00:00 Is it time for you to diversify your crop mix with grain sorghum? Maybe you don't think so, 00:05 but you're gonna hear from Temple Rhodes and Tommy Rhodes. Talk about, perhaps, maybe it might just make sense for you. 00:14 Welcome to extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where you get a guaranteed return on investment of your time as we cut your learning curve with the information you can apply to your farming operation 00:27 immediately. Extreme ag, we've already made the mistakes so you don't have to. Managing your farm's water resources is a critical component to a successful and 00:38 sustainable farming operation. Advanced drainage systems helps farmers just like you increase their yields up to 30% with their technologically advanced water management products. 00:50 Visit ad s pipe.com to see how they can keep your business flowing. Now, here's your host, Damian Mason. 00:59 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extrem Ice, cutting the curve. It's me, your host, Damian Mason. I got Tommy Roach, 01:06 our friend and business partner, uh, at Nature's who's talking about Milo. He calls it Milo. I call it grain sorghum. 01:12 He's gonna tell you why he's insistent that it'd be called Milo. And we're also gonna talk to you about more importantly, 01:18 why Temple Roads has put grain sorghum Milo into his cropping system, into his mix. Alright, let's face it. Here's what I know. 01:26 Here's about 6 million acres of grain sorghum in the United States of America produced annually. 01:31 Those acres are growing just a little bit because of water pressure out of the Alala aquifer. 01:36 Ogallala aquifer in places like the Panhandle of Texas and Kansas, which is essentially where all of those acres of grain sorghum are. 01:42 So you're asking yourself the same question as me if all the acres are grown where they don't really get rain, 01:47 where they need to put something in there that can grow grain sorghum, Milo, why is a Kansas and panhandle type crop coming to Maryland? 01:55 He gets precipitation. He's, he's got really good growing conditions. Why is he doing that? So that's what we're talking about today. 02:02 Tommy's actually a bit of an expert because of his roots in Texas, and temple's becoming a bit of an expert because he is growing the stuff. 02:08 Alright, why in the hell are you producing grain sorghum in, uh, Centerville, Maryland? 02:14 So this all kind of came about because we had, we have a couple different problems. So we got really, really sandy soil. Um, we got some that just, it needs irrigation bad, um, and we, 02:27 and we can't get around it. So we burn up pretty easy. It can be pretty droughty up here. We're anywhere from three to five days from the worst drought that we've ever 02:36 had. So that's one problem. So we were trying to get around it on some of our really, really low C CSOs. But the other problem that we got is we got a tremendous amount of deer damage 02:48 and we can't get away from it. And we've got farms where, uh, this particular farm, you know, 02:53 we went in there and I cut a tremendous wheat crop off of it, and we get all done and my dad looks at me and he's like, 03:00 I don't know why you're even gonna plant beans on this because the deer are gonna eat you up. You're not gonna have any crop. 03:05 I would just leave it fallow and I wouldn't put a crop in it. Well, I didn't, I don't really wanna do that. So I went and tried to find a, a market. 03:14 I talked to some sorghum producers north of here, and I've talked to some breeders, um, of Milo, and they've got a really good market in this area. 03:25 So I established a market and from there, you know, it's just all about, I've had a ton of conversations with Tommy about this, and, uh, 03:35 I'm trying to learn how to grow the crop. Uh, we're gonna get to what it takes to grow it. But, and then I also wanna talk about your market you found. 03:44 So let's go ahead and go with the production or the market. Which one comes first? The marketing or the production? Which one? 03:49 You go with Temple. Well, you better market it first. You better have a market before you go starting trying to produce it. Okay. So that's, I think that, 03:56 I'm glad you said that because that was gonna be my thing. We in agriculture are geared around production, all means, all the, 04:02 all the interest we get on our webinars. How do you make this more bushels, more bushels, more pounds, more gallons? That's what we love to do. 04:08 But the heck of it is you gotta have somewhere to go with it. You know, you can grow a lot of different things, but if there's no infrastructure, you, 04:17 you know, like the cotton industry, without the gins, you don't have the cotton without the cotton fields, you don't have the gin one goes hand in hand. Most, 04:24 since we already decided almost every acre of grain sorghum is produced in the arid, the arid, uh, lower plains. Um, 04:35 where did you decide to go with it? Because there's no, there's no infrastructure there. I can tell you that the, the Kokomo grain down the road here for me has not got a market posted for, uh, 04:45 Milo. So the market got established up here for two reasons. You know, I mean, one, we're really close to a bunch of ports and two, you know, 04:55 we live up here in suburbia, you know, uh, everybody wants to feed bird seed in the backyard for these mixtures. So that's kind of like the market that I found. There was a couple different, 05:06 uh, webinars that kind of came up. Um, guys trying to, uh, promote sorghum in the, in this area or Milo. And, um, 05:15 it goes for two different things. One, it goes for bird seed and two, it goes for Chinese beer. I don't know what Chinese beer is, but, um, that's, 05:23 so they're gonna export some of that out. So they're trying to drive a, a bigger niche market up here, and it's turned into being quite the thing. 05:32 I I, I've talked to some guys north of here a couple hours north, and they've been putting in double crop behind wheat. 05:39 So that's kind of what I wanted to try to do. I double cropped this after I took my wheat off. And uh, it looks really good right now. I don't know where it's gonna go from here, 05:51 but the market is good enough here where, um, you can, you can take it to a couple, there's a couple different green mills in the area, uh, north of here and east of here that are taking it. But the, 06:03 the bigger play really is, is being able to store it. If you have storage for this, um, you can play it in and they really don't want it until, you know, February, 06:13 March, April of next year. So that's, that's our play. We're gonna, um, there's a bigger basis on it if you can go ahead and you can store it. 06:21 So we're gonna play that basis out, um, is what we're, we're trying to do. All right. Tommy? Uh, I, I guess I, uh, 06:30 I should have known that a Texas guy, like you had, uh, you know, schooling in, in, uh, Lubbock and whatnot, that you would be all about the grain sorghum, 06:40 Milo, first off, why am I wrong when I call it grain sorghum and you keep calling it Milo? So when I grew up on a family farm, we called it Milo. 06:51 When I graduated from college, I was a sorghum breeder. Don't ask me why I wasn't a Milo breeder. I was a sorghum breeder, if that makes sense. I don't dunno. 07:02 All right, so you've got, you've got a history, you grew it as a kid, you learned about it in college, and then you had a job as a sorghum breeder. 07:08 I think I, I think I'm, I'm right about that. Roughly 6 million acres. I mean, we got 90 million acres of corn, 83 and a half million acres of soybeans, 07:16 only 6 million acres growing. Uh, milo, it's, it's not because we can't grow it, it's because it's generally not as high value, 07:24 but temple's tapped into something. First off, he can do it double crop. Secondly, 07:27 he's grabbing a marketplace that the people in Kansas are gonna be a little harder to sell to suburban, uh, bird feeders and then, uh, 07:36 ports that can send the stuff to China. Um, tell me about the, the market then we'll talk about the production. 07:42 So I will make a comment about temple's. Uh, Chinese beer, it is used in Chinese beer, but it's also used in Chinese liquor. 07:53 Uh, they, they go between rice and sorghum, and either way the Chinese liquor is called bayou and it is really bad stuff. So if you ever go to China, don't do it. 08:09 Okay. So I've never heard, uh, of Baju and I've never been to China, nor have I been offered Chinese booze. So anyway, they, they use this, you know, 08:21 as a distillate, if you will. Um, and, and that's something that again, you're gonna have a little harder time tapping into probably, uh, 08:29 without a bigger negative basis if you're in Kansas, I'm guessing. So his, his geography helps him in that regard. Yes. 08:35 So couple of course, couple things. Why it's grown in the high plains, Kansas is number one, Texas, number two, 08:44 I'm guessing Colorado Is three home, Three, Uh, South Dakota. Yeah. Pheasants like, uh, grain sorghum scattered on the ground, but it's, it's, uh, 08:57 used for pet food for the feedlots, for poultry, uh, dairy swine. That's the one of the big reasons why it's in the plains. 'cause it can go to feedlots. Another reason it's grown in the plains is, 09:12 and you alluded to it, is it doesn't take a lot of water to grow it. Right. Which in Temple's case, yeah, generally speaking, 09:21 he has natural rainfall, but in a year that it's dry, kind of like right now you're way off having double crop mild, then you would, uh, having double crop beans. 'cause if you compare it to corn, 09:35 which we'll get into that, it only takes about 60% of the water that, that a corn crop does. So it doesn't take much water at all. 09:44 Yeah. And uh, to, to, to temple's point, he might get 50 inches of annual precipitation, but he's going in double crop. You're taking your weed off July 1st, June 25th or something. 09:55 We, we start taking weed off around the 20th of June and we're done by July 4th. So the point is you get precipitation, 10:03 but when you're talking about sandy soils, also the hottest time of the year. So it does more closely emulate or simulate the 10:12 Kansas or panhandle of Texas kind of conditions. And that's why it works for you. Uh, who came up with this idea? You did, Tommy told you who said he, he said go out and do this. 10:23 I, no, um, it came up with this just make pretty much my dad, to be honest with you. Dad came to me and he was like, don't, 10:31 don't put beans in the ground. You're wasting your money. You're throwing good money after bad money. And I'm like, 10:37 I'm gonna put a crop in. Um, and I had been doing some research on the thing and uh, I made a bunch of phone calls and made it up, hurried up, made it happen. 10:47 And as soon as I made it happen, I reached out to Tommy. Um, that's the great thing about all of our partners here at extreme Ag. 10:54 We always have somebody that we can talk to and we can reach out to. So I reached out to Tommy and he said, uh, he said, Hey, did you, 11:01 did you know that I was a, I used to be a sorghum breeder and I, and I, I, I immediately went back to him. I said, you mean Milo? 11:09 And he was like, well, whatever. Touche. But the, the long and the short is, is like I, I needed somebody to reach out to because I don't know anything about this crop. 11:20 I don't know, I don't know any history. I don't have any past data. You know, I, I rely heavily on, you know, 11:27 stacks and stacks and stacks of tissue samples that I've taken over the years to, to come up with my own recommendations for myself on my soil with my 11:36 programs. And I don't, I didn't have a program. I don't have any past history. I don't know what the crop utilizes, I don't know what its needs are. 11:45 I know that it's similar to corn. Yeah. But, you know, and at this time when I put this sorghum in behind, um, we, I didn't, I wasn't ready to, to put Tube two on there. Fertilizer, 11:58 I wasn't ready to put an infer program on it. One, I didn't know what it needed. And two, at that time, we were in such a pinch, I didn't have time to do it. 12:08 So I had to reach out to Tommy. And Tommy kind of walked me through, you know, what the requirements were and how I needed to handle it. 12:17 And I told him about all the different systems that we have and how we were gonna get around everything. 12:23 Alright, Tommy, let's go to you. You're the guy that grew up raising this stuff. Almost everyone listening to this as not got any experience 12:32 producing sorghum. I mean, I'm, I'm on a, I'm on a, I'm on a limb there, but I don't think I'm on much of a limb. I don't know that to be a fact. 12:39 I haven't done the polling of who listens to the extreme eggs cutting the curve information. But I can tell you just based on sheer acres, 12:47 a bunch of these people know about wheat, corn, and soy. I'm guessing they don't have as much experience with green sorghum. 12:52 It's kinda like corn, you said that we know it only takes about half to 60% as much moisture as corn, which is why it's very well-fitted for places that have tapped out the, again, 13:01 the ogle aquifer is a great example. You, you, even if you have the rights to drill, you may not get any water. So where, where else does it go? Take me through the similarities and the dissimilarities. 13:11 So if you want to compare it to nutrient wise, like a 6,000 pound, and depending on where you're at, you could call it, you could do it in pounds or you can do it in bushels. 13:23 So a 6,000 pound milo or sorghum crop is going to require roughly the same amount of nutrition as a 200 bushel 13:37 corn crop. One of the big differences though, is that you are going to remove more of the nutrients in the corn than you are in the sorghum seeds. 13:51 You're gonna put a lot of the nutrition is gonna go back to the, back to the environment. 13:58 Wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, Al gate, like, I know that, like we'd say, we talked about sunflowers, 14:02 which is another crop that a lot of people don't have any experience with, that also does very well in dry soils. It's, 14:07 it's like notable temple has a sunflower patch to shoot doves. Sunflowers are hard on the ground. It takes a lot of nutrients out, right? 14:14 I mean it, it's, and then so when we talk about grain sorghum or milo, compare it to sunflowers, compare it to corn, 14:20 you're saying it takes more nutrients per, per bushel removed or What? No less less than corn. 14:27 Okay. And by the way, I just Googled it because I wanted to know a bushel of grain sorghum. It's 56 pounds same as corn. It is, yeah. Okay. Didn't know that. I do know. 14:37 Okay. So you're saying it takes less nutrients. That's a good thing also. You're not getting as much output. I mean, if he gets 230 bushel, 14:45 250 bushel corn on that kind of a field planted in April, he's probably, what are you getting in way of output for double crop sorghum following wheat? 14:56 So your guys, I don't, you were saying your people you talked to to the north, they were getting what, a hundred 120 bushel? 15:05 Yeah, double crop. They were getting a hundred, 120 bushel. And I would be like, seriously, like psyched if I got anywhere near that. I, 15:13 I don't know that that is obtainable, but you know, that's, that kind of gave me a yield goal to talk to Tommy. When I talked to Tommy, 15:22 I'm like, look, here's the yield goal. That's what it is. You know, two hours north of me, I wanna shoot for the same yield goal. Like now what? 15:31 Yeah. So by the way, do you know what your breakeven is? I mean, if you, it's double crop and you wanna do something your father told you don't waste 15:38 your time and money and you did. So if you get a 50 bushel crop is at least justify your time. No, I mean, I really need, I need to be breakeven. I need to be up in the, 15:49 in the sixties just to break even with what I'm, what I'm trying to put in. I see. I mean, I'm, I'm trying to maximize this as much as possible. 15:56 It's kind of a learning curve for me. I'm gonna fully send it kind of. Mm-hmm. Um, and then, and I'm gonna back off from that. You know, this year is a, 16:05 is a huge learning curve for me. So once I learn it, then we'll, You've, you've only done it for a couple years. What was your first experiment? 16:12 Did, did you, did you, did you make a net? Did you net some money on it the first time? This Is the first year. This is, this is year one. 16:19 I thought you tried it last year. Okay. Mm-hmm. Uh, and by the way, what's a bushel, 16:22 what's a bushel of sorghum sell for in your part of the world? I mean, then what, maybe we might ask what's temple gonna get forwarded up in? 16:30 I don't even know what it is nowadays. 'cause like out in the high plains where I'm at, it's cotton after cotton year after year, after year. 16:40 And maybe one out of every 10, if you get a hailstorm, people will go back in if they have moisture with milo or grain sorghum. But that hasn't happened in a while. 16:53 Okay. It's, it's usually, it's usually about 75% of what corn board is trading for. That's usually somewhere rough. What it, what it can trade for. Now, 17:04 the differences is when you start talking about basises, you know, when a basis is derived. 17:10 Like it all depends on whether you're positive or negative basis, depending on the, their need. You know, if they need it bad, 17:18 you're gonna have a, a higher basis. And right now, um, the basis is pretty high. Um, for when you start talking about like the February, march, April, 17:31 months of next year, that's when the basis turns on. And that's why I'm gonna store it. And I'm gonna basically, um, hedge my betts. All right. So, uh, let's talk about the production of this stuff. Um, 17:45 you know, temple's brand new at this, so I wanna know what you advised him to do. First off, you planted on 30 inch rows, 20 inch rows, 17:57 fifteens, what do you do? Fifteens, we went out there and we planted 15 inch rows strictly no-till. It was just a planter and seed. There was no fertility out there. 18:06 We didn't spread any dry, we didn't do anything upfront. Um, we went out there with seed, put it in the ground, waited for it to come up. 18:15 And then we decided from there, you know, Tommy was like, Hey, you know, how do you, how do you do things now? And we came up with, uh, 18:25 basically a blend of fertility that he, um, you know, he recommended with like some 28, 0 0 5. Um, we put, uh, some IC fulvic in there, uh, 18:37 a little bit of sugar to kind of buffer that load. And we streamed it on like we did what, like we streamed corn on. Um, and we started with that. And then, uh, 18:46 then we go into the next pass was a, was a herbicide pass. And then, uh, 18:52 on that pass we put a bunch of micros in that Tommy said that it would need at that time, at that stage. 18:58 And our next pass is gonna be dry fertility that we're gonna go over the top and we're gonna spread prior to, um, 19:06 I guess pollination or whatever you wanna call it. So Tommy, you'll have to talk about that. 19:11 So you get to, uh, flag leaf, which would be a boot. I mean, you have a lot of the same terminology saying as in wheat, right? 19:20 You get to the, to the boot, and then once you see the head come out, which is a, uh, panicle, then, then the panicle starts, uh, 19:32 pollinating. It's every alle is bisexual. So it contains both a male and female part. It's not like corn plant where you have tassel and you have, uh, 19:44 silks that carry the pollen to the les every, every floor. It has both parts. Um, so once it gets to mid bloom, 19:58 uh, that is, you get the mid bloom and all nutrients, you pretty much reached 80, 70 to 80% of total nutrient uptake. 20:11 It. Well, why I say it acts a lot like corn. If you look at corn nutrient uptake, especially phosphorus, a good majority of that is after tassel. Mm-hmm. 20:24 And at 60 per, you still need 40% P 2 0 5 once you get to that mid bloom part. So that's why I say it's a lot like, uh, 20:35 corn in that aspect. Uh, nitrogen and, and potassium, you're, you're roughly 75 to 80% once you reach mid bloom, 20:46 which is a lot like, uh, a lot like a corn plant is once you get to tassel. So it's very similar as far as physiology goes. 20:56 When you get to V five, what's happening in a corn plant and V five, it's starting to set, uh, set your ear. When you get to V five and as sorghum plant, 21:08 that's when you start setting the, the panicle and how many branches are gonna be on the panicle and how many individual fruiting sites or forts you're gonna have on each branch. 21:21 So it, it's kind of eerie how, how similar both the crops are Except your corn sets an ear. 21:30 And I'm just pulling up some pictures for the fun of it here of grain sorghum. And I've seen it, I've hunted in those fields in South Dakota. 21:37 I even piddled around and threw some sorghum seed out ones milo seed out for bird habitat on my farm. So the head's on the top, the head ain't, 21:46 I mean, it's kind of in wheat, like, it's like wheat in that regard. So it starts to head out and then you don't know how it's looking. 21:52 Corn people can start making more educated guesses. Can you start making educated guess on sorghum before it heads out about yield? No. 22:01 No. All right. Answer me then the next question. He puts it in July 1st, let's say, because he is using it as a double crop, uh, temple is, um, 22:12 the harvest date in the panhandle of Texas is probably like right beginning of August, right? Mid August. 22:20 Oh no, uh, September. Like if you were gonna plant a irrigated milo or sorghum crop out here, remember we have, 22:31 we have a somewhat short growing season. I mean, it's still plenty chili in, in May, which is why we don't plant cotton until mid-May. Uh, 22:43 you don't plant corn until mid-April. So you're, you're a full season irrigated milo crop, like the, where you grow all of the production seed, Milo, 22:59 it's grown in the panhandle of Texas and panhandle of Oklahoma and Southern. You haven't, 23:05 You haven't gimme dates. You, you, you, you got a little, you got a little tension deficit there for a second. What are my dates? 23:10 When do I plant in your part of the world? When do I plant it? When do I harvest it? 23:14 Uh, you plant it, uh, early may you harvest it, uh, into September, early October. Okay. So it's long. 23:27 And some of the same, some of the same practices that like, uh, Kevin and Matt, 23:32 how they defoliate or how they defoliate beans to get 'em to dry down evenly 23:38 Desiccation. That's what You, that's desiccation that's what you have to do in Mylo. You have to control the dry down. So it'll make for good, uh, 23:47 steam in the back. Is Temple gonna have to desiccate this, uh, milam? Yeah. He's shaking his head yes. Okay. All right. So, and you plan on 15 inch rows. 23:55 Let's go back to the production aspect of this. You went in there, you no tilled into 15 inch rows. The fertility program you just talked about. 24:01 Did you have to put anything else down? Does it have a fungi, does it have a fungus issue? I mean, it, it uses less input. 24:06 So presumably you can get by with doing less stuff at time of planning. Yes. I don't know. I don't, all these questions are for Tommy. 24:13 That's all stuff that's coming up. Like, you know, I, I don't know what diseases that are there that I'm gonna have to, uh, you know, I'm gonna have to fight against. Um, you know, our P G R is gonna work. 24:25 That's another question of mine. Like, is a P G R gonna work, like it's gonna work on corn and soybeans and wheat? I don't know that, um, 24:33 what micross work at, at what time, you know, a lot of reason a lot of people can't get, uh, you know, a response. And I know Tommy goes through this all the time, you know, 24:43 we don't get a response outta a micro. Well, it's probably the wrong microbe blend for that timing of the crap. That's some of the things that Tommy and I have talked about now as far as 24:53 diseases, Tommy, like what do we have coming? You can get, uh, you have to watch out for like aphids, green bugs, things like that. Um, 25:06 you can get, uh, I, I don't think it's much of a problem anymore, but you can get, um, oh, it's called ergot, 25:14 which is which like, uh, ear smut, that's what it looks like. Yeah. Uh, but really my load, I mean, grain store was a pretty, 25:26 I don't wanna say no-brainer, but it's pretty easy. Well, I was, I was told when I first started talking about it, and I was like, you know, this is what I wanna do. I wanna do this, I wanna do that. 25:35 You know what I like, I'm come thinking about it as my corn program and the guy goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. You're way overthinking this. Do not overthink this crop. 25:45 It's not gonna take all the what you think that it's gonna take. And, and I have a real hard time backing up. 25:52 Okay, well, it might just be an easier crop to produce. And I'm not in any way insulting the, the guys that farm and the gals that farm, the 6 million acres that we produce. 26:00 I've actually predicted we're gonna see more of it. Grain sorghum. The National Grain Sorghum Association has been a client of mine way back when. 26:07 And, uh, I guess my thought is if we're gonna have more pressure on production agriculture from the environmental crowd, 26:16 there's gonna be maybe this idea that we should do things that are easier on the environment, like grow sorghum, it doesn't need as much water, et cetera. 26:23 There's another angle. It seems to me the foodie crowd, um, is into this. And Tommy's shaking his head yes, there's, 26:30 and I've read several articles. It's kind of like the same thing that brought up the non G M O or the thing seemed to brought up the, the gluten problems. 26:39 That same crowd seems to have a sort of affinity for sorghum based products. And I haven't seen a lot lately, 26:46 but it was a couple of years ago. So take me there. You would be, uh, surprised if I told you there was over 350 26:58 different food products in the US that grain sorghums a part of. Okay. 27:05 Already. Okay. Already. And, and it may be more common and, and temple stuff goes for, and temple stuff just goes for Chinese booze and birds. Um, all right. 27:15 Tell me about harvesting. Uh, so Speaking about birds, Well, before we get into that, let's talk about the harvesting and then we'll talk about the products again, 27:23 uh, harvesting. How are you gonna harvest it? And when, I have no idea. When I know that I'm probably gonna have to desiccate it. Um, you know, it's corn head. 27:34 Let's go with the simple No, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use a draper. Draper, you know, it's, uh, yep. Just a regular draper. 27:40 It's the same one that we cut beans and someone we cut wheat with same head, you know, it'll be locked up, you know, 27:46 we're gonna cut it couple foot off the ground, right Tommy? And we're just gonna clip heads and run through the crop. 27:51 Yep. Okay. So the good news is since you're a bird hunter, if you leave the, uh, the, the stuff out there, there's gonna be bird habitats. 27:58 You're only just taking the top of the heads off. Doesn't the grain sorghum plant get to be about three feet tall, Tommy? Depending on which hybrid it is, it could or it could be taller. Yeah. 28:10 All Right. There's some that might be shoulder high. Okay. But those typical, those, those would be my, uh, fuller season, uh, 28:18 hybrids. Okay. So you're gonna harvest it with a green, a green head, uh, and then you're going to, uh, have this stuff. Are you gonna store it? 28:26 You said that part of the, the I am idea for you to add, to add margin for you is if you can store it because it, the, 28:32 the demand might be, and you can't go forward sell this, can you? Yeah, you can go forward and sell it just like you do any other commodity. 28:40 I mean, there's, there's nothing any different. I mean, there's a market there. We can, we can afford contract, 28:45 we can play the market just like we do any other one. Um, but I am gonna store it. You know, we store all of our crops anyway, 28:52 corn and soybeans and wheat as well. So I'm, I'm looking for the best possible basis price that I can get, and I'm gonna play the market. 29:01 Uh, I'm looking here and I'm seeing different stuff. I'm seeing like eight bucks. Does that sound like a normal number? Eight bucks a bushel? 29:09 It's, uh, it's fairly close to that. It all depends on the time of the year and, and their need. Sure. But Right, right now I think they're, they're, 29:16 they're a fair amount lower than that right now. All right, Tommy. So the person that's listening Know where you're at, it could be a bushel or a hundred weight. 29:23 Okay? Yeah. Some places they sell it per a hundred weight, some places per bushel. Um, the person that's listening to this that says, 29:29 you know, maybe I should dabble in this. First off, you got have somewhere to go with it. We establish that birds, Chinese booze, uh, normal markets, obviously, 29:39 if you're in the Pan Hill of Texas, the local elevator just buys sorghum milo every day because that's what they do. Just like there's a cotton gin in and Matt's more part of the world, 29:48 or a place that buys soybeans in my part of the world. So if you got a market, uh, or you can tap into a market, uh, then what, 29:55 what's the next thing I need to know? Sounds like it's versatile enough. I can plant anywhere from about May 1st till July 1st, 30:02 and it's gonna get a crop. It does. I Can tell you that. Well, on, on less than desirable ground. 30:10 Uh, it doesn't like a wet foot. It does not, It does not like a wet foot. We got, we got some ground that's, that's on the heavier side that we had pretty, pretty bad deer dams, 30:22 and it was dry when I planted it. And, uh, it's kind, it's a little bit wet there now and it's not digging it, but that really sandy ground, it's digging it like, I mean, it's, 30:33 it's on point now. I mean, it is, it is known as a drought tolerant crop. Absolutely. It is. Hey, Tommy, does this ever get chopped for, uh, 30:44 silage or made into straight into, you know, animal feed? Obviously it should, right? 30:48 You can have, so there's different sorghums. You can have forged sorghum, which is, I mean, it could be 10 15 foot tall, 30:59 and that can be chopped for, I mean, that's chopped all the time. Okay. So they chopped that for silage. Absolutely. Uh, all right. So what, 31:08 what's from here on, what's temple need to know between now? And he probably will be harvesting it, I guess sometime in October, 31:15 we think maybe. So one thing that I was gonna say about birds, uh, sorghum can be both good and bad for birds. It can, it can, 31:25 you know, be a good habitat for pheasant. But if you have black birds with, with that head sitting right up there, you're gonna have to watch for birds, 31:37 Meaning that they're gonna steal his crop. Oh. Meaning that, yeah, you better get you a shotgun and, and either It doesn't seem very practical on hundreds of acres, 31:46 how many acres you put out for your experiment temple. Um, I think it was 185 or something like that. So he Is gotta go out and cover 185 acres with a 12 gauge. 31:54 It doesn't seem very practical, Tom. I I think it's one of these things that when the crop's ready, Tommy's saying that you better be ready to go get it. Do not 32:03 Let it sit there beginning. Uh, all right, so my last couple of questions. From a fertility standpoint, you, you know, there's, 32:12 there's always these things you talk about people growing continuous cotton down your part of the world, they're gonna deplete the heck out of one thing, 32:18 the sorghum. Is there anything that like, is very different about it? Like, oh man, 32:22 the one thing if you're gonna follow Milo is you gotta go in and amp up the whatever, sulfur. But 32:31 No, I mean, it, again, it's not too much different than than corn. I mean, it doesn't, it gives back just because of, of yield and I mean, 32:42 it doesn't yield as much as corn. Mm-hmm. You're not hauling off as much, much nutrient in the, in the actual grain. 32:50 So you know, it's gonna give back a good chunk of what, what you put out there Out there. Doesn't it have a pretty massive root system, Tommy? 33:01 It's just, again, I hate to keep saying it, but it's, it's a lot like corn. I mean, it'll set brace roots and it'll, it'll, it'll put down one mother of a root system, 33:14 Which should be good for organic matter. It should be good for infiltration of water and should be good for porosity. Uh, I mean, I, I'm trying to decide, is there a, is there a knock on this? 33:22 Is there a reason why we, I guess why won't we see more of this? I mean, I think that we should see more of this. Yeah, 33:29 Because it's not sexy. Uh, I mean, it's true. It's just not, Yeah, 33:36 I don't know about that. Tommy. I, uh, speaking of sexy, you know, I, I sent you that picture the other day. Um, you know, 33:43 our beans or you can see down the row and they're not really filling the row all the way out. I planted the sorghum at the same time. 33:49 I go down there and I take a picture and I sent it to Tommy, and I was like, the whole entire field, it's like one big black green carpet. I mean, 33:58 it's covered up in between the rows. I think it's pretty sexy. I'm not gonna lie to you. It's sexy. 34:04 You know what, making money doesn't have to be sexy. I know a guy that's worth enough money to buy all three of us put together, and, and he did it with a, a, an excavating business and porta john's, by God. 34:15 It doesn't have to be sexy to make money. And I think that's what we need to, yeah, that's what we need to probably go with. 34:19 So I can't see a bad thing about the ground. It's got deep roots. It's gonna add, contribute to organic matter. It's, it's, it handles drought, 34:27 which, you know, in years like this, there's a lot of people that wish they, you know, had something that was a little more drought resistant. Uh, 34:33 it satisfies the environmental objective, the foodie crowd. It seems to be growing. Its consumption of this. I can't see a bad thing. 34:40 I don't, I, and then also we can find alternative markets that are not, let's face it, we've got enough corn. 34:45 That's where our figure out ways to make ethanol. We, we got enough of this. We got now places to take eth, uh, 34:51 sorghum milo and put it in booze and bird seed. Seems like it makes sense. Yeah. I can't see a bad thing about it. It's just about being close to a, to a market. I mean, 35:02 otherwise there would be a whole lot more of a grown. Would it make sense, you know, in the old days of the cooperative spirit where you and me and Temple said, 35:11 well, let's pool our money and our resources and come up with a processing facility and, and share the ownership of it. Is, 35:16 is that something that would happen in a more modern version where they're like, you know, there's, there's growing consumption of this, of Milo, let's, 35:25 let's create some infrastructure to create more acres. Well, I think that's what's happened, um, just north of here. That's, that's the reason that they're, they're trying to promote it. 35:35 It's the reason that, that they're driving more and more into this. And, you know, 35:40 Milo's not something that I would've ever considered to do a double crop on, but they've been pushing it now for two, three years and it's growing here. And, 35:50 hey, look, if I can take some of that, um, that less than marginal ground, and I can grow a good crop on it, and I can turn up, 35:58 turn some profit on it, man, it's sounds great to me. And since most people listening to this are into the production side of it, so you planted it, you put down fertilizer in furrow or, you know, 36:08 starter fertilizer, you've gone over it how many times with the sprayer? So, so far, this is what I did. Planted it with nothing on the planter, 36:15 no tube or two, no in furrow. I came back across it, um, with Tommy's recommendations, 36:21 and we put a streamer pass on and we streamed fertility on. Um, I've been across once with a, 36:28 with a heavy micro slash more fertility, not really a micro pack, it was more of a foliar, uh, fertility, 36:36 like a real foliar fertility like they have at nature's. Um, not just a micro pack. Um, I've done that. 36:43 We are now getting ready to, um, put a dry fertility on. Um, we're gonna treat that dry fertility with some stuff, 36:51 and we're gonna spread it over the top and hopefully we will be done with all that. And the rest that we're gonna do is gonna be just, you know, 37:00 maybe small micro packs and maybe a P G R to try to stimulate some response, um, and control disease and control insects. And we're pretty much done. I, 37:09 I probably got, um, maybe two more paces to make in it. I've made now three, You compared to the average, uh, Milo producer, 37:18 you might've already been stepping on the gas a little too much. Yeah, laughing. I do that. I I didn't hear guilty 37:24 Fungicide. Did I hear fungicide? Yes, I will. I've actually, without Tommy's recommendation, I've already put fungicide on once. Yes. 37:32 Okay. So, so Tommy says you don't need to put fungicide on it. So Tommy thinks you've already, you've, you've overdone it. And, and, 37:38 and maybe that'll work for you, but also you might find out that you did three more things than you needed to and, and made the same money, uh, insecticide. 37:46 Uh, yep. I've already had that out there too. And you did recommend that, Tom. I would agree with that one. Yeah. But you don't think Cool. All right, so he is gonna harvest it in October. 37:55 What I'd like to do is do a revisit to this and say, okay, what did we find out? We, this is a long episode talking about the re the why, the background, 38:01 where it goes, et cetera. Then I wanna find out when we do a shorter episode about what were the results and did you make money? Because you know what? I'll say it again. 38:10 You don't have, it don't have to be sexy money, money's sexy all in its own little way. All right? I'm telling you, I'm telling you, Damien, 38:17 when you come up on August 22nd and me and you go around and do a bunch of videos, the day of my field day, I'm gonna show you it's sexy. 38:24 I'm telling you it's sexy. I, I, I think anything that's, I think I'm all about the country. I'm all about making money. And yes, I will be there on August 22nd. 38:31 If you are hearing this before that date, August 22nd is the field day at Temple Roads is from, uh, what, four to 8:00 PM Yeah, I think that's right. 38:41 Okay. It's, it is, it's sometime around quitting time, four to 8:00 PM He'll be making me work late that night. Uh, it's at Centerville, Maryland. If you want more information, 38:49 go ahead and just reach out. We'll get it to you. Also, remember, if you want to catch webinars, 38:53 we put out webinars the first Thursday of every month. It's fantastic. Every evening, every first Thursday of the month at seven o'clock Eastern, 38:59 four o'clock Pacific time, we do a webinar covering a different subject. We got the webinars, we got hundreds and hundreds of videos, 39:06 hundreds of these cutting the curve podcasts at Extreme Mag Farms. Share them with somebody I can benefit from. So next time, 39:12 Tommy Roach from Nature's and Temple Roads from the Experiment Station 185 acres of Milo, and I think he's gonna make money at it. We'll keep it posted. Till next time, thanks for being here guys. 39:24 Thanks guys. It's extreme ice cutting the curve. That's A wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve, but there's plenty more. Check out Extreme Ag Farm where you can find past episodes, 39:35 instructional videos and articles to help you squeeze more profit outta your farm. Cutting the curve is brought to you by Advanced Drainage Systems, 39:45 the leader in agriculture, water management solutions.