Podcast: Maximizing Agricultural Efficiency With A Systems Approach To Farming

00:00:00 Systems approach. What is it? What does it mean? And how can you use or improve your systems approach 00:00:05 for better results on your farming operation? That's the topic of this episode of Extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome 00:00:10 To extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. 00:00:19 This episode of Cutting the Curve is brought to you by cloth where machines aren't just made, they're made for more 00:00:26 with a wide range of tractors, combines, forger and hay tools. Cloth is a family business just as driven, demanding, 00:00:33 and dedicated as yours. Go to cloths.com and start cutting your curve with their cutting edge equipment. 00:00:38 And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ag Cutting the curve. 00:00:45 I'm joined by two of the founders of Extreme Ag, Chad Henderson outta mass in Alabama. Uh, Kevin Matthews out of hula. He, I always get it wrong. 00:00:53 Anyway, west Bend, North Carolina, he's got farmsteads in a couple different towns. I go with the one I can say West 00:00:57 Bend is the one I like to go with. Anyway, we're talking about systems approach. And I wanna point this out. 00:01:03 I, I said I want these guys on because for three years I've been working for extreme Ag. And they, a lot of times when we're talking about 00:01:09 practices on their farm, they say, we go to the systems approach, we go to the systems approach. I say, you know what? There's people like me out there 00:01:16 that are listening that say, what exactly does that mean? I think I know what it means, but go a little more in depth. 00:01:20 More importantly, gimme some good examples of what it means, how you use your systems approach, 00:01:24 and most importantly, how it gives me results. So I'll start off, Kevin, you already gave an example before we hit the record button, 00:01:32 but when you say system approach, without going into the example, what's that mean to you? To me that means start to finish. 00:01:41 That's, that's the getting the planter ready, getting the right products in the right place on the planter, and applying those products at the right time if 00:01:49 the crop allows that opportunity. Chad, when I say system, when you say systems approach, 'cause all of you guys say it, 00:01:56 all the extreme ag guys say it, and I'm not being, uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not blowing sunshine up your skirt. 00:02:01 I hadn't heard of a lot and I've been around agriculture for my whole life. I hadn't heard of a lot until I joined with you guys. 00:02:05 Extreme ag and you guys became almost like, uh, preaching this systems approach. What's it mean? 00:02:13 It means that there's no one thing that you can buy at one particular time and equate to a whole bunch of yield. 00:02:21 It's start to finish, like Kevin said. And it's, and it's understanding the pounds you need of each product and from the pounds of dry you might apply 00:02:30 to the, to the pounds of liquid that you might apply, apply from start to finish. It's the whole system. 00:02:37 You know, you can't stop in the middle of the game. Um, and if you do, there's gotta be a good reason. Kevin's been in a severe drought. 00:02:44 We've been in a severe drought, so you can just, you know, say, okay, I can't make any more. 00:02:50 I'm good. But there's also variances to that. So part of what you're saying, Lee Lubers, uh, talks a lot about rounding the bases, keep going. 00:02:58 You know, it might look like the year is shot. And then I think we heard, and it might have been you, Kevin, at Ag PhD last year, uh, 00:03:05 we were there and you were on a panel with, uh, one of the hefty brothers and the talk was giving up on a crop too early. 00:03:11 So does systems approach mean that, that you don't just all of a sudden pull the plug unless it, 00:03:17 unless it's dire as systems approach mean we do this in the fall, we do this in the winter, we do this in the, 00:03:23 in, in this month. And it, it sounds pretty methodical and almost sounds like a script you don't vary from. But I'm not sure that's true 00:03:34 For me. It's not for, for, for me it's not a script. We don't vary from, for me it's, it's understanding, you know, from breaking it down for farm by farm 00:03:42 and even getting on down to field by field and understanding what nutrients I need to produce the best crop I can make, 00:03:49 and understanding the system that I have to put in place for to do that, whether it's all dry or all liquid. 00:03:56 What am I trying to do and, and what is, what's trying to accomplish? Yeah, I'm, I'm right there with Chad. 00:04:03 You know, I like the systems approach. I don't like putting everything out up front 'cause I feel like I've lost the controllables. 00:04:11 I wanna control the controllables and I look at the different growth stages of the crop and I know from our experience what is needed 00:04:20 in those growth stages. So rather than just putting a great big slug out up front, we ain't got the money to do that. 00:04:27 We can't afford to do that, especially in the base quality prices. Um, it, you know, a good example, the drought hit us. 00:04:35 You know, we went the entire month of June was zero rainfall pretty much. I had one farm had a half inch. 00:04:40 Um, with that said, we parked the sprayers for over two weeks. We didn't move 'em. I mean, they was no need. 00:04:49 It didn't matter what you was going to do. Water was the only thing that was gonna make the difference. Mm-Hmm. And luckily we still had a lot of fertility, uh, 00:04:58 that we had not put out yet because we didn't wanna overload the front end. We wanted to save it for the back end 00:05:04 and be more sustainable with the practices that we were doing. Chad, you mentioned fertility twice already 00:05:11 on your system's approach. So part of that means you came up with a system that says we're not gonna put out all the fertility at once 00:05:18 because then that kind of ties you, but it's not just fertility, right? So your, your system is the fertility, the fungicide, the 00:05:29 Right, right? I mean, you know, we, we gotta spray the herbicides, you know, we gotta keep it clean. 00:05:33 Like that's, that's a given, you know, at this particular time we gotta spray herbicide, we're gonna clean it up. 00:05:38 Okay, well then, you know, we wanna make that pass. We wanna make it the best bang for a buck for the sprayer going across the field. 00:05:43 So am I gonna put in one gallon of K potassium or I'm gonna put in two gallon of potassium or am I going, how much boron am I going to put in? 00:05:51 You know, and what's the plan? Because we know we may need X amount of boron, let's say a pound of boron through the crop of this cycle, 00:05:57 through this crop cycle. You know, uh, we may need so many pounds of potassium. And with that being said, at 00:06:04 what point am I gonna put that in? It's not all one slug. Like, oh, I need some potassium. Let's go out there and put five gallon on. 00:06:09 Because there was a time in my farming career where I chased each, each individual nutrient not knowing better. 00:06:15 Oh, today must be nitrogen day, let me go put some nitrogen on and I'd put that on it. Oh man, I didn't put any potassium. 00:06:20 I might need some of that. Lemme go put that on. And instead of keeping everything even, you know, my, my pot potassium, my phosphorus 00:06:28 and I'm just keep triggering it all on and keep easing it on in. So the very, when I say you vary from when you say you 00:06:35 vary from the script, it's, it's not, it's, it's it's amount of product or, or weather related. Yes. It's never, it's ne the pa the, 00:06:45 you never doubt the passes. You don't cancel passes unless a tornado wiped out your field. 00:06:49 You're gonna do the passes. So the system is, we make seven passes, whatever it is that passes stay the same, the product 00:06:58 might change. Is that what I'm hearing? Right. Or unless you get in a drought, like I got some beans that needed a fungicide pass 00:07:05 and I mean, I didn't put it on, it was right. I was right where Kevin was at. It was two or three weeks dry, hot, no rain. 00:07:12 And these beans, I go out there, me and dad goes and looks at 'em Friday, last Friday and we look at 'em, I'm like, 00:07:17 I'm not putting any more money in these. They're probably 25 bushel beans. Mm-Hmm. I, I just, I'm gonna pull the plug on 'em. 00:07:22 Well, you know, yeah, I'm gonna make 25 bushel beans, but I haven't got any money in it. And so we're still controlling the controllables. 00:07:29 Okay. So when you say systems approach, you, I'm looking at a flow chart. Okay. Rather than a script. 00:07:37 A flow chart means remember it's if this, then this, if that's okay, then the next one, next one. So it's not a script as a flow chart. Is this Kevin? 00:07:44 Is it, you're knocking your head for, people are listening by the way. You could be watching this. You could be watching this. 00:07:50 Um, 'cause we do these all as video and audio. But Kevin's nodding his head. Is that what it means as a systems approach? 00:07:56 Means a flow chart? Yeah, it actually is because you know what Chad just talked about? So when we needed to be putting fungicide out 00:08:04 and uh, we would normally be doing, if we did, you know, a systems approach with no directives, no changes, 00:08:11 we're going to do it this way. It don't make a difference. This is how we're gonna do it. If we had that mindset, it wouldn't work for us. 00:08:17 So what we done this time, we would, we needed to do that pass on our soybeans. And I said, guys, it ain't happening, 00:08:27 but we had grass in the soybeans and grass will rob your moisture faster than anything. You gotta have a clean crop. 00:08:36 So I told the guys, I said, look, put nothing but round up in clean this mess up. 'cause that's all we needed. We didn't need any enlist, 00:08:46 we didn't need, uh, liberty or anything for those fields. We went in there at night 00:08:50 and early in the mornings, we got that sprayed. As soon as we got that thousand acres laid by to where the grass wasn't an issue, we said, 00:08:58 well it's, that's all we can do. If it rains, we'll have a crop. If it don't rain, we're not spending no more money. 00:09:04 We got the rain now. Every acre we need that we have on soybeans should have been sprayed two weeks ago. 00:09:10 But that, that's the way it is. Ground's too wet. We'll be in there later this week. But the, the deal is, is re you know, 00:09:18 Chad talks about reallocating money and this is how you reallocate your money. If you put it all up front, it's gone. 00:09:25 You can't pull it back and say, man, I I got 25 bushel beans I shouldn't have bought, you know, I shouldn't have spent for 00:09:32 a 70 bushel crop. The way Chad and I is doing it with this systems approach and the other guys, 00:09:39 and a lot of our members now are doing this, we're staging these as the crop needs it and as the potentials there, I mean, 00:09:48 I've got products in my warehouse right now that I can send back that I probably won't get to use and I can get a credit for it or I can use it next year. 00:09:56 But if I'd have put it out there, it'd been gone, I would not have got a return on it. Alright, so we're, we're recording this, uh, the end 00:10:02 of July, almost August 1st. Where are you on the flow chart, Chad? If the, if the system's approach is a flow chart 00:10:08 that begins, call it January 1st and then takes you through harvest. Are you three quarters of the way 00:10:14 through the flow chart by August 1st? Or, or is it still got so many mo I mean, because there's still a lot of season left, 00:10:22 The corn is finished. The early beans that are irrigated have one more pass left. They're at R five and they have one more pass left. 00:10:30 Kevin knows about the late, what we're gonna do on late season pass. Okay. And the, the regular beans that are not irrigated 00:10:36 that are, these are April planted beans. They're finished. I'm not putting any more money in them. Okay. For 25 30 bushel. Okay, now let's cool. 00:10:43 Across to the double crop beans, we got 2000 acres of them that we're gonna start spraying today. 00:10:48 We've got some rain that crab where, where Kevin's at the crab grass is coming. So we're gonna clean those up 00:10:53 and we're gonna put a fertility pack in those. We're gonna put some boron in them and we're gonna put some roundup in them 00:10:59 and get 'em shined up. Good. And I'm, I thought I could make it to R three, but I'm not, so I'll have to come back in 10 or 12 days 00:11:06 and be at R three and put a fungicide on and probably a little bit more micro pack and I'll keep, keep moving forward as we keep getting rain. 00:11:13 Okay. The irrigated ones will definitely move forward and the non irrigated ones will, will definitely get the fungicide, 00:11:19 but they may not get the fertility. You know, it's just all depends. All right, I want to go, I want ask you both a question 00:11:25 that the naysayer right now that's listening to this is probably asking, uh, that's probably gonna be the skeptic naysayer 00:11:31 that's gonna have, but before we do that, I wanna tell our listeners about Nature's. Nature's is one of our business partners here. 00:11:35 They're great folks, Tommy and Angie and, and Jeremy and all those good folks there at Nature's. Um, they're focused on providing sustainable farming 00:11:42 solutions and helping you maintain your crops potential and also prop up your farm for future generations using high quality liquid 00:11:50 fertilizers powered by Nature's bio. Okay? You can target specific periods of influence. They talk a lot about that spoon 00:11:55 feeding periods of influence. These guys right here, especially, uh, both of these two right now are talking about this very topic, 00:12:00 putting the fertility on when you can influence the crop if the weather allows you to do so, 00:12:04 wife fling it all out there in the fall when you can do the right thing using products like, uh, 00:12:08 nature's nature's products, uh, help you through your growing season and also can give you precision placement techniques to mitigate stress, 00:12:15 which we're just talking to these guys about drought. Go to natures.com. You can enhance your crop yield, you can boost your farm's. 00:12:21 ROI which is the most important thing, natures.com. Um, alright, the person who listen to this is gonna say, alright, Kevin, I heard what you're talking about Chad here. 00:12:29 You're talking about your systems approach. Sounds like you're just making adjustments through the season. 00:12:34 I don't know what's so fancy about that, but you're gonna tell me. No, it's a little bit more methodical than that. Go, Kevin. 00:12:40 You gotta have a plan. You gotta have a plan. You gotta know how to keep that plant balanced. You know, we've, you know, just like Chad, we've struggled 00:12:50 with boron and we, we've got a product this year we're using from spray tech, uh, boron Max. 00:12:57 We, Chad and I was in Brazil and we didn't like the way they packaged it before and we made some suggestions. 00:13:02 They listened to us much more user friendly now. And, you know, corn, for example, I struggled to keep a a 20 number on the boron 00:13:11 and I've seen a lot of tens, now I'm in the 30 to forties. But what did that do? 00:13:15 When I look at my tissue samples, I've got the most balanced plant now that I've had in several years 00:13:20 because I've fixed one of my limiting factors. Now I gotta figure out what the next limiting factor's gonna be. 00:13:26 So that is, that is how you do this. You've got to have a plan and you got to know what the needs are of 00:13:33 that crop at the stages. And you gotta understand what the potential of that crop is. And that is how this system works. 00:13:41 If you don't get your feet and boots in the field, uh, or have an agronomist out there that you can really believe in, um, 00:13:50 it's not gonna be as easy for you. All right, Chad, I wanna go to you, but I just heard two words here. 00:13:55 I'm, I'm getting a little linguistic, but Kevin said assistant approach means you start off with a plan and then he talked about crops potential. 00:14:03 And what I'm thinking that there's another p word in between there. You start pivoting, not talking about irrigation units. 00:14:09 You start pivoting on your decisions when you think, okay, this crops potential, 00:14:13 in your case 25 bushel beans, I can't do anything anymore. I can't do anymore. So the system is 00:14:18 normally I'd go out there and treat them. I am hunting another P word. I'm punting on that treatment because, 00:14:25 because it ain't gonna do any good. 'cause the potential's I've already achieved the full potential of this crop plan pivot 00:14:32 or punt potential based on the crop's potential. Is that what we're going with the systems approach? Then you just look at it at each junction along the way. 00:14:41 That's a hundred percent right. Um, we just looking at, we know, you know, we know that my soybeans needs X amount of pounds of boron. 00:14:49 I know that my soybeans needs X amount of pounds of potassium and that's what we're gonna get in the game. And we're never, and if when you say systems, 00:14:57 also we're looking at different forms of these products, okay, that does this mean that, hey, 00:15:02 we're talking about liquid fertilizer, we're talking about late season, so we're not gonna put any dry fatu out. 00:15:06 No, it don't mean that. It means also I have a system of different forms as well. We have different products to put in place. 00:15:13 You know, whether it's potassium acetate, like I said from from bio, okay, from nature's, or whether it's, uh, the boron, we use some spray tech 00:15:21 or what have, you know, whether I'm using cowboy from concept agritech, I mean, it, it, it don't matter. 00:15:25 All these products fit in the game. And when we, that don't mean that I don't put out potassium as a dry form, but there's 00:15:33 different forms we're gonna put out, Kevin, when, um, when the person that says, okay, a uh, a systems approach really is just, uh, farming, uh, 00:15:42 because I just go out there and I, these guys go out there and look at it. But you're gonna say no, here's the system we put in place, 00:15:48 but we will make an adjustment at each junction along the system based on, and I'm guessing it's almost always weather. 00:15:57 Well you say crop condition, but generally weather dictates that. Yeah, weather's, weather's definitely the queen in this 00:16:04 because she can go any way she wants to on the chess board. There's no question of that. 00:16:09 The the deal that I really like about this approach is it gives me back to the controllable side. I have more control the way we done things growing up. 00:16:24 You put your fertility out, you planted your crop, and when you laid it by with that applicator, 'cause that's about all you had to spray with at that time, 00:16:34 you was done to harvest and then later on the helicopters and the airplanes got more popular. 00:16:40 But so you do a little bit then maybe some fungicide if you absolutely had to, but outside of that, that was it. 00:16:48 But the way you're seeing the big yields in the south and the east coast that you're seeing now compared to the Midwest is the fact that we don't, 00:17:01 not very forgiven at all. It can be really mean to you and you've got to really be involved in the intensive management and understand when those trigger points are. 00:17:13 If you're talking about soybeans, what makes yield on soybeans? It's the number of soybeans and the number of the, 00:17:22 or the number of soybean seed and the size of that soybean seed with the weight of it. And if the bigger the beans, the bigger the yield's going 00:17:31 to be just about nine out of 10 times in my experience. And you've got to know when to influence that time. Same way with corn, the bigger, the heavier the kernels, 00:17:41 the bigger the bushels, the more money you get at the scales. Alright, Chad, you said once when I was done in Alabama 00:17:47 doing a recording on your farm, you said there's no, you can't just call the co-op and say, Hey, give me the 400 bushel, uh, treatment 00:17:57 and then they just come out with their applicator once and blow out this thing and then you go, they'll, They'll do it. You just won't get to 400. 00:18:03 Yeah, well, yeah, they'll give you, they'll sell you whatever they'll sell whatever they can sell you. 00:18:07 But it, so Chad said that, and I know you, you, I, I always remember what you guys say. So you said there's no such thing as just calling 00:18:13 to the co-op and saying, gimme the 400 bushel treatment and then boom. So that's why you do this. 00:18:21 You haven't quite got four oh bushel, I don't think, but you're yield setter and a and a corny yield winner and all that, whether it's corn, soybeans, or your wheat. 00:18:28 Why is the systems approach the better, the better approach to get to huge yields versus calling the co-op 00:18:36 and saying, I want the four oh bushel, which there isn't one. I get that. What, why is your approach better at 00:18:41 getting big yields? So first of all, we want to, we wanna say that there's nothing wrong with just, it's, 00:18:49 it's all you need to do is figure out which way you wanna farm. Okay? There's nothing wrong with farming 00:18:54 and saying, Hey, you know what, you're, if it was my dad's age, he's 75, I'm gonna call a co-op. I'm gonna put me some fertilizer out, I'm gonna make a crop. 00:19:02 Hey, nothing wrong with that because you're still controlling what your inputs are. Okay? But you don't wanna spend 400 bushel blend worth if we 00:19:10 will, on the crop and then go out here and do a whole lot of folders and then come back and think that you're gonna make one foer pass 00:19:16 and you're gonna make all this corn and it's just gonna be okay because it's not that way. Let's talk about, let's just talk 00:19:23 about A PGR for one second. Understanding A PGR. So A PGR is triggering the plant to do a specific thing, right? 00:19:31 That's what it's going to do. Okay, well if we don't feed it behind that trigger, then it's kind of, it's only got 00:19:38 so much limit to what it can do. So it's a trigger and then a feed, a trigger, and then a feed. 00:19:43 So it's understanding what you're trying to do, at what point in the game that you're doing it. And that's some of the systems approach. 00:19:50 It's, it's an, it's a, a educated guess on when it gets here, I'm gonna do this, when it gets here, I'm gonna do this. 00:19:56 And that's from all the data we've received from universities and other, other, uh, uh, places that we could figure out, right, what the plant needs at 00:20:04 that time in that cycle. So when we know when the car corn plant gets to R one, it needs this or R two, 00:20:09 it needs this R three, it needs this. Alright, Kevin, you've done, speaking of university stuff, you've done trials with, uh, in conjunction with NC State 00:20:17 as I remember you, I think telling me when I've been at your farm and I've been to your field days, which by the way, 00:20:21 if you're listening to this and you, uh, and, and you're hearing this before that, we've got two field days left, two of the five field days. 00:20:26 May 16th was down at Chad's. You missed that one. June. June, uh, you missed the one at Kelly's and you missed the one at Matt Miles. 00:20:32 There's two left. If you're hearing this before August 8th, you can come and see us at Kula, me, North Carolina Hula Mene, 00:20:38 North Carolina, uh, is where Kevin Matthews Field Day is on August 8th. Um, you're gonna want to, you wanna go 00:20:44 to the extreme Ag Farm Field Day to check that out. And then August 22nd is temple roads at the final field day of the year. 00:20:49 I'm looking at my calendar right now, Thursday, August 22nd in Maryland. If you are in the East Coast, you might well check that out. 00:20:54 Anyway, did you learn, where did systems approach come from? Was it North Carolina State University? 00:21:01 Some agronomy professor said this. Where, where, where did it come from in your, whether you shared it with Chad, Chad shared it with you, 00:21:09 Kelly shared it with Ke. Matt. Matt, where'd it come from? Who came up with this? Who came up with this and why does it work? Heck, 00:21:16 Heck, I think Kelly started saying systems approach and I think it stuck with the rest of us. All right, so Kelly might didn't know 00:21:22 Up to do Well, I wonder if Kelly might've been the one that said it, but you guys were already doing it. So whether whoever coined the term, this isn't, 00:21:32 this isn't something you just started doing this year. So Kevin, where, so we, where'd you start looking at it? Yeah, so, so you, you know, 00:21:38 I gotta give credit to Phillip Davis. Um, he's the one that taught me the important times of the crop. You know, we had a, we had a peer group, a lot of us in it 00:21:49 and, um, and several of the real good farmers is, has passed on and gone. And I, I wish I had half the 00:21:55 knowledge that they took with them. But, um, learning those crops and then as we started playing more with it 00:22:03 and talking more, then the universities, uh, like Dr. Ron Heininger at NC State, Dr. Fred Belo at University of Illinois, they got intrigued 00:22:12 with our thought process and they, with the, with the equipment and the labs that they have at their disposal, 00:22:21 then they was able to drill in and identify the nutrient ramp up uptake of these plants at these exact particular growth stages. 00:22:32 And it reassured it, it re it basically reaffirmed what we was doing. Um, Dr. Inger 00:22:39 and I used to do a presentation, we'd travel around, uh, North Carolina, South Carolina, 00:22:44 and it was, it was basically the, the, the farmer and the PhD and I could explain what I was seeing and then he could explain why I was seeing it. 00:22:54 And it, it was a really cool deal because he was really brilliant with that understanding. But it was us guys as farmers trying to figure out a way to 00:23:04 make, uh, extra money and try to be profitable, but yet, uh, sustainable and not just go throwing stuff out there. 00:23:15 'cause we can't do that in these watersheds that we're in. We'll get in big trouble. And I really think all well, you, 00:23:20 You just made the environment, you just made the environmental reason. And you know, that's temple's famous thing about that. 00:23:25 You just said you can't fling stuff around willy-nilly basically because the watersheds, and that's an environmental thing. 00:23:30 That's not just true. You know, where you are, where temple is gonna be true everywhere probably because the, the big arm of the EPA, 00:23:38 but there's also this year in particular when we're talking $4 corn and $11 beans, it's true everywhere probably 00:23:45 that what you're talking now is about the systems approach allows you, you might be putting out more stuff, 00:23:51 the naysayer right now Kevin might be saying, well these guys put out a lot of stuff, but you're doing it in a, in a, uh, very, 00:23:59 we're doing it judicious way so that the plants use it. So, which is better for not only the environment, your bottom line. 00:24:07 Well, a good example, our corn, our, our later planted upland corn. So we have two growing seasons, uh, 00:24:13 river bottoms and upland. Our later planted upland corn was, um, the droughts delayed the reproduction side, 00:24:23 so it stayed in vegetation side much longer. And during that we withheld our Y drop, which was typically what's going to be another 30 gallons 00:24:33 of UAN to finish us out, to keep us about 0.6 0.7 pounds per bushel, which is very efficient. 00:24:40 And with that drought, we stopped, we said there's no point in putting no nitrogen out there because this, the plant's gonna take it up. 00:24:47 And if we do have to go to silage, we've just blow the nitrate level out the roof for no need, if it'll even exor it. 00:24:54 Yeah. So we held up, well, lo and behold, we was blessed. The range came and the crops look like crap, 00:25:00 but we got ears on there. So we cut some four foot tall corn, it might cut 140 bushels, 00:25:05 but instead of putting 30 gallons out there, now that we know, we've got a ear that pollinated, we just put 20 gallons out there. 00:25:12 So we just saved 10 gallons of acre of UAN, which is a significant savings of money because we did that systems approach 00:25:22 and we had an ability to control our total fertility budget at hand. And that is a big deal. 00:25:30 You take 500 acres and you just cut 10 gallons off, that's over a tanker load of of UAN. That's a lot of money. 00:25:38 Does the system approach Chad, allow you to save money because the person, you, you described it, and you've said this before, you're, 00:25:44 you're not in any way being judgemental. You're not, you're not in any way bashing about it. You've said this on your farm, you said this on 00:25:49 countless times that we've recorded. You said there's nothing wrong with farming. The easier way meaning Yeah, call it co-op a couple of times 00:25:56 and don't, don't intensive manage your acres. You'll have less dollars invested. You'll get a little less yield, 00:26:01 but you'll also have less dollars in and it probably still works. Like you said, if it was your dad 75 years old, 00:26:06 why the hell would you work this hard? You chose to go the systems approach and the intensive management. 00:26:13 Is it just because you want those plaques that say you got high yields or does it actually make dollars? 00:26:20 Well, um, we have to learn how to make more with less at the, as the American farmer. And I feel like it's my due justice that I should do that. 00:26:30 You know, I don't feel like, you know, my dad and my granddad built this farm and they built it going through the eighties 00:26:35 with 18% interest. And if, if I just sit here and ride on their coattails, what have I done for this farm? Or what have I taught my children? You know? 00:26:44 And so it's nothing wrong with having, you know, I believe in an RD field. I believe that you should have some, some research 00:26:51 and development on your farm. I mean, I don't believe we should listen to NC State or Auburn University 00:26:56 or anybody else a hundred percent of the time and just say, this is what they say do, I'm gonna go out here and do it and hope that it works. 00:27:03 You know, I mean they're they're giving us a standard to go by, but it's our responsibility to make a living, 00:27:08 make money and to try to do better. And that's what we're trying to do. You know, I, I know that's a long way around your question, 00:27:13 but that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to do better, be more sustainable, use less fertilizer and get the same product. 00:27:21 But that's the, that's that's the long way around the question. But also it kind of answers it. 00:27:24 The, the thing is the easy button method that you said if you were 75 years old and you would still do, you would do it that way. 00:27:33 You don't think you're maximizing the resource. And, and I understand that. Does the systems approach make you more money 00:27:40 or is the easier, is the easy button, it seems like it's probably a rhetorical question. It seems like the systems approach allows you to put more, 00:27:48 be put more, more, more, like you said, more return on the resource, not Return. Well, I'm saying not all 00:27:52 the time. Is it gonna make you more money all the time? No, it's not. Because if you come up with a drought and you make 20 bushel, 00:27:58 you're gonna make 20 bushel If you'd have put all your fertilizer out there or if you wouldn't have put all your fertilizer out there. 00:28:02 Right. You know what I mean? There's some things that mother nature's always gonna win. She's always gonna trump it. 00:28:07 So you're at that, at that mercy. But that's not all the time. And when you have a hand in feeding a crop 00:28:13 and when you know that you can make an adjustment to a crop and you can understand what it is 00:28:18 and then you're growing that crop, then you can make more out of it. Then you can always come back and you learn something. 00:28:24 So when you have a, a damaged spot in a field or you have a spot that they messed up with a fertilizer truck 00:28:29 or you, you have things going on your farm, you know how to cure it. You don't need to send a tissue sample off to tell you that. 00:28:35 It needs more potassium in it. Right, right. You treat it. So it's all about learning, 00:28:40 you know, it's all about learning. And that's what we're doing here. Kevin, you talked about before we hit the record button, 00:28:44 you gave an example of why the system approach you're sold on it versus, uh, making decisions just willy-nilly 00:28:51 and you know, here and there or whatever. You gave the example of an, and I think what you were tell saying is there's a 00:28:58 cumulative effect over time, whether it's the over the course of the season or I'm guessing over the course of multiple seasons 00:29:06 of being methodical with your systems approach. You get it is the old compound interest kind of thing. The results get better and better. 00:29:15 Is that kind of what I think I heard on your story? Yeah, they do. And, and you know, the better crops you grow and, 00:29:21 and soils like Chad and I have, the better the crops you grow, the better the organic matter 00:29:25 you're gonna build in the soils. And we're all, I mean we're very short on organic matter in our soils here on the East coast and, uh, 00:29:33 and the gulf, the the thing that stood out with me is, you know, we was, had some soybeans under extreme drought pressure, probably as ugly as beans 00:29:42 as I've ever seen in my life. I really felt like, um, a week ago, last Friday. And, you know, another, another day 00:29:49 of a hundred plus degree temperature, no rain. I felt like they would be dead. I I hope nobody threw a cigarette out 00:29:55 unless I could watch 'em and get their insurance. But, um, 'cause I figured it would just burn up. But we got seven inches of rain since then 00:30:03 and I would not walk in the field. I didn't even wanna seal 'em. And uh, you know, they're podding, there are three 00:30:10 and went in the field Sunday, had seven inches of rain total. And when I went in there, I was amazed of the pods 00:30:21 that was on the plants that I thought would've been aborted and fell off. So I pulled some up and looked at the roots 00:30:27 and just had the massive root system that our PGRs helped build us up front and our micro packs that we'd done, 00:30:37 and the nutrition that we've done on the soybeans, which is not normal. Most people just, if they treat the beans, that's great 00:30:45 and then they plant them. They don't manage 'em like a corn crop like we do. And by doing that, you know, I've got a potential now 00:30:54 that we've got rain to, you know, easily make 50 bushels on those fields that I really didn't think we'd even get to harvest. 00:31:02 Yeah. So that is the benefit is when no stress has hit and you've kept that plant as healthy as you possibly can and built the biggest root system as you can possibly build 00:31:13 going into those stress events, the outcome of those events is huge. Um, full disclosure, we are chopping some corn. 00:31:20 It don't have no ears on it today, but it was, you know, temperature trumped it a hundred plus degrees 00:31:27 and it, it, it couldn't do its job. It looks pretty, but there's no ears on. All right, I want to get, yeah, by the way, 00:31:33 in case you're listening, it's been terribly hot. They've suffered from drought, they've just got rain, but the rain came too late. 00:31:38 So, uh, Kevin has corn fields, they're going to being chopped for silage and sold to a dairy farm. So that's what, uh, he's talking about there, 00:31:45 which you won't get any plaques for that. They don't give you high yield plaques for that. And uh, no, you 00:31:50 Just wanna survive. I, Damien, this is called survival man. This Is called the plaque you're getting here is the bank. 00:31:55 The bank doesn't, uh, call your loan, uh, plaque Chad. Yeah, they'll give you another loan. It's not just fertility, it's not just even herbicide. 00:32:04 I think when you talk about systems approach, is seed treatment part of, uh, systems approach? Oh, a hundred percent. 00:32:10 A hundred percent because we're trying to address, you know, whatever if whether it's a nematode problem 00:32:15 that you have in the river bottom or whether it's something else that you got going on, it's always a system to that farm or that field. 00:32:22 Um, you'll start with a seed treatment, go into the infer or tub two, you know, whether it's building, 00:32:27 putting a PGR in for a better root system that we talked about, putting sugars in for biology. Um, it's all trying to, you know, make it, 00:32:35 make the organisms and make everything work for you and make it to where it's more affordable. This Thinking about the plaques, you know, 00:32:43 building plaques, you know, that's, you know, that's all nice and NC G's great and I appreciate what they do, 00:32:48 but all that really is, is our r and d that's our research and development plot and that's what those things 00:32:53 that go on there, we see if there work, we figure out how they're affordable and we put 'em into our normal practices. 00:32:58 I'll take a farm average every year over in plaques and I love 'em. They're great. Yeah. But 00:33:04 So speaking of other things that are really part of the system, it planter set up is part of this, I mean, I'm just gonna keep running through here. 00:33:11 Yeah. You guys are nodding your head. So planter set all the stuff that we've talked about on other episodes, 00:33:15 which we have a webinar coming up this week about har about your harvest as your, as your combine set, combine set up, planter, set up sprayer. 00:33:24 Uh, Kevin and I did an episode about pepping your sprayer for the season. We did web. All that's part of the system. 00:33:32 Absolutely, absolutely. You know, you Need how many, how many times is it Kevin, that you remember 00:33:41 How many times? What, How many times is it that you just forget? Like I thought I put them tips on last year. 00:33:47 Oh no, it was two years ago, boss. All of a sudden this sprayer's got 40, 50,000 acres on the tips 00:33:52 and you're like, man, them things wore out. I don't know why it's doing crappy job. Like I don't know why. You know, so, 00:33:59 So instead you switch to the systems approach says every year new, new sprayer tips or every, every year 00:34:04 after every 10,000 acres, the sprayer covers Test do, flow tests, checking things up. Yeah. So when you're talking about system approach, 00:34:12 it's equipment, it's, it's it's equipment, It's equipment maintenance. Damien, I think that's what would some of the, you know, 00:34:18 everybody ought to have their combines in their shop right now going through it, checking it out. Yep. Purpose. 00:34:24 It's equip, it's it's seed treatment, it's, it's uh, it's it's products, it's weather and all that. So get me outta here. What else do I need 00:34:30 to know about systems approach from each of you? Kevin, you led off, uh, so you get this word then Chad gets the last word. 00:34:36 What do I need to know if I'm listening to this? And I always wondered, hey, these guys talk about systems approach, uh, a term that, uh, 00:34:42 that here it means being methodical. It means being, is it written down? Is this on a whiteboard somewhere in your office? 00:34:51 Uh, I mean is it, it it, it must it can't just be, it's just not, it's not just in your head. Because also Chad just pointed out the system's a little 00:34:59 different on one type of farm ground, his river bottoms versus say some of his high stuff. It's a little different system is, isn't it? 00:35:08 Yeah. Danielle's gonna say it's in my head, but we do, we have spreadsheets and go through and um, try to have a, a general plan. 00:35:17 But you know, that plan, you know, a plan is your first route to disappointment because uh, things don't always work out like you plan. 00:35:25 That's terrible. But, but yeah, I mean you got, you got to and you gotta look at the numbers 00:35:32 and see if, if this pro, if this approach is going to be, if there's gonna be ROI there, you know, 00:35:38 hey corn's $4 instead of $6, I need to cut this out. I'm only seeing, you know, I only see a small gain. I'm not going to gain enough right here. But you've also, 00:35:48 Part of the flu chart is price and and that's where we said plan and pivot and ROI potential, but then there's price. 00:35:54 Yeah, yeah. What about Chad? Um, answer me that then. Um, you've got a, you've got your flow chart, which is your systems approach, 00:36:03 but it, it, it might be the same times, but different treatments on different kinds of ground. You've got variable systems based on 00:36:15 not just the weather but also the type of ground. Right? So let's look at it this way, Damien. 00:36:20 It's not the one thing that's in the tank, it's all the things that are in the tank, okay? It is not just because I put sugar out today. 00:36:27 Oh, I'm gonna make another three bushel. No, it's because you put X, Y, and Z with the sugar. And that's what we're talking about with the system. 00:36:34 It's, it's starting with the planter and the infer and going all the way through to harvest. You know, even to the desiccation of that plant, 00:36:43 if you're talking about beans, we're gonna desiccate 'em and then we're gonna gather 'em at the right moisture. 00:36:47 It's the whole package. It's, when we say system, it's not the one thing that, Hey, I'm gonna put potassium acetate 00:36:53 or buy okay on this crop right here. And man, I'm just going to, I'm gonna hit it home like I've done, 00:36:59 like I'm gonna make 82 bushel, you know, and that's the, we hope that's the case, but that's usually not the case. 00:37:04 It's from start to finish. I'm leaving it right there. They've explained to you what the systems approach is explained to you, the benefits of it, it, 00:37:12 it gives you a flow chart to get through your season. And it's not just the season, it's the pre-season and the post-season. 00:37:16 What we just heard from Chad Henderson and Kevin Matthews to the founding fathers of Extreme Ag, I'm glad they came on here 00:37:21 because I gotta be honest with you, I've been sitting here for three years doing these recordings 00:37:24 and I hear these guys talk about systems approach. I think, I don't wanna sound like a dumb ass, but I'm not sure I can know exactly what 00:37:30 that means. So I finally asked, You're not sure you know what it means If finally ask the question. I'm 00:37:34 not sure I still know. Yes. Alright, so anyway, thanks for being here guys. I wanna remind you again, if you're listening to this, 00:37:39 that we got some cool field days coming up August 8th, August 22nd. If you're listening to this and it's already 00:37:43 passed those dates, you know what? You can catch coverage that we recorded from these field days. 00:37:47 So you can take some of those practices and learning and lessons back to your farming operation. I also wanna remind you, if you are listening to this 00:37:54 before the date of August 14th, if you have a kid grandkid niece nephew hired hand that's working toward a degree in agriculture, 00:38:01 we have the extreme Ag scholarship. We're giving away ten three thousand dollars scholarships. This is a big deal. Ten three thousand dollars scholarships. 00:38:08 'cause we at Extreme Ag believe in fostering the future of agriculture. So if you're hearing this before August 14th, 00:38:13 that's our deadline of 2024 and we'll be doing it again next year in 2025. There's a third year we've done it. 00:38:18 So go ahead and go on Extreme ag.farm and sign up for that application. I'm sorry, get the application for some young person, 00:38:23 you know, pursuing a degree, two or four year degree in agriculture. Till next time, thanks for being here. 00:38:28 You got Chad, you got Kevin, you got me. David Mason. Share this with somebody that can benefit from it. It's extreme ag. 00:38:34 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 00:38:42 of your farming operation. Cutting the curve is brought to you by cloth where machines aren't just made, they're made. 00:38:49 For more. Visit cloth.com 00:38:51.785 --> 00:38:54.685