Farming Video | How Soil Biology Programs Help Crops Recover from Flooding | XtremeAg

22 Apr 252m 7s

In this update from Jacob at Live Oak Ag, he evaluates crop recovery one week after severe flooding that left many fields underwater. He observes significantly better plant health and stand quality in fields where growers had invested in soil biology through long-term programs. These fields, particularly those with pre-plant or in-furrow fertility, showed more robust plant responses, with 20–30% stronger stands and better emergence compared to fields lacking such programs.

00:00:00 Hey guys, Jacob here with Live Oak Ag. Been looking behind the, uh, flooding we got last week. It's been about a week since we've had that. 00:00:07 Obviously you've seen PS and Matt talking about what's going on, uh, how we've got a lot of water, a lot of crop underwater. 00:00:15 Obviously, we're not as bad as some other folks around and, and, uh, we're grateful for that. 00:00:19 The biggest thing I've been seeing the last few days is fields that had pre-plant fertility or infer fertility and had a long-term program on soil biology 00:00:32 where I've been seeing people that have been taking care of the soil biology and devoting some dollars to that, 00:00:39 even if it mean taking some dollars outta their program towards soil fertility and reinvesting it towards soil biology. 00:00:47 I'm seeing a more robust plant that handled the weather better instead of struggling along and having poor stands and having uneven stands. 00:00:55 Uh, and a lot of, of plant death. Those plants are coming along. Our stands are 20 to 30% better in a lot of places, 00:01:01 just a more vigorous plant. It's coming out of that, that mud funk that's, uh, been covering up the bud and, and been coming through that 00:01:09 and open it up and, and turning into some pretty good TFOs in the corns instance where we haven't been having infer 00:01:15 or a pre-plant then wait until after this storm came through, the plants are struggling a little bit. 00:01:20 It looks like they're, uh, they're feeding off a little more seed energy that you'd want 'em to instead of having something to, 00:01:25 to keep 'em going along. So they're, they're proliferating like you want 'em to, they're, they're just kind of hanging on, not by thread, 00:01:32 but not very well. So if you have the opportunity this year to put some soil biology in to start building on 00:01:39 that program, even if it means taking a few dollars outta your, your soil fertility budget 00:01:43 and turning it that way, I think you'll see a gain to where you're kind of weatherproofing your crop, whether it's early season like it is, 00:01:48 or maybe later season where you're weatherproofing your crop and making it to where it's going to hold up to, 00:01:54 to the heat, maybe to the cold, or to adverse conditions like we had last week where we got eight and a half inches in four. 50 00:02:00.475 --> 00:02:02.365