 00:05:41 So we were just trying to push that and see if he could actually move the needle with the calcium in the plant 00:05:47 and you know, take it to yield my thing on double crop beans. They, they do have a lower yield potential, but maybe it's 00:05:54 because we're treating 'em like that. And so I think we've kind of touched on that and I think that's a great idea Kevin did 00:05:59 to try and untake it that way. If he gets any rain at all, it really may surprise us, especially since we're usually using the fertilizer from the 00:06:06 wheat to carry the beans through. I'm gonna go with, uh, the statement Johnny re made. I wanna go around the horn on this. 00:06:12 We'll start with Kevin since it happened to his farm. He just said jokingly, I paid, I paid Jim to put all of everybody else's stuff onto mine. 00:06:20 That sounds like something a lot of people would think, oh, just keep pouring the fertility to it. 00:06:24 And one of our recordings three years ago, Matt Miles said, you can put three steaks in front of a baby, 00:06:29 but a baby can't do anything with three steaks. Sometimes you gotta think about your crops this way you can dump all fertility you want out there, 00:06:34 but it's just like putting three steaks and a couple of potatoes in front of a baby. It can't, it can't take it 00:06:38 up and it can't do anything with it. Anyhow, there is still that mistake that's being made in agriculture. 00:06:44 That's where I think from the outsider's perspective, these budget 50 bucks makes you actually feed the baby the right way. 00:06:54 That's what I think is cool about this. But your comments, So yes, that is one thing I'm a**l about 00:06:59 is spoonfeeding the crop. I think when we throw it all out there, we can really, uh, hurt things and with this lower budget amount 00:07:07 that we've done, we is able to really spoonfeed put it out front and let the relay effect of the crops as they start to grow 00:07:14 and have the nutrients they need. The biggest thing is you don't want the crop waiting on the nutrient. 00:07:18 It's gotta be there. Who came up with the number 50 bucks, Stephanie? Um, that was just something that we looked at, uh, 00:07:26 when we built all of these as what's kind of a realistic dollar amount. Um, some we added more money to some 00:07:33 of the challenges we added less money. And that was basically just to get these guys thinking. If you had to cut back from your normal spend 00:07:39 or if you had luxury spend, how would you spend that? The number Gabe used to be, what is it? Uh, Galen used to quote 17% 00:07:46 or something like that of the expected revenue goes into fertility. There's a, there's an actual ratio that you recommend. 00:07:52 What's that number? Probably around that 17 to 20% Of expected revenue outta the field Yeah. That you can justify for 00:08:01 fertility, but that's all fertility. Well, yeah. Yeah, that'd be the fertility part of it. Yep. All right. Chad, you are the send it guy, 00:08:09 you're one of the Send it twins. Is it hard for you to do things on a, uh, rationing? Oh no. It, it's not bad at all, 00:08:17 but it, it is on these yield plots because s got the tab on it. It's very hard when, when, when somebody else got tab, 00:08:24 but when you know when I'm having to stroke the checks or you know, dad, I'm having to answer to Dad and Stewart about what I spent on something. 00:08:30 It's not hard at all because they'll get in you pretty quick. You know? Do you think, do you think that, 00:08:35 do you think there's something like this then Chad the next year, then you look at it 00:08:39 and say by golly, you know what I think we could do it for? I think we could do it next year for 40. 00:08:43 I think we get the same. I mean, do you think that there is an ex like every year is like, oh my goodness, I'll bet you we could do it for even, 00:08:51 we could probably shave 10 more bucks and not lose anything. Well, you know, us as farmers over the last 00:08:56 25 years have done that. We just keep trying to do that and we keep, we keep doing it. Well, you know, um, from where we used 00:09:03 to be at applying fertility to where we are now, we've had a lot of good products. You know, you look at folks at Agri Liquid, 00:09:08 they're always coming up with something new, you know, another way to get something drove into the plant. And so I can see us doing things like that, 00:09:15 but man, I'm telling you this, this the, you know, we just talked about double crop beans here. It's very difficult. 00:09:20 I've been trying this real hard for the last seven or eight years with multiple products and it's so weather dependent, you know, 00:09:26 you can put it out there and you say, well that didn't work. Well it didn't work because it was 95 the week you put 00:09:31 it out there, you know? And so it is just, you know, it's a fun game to play. Um, we have made some good double crop beans. 00:09:38 Kevin makes good double crop beans, you know, so it's, it's definitely worth, it's definitely worth the, uh, worth the effort. 00:09:44 What's the yield range gonna be between uh, I mean there's gonna be a few bushels but different obviously in the challenge between all 00:09:51 of you and that's the fun of it. What do you think the yield difference between the April stuff under irrigation 00:09:56 and this double crop stuff? Un irrigated 40 bushels different. 50. So will you hit a hundred bushels under irrigation? 00:10:03 No problem. If I don't, I'll be the first time in eight years I hadn't. Okay. And so pretty much everybody's prescription, not, 00:10:10 you think everybody's prescriptions, even Johnny's prescription is gonna hit a hundred bushels. Yeah, it should. I mean the land is so good 00:10:15 and that's one reason I wanted to bring it off this land because the average grower in our average 00:10:20 farms aren't that good. So for the public to learn something from this, let's put it in a more realistic environment 00:10:27 and it's a whole lot easier to make a five bushel yield increase in a 50 60 bushel yield environment than it is a hundred bushel yield environment. 00:10:35 So, and that way we want to help the growers that come out to the field day and see the importance and difference. 00:10:41 And that's the reason that we wanted to have both scenarios. We got it in both yield environments, 00:10:46 the 50 60 bushel yield environment, we're hoping to get 70 on those double crops, but the 70 bushel double crops are very good. 00:10:52 Yeah, yeah. I mean that's like found money, isn't it? Yeah. I mean that's very, very good and, and we've had really good timely range, 00:10:58 but it's a long way to the finish line. Mr. Vall, you've got a lot of experience in the double crop thing. 00:11:06 Obviously you're involved in all of these challenges, uh, wheat, corn and soy. 00:11:11 Which one gets you most excited? Are you excited about the soy because it's two different versions of it. 00:11:16 Yeah, I like the idea, especially with Kevin twisted it to the double crop. What I'm the most excited about is we figure out which 00:11:22 treatment one, then we could go in and part out the individual products too and see which ones are actually giving 00:11:28 him the return he needs. Because some of 'em have some overlap, most of 'em do not. But at the end of the day, if it's a 00:11:34 what if it's a $15 product that was giving you the bigger ROI. So that's what I'm more excited about is when we get 00:11:40 through all these trials, it's kind of break down which one had what product different and see if we can just use maybe that product 00:11:46 or maybe two products to get where we are to get that ROI higher. 'cause that's how, that's how uh, 00:11:50 nature and Stephanie is my partner. We can win by having that cheaper product put out. Stephanie he just mentioned to you. All right. 00:11:56 Biggest mistake you think that people make when they're trying to be on a budget for soybean production when it comes to fertility? 00:12:02 Biggest mistake you see farmers make in your nationwide travels? I think people just cut back, uh, everything on soybeans. 00:12:09 You know, soybeans aren't necessarily the big yield big money maker. Um, so they just, you know, treat it like, treat it like 00:12:16 that, that they cut back everything. And so it's a fine balance between you know, what nutrient spend you wanna do, um, 00:12:24 but not spending so much, um, that you're not profitable. So I think, you know, guys just have to look at 00:12:30 that balance instead of just completely ignoring it. 'cause the option, the best option isn't ignore fertility on soybeans, but it may not also be, you know, 00:12:37 drop $200 fertility on them. Either Gabe, somebody comes to you, you're nodding, somebody comes to you, whether it's Mississippi 00:12:43 where your home state is, or up here in India, no matter where the place is, someone comes to you and says, gimme a couple of big points. 00:12:49 I've gotta cut back, I've gotta cut back on fertility spend on my soybeans. Uh, we're, you know, we're talking about less than 00:12:55 $10 prices out here. What do you tell 'em? Gimme the one, two or three things you tell 'em? Well, 00:12:59 I think we pay attention to what we put up, up front because I always like to, like, uh, Kevin was talking about and what we're trying to do to spoon feed some stuff. 00:13:06 So I always look at what they're doing up front and then what the challenge is later on in the season with our soils, we don't hold as much stuff 00:13:13 as good as everybody else's. So we wanna pay attention to what we're putting up upfront, make sure that we have the budget for things 00:13:18 that we need to spend in season. Um, and then I think just like, like what we just said, the environment that we're looking at, 00:13:25 there's a big difference between a 50 60 bushel environment and pushing that to 65 00:13:29 or 70 versus a a hundred bushel environment. I think we really need to pay attention to what we did and not just cut it all out 00:13:37 because they have been, they have been the, the easy thing to cut fertility on. 00:13:41 We cannot continue to cut fertility on soybeans. We, we've got, we've got the varieties to push that right now, and we need to make sure that 00:13:50 let's place all that in the right spot and then make sure that we feed it as we go. But I, I like the spoon feeding approach 00:13:56 and if I have to play with it, I'll play with it up front to make sure that we have numbers that we can play 00:14:00 with in season two to fix some things. Yeah, soybeans sometimes get mistreated. They're not sexy. And then so they, and I like Kevin's point, 00:14:09 a five bushel move from 52 to 57 bushels an acre, that's a hell of a money maker going from a hundred on up. That, I mean, that's, that's, that's territory a lot 00:14:18 of farmers just aren't gonna get to. They just don't have the ability to do that. But 52 to 57, that's, that's a bunch of money right there 00:14:24 that, uh, yep. And it's an easier move to make. Yep. And I think we need to keep that in mind a lot of times. 00:14:30 'cause if we don't, we can get to overspending and then it looks really bad. So, 00:14:35 Chad, last thing from you. Who's gonna win this and why? Who's gonna, who's gonna, who's gonna 00:14:39 win the soybean challenge? Um, well I, I would really like to see it, you know, Kevin's just really good up there on him. 00:14:45 Soybeans, it's gonna be really tough to beat, but I think me and Gabe having have a, I think we got a fighting chance 00:14:52 and especially he done messed around and got a double crop world. It's all over, but the crime. 00:14:58 All right, so Pay attention. We're gonna keep, uh, keep you updated about all of this throughout the season. 00:15:03 Also, we do this at our field days. We have field days upcoming, depending on when you hear this. 00:15:07 August 5th, we're gonna be at Johnny lls, August 7th. We're gonna be at, uh, Kevin Matthews, August 15th. We're going to be north 00:15:14 of the border in Quebec up at Sam Ketos. And then we're gonna round out our field days with extreme Ag. 00:15:18 August 21st. Uh, it is, yes, it is indeed August 21st. Look at the calendar at Temple Roads. That's our last field day of the year. 00:15:25 You can find out coverage from our field days. Go to Extreme Ag Farm. If you like what you see, remember there's a whole library 00:15:30 of videos these guys put out there plus episodes of cutting the curve. It's all free at Extreme Ag Farm. 00:15:35 Also, check out our YouTube channel while you're on the Extreme Ag YouTube channel. It's all free to subscribe, check out our new hit show 00:15:41 of the Grainery where these guys come to, uh, my farm and we record, uh, uh, talk about the personal, the professional, everything in 00:15:47 between about the business of agriculture. So next time, thanks for being here. That's Stephanie and Gabe from Agro Liquid Kevin Matthews 00:15:52 and Chad Henderson and Johnny Verell from Extreme Ag. Thanks for being here. Check out all of our stuff on the Economic Fertility 00:15:58 Challenge throughout the season. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme Ag Farm 00:16:05 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 00:16:09.055 --> 00:16:10.375