Farming Video | Can $40 In-Furrow Really Move The Needle On Corn ROI?

7 Sep 253m 29s

Temple Rhodes teams up with Stephanie Zelinko from AgroLiquid to talk through this year’s $40 in-furrow challenge on his farm. Just like the other XtremeAg guys, Temple had to build a starter program based on his soil tests—but stick to a tight $40 budget. Every farmer chose a slightly different approach, targeting phosphorus, potassium, micros, and even things like calcium, sulfur, and manganese. The twist? Nobody knew which tote belonged to who, keeping the challenge blind. Temple shares how he thinks the results may come down to return on investment more than visual differences. He also digs into pollination issues caused by heat and how real results will likely come from the fields up the road. It’s classic field trial banter—competitive, real, and rooted in ROI.

This video includes paid sponsors of XtremeAg.farm. The views & opinions expressed in this video are those of XtremeAg.farm and are based solely on the experiences of the XtremeAg team. The use of brand names. and/or any mentionor listing of specific products or services herein is solely for educational purposes and does not imply endorsement by XtremeAg.

00:00:00 Hey guys, it's temp. I'm here with Stephanie and uh, Stephanie explain our challenge spots at the agro lipin. Yeah, so we did our challenge class like we did at all the 00:00:08 extreme AG guy farms this year for your farm specifically. We set a $40 budget looking at in furrow 00:00:14 applications on corn. So everybody looked at the soil test, addressed the phosphorus, potassium, and micros. 00:00:19 But everybody took a little different approach on how they spent those $40. That's kind of hard to do sometimes when we talk about $40 00:00:26 to stay within that budget now and the in furrow program, you know, that is a lot of money, you know, to spend. 00:00:32 But I don't know that, I mean, I, I've been through these plots and I've looked at 'em and I treated them. 00:00:38 I don't know, I didn't know, like when I got the totes, you know, Stephanie didn't want us to have, didn't want us to know which ones are which. 00:00:45 'cause she was afraid that I would sway it, which I might have swayed mine 'cause I don't want these other guys, they don't 00:00:51 like Kevin or Chad to beat me. But since they're not here, like I can switch 'em around now. 00:00:56 'cause now I know a team won it, that's mine. And so I'm down there. I'm probably definitely gonna walk back through it, but I don't think 00:01:03 that there's a lot of difference in the plots. I, I kind of went through 'em and I don't think that there's a lot of difference, 00:01:08 but it's all about ROI for us, right? Yep. And visually we look through it. All of 'em look the same. We pulled back a couple ears, 00:01:14 we can't see anything different. Um, yeah, we all spent right around $40 and so, you know, it's just gonna come back to, you know, 00:01:20 what has that missing link? Somebody put, uh, Kevin, put some calcium in, you put some more manganese in, some more sulfur. 00:01:28 Um, those little things are what's gonna make the difference, what that best return on those fertilizer dollars we spent. 00:01:33 I mean, some of the reasons for some of the stuff that I chose, it wasn't because what was in my soil test. Like manganese, I can tell you when I've done tissue samples 00:01:41 and stuff and paste, I'm always kind of low in manganese. So that's why I do it 00:01:45 because I treat that on my planter as well. That's something that I already do. So this is kind of where my program already is. Now. 00:01:52 I'll be upset if one of these other guys beat me out, but this is kind of where I lay anyway. So we'll see how it turns out. 00:02:00 I don't know that there's a lot of difference in any of them. I do think all in all the, the, the, there's no deficiencies 00:02:07 that I can see in the plan. We've definitely got some pollination issues out there that's got nothing to do with what we did here, here, 00:02:13 but we also had, like, our nighttime temperatures were extremely high when this was, this particular farm was pollinating 00:02:19 because we can go up the street and it'll look completely different and it had the exact same treatments on it. 00:02:24 So this was just a representative. Your real plots are up the road, right? So I probably would not gonna harvest this. 00:02:31 I'm probably gonna go up the road and harvest that. 'cause they, there's no pollination issues there. So I don't know. W we will see. 00:02:38 I mean, from what you saw, what do you actually, which one do you think is actually gonna win? I think it's hard to say. They all look equal. 00:02:46 I'm gonna say that Chad's gonna win 'cause I helped him with this program, but that's being a little biased. Yeah. 00:02:50 But you know, I mean the, the guy that helped me with mine, I mean, he's helped me for years, so I, I don't think that you beat us just 00:02:55 because you won last year. I know, you know, down max in Arkansas, you don't win here. Like, I don't 00:03:03 See it. Well, if we've already, I already have one loss 'cause I didn't win at Johnny's. You didn't win at Johnny's. So we're, you we're both, 00:03:09 Both, You know what we're, we're both, we're both not winners yet. No. So we have to figure out where we're gonna win. 00:03:13 Maybe we'll both tie Yeah. As long as we beat somebody. Yes. Maybe. We'll we, We'll beat Kevin up on that. 00:03:19 Alright guys, we're gonna let you know what these challenge spots do. 00:03:21.985 --> 00:03:24.085