Farming Video | Who Knows Their Farm Best? Inside the 2026 XtremeAg Fertility Face-Off

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5+ Years - Grower Standard Practice

Welcome. Um, again, as Amy said, I'm Stephanie Linco, agronomist with aquid, and this year's trials, um, are a little bit different than what we've done with extreme ag guys in the past. Um, and so when we were looking at what content we wanted to provide for you as the growers, we went back to kind of the focus on heavy agronomy. And so everything that we do at Agro Wind has a backbone in a soil test. That's where we'd like to start. Look at a soil test and then custom makeup wind, using that complete line of crop nutrition to build a program for your specific soil and your specific crop. Now we recognize that, you know, every farm's different, and even if you talk to an an agronomist, every agronomist is different. And so when we did this, we said let's challenge each other, um, and see who knows their homes farm the best, and then we'll see how their corn parts compete with that. So if you went back to the 2024, you may remember some of those videos. We did this challenge plot and that Miles Farm on corn, he was not the winner in his home farm. So he wanted to come back this year and see if he could, you know, redeem himself and become the winner. We did a contract with him. So in each case we took the six guys. Um, we had a different crop, a different budget, and a different method of allocation. We set it up and then we teamed them up against two of their counterparts. So in each location, um, we'll go over what we had set that up and I'll let the guys kind of talk, talk about what they found and kind of the take home message is, um, you can get to that same yield point a number of different ways. And so there was some differences in yield, but there wasn't huge dramatic difference. So when you're working with agronomists, don't freak out. If one guy tells you one thing and somebody else takes you, um, down a different path, you can get to that same end point in a number of different ways. So we will start out with Matt. Um, here's the trials. This is the information that we have. Um, all of these were based upon a $50 fertilizer budget and we're looking for foliar applications. And we did up to four of those out there in the field, starting with that first, um, growth regulator application. So the first tops is mass treatments. Um, you can see he put a focus on potassium, calcium, and boron. He did that in the first and third application up in the second fourth. He just taught that back but only did the calcium and boron. He went up against Kelly, um, who kind of took a more holistic approach and added some nitrogen in there as well as potassium calcium to some micronutrients. And then Kevin Matthews was the third competitor. Um, kind of a similar approach, just picked a couple different products and then added it to the sink and manganese, um, and boron into that program is off. So, um, here's what they did. Each one went out, um, map floor applications. Ali four applications, kind of cut it back to one, two applications. And I will say each one of the guys worked with an liquid agronomist that kind of held these programs. So looking at the final yield here, um, again, uh, we go across there. Matt did win his home site, um, and then had the highest profit as long as well as that highest return on investment very closely followed by Kelly. So I'll turn it over to Matt if he wants to say anything additional about this trial. You know, on this trial I did get get, uh, my rear end handed food down with Walmart and I kind of felt like maybe I should had, I was, I'm not into cornrow area, but I definitely let anybody get cotton. So Kevin got quote, I'll tell you that, uh, I wanna say something. Two things. One, split application and our essential, no matter the micro macro, whatever, uh, I think Kevin was a little lower than Neil, but what Kevin was trying to do was, was get his pinch back. And, and I think it got a little confusing to him that, you know, down here he don't know the insects here and down here we're gonna spray insects somewhere around five days pounds. So getting that piggybacking an application is, is not a problem. So I think if he would've known that, he would've gone closer to yield we were at. So I just did want say that that, you know, you've got ample amount of time that you going drive to, to add. So if you can him up, you know, that's, that's probably the best way. So that's what be done, uh, force win there. And I did not cheat. Uh, I, I picked it myself, but I did not cheat. So, uh, I, it is fun. Uh, it makes I see the thing, uh, Kevin ever goes, you know, what kind in they have, but you know, he probably learned something about this to choose no more times. The trial was easy. Everything pre the way we wanted it done. Uh, it really makes a difference guys. We're doing a trial. Uh, when y'all do things like that, you've got the application we need pre it's impossible and it makes it a little easier to do the trial. So, uh, we had good luck with it. It worked well for us. I was a little scared. Kelly might, might, I don't even know. It was only the on top. Alright, thank you. All right, we'll switch over to the next topic of corn and we had two different corn trials. Uh, so the first one is with Kelly. We did a two by two application. So this was not counting the nitrogen portion of it, but a $60 budget to look at adding some additional nutrition in Act I two. Uh, so Kelly's treatment, you can see we go through it, has a whole list of micronutrients. Um, he had talked about those of those degrees elements earlier. And so you can see that's kind of where he heavily focused. Um, Matt was the next competitor, pretty similar, um, but added a kind of focus on sulfur. And then Johnny ll was the last one. And he kind of, if you looked at these guys, they all had two or three trials across, uh, all of these. Um, and they kind of followed a very similar trend. He kept it very simple, um, just focusing on his nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. And so going over to the, the yield side, you'll notice a trend, um, pretty much in every case that the home grower did win their site. So Kelly had taught yield the 218 bushel followed closely by Matt at two 16 and Johnny at 2 0 7. Um, no, two by two, so no additives, just that nitrogen only 2 0 6. Um, return on investment, uh, Kelly won that as well. Again, closely followed by Matt. So I'll hand it off to Kelly if he has any additional comments on this one. Yes, with my trial it, you know, we did a lot like our grower standard practice, things like that, you know, the nitrogen was turned down and we uh, we tried to achieve mine balance, things like that. You know, this, uh, uh, another, uh, not only does the home grower win, but at my farm, the rust was a problem. This field, the proven yield would be like two 20 and as you could see, it made 2 0 2 things like that. So there's a little bit of a rust problem here, but you could still see that, uh, the trial paid off. And uh, uh, we, we have a nice ROI here, uh, Matt just about beat me and boy, I would've should loved to beat Matt Cotton. I gotta tell you that, uh, it would've, I, I probably would've not stopped rubbing that in. But, uh, if he beat the corn brewer on his own farm, I have it coming back and he, he got very close. But yeah, this every liquid has some nice products. Uh, you know, we've used them a lot and uh, especially with the Cal Soup product, you know, is one that I have, I've really worked with. You could see how we really get that into the plant with that nutrient density, uh, report that I showed earlier. Thank you again, the questions just go ahead and jump on in. If not, we'll move on to temples and I will note, look at your book for the correct information because for whatever reason I changed the names but I did not change, um, the product mix. So this is actually Kelly's trial that's shown up on the board, but it is correct in your book. Um, and just kind of go through, this is going to be an inferral application and we give a $40 budget. And so if you think back to what you're gonna do for an infra application on your horn and are you goal was relatively high here, that's really not a whole lot of dollars to spend for that in for treatment. And so this was designed to kind of put a little bit of stress on the agronomy team and these growers to figure out, uh, I have a very limited dollar amount, how can I go ahead and spend those dollars? And so when we look across their, um, temple did two gallons of pro Gino, which is our phosphorus program with sugar cake, potassium, and then a micronutrient sulfur package, um, that he went up against Chad who focused on phosphorus and did kind of half quick feed, half slow release phosphorus and then some potassium and micros. And then the last competitor was Kevin who did a quick beat phosphorus and then added a potassium sulfur calcium mainly in sync. So he had a little more detailed program behind that. But each of those, again, programs, you know, again kind of focused on that phosphorus side, which is kind of where temple tends to lead when he's going the lift. And so looking at the yield results, he did win as well at 255, but again closely followed by Chad at 2 54 and then Kevin at 2 49 looking on that return on investment. Again, they all kind of, you know, flow pretty similar 27.4 and 27.3. So again, temple had a little bit of an edge there, but looking at, you know, the overall program, same temple's not here, you know, phosphorus management kind of tends to be where he focuses and if you get that phosphorus out there and that timely application in furrow at low rates, um, he can go ahead and get the yield that he expected. Next crop is soybeans. And so we had two different soybean trials. Um, the first one will start out here with Kevin. And so looking at Kevin's trial, um, he was had a $50 budget for a two by two program and so his treatment was capitalized, which is a potassium calcium program and calcium tends to be an area that he struggles a little bit there on that farm. And then phosphorus with some folic acid, he went up against Chad who had potassium calcium and micronutrients. And then the final competitor was Johnny. Um, did a heavy focus on those micros along with some bosphorus to that. So each program again kind of focused on those same nutrients, just did a little different approach to how they address those As far as you goes, Kevin actually did two trials for us. He did one on the field day site, which was his irrigated soybeans. So those are the top numbers there. Uh, where he won at 90 bushel per acre followed by Chad at 80 or actually followed by Johnny at 86 and then Chad at 84. Um, and then he took those to a lower producing dry land field, um, and John Lee and Kevin tied at 48 bushel Chad at 47 bushel. So we did see less of a yield gap there when we were having um, those lower potential yield bes. So if Kevin's ready, I can hand it off to him and see if he has any additional comments on these trials. So the double cop, so beans tonight is soybean is planted behind salt, well wheat and uh, we actually was glading on, typically we like to be harvesting wheat from June 17th and June 20th and have all the soybeans. Replanted beef is actually blended the first wheat of July. So you get away from last summer sauce and very see 30 40 bushel D at that time. So we was actually in the high forties, 50 bushel, so that was actually quite surprising. But what we wanted to do is we get a lot of fish back when we dug our irrigated because two plate on my blade when you're, you know, coming out hundred bushel drain very easily. And uh, but this year we gotta give her scenario that I told you on the corn we was right to TI gate he only gate. So a lot of our built around ation on irrigated gates, we did not get to by Gate Zoo, excessive rain falls. So they pretty much had a dry line crop even that was classified as, but that was pretty good deal. The reason we wanted to do this, you know, the double cop scenario is we can run pretty good wheat but we can really get hit when we go from a full season soy team making 78 bushel an acre and then we get it to a double pop scenario. We're making 40, 50 bushels acre. We need to know gun to be like what Chad, that 60 was saying Bush range and being in that double crop scenario really works well for. So we thought this is a good opportunity to see if this fertility program could be stopped that we could really calculate on in double crop scenario and you, you and our and uh, and aggregate this more, uh, more need to share with others to have better options. Alright, thank you Kevin. Any other question or any questions for you guys up here? Now we have one more soybean trial. So the mixed soybean trial is, was at Chads we did a $40 budget for a single foliar application at the R three growth stage. These were double crop beams. Uh, so Chad's program for rate is a multi nutrient foliar package. We have, uh, combined with some potassium calcium, uh, that micronutrients but I guess Matt who focused on this nitrogen with some micronutrients and then temple, unlike he did in a lot of his trials focused on phosphorus and models, some micronutrients and some calcium. So again, with a few different approaches but it all kind of focused on some of those similar nutrients. And when it came down to yield, Chad was the only one who did not win on his home farm, but 56 bushel where the 57 bushel, you know, I consider that pretty much a lot. Hey, hey yeah Stephanie, first off, you Can't, you can't just like Chad didn't win because you know you're gonna incite them and he has Lots to say, but Kelly's gonna map Miles is taking, taken a lot of abuse from me beating him in corn and he just text me and wanted me to announce to make sure everyone notices that he beat Chad at his place. So I was supposed to say that before Chad goes, I sorry to interrupt, but I have to tell you, Matt beat Chad by Wi Bush, Kill him out there. Wily, uh, do we have any questions ER's mud, do you know, is there any questions on that at all? We have a hard time with double drop beans. We've been on this trail look, I mean with most of the fertility companies in here for five or five or six years, like I had one farm last year that had five different fertility trials on it for double crop beans and it, it's very hard to do. Like it's just hard to do anything with who, who if your drugs go to grow beans some sky does back there, it it's just not much to it. But we can make, we can make a good living at it because I can't grow regular seed beans. So when I have a hard time dealing with our weather environ, it just seems like I, I can't catch the rains here lately. But uh, we are in that range a lot of times we're, we're trying to be somewhere around that safety bushel rains on the irrigated side and the non irrigated side. Like this year where the east was what come by, this was off come by deal, so whatever it is. But the, the dry land was somewhere around 20. So that's kind of the world we live in. The best thing that we've seen year after year after year after year on dope across soybeans, it's about 20 pounds of nitrated plant. And it ain't always, always because, but just tried to get that leaf up air to start getting it sunlight fast as possible. And that's the most repeated thing that we've had. I know that goes against but here we're, we're here talking about what works and what what always don't because in these programs, if you look at these programs, we're always trying to address whatever is the lowest in the planet and maybe we should be addressing that more in our wheat instead of in our beans and maybe we should need to get it dec exactly earlier. Maybe that's what I've seen a lot of times on this. Uh, but we're really trying to get the plant up and growing because a lot of times before we get what it gets dry, I can make the beans, we can't cut the beans, uh, sickle cut Manhattan if they're low or something like that and we're losing more and if we can pick up just a few beans, you know, and I think that nitrate does that, it gets the plant up outta the ground because to grow any, we can get that summer sun as fast as possible. Um, I know they don't have anything to really to do with s's caught up. Stephanie, any, anything else? Anything at all? You're not that sold. There you go. Cool guy. So in central Nebraska, I understand you guys had your budget, but if you would go back to what was in the concoction and let's say it was a 25 uh, chat, $25 challenge, what would've you have chose out of that lineup? Um, I'm not even gonna look at what was in the lineup, but I'm gonna tell you right off the bat, it is the fur rain, you know, because it's the micronutrient package, right? We gonna know we're gonna do that. And this was at R three challenge, like that's when we had to apply it so it was with a fungicide. 'cause we're not gonna, we're dumb crop beans, we're not gonna make applications without it. We can't, you know, afford that. So we, we had to go with our three. We're going to start with fer rain and then like I said, we, we've been laning on the calcium. Well the borons gonna need to be there. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be fer rain borons gonna be one and two 'cause we've got a whole big flowers, right? And then, then it's gonna be the i i to cut back, we gotta have the cat. So KBI would probably say BK then inverter in. I guess if I had give that order, what do y'all think? I bet if he asked Temple he would still say he needs the phosphorus. So I think a lot of it's geography, you knowing your soil and what that crop needs. You just, All right, so the last one we did was at Johnny Burls farm and it was on winter wheat. And so this one was looking at a $30 budget full application at flowering. Um, so again, you know, just like the other ones, Johnny kept it pretty simple for array. So I gave that modified nutrient package some nitrogen and some additional micronutrients. Kelly, like he did in most of his trials, went all out and put every possible nutrient he could in that overall mix. And the temple focused on phosphorus again as well as some nitrogen potassium. So again, three different approaches. All, you know, kind of similar but everybody kind took a different approach on what nutrient they wanted to focus on. So when it came down to yield, um, again, Johnny won his home site and our highest ROI at 114 bushel Kelly one 11 and 1 0 9. Uh, so again, still getting, you know, pretty decent yields. He had a yield of 120 bushel, didn't quite meet that. Um, but he did have some environmental issues that went on at that field site. Um, so he was overall happy with this and just looking at different ways that we can add some additional nutrition at that following stage to provide some additional yield, you know, later in the season, especially if you're starting to see deficiencies stuff in or if you're having some additional um, nutrient challenges, just being able to spoon feed that and get that out later in the growing season gives you some options there with those late season applications that you can time with either at insect or a fungicide fast. Any questions? This was the last one I had. Alright, so I'll just say a little conclusion then. So again, going back to yield all of this, there's a lot of different ways to get to that same yield point at the end of the season. And I know liquid, we have a complete line of crop attrition and we do like to focus that on that soil test. Uh, look at staff sampling and look at tissue sampling and figure out where those missing pieces are. And just because it's what your neighbor does and has it successful or somebody else that you talk to here at the event, um, still know your own fields, you know, what that soil net crop needs and kind of address that accordingly. Um, and all of our products can discip one another. Um, I think, um, Matt kind of alluded to that to start and is said in one complete unit. Um, so it comes as one product, but it has whatever may be custom blend for that. Stephanie's absolutely correct. There's many ways to get to the end yield and you need to know your farm and you need to know your soil. My, my soil's obviously different than Chad's and we talk about the nitrogen release. You know, the question from back there is what if you run outta nitrogen? Well that's part of managing. How do you manage what we don't measure? I, uh, like, uh, do you know how much nitrogen's in your soil that everybody needs to know that? And if you really want to die down, if you really wanna make an ROI, especially in this economic environment, what is your limiting factor and where is it at? Measure your soil and know what's available. What's your base saturation? You know, there's several people in the room to talk to Heco over here from Wisconsin and uh, he's got a magnesium problem. Coal has a magnesium problem, things like that. Know what your soil limitations are so you can manage them. There's many ways to get to the end yield and our trials show that throughout the different geographies that that were, that extreme. Chad, Chad needs a little bit more nitrogen than I knew. Chad needs a bigger response out of morron than I because of the CECs and things like that. So again, Stephanie's correct, there's many ways to get 00:20:43.335 --> 00:20:45.255