Farming Podcast | Can You Boost Wheat Yields on Budget? | XtremeAg

00:00:00 We had a goal of 120 bushel wheat with a $30 spend on fertility. Foli applied. We're gonna find out how that went 00:00:10 with John Rell and Stephanie Linco in the extreme Ag Economic fertility Challenge in conjunction with agro liquid. 00:00:18 In this episode of extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome to Extreme ags Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:00:26 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:34 Hey there. Welcome to a fantastic episode. You know, we've been doing a whole series of these with our partners at Ag Aquid. 00:00:40 We're talking about economic fertility challenges, where at each of the guys farms we did different plots. And in those plots we say our goal is this amount of yield 00:00:47 and with this amount of spend. And we absolutely held them accountable to that, to the penny. 00:00:52 They could not exceed the dollar amounts that they were set for. John Verell's fail field, uh, 00:00:58 he put out wheat at 120 bushel, uh, goal. He had his prescription and each of the guys teamed up 00:01:05 with someone from Agro liquid. He teamed up with someone from Agro Liquid that's in his region and western Tennessee. 00:01:11 Kelly put together a prescription. Johnny put out the crop and Temple did as well. Each of them did very, very well. 00:01:17 But none of 'em actually hit the 120 bushel. Mark Temple did 109 bushels. Kelly did 111 bushels of wheat 00:01:24 and Johnny Re's prescription yielded the best 114 bushels per acre. Also won the ROI challenge, meaning the amount of spend 00:01:33 and then the amount of money that you made off it, which is very important to you. If you are a farmer and you are looking toward next year, 00:01:39 you're thinking, where can I cut back and still actually not sacrifice yield because we are in a tight commodity price situation. 00:01:46 Well that's why we're here for you Mr. Rell. We talked about this and then uh, on a call just a week or two or three or ago, 00:01:54 and then you talked about where things are gonna go. So big takeaways. What'd you do, what'd you learn 00:02:00 and what are you gonna do moving forward? So let's start with the, what did you do? Yeah, so we went out there 00:02:05 and you know, we planted the wheat crop. We had it planted when me and Stephanie came up with a crop I was gonna do 00:02:10 and I was just telling her for me, wheat's something we're always trying to push, always trying to get a little bit more outta. 00:02:17 I thought it'd be pretty neat. Temple makes really good wheat. Kelly makes wheated also. 00:02:21 It's turned out to be really good wheat up his way this year too. And so we kind of put together a team there 00:02:25 that we were gonna have competition. And me and Rob, you know, he was with Aggregate liquid and he, he, me 00:02:32 and him were talking about how can we win this. We didn't know if we'd win it on yield, but we thought we could win it on having a lower cost in it. 00:02:37 So we went that way and it ended up paying off. We won both ways. And I think the takeaway I took from it is being able to spoon feed what the crop is testing for 00:02:45 what the crop is showing you it needs, can work, can work and can really pay off. 00:02:50 Because I think one thing this year that helped us and made some of these yields where they are, 'cause my whole wheat crop did not make, this is, uh, 00:02:59 the spoon feed along the way because of the amount of rainfall we had. You know, I think it was basically from April 1st 00:03:05 to July 1st we had 30 inches, which is a tremendous amount of rain there in grain fill on wheat. 00:03:10 And we were still able to capitalize on some very good test weight and very good wheat yield. 00:03:13 So I think it does work. I think the biggest thing is, is you can sit there and test and see what the crop needs and and adjust to it 00:03:21 30 inches of rain. And normally during that time span you probably get 12. Yeah, probably So, yeah. 00:03:29 All right. Uh, Stephanie, you've been doing these all over the place? Uh, it's neat. It's fun. 00:03:35 Gives people a little something to Wise Crack about Johnny's not really that way. The other guy's extreme ag very competitive. 00:03:42 They kinda ever, they're kind of sassy, you know, they like the smart mouth. John's not that way. He lets his game do 00:03:47 the talking right here. Clearly he lets his game do the talking Temple Temple lets his talking do the Talking Rell 00:03:55 that just came to the talking. What'd you see? Well, I saw with all these challenges, um, everybody had their own kind of personal bias based upon 00:04:04 what they're used to, um, for their location. And that followed through if they're farming on their home farm or making a recommendation somewhere else. 00:04:11 Um, you know, all the guys took a similar approach, you know, on all of their treatments, but it was different than everybody else. 00:04:18 So, you know, I worked with Kelly on this trial. He went all in. He micromanaged down to every little individual micronutrient they are. 00:04:26 If you look, I think there is eight or so products in his overall all blend, which only totaled two gallons per acre. 00:04:33 Um, but he did a lot of little things in there. Um, and so, you know, did it work out, you know, second place finish I guess isn't bad. 00:04:41 Um, but still not the winner. And so I think it comes down to, you know, knowing what that cropping soil needs 00:04:47 and then managing that, um, the best way you possibly can. Johnny, you came up with a couple of thoughts though. 00:04:54 And when we talked a few weeks ago, you said, I, I got, I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do on my wheat next year and then before we hit the record button, you said, 00:05:02 I'm not even sure I'm gonna grow wheat next year. So where are you? Yeah, if you start running budgets 00:05:06 and stuff, it's hard to figure out to justify wheat, especially with your fertility costs that you have. And I think on the wheat I'm going to grow, 00:05:13 I'm definitely gonna cut back quite a bit on the front end and then I'm gonna try to spoon feed it along the way, see 00:05:18 what happens after the first year, see how the wheat looks, see what it's testing for and make those adjustments then, 00:05:23 because that's one thing I did learn this year, you can affect the crop late season. 'cause this all went out. I don't know if s City, 00:05:30 this all went out at flowering, so it wasn't an extra pass. We actually put this big punch in right there at flowering 00:05:36 with a $30 budget basically. So you can still, um, make that yield bump and adjust what that crop needs. 00:05:43 Even that late season. You said this was or was not an extra pass? It was not. I I threw it in with the fungicide. 00:05:49 Got it. Um, so the point is, moving forward You gotta walk up expend. So I mean, I think, I think everything you put out wheated every fall 00:06:00 and you harvest it every June and then you put in soybeans behind it no till you're gonna change your system. 00:06:08 Yeah, I don't know. I mean right now we've, we've cut the wheated acres in half, so it's gonna be interesting what we're doing. 00:06:13 We haven't reduced our wheat acres like this ever. So it's just telling you, you know, when you're dealing 900 plus dollars d you know, close 00:06:21 to $600 pot ash, 5 50, 600 pot ash, it's pretty tough to make those things pencil. But you can still make a crop like this work with some help 00:06:30 with a liquid dot, so to say. As long as you're testing and you know what that crop's calling for and when it's going to need it too. 00:06:36 You know, grain fills a big time, big nutrition time for that crop. Okay. Preload It all right. 00:06:41 Now dam, we're not guaranteed a wheat crop. We can have, we have had, uh, in the last 20 years, we've had two years where a freeze has hurt us one year. 00:06:48 It pretty much took us completely out. That would be devastating to have all the nutrients put up front loaded on a crop 00:06:55 and then lose it, you know, in February. So we, we've had that happen. Right, right, right. Uh, Stephanie, here's the thing. 00:07:03 This is a, this is not the first time you've heard this discussion. Um, we, we, we are in very depressed prices. 00:07:11 I gotta figure out where I can cut. I don't even know if this makes sense. What do you tell people? 00:07:16 Well, I think, um, you know, having a budget and startup And you're a farmer yourself, I should point out, 00:07:21 so you understand this, this isn't just some ivory tower thing, like oh, tough one out. 00:07:25 Oh, it'll be a better, I mean there's none of that stuff. No, I want guys to be successful in not just successful 00:07:31 the current year but be able to farm the next year. And so I like having a budget and sticking to it, um, but also having that flexibility. 00:07:39 And one thing that the fold your nutrition and that spoonfeeding approach helps you with is you can delay some of those, um, 00:07:45 applications and spends. So if you get into, you know, the season and Mother Nature's cooperating, 00:07:52 you can spend those extra dollars 'cause that yield's gonna come. But if the flip side, if something happens 00:07:58 where you're not gonna get that top yield, then you have that option to cut back and not spend those dollars. 00:08:03 So that's gonna help you kind of manage, um, that expectation and that final return for those dollars that you do spend. 00:08:10 Right. Uh, Mr. Rell, the $30 on the, the nutritional isn't the problem. The other numbers you just named, 00:08:21 you just routed off some exceedingly uh, high priced inputs. It's almost like this right here. Great. 00:08:30 30 bucks, that's no big deal. I can, I can justify that all day long. I think for me, the non-farm, listening to you, I'm saying 00:08:39 I'm gonna spend that 30 day dollars all every season all day long. I gotta figure out how I can, 00:08:44 how I can whittle back on some of these other things. Yeah, and I mean I, I, I think that's the key to it. But, you know, if we're gonna reduce all 00:08:52 of our front load fertility, it's gonna be more than $30 throughout the season too. So you just gotta be careful of that. 00:08:58 But, you know, I, I think what's hurting us right now, of course everybody knows we've got a, such a high input cost going on, a depressed, 00:09:04 weak price per se compared to where inputs are. If we were talking $10 a week, we wouldn't be having this same conversation, 00:09:11 but this is where we are, so we gotta figure out how to make it work and try to figure out how to show some form of a profit on some of these crops. 00:09:18 And that's one of the main reasons, I wanna say the main reason I hadn't cut all the wheat out. If you pencil things, nothing looks good right now. Right. 00:09:24 So I'm going hedge my, I'm gonna try to spread my risk out, hedge my bets that by having multiple crops, 00:09:29 something's gonna hit and something's gonna help us make a profit this year. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you could make the same argument on 00:09:34 certain on soybeans right now and possibly on corn, uh, depending on where you are. It's, it's, uh, it's tight all over the place. 00:09:41 That's right. What, what else for next year? Canola? You're doing canola? Yeah, we're gonna play with some canola. 00:09:49 We'll do some foliar feeding on it too. I mean, diversifying is a big thing. I I would just tell people that, you know, 00:09:56 don't go all one crop. I, I can see that being the worst thing you can do. And then I would just be very careful saying 00:10:02 that you're gonna cut all your fertility out. I'm not gonna say you can't stop using one type of fertility, move it to something else that might be, um, 00:10:10 more cost effective or, uh, a timing thing. You know, we were talking about this, you know, also if the crop's not there, if, if it's 30, 40 inches 00:10:19 of rain again next year or something crazy like that, the wheat looks like it's gonna cut 60 bushel. I haven't put any money in the crop. 00:10:25 I was doing this at flowering so I could still reduce that cost in. So I would just tell people to watch out 00:10:31 and really just give that crop what it needs, when it needs it and try to try to make the best we can out of it. 00:10:37 Got it. Anything else, Stephanie? Uh, the economic fertility challenge, uh, have you learned anything? 00:10:42 You're the, you're the agronomist and farmer around here. Is either this actually been insightful for you, 00:10:48 you do this kind of stuff all the time? Yeah, all of it. You know, any trial you can do is beneficial 00:10:53 because somebody is doing something that you haven't thought of, um, that could help your operation. 00:10:59 So I think, you know, learning, you know, I always use caution though because just because it worked for Johnny in Tennessee doesn't mean 00:11:05 it's gonna work for me in Michigan. Um, and so, you know, take that and then trial it on your own farm. 00:11:10 You know, take a little piece of that home, don't switch all your acres, you know, don't look at the results and find out 00:11:16 what this foliar treatment was and put all your acres to it. Um, hoping for the same response. 00:11:21 Just, you know, try a little bit and see what works for your area as well. Yeah. And, and, 00:11:26 and people heard people on extreme ag the last few years really talk about having a balanced crop. 00:11:31 I think doing programs like this really can help you balance it. You know, uh, Kelly threw out about every, uh, 00:11:36 micronutrient you could at it and trying to see which one was going to benefit. A lot of the stuff that we had already predetermined though 00:11:43 was stuff that Kelly was probably doing more in his area, not so much in mine. 'cause the time I got the tissue samples I was already 00:11:49 spraying like the next day or two. So it made it very hard to to work that out. So Kelly might have done some things different, 00:11:55 but having products shipped all over the country and in a timely fashion is hard too. We came up with a plan stuck to our budget. 00:12:02 I knew to go in low 'cause I knew Kelly was gonna blow the budget all the way to the top. So we were just hoping to win on ROI not on yield 00:12:07 and got lucky and won on both. And this was replicated across the field, so it wasn't like it was just a 500 00:12:13 foot pass and that was it. This was replicated. So it was some good data. Tess, you did some good stuff. 00:12:18 So that's the, the difference between the three treatments. Temple Kelly threw out a lot of different micronutrients 00:12:24 and, uh, rol you did more, uh, what you normally do. Yeah, I went basic. This went probably more volume. Kelly actually went probably the least amount 00:12:35 of volume of the products. Wasn't it Stephanie? Isn't that right? Yep. He was by far the lowest. 00:12:39 Yeah. So he, he did all kinds. It's not at high rates. I kind of went with just a few products or a few neutral of meaning at a high rate 00:12:47 And Temple's approach was He did pretty much everything NPK boron, um, at four ga almost four gallons per acre. So Yep. 00:12:56 But they all stayed within the $30. And obviously the, the big winner here was Mr. Rell. And you'd say, well, there's not a lot of difference 00:13:02 between top and bottom 114, 109, well, five bushels at, uh, what, $5 50 cents? 00:13:08 Yeah. Yeah. 27 30 bucks. Uh, it matters a lot right now, more than ever. Yeah, absolutely. You made enough difference just 00:13:15 to pay for your budget on your, on, on your foliar applied agro liquid products. Yeah, it's always good when you, 00:13:21 you do a application like this and you actually get a good return too. I mean, that's, that's the big takeaway. 00:13:25 And I think that's what's been eye-opening across all these trials we've done at all the different farms. 00:13:30 It does. Just because you spend the most doesn't mean you're gonna make the most, but it sometimes you, you do get lucky 00:13:36 and do that, and then you double dip, so to say. But most of the trials, it doesn't work out that way. It seems like, you know, I I remember Matt lost it his own 00:13:43 home last year and, you know, Kelly came in and reduced nitrogen, did all kinds of things with the, a liquid trial and beat Matt at his home turf. 00:13:51 But it doesn't always work that way either. So, Poor Matt has been reminded of this on about three fourths of our recordings that he lost. 00:13:59 Uh, he lost his own contest at his place. But, you know, it's, it, it's, it's all educational, man. It's all good. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. 00:14:07 So if you wanna learn more about the agro liquid lineup, we're talking about the economic fertility challenge here 00:14:11 than conjunction with extreme ag on how you can, uh, cut back, especially dry, applied, and then use more foliar stuff throughout the season. 00:14:18 That was a big, uh, theme here, obviously. Um, we're gonna be giving you results. We owe you results. Now you got the results on wheat. 00:14:24 We're gonna get your results. If you're, depending on how you go about listening to this, you can go back and listen to the, the setup 00:14:30 and how they were put in, et cetera. Uh, it's all there. Just, uh, and type in, in the search engine, um, 00:14:36 at our extreme Ag Channel, agro liquid, and you can see this whole thing. Uh, also go to our YouTube channel and hit subscribe. 00:14:42 It doesn't cost anything. While you're there, check out our new show, the Grain rate filmed right here at my farm 00:14:46 with my friends from extreme ag, talking about everything from the personal to the professional and everything in between, uh, 00:14:51 about the, the industry of agriculture. If you wanna learn more about agro liquid stuff, Stephanie, they go to 00:14:58 Agro liquid.com Next time. Thanks for being here at Extreme Ag Cutting the curve. I'm Damien Mason. 00:15:03 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 402 00:15:11.685 --> 00:15:13.005