00:00 I came here to the filter station for Kelly's subsurface drip irrigation system to talk about using this for fertility 00:06 and how that works in a wet year. And then all of a sudden, our topic got hijacked. Matt says, I've been thinking about putting this stuff in. 00:13 I need to talk to Kurt. That's Kurt Grim over there, Nutri Drip. And next thing you know, Kelly is selling Matt on why he 00:18 needs to put subsurface drip irrigation at his farm in Arkansas. So I gotta tell you, my topic got hijacked, 00:24 but I think this is a much better one to talk about. You ran the numbers, you said, Matt, you farm, say 10,000 acres, right? 00:29 You don't get to use your end rows because down there with the furrow, irrigation, flood irrigation, fur irrigation, right? 00:35 You've gotta have all those ends with the poly pipe and it's gotta run down a furrow. And you said, I'm not just pulling those acres out. 00:42 Wait a minute. Run those numbers real quickly for me. So the end result's gonna be that Matt's actually losing money 00:47 because he doesn't have drip irrigation. But of Matt's 10,000 acres, he's, he estimates he's not farming 5% of it or 500 acres 00:55 because of end rows, of end rows, because of the turn rows he has to have for the flood irrigation. 01:00 If he'd put drip in, he could farm 500 more acres times 200 bushel. Corn is a hundred thousand bushel of corn. 01:07 He spends 20 to 40,000 a year trying to kill pig weeds in those turn rows. He's gotta do $40 an acre worth of tillage every year. 01:16 And then every, every third year he does compact. He does a deep vertical tillage for, uh, to break up the compaction. 01:23 The SDI would take care of that. And, and then we get into the sustainable space. Sustainability dollars. He'd be no till if he didn't have 01:31 to do all the $40 an acre of tillage to, to create the, the Ridges. All right? Now Matt is 01:36 sitting there saying, and he's a pretty calm guy at beast. He wants to retort, but he has to go last. 01:42 Kurt, do those numbers make sense or is this too much pie in the sky? Because I can already start hearing 01:47 what, what Matt's gonna say. I wanna hear your thoughts before we get to Matt. Yeah, It makes sense that, you know, we look at not, 01:53 not just on Matt's operation, we get a lot of, um, pivot irrigators that are missing 20% of their acres on center pivots. 01:59 And it's the same, it's the same map. Mean course the corners are dry land. Yeah. Right? Um, and you go far enough west, 02:03 they don't even farm 'em, right? And so, yeah, it's the same thing. What's the value of that land? 02:07 You're paying taxes on it already. You're going across it already, um, and not getting any production off of it. 02:12 So how do you take, how do you take land you already own and make it more productive? And 02:17 So one of the big arguments has always been, and we've been doing this 'cause land values have been at such a premium in the last few years since, you know, 02:23 I've joined extreme ag. You know, we talked about putting in tile, putting in drain tile, Hey, rather than trying 02:28 to go in $14,000 an acre ground, why not take the 14,000 an acre ground you own and putting 10% of, uh, investment into it 02:37 and making it worth so much more that kind of thinking. So I'm already kind of thinking that this is gonna work, but I know that Matt's Eden probably not doing it yet, 02:45 but on the plane ride home, he is gonna come up with all the reasons why this won't work because he's even admitted sometimes. 02:51 He says, well, that won't work. Is one of his first go-tos. All right. Is this gonna work? Oh, I, 02:56 I think there's ano very good opportunity for it to work I three when, when extreme ag first, you know, started, you know, 03:02 and I gotta to hang out with these guys that, that had been put down drip irrigation. I said, I've gotta figure out a way to do that. 03:07 Well, how do you do that when you're already flood irrigation? Mm-Hmm. You spent the money to do that. Mm-Hmm. 03:11 You put in underground pipe. Mm-Hmm. You know, you did all the things to make your furry irrigation, um, efficient. 03:18 And we've got a few pivots scattered around on our farms. They're, they're at least 20% less yield 03:25 than the flood irrigation. So I've gotta figure out, in my mind, is the drip irrigation better than a pivot irrigation from 03:31 the fact that where I'm at, you can't get enough water in a circle to, to sustain the yield you can 03:37 with flood irrigation on corn. I Want, I wanna ask the irrigation guy, which one would you, if he was going to just dabble, 03:42 he is gonna take a few hundred acres and go to subsurface drip irrigation. Which one do you yank out first? 03:47 The furrow or the pivot The furrow. A hundred percent. Because we're gonna save, we're gonna use half the water on furrow irrigation. 03:54 Okay. And we're gonna be able to introduce verigation, right? Mm-Hmm. Verigation through furrow is almost impossible. 03:59 Um, at least to do it uniformly. I've tried it. And so, okay, so We would do furrow reduce water demand by half, 04:04 which probably is not as much of an issue where you are as if it was somewhere dry. You've got the big water table 04:10 and then fertigation, alright, you're, you're the one that's pitching him on this whole thing without even a commission from Kurt. 04:15 From what I'm seeing so far. I'm aware of that, but we're gonna get that. Oh, I'll bet he'll get one somehow. 04:19 All right. You like to say, here's the numbers. It's a no brainer. You're kind of almost impetuous that way. 04:25 You're like, okay, this is your mind. Is should he be doing this? And like in your mind, should he be drawing up this plan on the flight home? 04:31 Well, I think with all the challenges he talks about the 500 acres, the a hundred thousand bushel 04:36 of corn in Matt's world, five, that's a half a million dollars a year. I think it's at least worth looking at 04:41 and talking about taking a very serious look at it, you know, the, uh, the pigweeds, things like that. I mean, we're, we're up to, we're up to six, 04:50 700,000 a year that would pay to, uh, that'd pay to put some drip in. Yeah. That would make a hefty payment. 04:57 But the, we have to validate that we don't have that 20% reduction in yield. Yeah. I believe though, you know, I'm thinking here 05:03 as you're talking about it, that 20% reduction in yield is 'cause of how long it takes to circle to come around. 05:07 Mm-Hmm. With drip, that water's ly spread out just like the flood. It isn't a one time deal. 05:13 Like the, uh, like the, the pivot is, you know what I mean? So I'm optimistic as I usually am optimistic that 05:20 that 20% reduction won't be there. Well, and we're also the two things that, one thing you hadn't even thought about. 05:25 So see, he's not thinking everything. I'm gonna help him here. The cost of the poly pipe Mm-Hmm. Per acre and the cost of labor, that's, 05:32 it's very intensive labor intensive to put it out, pick it up and monitor it all the time. You don't have to go out there with, we have 05:38 to completely check every row with a shovel when we're further irrigating, that guy's gone. 05:42 He's gotta walk up to this and do something there. And I'm sure you monitor it some kind of way. How do you know if it's a dry 05:49 spot and you're not getting it out there? So, By the way, it's On our phone now What I'm wondering is Kurt Moisture center 05:54 Mm-Hmm. Why are you not making a bigger push for people that have furrow irrigation to go to subsurface drip irrigation? 06:00 It seems to me we just ran rough numbers here. It's, it pencils out. I'm not sure over time, but we're, 06:05 'cause you even told me once, is 12 to $1,500 an acre? No, we're gonna be more like 2000 to 2,500. So that's the challenge, right? It's a big CapEx cost. 06:13 So how do you, how do you get the ROI real quickly To cash flow flow quickly for list our viewer two two 2020 $500 per acre 06:19 for a turnkey installed subsurface drip irrigation. That's correct. That's the typical range for a normal sized deal. So 06:25 It's a pretty big CapEx. CapEx, right? Uh, I gotta come with a lot of money out the door. Right. Can I borrow, can I borrow on 30 year terms on 06:31 that is how do I work That? So t you could get a mortgage on the land and get a long-term loan, but we also can finance a drip 06:37 system without taking a mortgage on a seven year loan, which typically from Kelly's numbers, that will cash flow a seven year loan. 06:44 Um, the other thing we need to look at though in, in flood to drip irrigation conversion is there's a lot 06:48 of equip money potentially available to help do that. The government has a big push right now trying to get those acres converted over 06:54 to a more efficient form of irrigation. And there should be extra sustainability money you would think coming in the future for cutting your water usage in 07:02 High. Making that practice change would, uh, making the practice change on from a water efficiency and no-till would provide a lot 07:09 of sustainable dollars. Yeah, for Sure. I wanna go back to one of Matt's questions about 07:13 how do I know if there's a spot in the field that's not irrigating? So one of the tools we started using this year, 07:17 actually last year we started using it, it's a thermal satellite that we get an image every single day. 07:22 And so now I can see which zone is running and which zone is, is off or too dry. And now I can start allocating my water based on an, 07:30 an image that I get from a satellite every single day. Gotcha. How much money do you spend wide dropping? How many times do you wide drop? 07:36 My wide drop? Well, depends on if it's your plot at my place or what I'm doing myself. But no, I I I'll stream my nitrogen out pre-plant 07:44 and then I will wide drop twice. I'm on a corn, corn, corn now crop. I don't do any, We've eliminated those two passes Right 07:51 By putting it through here. By putting it through here. Yeah. And you can put a sufficient amount, 07:55 you can put large amounts, small amounts, whatever you want. Do Percent. Yeah. Savings. Savings. 07:59 Then first off, I just run the money. I picked up baker's. I didn't farm. Uh, I don't have labor going out by the way. I told Matt. 08:05 'cause I, I liked the idea of something that's almost mindless. I wanted it to be my job when they lay all that poly pipe 08:11 that I get the job of going around with a stick and hitting a little hole and then the water picks up. Matt said, you'll think that's cool for about 45 minutes 08:17 and then tendonitis will get in your elbow. You eliminate that. After 200,000 holes, your arm gets tired. 08:23 So, all right. There's that, there's the labor, there's the acres you picked up, there's the, uh, irrigation. 08:28 I, there's a place not too far from you, it's acres and acres of polypipe that's all just bundled up in a pile for recycling. 08:34 Yeah. So you gotta pick all up. So there's some pretty big labor things. I'm starting to see this in my head. 08:38 Yes. Why did it Take you, why did it take you and me Midwestern guys to turn him onto this idea? Well, he had to see the example of how it works. All 08:46 Right. I didn't think that's the answer he was gonna give when you said that, but yeah. The great thing about you, I was priming. 08:50 You're not a huckster salesperson. There's gonna be some challenges. First off cap expenditure. What else should he consider? Yes. 08:56 If you think about switching from sub, if you're thinking about switching from furrow to subsurface drip, what else should Matt consider? 09:01 So water quality, um, we've talked, touched on that just a little bit with Matt, that he's got iron in his water. 09:06 We're gonna have to figure out a way to get that iron out before it goes to the drips irrigation system because it 09:09 Can run through a polypipe and down that furrow. And it don't matter if it's got iron or not, right. When it's going through a little teeny hose 09:14 and a little teeny spigot. Yep. It could potentially plug. Okay. Yep. So we've got, we've gotta address the iron 09:19 and there's ways to do that. There's filtration options out there that we can get rid of that iron, 09:24 It'll plug it actually plug pivots. Yeah, the iron's that bad. It'll plug. So you is have to have a filtration or water, some sort 09:29 of a water, water, um, cleanup system. Right? Pre. Pre, okay. What else? Yep. So that's probably my first one. 09:36 The second one is gonna be in, in his furrow irrigation. He's, he's rigging, he's creating this ridge, 09:42 which is a think about, think about the aerated soil in that ridge. How are we gonna mimic that in a, in a flat field and, 09:49 and not lose that benefit? I think that's probably one of the other things we gotta consider is how do we make sure we get that soil wet but not too wet. 09:56 Yeah. Keep that air in the soil and those really flat fields in Arkansas. That would be one of my watch outs is like, 10:02 how do we make sure we're never over irrigating? 'cause you can actually do more damage with over irrigation than, than 10:06 Not enough. Especially in our closeup clay soil, low clay hole. 'cause guy a person, no offense, but a person like man, 10:12 he's so used to thinking it's hot, it's summer, it's dry, put the water to it. 10:16 He'd have a propensity to possibly over water is one of the Challenges. So one, exactly. 10:21 'cause with subsurface drip irrigation, we've got that drip line down there at 12, 14, 16 inches. That water typically comes up 10:27 to within two or three inches of the surface. But you walk out across your field and you think it's dry, turn the system on. 10:32 And we've really gotta monitor what's going on underneath the soil to make sure we've still got air in that soil and we don't over 10:37 Irrigate. Yeah. Where your root zone is become saturated, the oxygen is just as important as anything else. Yes, 10:42 It is. The advantages, some of the advantages is I wouldn't have to have the raised bed so 10:48 I wouldn't have to have the tillage. If we get the oxygen right, I can change row spacings. I do know that narrow row beans 10:54 and what I plant are higher yield from what I understand. Narrow row corn, like 20 inch corn. 10:59 That's supposed to be really the thing to go to with some people. You know, there's a lot of different things I could 11:03 try and do. I could run a pull type planter. You know, what would that be worth to be able to run a pull type planter? 11:09 I could put two or two on the, by the By way. I listen know right now that's tuning in 11:11 for the first time pull type planter because maybe you didn't know this. Matt's the only farm I've been on 11:16 that the planter's on the three point hitch on the back of the tractor. And that's because they're turning tight on the end 11:20 and they have to hit those, uh, mounted up and you're planting on mount sprayer Efficiency alone. We 11:26 pull up with 120 foot boom, we fold the wing up, we back up, we turn around counter rows, we pull back in, we back up, we fold the boom back out, then we take off, oh, 11:36 where with the end rows. You go through there and make your trim pass and then you're, you're done from there. 11:40 That's huge inefficiency. Just in the sprayer. I hate to say that. We just sold, we just sold a unit for Kurt. 11:47 So you wanna cut me on the commission also? His name's Kurt. There'll probably be one or two things that screws it up. 11:52 All right. Anyway, we're talking about, uh, we're talking about the, the very, uh, reality of have you questioned the system that you have in place 11:58 because it just happened, we walked up here. Are you questioning your irrigation system, what it might be costing you? 12:03 Is it time for you to consider something else? Maybe it's beyond irrigation. Is there something that's right in your face 12:07 that you've just accepted, that you're like, Hey, wait a minute, I should look at this from a different perspective. 12:11 Maybe actually, there's a lot of money to be picked up here. Like, uh, Kelly ran the numbers for you. We're extreme ag. 12:16 That's what we do is help you make more money from your farming operation. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time.