Farming Video | Are You Managing Stress or Chasing It?

00:00:00 All right friends, welcome to day two here at Nature's where we have the learning panel. I am joined by my friends and I'm gonna tell you the topic. 00:00:09 The topic today is stress mitigation, fact or fiction. In other words, can you affect your crops? Can you actually reduce the stress on your crops? 00:00:20 Well, there's a lot of companies here that say we have a product to help you reduce stress, but can you actually do it? 00:00:25 Let's face it, it's 105 degrees in Arkansas where Matt lives in the summer. There's no rain sometimes for six, eight weeks at a time. 00:00:32 Your plants are under stress. Can you actually as a farmer do anything about that? Well, that's what we're gonna discuss today. 00:00:38 Is it factors or is it fiction? And by the way, some of these guys do farm in some pretty tough environments. Our panel, Matt Miles from McGee, Arkansas down 00:00:45 as he calls it, little Vietnam. It is some pretty tough conditions in southeast Arkansas. Then we go over here to Tennessee, Western Tennessee. 00:00:52 Johnny Verell sometimes deals in some pretty tough situations. Last year, the rain and rain and rain and rain, rain. 00:00:58 And then it stopped and then it never rained again. And then we got temple roads. Stress, he always talks about is 00:01:03 how he can't actually put fertilizer on. Matt made a joke about that once. Yeah, temple Boy, you know what? 00:01:08 I just had to go around pharma. No fertilizer. Well, it's not quite that bad, but there is stress obviously in Maryland. 00:01:14 Uh, mostly from his own mental, uh, mental reasons. He's like, sometimes, oh, I'm stressed. I'm stressed. Anyway, we love him. 00:01:20 He's gonna talk to you about what's going on with stress mitigation. And then we're joined by Tommy Roach. 00:01:24 Tommy Roach is the guy that brings this all together and says, you know what? I want this topic 'cause I 00:01:30 wanna hear what they can say about it. Tommy, why did you select this topic? Take his microphone and then we're gonna go down the line 00:01:36 right here and talk about can you actually affect the stress on a plant as a farmer? 00:01:42 So I, I often joke that you could walk from aisle 100 down there to aisle 4,000 down there and everybody's got something. 00:01:52 And by the time you walk the length of it, you've made how much? Two 200 extra. 200 extra. 00:02:00 So is that, is that fact or fiction? I say the fir the first way you mitigate stress, and people may disagree with me, 00:02:10 but it's through plant nutrition, that that's the first level. Now, I'm not saying there's not products out there 00:02:17 that you can add on top of that, but the first, the first plant defense is with proper nutrition. 00:02:24 And if you were here yesterday, we talked, we you talked about balanced nutrition, that factors into it. 00:02:31 But you can mitigate or manage stress to some degree with proper adjusting it. Plant, nutrition, Temple rolling onto you. 00:02:39 All joking aside, you are one of those guys that is very much in the field. You're always getting your hands dirty. 00:02:44 You're always looking at these plants. I've been to your farm at different times of the season. And you can say, oh, stress, that's a problem down south. 00:02:51 That's where they have these 160 degree temperatures. We don't have that in Maryland. We got this nice breeze coming off of, uh, the Chesapeake Bay, whatever. 00:02:58 But we all deal with stress in our fields. Um, I think you guys are all very good at looking at this. What's your stress? 00:03:06 Stress is stress. It doesn't matter where it is or where it comes from. You know, the most stressful time in a, 00:03:12 in a plant's life is at, is actually at emergence. So from emergence all the way through tassel, through grain fill, everybody's gonna have a stress. 00:03:22 Whether it's too much water, too little water, too hot, too cold. Stress is stress. And in my opinion, 00:03:29 I think Tommy's he's correct. Um, when you get the plant upright and you stop learning about, um, you know, 00:03:37 everybody has a snake oil. Well, do you realize that the big, one of the biggest snake oil that, you know, 00:03:43 I don't wanna talk about snake oil, but I am one of the biggest snake oil in the whole entire, um, community of agriculture. 00:03:50 It's fertilizer. 'cause it's got the lowest efficiency that anything has. So what truly is a snake oil? 00:03:56 Like fertilizer can be a snake oil if it's used improperly. Hey, does anybody wanna sell to temple? 00:04:02 We're being paid right now to sit in a fertilizer company's booth. I don't know that calling their products snake oil right 00:04:09 now, while we're being paid to be in a fertilizer company's booth, would be the best move right outta the 00:04:14 gate. But anyway, you do, you Listen, it is what it is. But anything, if you don't use it properly, it doesn't work. And if you use fertility at the wrong 00:04:23 time, it's not gonna work. But if you use fertility, right, for what the plant needs, we're so worried in the agriculture industry, 00:04:30 we've been stuck in our own way of we need to fertilize the ground and the ground's gotta be this and this needs to be your base saturate 00:04:36 or your your your baseline and everything needs to be balanced. We've heard balance, balance, balance, balance, balance. 00:04:42 There's nobody in this entire place at the commodity classic that has truly balanced soil 00:04:47 because I don't think that we've ever seen it. But what we do know is there is nutrient uptake charts. And I can't, and I, and I get tired of screaming this, 00:04:56 but a plant is the same plant, whether it's at my farm, whether it's at Matt's farm or whether it's at Johnny's farm. 00:05:03 A plant is a plant and that plant needs certain nutrients. And then one way to mitigate stress period is 00:05:10 to give it the nutrients that it needs at their time that it needs it. I wanna go to John by the way. 00:05:16 I like that thing a plant as a plant. And I, I wanna get into this because the question could be asked and I wanna get to that. 00:05:21 When we come back to Tommy, I've got trees in my woods that will go through these terrible summers and they don't have any rain 00:05:28 for two and a half months at a time. They make it without any hand of man. But also these plants 00:05:36 that we're planting are the farthest thing from natural trees. They've been doctored up and manipulated by us forever. 00:05:41 So I think they maybe need more help. So I kind of see where there is a thing called stress mitigation. 00:05:46 Johnny, you deal with it. I wrote down some notes preparing for this in 2025. Am I right about this? You had the spigot wouldn't shut 00:05:53 off and then it did. Did you do anything for stress or were you just doing it to go out and salvage a crop when the weather finally cleared? 00:06:03 No, a hundred percent. We were extremely wet. We lost pretty much all of our roots. It seemed like we couldn't get any type of root development. 00:06:09 And I think that's one of the biggest things that we could do as farmers, is anything we can do to stimulate that root growth so 00:06:14 that we can get those nutrients that are in the soil. Whether we're soil applying them, infer two by two, anything like that. 00:06:20 But exactly right, Damien, when it shut off, we went into like what we could do to keep that crop happy. If we can get a rain underneath 00:06:27 the pivots, anything like that. So it really changed what we were doing. We didn't front load everything last year. 00:06:31 We went more into a spoon feeding. I've been talking to Temple and he'd been telling me I need 00:06:35 to really start doing that more and more. So that really saved us. 'cause when it shut off, we did shut off a lot of 00:06:40 what we're gonna do the rest of the season. But I'll tell you one thing that's interesting. I think Matt's number one variety on his farm is the same. 00:06:46 That's on my farm, is the same on temple's farm. And how we manage that crop is almost the same. The one thing that me and Matt had to fight 00:06:53 that's a little different temple is the nighttime temperature. But outside of that, we're really trying 00:06:57 to manage the same corn varieties from one end of the country to the other end. And that's kind of hard to believe. What 00:07:03 You just said was between all three geographies, which are vastly different really, and soil types even to maybe less different. 00:07:11 You you had the exact same yield almost with the same hybrid doing the same practices from Maryland to southeast Arkansas. 00:07:19 Me and Matt are a lot closer in yield than temple, but at the end of the day it's the same phrase. We're all in that one 15 to one 20 day corn. 00:07:26 And it's hard to believe that temple as far north as is. But what I'm saying is, is we're doing that 00:07:30 because that gives us longer time to spoonfeed when we do have the right conditions to get better grain field and to push those yields on up 00:07:36 Would please. Perfect. Would you please give Matt the uh, microphone? I want to ask a question, Matt. 00:07:40 First off, I'm gonna ask you a short question answer and then I'm gonna go into uh, my notes that I had prepared for this. 00:07:45 Is stress mitigation something that you can actually do? In other words, fact or fiction, 00:07:50 can you actually change the stress on a plant by your practices or not? Yes, maybe not to the extent timber can. 00:07:58 The number one yield influencer, the number one yield influencer in in our growing crops, any of us sitting here is stress mitigation. 00:08:05 That's not always a fertilizer, that's not always a, a stress mitigation product that might be planting at the right time 00:08:12 and the right temperatures and the right soil depth. Stress mitigation covers way more than just products. So fungicide, you know, is, is a prime example. 00:08:20 It's just like I say this, if you send your child to school, it's 40 degrees, you're not gonna send 'em to school 00:08:25 and a t-shirt and shorts, you're gonna have a coat on 'em. Well without stress mitigation 00:08:29 for the child. Same thing with the plans. You guys hear what he said. Alright, so I wanna go over to Temple again. 00:08:34 Uh, the one thing that I almost wonder if you have a leg up from the very first recording I did with you, 00:08:39 um, four years ago. You talked about obviously how you had to be way earlier than most farmers about 00:08:47 diligent smaller doses of fertility through the season because of the nutrient management regulation that you face by the Chesapeake Bay. 00:08:56 Do you think that that gave you a leg up on reduction of stress because you were already out there 20, 30 years ago having to look at that plant 00:09:05 and just barely give it enough to get it going? I mean, because it would seem to me that you were ahead of the, on management of the plant through the season. 00:09:17 Well, we didn't have any choice. What choice did we have? It got thrown upon us and we had to reinvent ourselves. 00:09:25 So the only mindset that you have when the government comes in and says, we're gonna cut your end and, and your phosphorus, 00:09:32 and here's what we think that you need. And they had no data to back it up and then it threw us all in a tailspin. 00:09:39 So you were like, okay, so what do I do now? So the only thing that we knew how to do as the farmers in the Del Marva is to 00:09:46 stop worrying about the acre and start worrying about what that plant needs are. What are the requirements throughout the 00:09:52 whole entire growing season? Didn't matter if it was, if it was corn, wheat or beans, it didn't matter. 00:09:58 We still had to worry about exactly what that plant needed at that time. What we didn't realize we were doing is, 00:10:05 is we were mitigating stress because the plant was happy. If the plant's happy 00:10:11 and the plant's healthy, we didn't realize what we were doing. So in reality, we tripped upon it because we had no choice. 00:10:18 Alright, I'm gonna go to, well Matt still has the microphone in his hand. One thing that, uh, Johnny and Tommy 00:10:23 and I prepared our notes was about potassium deficiency. Um, potassium as according to my friend, 00:10:30 Tommy is the most important nutrient associated with stress reaction because of water relations and utilization. 00:10:37 I wrote those notes down because he explained it to me 'cause he's the agronomist. I'm not. You have a potassium deficiency. 00:10:43 Does that make your job of managing stress even harder? Not to mention the conditions of little Vietnam? Well, we just have to, we just have to apply it. 00:10:51 I mean when we talk about you good? Yes. Can y'all hear me? When we, when we talk about fertility 00:10:57 and a lot of times we talk about fertility, reduc reduction, we've seen big results from re reducing our nitrogen, 00:11:02 even reducing our phosphorous sum. You know, temple can tell you that from living in it. The one thing I think we under apply is potassium. 00:11:10 And potassium not only, you know, works with stress mitigation, but it has many, many other things that goes along with it. 00:11:16 Uh, Johnny wants to talk and then I wanna hear from Tommy about the potassium acetate. 00:11:20 Yeah. One thing I've noticed the last few years that really changed on our farming operation, we went from putting out a form of potassium that was full 00:11:26 of chlorine and salt and going more to a foliar style of potassium that doesn't have that. Because when you're applying that to your soil, 00:11:33 you're hurting the roots, you're hurting the plant and it's making it a lot harder for the biology that's in the soil to help support that plant. 00:11:38 So that's one thing I would throw in there. If you wanna talk about stress mitigation, do away with your salt and your chlorine 00:11:43 that you're putting in your soils because that really changes how that plant's gonna be thriving in that condition. 00:11:48 We went to more of a foliar feed this year, uh, on potassium and it's been a, it is been a game changer. 00:11:53 You can already start to see the difference in the soil type or in the concentration of the soil right now. 00:11:58 Alright, I wanna go potassium acetate a quick, uh, from Tommy and then we're going to ask for questions and then we're gonna do our first round of trivia 00:12:04 for a $25 gift card. If anybody has a question, go ahead and let me know so I can find you. Anybody got a question statement? Comment? 00:12:11 All right, go ahead. Potassium acetate and stress. So here's my 2 cents on this and I'm not gonna sit here and promote the seed company next door, the one down there. 00:12:23 But these, these hybrids are built today to do what? Yield. Yield. Yield and yield. And one thing that's not factored in is that these, 00:12:34 these hybrids change so fast. Like two year lifespan is probably good. And we, we have no idea how these different hybrids react 00:12:45 to fertility and especially, um, you have all this increased yield that you're chasing. You have increased plant matter for, uh, dry matter 00:12:58 that you've got to somehow get broken down and get nutrient back into the soil. We are my opinion, take it for what it's worth, 00:13:09 not applying enough potassium, potassium drives everything else around in the plant. It helps all, we can't control, we can't seed clouds, 00:13:19 we can't control moisture. But what we can do, supply potassium to where it helps in plant water relations, 00:13:27 helps in root growth, helps in photosynthetic capacity. 'cause at, at the end of the day, plants got to make its own food, own sugars on carbon 00:13:37 to keep making yield and there's not enough potassium put out in the, in the environment. 00:13:43 Take people take a soil test and what do they see? What so many pp M of K, right? So many PPM is that so many pp M 00:13:54 of K actually available to the plant? Who wants to answer that question? I'll just, I answer it for you. No it's not. 00:14:02 And people chase their tail by applying, what do they apply? John Potash, which is what he was talking about chloride. 00:14:14 So You good to go? No. Alright. Any, any questions? Any questions to the crowd statements? All right, our first round of trivia, 00:14:24 oh we got a question from my hometown friend Dan Blocker question. Okay. Seeing how I'm the business 00:14:32 of selling snake oil, but Which is fertilizer. And then one of his podcasts he's telling us that I bring no value to the farm 00:14:41 and I'm like, geez, O Pete, Damien. Anyway, so you guys maybe pick a new farm up and got the soil test. 00:14:49 So you are looking at parts per million. Will like a potassium acetate build you? Well also, 00:14:56 'cause I'm just starting to get into looking at some of this, um, like cost per unit. Can you build as well with this type? 00:15:07 Or do you still need some of my snake oil to the old barrel stave? If you got a low K number, can you fix it with acetate 00:15:18 or are you still gonna need my snake oil? What's his snake oil? I'll do it. What's his Oh, fertilizer. Fertilizer. 00:15:27 He's from a major fertilizer company. Sorry. So, um, no, there's no real building and I mean I, Chad 00:15:35 and I can talk to this a lot of times we don't know year to year in my area if I'm gonna continue to have the farm. 00:15:41 I have a, a problem with being able to build fertility in the soil. My soil type doesn't realistically build a lot of soil. 00:15:49 If we were gonna build, build soil in our area, I'm probably gonna go out there and try to put chicken manure on to try to build the soil. 00:15:57 But I'm still, we're still trying to get to some kind of balance. I'm not saying that fertility is snake oil, 00:16:04 I'm saying fertility not used correctly is snake oil because of the efficiency. The efficiency is the whole thing. 00:16:11 Now keep in mind, so if I pick up a brand new farm and maybe not sure if I'm gonna hold onto it for two or three years, I'm not gonna go out there 00:16:19 and build fertility, I'm not gonna do that. I am gonna concentrate even heavier on building the plant. So I'm not worried about building the PPM in the soil. 00:16:29 I'm well worried about building the amount that that plant gets into it. And when I take a sap sample 00:16:35 or a tissue sample, I'm worried about that. I do not care what's in that soil at that time. 'cause I'm probably gonna lose in two or three years. 00:16:45 I'm gonna give you a prime example. We talked about this the other day. So I took on a 1300 acre farm this year. 00:16:51 I'm gonna disagree with, I'm gonna disagree with temple a little bit. And, and I would not have done this 00:16:56 before this year with this farm. So I pick up a farm, I've been wanting it since I was a kid. It joins me 1300 acres. 00:17:03 All the guy did was a little bit of MP and k, low budget farmer, beautiful farm, beautiful ground, low budget farmer. 00:17:09 Nothing against that that he, he made a living for. He quit when he was 80 years old. We, we took that farm, we even put a ton 00:17:17 and a half a litter on it prior to two planting, same week, same variety. We planted soybeans on that farm 00:17:24 and a farm I've had for all my life basically since I've been farming. The farm that we picked up, 00:17:31 the yields on the beans were 55 to 60. The farm that I've been farming was 85 to 90. So where did I pick that up from if I didn't build it outta 00:17:39 the soil or if it wasn't already there? Where did I pick it up from? I think we, we've been putting out litter since 2006. 00:17:45 So, you know, a lot of that had to do probably with the biology. 'cause the biology's gotta interact with a fertilizer 00:17:51 or not fertilizer snake hole. I'm sorry, it's gotta interact with a snake hole. But you know, he sells fertilizer too, so, so, 00:17:59 so he could say what he wants to about that. But there is a, there is an advantage to having soil that's built up now. 00:18:05 I think the biology part has a lot to do with it, but I think if you build the right base, then these products we're talking about work, 00:18:13 if you've got a good base in your soil, then it's less stress right off the bat. That's kind of my opinion. 00:18:18 And I may feel stronger about it now after the farm we took last year, So, so remember we're talking about two diff two 00:18:25 separate issues building soil versus feeding plant. And it, it takes, like Matt said, it takes years to get either soil corrected or, or continue to maintain it. 00:18:39 Most of the time when we're trying to correct whether it's calcium, magnesium, potassium, we're doing it with gyp and lime and, 00:18:48 and sulfur, which is gonna, which is gonna take years to get that, get it accomplished if we even ever get there. 00:18:55 But in the meantime we're, we have to focus on what the crop needs this year. So we have to feed the plant. 00:19:05 Yeah, I would just say what, what all these guys have already said, but also there's been times 00:19:10 where I a hundred percent believe that you can go out there and you can put out 200 pounds of pot ash 00:19:14 and you're not gonna gain 120 units in the soil even if you don't plant the crop. So the inefficiency of some of these, 00:19:19 there are other versions out there that are better, but I would just say when you pick up ground or you know, temple's been to my place, 00:19:25 me and Damien done some videos. I mean we grow factories it seems like better than we do crops. 00:19:29 So when you look at that, you can't go out there and just spend $50, $60 an acre for one product and expect it to be there for years to come 00:19:36 before you get it because we might not have it. So I think a lot of what Matt said, there is a need to have a good baseline, but once you can get 00:19:43 that baseline in check, you don't have to put, you can reallocate and really spoonfeed what that crop's needing at that moment 00:19:49 and really help build that crop plant, build that plant to produce the crop we want. Alright, Stress mitigation. 00:19:55 A lot of times it's, people think it's just heat and they say, I don't have that problem. I'm up in, uh, you know, North Dakota. 00:20:02 Why don't you explain where you see stress mitigation from your travels and then what these guys can comment on 00:20:08 of ways they've helped mitigate that stress different times of the year. So y'all see the, uh, this chart that temple failed to say 00:20:17 where, whose it was yesterday in the, in the big panel, but he knows where it was from. If you know, I just, I just use it a lot. 00:20:26 That's all. Okay. So if you notice, and I, I'll sit here and talk about K all day, 00:20:32 but there is a, a huge demand, and I don't know if you know Dan Post just worked for the company across aisle for a long time. 00:20:43 We talk about, it's a huge sucking sound. Once you get to that V eight V 10 stage all the way out past tassel, you, there's no way that you can supply enough 00:20:57 K to a corn crop to a bean crop. How, how much p and k does a say, a 60 70 bushel uh, soybean crop take more than a 00:21:10 200 bushel corn crop. And most people are taking care of that need in a two year spread from previous year's corn crop. 00:21:20 They, they just, they're treating beans like a cover crop essentially. So how, why do we add more pounds 00:21:31 of potassium and it can't just be pounds. That, that's a, a trap people fall into because they equate pounds to dry, dry to potash. 00:21:42 You're not gonna take care of your K needs with potash. Now I'm not saying that you can't, that shouldn't be part of the equation 00:21:52 because we're not gonna be able to supply enough K with a, in a liquid diet 00:21:57 unless you have a really, really, really good base established and most people don't. So how many, how many people apply fungicide? 00:22:10 Pretty much everybody you use. What do you use as a carrier? Most people don't even, uh, 00:22:16 think about putting nutrition with fungicide. I don't know why, but I would say use potassium acetate as your carrier instead of, 00:22:30 you can throw water in there, that's fine. But potassium acetate in with fungicide. Zinc in with fungicide 00:22:40 because we're trying to keep the plant running. Stress can come in many forms. Heat not enough water, too much water. 00:22:50 Nobody can control nighttime temperatures nowadays. That's where, that's where the huge draw is here in the last couple years. 00:23:00 Have high nighttime temperatures. Plant has no time to recover. Am I correct Johnny? You wanna hop on? 00:23:09 Nah. And talk about whatever Johnny, bro. You know, you'd think a professional know how to work a microphone. 00:23:20 Johnny Ferrell's gonna hop in here and talk about his tips or tricks that he has used for stress mitigation. 00:23:26 It could be about water, it could be about whatever direction you want, but I want you to something you actually used and how it works. 00:23:32 So these guys get a take home actual, I can use this on my farm. So last year, like we started out, 00:23:40 we had the wettest spring, we had one rainfall event. It was 14 inches right when we planted the crop. When you have something like that happen, 00:23:45 you can never get the root development that you need. So when you start doing tissue samples, if you pull a sap tissue 00:23:50 or SAP test out of it, you'll see real quick that you're deficient nutrients that, that are in the soil. We applied 'em out there, our guy over here 00:23:57 was talking about dry fertilize. We put that out, but you cannot get it in the plant if you don't have the root. 00:24:00 So what we had to do is to go to a foliar diet to try to get this plant back in balance where we needed to do. But we also added, we had a lot of potassium in it. 00:24:08 We added sulfur, Molly, all those different nutrients that we could put into that plant that we had actually put out. 00:24:13 We had already put zinc out at planting. We still did not have what we needed in the plant. And a lot of it comes back to we never had the 00:24:19 infrastructure in the ground to get it to that plant. So, you know, stress mitigation, we all talk about heat, stuff like that. 00:24:24 Last year probably our biggest issue we had was how we started off and yeah, we went 56 days with no rain after the fourth that finished it off. 00:24:32 But it, we were, we were on a good track. Even when we started adjusting what we were doing throughout the season 00:24:36 to get those nutrients in there, it really was working until we had the next event, which was no rain. Damien. All right. Matt says, yes, 00:24:46 my farming practices can reduce the stress. Everybody thinks where you are, it's gonna be heat, heat, heat. 00:24:53 Have you ever had to adjust for stress of cold in the southeastern Arkansas? Oh, you know, not as much as we do heat, 00:25:01 but I planted about 300 acres yesterday, so I'll probably have a little bit of issue at some point in time. 00:25:06 First half of March with coal air. Uh, but we do put stuff under it in the ditch to, you know, to, to help with those kind of problems. So 00:25:14 What do you do? You put something you did they not tell you it's still February and that's why you're out 00:25:18 planting or what's going on? Yeah, I always, I gotta have something to worry about. So you put, you put 300 acres out yesterday of 00:25:25 Corn and beans and Beans. And then tell me what you did as a stress litigant, um, adjustment for putting stuff out February 25th. Well, 00:25:33 We've just got like, we're gonna have a, we're gonna have a carbon source, a neutral charge source, uh, RY link. 00:25:38 We're gonna have our fertility k we're gonna have all that in the ditch so that that's all the nutrients we need to build that root system to, to help protect with stress. 00:25:47 Same thing on the soybeans and a lighter version. And when he says in the ditch, he means in furrow. In furrow. Got it. Anybody 00:25:53 got any questions for the guys? I got one over here from Joel from Oregon. All right. So you were talking about using potassium 00:26:00 acetate as a fungicide, as a driver to help with it. Is there any reason it couldn't be a calcium acetate zinc acetate or is it the acetate formulation 00:26:10 or specifically the potassium formulation and assuming they will mix? It's a little of both. We see as much benefit with 00:26:20 the actual nutrient as we do with the acetate part because there's, there's lots of research, lots of data. Tommy, 00:26:29 Just look, bring it up a little bit so they can hear you over here. Oh, okay. There's, there's lots of data out there 00:26:34 and I've, I've been doing this for 13 years now that that shows what acetate does and it's in, in many instances it's the same thing 00:26:44 that potassium does. They both have an effect on photosynthetic capacity. They both have an effect on, on stress mitigation, um, 00:26:54 water relations, all those or different pieces of t of the stress puzzle. Now when you get into calcium 00:27:04 and mag, can you add it to fungicide jar test, jar test jar test Calcium is very weird. 00:27:15 There's only one, one nutrient that may be more cantankerous than calcium and his boron, it can work today mixing stuff 00:27:25 and tomorrow it don't work. So jar test, jar test, he did a lot of foliar mag acetate and 00:27:35 It was tremendous results. I don't know if, I mean my low hanging fruit was, I am always a mag deficient, so, 00:27:43 but I needed to drive it in the plant so he made me some mag acetate and it was a, a huge benefit, you know, 00:27:51 but we talk about, you know, back to what you know, Dan was talking about earlier, you know, can we replace dry fertility like this? 00:27:58 No, but back to what Johnny said, when you have an environmental problem and you don't have the root system to go 00:28:05 and get these nutrients that are in your soul, you gotta back up and reboot. So a couple years ago, one of the things that I had happen, 00:28:13 I called Tommy, he was one of the first ones I called. I had an a LS injury and it was bad and my root systems were dying 00:28:23 and I needed to do something to get that plant back together. Well I got the plant back together 00:28:27 and I fed that plant the entire time until my brace roots could come alive and go down and get more because my regular crown roots 00:28:35 and all my fibers roots, they were dying. They were like it was dying off. And I basically grew the whole crop on a liquid diet. 00:28:42 So I disagree with some of these guys saying that we can't grow everything on a liquid diet. I've done it and I know I can do it 00:28:49 and I can do it with an ROI. Alright, I want to throw it out here. I want to hear from everybody 00:28:53 going down the line right here. I'll start with Matt. Matt, you've got irrigation on every acre you farm 00:28:58 and you've got genetics from these seed companies better than it's ever been. You've been farming since, you know, 00:29:04 35 years ago, 34 years ago. I'd say that stress mitigation's pretty easy when you've got the best genetics we've ever had in the history 00:29:12 of agriculture and irrigation. I don't think it should really be that hard to stress mitigate, I'm being mean of course, 00:29:17 but that, that would be the perception from a lot of people. Like what the hell is he worried about? 00:29:21 Just turn on the spigot and plant great genetics and as long as you got the fertilizer flung out there, you're fine. 00:29:26 Well, like you, like you said, we farm the same variety in three different areas of the, of the, of the United States. 00:29:31 So I'm gonna have some stresses different no matter how high that thing can yield, it can be a 300 pound variety 00:29:37 and I may be 180 if I don't do some of the things we do to try to relieve stress. Johnny don't. The seed companies make it so 00:29:44 that the stress reduction as a farmer is a heck of a lot easier. I mean they do, but we talked about it again 00:29:52 and all these new varieties are for the high end yields and we're not all farming in that high end yield environment, you know, 00:29:57 and I'm predominantly dry land. We have a lot of irrigation, but it doesn't matter really at the grand scheme of things. 00:30:02 But you know, one thing we hadn't talked about, Damien, is so many of these varieties too have different disease 00:30:06 packages and stuff like that. There is products that we can put out there that are foliar, that are fertilized, high rates of copper, stuff like that 00:30:13 that can help stress mitigate from the disease size too that we hadn't even talked about today. I'm gonna ask Temple the same question, all right? 00:30:23 You're already fo forced to trickle out all your fertility because of the nutrient management. 00:30:28 You've got the best genetics of these companies, obviously they're amazing. It's easier now to reduce stress than it's ever been 00:30:35 unless you think that somehow the stress has gotten harder. Well, like I said, stress is, is stress. 00:30:42 Like it doesn't matter when it happens from emergence all the way through tassel. Stress is stress. Um, I will say out 00:30:51 of all the nutrients in my opinion, um, like obviously always go after low hanging fruit because that's, that's the easiest way to relieve stress 00:31:00 because it doesn't matter what nutrient it lacks in, it's gonna throw that plant through some kind of stress. But for me, potassium, what does potassium really do for me? 00:31:10 It helps that plant translocate water up and down the plant. So if it can bring moisture into the plant, 00:31:17 it can't bring any other nutrients in if you don't have the potassium source. So don't ever let it become deficient. Alright, 00:31:25 Let's go through this wrap up before Temple has to hit outta here and go to a different stage. 00:31:29 I think the neat part of this is, and I was being a little facetious, I said these seed companies have made tremendous strides 00:31:35 compared to when we were kids, right? And if you think about what stress mitigation is, we're already smarter. 00:31:41 You guys have already done so much about applying things at just in time when it's needed to be there. 00:31:47 You already had the curve. I think that the stress penalty on yields, especially from forward thinking farmers like are here right 00:31:54 now, is less than it's probably ever been. As opposed to maybe what you had in the old days, the stress penalty would've knocked you out. 00:32:00 So I want your comment, closing comment on, 'cause we asked the question, is stress mitigation fact or fiction? 00:32:06 Well, I think that it is fact obviously, but it's probably better managed today than it's ever been. Oh, I think it's a hundred percent managed better than 00:32:14 it was years ago. We didn't know. We've got more information now. You know, are we where we need to be to to 00:32:20 to have the silver bullet? No. If we can ever get a product that will lower canopy temperature consistently all the 00:32:26 time, something like that, that's gonna be a game changer. But where we are today from where we were 00:32:31 for me 10 years ago is like night and day. I think one of the biggest things that's changed farming in the last 10 years is how we're getting our data. 00:32:38 We were doing traditional soil sampling, went to tissue sampling, now we're doing sap tissue testing, stuff like that. 00:32:44 We're able to see those nutrients actually move in and up and down that plant so we can tell what's going on. 00:32:49 I think that's what's really helped us get to the next level in yield. I'm gonna make it real simple. See that chart? 00:32:57 Start paying attention to them charts for every, every, whether it's corn, wheat, beans or whatever they're out there. 00:33:04 Follow that, get ahead of 'em, not behind them. Proactive makes money, reactive loses money. And that's the way to, to reduce stress. 00:33:12 Not just stress on the plan, stress on your pocketbook. That's the most important one that we need to talk about in this future that we 00:33:19 Got. I like it. Proactive makes money. Reactive loses money. Good deal. All right Tommy, gimme the wrap. 00:33:24 So lastly, um, I'm sure everybody's looked at the drought monitor lately. Just remember drought typically does not get any 00:33:33 better in the season. So it's already pretty bad in some spots right now. So placement of nutrient form a nutrient is going 00:33:43 to be critical in going forward in 2026. We're gonna stick around. You guys can stick around for a few minutes. 00:33:49 Anyhow, these guys can stick around for a few minutes. Anyhow, I think that's a good time to wrap anyway. You always get much better information when it's one-on-one 00:33:56 in terms of, uh, about your unique situation. Uh, Tommy Roach, the people of nature's, thank you very much for having us here. 00:34:02 I'll stick around, say hi to you and I gotta tell you, stress mitigation factor fiction. We all agreed and temple's best little parting words if you 00:34:09 have not looked at the nutrient uptake chart, nature's the only company that we work with that does this right over there 00:34:15 and it's another one right over here. Throwing out fertility when it's not needed does not help your plant. 00:34:21 But more importantly, what'd you hear when we started things off with Tommy? The best thing you can do to reduce stress is 00:34:26 create a healthy plant. Do that by the right timing of the nutrients. Anyway, that's Johnny Verell from Tennessee, 00:34:33 and that's Matt Miles from the southeast part of Arkansas, joined by Tommy Roach, Texas Tech alumni as he were. 00:34:39 That's Lubbock from Lubbock Anyway, and I'm Damien Mason with the three Mag. 00:34:42.565 --> 00:34:43.525