If You Could Keep Only One Micronutrient, Which Would It Be? | The Granary

00:00:00 You get to keep one micronutrient in your farm's fertility program the next growing season. What one micronutrient will you keep? All the others are going away. 00:00:10 That's what I'm talking about as we're geeking out on agronomy in this episode of "The Granary." You ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real 00:00:17 issues? And the best part, you're invited. So pour yourself a drink, grab a snack, most importantly, pull up a chair. 00:00:27 Welcome to "The Granary." Hey, guys. All right, guys, you heard the topic right there. I've got Chad Henderson from- 00:00:40 Hmm ... North Alabama. He's joined by Texas Todd Kimball from Texas, of course. And we've got our sponsor here, our friend Tommy Roach with Nature's. 00:00:48 Nature's a fertility company that's been around for 80 years, since 1946. If you want to learn more about how their product line can help you farm 00:00:54 better, go to natures.com. Thank you very much for the sponsorship and bringing this awesome episode and topic. We're geeking out on agronomy, which I said 00:01:02 before we hit action, and I am, of course, I'm wearing my FFA soil judging jacket. Todd's never seen this before. 00:01:07 I was the ninth-best soil judger in the nation in 1987. I think that's really important to throw that out there as we're geeking out on agronomy in this topic. 00:01:15 There would be eight. I was wondering. So I... Don't you laugh. So- 00:01:23 He was one. That was good. He was number one. So as a condition of keeping our sponsorship with Nature's, we always have to geek out on agronomy about once every five or 10 episodes, which is fine because a- 00:01:34 agriculture- Pretty light. That's all right ... where would agriculture be without soil? And where would the soil be without people like us that want to talk about it? 00:01:40 So anyway, I didn't even know for sure what a micronutrient was, even back when I was the soil judger in the nation. I've gotten there now. 00:01:48 Of course, we're going to say boron, because I've learned more about boron since I joined XtremeAg. We went to the Farm Progress Show, and we did a video with 00:01:56 some dude that was in a boron company. And between him and Chad, it was like two 18-year-olds at a nudist camp or something. 00:02:03 They were just that wound up over the situation. So anyway, I'm saying he wants to keep boron. You said before we hit action on this episode that some of these things I thought 00:02:13 were micronutrients aren't. I thought sulfur was a micronutrient. Macros. What'd you say? Macros? What? 00:02:18 Primary, secondary, and micro. We might already explain that first where me and Todd- Yeah 00:02:22 ... can peek. So Matt was over there saying, "Well, if I was in this episode, I'd be talking about sulfur." Kelly yesterday said, "Oh, I'd be talking about 00:02:31 calcium." Neither one of those are micros. Yeah. You have macro, or primary, which is NPK. 00:02:39 Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. Then you have secondary, which is calcium, mag, magnesium, and sulfur. Then 00:02:48 you have all the rest of them. Zinc, manganese, copper, iron, boron, moly- And we need all of them- 00:02:53 ... cobalt, whatever ... in some capacity to produce a good crop. I actually thought it was neat, Kelly said once in a recording that he thinks 00:02:59 nitrogen should get its own category. It's a macro-macro because we use it so much and over-apply it. And then there's phosphorus and potassium. 00:03:07 Then there's, you said secondaries, but then there's even micro-micros, that you need them so sparingly that they're almost not worth 00:03:14 mentioning, but you need them. But don't you understand that crop, 00:03:19 corn, potato, we'll throw alfalfa. You got alfalfa right back here. They actually need more potassium than they do nitrogen. 00:03:27 So why would you create a special macro-macro column for nitrogen and not include potassium in it? He's from Iowa, he don't know any better. 00:03:37 It's not the Iowa people. Don't get it wrong. I'm just saying, he has an abundance of a lot of things. Yeah. 00:03:42 Right, Todd? And organic nitrogen. Yep. Yeah. Organic. So- Yeah. 00:03:46 What micronutrient are you keeping? You got to get rid of all the others now that we know where they are. Now we know which elements- 00:03:51 So wait, I got one more question before he answers. So is this, do I get to keep one per farm in particular? Can I pick this one on this farm and this one on this farm, or is in general, 00:04:01 on your farm, Todd's farm, or my farm? You see what I'm getting at? Like, is it like- 00:04:05 Some places need different ones. Yeah. Todd's going to pick one thing because of this A micro. One micro. 00:04:10 One micro. One micro is all we get. Zinc. Zinc. Ooh. For corn. For corn. 00:04:16 What are you going to do on cotton? Ooh. Hmm. Now that's a whole different question. Potassium. That's not a micro. 00:04:23 That's not a micro. That's right. That's right. In fact, that's not even a secondary. I would say- 00:04:29 That's a macro ... if you keep one on cotton, it'd be boron. Boron. 00:04:32 It'd def boron- Boron ... flowers, right? Yeah, boron. So I threw out, which nobody wanted to do it, but I threw out, "What's your favorite color?" 00:04:40 Hmm. Your favorite color is white because you love to kill crops with too much boron, then it turns them white. 00:04:46 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I probably have done that when I left. Mm-hmm. I didn't even listen when I get back. 00:04:50 So by the way, is it region-specific? Do you understand how much it takes to turn something white? He's found out. 00:04:55 Have you ever done that, though? Have you personally? I have not. So see, that's what I'm saying. That's a whole myth. We can talk about myths later. 00:05:01 You can turn a whole green crop white- You can turn it white ... by using too much of a nutrient. 00:05:05 Well, is it region-specific and soil-specific and crop-specific? Because this is a hard question to ask- 00:05:10 Uh-oh ... because he's the same field across the road from one of these guys. Heck, we could say it's field-specific, couldn't we? 00:05:15 I mean, that's- No, it is. It is. But zinc, I think in my high calcium soil, without zinc, I'm in real trouble. 00:05:22 You got a lot of phosphorus, too. Yes. Which is tied up with calcium. Right. 00:05:26 And we all know that if you got a lot of phosphorus, you got to have zinc come along with it. I'm not sure that he's not 100% right. 00:05:33 I do love boron, but I think I could make it potentially without boron, right? But I don't know that I can make it without zinc. 00:05:39 No. And I don't know that... We talk about we want to be 10 to one, or seven to one, or five to one. I don't know that we know where we need to be, because every time we 00:05:47 keep applying it- All I know is people aren't putting out enough ... all I know is- 00:05:51 That's... I believe you ... wherever we're at, we're 5X wrong. Right. And back to the nitrogen, putting out too much nitrogen, too 00:05:58 much N is causing a bunch of these things to not be plant available, so. 00:06:02 What, does it screw up? Balance. Yeah. So that's the other one in our question to geek out on agronomy. It may not be that you need this particular micronutrient, 00:06:13 you just need to back off on something else that is screwing that one up because of this unbalance. 00:06:17 Well, see, I got another theory. So if you've got too much of one, it's not that you have too much, you just don't have enough of the other. 00:06:24 Mm-hmm. Okay. Instead of saying, "Oh, I got too much of that, I'm not ever going to do that," well, you just got to get the other one. 00:06:29 We was talking about your base sets, right? That's right. We were talking about, what was it of calcium? 00:06:33 94. 94. Yeah. Okay. I love it. So what would we... How much- Oh 00:06:37 ... sulfur would we put down? He tried what? 500 pounds of AMS? AMS. 00:06:43 And it's, I guarantee- It's still not enough. Still not enough. Chad, I say the same thing when people tell me, "Ah, I'm not feeling that great. 00:06:50 I drank too much last night." I'm like, "No, you don't drink enough the other nights, otherwise this would be normal." 00:06:55 Oh. Prime example. Prime example. Or you didn't drink enough water before, right? What do you find out? Kelly Garrett said once, Tommy, then they started 00:07:05 doing sap testing, not just tissue sampling, not just soil sampling, sap sampling, so you can find out what's happening in that plant, in that crop right now. Right? 00:07:13 And he said, "We haven't pulled one this whole season that wasn't zinc deficient." Where was this? Corn. 00:07:18 Well, even Dan, over his course of many years, if you look at tissue testing, what it comes back may be one thing. But if you look at the adjusted numbers that people 00:07:33 should be using, every sample he's looked at over recent years has been 100% deficient in zinc. 00:07:40 And like I said, we don't know how much is too much. It's just like potassium. If you could ever, how much would it take hypothetically, and it's all different, but if you went one-to-one 00:07:51 with nitrogen potassium? Available potassium, right? Like even, you know, not just- And we're not talking about throwing out, in this case, potash. 00:08:00 Yeah. That's the wrong thing to do. Yeah. But yeah. We tried that. Are we better at this than we were five years ago? 00:08:05 Are we better at this than we were five years ago? I made the joke, I didn't even know what a micronutrient was- My farm is 00:08:08 ... 20 years ago, 30, 40 years ago. Ah, my farm is. I'm not sure that a lot of farmers knew the value of micronutrients even as recently as 10 or 20 years ago. 00:08:15 Oh, it was... Dad even told me, he's like, "It used to be a pretty big deal if you bought a micro bag." 00:08:21 Yeah. Like he was like, "Oh yeah, you're really pushing it." Yeah. 00:08:23 Oh. You know? I would agree with that. The stuff that you're doing as a standard practice right now- Oh, yeah 00:08:27 ... in terms of micronutrient fertility- Yeah ... was outside of the box, crazy-ass stuff 20 years ago. Yeah. We're just like, "We're really going to push on it." 00:08:35 Yeah. And I think we've improved because at least people are applying zinc. But okay, if you're putting dry, say, zinc sulfate in 00:08:43 a broadcast blend, and you're only putting 10, 20 pounds in there- Which is- 00:08:48 ... think about, you got a granule over there and one over there. I mean, are you really doing any good? No. 00:08:53 No. You're not. Yeah. So- But the... And the best thing about zinc is what they tell me, now you tell me if this is correct, that the only way it's going to leave here is if we use 00:09:03 it up. Yeah. It ain't moving. It ain't moving. No. So think about that. So you- 00:09:07 And that's going to tie up with- But does that mean that once you get it right, you're- 00:09:11 Bingo ... once you get it right, you're good. So I took one farm and done that about three years ago. Yeah. 00:09:16 Took one farm and said, "Okay, what's it take to get the ratio right?" But for of the numbers we have at hand, which those numbers are probably 50% off, right? 00:09:24 Yeah. So what we take to that, it was 30 pounds. 30 pounds. We applied 30 pounds of zinc to that farm, and now you can see it. Like you can literally see it and it's a... 00:09:33 But it's still applying every year as a maintenance. All we do is just- And you're putting it in a strip. 00:09:39 Yeah. And then we put it in a strip. This year, I'll say it right here. This year I had 2.6 pounds 00:09:46 of actual zinc in the strip. Actual. That's a 36 or 35, 36, 37% product, right? 36. 00:09:54 30- 35 and a half for zinc sulfate. Yeah. So 2.6 actual pounds of zinc in the strip. How much zinc do you put out? 00:10:02 Not near enough. What? Maybe- Quarter pound max. Will you put a gallon in season? No. 00:10:07 No. I had two... And a gallon, would a gallon be a pound, right? No. Pretty close. 00:10:11 So I had 2.6 pounds in the strip. So- And we're still putting zinc in. Can I ask a few questions here? Let's go to the agronomic expert, then the guys 00:10:20 that are out there getting their hands dirty doing this. If we know more about it now, are we still 00:10:26 not getting it right? You just had to correct two farmers- No 00:10:29 ... last night on what a micro was. I mean, they're punching- One called calcium, one called sulfur 00:10:31 ... they're punching the easy button. They're going to put it in the broadcast, and we all know that that's wrong. 00:10:40 Right. But that's what they're doing. Okay. So your assessment here of, and you get all around the United States of America is, we understand it, but we're not 00:10:50 maybe refining our practices enough? You're not putting it in the right location or at the right time because, okay, for those that are doing it in a strip 00:10:59 or are doing in-furrow, so they're putting a quarter- Or one drop or as two-by-two, whatever ... so at least they're putting it in the right spot to where a plant can 00:11:09 get it. Yeah. But I will tell you, if I had to pick a time- Yeah 00:11:14 ... I'm going to put zinc out one time. Most people do it in-furrow because they think you need it with phosphorus to build roots. 00:11:23 No, I'm going to put it post-tassel when I'm trying to get starch in that kernel, because guess what? You can't build starch in that kernel without zinc, 00:11:34 and there's not enough people doing that post-application, post-tassel application of zinc. They're missing the boat. 00:11:40 All right. So you just said your father, 20 years ago, "Man, we put some micronutrients on, we're going to just farm the hell out of that field." 00:11:47 Yeah. Really go try and bust a bin. But we know better now, so why aren't we better at managing micronutrients? 00:11:58 I can explain that a little bit, I think. My farm started getting better on these pieces specifically when we got our yield monitor figured out 00:12:06 Now, I hate to go backwards, but we were doing stuff and we didn't really know if it was working. There was no way to tell, no way to actually mon-- 00:12:13 And I'm not talking about a John Deere yield monitor from 2010, because those were horrible. The worst things ever. 00:12:20 Once I was able to get the data and start monitoring the actual yield of what we were actually applying, then we started learning. 00:12:27 Because I could put out a product on half a field and- And you was looking in a truck like, "I think it's better." "I think, yeah, I think this side made a little better." 00:12:35 And me and you are going to want to think it done better because we spent the money. 00:12:38 Exactly. But did it make one bushel? Did it make 10 bushel? We didn't know. We absolutely didn't know. But now we can know. 00:12:45 That's my opinion. Well, I agree with that. But the farmer that's not doing it, and we're not bashing. I know in a previous episode- 00:12:51 Yeah ... I made an accurate observation of farmers- And I get punched in the mouth ... and Chad all but threatened me with my life. 00:12:57 Yep. What does Mike Tyson say? "It's all good till you get punched in the mouth." That's right. 00:13:02 But all the farmers today have yield monitoring combined. Yeah. 00:13:06 It's not like they're running Gleaners. Well- "Hey, man, I've seen this M3 on Facebook." I'm like, "Oh, man, I really want to buy that thing." 00:13:14 Yeah. But- Well, we're no better than them ... I think we're trying to understand it, though. And let's look at the technology. Everyone's got a 00:13:22 smartphone, right? Yep. And I think the research, that is the good part about the generation behind us. They're so much faster and quicker- 00:13:30 That's right ... with data and with information than we are. Mm. Mm. 00:13:35 Because we just had to put it out there like Todd's talking about and hope that it yielded better. We took a year. 00:13:38 Mm-hmm. And now they can do it on their phone, and they can see what the results are on multiple locations. 00:13:42 Right. But- I mean, heck, you showed your phone yesterday or today, and you could see everywhere Trey's- 00:13:48 Yeah ... Trey's running around- Yep ... spraying. Yep. I mean, he's got to download the stuff- Yep 00:13:53 ... off of Ops- Right. Yep ... and teach you about it. Yep. I mean, that's true. 00:13:57 That's not my job. I'm a Utah. That ain't my job. And keeping all those products in there, it's kind of a chore, but it's so important because if we don't get that data input into there right- 00:14:05 It's- ... it's bad data. Yeah. So it's very important. I got this problem, Mike. I got these pieces of cardboard and stuff shoved in behind the sprayer where I wrote this stuff down. You know what? 00:14:14 He's got these five big pieces of cardboard. Todd's like, "I don't know which one I put where." So he writes on cardboard. Temple runs it down his arm. 00:14:23 He runs it down his arm. Yeah, I've seen this. Front and back. He ain't going to take a bath for a week. Yeah, right. He's got stuff written all over his hands. 00:14:27 Yeah. No, I do take the time to put it in Op Center, and sometimes when certain people send me new products that don't have a name, we have to go in 00:14:35 there and make a custom name. So it ends up taking me a little longer. Aren't you just glad somebody sends you stuff? 00:14:40 Ooh, I come up with some good names, but they wouldn't let me use them. Oh, man. 00:14:44 All right. So, yeah, panty dropper. Panty dropper. That's the name of the product called- Angie's going to kill us. Mike, Angie's going to kill us. 00:14:51 Yeah. It was a product called Panty Dropper. So answer me this, you dialed it in. Is the payoff there? Oh, I definitely think it... I'll say it again. 00:14:59 I think I'm in the kindergarten phase of figuring out this balance thing. Thank goodness for these guys. I'm learning a ton, just 00:15:07 opening my mind. It's- I don't know that any of us... Obviously Tommy's forgot more about this than me and you'll know. 00:15:12 Right. But far as, as farmers, I don't know when we'll get out of the kindergarten phase because every time we learn something, it just opens five more doors to what we 00:15:20 think. Mm-hmm. But I think the biggest thing as farmers is what we're doing right now is we're figuring out what we can replace because we're so hung on NPK, 00:15:28 right? Right. So how much K or P can I pull back to provide the money? Because remember, it's still about how are we going to afford to fix this. 00:15:37 Well, you're talking- And it doesn't take a lot of these micros ... it doesn't take a lot. 00:15:40 It doesn't take a lot. Well, that's why they're called micros. I might have- 00:15:42 Because they're not needed in heavy doses ... I might have a problem with that statement. You know, I hadn't figured out what "don't take a lot" means. 00:15:48 Yeah. He likes to send it. Well, here's the thing. All right, you say it doesn't take a lot. That's why they're called micronutrients and all that. 00:15:55 But we've got, to the point, information is better available than it's ever been, and the payoff is there. So it seems to me it's kind of like, yeah, we should 00:16:02 just be doing this. Well, and people focus on, unfortunately, N number one, P number two- 00:16:09 Yeah ... and then- Everything else ... whatever else. All right. Like K is even down the list. Like, oh, it needs to be- 00:16:14 It's way down the list ... pretty s****y. There's very little K put out in my area- No. 00:16:17 ... in general. Very little. Oh. So they focus on making sure crop has enough of those two. Well, you're screwing up everything else. 00:16:25 Mm. You're screwing up the whole balance, and that's what we always talk about is trying to get to 00:16:32 find the balance. Let's go back to the question of the show. You say it's all about find the balance. I've heard that. Right. Wonderful. 00:16:38 I said, I looked at the camera and said, "You get to keep one micronutrient." And we said, "Friend, it'd probably be boron." He said, "Zinc." And you said, "Zinc 00:16:43 for..." Corn. Corn. And for cotton. Boron. Boron. And you don't even do cotton anymore. But I- 00:16:50 For wheat. What do I need for wheat? Well, I think, and I can't name... I- Hmm. That's a tough one. 00:16:56 That's the one micronutrient I need for wheat, copper. That would be right up top. I would probably go back to boron on wheat, 00:17:04 but I don't know that it's affected as much, but- What are you going to do for beans? I can't name sulfur, I can't name potassium, so I got to name... 00:17:13 And we even talked about moly as little bit as it needs, as little as it needs. I don't know. 00:17:19 By the way, for the viewer and listener, moly is short for molybdenum. And if you ever want to have fun, have Mike Evans, who's the chief 00:17:26 agronomist at Garrett Leigh and Cattle, just say, "Hey, I'm going to put a $100 bill right here." Same molybdenum, but you got to say it correctly. He can't do it. 00:17:34 Then he put another $100 bill- Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Ma-ma- 00:17:38 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Ma-bibla. Ma-dib. Ma-dibla. I'm like, "You're supposed to be an agronomist. You can't say molybdenum." So what do each of those things do? 00:17:45 So if we're geeking out on agronomy here, Chad, what does boron do? Well, I mean, it's so hard because the thing I have learned in the 00:17:53 last five years is the word balance. So when I started out really trying to, let's say, chasing yields or whatever, trying to improve the farm ROI, and that's not into chasing yields and 00:18:03 ROI, I probably didn't know. But when I started doing that, I would I'd get a wild hair, we'd pull a tissue sample, and I'd, "Man, we're low in nitrogen." I'd 00:18:10 run out here and slam it with nitrogen. You were very reactive. I'd pull the next one- 00:18:13 You were very reactive. You would react to whatever the sampling said that minute. I would pull, but only that one. 00:18:18 Oh. So then I didn't understand what that done when I stung it with that. So then when I stung it, then I was all reactive. I was never proactive. 00:18:26 Yeah. So when you understand in the plant life cycle, there's all kind of things. You can Google it and be like uptake chart and look at the uptake chart. 00:18:32 But when you look at that and you understand the balance of when you push this one, what this one's going to do- 00:18:36 Sure ... and you start applying them ahead of time in that order- Mm-hmm 00:18:42 ... then you acquire balance. The last two or three years, we have the most balanced- 00:18:46 Yeah ... samples. That's the key. Find a balanced tissue sample. Right? So of the micros- 00:18:50 It ain't got to be high, just about. Of the micros, most of the time you apply nutrient and a lot of it stays in the residue. 00:19:00 Zinc is the only one that, we call it a harvest index. Zinc is the only one by and large part is taken off in 00:19:10 that kernel of corn because it makes up starch. That'd been good information to know the last few years. 60, like 65%- 00:19:16 Well, and this, and look at these people- ... withholding information that's costing you money. That's things we should know about. Like before now. 00:19:23 Well- Like that type- You have my phone number- Yeah ... and you won't ever answer me. Anytime... Whoa. 00:19:29 We just talked about- Uh-oh ... you put your phone up when you're eating supper- It ended up back here 00:19:33 ... you don't answer. I'm going to give you that. I'm going to give you that. We're going to pull our call logs up and let's see who getting answered most the 00:19:38 last two weeks. Okay. Yeah. Never mind. What's zinc do for corn? I don't know. Kernel. 00:19:45 Okay. Then that's it. It's trying to- And that's it. No, no, no, no. That's weight? 00:19:48 That's one big part. But is it test weight? That's starch. Okay. But the starch... 00:19:54 What would happen if I- Which means test weight ... Which means test weight. Right. 00:19:56 So if I under-zinced, I'm just getting a lower test weight kernel? So- 00:19:59 Is that what you're- ... it's like the whole balance. It's the phosphorus part of it. It's the ratios. It's the whole... 00:20:06 It is one of the keys that helps it get it. Zinc moves it all there. We have a bunch more, but like- 00:20:11 So generally speaking, what do micros do? Just generally speaking, it's all related to typically 00:20:19 enzymes, cell structure. That's what micros typically do. Now, some of them like boron affect pollen tube growth. They affect flower 00:20:30 retention on cotton- Right ... beans. That's why boron's needed on that. 00:20:37 Okay. At that stage. Right. Right. Oh, that's the other thing. So you can keep one micronutrient for this episode that we're talking about, when? 00:20:44 Like we keep one per week. Okay, so that's what it is. Because a guy like him that maybe has a tendency to go overboard is going to say, "I need zinc now, but I need boron later, and I need 00:20:56 copper." Let this man finish because I'm going to learn something here. Go ahead. Go ahead with what you was talking about. 00:20:59 Like you had them all laid out there and then you stopped at boron. Well, I- 00:21:03 But keep going. So- Like I'm going to learn something here because he's not holding it- So with you and calcium- 00:21:08 Mm-hmm ... when you dig boron, you go to California, big boron mine, guess what you're going to dig up? 00:21:16 Boron rides with calcium in nature, which is why it's hard to get a liquid boron and calcium to work right, because it wants to go back to the way it was. 00:21:27 It wants to form solid. So- I have seen that. Yes, you have. I've seen it. Anyway. 00:21:34 So boron, calcium. Boron is needed, it's kind of like the glue in between cells, so it holds everything together, and we know what calcium is, 00:21:45 structure, so that's why boron and calcium kind of ride together in a plant. So to get your boron right, you got to have calcium right. 00:21:54 Absolutely. Even though you said calcium's not a micro, it's a second tier, third tier. 00:21:58 And it kind of goes back to phosphorus and zinc, especially early. Yeah. 00:22:03 Phosphorus and zinc both make hormone auxin, and you got to have both to do it. But then if you look at phosphorus and zinc curve, 00:22:13 you have a small one early. You tend to rest that- Then guess what? ... late. 00:22:18 You got a huge- Yeah ... sucking sound back here in the back, and people aren't dealing with that because they put it out all at occur. 00:22:27 Because we've just put some 1034 out in the ditch. Mm-hmm. Like and everything's great. 00:22:32 Nice. Oh, yeah. Let's see. Four, 44. And then we're not even going to talk about- That's what Kelly Garrett lives, four, 44, and four. You ever heard of that? 00:22:40 Uh-uh. Four weeks? Planting. Okay. Four, 44. At the beach. Uh-huh. 00:22:45 Four weeks harvest. Uh-huh. I bet Kelly lives this too. Actually, I'm not sure that he spends four weeks harvesting. Yeah. 00:22:54 I'm not even sure his guys spend that much time. He drove by and looked at a field once that had a combine in it that he owns. Right. 00:22:59 That's right. By the way, that's also, they get- I'm rough. I said that's also- 00:23:03 We rough on camera ... I said that's also how these beef farmers are. He's like, "Well, we're taking good care of these cows." I said, "How do you know?" 00:23:09 I said, because I was a dairy farmer. You're handling them cows three times a day, and you're out, I mean, every monitoring, everything. For to be a cow-calf guy like him, once 00:23:19 a week they drive by and look at them like, you raise these cows away like I raise elk. 00:23:23 Oh, like, oh, hey, there's some elk out there. See there? Hey, honey, you see there's some elk out there. Oh, yeah. 00:23:29 That's how he is with his cow operation, is all these beef farmers are- I know 00:23:32 ... with their cow operation. All right. What is the other one that you said he needs for cotton? It's boron? 00:23:38 Boron. Okay, and there's another one, did you say? No. Okay. And then, seasonal. 00:23:43 I mean, there are, but boron's the main one. Well, you made your point. By the time you get over here, this is all gone. Corn. 00:23:47 Zinc doesn't leave. Corn. Okay. Phosphorus and zinc way out here on the tail end. At the end. 00:23:52 Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else that you need to- Because it's all about, again, it's all about taking that chart. Well, and every- 00:23:58 And we know the demand based on crop stage. Yeah. Yeah. And when you push one real, real, real hard, then the other one just, it's going to pick on another one. 00:24:07 Mm-hmm. It's like there's so many, still so many numbers, right? It's that balance thing. 00:24:09 I swear. And you can tell me if I'm wrong, and help me understand this, but like you take a Even a tissue test. You know how the soil test is made up of 100? 00:24:17 Right. Okay, do you believe a tissue test is still made up of a certain number, like 100? You let me know when you figure it out. 00:24:25 You're talking about a maximum score? No. I'm talking about if you pick on one, it changes the other. Ah. Mm-hmm. 00:24:31 It's all about- I can tell you for a fact that if you pick on boron, and you take boron to 50 or 60, right where you shouldn't be, there's no need to be there. 00:24:38 We would agree with that. But if you do, I can promise you it will pick on nitrogen or potassium. 00:24:42 Sure. Because it's all about if you have something tugging over here, it's going to affect something over here. 00:24:48 I understand. And that's physics. So we asked a question, we're asking these guys, if we asked a room, we're at Commodity Classic at your Nature's panel, let's say, and we say, "All right, every 00:24:56 farmer in here, tell me you get one micronutrient," what do you think they're going to say? Are they going to get it wrong? 00:25:02 They're going to do exactly what- They're going to say nitrogen. They're going to say- 00:25:07 They're going to say exactly what we did. They're going to say sulfur, I bet. Yeah, and you're going to tell them that's great, but that's a 00:25:12 tertiary... By the way, we used the word chasm. Close. It's a tertiary. It's a tier three. It's a tier three. There's a new term. 00:25:19 Not copious amounts of- Primary, secondary, tertiary. You can tell that we're farmers and not agronomists. Copious amounts of potassium. 00:25:26 You can tell that. That's right. Chasm, divide- Copious ... gap. Copious 00:25:32 Rift. Those are all the same word. Okay. They'd say sulfur, and then you tell them, "Well, that doesn't count as a micro." And then do you think many farmers are just getting it wrong, period? 00:25:43 They just don't have the... Or is it they don't use it, or they don't get the balance right? 00:25:47 I don't think we understand it. Me and Todd, I'm speaking for me, but- No, I don't either 00:25:51 ... we know that we only have, say, 40 good crops, right? And we've spent those crops in just trying to keep our head above water and just 00:25:59 diving into something. Now, we hope that's next generation. Maybe that's our mark. Maybe we leave it on them where, "Hey, you 00:26:05 really need to push on this because we don't understand this." People are arguing you ain't teaching Jackson and Dre about micronutrients. 00:26:12 No. People are getting- No, we're not. We're really not. People are getting better because I've been dealing with 00:26:18 micros for 25 years, and it used to be a distinct cycle. About every five years, it'd go up, and then it would go down. 00:26:28 You mean utilization- Right. Usage ... of micronutrients. But at least now, 00:26:34 over the last 10 years, we've seen micronutrient sales increase every year. 00:26:41 Is that because people say, "Well, I put that micro pack out, and I didn't see anything from it, so we quit using them"? 00:26:48 I think that's what it is, because a lot of farmers are like my dad, just, "I'm going to use this one time and then see nothing more. 00:26:54 Hell, we put it on five ways wrong." Yeah. Right. So used to, people didn't even use a micro pack. 00:27:02 It was just single zinc, manganese, iron, whatever. Yeah. So over the last 10 years, more people have started using micro 00:27:10 packs because of this interaction we talk about versus single nutrient. So you can take a micro pack, and in the case of zinc, you can take a micro pack, and you can spike it 00:27:22 with more zinc. Yeah. Because the micro pack already has the zinc in it. So that's the trend I think that we're seeing in the industry 00:27:30 is micro pack versus single nutrients. So a man should just dive in with his agronomist or into his soil samples or into his few 00:27:41 tissue samples. You say, "All right, I know I'm short on this one. What does this one that I want to affect..." Let's say it's whatever. 00:27:48 Yeah. Let's say it's zinc or boron. Like, "I know I'm short on this one. What's it going to change when I do fix it?" 00:27:53 Mm-hmm. Because that's what took me years is seeing that screw up and being like, "God dang, I should've caught that three years ago." 00:28:01 But you said also that by throwing out one a little bit too much, then you mess... It's the old lady that swallowed a fly. 00:28:07 Yeah. You know the little nursery rhyme. Swallowed a fly, then swallowed a bird. Da-da-da-da-da, all that kind of thing. Then you're all just screwed. 00:28:13 Chicken underneath. So by using micro packs, though- Mm ... it helps prevent what you just talked about. 00:28:23 If you put too much, we'll just call it zinc, out, then it affects something over here. So you put micro pack out, 00:28:30 then you're getting away from what we talked about. The one. The one. 00:28:34 But I'm going to plug a product, Finish Line. That's why I love that product. It's got how many products in it, or how many micros in it? 00:28:40 Four. Four. And it's a- It's easy ... it's a balanced product. Okay. If we want to get on the topic of- 00:28:49 I mean, I'm serious. I love it ... micro packs out in the market. Well, I don't normally want to go commercial here, but- 00:28:54 It's a horrible... No, but this is just general. All right. People need to understand how... They need to look at a label. 00:29:00 Yeah. Because if they look at a label and somebody's selling them a micronutrient 00:29:07 blend- Blend. Right ... what they're going to see on that label, generally speaking, is a minute amount of .05 zinc, .05 00:29:16 manganese, .1 iron. Yeah. I mean, you're basically not getting- Like .005 copper or something like that 00:29:21 ... you're not getting anything in there. Yeah. So it's not enough is your point? I can p**s and get more micronutrients- ... out than that. 00:29:27 Oh, yeah. That might not be politically correct. All right. We- But that's our disclaimer 00:29:30 ... we asked the question, what one micronutrient are you going to keep in your fertility program if you could only have one? 00:29:36 P**s and salt. That's what I said. I got zinc, and I got boron. I got boron, I got zinc, and I've got urine. 00:29:41 So that's a fantastic list right there. We're going to leave it until next time. We're talking about agronomy. We're geeking out on agronomy. 00:29:47 Oh, this is getting in the good stuff. I even put on my FFA jacket from 1987 because after all, I was the ninth-best soil judger in the United States of America that year. 00:29:56 Out of eight. And a walking thesaurus, apparently. And I'm pretty good- I'm pretty good with words in the English language. Until next time, thanks for being here. 00:30:04 Thank you very much to Nature for being our sponsor of this show. They're a fantastic company. Learn more about how you can use their products. 00:30:10 I don't think they sell his favorite micronutrient- ... but I could be wrong. You can go to- 00:30:14 It's springtime ... natures.com to check out all their line of products. Chad Henderson, Texas Todd Chamberlain, and our friend Tommy Roach from Nature. 890 00:30:21.020 --> 00:30:23.180