Webinar | Reduce Nitrogen Costs Without Reducing Yield: Smarter Strategies for Maximizing Nitrogen Efficiency

Hey, uh, welcome to the March 13th episode, a edition of the Extreme Ag Webinar. We've been doing this for three plus years now. It's one of my favorite things that we do because it's interactive, it's informative. In other words, we want you to be involved. If you have questions, type them into the chat feature. We will get them addressed. We want you to be involved. We want you to be able to get the interaction and take this information to your farm and apply it immediately for success. Um, this topic is something you're gonna hear more and more about. Temple Rhodes and I were on the road in last month in Nebraska with one of our business partners, James Paton of Agritech, USA, and the entire topic for an hour and 45 minutes, they kept us on stage. We only had an hour and 15 minutes planned. There was that much interaction from the audience, and the subject was reducing applied nutrients, particularly nitrogen. Why? 'cause 26% of the tested wells in Western Nebraska are almost 10 times the amount of acceptance in terms of the nitrates in the water. This is a bullseye that is absolutely on the back of agriculture. It's happening in Wisconsin, it's happening in Iowa, it's happening in Nebraska. This is not just an East coast thing. It's not just a Chesapeake Bay thing. We've over applied nitrogen. You're probably still over applying nitrogen. Guess what? We're gonna give you solutions tonight on how you can stop over applying nitrogen. So our discussion reduced nitrogen. You saw the nice, uh, uh, invite that will put together reduce nitrogen costs without reducing yield, smarter strategies for maximizing nitrogen efficiency of all the things that we have, uh, still do. Kelly Garrett's favorite statement, the holy grail of American agriculture is producing corn. We love to grow corn. If you wanna grow corn, what do you do? Fling nitrogen at it. Well, guess what? It's changing because of regulatory. It's changing because of the environmental issue. It's changing because of the economics. If you're still flinging nitrogen like you did just five years ago, you're wasting your money, and it might very well put you in financial peril. So, without any further ado, I wanna go right into this. Kelly, since we quoted you in our invite. I want you to lead off, you've been kind of spearheading this, and you're not anti nitrogen. Hell, you put anhydrous out in November for soybeans. You're kind of crazy about this, but you are absolutely convinced that we have over applied nitrogen. And you started doing trials two years ago. We're gonna get to the graphs. You're gonna show us the results. Two years ago at your farm, a field just to the north and east of your own home, not too far from your old man, you, you embarrassed him by putting it along the road. You did a trial where you put zero applied pounds of nitrogen on corn, then you did like 60 pounds, and, and you went on up from there. Talk to us about your evolution on nitrogen reduction. So I started reducing nitrogen clear back in 2015. At that point, though, I didn't know how to measure it. We just had a theory. And as Brian Adams says, it's a very scientific method. It's called a wild as guess. And so we, we went down in the high yield areas. We started only applying 120 pounds. And in the low yield areas, we were still applying over 200 pounds because we knew that we didn't need as much, much in the high yield areas, but we still didn't know what it was. And then, you know, fast forward into like years 21, 22, Mike Evans is part of the team. Uh, you know, we meet Jared Cook, we meet Clint Freeze. It's the, the beginnings of calibrated agronomy before. And we, and we met the SAP test, and we met the rapid soil test. So, and we, you know, we have a couple slides to share. Evans went out in July and tested the top two feet of soil. It was, it was a, the sum of three soil tests, zero to six, six to 12, 12 to 24 inches. And we're gonna validate or verify how much nitrogen is coming out of that soil. And if will can put that up here while we're talking. Uh, so everybody can see that, that deal, it's gonna blow you away. This is the wrongs. This is the, uh, this is the testing on the wrongs property, I believe. Yes. Yes. Uh, no. We, we need the one where, with the, with the pounds of nitrogen available will Okay. The one with the, the colored truck. And It'll, can you scroll, scroll up so we can see the bottom one there will please. Okay. If everybody can see this, uh, if everybody can see it, you can see there, like where it says Kelly Garrett, land cattle home. And you can see the sum of the three in zero to six inches. There's 404 pounds of nitrogen. There's a sum of 775 pounds of nitrogen that's in a high yield area. If you go to the bottom though, you can see the total is not quite 180 pounds. So at that point, when Evans verified that, and he deserves all of the credit here, when Evans verified that, we just started going lower. And, and in theory, if you got 180 pounds of nitrogen, you got a couple hundred pounds of nitrogen. Do we really even need any synthetic? So we went all the way to zero. And, um, and then we, we did zero, sixty, a hundred and twenty, a hundred and eighty, and 240 pounds of nitrogen. You know, Mike has, has shared that slide. Uh, will, could you put that slide up now? So now we've verified what sort of nitrogen's coming out of the soil and which one is it? The one one above this, this, The one Above that says wrongs, the one that says wrongs. Okay, I'll get it up. Yep. So by the way, I wanna point out to the listener viewer again, ask your questions. But these guys started doing this. And we have an all star cast, in case you hadn't already noticed that. Um, we got Mike Evans agronomist with calibrated agronomy working alongside, uh, owner of co-owner of calibrated agronomy, also employed by Garrett Land and Cattle as an agronomist. And we got Brian Adams, who is with Volunteer Ag Services and works with Johnny Rell Rell Farms in Jackson, Tennessee. So we're gonna go from, we're gonna go from the Midwest, we're gonna go to the south. We're gonna go to the east probably before that with Temple Rhodes. We've got Johnny, we've got Brian, we've got Mike Evans, we've got Temple. We're gonna talk with this from three different parts of the world, because we know that your hesitancy is going to be, that might work for them, but it won't work where I farm to cut back on nitrogen. So that's one of the overriding themes here today, because we want you to build, to reduce your nitrogen without sacrificing yield no matter where you farm. Go ahead, please. Mike Evans. Can you explain this? Yeah. So this was just a replicated study we did, um, built on a farm that Kelly, it was actually a corn on cornfield no-till corn on cornfield for about, uh, 10 years when we got to, uh, this study. And, uh, basically just like Kelly said, 0 61, 21 80, we considered 180 the grower standard practice in the area. So that's, if you look at the treatment in the middle, that's the starred one. So it's, the numbers are all based off that. And then we went up to two 40 and it just was replicated to get some statistical data out of it. And yeah, it's an interesting slide, uh, uh, trial result. Uh, if you look at the average yield zero obviously is 1 44, but everything else be out, out outside of that is within, um, five bushel of each other. So it really opened our eyes, um, considering, you know, corn on corn and everything else that, uh, everybody would say probably you need to put on more. And, uh, got us down the path of, well, we don't need as much. We were in this field, Kelly, and we shot a video. So if you're watching this and you want even more, and you wanna see us getting our hands dirty, we were in this field. In fact, uh, Matt, I believe it was Matt and Temple were in this field. I was in this field. We shot videos on site. When we were looking at this, you could, you could tell Kelly, just kind of give the visual, you could tell the stuff that was obviously had no applied nitrogen. It, it looked a little bit anemic, but clearly look at these yield results. As Mike Evans just pointed out, you're within five bushels from 60 pounds of applied to 180 pounds. I, I'm, I'm gonna be happily taking two pound, two bushels less and using one third the rate all day long, especially in this environment. Why wouldn't I just start doing this across the board? Well, exactly. So, well, you need the variable in our soils, and I think in most soils you need the variable rate, the nitrogen because the soil is infinitely variable. And you've got your yield monitor, use your yield monitor to make decisions. Uh, I'm oversimplifying it just a little bit, but this variable rate prescription is, is what we do on a, on a normal production. Corn is from the yield monitor. And as you can see there, look at that. And, and this, this isn't one sample, Damien, these are three, these are replicated three times. And this is the average 60 pounds average, 2 0 9, 240 pounds averaged a a half a bushel, less, three tenths of a bushel less. There's no reason for that other 180 pounds. You add 41 30 and 36, 12 together, $77 and 42 cents difference just in your nitrogen spend right there. $77. If a grower isn't excited about making $77 in the economics we have right now, I don't know what else to talk about. And we honestly reallocated this to other things Well, Or don't reallocate it. The point is, if you could, if you could have a net margin of $77 per acre on your farmed acres this year, you should skip happily all the way to the bank because there's gonna be a lot of farming operations that are at, at or below break even on a per acre basis. A absolutely, and and my point of this is, this is data that Evans and I did on our own to see where we could get, and obviously the zero is too far, but you know what, what if we could have gone to 30? You know, what if we could have gone to 25 or 40, we could have, we could have maybe touched a hundred dollars an acre savings here. That's my point. You know, we need to, we need to, uh, manage in a more detailed fashion and in more intensive fashion, look at the money that is to be made. It, it, it's there. All we have to do is manage it, measure it, and manage it. Mr. Evans, is there anything else before we get rid of this? And by the way, if the person watching it wrong is a, is the name of the farm and, uh, obviously this testing, is there anything else on this data that's up on the, the screen right now that you want to highlight for the viewer? No, Kelly did a great job. All right. So we can take that down. Before we go to our friends from Tennessee, I want to go to Temple, you know, put this in a, in a overview. We did it on a stage in Garing, Nebraska. You and I did it on a recording with James just yesterday. Regulation might be coming, whether it is or isn't. We know we got a lot of nitrates that get into the water. Why do we wanna do that? But more importantly is the economics. So one of the things should motivate you. It should be the environmental appeal, it should be the economics appeal. It should be just for God's sakes, we can do better appeal. Talk to me from that standpoint, temple. Then I want to go to the, the data from, uh, Johnny and Brian. It's all of these things, all of the above should excite you. Like it shouldn't be one little thing that should excite you. It should excite you for the fact that you're gonna save money. You're doing a better job. You're not wasting fertility. You know, the only thing that I see, other than that, you know, how much better could this result have been if you had spoonfed exact right timing and, and Kelly's right, what happens if you could get it down to, you know, 40 pounds, but you put that 40 pounds out at a time in the process where that plant actually needs that nitrogen. You know, maybe you take it all outta the front side. You know, you're talking about spoon, feeding your finances, spoon feeding your fertility, um, you know, just all around doing a better job. And what's this gonna make up for the environment? You know, this is something that's very scary for people that they need to get involved with because it is going to come to everywhere. You know, look at the amount of scare that was in the room, the, the fear that was in the room when you and I were in Nebraska and North Plat. I mean, the guys were scared to death. Like they didn't know what they were going to do because they've been farming with this tradition bound thinking their whole life. Well, I'm here to tell you, like, the guys here have done it, and we've been in this thing for, for now going on three decades. So this is nothing new to me. Um, it's, it's just part of the way that we farm out here. And that's what's great about it. You know, I, I think it's great that everybody is adopting this. And now the next thing is, is when exactly do we need each one of these nutrients? And how much more can we actually cut it back? And if you can do it in Kelly's ground, that is a high CEC and a high organic matter, and then you do it out here where I'm three to 5% c, e, c, and a less than 1% organic matter. And it works. I, I find it hard to believe that I can have an argument with anybody where they can say, it doesn't work in my area. We just addressed that yesterday during the recording. That's why I liked, and that's why I wanted to go to you before we go to the Tennessee, because the, obviously if farmers were infamous for this, that won't work in my area. Yeah, that might, it's easy for you to say. And you pointed out yesterday, you're talking, I've been to some of your fields. Some of 'em are, they're beachy, right? They're beachy. Mm-hmm. And you're talking Sandy CECs in the single digits, mid single digits and organic matter that hovers less than 2%, maybe even in that 1% range. And you're able to make this work, you have to work a little harder, right? Because you gotta put, you gotta, you gotta do a little spoon feeding. But if you're a modern farmer today, temple, you should be out there. It's not just the economic and the environmental. It's just for God's sakes. What are you doing in June, July anyway, at all? We, we have the equipment and we have the technology. Yeah. Why are we not using it? Right? Um, I want to, uh, make sure that we go to the, the southern guys. Now, before I do that, I also wanna remind you that something kind of exciting, we're all about education here at Extreme Ag. And so just today, we, um, are announcing that once again in 2025, we're gonna do the scholarships. So if you are a school age person or you have a niece, nephew, son, daughter that is going to pursue a career in agriculture, we are gonna give away 10, $3,000 scholarships. We've just opened this page up, uh, today. It'll be open tonight. Um, and you can go to our website and you can click the link. We gave away $30,000 last year. We're doing it again in 2025. We're all about building for the future. And we wanna make sure that, uh, you understand, we support youth, we support the next generation of agriculture. So, uh, once again, the extreme ag scholarship makes me very proud to be a part of this organization. Johnny, you did a trial. I was there your August field day. Um, we have field days. I encourage you to attend them. They're very, very well done. Johnny does a great job. Um, packing aqui lung, uh, you need, it's about like breathing under water in, in Tennessee in August. It's like 98.7% humidity. But he brings you into a barn and has coolers going on. But it's coolers blowing through moisture. So it goes from 98.7% humidity and 98 degrees down to 90. But this humidity becomes almost 100%. You almost need a life preserver. Anyway, enough about that. I don't whine about the temperatures, I just work through anything. Anyway, you did your nitrogen reduction on one side of the, um, driveway. And on the other side of the driveway, your field day you did, threw everything with the kitchen sink at it. It was very obvious. Some of the corn with no nitrogen looked like bad stunted droughty popcorn. But you did that for the extreme example to demonstrate nitrogen reduction, uh, strategies. And you learned a lot talk to us. Yeah. You know, everybody's talking about now you got all the biologicals out there and stuff like that. And so we were trying to showcase, you know, all the different ones that we knew about if they really work and what they are really bringing to the farm. And that was a big deal for us. 'cause you know, we always try to bring an agronomic approach to our field day and actually having it a hands-on deal. And, you know, Kelly was there, temple was there, and I think me and Kelly did a video and we were walking out through there. You could see every trial just by walking down the turn the end roads, right? You didn't have to walk out in there. You knew what was done. Once you saw the first one, you could pick out the replication all the way across the field. And we really wanted to see what will corn make with no nitrogen. If we do anything, we're not blessed. Like Kelly, you know, we don't have 200, 300, 400 pounds of, of nitrogen available. We have probably like negative 20 on everything. So you know, it, we really have to work with what we're doing. But at the end of the day, you can make corn no nitrogen. Is it an ROI, you know, that's what we wanted to see. And then we wanted to see from the biological standpoint what each one of 'em brought to the brought to the table, and actually break 'em down into a replicated trial of it to really showcase are they bringing, are they carrying their wipes? So to say, I, it becomes an easy excuse to say, okay, uh, I don't have Iowa soil, or you know, I'm not in Champaign, Illinois with 12 feet of prairie, uh, black dirt, whatever. But the reality is, it's farming's still farming. You've gotta make some adjustments to be in Jackson, Tennessee. But you already, five years ago, you even said before we hit record and got our, our crowd invited in. You knew you were, you know, now you were over applying. And it almost is like, why, why did it take me so long to cut back on applied nitrogen? That's right. You know, and we've been that, we had another field day one time where we did the spoon feeding approach, like Temple was talking about. And, you know, 15 years ago, everybody put all their nitrogen out up front. We threw ammonium nitrate on top of the ground, walked away, and we didn't realize what kind of yield we were leaving. We went to the spoon feeding approach, do a system approach where we feed it all year. And we really saw good yield, yield results from that. And then like this year, like I said, me and Brian, we went out there this year. We, we've planted this whole plot and laid it out and, you know, grind could break that out, you know, and kind of show you what we got and the results we got there. But it was, it's a visual. Farmers like visual, they like seeing big yields, big corn. And when you can actually see the yield results or the, the yield gain from the different nitrogen approaches, that's a big deal for us. All right. We're going to my favorite. Brian Adams, you might have been skeptical. Were you the one that was skeptical or did you then have to go and sell everybody else on this high idea that we're gonna reduce nitrogen and we're not gonna lose yield? Tell me about the evolution for you. Yeah, so, so the evolution, Damien has been coming for a long time for me. Um, I was the, uh, the moron approach guy. Like, well, if, if a little bit of nitrogen worked well, let's put a little more on right. Some more on and more on, more on, more on however it is. And I think when Johnny and I started, Johnny and I met a little over 10 years ago now, um, we hit, uh, we had a really good NCGA entry and actually had a really good field average that year. Um, averaged right at 300 bushel per acre on 200 plus acres. Um, 85% of that underwater. And I thought, boy, I look, I look really good. I just met this dude and he thinks I'm something now, right? And then we couldn't replicate it again for years. Couldn't figure out what we did. Um, NUE on that was probably really close to one to one Johnny, that that's a fair number route, I think from back then. It Might have been more like 1.2, but yeah, it was Pro it was pretty high. It was. Um, and, and from that point forward, man, we started chasing it Damien, uh, 10 years ago to the point that we realized the higher we went, the worst the yields got. Yep. Um, things got more and more inconsistent. Um, five years ago, six years ago now. Probably started down my first rabbit hole of, of true nitrogen reduction. Um, and, and that was, um, of all things. It was with Pivot Bio. Um, that was kind of where I got my first, uh, my first idea of kind of trying to reduce, uh, and, and by and large, I think at that point I realized that we were probably using too much nitrogen. I just didn't know how much, uh, that would be the fairest way to put it. Uh, I'm still not a zero nitrogen guy, right? We get a whole lot more corn yield, Damien, for free, in terms of applied synthetic nitrogen costs than I ever would've told you. Um, Kelly and I were having a conversation earlier, and, uh, I don't know that that, that our organic matter, certainly we're not three to 4% or, or higher, like he is. We're realistically, uh, 1.2 to, to maybe two, but I'd say a 1.5, 1.6 average, uh, very thin layer, top soil, highly erodable soils. Um, we're four to probably nine. CC on average on 11 is pretty heavy for us. Um, but Will, if you'll throw up that slide, I'll kind of start down this road into what we saw. It's very similar to what, what Kelly and and Evan saw. Uh, And by the way, this was just last year. This is the 2024 field day, uh, experiment, correct? Yeah. Re replicated, uh, replicated average. That's correct. Damien, uh, from last year, 2024 growing season, uh, pretty good growing season for us. Um, Johnny, Johnny had one of his higher, uh, corn averages across the farm last year. But you see the non-treated 97 bushels, let's, let's call that a hundred for flat math. Uh, we had a consortia biology product, uh, came in at 91 Pivot bio proven 40, uh, on the seed at 94. Source at a hundred. All right, so, so let's talk about that. I don't, don't look at the little bit of dip above or the little bit of rise, or the little bit of dip below. The rise above. Suffice that to say that in the absence of getting that plant growing off any better than it was earlier as it started to, to determine yield, uh, around that V three V four stage and getting that factory built and getting that plan any bigger, I don't think that there's a lot you can add right now, um, with, without doing anything else prior to planning to get any of those products to work like they should. Those products absolutely work. Yep. Uh, in a different scenario. But we were putting them in a break scenario. So, Okay. So that's why I wanna point out here, because obviously these are all, several of these are companies that obviously we do stuff for. Yeah. And they want us to be, they want us to be honest and talk about what happens. Yes. But they're not gonna be particularly enamored with the fact that we're saying, okay, you, you did 94 bushels. It was the, the, the reason it did this, this poorly was you used no applied nitrogen at all. None, zero whatsoever. And when you don't do that, that corn plant will never get off, especially, um, as it moves into B three B four, it starts to move into rapid growth. It's determined in yield at that time. It, it doesn't matter the manner in which these products work. They were desi, they were basically not gonna work in that scenario. Okay. Moving, moving on. Great. Moving on to the right, you then, you, you 50% or 60% your, your, uh, result, and that was with doing, what? 40 pounds of ap? 40 pounds of nitrogen? 28 0 0 5. So roughly th uh, it'll be roughly 13 gallons, I believe. Yeah, 13 gallons of, uh, UAN in a two by two type solution. That's what it Then, then we went up almost 10% from there, going to the right at 168 bushels 25. Tell me what those, uh, for the person like me that doesn't know what all this means, 20 5G of UAN and three-way, what's this all talking about? 25 gallons of a 28 0 0 5 UAN solution. Um, plus the three-way of the biological, the proven 40 and the source, correct, Johnny. That's right. So 75 units of nitrogen plus the, the biology. That's right. Perfect. So, and then on top of that, you've got right beside that, the same 25 gallon solution plus hemic acid. And we're looking at that from the efficiency standpoint, right? Um, EPA defines nitrogen stabilizers is they either have to be a nitrification or rease inhibitor. Um, they have to be one of the two. Uh, you go to other parts of the world and it's not that way. There, there are other ways to stabilize nitrogen, uh, beyond fication and urease. So we're looking at that from an efficiency play. Uh, then you see just the raw jump to 33 gallons, so a hundred units basically of applied synthetic nitrogen. Then we go to 50 and you get it to 150 units all the way out to 80 at, at two 40. And, and you look and you or at, um, uh, 240 units and 240 units traditionally had been a grower standard around here, um, to grow 200 bushel corn on average, right? Mm-hmm. So we're not very efficient, right? We can agree to that. That's a probably, I had another math in my head, but roughly probably 1.2 at that. Yeah. So, which by the way, the university's always said you're supposed to be at about 1.1 to 1.2. So this is, that's doing what you're supposed to do, which isn't really accomplishing our objective of reducing nitrogen. No. At this point, I firmly believe if you're 1.1 or 1.2, you suck. Right? And I'm not saying you suck as a grower, but what I'm saying is your, your NUE could be so much better. And just a few short years ago, I thought that was really good. I I was on board with it, right? And understand that all those treatments, aside from that 40 pounds, that planning, Damien, everything to the right was put out at a traditional B three V four side dress timing. That is when that nitrogen was applied. Okay? So the person, the person watching this is gonna say, well, wait a minute. It sounds like you didn't reduce nitrogen at all to get good yields. You still had to put out your 1.2 pounds. But you're saying this was a, you had some weather challenges. And then what's the right answer? Which one of these are you? Would you replicate Johnny across more of your acres in 2025? Which one of these am I looking at in terms of the prescription? Yeah, I mean, I would, I would find a bio, a biology source that works on my farm, which several of 'em do on us. I would reduce my nitrogen, synthetic nitrogen and allow those to work for us. Like I said, when I say this, the reason we're trying all these different ones, we're trying to figure out which one works in our soil type or our, in our, our biology in our soil, which one responds the best? Kelly gets different results than us. That's one thing when we walk at that day with Kelly and Temple at the field day, we're walking out there, there saying, which ones work? Kelly might not see the same results, or he might see a better result, but for us it's gonna be paired with a, a bio, a biological, and then a humic source. And we're gonna reduce our, our synthetic nitrogen quite a bit. So in 2025, based on the studies you've done, you, you think Brian and Johnny, you're, are you gonna be at like 7.7 pounds of applied nitrogen than a biological and is, and a and a ic? Is that what we're talking about? Yes. Yes. So, so the flip side on there, Damien, and it's fortuitous that you said 0.7, um, what was not included in this study were some other things we did. We actually got to a 200 and roughly 20 bushel dryland corn yield at a 0.68 NUEI previously thought a 0.68 in our part of the world was unattainable. Yeah. We got to a 0.68 whole field average. That's not any sort of replicated strip that is whole farm average. Um, no single silver bullet there, right? There's a lot of things you're doing different. The one thing I would say is going back to that slide as you look at it, I mentioned that only one of 'em had the app plant and nitrogen. I think we probably messed up and should have had an at plant nitrogen in there, and then added the balance of the desired total nitrogen in the side dress. And I think those numbers would've went extremely high, because you see how efficient that first 40 pounds was, right? Yep. That was the best 40 pounds, the best 40 units basically, that we applied. Um, and, and I think anybody, temple Kelly, uh, Evans, any of them would agree to, right? That was, that was the best 40 pounds we put out, the most profitable. Okay. So, and, and by the way, at some point you're, you're, you're getting, uh, you know, exponential, uh, marginal return on your investment, and at some point you're getting diminishing marginal return on your investment and that first 40 pounds where you made it. I wanna go to a question you had already addressed Brian Strider in the comments, but for the person that's watching this, uh, live or replay, Brian St. Strider asked, has there been any trials with injecting 28% at pre-plant or only nh, NH threes and Hydrus, right? Yes. Yes. So, uh, did you, I I think you kind of covered that. You touched on it, but you didn't cover it. So if you two wanna take that Johnny and Brian on that? Yeah, you wanna go ahead Brian on that one? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, to answer that question, that 40 units at planning, that was the 28, um, that was the 28 0 0 5, the UAN solution injected app planning, um, done via two by two. Um, and then a lot of the, a lot of those treatments in there where they all say UAN, those were actually streamed over the top. If they were a side dress timing, those were not injected. We stream over the top. And, um, you know, a lot of people thought we were idiots for years, but it's the easiest way for us to get nitrogen out on our corner. Stream it over the top. Okay. All right. So we got some, let's stick with some questions. Anybody can take these. Um, I, I mean, but, uh, this is, looks like there's, specifically to the Tennessee experiments, Andy Banal, who's a extreme AG member from about an hour west of my farm in Indiana, asked how has the nitrogen, how was the nitrogen applied? Why drop Colter, et cetera. So you, you went over the top, you just said that, right? Yes. We, we stream barred That's correct. With, with, uh, with a ground rig, ground driven rig. John Burleson asks, what biological, and then, Johnny, this is probably for you, since you spoke about it, biological or humic products, have you tried with success? And then, by the way, and I want to go after Johnny answers this, if we're talking about biologicals to and IC to reduce nitrogen, I wanna go around the horn on this. So Johnny, please go first. Yeah, so I like the bio biology piece there. You know, whether they're synthetic biology or, or true biology, you know, proven 40 works great for us through pivot bottle. We've been using it for years on our farm. We get a good response. I think this trial right here that we did prove that it does carry what it's supposed to be carrying. We've used source, uh, through Sound Ag. Um, it, it, it's supposed to provide about 25 units of nitrogen. So those are two big players that are actually standard practice on our farm. Now, through the research we've seen, we've done it all different ways. Uh, we've done a coor biology like Brian was talking about. That's, you know, kind of just getting on the market with some of these companies that send you stuff, wanting you to try. We've actually had pretty good results from it the last few years. So we kind of starting to play with it. Some, a lot of 'em, where we're going with this, if we think it's a piggyback approach, might not be just one fits all. It, it might be two or three as a package is what we need on our farm to make it work. And, um, our soil biology is not living like some other parts of the country too, you know, and, you know, I think that's a big piece of it there. It's a, we're in a pretty much a no litter environment where we are. So we don't get any type of, you know, biology from that. So for us it's figuring out which ones work best on us. I think we just lost Evans going around the horn biologicals or other products to help you in your, in your reduction temple of nitrogen. You spoke a little bit about it when we were on stage in Nebraska. Yeah. You spoke about on our recording interstate. When you look at ways to reduce applied nitrogen, what do you use to, uh, accomplish that? So I mean, yeah, this, this biological space, you know, there's a lot of pe It's, it's kind of like the wild, wild west, realistically, you know, there's so many different biological companies out there. You know, I'd say find one that you really feel like it's a really good source of biology, the biologic, the biology, uh, piece. You know, the healthier that we make our soils, the better we're gonna be able to utilize nerian that we, that we apply out there, right? So, um, I use Holganix as, as what I've been using here recently. It works really well for me. It's kind of, um, improved the tilt of my soil. It has created a lot more biology in the soil and it, and it's creating an environment where I can keep utilizing the fertilizer. 'cause I mean, right now my grower standard practice is a 0.7, um, pounds of nitrogen to a bushel. And that's where I fall at. So I'm trying to improve my soil now to, to try to get that a little bit lower every year. So that's what I'm doing. And I'm playing with a bunch of different biologies. But it seems like, um, the healthier we can make our soil, the better off we are. The more utilization that we can get out of every bit of fertility, whether it's nitrogen, whether it's phosphorous or whatever it is. We, we, we have to look at that piece. Kelly and Mr. Evans, uh, again, there's gonna be somebody that says, oh, they can just reduce nitrogen. 'cause they have, uh, prairie soils up there and, and ice cream, uh, land. Oh, that's true. By the way, it's the southerners that continue to say that they, they ridicule about his ice cream land and ice cream soils and all that. But you get, you need to do some other stuff. Evans, what are you throwing in, uh, what are you throwing in the mix to reduce nitrogen? Uh, we use a lot of hemic acid, uh, carbon sources. Um, we have a product called backbone that we use a lot of. And, uh, you know, going back to Brian, what we use saying about stabilizers we're, we use complexes. That's what hemic acid is. We consider it a complexer. It complexes that nitrogen keeps, it keeps it kind of bound up. So we use that a lot on Hydrus. We use, uh, calcium, uh, based complexor, really. It's, they consider it a stabilizer, but, uh, that's what we do. And then really, and we use SAP analysis in rapid soils through the season to manage our nitrogen. We can't sidedress like these guys, uh, 'cause of, of ice cream land is actually like a scoop ice cream. It, it's pretty random. And, uh, sleep steep. So iron Blight my favorite, my favorite term. Usually if Kelly has a term that is catchy, he stole it from somebody else, usually me. But, um, in that regard, he's come up with iron blight because the, the 40% slopes curves a creek, a couple of cows, and a fence row. So, uh, he can't, you guys can't go out there at a certain point of vegetative growth because you'll knock everything over. But, um, we just did something Kelly, all joking aside at Commodity Classic, where if you're watching this, you know, that, uh, extreme ag has a huge presence at Commodity Classic. We run to all of our business partners booths. We were on panels. Uh, we worked with our, uh, fertility companies like, uh, agro Liquid. We were in their booth. We were nature's for panels. And we also swung by Gerson. We talked to Scott, uh, lay and talked about a product that is, gets three modes of action. And we'll just put the video up today on social media. So go and check it out when you're done with this webinar about Infinity. And that's gonna be, I think, a game changer. 'cause what he explained to us, Kelly, is it uses, uses ambi, it takes the 78% of our air that we breathe is nitrogen. It helps you use that. Yeah. I'm excited to try that product. Scott is very excited about it. Uh, I haven't found a lot of other nitrogen fixing products that work, you know, but as Johnny said, his biology isn't alive. Ours is, uh, Evans talks about the carbon type sources that we use. And, uh, I'm always very skeptical of the biological products because I haven't seen great success there. But the backbone product that Evans talks about, those other carbon type sources really do help us. We haven't ever seen a lot of other predictable success. I am excited, as I said, to try infinity because Scott is, and you know, I have a lot of faith in Scott. That relationship goes back a few years, you know, so we'll see how it goes. I'm excited to try it because I'd like to turn the nitrogen down even more. I, I'm a, I'm a number guy and I refer back to that ROI. If I could go from $77 to a hundred dollars somehow, um, that sure would become a grower standard practice for us. One of the things that Scott Lay, you like to talk about how he was in Herald him as the former Bloomington, Illinois, uh, MVP quarterback at his high school. I kind of have this idea. 'cause every now and he gets a little sassy with us. I wanna do a linebacker versus quarterback drill. We put Evans on one side and we put, uh, Scott lay on the other one, and I'm gonna be the blocker, which means, since he kinda gets sassy, I plan on absolutely just stepping to the side and letting, letting Evans come in on a blitzing package and, and, uh, and clear 'em out. Anyway, we don't wish violence onto to you, Scott. I know you're watching right now. We've got two questions I wanna get to them before I do. We've referenced these field days quite a bit. I think it's important for you to get on your calendar. 'cause it's already mid-March. Our first field day of the year is May 22nd. And, uh, Henderson Farms, uh, in Madison, Alabama. And it's cool because most field days happen in the dead of August. And, and they wanna tell you, oh, you know, look at, and they, they mow off the crappy looking corn and show you the good stuff. You know what, we start at the beginning. We, we go down there to Chad's farm and we talk about what's gonna be, and he shows you the stuff early season. That's cool. After that, we go to McGee, Arkansas, June 12th to be with Miles Farms. Then we're gonna go to June 26th. We're gonna be in Iowa. You can see some of this. Are we gonna do any nitrogen reduction, uh, trials, uh, that are gonna be on display at the field day? Mr. Evans, Uh, might be, we haven't got our f finalized yet, but gave me an idea now, Damien. I like that. And then August 5th is at Johnny lls. We then go from LLS to Kevin Matthews. And we're even gonna be in Canada. That's right. We're going international. Uh, they're gonna charge us 25% probably across the border, but we're going there anyhow. And then we're going to go from there to, we wrap up our season at, uh, temple Roads. And what's the date of the years? August 20, what? 22nd I Think. August 22nd. We're gonna wrap up. Our last field, day of the year is at Temple Road. So anyway, um, the question from Robert Hemingway is very lengthy. Before we get into that, we're gonna go with Edwin Parkinson's. Who says, are you using Chafer stream bars? If so, are you using them across the entire boom or just over the row? I think, Brian, that's probably for you. 'cause you talked about the way you apply nitrogen over the top. Yeah, so, uh, just as good familiar Johnny, but Johnny actually uses, um, a stream bar system from Needham Ag Needham Ag Technologies, N-E-E-D-H-A-M, Needham, Needham, whatever. I, I've got an accent. So I I, somebody out there probably doesn't understand me, so I'll spell it out. Uh, but need a mag. Um, they're, they're easily, uh, easy to find. Um, there's a wonderful lady that works there. I can't remember her name, but if you call her, she's as sweet as can be. You tell her what your sprayer is, what the space is, what you're trying to do, and she will absolutely send you the right product without fail. She's done it a million times for me. Oh God. I love Brian Adams. In case you, uh, are wondering why have we kept this character, uh, not on here. I think he's gonna be on future webinars 'cause he's, that he's that favorite for me. And incidentally, there's the old thing, Brian, if you need to tell everybody how rich, hardworking, or smart you are, maybe you're none of those three. I'm gonna throw a fourth thing in there. If you need to tell people you have a southern accent, you really probably don't have one. There's no need for you to tell anybody that you actually have an accent. I think that the viewer probably already had picked up on that. Yeah, I was, I was just recognizing that and trying to be thoughtful of those who could not understand me. Sam Reemer, Remer asked, do you ever recommendation on a rate of a ic? I picked up a product called IC with a K today that's labeled one quart to four gallons per acre. That seems like a pretty big disparity. Does anybody wanna tackle that? Probably one of our two agronomic experts. Mr. Evans. Yeah. Usually what we tell guys with humic, 'cause if 15 gallon or less, we run a quart. If you go 15 gallon or more, run two quarts. That's pretty simple for us, what we've ran. Okay, Brian? Yep. So my, my answer is gonna be a little bit more lengthy. Number one is understand your humic source. Uh, understand that it does not need to be heated during the drying or extraction process. 'cause that cuts a lot of the value out. And understand that a 12% IC on one label is not the same as a 12% on another. And this, that's time that is, uh, confirmed another time. But I like to be at 3%, 3% mixed with my UAM. That is where I like to be. There is a lot of value in that. So, um, realistically, if you're looking, you know, if you're putting out a a hundred gallon of UAN, obviously you'd want three gallon of that. Well, you cut that down to 25 gallon, uh, you're, you're slightly less than a gallon. But, but basically a 3% ratio, uh, 3% of your nitrogen total as far as UAN goes, is where I like to have my humic. That's what we run as a standard or one gallon per acre. Perfect. That is what we dress. Anybody have any experience with this product that he's referencing? Humic with a k on the end of it? We do not. There's quite a bit of 'em out there, right? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Uh, moving on with questions. And then Edwin said that's what he sells. I use them on wheat. I think he was referencing his previous question. So I think that, that we've, we've covered that. Jeff King, that's our friend from Kentucky, uh, labs for SAP tests since you, and by the way, Jeff, we did a recording, me and I believe it was Mike Evans and Kelly Garrett, and we talked specifically, it was released in 2024 about SAP testing the advantage of SAP over tissue. Uh, you know, we've been through the whole tissue thing. Chad Henderson says, do it, don't do it. Don't do it, do it. Don't do it. And if he argues back and forth. But the point is, these guys said absolutely use sap. It's, it's immediate. It's not like, uh, historical reference the way tissue is. Where do you send your stuff? Where do you get your SAP results analyzed? New Age labs at South Haven, Michigan. New Age labs at South Haven, Michigan. Brian's nodding his head. Do you send your SAP stuff there as well? That is where all of ours go as well. Perfect. There we go. We just answered that at, um, we are done with that. And then we're gonna go to, uh, next question with Ryan. Ryan says, how uniform is the distribution of the hopper applied biologicals? If it was more consistent, what do you believe would be the results? Temple? Um, maybe this is one for you, hopper applied biologicals. He's worried about the uniformity of the distribution. I think that you and I recorded something about that, and you talked about you were, you marveled a thimble full of stuff, was able to cover a, a, a huge vat of seed. And you were absolutely, you were sur pleasantly surprised. And actually you, you, you were a skeptic and said, there's no way this will work. I, I was, uh, a huge skeptic against this, um, product that we used. And I thought, there's no way that we can get coverage on every seed there. There's just no way. 'cause I mean, it was a, it was literally a small pouch and they were like, I needed you to apply this on 10 bags of corn. I'm like, yeah, okay. This is gonna work. Yeah. Um, but it actually worked out very well, and it was completely even, you know, I think that it's one of the things, if you have biologicals that are in a, you know, in a pale of some sort, you know, just do the best job that you can to try to blend it from one box into the next box and then get, get it on there best you can. And then once it rolls into the planter, I, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised how it gets on everyone. I don't, I can't sit there and tell you that. I feel like some of it got it and some of it didn't because the, the test plots were so even, I, I felt like everyone got it on perfectly, By the way. Anybody got any else? Uh, because that was a big topic that we covered in, in a recording. Uh, I mean, as we've gotten used to using smaller rates, remember it was only 30 years ago when we started using only like an ounce per acre or three ounces per acre. And you're talking about guys that were used to taking literally 33 gallon barrels and dumping it into the sprayer. So it's been an adjustment in the making now for three to four decades about reduction of rate. Is there any other tip trick wisdom about putting teeny little bits? Brian's nodding has had teeny little bits of product on a vast amount of seed treatment. Yep. So to Echo Temple, I was skeptical and I worked for a company that manufactured hopper box type treatments. I, I was skeptical for a long time. Uh, a lot of these new ones, uh, the way they work with fluency agents, um, microalgae tout, graphite type bases and things like that, the way they mix in their ability to move down into those seed boxes, treating 'em over the top, you ask for tips. I love to break the lid off a, a seed box, pour whatever required amounts on there, distributed evenly across the top of that seed box, put the lid back on, uh, find a guy you don't like and put him on the seat of the forklift and let him shake the ma shake the forks up and down. It's gonna bounce him pretty good there, uh, for about 30 to 60 seconds. By the time you do that, you drop it over into the top of the seed tender, let it roll down through there. That seed is absolutely thoroughly coated. Agree up 1000000% with Temple. I just wanna point out those videos that Kelly shares with Thet extreme ag team of Mike Wind Grove on the forklift, usually wrecking stuff and or imperiling other people dropping stuff on their head. Turns out actually maybe he's trying to shake up the seed treatment. He's actually doing this on purpose Evans, is he doing it on purpose or is he just a terrible operator? A little of both. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't believe that Mike Evans lets Mike win Grove get on the Forklift. It doesn't happen often. When, when, when, when, when Evans is not on the forklift. Win Grove takes his opportunity to run over and usually wreck stuff. All right, we got that one cover. We'll past the baton. I've got a long question. I got a long question from Robert Hemingway, it's been on the here for a while and it's maybe a statement, but I want to get go around the horn here, uh, from a couple you haven't heard from. We're putting on 70 units of n 12 units of P 10 units of s with thiol, with bandits, both sides of the row with planter on strips. If my boys wide drop the balance of the nitrogen at V five to V six, I'm going to recommend adding two gallons of thiol Theos salt, I don't know what that is. Five gallons of 10 34. Oh with nutri charge. Also a pound of molasses sugar and humic acid. Wanna protect 32% from the loss if it doesn't rain your thoughts? Anybody got any thoughts? And then potassium acetate be useful. Question mark. We have 200 units of potassium already in a fall strip. Uh, there's a, a lot of stuff there. Thoughts on that? Who wants to take that? I'll, I'll start by saying he wants to protect it and I'm assuming that means he has a thought of, of wanting to add some sort of traditional nitrification or, or urease inhibitor based on the amount or, or the, uh, the method in which he's applying it and, but as a wide drop, putting it right down there at the base of the stalk with ic, I would argue you're already doing that further. I would say that as you move toward a, a more traditional, uh, like a DCD or natural power type product, everything you've done up to that point to help your biology get off to a good start, help seed it, help grow it, you're killing it. That is broad scale bactericidal. I think it's a terrible, terrible addition to go with Tyrons, DCDs, things like that. And I used to recommend them, but understanding what they do to your bacteria in the soil, um, for a lot of reasons, Evans and I talk back and forth in group messages about this a million times, let that hemic acid, just because the, the United States EPA does not consider that an, uh, an nitrogen stabilizer does not mean that it's not doing that from an efficiency standpoint, uh, as well as other things. And, and that's where I will leave it. Plus the nutri charge is helping in that regard too. So, alright, Evans, he just went down the road of telling somebody they're doing something wrong. Actually not, but we've learned a lot about how certain stuff sets us back. You know, it's one step forward, two steps back. And the soil biology issue component of that is, is his thing. You have a thought on that or anything else? No, I'd echo what Brian said, but you know, if you're looking to do a little bit of our production, um, these are diverse carbon sources. You got sugar and humic in there. I would, I would look at adding a fulvic acid. You know, if you can find one that's relatively inexpensive, add that in there. That'll give you more complexity. Um, and it'll help with the, the plant taking it up. Fulvic and natural. Uh, plant loves fulvic acid, so it's gonna help take that up as you go along. And then the potassium acetate comment he's saying is that, would that be useful? I'm assuming you're gonna say yes, but I I I'm over my head here. I'm over my skis on my agronomics. Yeah. I mean, looking at it, he's put 200 units of K in the fall strip. Um, you'd hope he'd have enough. We always use that at Kelly's as a, as a splash in the, in the Foer blend to, to ignite the potassium, so to speak. So we, we build it into the program around fungicide tassel later in the season. Is That where like the bio kay stuff comes in to? Temple's nodding his head and Kelly's nodding his head. Yep. Okay. All right. Um, moving on. Questions. Uh, Edwin Parkinson's says Holly Needham will usually answer the phone. I think he's referencing Brian's answer earlier about the company Needham Bo Clawson asks, Kelly, what is your sap nitrogen levels that you are trying to remain above total nitrogen parts per million? Well, it isn't, it's, it's 95% where, you know, in that nitrogen conversion efficiency, we want to hit 95% assimilation of the nitrogen. That's the definition of success. I, I would say that on his question, he's asking for the total nitrogen. It, it is the, the lab we work with such benchmarks for ranges you need to be in to hit. So they'll set that in when you send a sample in to give you a, a number to hit or look for. Mr. Rell, we haven't heard from him for a while, so I don't care what the question is. I just want you to address it just 'cause I want to hear from you. Uh, so do you have anything on SAP testing since, since you guys are very big on SAP testing? Do you have anything on that? No, I think it's a great way to track where the, where the nutri is in the plant and you can kind of start predicting a lot easier. We really got into it last year. Kelly's been in it a couple years, so I think this coming year's gonna be a big part. 'cause I'm not gonna say history repeats itself, but you can really start seeing the trending in the plants by watching what's going on. Whether it's weather events or anything like that, causing your nutrients to move. Since he does ask about nitrogen per specifically, and obviously this whole entire thing is about reducing nitrogen. Do you have a target parts per million of nitrogen that you want to see in your, in your sap? Man, I'd have to go with Mike or Kelly on that one to know exactly where. I think Kelly might have mentioned that just a second ago, kind of what he was looking for. Temple came in with a smirk. I think that temple's enjoying the fact that you couldn't answer a question. But I should also point out, I should also point out, No, I'm, no, I'm actually not Johnny and me and some other people are on a text message chain and they're making fun of me because they think I got cow s**t on my jacket and I just rolled around in it and just rolled up in here. Which they're not wrong Actually. It's chicken litter 00:50:30.805 --> 00:50:30.925 and we try to have you avoid using swear words on our webinar. Sorry. Thank you very much. Sorry. It's alright. By the way, if you miss Commodity Classic, we had ama amazing rendition of the Match Farm. Match game and a person was going for a $200 match and the, the clue was grain blank. And Will was almost gonna not use the clue because he said everybody and her sister's gonna put grain bins and they went to temple and Temple said grain tank. That's what we call 'em. We call 'em grain tanks. I Think, I think there's one half of one county in the United States of America that calls those big things on the horizon where we store grain grain tanks. I think that when he, when he empties the tractor of fuel, he pulls up to the diesel bin, fuel tank, grain tank diesel bin. Anyway, um, moving on Bo's question, we got, I've heard That now about 10 times since Commodity Classic. Can we now retire the joke? Please? You know what, when it comes to agronomics, when it comes to agronomics, I think we should, uh, go ahead and do whatever our friends at, uh, like Brian and Mike say when it comes to comedy, I think we should defer to the person that's a former comedian. Thank you very much, will. Andy Banal says, if you're doing a small trial, use a submit mixer, um, that was in reference to somebody else's thing. Matthew Romero, are you applying micronutrient or are, are, are applying micronutrients important in reducing nitrogen micronutrients to reduce your nitrogen? I'm gonna go with Temple because we spoke about this very thing as it relates to phosphates and nitrates, but you're gonna say absolutely. Absolutely. Is that all you want me to say? No, I want you to expand on it. What micronutrients and how how do we go about doing that? It's, it's really a balance of what you know, you, I'm gonna refer back to Evans and let Evans take this because he's really good at this now. Micronutrients play a huge role in how nitrogen simulates up through the plant. Um, Mike can do a really good job of explaining that. Mike, why don't you, why don't you talk about that? Okay, temple, I'll do your work for you. Um, good Job. Micro micronutrient hit you Evans micronutrients as a, as a strategy to reduce nitrogen. Um, I I'm sure that Kelly's gonna say, well, it's because all we ever focused on was flinging more nitrogen out there. It maybe it's not even that one offsets the other, it's just that now we're starting to pay attention to stuff that matters. Right? It's like, uh, every now and again, you'd something more than just n Yeah, so I mean, plant takes up multiple forms of nitrogen. Let's just use nitrate. Ammonium are two forms that come up through the plant. Well, I'm gonna take nitrate. When it comes in the plant, the first reaction is nitrate reductase, uh, process. And that is triggered by Molly. So if you don't have enough Molly, that process gets stagnated and then you create a bottleneck and create issues down the plant. So that's the micronutrient you need. Then once that, if you have mo it gets kicked in through the system, you need zinc, uh, iron, boron, copper, all of them to complete the cycle so you get to a protein. So they're vital in all those process of converting nitrogen. Nitrogen. You get a, uh, hiccup in the, the whole system and you get a, uh, I call it a kink in the kink in the cog of the chain. And, uh, the plant doesn't, doesn't work as well. So, and you lose your efficiency. So they're very, very important. We're gonna move on to Aaron ER's question. You know what, like, like I bet you will, if he went to the high school reunion and like the kid that had been the jock that like then was in a terrible accident and like was in a wheelchair, will would knock him outta the wheelchair. Just like I had one joke. I mean, I used to be funny and I thought maybe I could resurrect it. He just knocked me outta my wheelchair. Thank you Will. Aaron Miller asked the question, does anyone use the Heney soil test to see if nitrogen levels in the soil, uh, or see what your nitrogen levels in your soil are? And if not, what type of tests are you using besides SAP analysis? Go around the horn on that, Brian. We do, we do not use the Heney soil test to see end levels. Um, I'm not gonna say that that amongst other things are not some, somewhere we're gonna be going. We used to make a blanket plan. Dude, we were awful at this. I told you we were 1.2 to 1.4 and we're proud of it. Um, the further we get down the road, I think the more, um, the more involved in this we will we'll get with, but the rapid soil testing, uh, and, and I think Kelly can probably talk about it as good as anybody. Uh, maybe even Temple too. I don't know if Temples do. I know Kelly and Evans are, uh, with that rapid soil test and understanding, um, what kind of mineralization they're getting, um, out of that. But that would, that would probably be the number one thing I think is, is where I would start if it were me. Uh, but up to this point, we've done a really bad job, uh, Johnny and I as far as monitoring where our nitrogen is at, where it's coming from and how we can get to it. Fairway, I can put it Anything else on the Haney test or about, uh, analysis for n Um, we have a test around here that a lot of guys use, especially if you are ha if you have, you put a bunch of litter down on ground, we have what they call PSNT test. It's preci dress nitrate test and and it gives you all the multiple forms of nitrogen that are that is out there. But what you find is, is that it, it's so erratic and it comes back and giving you all these different results because I've had 'em come back where it said, Hey, you don't need any nitrogen whatsoever and you don't put on any at all. And you try to stage it out and it becomes a off scaled manner and, and it doesn't. I don't think that we're quite there yet with the testing that we have out there. I think that we got a long ways to go. Um, I think this is why SAP samples play such an important role of what the plant needs, when the plant needs it, knowing what your nutrient uptake is, um, throughout that, that crop cycle. I think that it plays a more important role than some of these tests that are out there that are, um, I don't wanna say old and and outdated, but we're, we're just not quite there yet. Well, even On that, do you, do you think the soil test, do you, you know, we got way better at it. You should go out and grab one plug of soil per 80 acres than we started doing, you know, now grids is soil testing even, even the better of it kinda yesterday's technology. It is, it it's very much yesterday's technology and we still square by it, you know, use phosphorus for, for example, you know, they use an extraction test and they extract phosphorus out of it and it's given us one, one type of phosphorus. Yeah, well we know that there's multiple different types of phosphorus that's out there, but it's only reading one of them. And we use that as a holy grail, you know, especially for me, you know what I mean? It's the holy grail. Yeah. For what, how much phosphorus you have out there and we're held accountable to that number. Well, we're not even, we don't even know the other types of phosphorus that are out there 'cause we don't break them down. Big takeaway, and I wanna throw it at the crowd, and I got a couple more questions. When I was in a session, and I think it was with extreme ag, when we, I learned that about only one third, 35% of applied nitrogen gets into your plant. The light bulb went off in my head and I thought this any other business that two thirds of your investment just evaporated, you know, went to the water, you'd say, for god's sakes, let's address that. And I think that's what this webinar is really all about. So I wanna go around there. Um, and, and you know, isn't, isn't this low hanging fruit, Kelly, can we use your favorite term? Yes. This is low hanging fruit. Uh, again, how do we manage what we don't measure? So let's measure it. Let's validate what we have, let's verify what we have and let's get down and, and get it as tight as possible so we're not wasting any input dollars. That is my a hundred percent goal. That's all I'm trying to do. John, Then why are you putting out all your nasion in the fall? You're smoking down your biology. I don't need the nitrogen. Uh, no. Well, in the, in the fall, I'm not smoking my biology in the spring, I am in the fall when it's dormant and that biology is, uh, easily repairable, very forgiving. And in the spring it comes back with the weather we had last fall. I'm gonna have to put some nitrogen down in the spring and I'm not at all excited about it in the fall. I Said, I'd said this to set you up because, and I was out there with Kelly, um, for an example, um, he was showing me like the fall applied anhydrous and then there was some neighboring fields that had spring applied anhydrous and holy crap, could you see that Kelly, or what it was like night and day. So it just goes back to a testament of how much biology works out in our soils that helped bring that soil back to life. And in, in our industry, there's all this talk about we need to split, apply this nitrogen to raise better corn. And in some parts of the country, I'm sure that they do. But where we live, the last thing I do is to need to add more nitrogen. The nitrogen, uh, adding more nitrogen is just gonna make us add more micronutrients at some point. It, it, it's gonna make us spend more money. What I need to split apply is calcium and zinc. Uh, you know that SAP sample that was up there before with calibrated agronomy, we talk about it and Luke, that is in Illinois, part of the calibrated agronomy team. He says, across all crops, across all states, he's never seen a SAP sample that has enough zinc. The last thing I need is more nitrogen. I need to spend more money on calcium and zinc. You said that by the way, at, at one of our interviews that come commodity classic. And I thought that was interesting. One of the panels we were on that and you're talking about not three samples, not four farms, not four farms from the same county. You're talking about a pretty breadth of of infra of, of, of sample. And not one of them had enough zinc and that was really telling about micronutrients, which was a previous question. Two more questions, John, John Burson asked, uh, Johnny and Brian, would you take this, do you sap test every week or do you do it just ahead of critical uptake period? So how do you, what's your methodology on sap? Yeah, last year we started doing the SAP test and we were doing every other week on the same day at the same time of the morning. So we were trying to build it, I guess you could do it every week, but for us, we were doing every other week. We would do it like on a Monday, try to have the results back by Wednesday and we could apply what we needed to on Thursday and Friday. But I think the big thing, Kelly, I think I talked to him one day, he is like, just be consistent. Whatever you do, whatever day you pick, be consistent. And just remember you need those tissues to get those samples to get there in a viable fashion too. So don't pull 'em on a Friday and let 'em get hung up over the weekend. Right? Yeah. The better the ball, the benefit, the benefit of doing it is the timeliness. So if you, if you pull your sample and then sit on it, you've defeated the purpose, I think is what you and Brian would say. Uh, a lot of questions. This is great, which is what we want to be exact, uh, we want this to be. Ryan F asks what zinc and calcium rates are sufficient. Mr. Evans, you wanna pop on that? Yeah, I can. Um, I'm assuming he's talking fo here maybe, but, uh, uh, really it's about frequency. We, we, uh, apply about three or four times at Kelly's fo fo foliar. I can't say it. And uh, maybe it's just small doses. Um, especially Molly as frequently as we can. So. Well, Speaking of Molly, that's his next question and I want to hear either you or Temple say, what's Molly short for? I always forget what element does it, is it short for Temple? Can't even say water and you're asking him to say molybdenum. I just say Molly, it's just Molly. I Dunno. The rest, the element is known as molybdenum, but Ryan would like to know some guidance on molybdenum and Evans, you were getting ready to go ahead and give that. Yeah, because Molly can, you can do overdo it pretty easily if you try to put too much on. Um, but like back to the rates, we run pints through quartz, um, and we run individual micros on Kelly's farm. Um, that's how we get our numbers up to where they're at. Allen Hunt asked the question, is 24% or 28% the best for corn sidedress application efficiency? He asked this about 10 minutes ago. Uh, anybody got any guidance on 24%, 28% side dressing, 20 eight's the, the most common form we could get 28 0 0 5 for us. Maybe there is 24%, but it's not available where We are. I I I mean I'm not the agronomic person, but I'd never heard of 24%. So 28% is just because it's most available, correct? Well for us it's what we could pick up local. Yes. Yes. Tucker Thomas asked Kelly, do you have any history using end zone or ender with your anhydrous? And that's going back a few years, uh, for nitrogen stability, which that I think that that's, that is, we Don't, yes, we don't. NerVve is hard on soil biology the way Iner works very, very well to, uh, help your nitrogen, but the way it works very, very well is it just smokes and kills everything. Yeah. We use a product right now called maintain and which is a, uh, a calcium source evidence could talk about it better, but the maintain, um, helps the nitrogen, you know, stabilizes the nitrogen and it is less hard on soil biology than bare anhydrous. The nerv is, is, uh, is even harder. We, we actually have trial data from that. Uh, nerv nerv very works very well to maintain the bio or to, uh, stabilize the nitrogen, but it just kills the biology and it's, it's a product we don't like at all. I, I you're talking about history, that's, I mean that's 40, 50 years ago when that was the new, that was the, that was the new thing on, on conserving, keeping the nitrogen in the soil and I mean I think we've, I think we've got three iterations of, of better evolution since then is my perception on that. I agree. But it's still the most used stabilizer on the market. Yeah. Alright, that's our last question for that. I wanna go around the horn here on, on reducing your nitrogen costs without reducing yield. So the big key takeaway here, we got a lot of 'em, but the point is, Evans, you can do this, you guys are doing it. We started off in Iowa and then the easy answer is, oh yeah, it works up in Iowa. But the, the point is you've done it. You started doing, you started cutting back on nitrogen several years ago. The point is it it it works. You're, you're saving money on applied nutrients and not sacrificing yield. Give me the, gimme the, the last statement on that. Yeah, I think we've done it, we've vetted it at Kelly's quite extensively and it took a lot of trials on his farm using different methods of soil analysis and our SAP analysis to make decisions towards getting to where we're at today. So I think that that's a key takeaway for me is you gotta measure it on your farm with your practices and validate it and figure out where you need to be. Temple is the key for you being able to reduce nitrogen, this being better at than the spoon feeding the plant for the remainder of the season? Is that the key or is there something else? No, I think I, for me the key is, is you can't just take away one. Um, you have to learn how to spoon feed the entire crop. And it doesn't matter which nutrient you, you particularly wanna play with. You kind of have to fool with all of them, in my opinion. Yes. If you take away some nitrogen, yes, I think that we're over applying it, but I also think we're over applying a lot of things, right? So if you wanted to get down with the whole spoon feeding your entire crop for what that crop wants, and I think that that's where Mike's going and Kelly's going and where Johnny and, and Brian and everybody is, that's where we're heading towards. Um, and it's something that we've, we've been trying to perfect for years and it really does work. And when you get down to a point where you're still maintaining a really good yield and you're at a 0.7 on an margin, you're less phosphorus and you're less potassium than you've ever used before. Maybe you've upped your game on your micronutrients because you've had to facilitate all the rest of the plant's needs, but the plant becomes a very different animal from what you're used to. Johnny, you're the youngest person, so that means you're supposed to be the most adept at new things, changes, et cetera, et cetera. But you are actually a year or two behind the Iowa guys on your nitrogen reduction strategy. You're catching up fast. I don't think you're done. What's next on you on your nitrogen thing? What's, what are you gonna try out? What are we gonna show us? What are you gonna show us? If I come to your field day in August, which I am coming to your field day in August. Yeah. I mean, you're always trying to think outside the box. We're always trying to try new products and new timings. I think Temple, you know, talking to him like we do and stuff like that, he spoon feeds as good as anybody. I think through the SAP test what Kelly and Mike are doing, you constantly looking and seeing what you can adjust and be able to adjust it on the fly. That's the big thing for us going forward. And mainly probably just gonna try to showcase what a true spoon feeding liquid dock can look like on a crop, which is what I kind of learned through Temple last year. His field day is being able to put what you need, when you need to put it and make that crop happy. By the way you talk about talking to Temple, uh, he does call you every morning. You don't have any choice in this matter. He calls you every morning. Yeah. Uh, and, and, and we're glad he does. All right. Uh, is there anything from the Iowa, uh, from the Iowa Collective Kelly on this thing? It's, it's kinda like stress reduction was your 2022 big push reduction of applied nutrients is one of your big things now. Uh, we come to June when we come to your farm on June 26th, we're gonna be talking about nitrogen reduction. I think we are. That'll Be one of the things we talk about. I would tell every grower, everybody that's listening, go out and measure what is in your soil. It's gonna be different everywhere from map miles in Arkansas to Temple and Maryland to Johnny in Tennessee, to me and Iowa. It's gonna be different everywhere. Measure what you've got and then manage it and use that to cut down money. You know, let, as we showed, we, we could save $77 and or there's a $77 difference between the two 40 and the 60. We continue to turn it down and we continue to save money. It's, you just have to measure it so you can manage it. That's all Over here on the notes. You've got, uh, different links for stuff. If you're an extreme Ag member for only seven $50 a year, you get premium content, you get access to these guys. Temple won't call you every morning, but he could. And you'll get that for 7 50, 7 $50 a year. You also get special offers from our business partners. And more importantly, you get the year end data, all the stuff these guys are compiling on their farms in their trials, in their field days. You'll get access to that for just seven $50 a year. Encourage you to become a member. Also, if you've got a niece, nephew, son, daughter, grandchild that is pursuing a two or a four year degree at an accredited agricultural college in the United States of America, please go to our website, extreme Mag Farm and, and find the scholarship application you can apply for this. We're giving, these are not chinsy little, you know, $10 scholarships, there's ten three thousand dollars scholarships. We're giving away $30,000 to invest in the future of our industry, the world's most important industry. We want you to get it behind that reminder that we have field days so we can bring the learning to you and you can get your fingers dirty. May 22nd, our first one in North Alabama at Chad Henderson's. From there we go on to McGee, Arkansas, June 12th, uh, and see our friend at Miles Farms, June 26th in Iowa. You can talk to Mr. Evans and Mr. Garrett August 5th at Rell Farms. From there we move on to seeing our friends at Kevin Matthews. We're gonna go to Quebec. That's right. We're gonna be in Canada. And then we're gonna wrap up our field days season at Temple Roads in Centerville, Maryland, August 22nd. Uh, if you like what we do, go check out the Grainery Show. It's on our YouTube channel. Go to YouTube and just type in extreme mag. It's free subscribe. We want you to be a part of this. You can also find the Grainery Show at Extreme Ag Farm. Our next field, our next webinar is on April 3rd. We're gonna ask the question, is your machinery giving you a return? More importantly, do you know the ROI of your farm equipment? Farmers love machinery. We're just a commodity classic. You know, our friends at Fent got this big gold machine. The people at John Deere got this, you know, beautiful machine sitting out there, but is it making you money? We're gonna dig into that at our April 3rd webinar. Punching out the return on investment on your machinery. It's probably your second biggest expense behind your land. Is it actually making you money and tight economic times on the farm? You need to be questioning these things. We're digging into that on April 3rd. His webinars are always here for you. Always interactive, always informative. Kelly Garrett, temple Rhodes Will Osted our producer, Mike Evans and Brian Abs. You're gonna be seeing more of Brian by the way. And when I say seeing more of him, I don't mean he's gonna take his clothes off. I mean, he's gonna come around more often and of course he's here with our friends. Johnny Rell, thank you very much for being here. Till next time, I'm Damien Mason 01:10:47.185 --> 01:10:49.565