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Controlling fertility expense on your farming operation, very important, especially in this economic environment, to keep your
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bottom line positive. That's what we're talking about in this episode of Demco's Built to Move series, Agronomy Simplified, to help move your farm
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forward. I'm with Iowa farmer and Demco employee, also agricultural consultant, Jason DeCavers. This is an important thing always on bottom line issues, but it's very
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important right now. We've got fertility shortages. We've got a really crunchy bottom line. What are you telling people? In the past, with dry P&K, everybody was told, "Put the P&K on there,"
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because as you look at your soil test, you're building. And what we're starting to find out is that's really inefficient to put a lot of dry P&K out there, because very little of it gets into the plant first year.
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So if times are tough and you have decent levels, maybe you can cut back there. Or maybe it's nitrogen. The colleges say you need 1.1 to
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1.2 pounds of N to raise a bushel of corn. Well, the pretty good chance is we've been doing it on a half pound a bushel the last few years. So, not saying that everybody should cut everything at a
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drastic level, but maybe you start to slowly ratchet back some of your fertility plans.
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It's interesting that you have seen on your own farming operation, as well as the clientele you work with, that there are cuts that absolutely can kill
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you, and there's some cuts you're like, "We should've made this cut sooner." And N's one of those things.
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Correct, 100%. And manure rates too is another big one, with manure being, "I've got it, I'm going to put it on extra thick." Well, maybe taper that down,
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because there's some penalties to overapplication of manure. Yeah. All right. We talk about needs and wants.
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We talk about some farmers get into a routine, which means they do the same thing year in and year out, might be costing them money.
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What do you see, and what do you see with the folks you're helping? A lot of people like to do recreational tillage.
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Mm-hmm. And that might not be the best thing, especially as you see the news lately of dust blowing across roads and some of the hazards of that.
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So it's- So you've got an erosion issue, you've got, obviously, an expense issue, diesel, et cetera, and then also, does it hurt your fertility? It does, right?
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It could at times. Not in every case, maybe. Got it. And then the last thing you told me before we hit the record on this was about data. We've got better technology inside that cab, in our offices,
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on our phone for crying out loud. How do we use data to help bring that expense in line?
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One thing that we've seen in the data, a couple years ago, we said, "Hey, we're going to cut on our seed budget." So we went heavy conventional corn, and we
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didn't look at the hybrid. We just said, "Oh, it's conventional. It's going in the field." That was a really poor decision on our part, because some
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of those varieties were not meant for our area, but because they were conventional, we said, "Put them in the ground." And that hurt.
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So we'll look at the- Meaning they were a little bit less expensive seed and you said, "This is not going to make a difference." It made a big difference.
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It made a big difference. We should've looked at the hybrid first and then started to pick what trait package we wanted to get.
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And then there's the other data issues. You've got soil sampling, we've got tissue, we've got sap that you guys are doing. So the data availability is greater than it's ever been.
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Definitely. You just have to know how to process it- Got it ... and use it.
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His name's Jason DeCavers. He's an Iowa farmer. He's also a Demco guy and an agricultural consultant. We're talking about controlling your fertility expense for a bottom line
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that's positive on this episode of Demco's Built to Move, Agronomy 00:03:01.400 --> 00:03:03.520
