Farming Video | Can Nutrition Replace Fungicide?

00:00:00 Can you save money by reducing fungicide? That's gonna be a question that I think you should ask yourself this season, next season, the season 00:00:06 after that, based on where commodity prices are and the spend you are putting out per acre. I'm joined by Kelly Garrett 00:00:12 and Nate Enon with Spray Tech here at Matt Miles farm in McGee, Arkansas. The field day is going on and we're grabbing people 00:00:18 and saying, let's just bring some of this great information back to you if you couldn't attend this field day. 00:00:23 You said there's a real strong economic argument made about, we have used fungicide maybe too gratuitously. 00:00:29 We've put it out there. We know it's a preventive, you call it a defensive, uh, measure. Maybe we are spending money unnecessarily 00:00:36 and there's other products like full tech from these guys that can reduce that spend. 00:00:41 Yes. Fungicide. The reason I say it's a defensive spend is it doesn't make yield. 00:00:46 Right? It protects it, which is fine. It it works very good. But if we use a product like Full Tech Cube 00:00:51 and things like that, which is a nutritional, and we achieve mineral balance in the plant, the plant will have its own defense mechanisms 00:00:59 and hopefully we don't have to use fungicide and the nutritional will make yield. That's an offensive spend. 00:01:05 That also offers a defensive component. Do healthy plants need fungicide is one of the questions because there's this thing, there's gonna be a bunch 00:01:12 of skeptics watching this that say, Nate, you know what? These guys are full of 00:01:16 crap. They're trying to sell something. A healthy plant is your best defense. Straightforward. That's, that's the answer to that. 00:01:22 The healthier plant, the better defense is gonna be plain and simple. I talked to a lot of guys throughout the country that, 00:01:28 uh, always have that debate. Fungicide or no fungicide. We started looking at cube 'cause it does that, but it also takes care of the nutritional package. 00:01:35 So if a guy's questioning on the fence, a lot of times we would go that direction 'cause we were looking what else to add to 00:01:41 that tank in the late season? Do we overuse fungicide? I I think we do at times. Uh, I think there's a time that, a good time 00:01:47 to protect your plant that needs to be there. I mean, I, I think we'd still need fungicide at times. I'm not 00:01:52 The farmer you are. I asked a question, uh, in an interview that I did about the spend 00:01:56 and I said, the cheapest fungicide pass, just product 10 bucks, cheapest fungicide pass on the premier Cadillac products. 00:02:02 24 bucks. Does that sound reasonable? Yes, It does. Alright. If I use a different method, 00:02:08 I can save easily 10, maybe 24 bucks. Absolutely you can. And then I would, again, reallocate those dollars. 00:02:15 A lot of times there's probably a overuse of fungicide because we wanna make that pass. We wanna protect it. And so we're trying to be efficient. 00:02:22 Well, if we're efficient with our airplane or our drones or sprayers, if you wanna be efficient, go out and 00:02:27 and spray a product like the cube. Make a micronutrient pass. Yep. Try to achieve mineral balance in your plants, 00:02:33 which will raise the brick score. There's your natural defense. Again, you don't need that defensive 00:02:37 spend and you're making yield. You know that people come to these field days and even the people here as open 00:02:42 mine as they are, are skeptical. Answer the skeptic that says it's easy for them to say they've never lost a crop to frogeye 00:02:48 or all these different kinds of southern rust, southern rust or whatever. Answer that skeptic. 00:02:52 So to that skeptic, I'd say this, listen, you've gotta take care of, of the disease you've got coming. Uh, I would say, uh, preventative 00:03:00 and being early on, it is your best defense. True. Putting some nutritional in, it's, it's important what you're putting in that tank to go out there, protect 00:03:07 and to create yield. So I think it is very important to have stuff in your tank there. Do You think, Kelly, last question. Do 00:03:12 you think we ultimately get to a point where we use almost no fungicide because of environmental pressure and economic pressure? 00:03:19 It's a goal that I have because of the budget, uh, budget I wanna stay within. Okay. Is it attainable? I, I believe it is. Yes. 00:03:25 And all of a sudden we're saying, man, we used that fungicide so much. Back in the old days, we didn't even use anymore because, 00:03:30 Because we didn't know any better. But now with continued testing, continued research in education and learning 00:03:36 and evolving, there's a better way to do it. Kelly Garrett coming at you from Matt Miles farm, uh, here in McGee, Arkansas. 00:03:42 Great Field Day, extreme Ag Field Day. We do this all the time and we want you to come to our field days, 00:03:47 very much experiential learning. You can get out here, you can kick the brakes, you can talk to everybody, people like Nate Eon here with spray tech 00:03:52 and all the other companies we work with and all the wonderful plots we're doing. Check it all. At Extreme Mag Farm, 00:03:57 you can register for the field days. They go through August 21st. I'm Damien Mac coming at you. 00:04:01.125 --> 00:04:01.765