Crop update from Iowa: from freezing temps to 90 degrees as drought conditions intensify

Narrator: We are grateful that you are joining us for another episode of the Ag View Pitch, as we know that your time is very valuable. Our team at Ag View Solutions is always here for you for any questions or comments that you may have. Please feel free to reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. And now here is your host, Chris Barron.

Chris

Barron: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and we are here today to have a little conversation about what's happening with weather and crop conditions in Iowa. Iowa's kind of been hitting the news and as I live in Iowa and farm in Iowa, just wanted to reach out to everybody and kind of let you know what we're seeing. But lucky enough today we have with us, we have Mike Tierney, an account manager with Pioneer, and we also have Troy Dittmeyer, who's an area agronomist with Pioneer. And so figured rather than me giving an update, we would access some professionals in the area to kind of talk about what they're seeing. Across the state. Obviously we're very dry right now and we've had some frost a couple weeks ago that really injured a lot of things. And so we're going to start with that. Troy, I want to start with you and we'll get to you here in a minute, Mike.

But Troy, start with you a little bit on the agronomic side and let's start with the frost. We had a pretty interesting freeze that kind of hit that east central Iowa area where, where you're an agronomist. So I'll have you kind of touch on that to start with.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Sure, Chris. Yeah, we were a little bit surprised when we saw the damage because the thermometers that morning suggested that it shouldn't have showed as much damage as what it did. I guess the area that I, that Mike and I cover is, is kind of east central Iowa in the Highway 20 to Highway 3 corridor. And a lot of the, the main damage was, was north of, of Highway 3. In visiting with our counterparts, there was a fair amount of soybean replanting. Mike and I did not experience much in our particular area, but the one trend that we did see is the high residue, the no-till cover crop kind of type fields in both corn and soybeans did have quite a bit of damage. And, you know, the lower lying areas as well, that's where most of that stuff was concentrated at. The soybeans overall for the area that we cover fared fairly well.

You had to get up into the Charles City, New Hampton area where they probably had a little bit more widespread replant. Most of the plants around here have recovered. And just walking around with farmers and other sales reps, you know, we've determined that the stuff is pretty darn resilient. Do feel that in some of these, you know, corn fields where we experienced some pretty heavy frost and maybe took off 2 or 3 leaves. And, you know, when you're trying to produce 250, 300 bushel corn, you can't, you can't have a bad day, right? And so we did have a lot of potential out there with the stand establishments that we did have. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these fields we took, you know, 20 or 30 bushels off the top, especially where you're seeing significant tissue, tissue loss.

Chris

Barron: Um, you talked about the seeing a little bit more severe damage, and Mike, feel free to jump in on this as well, but you talked about the no-till, the COVID crop areas and stuff being a little more severe. Um, does that make people question their practices a little bit, or— because we do the same thing. I mean, we strip-till, we, you know, we had some cover crops this year, and we did see more damage on, on where there was a lot of residue versus we had a clean-tilled field planted to beans and some low ground, and it didn't, it didn't freeze. And so It makes you scratch your head, doesn't it?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, so, you know, kind of interesting timing with, I would say, the progress that we've made with implementing conservation tillage and also the carbon credit programs that are becoming available and a lot of people signing up for cover crops. What was interesting is yesterday afternoon I was in a field where it was partially tilled or full with tillage and then also had no-till cover crops, and I stuck a soil thermometer in the ground and there was a 14-degree difference in soil temperature between the bare soil.

Narrator: Wow.

Troy

Deutmeyer: And where the COVID was. So if we continue in these hot, dry conditions, you know, those conservation acres could make a drastic turnaround and at the end of the year maybe come on top. So definitely a challenge, but I think with every system we see unique challenges.

Narrator: Yep. You just have to look at the environmental conditions from year to year. Now, You go back to 2019, I'll give you an example. It was Memorial Day weekend. You guys were probably swamped, Chris, right? We were swamped. Nobody was planting. We were looking for earlier maturity hybrids for growers to plant. And I had a no-tiller that was going to put in a plot for us, and he called me on the Sunday before Memorial Day, says, you working tomorrow? And I said, I don't think so, we're too wet. He says, uh, well, I'd like to put that plot in. I go, no way. He says, yeah, come on down. And, uh, I went down and I tell you, he had, uh, his cover crop and he had killed it. And it was all the way from Guttenberg down to Prairieburg, there was, uh, nobody in the field and everybody was swamped out.

And I got to this cover crop guy, uh, that was ready to no-till and his field was in perfect condition. So, so this year you're seeing one side of the coin, but There's not everything when it's dry or when it's wet out. The porosity in the soil that an environment like that creates can be very beneficial at times too.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, we don't, we don't want to draw conclusions from one weather event for sure.

Narrator: Exactly.

Chris

Barron: The other thing too that I want to lead to, and I'll start with you, Mike, on this one, and we'll come back to you, Troy, here is on the dry conditions. That's what's making the markets right now. Everybody's kind of looking at Iowa and saying, okay, those guys are dry. Southern Minnesota is pretty dry. Not to mention a few other areas. If you look at the drought map, it's starting to get the market concerned. But with the no-till and, you know, some of the conservation things, that is a moisture conservation thing as well. And so there's probably going to be some advantageous things that we may see there moving forward, wouldn't you think, with, you know, as we get drier here and start to see some of the plant stress that we're already starting to see.

Narrator: Well, just in general, as we dig roots in corn, and a lot of it's in that between that V4 and V6 stage right now, the root development's as good as I've ever seen because of soil structure. We were just out taking some soil samples earlier this morning in this area, and we would dig, dig, and dig, and dig, and we couldn't find the bottom of where the roots were, and we're 2 feet deep. Wow. So you, you know, you just really be surprised. And as you get a couple inches below that dry line of soil, there's still moisture down there. Now there's a few sandy areas where the corn's rolling a little bit to preserve its moisture, but really we've got some water in the tank to run off of. Of course, the forecast is very dry. I guess, you know, it's concerning when the, the forecast is dry for that long. As we can look out at the next 10 to 14 days.

But we've got some water to run on for a while. Hopefully the weather conditions will change and we can catch a rain. I guess just north of where we're at now, they had a nice shower, but it wasn't very widespread. Not very widespread. We were in that field and we got back to the shop here and we had to take the mud off our boots, and it'd been a long time since I'd done that.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, as you can imagine. Our yard here, the grass is completely brown and you guys walk in with muddy shoes, you know, that's a Interesting, interesting thing to see.

Narrator: It was just a little popcorn shower that was a couple miles, I guess, north of here.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, yeah, it's going to be pretty spotty like that, I think, as we move forward. So, um, talk a little bit about, Troy, about the physiological maturity of the corn plant and, and beans if you want to as well. But, um, you know, we're getting to that V6-ish stage right now in, in Iowa, probably in general in a lot of cases. And with this dry weather, what does that tell the corn plant when we experience really dry conditions at this point?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Sure, you know, at that V6, you know, V5 through V8 stages, you know, we're starting to determine rows around the ear. And for what I guess going back to what Mike said about digging roots and seeing how deep they are and, and the moisture that's down there, you know, in order for us to loose rows around right now, you know, you're going to need to see, you know, leaf rolling for about 4 days before we really start to shrink that ear down. And corn's pretty resilient yet at this stage. So I guess I would say, you know, the conditions that we have right now, I'm not too overly concerned about ear girth. But if the, if the 2-week forecast shows we start getting to V10, V12 corn and we're under moisture stress, that's where we'll really shorten up those ears, and, and that's where our yield loss would potentially come from.

But right now, I guess I'm still trying to be glass-half-full kind of guy. We have excellent stands, a lot of very uniform corn. The frost did ding a few of those fields, but, you know, the moisture comes here in the next 10 days, we could still have a very good crop. But we start going more than 10 days out and start getting into where we actually are determining how long that ear is and getting closer to pollination. We stay under this kind of moisture stress, it'll definitely have an impact.

Chris

Barron: Okay, another challenge I want to ask you guys about too is spraying. We have a lot of dry areas with clients in multiple states where, you know, the residual control has been a little, a little sketchy in places from place to place, and a lot of questions, you know, With spraying, I always— my dad always used to say the best days to spray are Sundays, holidays, weddings, funerals, graduations, you know, because it's too hot, it's too cold, it's too something for spraying, right? Too windy, too something. Right now it's heat. And so what, what if anything are you guys cautious of right now? You know, we've got various types of things that we have to manage in soybeans, you know, with different chemistry, and, and same thing in corn. So any, anything you're watching out there that our listeners should be paying attention to on the, on the crop protection side of things?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Well, the one thing, Chris, I guess that a lot of people have been asking is, you know, should we just kind of wait this heat spell out? And I guess Mike and I were talking yesterday with a grower that, you know, these weeds, it seems like drought does not affect and heat does not affect weeds. They keep, they keep growing. And with With the rapid growth, you know, waterhemp will grow 2 inches a day in this kind of environment. We're just encouraging guys, if the wind is correct, you know, we got to watch the heat obviously with the dicamba applications, but we really can't hold off any longer on these herbicide applications because the weeds are just going to get too big. And as we get drier, they're going to harden off and be harder to kill. So I guess our recommendation to guys is you know, get out there and get it, get it on.

And if you would happen to catch one of these pop-up popcorn showers, your residuals there that can be incorporated with rain if you would be lucky enough to get underneath one.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, I think some people are concerned, you know, if they put that residual out there and it's there for 15 or 18 days, do you get it? Does it— are you going to get the recharge when it does finally rain?

Narrator: Yeah, the— that'll sit there and wait for a rain. And, and the other thing is that we don't see a lot— a lot of the fields, we don't see a lot of weeds because it hasn't rained yet, right?

Chris

Barron: So that's what's making a lot of guys— what do I do, there's no weeds? Well, probably, probably spray, because there will be.

Narrator: The thing you got to remember is if you keep waiting and you get leaf tissue covering the soil surface and your spray can't get down to the soil anyway, right, you're not getting— going to get any residual control if you wait till the leaves cover the all the soil, you know, you want to get that spray down slow, right? So our advice is, uh, maybe make it so you don't have such a hot surfactant on a hot day. Most of the crops now are traded to tolerate what we're applying to them, which 15 years ago that wasn't the case. We used to really ding corn up on hot days like this. But, uh, if it was me, I would go ahead and make the application and make it now while the weeds are smaller that are there and get that residual herbicide out there on the soil rather than spray it out on the, on the leaves later.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, and I'll just add to that, you know, for the guys in the frost areas, uh, when you're staging your corn, we're gonna have to start splitting that plant and looking for internodes. Because if you lost your bottom 2 leaves or whatever to frost, and now also you look at a plant that has 4 or 5 leaves, leaves left, which you already lost to— you're now V7. And you might be off-label on some of these products. So really encourage guys, if they don't know how to do that, contact their agronomist. And the other thing on the soybean side is, you know, we'll probably, with all the early planted soybeans, we will see flowers here showing up in the next probably 7 days or so on many of these soybean fields.

And, you know, our research has shown that once we start seeing flowers and into that reproductive stage, we really don't want that plant to have to go through metabolizing herbicide to preserve as many flowers as we possibly can.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, and that, that's great information too, because I think that's one of the big concerns that we not only are dealing with in our own operation, but we're hearing from, from clients, you know, wondering about spraying. And, and, um, definitely, like, say when that soybean plant gets in a reproductive stage, we want to, we want to save that plant and, and have it be focused on reproduction rather than metabolizing stuff. So Anything else on agronomy they didn't hit before I shift gears on, on another topic here for a minute?

Troy

Deutmeyer: I guess just for a lot of our— your Iowa listeners, or even Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, where we've known that the rootworm pressures have increased over the past few years, just be mindful out digging. We will start to see rootworm hatch happen here in the next 10 days, and that'll be something to keep an eye on. And, and we've had good luck in season with, uh, Y-dropping some insecticide if we do need to come in with a rescue type application. So that'd be probably the next thing after guys get done spraying and side dressing to keep their eyes open for, Chris.

Chris

Barron: All right, appreciate that. And, um, Mike, we were talking offline here when— before we started, just a little bit, that, that I was going to hit you up on some economic things here, um, as farmers You know, we do have really strong commodity prices. One of the big concerns is, okay, well, we have really good commodity prices now. How long before, you know, inflation starts to affect everything from seed to crop protection to machinery to land prices and all these kind of things? And so, um, first thing I want to hit on is you had mentioned you'd had some customers asking, well, geez, do I— can I justify fungicide? You know, and we're a long ways from that yet. But talk a little bit about just some of the decision-making that you think is important that producers think about when they're either protecting or trying to increase yield from an economic standpoint.

Narrator: Well, I was talking to a grower earlier this week that's all about trying to get the most out of— most bushels out of his acres, and he's one that puts on nitrogen before he plants, he side dresses, and then he comes back and Y-drops a little bit on top of that. And the question was because of the dry weather, and he was believing that we weren't going to get a rain until June 24th, and then he thought it would be dry for 6 weeks after that in his mind. Now let's hope that all doesn't—

Chris

Barron: I hope that doesn't happen.

Narrator: Let's hope that doesn't happen. But so as we talked through that, you know, with his 3 timings of nitrogen, we decided that if that's what he believed he would be better off to move his Y-drop application up to now, uh, and, and either not do the Y-drop at all, not make that application, or to cut back to, uh, just a 50% amount and move the other 50% earlier on. That was something that came up this week, is the way that he could get his nitrogen in place and then hope for rain, some more rain later on this month or into July as we move forward. And then like you mentioned about the fungicide, I've had— already have people that have fungicide booked that are wondering if they should unbook or plan on not making their fungicide application.

And like you said, we've got some time to make that decision before it's time for fungicide application, but But for me, you know, where we apply fungicides on corn on corn, uh, historically we've just seen an advantage there. And, and the advantage comes in the form of, of bushels as well as standability of the crop when it comes to health. It's hard to put a price on that if your stalks get rotten because you didn't protect your plant. And if it gets dry out, I guess there's been years where I've seen it get dry and the plant tries to make an ear and it cannibalizes all the stock late in the season. You know, years ago when we didn't apply fungicides, and to have that tool in the toolbox, and with prices where they're at on corn, and not be optimistic at this point, I personally, I'd still be optimistic and be hoping that we would get some rain as we move forward.

Chris

Barron: One of the things, I think I just mentioned it to you before we started recording, is I always tell people that, you know, the fastest way to lower your cost of production is to increase yield. And so it's either a combination of, you know, increasing bushels by, you know, doing whatever you can to enhance additional yield or protect the yield, and that's where your fungicide and those kind of things come in. So last question I want to hit you guys with, unless there's something else you guys want to touch on, but is back to the economic side of things again. From the standpoint of where prices might go. And I know you guys don't know, and, and I don't want to throw you under the bus because you probably aren't— don't know, but farmers are sitting there thinking. So I'm just throwing the question out there, what guys are thinking, you know.

Um, what— how do the— how do the companies look at, at this, you know, um, with this commodity price, you know? Any, any perspective there from, you know, the products and, and the services and things from— and it's not just the seed industry, but you know, all of the companies when, when, and the landowners when they see high dollar prices, you know, how do you look at that?

Troy

Deutmeyer: You know, I guess, Chris, from Pioneer standpoint, you know, whether it's $3.50 corn or $5, $6 corn, it doesn't change our focus on how we're trying to develop, you know, corn, new corn and soybean hybrids, you know, what services our sales reps are going to provide. You know, year in, year out, it's the— it's kind of the, the products that are consistent, uh, you know, the sales rep that can bring agronomy information, you know, whether it's fertility, insects, weeds, and things like that, that, that really doesn't change. So I guess from our standpoint, I guess we don't see a whole lot of difference in the focus that Mike and I have in our daily jobs, whether corn's $3 or $6.

Chris

Barron: Well, and when when corn's $6, or if you can get a higher price, it's a lot easier. Again, back to the idea of enhancing yield or protecting yield, right?

Narrator: It's a lot more fun to work with people when they can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. Or it could be a profitability there, other than, uh, such as the case of the past few years where it's so difficult to pencil things out, right? People are a lot more willing to sit and visit about ways to increase their yields. And, and that's what Troy and I like to do, is help people find ways that they can make a better yield and ultimately be more profitable.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, and that's the key, is, is increasing the yield. So anything else that, that I didn't bring up, or anything, Mike, from the standpoint of what you're seeing with customers out there that I haven't hit on, is there anything you can think of, or Troy, that you guys are seeing that that warrants further discussion here?

Narrator: I, I guess this— before this week, that, you know, we've followed up on the frost damage, we talked about that. And then this, this past week we've been out on a, uh, a nematode initiative, taking nematode samples to try and get a handle on how much damage nematodes are causing here in our part of the state. And, uh, we've collected 25 samples so far, and next week we're going to try to get another 25 samples to send in for analysis and, and try to get a handle on what corn nematode damage is in our area.

Chris

Barron: Interesting.

Troy

Deutmeyer: So yeah, and I guess the one thing I'll add, Chris, when you commented on, you know, ROI and, and getting more bushels and, and being more efficient and profitable in your farming operation, Mike and I over the last couple years have done what we call a, even just a soil test, soil testing initiative, where we've gone out and either taking guys' existing soil test results or going out and grabbed a few new samples, and then we correlated those back to yield. And we were shocked at the number of percentage of fields that we ran into that just had some of the simple building blocks, which we call the yield pyramid, missing. You know, soil pH, potassium, phosphorus. You know, we were finding 60, 70% of the fields were below optimal on potash. And so you talked about adding, you know, additional inputs.

And sometimes we get wrapped up in something, you know, new shiny ball agronomies where it's, uh, you know, a biological here or foliar feed there. And while those things can definitely add to yield, if, if we don't have our building blocks, our fundamentals, our fundamentals down, you know, you're not going to get the return on investment in those, in those products that you're purchasing. So I just, I encourage guys to continue to you know, go to as many people with your soil test, review them, and take a look at them. Because what, what we've seen in our area is there's a lot of basic needs that aren't being met, and we could really increase some bushels and get some really good return on investment with just some things as simple as lime and potash.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, the fundamentals. Um, you mentioned biologicals, and I'll ask you both for kind of my last, last question here that I tend to do at last, and then I do a last, last one. But On the biological side of things, are you guys seeing anything there? You know, it's like you said, you got to have those fundamental, those building blocks first, but if a producer's got all that, um, is there anything that, um, you think that's— so that's on the forefront that we would want to—

Narrator: good question. Uh, we do have a, a product that is available. Actually, Pioneer just bought or got the rights to product called Utricia, and we're doing some test work with that this year. And what, what Utricia does is it, it's sprayed onto the corn as a foliar and colonizes in the plant, and it takes nitrogen from the atmosphere and it makes some nitrogen to assist. You know, if your corn is short on nitrogen, this atmospheric nitrogen will help it along. We'll come back another day and talk about what we learned from that this summer. We're just getting ready to make the applications. We'll have 20 different locations within the area that Troy and I cover, and some other— someday, uh, next winter we can come back and talk to you a little bit about what we learned there.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, that'd be, that'd be very interesting. I know we've got a lot of the clients we work with anyway. It would be fun to do like what you're saying, Troy, is to get some soil samples from some, some of them, because, you know, we all think we do pretty good in that, but, you know, sometimes if you have an external set of eyes look at things from a little different perspective, a little different angle, and then come back and, and just kind of cross-check what you think you already know. Sometimes you don't know what you think you know.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Well, and sometimes with, you know, today's technology, grid soils testing, we just maybe assume that we're doing a good job, like you said, Chris, and, and maybe we just need it to look at it through a different lens or someone else's lenses, I guess, and, and take a look-see at it. So yeah, it's, it's been a valuable experience. And we've had a lot of customers where we brought them in with, you know, groups, and everybody can kind of share what they're, they're learning and seeing. It's been, it's been quite valuable. It's been also eye-opening that with all the grid testing we've been doing over the years, how there's a significant amount of fields out there that could— we could really increase profitability and yields by taking care of some of the basics.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, and like you said, Mike, too, I think it'll be interesting to come back and look at some of the trials, you know, what happened with some of the frosted areas, what happened, you know, with the dry conditions, and, and, you know, with some of the biological testing and, and the other things that you guys talked about here today. I think it'll, it'll be great to follow back up and kind of see what you guys are learning and how can we help producers do a better job and ultimately be more profitable. There you go. So hey, really appreciate the conversation. Troy Detmeyer with Pioneer, area agronomist, and Mike Tierney. Mike, thank you very much, appreciate it. Glad to be here. Yeah, thanks Troy.

Narrator: And thanks to all our customers out there for buying Pioneer products too, we appreciate it.

Chris

Barron: That's right. So hey everybody, we really appreciate you listening. Again, if there are crop updates in any areas, or if you have something that you'd like to report and get on here so we can get some information out to people as far as kind of what the crops are doing and how the crops are looking, let us know and we will get that out to everybody. Again, everybody, thanks for listening, and we will catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch.