Farming Video | Field-Day Lesson: Matt Miles on Reducing Fertilizer Loss

00:00:00 We're talking about a product to help unbind your nutrients and make products stay around in the soil longer for your plants to utilize them. 00:00:07 I'm joined by Nick Vandervoort. He is a technical agronomist with a company called Ligos. He's got a chain right here with a bunch 00:00:13 of magnetic balls on there. He is, to his left has Matt Miles. Where? At the Miles Farm Field Day here in McGee, Arkansas. 00:00:21 So this is the product. So tell us the company's ligos, and we asked you before we hit record, what's this product? How's it work? Why do I need it? 00:00:28 You went into how it works a lot. What's the product? Right. So it is a liquid product. It's a polymer based product. 00:00:35 Okay. So a polymer, a chain is a good representation of what a polymer is. Okay. Okay. Individual links. That's 00:00:42 Why you have this. Yes. I was afraid you were gonna hit me with it or something. Now I Understand. So, individual 00:00:46 links strung together. All right. That's when the magic happens. You have something with utility that you can use. Got it. 00:00:51 Our polymer is made up of links of aspartate put together in a link or a chain. 00:00:57 Then you have poly aspartate that is negatively charged. It's anion. So it holds positively charged nutrients. 00:01:05 So your ammonium ions, your potassium ions, your calcium ions. Why that's important. When you put this with fertilizer, 00:01:13 you apply it fally, it gets down in the soil. Mm-hmm. It helps feed the plant. It holds onto the nutrients in the root 00:01:20 zone, feeds the plants. If it gets those nutrients get into the plant, that's less lost to air and to the environment. 00:01:27 You're using this product, you're doing it in a field day. Here we are at your field day. It's mid-June. 00:01:33 You put this product on. Obviously it's a half gallon, Half gallon use Rate per half gallon use rate per acre. So I'm just got a little sample of the stuff right here. 00:01:40 It's a liquid. How did you use it and when did you put it On? We've done it several different 00:01:43 ways. We've got it on multiple crops, doing it multiple different ways from infer to foliar to y drops. 00:01:48 Right. So each crop, we've got different applications, you know, in, in different ways. Do I apply it once per year? Do 00:01:54 I apply it all those ways? Do I put it in furrow? Do I put it uh, soil applied? Do I put it uh, in furrow? Do I put it at fungicide pass? How many times do I use this? 00:02:03 You can use it once. You can use it multiple times. Okay. You can do four pints Y 00:02:08 Yeah. Yeah. You, you, you're not restricted Two points how You use it. Yeah. Okay. 00:02:12 Half gallon per acre. You can do quarts, you can do pints. Most people do a half gallon up front and then, 00:02:19 or split it a, a quart up front and then a quart later in the season. You've Got a, you've got this problem. 00:02:25 Do you have this problem? The one that Nick is explaining here? Absolutely. We have a problem. 00:02:28 Absolutely. We all have that problem. Okay. Stuff ties up. Yeah. Alright. So, So this ties up in leeches where he is saying 00:02:33 that he's gonna keep it in the root zone with all the rain we've had. Yep. A lot of these nutrients will leach 00:02:37 and I'm assuming this will, uh, help keep that from happening. Help, help Hold onto to it here The roots keep in the root zone. 00:02:42 Yeah. And then when our sands, that's a really big deal. Sure. So, uh, well you have a hard time keeping nutrients in the 00:02:47 sand anyhow because of the leaching issue. This won't help with that. No, it'll, it'll help hold the nutrients in the root 00:02:54 zone so that they're not lost. But you're gonna change Matt's soil. No, he is just gonna prevent it. 00:02:58 He's just gonna prevent 'em from leaching too. So what I'm wondering is what do you think will be a success when you look 00:03:04 out here, what will you say? You know what this will tell us. Product Absolutely. Did what I'm supposed to do. How will you know? 00:03:09 Well, I know by the yield, I mean, to be honest with you now we've, we've been monitoring some of the plots we've got or all of the plots we've got. 00:03:15 One thing I did see too, and it may have something to do with holding those nutrients there readily available. 00:03:20 We applied some liberty and dual together. Yep. Burn out cotton pretty good. You could tell the row where the solus was versus 00:03:26 where we didn't put it out. I did a previous video on that. So it is also helping with crop health just in general of, 00:03:32 of metabolizing some of these chemicals. But you Just, you're gonna do how many treatments to get it on? I've got it in several different ways. 00:03:38 You're doing it in turro, you're doing it Foliar. I think most of 'em are court. I'd have to go back and look 00:03:42 Is pretty easy. This, Nick, is there anything this will not work with? No. Okay. It is in the tank with fertilizers. 00:03:48 With everything. Yeah. Yeah. What are you seeing in way of, I mean is the, is the benefit here just increased yield 00:03:52 or is it that I can cut back on applied nutrition and save money that way because now this keeps it around longer. 00:03:58 Well, it's yield, it's return on investment three to seven x return on investment. But I don't like making the recommendation to cut nutrition. 00:04:08 Yeah. Okay. If someone wants to do that, they can obviously do it. But I, I would rather use this product 00:04:14 with a full nutritional program and see what additive benefits you get over that. You're optimistic. You're optimistic. 00:04:21 You'll see it, you'll see it either doing one of those things allowing you to decrease spend or, or increase the yields. Yeah. 00:04:29 The most time when we test a product like this, we'll start out with our full fertility program plus the product then the next year. 00:04:36 Okay. So it makes a three to seven return. Yeah. Then the next year we may pull that fertilizer back. We did these with other products, pull it back 20% 00:04:43 and see if it, you know, then you start looking at cost per acre, you know, and, and how that works out and you gotta figure 00:04:48 your fertilizing all that. But there's, there's both ways is actually what I would say. Got it. You excited? Yeah. 00:04:55 You, what you're seeing is giving you optimism. Yep. Sure. He is. His name's Matt Miles worth the Miles Farm Field Day. 00:05:00 He is joined by Nick Vander, the technical agronomist of the company called Ligos. He's got his chain right here. He is got showing you he 00:05:05 Never put it around his neck. No, He better do that. Yeah. 00:05:08.125 --> 00:05:08.645 00:05:09 Have ch we'll Travel. Got it. Till next time we're at the field day, you should check out all the cool videos we shoot like this 00:05:14 to bring the field days to you so you can help put these, uh, practices and some 00:05:18 of these products into your farming mix to help you farm better. Damien Mason coming at you, check out more 00:05:22 of the great stuff extreme ag.farm and if you haven't been one of our field days, you might still be able to sign up Extreme Ag Farm sign up. 163 00:05:28.515 --> 00:05:29.325