Blowing The Bin Top Off With a $400 Fertility Budget
It may be a while before we see an $8 corn market, but you can still learn something from Chad's plan for a $400 fertility budget.
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00:00 Hey y'all. It's Chad Henderson with Extreme Ag, and here we are. It's field daytime, 00:05 and we fixing to be talking about this budget. We went from $4 corn with Stephanie and Galen, and then we went to $6 corn, 00:12 and we talked about that budget. And here we are. No limits. One and only No limits, Okay? There is a limit. We're 00:18 at $400. Fertility budget per acre. So again, looking at what is that a limit? It is a limit because you can still spend 00:25 more, you could always spend more. I promise. I more, I can promise you we can always spend more. I can promise you we can spend more 00:32 because this is nowhere near what a com. What a contest, plot cost is it. I mean, y'all, y'all know, y'all help people with it. 00:38 I mean, you know, our contest is our research and development. We drag that over into our normal practices. 00:43 Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. I always think, you know, uh, those $8 corn years are rare, 00:50 but it is a time to sort of reinvest in intellectual capital that helps you make decisions when it's the $4 corn 00:57 that we talked about earlier and you had some tough calls to make on what you would eliminate. 01:02 We know, I mean, if we could just cover all of our bases, wouldn't that be great? But we know there's diminishing returns. 01:08 Like is it four pounds of zinc? Is it eight pounds of zinc? Is it two pounds of zinc? Where does it sit in, you 01:14 Know, it's most time it's gonna be two pounds of zinc. You know, I love the eight pound theory. I really like where you're going with that. 01:19 But you know, most of the time it's the two pounds of zinc, you know, forward. So where does Stephanie, uh, 01:24 help you spend the money on this one? Oh man, it was everywhere. It wasn't just nitrogen. It wasn't just, you know, 01:28 it wasn't just NP and K, you know, so we started with your dry program. So we talked, we increased, we started at, um, 50 pounds, 01:34 then went to 1 25, and this is two 50. This is, this is 200, 200 pounds. This is 200. So that gave us our base with the strip till there. Yep. 01:41 And then for our planner program, we started out the same for all of 'em. We did that same mix and then we just increased rates. 01:46 So here we're at six gallons of that same planner mix across that went out in furrow 01:50 and then added 28% UAN with some potassium in that side dress. So getting an additional potassium out there, 01:56 which we wouldn't see in some cases. So that's, that was our starting point. Now where it's gonna change from here is in the fers, like 02:03 where we didn't even go make a foer. We made our herbicide pass and we trickled some micro 500 and we got like a sniff of she ca just a little bit. 02:11 It was like, it's like that's all you get. So we did that there and then we come on up just a little more. 02:16 But with this one we get a full rate. We get, I think we get three passes. We added some other products as you see that already. 02:23 Mag liquid products, we put them in the game, put them in the budget. Yep. We put in things that y drops some more micros, 02:29 some more potassium and wide drops. That's right. So anytime we could get nutrients beyond nitrogen, we put those out. That's 02:34 Right. And not the cost of just adding more nitrogen, we just kept Cutting back. I mean, those sound like 02:38 smart decisions. They really do. Do you think, I mean, do you guys feel confident they're gonna pay you back or are you just 02:44 crossing your fingers? Oh, I'm confident. I'm confident they will. I'm confident. Okay. You know I'm, Will we ever find out? 02:50 Oh, we will find out. We will find out in, uh, like September. We're going to find out. Now I'm going to tell you that I, 02:57 I'm not gonna lie, Stephanie, you will get the, the phone call first. We'll decide how we're gonna tell you according to the data. 03:03 That's a fact. That's the advantage. Can I count on it to be accurate at that point? You Can count on it to be accurate, you know? 03:10 Well, I mean, because we do wanna give good information to the I as farmers as I know you guys will be. We're kidding. But 03:15 I will lie to Temple, but I will not lie to you. Well, and more importantly, I mean, we really designed this really 03:21 as a complete educational piece. Yes. Like, yes, we're agro liquid, but, and we have a number of products. 03:27 But the idea is to help farmers understand that decision process. And if we want education out of it, 03:33 we gotta give 'em the true scoop at the end. You Know, the thing is, like I said, it was exactly what you said. 03:38 We feel a lot of times that farmers make up fully emotional decisions, you know, and we need 03:45 To make, it's easy And we need to make these decisions based on education. And that's what we're doing it for. 03:51 We're based on the facts of what works and what don't work based on facts of what we think we need versus what we know we need. Well, 03:58 It's gonna be fun. I mean, we will have more videos on this. It's gonna, it's Gonna be something I I do hope Farmers, 04:04 while you're talking about you're finding value in micronutrients, I hope someone's watching this and going, why would I decide? 04:10 Yep. You know, and that, and that's, that's the whole purpose of this. That's right. Is what would I 04:14 Decide? So the, so just for checks to make you wonder, if you're thinking, what would I decide? Take a pen and paper, scratch down what you do. 04:21 $4, $6, $8 corn. I don't care what your population is, if it's 28,000 or 36,000, this is all standard. 04:30 Uh, but what would you do on your dry program all the way up to, would you put a fungicide on it? 04:35 Because those are the things that matter. Those are the facts we know we gotta have. And what would you do.
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See All GrowersChad Henderson
Madison, AL