Spring agronomy update: planter settings, spray tips, and on-farm trials

Chris: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today we're gonna talk agronomy with Troy Deitemeyer. We're lucky enough to have him back again. I think we did a couple of meetings with you last year on agronomy, right?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Sure, yeah. Thanks for having me, Chris. Great to be here.

Chris: Yeah, it's good to be, good to have you here. And I think one of the things we are trying to do here is As guys get in the field, I mean, there's, I know there's people listening that are done planting, but when you're done planting, that doesn't mean you're done with spring field work, right? There's crop conditions and things to watch. And so what we wanna do here today is we're gonna touch on some key things, some best practices, and kind of pick on Troy's brain here a little bit around equipment, around, you know, conditions, a little bit on herbicides, and a little bit on the importance of thinking about doing some own, your own field trials, things in your own operation that can really benefit kind of where your operation goes, as we all have a lot of different nuances in our own farm operations. And so measuring, that's really key.

And so we'll get to that a little later, but I'm gonna start out with you, Troy, really talking about the equipment settings and those types of things. I know we had that discussion last year too, starting with the tillage, getting that set correctly and not screwing up the ground. And you know, one of them is timing, right? But also into setting the planter and making sure the sprayer's set right. And we're, you know, we're applying like we think we are in the monitors. And there's just so much technology now. So I'm gonna turn it over to you and you can, you know, do the tillage and then maybe the planter. And I'll throw you some more questions as we go.

Troy

Deutmeyer: That sounds fine. So I guess starting off with tillage, I guess one of the things I encourage you guys to do, and you've probably seen videos of this before, but having a leaf blower with you. And what you can do is you can evaluate your tillage floor quite well when you have a leaf blower and you blow that loose soil back. And what we want to see is a uniform tillage floor. So it almost looks like a tabletop. And a lot of times what we'll find, Chris, especially with some of the high-speed disc or some of the quote-unquote vertical tillage machines, we see a very uneven tillage floor. And so what the issue that that causes is when the planter is going across the field, if you did your tillage at an angle and you plant straight, that row unit is going to consistently be trying to go over top of an uneven tillage floor.

And one would think, well, if that tillage floor is 2 to 3 inches below your planting depth, it really shouldn't matter. But you will be able to see that in the ride, in the performance of your planter. So that's one thing to start with. And then a lot of times, if possible, we see the best results when guys do their last tillage pass in the exact same direction that the planter goes. And that, just in case you don't have a perfect tillage floor, you'll be able to allow that planter with a lot of hydraulic, you know, down pressure systems now, it can kind of lock in and it'll kind of keep following that area rather than continually going over top of a wavy tillage floor. So that's probably one of the biggest things that I see with some of our spring primary tillage.

A lot of times, soybean stubble around here will get hit with a field cultivator and making sure that we are at a good moisture condition at that tillage depth that you're doing. A lot of times we'll have dust flying on top. And if you look underneath, we could be, fairly wet. And so the options there obviously is to wait maybe another day or two, which I know a lot of guys don't want to do. So then the next best option would be to raise your tillage up to try to keep it into some drier soil. A lot of times those tillage passes can create a very— what we call a density layer, a very unique density layer. And so when our roots later on in the season try to penetrate that, it'll have a hard time.

Chris: And that happens where the tractor goes too.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Correct.

Chris: When you're a day too soon, a lot of times it's the, it's your tillage. You might be able to fix that, but you can't fix the tractor, right?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah. You know, and you see it too, a lot of the tractor track or where the anhydrous tank was getting, was heavy and things were a little bit tacky and we just caused that compaction and we can see it all year. So, so get, get out, dig and just kind of see, you know, what adjustments that, that can be made to help that. And a lot of times going shallower will improve those situations. And then the other thing that we've seen, again, with the high-speed disc and some of the vertical till machines is we can put a lot of residue right in our seed trench, or especially—

Chris: Push it right down in there.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Especially at that 2, 2.5-inch depth is where a lot of that on some of these new, quote unquote, newer tillage tools are placing a lot of that residue. And their adjustments can be made as well. If we can go deeper to try to bury that residue deeper or go shallower to try to keep that residue on top. And move it with a row cleaner. But the last few years we've seen a lot of uneven emergence because seeds are getting placed literally touching residue and we need to have seed-to-soil contact, not seed-to-residue contact if we're gonna try to get that uniform emergence.

Chris: Speaking of seed-to-soil contact, I wanna touch on the strip-till listeners too. And then we'll get to, I wanna dive back into the conditions for a minute as well. You look at the strip till, assuming that, you know, there's some stuff residue on the top, your reel cleaners are kicking that stuff away. Talk a little bit about from a condition standpoint on the strip till side, then I'm going to come back to the tillage. When is it go time? Because that strip looks dry and typically you have really good soil structure, so you can almost go a day or two sooner with the strip till theoretically. Is that, is that a true case or is that something you got?

Troy

Deutmeyer: I think in most cases that's probably a fair especially if that field has been in a no-till strip-till situation for numerous, numerous years. We have the soil structure built up or we have more carrying capacity of our soil. And even though it is damp, the soil structure can handle that weight compared to a tilled field. And we just look at a tilled field, even comparing the same moisture content percentages, you know, a tilled field will not have the carrying capacity that say a strip-till field will. So. Generally, you know, the strip to every tillage system has its unique challenges. Strip till has a lot of great advantages. The one thing that was revealed, the negative on site on strip till here a few weeks ago was when we had those heavy rains and we just had a little bit of frost out.

And if you weren't on flat ground, on a slope, or you weren't on a good contour in some hilly ground, we lost a lot of soil right down the strip. But no, in general, I think the strip till is a good system. And a lot of times you can be planting almost at the same time than somebody who's doing full-tiltage.

Chris: So how do you decide, or what are one of the two practical applications when a guy's looking at, okay, we gotta send the field cultivators out there, and some of these larger operations send two field cultivators out there, and it's like herding cats maybe because you've got a field that's 90% ready.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah.

Chris: It's always that other 10%, right? That's the confusing part that makes you scratch your head and say, do we wait another day? For that other 10% or do we go with the 90%? Talk a little bit about that decision process and what guys need to think about as they work through that.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, I think you just look at the forecast, but then you also look at the logistics of your operation. And if you say, hey, you know, we've got to get going, we've got to get stuff done, then obviously when it's 90% fit, you just run. And then the other thing too is field specific. Okay. Does this field take forever to dry out? And so then you'd probably go with the 90%. If, hey, you know, it's not too bad, it is well-drained, but we just got a couple spots that aren't quite fit yet. And we know within a day or two it'll be fit, then that's maybe a case where you can wait. But the biggest thing I think to, and growers have heard this numerous times, and it's just taking the time to do it is, you know, just grab some soil, you know, squeeze it a little bit. Does it fall back apart? Or does it make a ball and stay in a ball?

And in that ribbon testing, Rieke can take that soil, and if you can make a ribbon more than an inch, inch and a half long, then we know that's probably still too wet. Right.

Chris: The other part of that question for you too is a little bit, I would think, is soil type too, right? 'Cause some soils are gonna be more compaction-prone.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Correct.

Chris: And some are less compaction-prone. And it seems like, you know, we can watch, some operations go when it's not ideal and they get by with it, you know. And, and you, you know, even the pre-nitrogen or whatever applications they're doing, you look and it's like, man, that doesn't look fit, but, you know, and then all of a sudden it's still fine, you know. But the next person, you know, on a little heavier soil, a little more clay, all of a sudden there's a penalty big time. Right.

Troy

Deutmeyer: I think you kind of hit, hit it there. The big thing that we see is the more forgiving soils would be your higher organic matter, loamy kind of type prairie-derived soils and the higher clay content, lower organic matter soils are the ones where we know that if we go out there a day or two too early, it's gonna haunt us all year. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: And sometimes some of the wet sand, but that's where you get stuck too. Yeah.

Troy

Deutmeyer: You don't, you don't, you know, sand can pack almost tighter than clay really when it's wet. Yeah. But you don't think that. But a lot of times because it is sand, it dries out quickly and we're not usually out there when it's wet. Right.

Chris: Exactly. Yeah. So I appreciate, you know, we kind of did the conditions part first and got into that. Talk a little bit about settings on the, as we lean into the planter now, as we're in the yard, we're getting the monitors working, you get out in the field, we find out that we don't have the monitor set quite right and we're messing around with that stuff. Sometimes I think we get a little bit done before we start looking at the actual machine. What are some of the things on the machine?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Sure, the things that I guess that I noticed in working with customers is a couple things. One is we see a lot of, worn out disc openers and not the correct contact length of those disc openers. So that was probably be the first thing that I would tell customers to take a look at, especially if you're in a rain delay right now. And the other thing that we see also is a lot of times, or not oftentimes, the closing system is not following truly behind where the center of the seed trench is. And sometimes you can move that with a shim, take out some washers and throw them from one side to the other. So that's another thing to look at, as well as we want to make sure that our gauge wheels are rubbing tight up against those disc openers.

And there shouldn't be any slop there, because what that does is that allows for dry soil at the top of the seed trench to get in between those disc— or those disc openers and the the gauge wheels and allows that dry soil to fall down to the bottom of the trench. And now we got some seeds sitting in moist soil and some seeds sitting in dry soil. We saw that a lot last year with some of the drier conditions. And it does seem like we get these rapid warmups with 30, 40 mile an hour winds and that top half inch of soil can really dry out quickly. So those would be the couple things to think about on the equipment side as far as making sure that your actual hardware is in, is in proper shape and ready to go.

And then as far as getting into the field settings, again, mentioning that dry soil in the bottom of the seed trench, if you are seeing some of that, then essentially there's two things that you can do. The one thing that we found last year that was probably more effective was increasing some down pressure, about 20 to 30 pounds, and that will firm that soil and prevent it —than falling in— falling down into the seed trench. Now there we have to start being concerned about sidewall compaction and making sure that we're not overdoing it. If we do have one of those situations where we're extremely dry on top from some hot windy days, but we're still fairly wet underneath, increasing that down pressure might create that sidewall compaction. And so there an option would be is to maybe lower your row cleaners about maybe 1/8 of an inch. Okay.

And that will help throw some of that really fine dry soil off to the side. Without kind of making an inverse ridge till, if you will. And then we can solve that problem as well.

Chris: We see that as an issue even in our own operation. You know, we have a couple fields that we're blessed to have essentially mile-long roads, but then there's 7 different soil types across that mile. And you get into certain soil types and the row cleaner needs to be down further and you get into another soil type and you need to bring it up. So you kind of sort of set— right, you kind of set a happy medium. And so you're kind of plowing in one area and you're barely, barely moving that light stuff on the top. But it's kind of that happy medium occasionally too.

Troy

Deutmeyer: And the only way you're going to know is just get out and dig and see what the bottom of that seed trench looks like. And if you're getting, getting dry.

Chris: And maybe in each of those soil types, which sounds like excessive, right? It's like put somebody in, if all they got to do is push a button, let them run a couple of rounds and do some digging or make sure somebody's there, whoever's hauling seed. Instead of sitting in the pickup eating candy bars and watching YouTube.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, that's the thing that we've talked with a lot of operations about is the tender guy, right? Whether it's—

Chris: Teach the tender guy what to look for.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Teach the tender guy what to look for and communicate back with the guy operating, guy or gal operating the planter and make adjustments. And it's one of those things where you strive for perfection, but you're never gonna truly get there. But the fact that you can take, that you're looking, you're digging, and you're doing some evaluations. Before we started, I gave you the example I had a couple cases last year where we were getting ready to put in a Pioneer hybrid plot. And we did some checking, there's some things we didn't quite like, we made some changes, and we made some more changes. And then at the end of the season, when we were harvesting the actual hybrid plot, we went back and we took some weights from where we— when we first pulled into the field versus after the settings. And it was all the same hybrid.

So— we in two different situations, one, it was 8 bushels to the acre and the other one, it was 12 bushels to the acre on corn. And if you would have walked into that field blind, not knowing that we had made any changes and you didn't do a very, very deep dive into taking, looking at plant heights and things like that, you would have never noticed it. Right. Driving with your sprayer, your side dress unit, things like that. Even the combine, you wouldn't have noticed it until we got to the end and weighed it. Right. And so that 45 minutes that we spent You know, if you think about that, even on the low side, 8 bushels to the acre, the one gentleman had 500 acres of corn and the other guy had 700 acres of corn. And if you take a look at what that— the ROI, the ROI on that over his entire operation for that half hour, 45 minutes that we spent, it's pretty huge. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. And that's what we always tell people is, you know, your planting window, you're getting paid about $10,000 an hour if you do it right.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah. You know, or more, correct?

Chris: Probably even more than that, depending on the operation.

Troy

Deutmeyer: One, the one other setting, or the one other thing that we've been seeing that's become more common over the last couple years, and I don't know if it's because of the increase in the high-speed planters or if it was just the conditions that we've been dealt, but frequently we're seeing the bottom quarter inch of our seed trench is not always getting closed consistently, and so we have some air pockets. And you're gonna have to kind of dig pretty careful to find that because if you just take your normal, you know, seed digger or your pliers or your screwdriver and you just dig straight down, as you're digging and pushing soil and breaking soil loose, that naturally collapses that and fills in that air pocket. So we encourage guys to take a bigger swat, pull it off to the side, and a lot of times you'll be able to see that.

And again, that could have some pretty big impacts and, We've seen quite a bit of it the last couple years. Especially if it doesn't rain for 3 weeks.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. When the soil shrinks and that air pocket. I want to ask you another kind of a unique question. I think that, I know we didn't talk about last year, but like every unit on a planter is a little different even though they're identical. And so, you know, one thing we've tried to do, and I know we've got clients that have mentioned they do this, is they'll look at every unit We've also got guys that have 32-row planters, 36-row planters. And if you sit down and you start digging, like you just said, you dig down and you pull back, you dig down, you pull back, and you do that 36 times, that's a lot. And then you do it a couple of times in a different— in a couple of different environments.

I think that just emphasizes to me why it's worth doing a little training with whoever's bringing you seed or, or you know, put your son or daughter in the planter and let 'em go back and forth a couple times. All they're doing is pushing a button on the end of the field or whatever. Let them make a couple rounds. But, or like you said, letting the planter sit there for 45 minutes might pay a lot of dividends not moving. Just 'cause you're moving or just 'cause you're doing something doesn't mean you're making money.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, so a lot of your people watching probably have seen that block system called set and seed or seed and set. I can't remember what the exact name is. And you could do it with 2x4s and stuff. In your own shop. But a lot of times, you know, each row might be a quarter to a half inch different, different than maybe some of the other ones. And an example is last spring, there was a customer had seen this, had a brand new planter, brand new 16-row planter, and there was 12 of them that were the same. And 4 of them were as much as a half to three-quarters of an inch off. So we had to move those T-handles differently.. And as long as you know that and do that in the shop beforehand, it can kind of at least get you in the ballpark before you head to the field.

Chris: Yeah. And I think a lot of people, you set the whole thing the same. Correct. And I think that's just a good thing to, to kind of look at and be at least be aware of, you know, and maybe you're lucky enough to have the planter, everything's identical. Sure. But, you know, and I, and the other thing too with settings, sometimes, you know, you have a, you have a breakdown. I know we had an issue last year and I'm not picking on anybody here because I've talked to several people where it happens, but you have a setting change and you take it completely out of the ground and you do your work and then you put everything back together, you jump in and you plant a couple rounds and like, ah, shit, I didn't put that thing back in the ground. And you got a couple of rows with seed on top of the ground, you know?

So I think the point or only reason I wanted to bring that up is one of the things that you talked about last year was just about getting your rest. And about, you know, just taking your time and not being in a hurry. Because, you know, I see, you know, you know, if we're delivering seed or working with somebody, not everybody's doing this, but sometimes, you know, a guy gets in and out of the planter, and you run back to the planter, and you run back to the tractor, and it's like, you're in a hurry. But it's like, if you run, that's like a second difference, you know, or whatever. And I think we just get anxious. And I think one of the things is, if we can just calm down, chill out, it'll get done.

Troy

Deutmeyer: If it takes us an extra half a day, you know, easier said than done. Exactly. It— the emotion. Yeah. And unfortunately, a lot of times we don't truly reflect on that until maybe there's a farm accident. Exactly. Family member passes away from an illness or something like that and realize, you know, we will get this done. We get it done every year. Yeah. And, and for the most part, it usually turns out just fine.

Chris: And I think it's for me, as I get older, you know, if I'm gonna— I'm gonna be 60 this year, and I know in my 20s and 30s, you know, I, I didn't appreciate the, you know, the experience. And I think that's the message I want to give people too, is appreciate your opportunity to get to do what you're doing. And, and I think, um, you know, I got a good example that Joe Paulson, one of our associates, good friend too, and he sent me a picture one day of the sunset. How often do we— other than you're frustrated because now I got to turn the lights on and I got 3 more hours to finish this field, you know, I mean, often we take the time to appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, make sure. Okay, the next thing I want to hit on is the sprayer, and then we'll get to herbicides, but I want to talk about the sprayer for a minute. There's some settings in that thing.

That are pretty key and pretty important. What do you see as challenges or things people need to pay attention to in the yard before they get to the field? And then when they get to the field, what do they need to watch?

Troy

Deutmeyer: I would say the biggest thing that, that I see, and was actually having this discussion yesterday, is your spray tips. Are you using the right ones, and are they in need of replacement?

Chris: And, and, you know, if you don't They're pretty pricey though.

Troy

Deutmeyer: I know. So is not having weed control. Yeah, right, right. But yeah, if you look at the amount of dollars that are going out of those spray tips to not have them at least check to make sure that, you know, they're putting the right amount out and the pattern is correct, you know, in today's challenges of trying to control weeds, we need to make sure that we're using the right tip, producing the right droplet size. And making sure that it's putting that pattern out that it's supposed to be. And that's probably the biggest thing that I, that I see, Chris, is we've got, you know, I'll see it where, you know, I got 2 or 3 rows where it seems like across the field that, you know, we didn't kill the weeds or maybe we had a bunch of weeds come up and it comes back to we're just using worn out spray tips too often. What about here?

Chris: You know, and we've got some clients that have really gotten down to low water usage. By virtue of making sure the pH is perfect and making sure all these things are just right. And then, you know, some people will be like, well, that's crazy. I'm gonna— I'm not going below 15. And, you know, and it kind of depends on— I understand it depends on, you know, how weedy the situation is, and is it seed and spray, or is it, you know, what is it? What's your take on, on water quality and usage for the individuals to just make sure they're thinking about as they set it?

Troy

Deutmeyer: So the water quality issue, I guess, that we probably run into the most would be hard water and, you know, the different cations that are in hard water that will actually bind up to your active ingredients inside your chemistry. And that's one of the reasons why there's been such a big push within the industry. You know, Corteva has been doing the same thing, is making sure that we're using the proper amount of AMS. And we've been finding that, that probably that 2 pounds probably isn't enough. And we've seen guys that have gone from that and gone to 3 to 4 pounds have really improved their efficacy on their post-herbicide applications. Mm-hmm. There has been some debate, and I did a little bit more research on this this past season on, on the pH and maybe affecting, impacting the half-life of the chemistry.

And some of that research is fairly old and was done on some products maybe that we're not currently using. But the one of the biggest things though for pH might— it might not be the half-life of the chemistry, but it's what gets into the plant the best. And generally you're looking at, you know, solutions that are in a pH of like 5.5, around that area for sure, below 6, where it'll penetrate that, that waxy cuticle, that leaf better. So those are a couple things, you know, for sure, making sure that we have our hard water treated so that way our chemistry that we're actually applying isn't tied up and it's still usable. And then making sure that we get it into the plant and, and adjuvants as well as the pH of your spray solution will have a big impact on that.

Chris: Talk a little bit about the herbicide products that are out there and just some things that guys need to think about. Everybody's situations pretty different, you know, whether, you know, what, what kind of, whether it's a weed pressure or, you know, pest pressure, whatever it is, you know, we all kind of get different scenarios. Is there any common theme or anything that you see out there that people need to be aware of that is something that they need to like keep in mind?

Troy

Deutmeyer: I think when it comes to not only herbicides but insecticides and fungicides as well, there's, there's a couple main things that I see that pose challenges to people. One is using the correct rate. And I know economics are tight and a lot of people are wanting to pull back on rates. And I tell guys who use a half rate, you need to expect half the control, you know, or half the efficacy, half the performance, you know. And then the other thing that does is speeds resistance. But most people are just concerned about, you know, this year and getting through this year. The other thing is the timing. And oftentimes I think that our applications are being made too late, especially on some of our post-herbicide applications in corn and soybeans around here. We just, we got to get those weeds when they're small.

And then the other thing is, the sooner that we can get that second residual component to the soil, get it rained in, the better chance we have of that, that working. The larger the weeds, the larger the crop, the more interception there's gonna be in that a lot of that soil residual does not make it to the actual soil to do its job. So I think those are probably the two biggest things I see, Chris, is not using the correct rate and our timing probably needs to improve. And sometimes when Mother Nature doesn't cooperate, she doesn't cooperate. But, you know, I think we need to get past waiting till almost the height restriction of a herbicide label before we go out and spray.

Chris: Yeah, my takeaway from that message you just laid out there is something that we observe with Profit Manager every year, especially in the planning time, is, you know, you talk about using the appropriate rate. Well, we'll look at an individual product and we, we always calculate the value of everything we all purchase in terms of cost per unit of production. So let's say it's corn or soybeans. So use corn as an example. That product might be costing us 3 cents a bushel. And so we go half rate. Now we just saved a penny and a half a bushel. Okay. Yeah. You know, what are you, what are you doing to enhance or protect yield? Correct. Or what are you not doing? Right. So what you take away, you'll never get that back. And then you might end up having to come back and respray.

Now you're spending another 3 cents a bushel And you maybe you're backed up and maybe you're not by the company, but you know.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, and then the other thing is then we start getting into, are we damaging the crop? Not only from a weed competition standpoint, but we know, you know, these herbicides have height restrictions, growth stage restrictions for a reason because that can impact yield. And a great example of that is not only with just herbicides, but with fungicides. And we saw that last year during the, heavy Southern rust pressure is the guys that used the full end rate on that fungicide, um, fared out very well. And, and for the most part, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of questions. Should I— do I need to come back in and make a second application? Right.

And I think that's kind of where maybe some of the mentality needs to get shifted to, is whether it's herbicides or fungicides, if I just use the full rate or close to the full rate on the first application, it really decreases the chances of a second. Right, right.

Chris: That's interesting. Yeah, I'm always a firm believer of dead weeds because they don't take away from yield. Just a few live weeds will start screwing with yield, and all of a sudden your, your cost per bushel just goes up a lot because when you lower that yield, your entire cost of production goes up, and it's a— it's like an exponential change, which is hard to explain to people, but you start looking at it in terms of the line item expense, which you give up, you, you're spending more on the other side of the equation 90% of the time. All right, so one of the things that, before we go to the last piece on trials, I want to jump back, and I, I failed to ask the question on the planters in, and we talked about conditions. It was one of the piece I wanted to bring up. And that's delay. Delay is emotional more than anything, probably, than it is factual.

And, you know, because we get pissed when we look at the calendar and it's wet or it's cold or the conditions aren't quite right. It's close, but there's rain tomorrow and, oh man, you know. So talk just briefly about, you know, planning dates. And I know they're different by region, right? But when a person looks at, okay, my final plant date for 100% for that maturity I want to plant, what's your thought there? I mean, it seems like, you know, what we see in the books, at least I know we've gone beyond that a number of years and still had really darn good yields, maybe a little bit wetter corn, or maybe the soybeans weren't ready the first week of October, it was a few days later or whatever. Talk a little bit about managing that. Is there, is there anything there?

Troy

Deutmeyer: And I know you have listeners from all across the country, so I'm going to speak specifically more toward my experience here and encourage them to talk with their local agronomist on, on more specifics on what they see in their locale. But, you know, we've done a pretty good job of proving that if there's a crop that really responds to planting date, it's going to be the soybeans. And so if you're undecided and wanting to maybe get out there when things are borderline. You know, soybeans do have a bigger response to getting in the ground earlier just because they spend more time in the reproductive stage. And they can also compensate a little bit better for uneven emergence and things like that. I mean, in ideal world, we want our soybeans spaced and emerging as uniformly as we want to shoot for in corn, but they do have the ability to adapt.

In our area, Chris, we've— the data has shown that we really don't see a yield penalty in most years for delaying corn planting until almost the 20th of May. And like you said, will the corn be wetter at the end of the year? Absolutely. But if you're looking at it from a yield standpoint, that, you know, being in the middle of May and planting corn, there's a good chance most years you haven't lost. You're 100%. Yeah, correct.

Chris: And that'd be relative to people in different regions, just to kind of think about their zone, what are their planting dates, like you said, their— with their local area. Um, you had mentioned population, or you didn't mention population, but you talked about earlier planting with soybeans. Real quick, just hit on population decision-making, both on do soybeans first and if there's anything on corn. But I know with soybeans, planting them real early in iffy conditions, the seed treatment's the most important thing. I mean, you can talk about that, but You know, talk about population with soybeans first.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, on the soybean population, obviously, the, you know, the sexy thing the past few years is how low can you go, you know, and bragging rights on that. But, you know, generally we've seen 140,000 is still a pretty darn good number to shoot for. And, you know, do you really need to increase it if you're going super early? You know, sure, if you want to increase it 10% or something like that, you're probably going to be fine. But, you know, with the seed treatments in both corn and soybeans, to be honest with you, they, they're pretty resilient. And, and to say that, well, you know, my conditions aren't great, so I'm going to bump up my seeding rate, you know, 10% or something like that, you're most likely going to lose more yield because of the conditions and not the final stand. Yeah.

Chris: What about You know, when you, you look at variable rate seeding, it seems like from what we hear— and this isn't, you know, the agronomy side of it, but just like with our clients— and when we look at what some of them apply in terms of, you know, the variable rate seeding, it almost feels like from what we hear anyway is we're getting almost a little better ROI from the variable rate seeding in the soybeans than we are in the corn. Is that kind of what you're seeing too?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, and I think it comes back to the just corn plant's more resilient and isn't quite as finicky when it comes to like late season rains and things like that. But yeah, the soybeans and that'd probably be one thing that we, when we switched to on-farm trials, that's one thing that guys should really try. If you haven't been verberating on either crop, I encourage you to do both. But again, the soybeans probably have almost a little bit more potential there. And what we've seen, just as a reminder, most people have probably heard this, but in your lower, lower yield areas, your tougher soils, we'd want to increase that soybean seeding rate. And in your better soils, we can probably decrease from that 140. And then the other thing too is if you're having lodging issues in your soybeans, the one thing that you can do to help improve standability is reduce the seeding rate.

The other thing would be narrow up the rows and then reduce tillage. Yeah.

Chris: Last quick question on there since we're staying on this that I didn't bring up. For some reason I didn't think of it, but temperature is another thing. I know, you know, last year you and I had a conversation around temperature for both corn and soybeans. Is there any watchouts? And this is more so for the people to the north. Yeah. You know, the South Dakota, North Dakota guys, right? You know, they still got frost in the ground as we record in places. Yeah.

Troy

Deutmeyer: You know, yeah. You know, 50's always kind of been that mark. And we talked about the seed treatments. The technology that's on the planters and things like that, we can do a better job of placing things. We generally see now that if we're 45 degrees and we're gonna be warming up, or at least we get 45+ degrees for 2 or 3 days before it would crash or go down, we're generally gonna be okay. So from a temperature standpoint, I think that's, you know, 45 is probably the new 50. And with the seed treatments, we can do a good job. And it just comes back to making sure the ground is fit. And that's the other thing is a lot of times the ground doesn't get fit until it warms up. But I do know there's places, you know, even here in the state of Iowa and talking with some of my counterparts that they are really, really dry. Yeah.

And, um, they'll have great soil conditions even at 45-degree soil temps.

Chris: I think you're— the, the thing you said that I think needs to be a good takeaway too from our, you know, and every year is different, but I know last year we rolled at 45-degree temperatures and the forecast called for 0.2 of an inch of rain with 55-degree temperatures. It ended up being 10 degrees colder and we got 2 inches. Yeah. And that's the problem with the forecast too, is, is how reliable, you know, how far out are you looking? I think, you know, it seems like they do a pretty good job about 3 days out. Yeah. You get beyond 3 days. Yeah. And, and I think a little bit of it has to do with the calendar too, right? I mean, the odds anyway, correct, are a little better the further out you get. And I like the idea— stable. Yeah. And I like the idea of the beans.

I mean, that's, you know, we were doing that back in the late '90s, planting some beans first, and everybody thought we were crazy. But I think the secret's out now. Everybody's figuring that one out. Yeah. Um, I guess the last thing we want to hit on with you, Troy, is, um, the idea of trials. You know, all of our farms are so different and unique in a lot of ways, soil types, the, you know, one person on one side of the farm is, you know, doing all kinds of tillage and stuff, the other one's doing no-till, and you got a strip-till, and you got all kinds of different, you know, hybrids and soil types and weather conditions and stuff. Talk about trials and what are some of the things that guys can do that are practical, that makes sense, they don't have to invest a massive amount of time but investing some time and focusing on that could really improve their bottom line. Talk about that.

Sure.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Yeah, we, like we discussed before we started, Chris, on-farm testing, I think it needs to be on every single farming operation. Doesn't matter if you're farming 200 or 20,000. As an agronomist, I can give recommendations, but really those are to keep you between the road ditches. And if you really want to find the center line, you're going to have to tweak stuff on your own. And we find some growers, depending on soil type, fertility levels, they might need 1.2 pounds of nitrogen to produce a bushel of corn. And we got other farmers who maybe side dress, have really solid fertility programs outside of their nitrogen, you know, they're as low as 0.6, 0.7. And so for me to stand up in front of a crowd and say this is the nitrogen rate that you need to use, we just can't do it. We can give you a ballpark starting figure.

So Things that I commonly get asked that I think would be easy on-farm trials with today's technology, you know, we talked about seeding rates. And, you know, we give out a recommended seeding rate for all of our corn genetics. And then, you know, I mentioned that 140,000 on the soybeans, but, you know, taking that planter and doing a strip at 100,000, and then 120, 140, 160, you know, and do that for a couple of years to see, Okay, this farm, this field, you know, where's my economic optimum? And, you know, same with corn. You know, like I said, even though we do those trials, 30, 34, and 38, you know, and I give a recommendation, kind of broad paintbrush recommendation, your operation might need 2,000 less, or maybe it might need 2,000 more. And the only way you're going to find that is, is to do your own on-farm trials.

And a lot of times, so it's seeding rates, nutrition as far as, you know, different nitrogen rates. Maybe it's your, your nutrition with your planter, or, you know, even P and K levels. I've had some guys now that have taken 10 acres in the middle of a quarter section and put a fair amount of P and K on, tracked how much they put on there, and over the years they're going to keep track of yield differences and things like that to see, you know, is the part per million recommendation that I'm giving them economical for the farming operation. So those are some really easy things to do— fungicide, no fungicide, switching the plant, the starter, or your planter nutrition on and off depending on what your package is. You know, do that, it's going to be mapped in your software.

And then most guys do have scales on their grain carts, and I really encourage guys to weigh those trials rather than just take it with a yield monitor, because if you're trying to find a 3, 5, 8 bushel yield difference with a yield monitor, you're probably not going to find it.

Chris: Yeah, that's interesting. And, you know, and I think the easy one for, for operators sometimes is just hybrid, splitting the planter or something, or doing hybrids. That can be an issue if you do it over 500 acres and one hybrid, you know, has an issue or whatever. But, you know, I— what I like to mention though is, is the measurements, and I'm going to hit on the economics for a second, is You know, I think we're all really good at measuring that yield difference. I like to see, okay, what's the profitability difference and take it one step further, right? So that yield, you know, if you don't get that yield, you can't go— you can't measure the impact, right? The ROI. What is the ROI? Looking at what did it— what did we invest on this pass versus what we invested in this pass and what is the net net ROI? And I think that's, that's the why.

I back you up 1,000% on those trials because if we aren't looking at those things, that economic difference is really what we're trying to get to for sure.

Troy

Deutmeyer: And sometimes, you know, there can be visual differences. And I know sometimes the sleep factor stuff that makes you sleep at night has value as well. But I'll just give an example from last year. I had a customer who was using— it was somewhere between a $40 and $45 per acre nutrition program on his planter.. And he was like, you know, asked me in January if I thought that was a good, you know, good system to be using. I said, well, it's a high-quality fertilizer. But I said, let's just switch it off for 2 rounds in every field. And when the corn was knee-high, you could see it. And at the end of the day, when we took— went out and actually weighed it across all of his fields that he did the trials, he averaged 3.5 bushels per acre better. Where he had the starter, but it cost him $45. Yeah. So even though he got more yield, he went backwards financially.

And it looked like in the field that it was going to be way more than that, but it wasn't. Yeah. So sometimes, you know, having pretty or sexy corn, you know, isn't the most profitable thing.

Chris: And we've seen that with strip-till on soybeans. You know, you strip a few passes and then you no-till the rest of the field. And those 3 passes that you strip come up faster, they look better, the stand looks better, and you're like, they're a little taller, they look better driving down the road. You can see it. Brainer. Yeah. And then you take them to yield and it's like maybe a bushel. Yeah. Or 2. And then it's like, okay, well, it costs us $18 or $30 or whatever your number is for your, your pass. It's like, okay, well, You know, but we did put some fertility in there, but it still didn't, you know, so then, you know, you really got to weigh those things.

And the last thing, when I say the word weigh, and I want your take on this, is I really caution people because whenever I've helped our guys on our Pioneer agency work through yield checks and stuff, and we take the weigh wagon or we go back to the scale and we compare it to the yield monitor in the combine, which amazes me that insurance companies use the yield monitor data because it's— with all due respect to all equipment manufacturers, that yield monitor data is junk unless you post-cal it. Because what happens is you calibrate on the front end, you harvest a hybrid that's, you know, the temperature is 15 degrees different on that same hybrid 4 hours later. The moisture content in the air, the humidity just changed. Oh, we just switched over to a different hybrid. By the way, it's 2 pounds heavier in test weight. It's not reading it correctly.

You almost got to calibrate with 10 different variables, and we're lucky to calibrate when 3 or 5 of them change. So I think the importance— and I just want your backup on this— but I'm such a believer of the scale, either a really dialed-in scale on the grain cart or hopefully scales at the, at the bin site, which I think is well worth the investment. So that, you know, so that you can go back and that yield monitor might be pretty accurate, it might be within a bushel or two, but why not we post-calibrate it and make it exact?

Troy

Deutmeyer: Comments? Yeah, so there can be a lot— there can be large yield monitor error. We've documented that, and I think there's numerous crop focuses from Pioneer on that. And, you know, I've had my sales reps, when they take out their, their hybrid plot, just like you guys do here, let's compare what the yield monitor load was versus the the WayWagon. And, you know, the yield monitor was calibrated and within a percent or two before we started the plot. And there'll be times, you know, on 250 bushel corn that will— some hybrids will be 10, 15 bushels off. They might be on the low side and the next one might be on the high side. So that's a 30 bushel spread. Yeah. And really there wasn't hardly any difference between them. So that's where, you know, we just need to be cognizant of the tool that the yield monitor is.

And it does a great job of showing us the spatial variability that goes across field and the trends that are there. And I have always encouraged our customers, every time you come into a new hybrid, every time you come into a new field, you don't necessarily have to do a complete calibration, but at least check it and say a couple times during that field and say, well, generally we're 2 to 3% high or 4 to 5% low, make a note. And then at the end of the season, allow you to compare genetics and field performances based on that.

Chris: And a lot of them, it's pretty easy anymore in the software to go back in if you know what the actual weight was off of that field. You plug the weight in and it'll post-calibrate it, and now your map's perfect, right? Right. So that, I think that's just something that we've seen that has been a lot of value to a lot of people.

Troy

Deutmeyer: And that post-calibration really becomes important because we have more operations are using their yield map to create crop removal, you know, for variable rate prescriptions. Yeah, that are just, you know, maybe the first year or two they base it off of the soil test, and the next couple years they base it off of what You know, they're, yeah, they're taken off of the field. Yeah. And that's when having that post-cal or making sure, yeah, right to start with, that's extremely important.

Chris: And by zone too, when you start looking at profitability by zone rather than just looking at a yield map, looking at that profitability by zone, which has, you know, theoretically you should have your, your input costs on those zones and you should have your yield and what you spent in those areas and then get a net-net. In those zones. So you kind of know how to, it really helps with the, whether it's variable rate seeding or nitrogen or P and K, whatever.

Troy

Deutmeyer: So good data in is good data out. Exactly, exactly.

Chris: So I wanna leave you with the last word as guys are either wrapping up planting or they're going into planting. What are some things they need to think about? And then also at emergence time, you can hit on that and I'll give you the last word.

Troy

Deutmeyer: Sure, yeah, just, You know, the big thing is to stay patient and make sure the field conditions are good and enjoy it. You know, we're blessed to be sitting in a cab that's got a bunch of glass and we're just looking across the countryside. You know, there's a lot of other people would give an arm and a leg to have that opportunity. So enjoy it. And then, yeah, just be safe out there. If you have questions or be sure to, no matter who you buy your seed from, just be sure to stay in touch with your agronomist and talk to them about different maybe trials that they see. And I just encourage everybody to really start getting into on-farm testing if you haven't in the past. And then yeah, as far as emergence goes, when that stuff starts coming up, evaluate that planter pass.

And if you do any listening to some of the ultra-high yield guys, it's the planter pass, the planter pass, the planter pass. And it's just so important. So yeah, just be safe and enjoy the spring. Yeah, it's a big chunk of your grade.

Chris: It's not just the yield, but when you see the emergence, that starts telling you the— your first test in the process of the growing season. And there's more stuff to go, but that's the first test. That's the foundation. Right, right. So sounds good. Well, hey, Troy Deitemeyer, really appreciate your time today and we'll probably get you back again. Yeah, probably when, you know, people are thinking about side dressing and we, you know, hopefully get the crop in, everybody's safe and get to that next phase and we'll have you back and we'll talk, we'll talk chemistry and we'll talk side dressing and keeping the plants healthy. Sounds good. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, thank you. And again, thanks everybody.

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