00:00 We're teaching temple about cotton here with Matt Miles at the Johnny Verell Field Day in Jackson, Tennessee. 00:04 There's a bunch of cotton trials going on. We're not really gonna talk about the trials because that's more Johnny's expertise. 00:09 But the main thing is you've got an expertise. It's called cotton. I will admit, I know very little about cotton, but everything 00:14 that I do know, I learned from you in October. I was in McGee, Arkansas. You took me out to a field. I loved it. You showed me the inner 00:21 workings of the cotton picker. I was fascinated. Showed me the bulls. I didn't understand all that. 00:25 Now we're gonna teach our Maryland friend about cotton talk to me. Yeah. So it's kind of neat. 00:30 This is the first time Timber City's ever been in a cotton field, you know, in, in his life. 00:33 So cotton is a very unique plant. Uh, we've got one here in front of us. So like you like, you know, like we were talking about it, 00:40 it is more like a tree that's actual bark, just like on a tree. Yep. You know, you can shave it off 00:45 and that, that's just like if you shaved off. Yep. Bark off a cypress tree. Yep. Next thing it's got a tap root, you know? 00:51 So, so the bigger the tap root, the bigger the root is, the better you go. The other thing, like I said, it was a tree. 00:57 So you have to manage the height and we talk about PGRs and corn and beans. Yeah. We're talking about different types 01:02 of PGRs that promote fruit. The main thing you have to have on cotton is a PGR to keep the height down. One of our, when I first worked with you guys 01:10 and we talked about what a plant growth regulator is and what it does, then I believe it was you, somebody with southern exposure might have been Johnny or Chad 01:17 because they've been in the cotton business in their production business in their life. They said we are using plant growth regulators 01:22 and cotton 20 years before it came to everything else. Yeah. And that's because what a lot of people don't realize, this cotton plant, which is a woody, becomes a woody tree. 01:29 It'll grow taller than me. Oh Yeah. If you don't, if you don't control it. 01:33 And that's even the varieties we grow today. You know, cotton originated as a full tree. Yep. So they they brought it 01:40 down, brought it down, brought it down. But we still have problem with height. What Do you got with your knife there? Is 01:43 that one of what's gonna eventually become cotton? Well, Yeah, like what I was showing, you know 01:47 what I was explaining to temple, you start with a square, you know, then you end up with a white bloom. 01:51 Then a day, two days later, you end up with a red bloom. And then when you pull that red bloom off, 01:56 which this one's you can see the little bowl. Okay. And then the bowl goes from that to, this is not a mature bowl. 02:03 If this was a mature bowl, I wouldn't be able to slice it with my knife because, because it turns 02:07 Woody. Woody. Well the lint, well no, the Oh, the lint. So it'd be like trying to slice your knife through a packed cotton Yeah. 02:14 Shirt or toothpicks or whatever. Yeah. You know, so you see inside there, all right. You see those are different seeds in there. Okay. 02:21 And that I just, I just kind of cut it in half. So you see the cotton seed. So you know when, when it goes to the gin 02:26 or whatever, you separate the lint from the seed and then the seed is either taken, used for cow feed or if you're in seed production, you know, 02:34 then they'll go acid delin that with, they'll take all the fiber off of it, delin it, and then that's what, that's what we plant. 02:40 You know, after that you get paid for both. You get paid for the seed. Yes. Plus you get paid for the lent, get paid 02:45 for the lint, get paid for the seed. You know, in the old days the gin would take the seed as pave for Jennings. 02:51 So there's two ways of looking at that. Today's world, everybody basically has sells their seed through a co-op or whatever. 02:58 Okay. Uh, but used to the gin would take that and that's how they operated. Okay. So you just said if you were growing genetics, 03:04 I mean this is obviously genetically improved when it came from Egypt or whatever, it was just a tree. 03:08 So we've done a lot of breeding with this, just like corn, soybeans, all the other crops that we grow. 03:13 The seed that comes from yours doesn't have value to become more cotton plants. It has value to become an oil protein product 03:21 for a cattle R feed. Yes. Fiber. Now you could, I mean you could actually, you could plant your seed de that my seed. 03:26 But it's just like soybeans or corn. You've got seed growers in certain areas where the weather is more, I could plant 03:32 What comes off of your plants and grow a cotton crop, but it ain't gonna be very good as opposed to buying stuff from the companies 03:39 that are specialized in breeding. Okay. So that's unique about it. I mean you can see the lint as, 03:43 even though this is really immature, you can actually, You can see it in there, See the lint there. So it's a whole different uh, product. 03:49 And like we were talking about earlier, this cotton's really struggled. Number one, it was replanted on on May the 28th. 03:55 So that's getting on the lake side. Yep. Number two, if you look around us, all of the rest of the crops that's growing here are insect harboring. 04:05 Yeah. You know that, that or damage to cotton. You said That corn around cotton, it creates more of a bug problem. That just, that struck me as like why? 04:14 Well, you take the, you take the corn, you know, corn's pretty resilient to insects like plant bugs. Okay. They'll live in there and they'll breed in there 04:20 and they'll come out here and they'll come out here and this is Their host. So that, that's, 04:23 that's where they, that's where they live. But this is their host in terms Of, but that's what I told him earlier 04:26 when we were walking out here. I was like, I don't see, like if we have insects in our other crops, you see, you see holes in your leaves. 04:33 Yeah. We don't see any of that. Right. And Matt said they don't bother that at all. Hardly at all. They'll go right for the square. 04:39 They go right for the square. They started the square and they will like the old bo weevil, which has about been era eradicated, 04:45 they'll actually pierce the bowl just like you'll see a stink bug. Pierce a uh, bean pine. 04:50 How much if you, if, and you said this, you said my dad used to make the crack that a cotton plant looks to die every day. 04:55 And you're out there, you're spraying it about every week. Yes. Mostly for bugs. 04:59 Yeah. Once it starts in the reproductive sta stage, we spray it every around every 10 days. And that's For bugs, mostly herbicides. 05:06 Nonissue at this point, no. And so you don't have a weed problem. Fungus, fun. Fungus is a problem. 05:10 Uh, target spot is a disease that's starting to get more prevalent. And would It be at this time or would it be uh, a month ago? 05:17 It'd be more in the reproductive stage. Oh, so la Later? Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. And it'll start, it'll start attacking the bottom leaves. 05:24 But once you get the plant canopy, you really can't do any good with a fungicide because you can't get the fungicide 05:30 down to the leaves that needs to go on. Okay. I have, I, he will go to a fancy store and he'll tell you that you can buy these 05:35 jeans 'cause they're organic cotton. It seems to me Then you must take one hell of a penalty on organic cotton versus conventional 05:40 because of all the disease pressure you just talked about. He laughs So i I be on something 05:44 And the bugs. Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine. I mean, we know that, you know, can you imagine how many times that you would have to, you can't go over it. 05:51 Like your, your crop's gotta be desiccated. Yes. I mean, I guess you could put it realistically, you could have, you know, conventional cotton all the way 06:00 around you and have a hundred acre square right in the middle of it all and grow organic, your yield penalty. And you'd be, you'd be alright, 06:06 but your yield penalty, it's probably just like corn or beans. That's probably 50%. I 06:10 Bet it's, I bet it's 80%. You know, because I mean, you see the damage that these plants have taken. Right. 06:15 Well and that, does that mean they couldn't control the height either? And that plant, the organic stuff might be this tall. 06:20 I'm not familiar with organic cotton. I'm not sure how they grow it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I couldn't even 06:24 imagine trying to grow it With, well that's other one. I don't know if they can use plant growth regulators. Okay. The last couple of things. What uh, 06:31 I know cotton prices are very bad right now. 67 cents a pound doesn't mean a lot to somebody from Indiana or probably from Maryland. 06:37 That's almost half of what it was when it was good. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. Well, You know, when you get up, uh, uh, north 06:42 of a dollar cotton you're in, you're Making money. You're, you're making money. You're in high cotton as his say. 06:46 Yeah. Uh, what's cotton, what's a farmer like your buddy temple? Not know that. Is that you probably like, 06:51 oh my goodness, I didn't even think of this. That he doesn't know stuff that's just, you know, 'cause you've been growing it since you were a kid. 06:56 Well, I will say this. We got the idea, you know, everybody talks about me and the desiccation of soybeans. 07:01 We got the idea of desiccating soybeans because it's mandatory on cotton. Yep. So we have to desiccate, we call it the foliate. 07:07 We have to defoliate this. All these leaves have to drop and they have to drop green. If you drop 'em crispy, then they go in your sample. Really? 07:14 And grade off. Yeah. So you have to try to drop that leaf green to best. So it's a special defoliant that you use for this? Yes. 07:21 You wouldn't, you're not gonna use what we use On beans. No, you wouldn't come out here and put 07:24 paraquat or sharpen on this field. 'cause it would just crunch everything up and go in the sample. 07:28 Okay. You're gonna use something what we call what's called drop and it will actually drop the leaves green. 07:33 And then we've got another product that we open the bowls with. So we forced the bowls open with another, uh, product 07:40 that goes along with the defaulting. So when we talk about, you know, PG and all these things, this ain't nothing new to you. 07:47 No, no. This is something that you've been doing a long time. It's a different Type Of, do you feel like some of the stuff 07:51 that you've done here is what's helped you be a better soybean farmer? A hundred percent. We, so, 07:56 so when the delta soybeans were stepchild, you know, until they got up to $10, they were a stepchild. This is what brought me to the dance. Yeah. And then I, 08:04 Soybeans were truly a rotation crop period. And then well no, they just were on your poor ground. Okay. So you went years and years 08:10 and years with the same plant. You know, cotton, Cotton goes on the good ground Cotton, cotton goes on The good ground, cotton goes on good ground. Soybeans 08:16 were on the background. So when we started putting soybeans on the good ground, my idea was if we treat the soybean is happy, 08:23 as we treat the plant, the cotton plant, what can we do? And learn to understand it. 08:27 Like you guys have done such a good job. And That's when you started setting soybean record. Our years Ours. That's what my point is. 08:33 I mean I think that that kind of brought us all to the dance knowing. Would you guys know cotton? You know what I mean? 08:38 And I do the same thing like up there where I am. There's a lot of vegetables around. A lot of what the guys doing vegetables. Exactly. 08:44 I drug that over in the soybean production. And it seems like those things really help because you guys are, are doing things 08:50 so differently that makes a difference. Couple Last questions. So really we talk about, 08:55 you guys talk about high management versus low management. Meaning if you just don't do that much and you spend less, 09:00 but maybe you know it works for you or you do high management, you're gonna be spending more, you're gonna be more time in the field, 09:05 but you're gonna make up fort worth yield. It's almost difficult for you to imagine having low management cotton. 09:11 Yeah. I mean there's not almost not such thing as low management cotton when you get to the cost per acre. Yeah. Now what we do is we add extra fos, we add biology, 09:21 you know, we're trying to make, just like any other plant, we're trying to make that root system as big as it can get. 09:25 So it can take as many nutrients as it can. Cool thing about cotton that I've noticed since being extreme ag, it will react to a foliar 09:34 or a new idea better than corn beans wheel. Interesting. So another couple of thoughts on this. Just a person that's watching this that's like in, you know, 09:42 in South Dakota and it's like, oh, this is all new to me. So wood, do you plant, you plant seed, uh, you take it 09:47 to the mill or the gin, I'm sorry, and they do the separation, et cetera. Do you, you forward contract it, 09:52 you can sell it just like any other commodity, you are getting 1500 pounds per acre. Uh, that's, that's our goal. Okay. 09:59 So at 67 cents, that puts you at about a thousand dollars of revenue per acre, right? 10:03 Yeah. What do you got in it? That sounds like I was gonna say that sounds like it's a tough 10:06 to grow this without spending a thousand bucks so Though, but you do get the rebate back from the gin when they sell the seed. 10:12 Okay. So you're looking at about 50 bucks per bale. So you get $150 on three bale cotton in addition to that. So our money used to be, you know, 10:20 we took all our input cost Yep. And the price of cotton. Then we made our money outta the rebate. 10:25 In today's world, we input's where they are now. Yep. We're gonna have to make the money outta sustainability programs 10:29 And Yes, exactly. So this is another reason when you've got almost break even commodity in cotton and you're doing 10:34 a hell of a lot of work to get it. So these other things we talk about getting, if you pick up 40 bucks an acre on a sustainability program 10:39 on a bad year, that could be your margin. That's gonna be my margin issue. Incidentally, you notice that they always call it two 10:43 bele cotton, three bale cotton. I learned That. Yeah, that's all. They talk About 500 pounds. They 10:47 Don't talk about five, 500 Pounds in a bale. Hundred Pounds in a bale. So they call it three, three bale acre. 10:51 All right, temple, your last question then we're gonna go, There's two things. So 10:55 one thing like I I noticed like you have a non fibrous root at all. Is that something that you stroke? 11:02 Like do they ever give you like a fibrous root? Yeah. Where they go out and they search and search the soil? Yeah. Well yeah, if you dug 11:08 that up, is this just a shovel? We pull most of the, you know, the, the hair, the hairs off of it. 11:12 Okay. But it's gonna have some now nothing like what beans and corn will have. It's mostly going with that tap root. 11:18 Well when you go through there and, and with your picker and all this is shredded off, you're left out here 11:24 with just this main woody stem that's basically a small snap everything or does it eat it all the way down? Everything 11:29 Will be, everything will be left intact, but the actual lint, so the, the spindle comes along and grabs that lint and pull it. 11:36 Don't even grab this. I wish I could pull that off. Yeah. Okay. But it's actually pulling the lin out and leaving. 11:41 It's leaving the brack that, uh, that's on, on the bowl. So this, this, you see the 11:48 Oh, oh, it's leaving that too. All that's Left there. See it's open like this and the, 11:51 and the spindle goes in there and pulls off off. The only Thing you need to do is like, with this, as woody 11:55 as this plan is, looks like to me, you just figure out how a way to run a sal chop through there, chop it fine. And you can use that as saw dust for all your, your, 12:03 it stays house integrators over there when you really, it never dries out when You get down harvesting. 12:08 I saw it. They then do go out because it looks like a bunch of little whips, like a bunch of saplings that have had been defoliated out there. 12:13 Then you have to deal with that out in the field. That deal with, it takes years and years and years. We deal with shredder 12:20 and the thing about it is that's a perennial plant. So once we cut it off to the ground, it's coming back. Yeah, it's coming right back. So if we have a mile winter, 12:27 it's gonna actually come back up and probably put a few squares on it. Which is why you go out generally 12:32 and basically mow it off. Yeah, We mow it off, but it'll still come back. Yeah, Because it's got the roots. Yeah. 12:36 Cool. All right, so then we just talked about you plant the spring, you, you spray the heck out of it. 12:40 You, you intensively manage it and then in the fall you defoliate it, then you go out and pick it with a machine that you showed me a video of. 12:46 By the way, dear listener, go and check it out. It was October of 23 when we shot it and uh, we, we did the full view of the machine, et cetera. 12:52 It's really cool stuff. Uh, very expensive machine that can only do one thing. Pick cotton. Got it. Last thought that it cotton's 13:00 Cool. Does it, did you learn anything? I did. I learned a lot. Good. That's what matters. Temple's, Temple, roads, map miles to the grand 13:07 of extreme ag coming at you from Verre Field Day. It is all about cotton. We hope you learned as much as I did. 13:12 Uh, this is my second exposure to the plant. So there you go. Until next time, check out all the great stuff at Extreme Ag, 13:17 including me looking at his cotton picker and all the other great stuff. Hundreds of videos these guys shoot on, on farm 13:22 and also hundreds of episodes of the Cutting the Curve podcast, monthly webinars for members. 13:26 And if you wanna be a member, it's just seven $50 a month and you get seven $50 a year, seven $50 a year, 13:31 and you'll get all kinds of, uh, exclusive offers. Till next time Extreme Ag Farm. Check it out.