2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

Deloris Pittman Author

02/28/2020 Added

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2020 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference presentation – Farming With 2020 Vision in Mind - Loran Steinlage, Farmer/Practical Field Engineer, DAWNequipment/UndergroundAg, FLOLO Farms, West Union, Iowa

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[00:00:21.590]Our next speaker
[00:00:23.170]for this morning, Loran Steinlage.
[00:00:27.630]He had to help me with the last name.
[00:00:29.300]I appreciate that.
[00:00:30.650]FLOLO Farms from West Union, Iowa.
[00:00:33.030]He's gonna be talking about farming
[00:00:34.180]with 2020 vision in mind.
[00:00:35.660]And West Union, Iowa's in north east--
[00:00:38.310]Far northeast corner.
[00:00:39.143]Far northeast Iowa.
[00:00:40.660]Welcome and thanks for makin' the trip over.
[00:00:42.960]Thank you very much.
[00:00:43.793]Thank ya for everybody comin' here today.
[00:00:45.977]As introduced there, I'm a farmer from northeast Iowa.
[00:00:49.430]Kind of gravitatin' towards, I've taken a job
[00:00:52.040]now with DAWN Manufacturing, UndergroundAg.
[00:00:55.300]I'm a test engineer based on some of the stuff
[00:00:57.940]that we're building and some of the stuff
[00:01:00.200]you'll see later later in the program.
[00:01:01.410]It's comin' to market hopefully within the next year.
[00:01:04.860]But how many farmers do I have in the crowd today?
[00:01:10.100]How many extension folk?
[00:01:14.380]Kind of rare.
[00:01:16.770]Industry support people like co-ops,
[00:01:19.100]agronomists, stuff like that?
[00:01:20.370]So thank you guys all for comin'.
[00:01:22.695]Thank your sponsors and everything for puttin' this on.
[00:01:24.960]It looks like it's gonna be a pretty good day.
[00:01:27.220]A lot of what I'm gonna start talkin' about today
[00:01:29.220]is gonna be based on this field.
[00:01:32.010]A lot of you guys have probably
[00:01:32.990]heard of Dr. Jill Clapperton.
[00:01:35.040]This field was kind of inspired by her
[00:01:36.875]probably five, six years ago at minimum.
[00:01:41.180]But what we got here is a interseed covercrop from 2017
[00:01:46.880]that's gonna be around 'til 2020.
[00:01:50.120]We've had cash crop every year.
[00:01:52.570]As we go through this, this is kind
[00:01:54.590]of the crop rotation on that field.
[00:01:58.525]And what I like to bring this one forward to is if the guy
[00:02:01.140]next to you falls asleep during this one,
[00:02:03.370]nudge him when you see this slide again.
[00:02:04.890]It'll be time to wake up.
[00:02:09.410]But for context this is where I'm at
[00:02:11.800]in the far northeast corner of Iowa, up here.
[00:02:14.690]The unique thing I want you to see right here
[00:02:16.580]is this 140 days of growing season.
[00:02:19.910]Now if you follow that through,
[00:02:21.160]it goes up clear north of Minneapolis.
[00:02:24.380]So there's guys west of Minneapolis
[00:02:27.520]that actually have more growing days
[00:02:28.930]available in the season than I do.
[00:02:31.460]So everything, what we figured out to work on our farm,
[00:02:35.003]we started with interseed cover crops in 2016.
[00:02:38.750]Has to be adaptable to that unique area.
[00:02:42.270]The other thing I wanna point out here,
[00:02:44.370]is this is the glacial till line.
[00:02:47.860]To the right of me is hills, to the west of me
[00:02:49.650]is flat essentially is what that's gonna tell ya.
[00:02:52.500]My farm is right smack dab there in that little hook.
[00:02:56.380]And that, you got the Loess Hills right across the river.
[00:02:59.570]I've got the Loess Hill in northeast Iowa
[00:03:02.120]right down the road from my place.
[00:03:03.700]But another neat little part about that feature is,
[00:03:06.730]as the glacier sloughed off it took
[00:03:08.680]a dump right on our farm.
[00:03:10.390]We have up to 25 different soil types in a mile.
[00:03:14.220]I mean we can go from pure gravel to pure peat.
[00:03:17.030]It's a testing haven.
[00:03:18.131]Last fall there we had one of the new
[00:03:21.310]pieces out there testing.
[00:03:22.460]And they couldn't believe some of the data
[00:03:23.720]we're collecting off of it.
[00:03:24.760]But other things I want you to pay attention to,
[00:03:27.591]43 degree north latitude is essentially the same
[00:03:31.390]as the South Dakota line from here.
[00:03:34.280]Highway 18 runs right there.
[00:03:35.820]I'm straight east one mile south of 18, for reference.
[00:03:39.150]The other thing is our moisture levels.
[00:03:41.040]We get 36 inches of precipitation, plus 38 inches of snow.
[00:03:49.140]My goal in life is to capture every inch.
[00:03:50.997]And we're gonna talk about that a little later.
[00:03:53.450]But we'll come back to them numbers here towards the end.
[00:04:01.230]Biggest thing is, Abby kind of did the nice opener.
[00:04:04.240]So I'm gonna jump right in about mid stroke
[00:04:06.020]to where I would normally like to take off.
[00:04:08.040]A lot of what I wanna talk to you
[00:04:09.040]today about is the productivity.
[00:04:10.810]You know everybody says, how are we gonna make
[00:04:12.240]cover crops pay and stuff like that.
[00:04:14.480]I'm to the point I don't even refer to 'em as cover crops.
[00:04:17.810]Everything I plant is either a cash crop
[00:04:20.320]or a companion plant.
[00:04:22.270]Everything is gonna have an intended purpose.
[00:04:24.940]I want to know what that crop
[00:04:27.180]is gonna do for me as I plant it.
[00:04:31.840]All this started back when first got introduced
[00:04:34.240]to the Three Sisters programs.
[00:04:35.780]Most of you even probably heard about it.
[00:04:36.940]The Indians did it how many centuries ago?
[00:04:39.330]It's not that complicated.
[00:04:41.080]But you just have to start connecting
[00:04:42.890]and identifying what plants help each other out.
[00:04:46.720]They had the corn plant was your trellis.
[00:04:49.340]The beans fed the nitrogen to the corn.
[00:04:52.130]And the squash provided canopy.
[00:04:53.800]And then the corn provided trellis
[00:04:55.740]for the beans to vertical.
[00:04:57.220]It was that simple of a principle.
[00:04:59.570]Each plant kind of helps each other
[00:05:01.210]as you start understanding this.
[00:05:04.699]And on our farm we have a greenhouse.
[00:05:06.850]So one winter ahead of time we started
[00:05:08.650]playin' with this in the greenhouse.
[00:05:10.640]The first thing we started noticing
[00:05:12.220]is beans that were only supposed to get
[00:05:13.870]12 to 13 feet tall were suddenly hittin' 18 feet tall.
[00:05:18.920]I'm not the most nimble guy.
[00:05:20.050]So you don't want me pickin' beans at 12 to 18 feet tall.
[00:05:24.970]Through that whole session, we started gettin' introduced
[00:05:27.710]to the garden books, and stuff like that.
[00:05:30.560]I'm gonna zoom in here a little bit.
[00:05:34.580]Most of us know what maize is, corn.
[00:05:36.650]In this column is our friendly plants.
[00:05:39.720]This is our antagonist plants.
[00:05:42.710]The reason I'm gonna kinda hit on some of this today
[00:05:44.790]is start understanding when you're thinkin' cover crops
[00:05:46.827]and that, what plants are helping us?
[00:05:48.970]What plants are hurtin' our cash crop?
[00:05:52.880]Here we have to get a little creative.
[00:05:55.190]What of our cover crops relates to summer flowers,
[00:05:58.620]amaranth, beans, peas, other legumes, squash,
[00:06:03.270]think about that in your cover crop mix.
[00:06:06.280]On the flip side, cabbage and tomatoes and celery.
[00:06:10.340]What cover crops can we think of
[00:06:12.143]that are actually antagonistic to our cash crop?
[00:06:16.360]Simple little things as we go forward today,
[00:06:19.140]hopefully will help you.
[00:06:20.710]I was over here listening to a lot of questions.
[00:06:22.850]I wanted to chime in on some of that.
[00:06:24.240]But hopefully, stop me and ask me some of the questions
[00:06:27.350]you had just before.
[00:06:30.800]A lot of this all starts coming about,
[00:06:32.730]you know the current mantra is
[00:06:34.267]"A weed is a plant out of place."
[00:06:37.010]We need to start thinkin' about some of this.
[00:06:38.900]What is that weed tellin' us?
[00:06:41.540]It's a simple concept called indicator weeds.
[00:06:45.950]I did learn my lesson on this one.
[00:06:47.510]I know you guys can't read it,
[00:06:48.540]so I did go through and cheat and type it up.
[00:06:51.350]One of the key ones I focus on
[00:06:52.493]is right down here, red clover.
[00:06:55.470]Red clover thrives in my farm.
[00:06:58.200]Some of my soil samples would tell me
[00:06:59.820]I'm low phosphorous, but according to indicator plants,
[00:07:03.053]our potassium, some of the indicators would tell me
[00:07:07.250]that we're actually high potassium.
[00:07:09.130]Our plants are actually getting it
[00:07:10.470]versus what your actual soil tests are takin'.
[00:07:14.173]And the reason I'm pointin' all this out is
[00:07:15.453]I know everybody likes their soil samples,
[00:07:17.630]but hopefully in the next few slides,
[00:07:19.340]we're gonna convince you to start.
[00:07:21.490]To me, soil test and tissue samples and all that
[00:07:24.480]is analog, you know, it's a snapshot in time.
[00:07:28.300]If you start understanding what's growing in your field,
[00:07:31.550]you basically have a livestream.
[00:07:35.350]Little bit of this goes back to the succession planting.
[00:07:38.750]You know, this is basically when the earth was formed,
[00:07:41.340]this is our timbers.
[00:07:42.550]Everybody talks about bacterial fungi ratios,
[00:07:46.030]do you know where you're actually at on this scale?
[00:07:49.410]Our actual, our cash crops like to be in the,
[00:07:52.580]well some people will say in the one to one ratio,
[00:07:54.390]but no tellin' the Plains there.
[00:07:57.010]They talked more about the one to three, one to four range
[00:08:00.010]is where you actually, you wanna be just a hair more
[00:08:01.920]fungal than bacterial.
[00:08:04.160]And part of why I wanted to keep this slide in
[00:08:06.950]is all the flooding around here,
[00:08:09.460]start thinkin' about what that soil is doing right now.
[00:08:12.350]It's very bacterial dominant.
[00:08:14.950]So start thinking where you're at on this scale.
[00:08:18.840]If you wanna bring back them soils without a lot of tillage,
[00:08:21.470]and all tillage is gonna do is bring more bacterial action,
[00:08:25.200]start thinkin' how you can resurrect that land
[00:08:27.330]into more productive asset
[00:08:29.310]without upsettin' the apple cart here.
[00:08:33.140]Lot of this started comin' together last winter
[00:08:35.140]when I was over in Australia.
[00:08:36.530]And I kinda, most of you will recognize the Oregon Trail.
[00:08:40.310]I sat out there quite a few years ago,
[00:08:41.860]and you know, everybody says
[00:08:43.540]freeze-thaw cures compaction.
[00:08:46.670]Well if that was true, that was, how many years ago
[00:08:49.090]was the last wagon went down through there?
[00:08:52.370]In my mind, you know, this is,
[00:08:55.690]I started understanding
[00:08:56.970]how some of our fields behave differently on our own farm.
[00:09:01.630]You know, how many of you had a field
[00:09:03.340]where it acts this way,
[00:09:04.510]when you go right across the waterway
[00:09:06.380]or a fence line and it acts totally different?
[00:09:09.820]You'll start thinking on some of that,
[00:09:12.500]how was that land developed?
[00:09:14.060]You know, in my area, a lot of timber,
[00:09:16.710]the timber was pushed, stuff like that.
[00:09:18.896]You know, I know North Dakota, I've been to Gabe's before.
[00:09:21.540]Well they decided this year, they're gonna farm that field.
[00:09:24.840]Next year it might be pasture.
[00:09:26.020]The year before it was pasture, you know,
[00:09:27.240]they don't have to do near the disruption.
[00:09:29.750]So when we start thinking about,
[00:09:31.080]talk farming in nature's image,
[00:09:32.560]I want you to start understanding a little bit
[00:09:35.300]of my mindset, 'cause this is where we were at.
[00:09:38.220]You might have heard the fires in Australia this winter.
[00:09:40.870]We were on Kangaroo Island.
[00:09:42.510]This whole farm is decimated by flames right now,
[00:09:44.720]but this is where they were at last year.
[00:09:47.500]They had what they call non-wetting sands.
[00:09:50.630]And that's a totally foreign concept to most of us,
[00:09:53.084]but what I wanna point out on this one
[00:09:55.630]is this is what they're,
[00:09:56.854]in two years, they can break the farm and pay for it.
[00:10:02.760]Some guys would condemn 'em,
[00:10:03.880]'cause they're still breaking ground over there.
[00:10:06.570]But what they figured out with these non-wetting sands,
[00:10:08.650]they have a clay pan below.
[00:10:10.960]If they pull that ripper through there,
[00:10:12.600]they can heave that, flip-flop it,
[00:10:14.740]and all of a sudden that sand suddenly holds water.
[00:10:18.230]Well, when I look at that field,
[00:10:19.610]we were in that field when they took the picture,
[00:10:21.780]I look at that, and I started thinkin' about my own farm.
[00:10:25.820]You know, where I'm at, everything's pattern tiled.
[00:10:29.270]Doesn't that look kinda like a lot of pattern tile,
[00:10:31.420]and stuff like that?
[00:10:32.410]You know, we need to start askin',
[00:10:34.395]the last conversation I had in Australia
[00:10:36.840]was probably the best one I've had in a long time.
[00:10:39.410]'Cause we sat there, granted, the guy was a wine maker,
[00:10:42.170]so it was kinda one of those conversations,
[00:10:43.840]but we sat there startin' to talk about, you know,
[00:10:49.770]everybody wants to go back to native.
[00:10:52.860]What is actually, is native anymore?
[00:10:56.120]You know, is that farm ever gonna go back to native?
[00:10:58.920]Is my farm ever gonna go back to native?
[00:11:01.400]And in relevance, you know, we need to start thinkin' about
[00:11:04.160]some of our plantin',
[00:11:05.410]our cover crops and all that stuff comin' together.
[00:11:08.540]You know, we wanna plant native plants,
[00:11:10.380]well how do you plant native plants
[00:11:11.690]when the ecology's changed the soil topography?
[00:11:14.340]Everything's changed to the point
[00:11:15.790]where them plants no longer wanna grow or thrive there.
[00:11:20.260]So it's just, you know, the neat part is
[00:11:21.750]the day that happened, and Ray Archuleta called me,
[00:11:23.590]and I said, "Ray, you're not gonna like
[00:11:24.757]"what we're talkin' about when we come home."
[00:11:26.190]But I just wanna start helpin' you understand
[00:11:28.990]a little bit where this crazy mind goes.
[00:11:31.710]Part of what we're gonna,
[00:11:32.543]was asked to talk about today, though,
[00:11:34.430]is the innerseed cover crops.
[00:11:35.890]So we're gonna switch gears here,
[00:11:37.710]and I'm gonna give you
[00:11:38.810]the few basic principles, moving forward.
[00:11:41.270]Corn on corn, I'm gonna focus on legumes and brassicas.
[00:11:45.120]Corn goin' to soybeans, I focus on cool grasses,
[00:11:47.530]but I'm gonna keep legumes in there,
[00:11:50.060]but we're gonna control burn 'em in the fall.
[00:11:52.430]We'll come in there, and knock,
[00:11:53.510]if we're using our perennials,
[00:11:55.800]we'll knock them out in the fall already.
[00:11:57.680]So next spring, you know, where I'm at,
[00:12:00.130]annual rye grass is probably the simplest and easiest.
[00:12:02.600]And that was one of the questions
[00:12:03.700]I wanted to address earlier, that's why I asked Abby,
[00:12:06.390]you know, if she's using cereal rye,
[00:12:08.790]you have to be very careful with cereal rye,
[00:12:10.670]the further south you come,
[00:12:12.350]because it's not very shade tolerant.
[00:12:14.970]So do your testing on your farm, get to understanding,
[00:12:18.500]you know, annual rye grass is gonna be better,
[00:12:20.740]it's very shade tolerant, plus the corn's a lot taller
[00:12:23.800]down in this area.
[00:12:25.350]So that's all on-site learning that you're gonna have to do.
[00:12:28.940]You know, we've played with a bunch of this since '06,
[00:12:32.285]and it's just little things.
[00:12:33.500]I hate to admit it, I forget a lot of them,
[00:12:35.080]but when I come to a meeting like this,
[00:12:36.500]it's kind of refreshing for me to go back
[00:12:38.100]and review a little bit.
[00:12:39.940]Beans going to corn, one of the other caveats
[00:12:43.690]I should mention is everything in the fall for us
[00:12:46.620]is gonna be set up for relay cropping in a perfect year.
[00:12:49.810]Now most of you understand what the last year or two been,
[00:12:52.520]we haven't had the perfect year.
[00:12:53.548]We're goin' into no-man's land next year.
[00:12:55.730]But ideally, my fields are gonna be set up to relay
[00:12:58.700]or companion crop, goin' into winter.
[00:13:02.690]Chances are, you know, my plan is corn long term
[00:13:05.940]is gonna become a rotational crop for me.
[00:13:08.610]Another critical thing I wanted to point out
[00:13:10.380]before we go too much farther,
[00:13:11.560]is everybody talks about timing on innerseed.
[00:13:14.030]You know, already we heard early V4, V5, tassel.
[00:13:18.480]I'll show you a little later where I'm at,
[00:13:20.050]but I don't even really pay attention
[00:13:21.750]to the stage of corn anymore.
[00:13:23.330]I focus more on the forecast.
[00:13:25.040]You know, I have a general ideal where I wanna be,
[00:13:27.279]but then we're gonna adapt as the season unravels.
[00:13:32.320]But another thing I wanted to,
[00:13:33.670]I just threw this one in this morning.
[00:13:35.290]I wanted, you know, how do you pick your cover crops?
[00:13:39.210]You know, corns, your warm season grass,
[00:13:41.770]start lookin' over here to the cool seasons.
[00:13:43.770]Mainly broadleafs and stuff like that.
[00:13:46.120]You can fudge a little and bring in that cool season grass,
[00:13:48.870]if you're, you know, once you get more experience,
[00:13:50.710]I wouldn't say start there.
[00:13:52.400]But soybeans, on the other hand
[00:13:54.580]is your warm season broadleaf,
[00:13:56.470]so then you're gonna wanna lean more towards the grasses
[00:14:00.120]and cool season stuff again.
[00:14:04.100]That brings us back to the succession plan.
[00:14:05.618]You know, start figuring out where you're at on here.
[00:14:08.487]The more perennial you're thinking about,
[00:14:11.760]the further to the right you will be.
[00:14:15.810]But you can also get too fungal,
[00:14:17.320]so then you might need to start warmin' things back up
[00:14:20.060]and bring your mix to the left.
[00:14:24.690]On our farm, as we started seein' what was goin' on,
[00:14:27.240]you know, traditionally, I was corn on corn
[00:14:29.240]all the way up 'til '09.
[00:14:32.820]I started seein', you know, I hear that people talk
[00:14:35.020]about diversity and stuff like that.
[00:14:36.510]So we started changin' things.
[00:14:38.630]The first step was I brought in the diversity
[00:14:41.700]with the innerseed mix.
[00:14:45.420]Then as we started seeing what diversity did for us,
[00:14:47.990]we started bringin' in soybeans, wheat, rye, barley,
[00:14:50.790]buckwheat, oats, and now this year,
[00:14:52.490]we were playin' with sunflowers.
[00:14:53.760]Granted, there again Mother Nature,
[00:14:55.640]she kinda threw a curve ball on that.
[00:14:57.820]But to make some of them work,
[00:14:59.730]towards the end I'll show you what we're doin' there.
[00:15:02.140]We've got to start stackin' crops.
[00:15:04.690]You know, I'm not in a traditionally double crop area.
[00:15:08.120]But we've, you'll see we've done the triple crop
[00:15:10.260]in Northeast Iowa.
[00:15:12.870]But one of my biggest eye-opening moments
[00:15:15.030]was the rainfall simulator.
[00:15:17.020]How many guys have had their soil in the rainfall simulator?
[00:15:20.710]Don't be shy.
[00:15:23.150]I'm lobbying for NRCS people to give us a year free,
[00:15:26.560]hassle-free at the NRCS
[00:15:27.790]if we can win the rainfall simulator.
[00:15:29.860]I haven't got any takers yet,
[00:15:31.020]but my theory is if you can win the rainfall simulator,
[00:15:34.130]you probably don't have a problem.
[00:15:36.040]What I always like to point out on the rainfall simulator
[00:15:39.000]is every time you see my soil on the rainfall simulator,
[00:15:41.520]we hold at least a third of the moisture.
[00:15:44.215]I made that statement
[00:15:45.780]at a meeting up in Wisconsin last fall,
[00:15:47.730]and at the end of the meeting, this elderly gentleman
[00:15:50.470]come up to me and he's like, "Sir, sir, sir."
[00:15:52.660]So I knew right away he wasn't a farmer.
[00:15:54.750]But he introduced himself.
[00:15:56.340]He was with the Corps of Engineers.
[00:15:57.664]He's like, "I wanna thank you."
[00:15:59.117]"In my whole career,
[00:15:59.997]"I've been lookin' for a number like that,
[00:16:01.607]"and nobody's ever gave that to me."
[00:16:03.880]So over the course of the summer, that inspired me
[00:16:05.870]a little bit to try to figure out to put
[00:16:08.380]an actual number to that, third of a, we're holdin' a third.
[00:16:13.330]There's what our soil looks like on the rainfall simulator.
[00:16:16.870]You know, we've always heard the chocolate cake thing?
[00:16:18.730]One looks like Betty Crocker, I think the other,
[00:16:20.524]probably could frost it and eat it.
[00:16:24.520]But you can have a little fun with that one.
[00:16:27.640]Tell me the, tell me what you see the difference
[00:16:29.120]in these two soils is?
[00:16:31.883]Soil color, first thing, right?
[00:16:34.710]Yep!
[00:16:37.310]Structure, difference,
[00:16:39.443]it's a lot more aggregated.
[00:16:41.530]This one's not, and there's also,
[00:16:43.220]You can see 'em up here on the screen too.
[00:16:46.400]And there's definitely,
[00:16:48.420]looks like a textural difference as well.
[00:16:52.030]That's 50 feet total difference right there.
[00:16:55.570]One side of the waterway to the other.
[00:16:59.110]Everybody says you can't change soil types that quick.
[00:17:03.900]As we pulled them samples last summer,
[00:17:06.180]I went and took seven pans of dirt.
[00:17:09.050]And I just put 'em in the barn, air-dryed 'em,
[00:17:10.870]and then we debuted this test at our Field Day last fall.
[00:17:14.400]But what I did to get the actual number
[00:17:16.090]is I weighed out 100 grams of dried soil,
[00:17:18.710]put it in the coffee filters you see there,
[00:17:21.470]and then just for simplicity, I took a spaghetti strainer,
[00:17:24.130]and dipped 'em in a pan of water.
[00:17:26.800]Lift 'em out, weigh 'em again, that's the difference
[00:17:29.480]you'll see on the next page.
[00:17:31.460]Trying to put that number to it.
[00:17:33.060]The one caveat I wanna give you up front
[00:17:35.300]is six of the soil samples are essentially
[00:17:38.810]the same soil type, one of them is a totally different farm,
[00:17:42.970]but I wanted to keep that one in there just to show you
[00:17:44.670]what the relay crop did.
[00:17:46.640]But one of those six, we actually had to force the soil in.
[00:17:51.090]That would be the lighter one there.
[00:17:54.660]Here's the numbers we actually came up with.
[00:17:57.739]Innerseed corn with a 32 way innerseed mix,
[00:18:00.910]we actually held 40% of the moisture.
[00:18:04.430]Monocrop barley, with established cover crops,
[00:18:07.900]we held 37% of the moisture.
[00:18:11.290]The relay field that you seen at the start there,
[00:18:14.810]the first slide, that was corn
[00:18:17.180]with delayed, terminated clover in there, we only held 35%.
[00:18:23.460]As you sit there and analyze some of that,
[00:18:26.810]I thought that was gonna be my best field.
[00:18:28.840]And then when I seen that number,
[00:18:30.040]I had to sit back and realize what happened there.
[00:18:34.550]Most of us understand soil aggregates,
[00:18:36.410]and stuff like that.
[00:18:37.890]You got that legume in there,
[00:18:39.060]you're gonna start breakin' down soil aggregates,
[00:18:41.250]so that in turn, hurts our water holding capacity.
[00:18:45.698]You know, keep that in mind moving forward.
[00:18:48.430]Then this next field here, this is the light blond field.
[00:18:53.150]Actually only held 27% of the moisture.
[00:18:55.527]And remember, we had to force that one in there.
[00:19:00.000]Just major difference, and you know, when I seen that,
[00:19:02.310]it's like we finally got some decent numbers.
[00:19:04.460]Now I gotta figure out how to refine all this.
[00:19:06.210]But hopefully I got some smart people involved.
[00:19:08.550]Now this one, this is the different soil type.
[00:19:11.990]But I wanted that one in there just to show
[00:19:14.280]that's what we're callin' relay soybean and rye field.
[00:19:17.220]Actually held 42% of the moisture.
[00:19:21.090]These two are what really kind of opened my mind
[00:19:23.240]to this one, 'cause these were right across the waterway,
[00:19:26.120]same exact treatment up until this year.
[00:19:28.710]One went into corn, one went into soybeans.
[00:19:32.100]There again, just that little subtle difference,
[00:19:35.330]by collapsing them aggregates with the soybean,
[00:19:38.000]we lost a little water holding capacity.
[00:19:43.750]Okay, a lot of when I'm out here, I like to talk about
[00:19:46.426]adaption versus adoption.
[00:19:48.920]You know, everybody's gonna try to adopt certain practices,
[00:19:51.420]and I try to convince you highly against that.
[00:19:53.740]Take a little bit of what Abby told you this morning.
[00:19:55.660]Take a little bit of what I told you.
[00:19:57.886]A few of your other locals, combine all that,
[00:20:00.350]and adapt the principles to your mindset.
[00:20:02.850]'Cause I'll guarantee, if you try to adapt what I'm doin'
[00:20:05.220]to your context, you're gonna fail.
[00:20:10.780]And the other thing I want you to be aware of,
[00:20:14.330]I brought this back after the last two years,
[00:20:18.060]you can have the best laid plan out here,
[00:20:19.620]and Mother Nature's gonna give you a rude, hard awakening.
[00:20:22.980]She's illiterate, I mean, she's just been,
[00:20:25.110]I think most of you guys would probably agree,
[00:20:27.160]she's thrown us some curve balls this last two, three years.
[00:20:30.720]But, be learning from all that.
[00:20:33.450]Figurin' out how to adapt your operation to the next level.
[00:20:37.680]Now we're gonna quick, quickly jump in an innerseeding.
[00:20:41.130]This is where I like to go, but I like to bring
[00:20:43.090]people back to this.
[00:20:44.430]You know, everybody said this is
[00:20:45.490]a new and innovative process.
[00:20:47.120]You know, this is 1900 John Deere, or Van Brunt back then.
[00:20:53.180]It's not that new of an ideal.
[00:20:54.720]You know one of the funnest meetings I was at,
[00:20:56.750]Western Iowa, one time we were in the city library,
[00:20:59.150]and the guy went across the hall into the library,
[00:21:01.550]he brought out 10 books from 1900 to 1930,
[00:21:05.790]showed what they were all doin' back in the 1900s.
[00:21:10.560]You know, just nowadays we have better tools
[00:21:12.420]and technology to make it all happen and easy.
[00:21:14.800]You know, this is where I'm at today.
[00:21:17.210]Don't start here.
[00:21:19.150]You know, this is where I started.
[00:21:22.460]I always like to have a little fun with that.
[00:21:24.000]How many people wanna have a bet that I wore them out.
[00:21:27.010]I don't look like it, but we actually wore them out.
[00:21:28.980]You know we started in '06 to about 2012,
[00:21:31.750]and I was ready to give up, tryin' to figure out
[00:21:35.130]them chemical interactions, stuff like that,
[00:21:37.280]that's all part of the learning process.
[00:21:40.440]I can tell you exactly what we're doin',
[00:21:42.210]but every area's gonna be just a little bit different.
[00:21:46.630]And 2012, we seen a little success,
[00:21:49.300]so we don't mess around here, engineered by inventory,
[00:21:52.790]we had to hurry up and scale up.
[00:21:53.900]We went from, you know,
[00:21:55.130]just test plots to 70 acres that year.
[00:21:58.210]The next year we figured out, hey this is gonna work,
[00:22:00.590]so we went whole farm.
[00:22:03.250]Biggest reason I like to keep this picture in
[00:22:05.060]is if you're buildin' an innerseeder,
[00:22:06.600]the key piece to pay attention to
[00:22:08.250]on that rig is the seed box.
[00:22:10.660]Build for capacity, build for success.
[00:22:13.240]I see too many guys puttin' a little 50 pound box on there.
[00:22:18.320]It gets old quick.
[00:22:19.680]You know, I wanna be able to cover some acres
[00:22:22.790]when we get going.
[00:22:24.240]But as we progressed, the rig you see now
[00:22:29.060]is actually number 10, but this was one of the funnest ones.
[00:22:32.577]You know, I bought an old Henneker Air Seeder
[00:22:35.100]cheaper than all could be,
[00:22:36.260]then I un-engineered it to what I wanted it.
[00:22:39.637]You know, never even used it,
[00:22:40.470]pulled it in the shop, rebuilt it to what I wanted,
[00:22:43.450]thought we had it figured out.
[00:22:45.807]But there again, we don't get attached
[00:22:47.150]to a piece of equipment, 'cause six weeks later
[00:22:49.520]that went back in the shop,
[00:22:50.690]and got tore down and rebuilt.
[00:22:52.610]'Cause we started figurin' that little common principle out
[00:22:55.630]that twin rows was gonna be the way to move forward,
[00:22:59.010]plus it also set us up for the other things
[00:23:01.070]that I like to do nowadays,
[00:23:02.260]with the relay and companion cropping.
[00:23:04.660]You know, here's what our fields looked like, 2000,
[00:23:07.908]I think this is 2014.
[00:23:10.090]We were still strip tilling.
[00:23:13.000]Best thing cover crop program afforded me
[00:23:15.330]is the opportunity to sell my strip tiller.
[00:23:18.970]I no longer have a compaction issue.
[00:23:20.530]I know longer have a fertility placement issue,
[00:23:22.640]so why pull a shank through there?
[00:23:26.650]But you know, all that was made available
[00:23:28.810]by figurin' out them key pieces and gettin' 'em in place.
[00:23:32.030]And the way I described it yesterday,
[00:23:34.350]a guy needs to be thinkin' like a chess player,
[00:23:36.030]not a checker player.
[00:23:38.000]You know, be playin' that long game,
[00:23:39.410]lookin' at four or five moves ahead.
[00:23:41.510]So you know where you wanna be,
[00:23:43.730]but also keep in mind where your checkbook allows you to be.
[00:23:48.370]2016, this was plantin' corn.
[00:23:50.940]You can see how much good growth we have in early spring.
[00:23:56.080]I love the suggestion
[00:23:57.250]that I should be sprayin' my cover crops
[00:23:58.950]two to three weeks ahead of time.
[00:24:01.627]That was froze a week ahead of time,
[00:24:03.950]so we've all gotta learn to adapt in our context.
[00:24:08.590]As you'll see shortly where I'm goin'.
[00:24:10.980]I think this field was winter wheat, just for context.
[00:24:13.690]Was plantin' corn into it.
[00:24:16.010]One of the key things we figured out over the years
[00:24:18.450]is I went back to row band on a herbicide.
[00:24:22.770]You can just tell we're keepin' that row clean,
[00:24:24.450]and then we're managing the in between the rows separate.
[00:24:28.980]That's all been made possible by, you know,
[00:24:31.053]when we went to CCS planter, you no longer had
[00:24:33.960]the bracket where you could hang the spray nozzle off.
[00:24:38.570]So there again we had to engineer by inventory.
[00:24:41.840]Anybody recognize what this bracket's made out of?
[00:24:46.820]When you go home tonight,
[00:24:47.653]look at your garage door opener (laughter).
[00:24:51.580]The guy down in Kentucky, when I called
[00:24:53.710]and ordered enough for the planter,
[00:24:54.940]he's like, "Man, did you have a storm?"
[00:24:56.740]I was like, "No, but we're about to."
[00:24:58.527](laughter)
[00:25:02.020]So there again, we're just gonna kinda go through
[00:25:04.190]the sequence here of how we do it out on my farm.
[00:25:06.370]If you got questions, I think we're gonna have
[00:25:09.070]a little time here to ask questions.
[00:25:10.440]But you know, here's emergence.
[00:25:15.380]Termination, that, 2016, that's when we terminated.
[00:25:20.120]You can see the corn's up about like that already.
[00:25:22.410]The only reason I terminated that day yet,
[00:25:24.480]is number one we were still RoundUp corn,
[00:25:27.070]but we are also lookin' at goin' hot and dry.
[00:25:29.680]So that brings that management factor in.
[00:25:31.510]You've gotta be payin' attention to the forecast,
[00:25:33.420]and your moisture situation.
[00:25:36.710]You'll see a little bit later, I think,
[00:25:38.030]I left the slides in here where we're goin' now.
[00:25:40.740]You know, for context this year,
[00:25:43.260]the day I innerseeded is the day we roll-crimped a lot
[00:25:45.610]of our cover crop.
[00:25:47.520]No herbicide at that point, other than the row ban.
[00:25:51.630]But that was all inspired when I seen this picture.
[00:25:55.000]You can start seein' my tram lines and stuff like that.
[00:25:57.420]I started noticin' where we drove,
[00:26:00.000]the cover crop never really came back.
[00:26:02.610]So it's like, "Okay, as long as we've got enough moisture,
[00:26:04.737]"I might as well let that out there
[00:26:05.867]"to help keep our corn feet dry."
[00:26:09.047]"But then I can eliminate a herbicide pass,
[00:26:11.037]"so if I can start figurin' out how to
[00:26:13.397]"manage that cover crop in between the rows."
[00:26:17.610]But this one, this is a first relay field
[00:26:21.420]we'll talk about in a little bit.
[00:26:22.980]This is winter wheat, that's annual rye grass across there.
[00:26:27.127]That's cereal rye with corn in up there.
[00:26:29.940]Just to show some of the, where each field
[00:26:32.150]gets kind of its own different management plan
[00:26:34.170]in our operation.
[00:26:37.240]But back to when do we innerseed?
[00:26:41.135]I don't tell people a stage.
[00:26:42.590]I like to show 'em, this is when I innerseed.
[00:26:45.590]You know, we're runnin' 12 mile an hour there,
[00:26:47.770]'cause the forecast says go.
[00:26:50.380]You know, originally when I built this rig,
[00:26:52.110]we were gonna try to side dress and innerseed
[00:26:55.050]at the same time.
[00:26:55.980]But I've threw that ideal totally away now
[00:26:59.110]just for the simple fact, to me,
[00:27:01.286]the timing of your innerseed is so dang critical,
[00:27:04.660]when it's go time, go.
[00:27:06.530]You can always catch up, you know,
[00:27:09.280]side grassin' and stuff like that later,
[00:27:10.910]plus I like dry side grass.
[00:27:14.790]But I also like, you know,
[00:27:16.020]we're startin' to do some foliar nitrogen.
[00:27:18.830]We're startin' to Y drop,
[00:27:20.470]or I got my own version,
[00:27:21.930]but Y drop is what most of you would recognize.
[00:27:29.180]But now we're just gonna go,
[00:27:30.110]this is what our innerseed looks like.
[00:27:32.520]You know, there's a week after innerseeding.
[00:27:34.390]On this side we got the broadleaf mix.
[00:27:37.840]On that side we got a grass mix.
[00:27:41.064]And if we're true to form,
[00:27:42.070]we probably got 'em flip-flopped.
[00:27:43.350]There we got the grass mix.
[00:27:45.170]Here we got the broadleaf mix, just depends on which field.
[00:27:49.960]I like to show the difference between the two,
[00:27:51.600]what it looks like.
[00:27:53.110]You know, there you can see old residue,
[00:27:54.633]we're still leavin' that stand.
[00:27:58.930]This is closer, a couple weeks later.
[00:28:01.110]You can still see we're capturin' a little sunlight
[00:28:03.270]down in here.
[00:28:04.140]The broadleaf's are startin' to finesse a little bit.
[00:28:09.920]By the following week, you can tell,
[00:28:12.550]there the herbicide band's really startin' to show up.
[00:28:16.410]But you can tell that broadleaf mix
[00:28:18.300]just really kinda flopped down on the ground.
[00:28:21.570]Never really died, but it just kinda stalled out.
[00:28:24.970]Same over here.
[00:28:28.470]By October, the day that was harvested,
[00:28:30.700]that's what the whole field looked like.
[00:28:35.180]I'd go a week later, but it was white.
[00:28:37.030]So, if we get the right year,
[00:28:39.980]and I work with a dairy quite a bit, neighbor,
[00:28:42.880]we trade cow manure for cornstalks.
[00:28:45.730]The year, the last time we baled all the cornstalks
[00:28:48.830]off that field, they were supposed to go
[00:28:50.700]to the bedding pack, they all ended up in the feedline,
[00:28:54.640]'cause he took feed samples when he got 'em home,
[00:28:56.860]and the feed quality was that good
[00:28:58.210]with all that green matter in there.
[00:28:59.990]Not a one of 'em ended up in the bedding pack.
[00:29:03.030]And a lot of times we'll trade a ton of manure
[00:29:05.180]for a round bale.
[00:29:06.890]A ton of cornstalks for a ton of manure,
[00:29:08.270]and I'll take that bet any day.
[00:29:10.870]But when we're doin' that, $15 an acre in seed,
[00:29:14.350]back when we were still doin' testing,
[00:29:17.950]we could get 15 bushel an acre.
[00:29:22.370]And I know I'll get a lot of doubters,
[00:29:24.890]so I called in the reinforcements.
[00:29:27.600]Good friend of mine, Chris Teachout,
[00:29:28.960]right across the river here, Shenandoah, Iowa.
[00:29:31.670]This is his plot from two or three years ago.
[00:29:34.380]If you know what you're lookin' at here,
[00:29:37.260]this is where he had the primer cover crop
[00:29:41.240]versus no primer, but easily he show,
[00:29:44.640]you know if you start sectioning some of that out,
[00:29:46.850]there's easily that 15 bushel an acre.
[00:29:51.070]Down here, you know, compare it to the check
[00:29:53.470]in a lot of places.
[00:29:55.640]But No Till Farmer had Jeff Toussaint from Pennsylvania
[00:29:59.360]kinda talkin' this 14 bushel an acre.
[00:30:02.300]And then through some of our travels,
[00:30:03.840]I kinda ran into this data.
[00:30:06.660]Anybody wanna translate that for me quick?
[00:30:10.380]This is from France, but it would correspond
[00:30:12.690]exactly what we're showin'.
[00:30:15.110]They're showin' this is percentages,
[00:30:16.890]above and below, you know 100% is normal,
[00:30:20.220]so you're above and below.
[00:30:21.910]If you're 200 bushel corn, you're 16 to 26 bushel a boat,
[00:30:27.300]just with the innerseed mix.
[00:30:28.440]And the common denominator between all of them,
[00:30:30.650]I believe, is hairy veg.
[00:30:32.960]That would be your trefle violet, or whatever.
[00:30:37.370]My French is off pretty bad.
[00:30:40.790]A good friend of mine is Dr. Jonathan Lundgren,
[00:30:43.540]a couple years ago I happened to be up there.
[00:30:45.470]His grad student, Mike Bredeson impressed the heck outta me.
[00:30:48.400]So if you're gonna start payin' attention to innerseeding
[00:30:50.527]and that, make sure you get him on your radar.
[00:30:55.500]The best way he described at that time was,
[00:30:58.240]the reason we can start cuttin' our insecticides back
[00:31:00.880]within the multi-cropping or the companion cropping,
[00:31:05.200]stuff like that, is we're basically playin'
[00:31:07.630]with the bug's mind.
[00:31:09.530]They're used to landing on a cornfield,
[00:31:11.310]and it's solid one-color green.
[00:31:13.860]Well, when they land on a field with innerseed cover crops
[00:31:16.410]or somethin' like that in there,
[00:31:19.230]chances are they're gonna land on the wrong color.
[00:31:21.710]It just draws 'em to that different color,
[00:31:23.890]so they land on that.
[00:31:25.430]Then they have to expend energy to pick up and move house,
[00:31:28.260]about five or six times on average
[00:31:30.420]to get to the actual corn plant to start doin' the damage.
[00:31:33.420]In the meantime, your predator-prey shifts the tide,
[00:31:37.050]and they catch up and can take care of the problem for ya.
[00:31:40.020]So I just, I like to, you know, if you're startin' to think,
[00:31:42.280]goin' down some of this, this is one of the best
[00:31:44.600]pieces of advice I found.
[00:31:48.060]Now any questions on innerseeding before we go further?
[00:31:53.300]Go, yep.
[00:31:54.133]If you're the row band
[00:31:55.032]root herbicide use?
[00:31:58.280]Row band on herbicide,
[00:31:59.500]we're usually running acetylchlor
[00:32:01.460]or atrozine, and then in between the row,
[00:32:07.030]I'm gettin' to the point where we like
[00:32:08.170]to roll crimp everything, well,
[00:32:10.490]you'll see the herbicide option we've made now since,
[00:32:13.870]here in a little bit, but any other quick questions?
[00:32:17.040]Other questions?
[00:32:20.120]Just a second, let me get you a mic.
[00:32:23.380]Stage of the corn again?
[00:32:24.310]Is that like V4, V5?
[00:32:25.807]Stage of the corn when I'm innerseeding,
[00:32:27.910]I base it on V4, but if we're a hot, dry,
[00:32:30.390]you know hot, fast growing season, I'll push.
[00:32:33.530]If we're a cool, wet growing season, I'll take my time.
[00:32:37.710]Just kinda be watchin' your forecast, you know your crop.
[00:32:41.710]I'd rather err on the early side
[00:32:43.580]than the late side, I guess.
[00:32:45.030]You know, if you get far enough north,
[00:32:46.790]I know guys that are actually
[00:32:48.620]seedin' their innerseed beforehand,
[00:32:52.130]it's just figuring out that time frame,
[00:32:54.750]where you wanna be in this area.
[00:32:57.490]I think Abby said it best, I can't tell you exactly
[00:32:59.590]what's gonna work here.
[00:33:01.030]I tried to give you the context of where I'm at, so.
[00:33:07.470]Do you have any problems
[00:33:10.810]where you're not banding in the middle of the row
[00:33:13.950]to control weeds as a cover crop is gettin' started?
[00:33:19.910]How do you do that?
[00:33:21.730]We're managing in between the rows separate,
[00:33:24.230]so if we need a herbicide pass there, we will do it.
[00:33:27.890]But so far, pretty much all ahead of corn now,
[00:33:32.065]we're using the cereal rye, and that's maintaining
[00:33:34.510]our water hemp, broadleafs, all that,
[00:33:37.280]that keeps it in check.
[00:33:39.000]And long as we got a plant growin' there,
[00:33:40.445]we usually don't get a grass problem, stuff like that.
[00:33:45.550]Good, thank you.
[00:33:48.660]Ah, now we're gonna jump a little bit
[00:33:50.070]to the relay cropping,
[00:33:51.130]I'm just gonna kinda bounce on that,
[00:33:52.564]just to kinda plant the seed.
[00:33:54.550]One of the guys that I actually,
[00:33:56.020]when I first discovered relay cropping,
[00:33:57.387]it was actually out here in Nebraska,
[00:33:59.045]Shane Grabing, so I wanna give him a little heads-up.
[00:34:02.070]The other mentor you'll see in a little bit here,
[00:34:03.980]but we've been playin' with this for a couple years now.
[00:34:09.150]But this map is what really started gettin' me to push hard
[00:34:12.870]on the relay innercropping.
[00:34:16.630]This whole field did 234 bushel an acre corn.
[00:34:21.200]This is thanks to AgSolver,
[00:34:23.120]I think was the software back then.
[00:34:24.970]Iowa Soybean Association pushed this a little bit.
[00:34:27.810]What I want you guys to pay attention to
[00:34:29.410]is that green strip.
[00:34:31.410]Now I feel guilty, because they didn't use my numbers
[00:34:33.720]on any of this.
[00:34:34.553]This is university data with my yields interjected,
[00:34:36.960]so I wish we could've put our cost in there.
[00:34:39.190]I think we really could've blow their minds a little bit.
[00:34:42.370]But even usin' their numbers,
[00:34:44.430]that green stands out drastically
[00:34:47.150]as 25% return on investment better
[00:34:50.600]than 234 bushel an acre corn.
[00:34:54.210]I could afford to do somethin' different
[00:34:55.704]was the first thing I thought of.
[00:34:58.640]So goes back to havin' that key piece,
[00:35:00.880]back to the innerseed drill that we built.
[00:35:04.470]We'll come in, this is kind of a later version,
[00:35:10.330]you know, we're still puttin' the cover crop in there,
[00:35:12.580]or the cash crop at this point.
[00:35:15.750]The twin row, this is winter wheat,
[00:35:17.800]we put it in with that drill.
[00:35:19.490]We had planted the soybeans with a tube,
[00:35:23.210]but now we're doin' food grade soybeans,
[00:35:25.120]so we went rogue and used the old Case IH Cylco
[00:35:28.680]on a shifting hitch.
[00:35:31.260]Simple, effective and it works.
[00:35:33.880]That's, we're puttin' our soybeans in there.
[00:35:37.517]$20 an acre seed cost, and we got two crops.
[00:35:41.950]All goes back to that return on investment,
[00:35:43.860]you know very low investment farming,
[00:35:46.950]and we're gettin' some pretty good return on investment.
[00:35:49.760]There's gonna be sheets in your packet.
[00:35:51.940]I got them in the PowerPoint,
[00:35:53.440]but I'll, in context of time, we'll kinda jump over them.
[00:35:58.400]If you got any questions.
[00:35:59.970]Here's how we harvest the winter wheat,
[00:36:02.450]or the cereal rye, or we've done malt barley.
[00:36:05.090]This year we had oats the same way.
[00:36:12.640]We started off with a friend of mine in Wisconsin,
[00:36:14.660]he had the steel blocker guards that he made,
[00:36:17.520]12, well, I guess it's about 14, 15 years ago now
[00:36:20.160]that he started this.
[00:36:21.730]But in my rolling hills, I don't like the steel
[00:36:25.070]out in front, so what we've evolved to
[00:36:29.081]is just a simple modification
[00:36:31.640]you guys'll probably recognize.
[00:36:33.800]If you got drain tile, we just cut a piece of drain tile,
[00:36:37.080]slit it, slam it over the cutter bar.
[00:36:40.430]It's probably $10 to convert a head,
[00:36:42.490]and you can do some testing.
[00:36:45.070]Now, 50 acres in, most of them, you know,
[00:36:47.980]we beat the snot out of 'em, so they lose their elasticity.
[00:36:51.220]They might go through the combine, but have a few spares,
[00:36:53.621]throw a few on.
[00:36:56.480]I did, this is John Coots, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin,
[00:36:59.290]if you wanna pay attention to him.
[00:37:02.620]We call him the Godfather of Relay Cropping.
[00:37:05.800]This is where he's at today.
[00:37:06.960]He's usin' John Deere Row Crop, head cuttin' the wheat
[00:37:09.520]with soybeans in there.
[00:37:11.620]The sad part is I kidnapped him about two years ago,
[00:37:14.080]took him to a meeting in Michigan.
[00:37:15.910]It was the most expensive kidnapping I did,
[00:37:17.990]'cause that followed me home.
[00:37:19.709](laughter)
[00:37:22.660]And you know, John sat in that meeting,
[00:37:24.860]and just listened to that.
[00:37:26.253]That was one of those days I shut up and just listened,
[00:37:29.120]'cause everybody was askin' John the key questions.
[00:37:32.180]And, you know, on the way home, you know,
[00:37:33.710]I was still adamant, I wasn't gonna do it.
[00:37:35.370]But the more I thought about it,
[00:37:36.590]I was like, "It's time for me to go to the row crop bed."
[00:37:39.330]John called me when he seen I had it.
[00:37:40.850]He's like, "Well, what did I say to make up your mind?"
[00:37:43.750]I said, "John it was just a culmination
[00:37:46.047]"of all them little things."
[00:37:48.000]But you need to go through some of that,
[00:37:49.450]you know, start with the cheap blocker guards,
[00:37:52.410]don't go to here right away and think
[00:37:53.710]you're gonna make it work.
[00:37:54.543]'Cause that's a recipe for disaster.
[00:37:56.740]You know, learn the basics, you know.
[00:37:58.680]'Cause as I listened to him that day,
[00:38:00.250]he's like, "Well, we went this route 'cause of that."
[00:38:02.403]"We went that route 'cause that, you know."
[00:38:04.217]And it just all of a sudden hit me, we're there.
[00:38:06.390]We need to go that next, you know, the next step.
[00:38:08.700]But I always wanna warn people.
[00:38:10.340]Don't start there.
[00:38:11.280]You know, 12 row head like that's probably 30,000.
[00:38:15.880]But if you don't think we're crazy yet,
[00:38:17.623]this is where we're goin'.
[00:38:19.873]This is the quick and dirty on the triple crop.
[00:38:23.300]We've actually took the wheat, rye, and,
[00:38:25.810]or wheat and barley, or beans,
[00:38:29.090]and then we'll throw buckwheat in there if we get a chance.
[00:38:32.030]But how are we doin' that, I know you guys
[00:38:33.550]are a little shorter on moisture than I am,
[00:38:35.240]so I brought this one in this winter.
[00:38:37.390]You know, we need to start evaluatin'
[00:38:38.480]where we're at on moisture.
[00:38:40.320]So go back to that first slide, or second slide I had
[00:38:42.803]when I talked about my precipitation,
[00:38:45.180]you know, we get 900 some milliliters a year of moisture,
[00:38:49.810]again as much in snow.
[00:38:51.730]My job is to get that all in soil profile so we can use it.
[00:38:55.117]'Cause if I can get it in the soil,
[00:38:57.310]cereal crops take 450 to 650,
[00:39:00.490]soybeans down here take 450 to seven.
[00:39:04.940]If we know we're on track
[00:39:06.200]and it looks like we got enough moisture,
[00:39:08.423]then we're gonna slam the buckwheat in there.
[00:39:10.790]'Cause buckwheat, nearest I can tell,
[00:39:12.920]uses half inch to two inches,
[00:39:14.830]dependin' on who you talk to, per year.
[00:39:19.820]But this is the day the cereal rye left the field.
[00:39:23.300]We're chasin' the combine with the same drill
[00:39:24.990]that installed the soybeans and buckwheat that year,
[00:39:27.740]or the soybeans and cereal rye.
[00:39:32.720]We're just sneakin' down in between the row,
[00:39:34.340]puttin' the buckwheat right where the cereal rye was.
[00:39:39.820]There shows emergence, and the thing,
[00:39:42.842]one thing, the reason I mention it here is,
[00:39:45.230]I know there's a few organic people
[00:39:46.590]startin' to look at this way.
[00:39:48.700]We're startin' to even use the buckwheat as weed control
[00:39:51.590]in our regular non-GMO soybeans.
[00:39:54.700]It's insecticide and provides good weed suppression.
[00:39:59.730]There's, I think, if I remember right,
[00:40:01.600]this was about two weeks after plantin'.
[00:40:03.190]You can start to see the buckwheat poppin' up in there.
[00:40:06.060]The beans have snapped back.
[00:40:09.700]There we're startin' to flower.
[00:40:13.420]There's full flower.
[00:40:16.060]Everybody wants to talk pollinator plots.
[00:40:19.050]You know, you see in one of the corn,
[00:40:20.430]well that Mike Bredesen picture,
[00:40:21.540]we've got buckwheat in every acre of our corn,
[00:40:24.470]now we're startin' to get it in almost every acre
[00:40:26.240]of our soybeans.
[00:40:27.073]And one guy's like, "Well aren't you worried
[00:40:28.297]"it becomes a weed?"
[00:40:29.810]It's like it's a manageable weed.
[00:40:32.270]You know, the volunteer rate on it is very low,
[00:40:35.870]so even if I have a few escapes,
[00:40:37.990]I'm not too worried about it.
[00:40:41.120]But I like to keep this one in here
[00:40:43.130]just for the simple fact everybody asks
[00:40:44.800]how do we time the genetics?
[00:40:48.480]You know, buckwheat and soybeans, how do you time it?
[00:40:52.421]Well, sit and watch right here,
[00:40:53.760]this is where we pulled in the field
[00:40:55.050]and turned around with the combine,
[00:40:56.120]the beans were stunted a little bit.
[00:40:57.460]Notice how much greener they are.
[00:40:59.510]Up here, the soybeans are maturing.
[00:41:01.730]The buckwheat matures right with the soybeans.
[00:41:04.770]So as the soybeans mature, the buckwheat matures.
[00:41:07.940]And it's the same principle as ethylene gas.
[00:41:10.130]It'd be the same as puttin' a banana and an apple
[00:41:13.640]in a paper bag to get 'em to ripen together.
[00:41:18.690]Harvest, pretty simple, we just take 'em both
[00:41:20.670]at the same time, and then run the product
[00:41:22.420]through the grain cleaner.
[00:41:23.800]The only thing we do is choke the air back
[00:41:25.560]on the combine, dirty the sample up a little bit,
[00:41:28.150]'cause buckwheat is 48 pounds,
[00:41:29.690]beans are close to 60 pounds.
[00:41:32.180]So you just choke the air back
[00:41:33.290]so you're not blowin' the buckwheat
[00:41:34.290]all out the back of the combine.
[00:41:37.260]But you've got these in your handouts.
[00:41:39.910]If you got any questions on 'em, grab me at noon.
[00:41:43.730]And I'm just gonna jump through them.
[00:41:47.020]How late we goin' here?
[00:41:48.210]You got time for questions.
[00:41:49.070]Oh heck, we got plenty of time, so.
[00:41:51.390]But I mean, if you got time, wanna ask questions on this?
[00:41:54.310]I got quite a few more slides to go yet, but.
[00:41:58.779]On your corn,
[00:41:59.719]how come you're using grass as a companion?
[00:42:04.239]Why don't you use, like, veg, clovers?
[00:42:06.730]Or use, yeah, he's asking why we're usin' a grass
[00:42:10.369]as a companion.
[00:42:11.560]That goes back to that warm season/cool season.
[00:42:15.960]You gotta be payin' attention to that.
[00:42:16.970]You wouldn't want two warm season grasses out there.
[00:42:19.567]Corn's a warm season.
[00:42:21.280]We're usin' the cool season grasses.
[00:42:23.770]But, other thing I forgot to mention early in the game.
[00:42:26.910]All the seeding rates I mention using
[00:42:29.590]is just for the cover crop benefit.
[00:42:32.270]If I was goin' for grazing benefit,
[00:42:33.880]I would probably double or triple them.
[00:42:37.230]Question here.
[00:42:43.650]Where can we get a chart
[00:42:45.070]of the companion plants that you had earlier?
[00:42:48.940]Google is, that's where I sniped it off Google.
[00:42:51.546]You can get lost for days on companion plants,
[00:42:54.966]or companion planting, stuff like that.
[00:42:57.960]I mean, I think, well they'll have the slide deck.
[00:43:01.580]You can, there should be the credit on there.
[00:43:04.760]Otherwise, like I said, get after a bit,
[00:43:06.630]if I got time, we can Google it quick.
[00:43:09.070]Loran, do you have any landlords,
[00:43:11.016]or is this all your own ground?
[00:43:13.510]Landlords, probably about 75%
[00:43:14.343]of it's one landlord.
[00:43:20.400]25%'s another landlord, I actually only own 20 acres.
[00:43:23.460]So the people that'll tell you this can't be done
[00:43:25.610]on rented land, we're doin' it all on rented land.
[00:43:29.980]The 25% landlord, when I rented that farm,
[00:43:34.750]I always like to tell this story.
[00:43:36.050]You know, everybody's like,
[00:43:36.883]"How do we get landlords on board?"
[00:43:39.780]That guy was kind of a forward thinker,
[00:43:41.540]and one of the neat, you know, he came out and started,
[00:43:44.660]I had been custom farmin' it for a couple years,
[00:43:47.130]and the guy that was havin' me custom farm it
[00:43:49.750]wanted to get out of farming.
[00:43:50.930]So the landlord came and talked to me the one day,
[00:43:53.190]and kind of did the interview process.
[00:43:55.310]He's like, "Man, I really like what we're seein' here,
[00:43:57.197]"but I've got everybody else beatin' down my door
[00:43:59.677]"wantin' to rent this."
[00:44:00.610]I was like, "Well that's fine."
[00:44:02.370]He asked me if I'd pay what he wanted for rent,
[00:44:04.030]and I was like, "Yeah, sure, we'll make that work."
[00:44:07.500]He's like, "Well I gotta go home and talk to my wife
[00:44:09.017]"and go meet with these others."
[00:44:10.340]15 minutes later he calls me and said,
[00:44:11.987]"Hey, talked to my wife, you still want that farm?"
[00:44:16.207]"Yeah!"
[00:44:17.240]So he turned right around and come back out with a contract
[00:44:19.610]ready to sign, and he had the simple clause in there
[00:44:21.810]that if I used cover crops on his farm,
[00:44:24.600]he will reimburse me the cost of the cover crop
[00:44:26.630]if I don't rent the farm back.
[00:44:29.150]So it's kind of a no-brainer.
[00:44:30.530]You know, we're kinda workin' that with any,
[00:44:34.120]any, you know, granted, I'm outta the land market right now.
[00:44:36.494]I'm focused on the engineering side.
[00:44:39.060]My daughters are lookin' at takin' over the farm.
[00:44:41.560]But as we're buildin' some of that,
[00:44:43.690]we're lookin' at usin' that.
[00:44:49.094]How early are the cycles there?
[00:44:51.250]How early do we plant the soybeans?
[00:44:53.430]We plant soybeans soon as the ground is fit.
[00:44:57.300]But we got that wicked little thing, frost.
[00:44:59.620]So we kinda gotta govern it, you know,
[00:45:01.770]when we think the last frost is gonna be.
[00:45:04.470]'Cause frosted beans aren't exactly fun.
[00:45:09.690]So you're planting soybeans,
[00:45:11.540]probably the first or second week of May?
[00:45:15.540]If we ever have a normal year,
[00:45:16.630]I'll be runnin' April 15th.
[00:45:18.040]Okay.
[00:45:19.553]You know, I used to say
[00:45:20.386]we planted everything in April,
[00:45:22.014]but Mother Nature the last two, three years,
[00:45:23.747]has kinda said, "Nah, I'd take April off."
[00:45:28.710]It's just kinda context where we live, you know.
[00:45:31.950]It's really weird when you're used to bein' done
[00:45:35.173]by the first of May, and now all of a sudden,
[00:45:37.220]we're not startin' 'til May 15th.
[00:45:40.290]Here's a question.
[00:45:47.250]With all that residue,
[00:45:48.600]and you say you plant beans that early,
[00:45:51.840]gracious, how warm is the soil?
[00:45:54.410]I wish I'd have that slide in there.
[00:45:56.120]Our soil with cover crops is actually warmer
[00:45:59.230]with the cover crops.
[00:46:00.640]If you find my YouTube channel, I've got a pretty good video
[00:46:03.390]with Fleer camera on there.
[00:46:05.800]But we, well, seein' when I was plantin' it
[00:46:10.200]was less growth than that, mean,
[00:46:12.440]it was only, just barely could roll the cereal rye.
[00:46:15.640]Right across the fence was no-till ripped soybean stubble.
[00:46:19.840]We're actually 10 degrees warmer,
[00:46:21.300]and we've got the temperature probes to back that up.
[00:46:25.350]Everybody says it's a hoax, it's PhotoShop,
[00:46:27.720]but you know, we take the time to put sensors in,
[00:46:31.220]and that backs stuff up.
[00:46:34.100]Loran, you're planting
[00:46:34.933]your soybeans green into the rye planted after the corn,
[00:46:40.610]right? Correct.
[00:46:41.443]Okay, so, and then you're rolling the rye to kill it,
[00:46:46.340]what's your backup in case the roller
[00:46:49.590]doesn't kill the rye.
[00:46:51.150]Because in my situation up in Northeast Nebraska
[00:46:54.330]we've got rolling hills with eroded hillsides.
[00:46:57.480]So we don't have a uniform height and growth stage
[00:47:03.090]of the cereal rye crop.
[00:47:04.550]So I'm killing it with Clethedhem, non-GMO beans.
[00:47:08.565]What's your backup?
[00:47:10.570]Backup plan, we're actually flip-flopped.
[00:47:13.290]You know, when that cereal rye is planted,
[00:47:15.180]we're actually assuming we're gonna harvest it.
[00:47:18.480]But fast forward to this past spring,
[00:47:21.980]we terminated 700 some acres of cereal rye
[00:47:24.690]that was supposed to be relay crop,
[00:47:26.670]just for the simple fact the stand looked like crap.
[00:47:29.010]We actually only harvested 85 acres on the relay this year.
[00:47:35.060]Sad part is, we've seen it before,
[00:47:36.840]and we really seen it this year,
[00:47:37.990]is I wish I never would've terminated all that cereal rye.
[00:47:41.720]'Cause even where we just ran the combine through,
[00:47:44.397]16, 20 bushel an acre cereal rye is all, you know,
[00:47:48.050]I try to remind people that was the best of the worst.
[00:47:51.020]You know, so we've done 40, 50 bushel rye with the relay.
[00:47:54.527]But this year, 20 was kind of the tops.
[00:47:58.050]But just by runnin' that combine through,
[00:47:59.610]we gained six to seven bushel an acre on the soybeans.
[00:48:03.100]Yeah, I think I see,
[00:48:03.933]I tell people seven to ten at times with that combination.
[00:48:08.570]But, you know, on the flip side, we had,
[00:48:11.840]well if you were at our June field day,
[00:48:13.320]we had all our seed fields,
[00:48:15.840]is where we had hybrid rye and all that stuff.
[00:48:18.460]We actually roll terminated that early,
[00:48:20.970]and that was the worst beans I had.
[00:48:24.410]Don't know, you know, I think a little bit of it
[00:48:26.540]was dicamba issues, but we don't know
[00:48:28.600]where the dicamba came from.
[00:48:30.410]But 30 bushel beans versus 50, 60 bushel beans,
[00:48:33.850]somethin' happened there.
[00:48:35.640]But you know, tryin' to understand,
[00:48:38.658]you know the six to seven bushel an acre,
[00:48:40.110]that was multiple spots, side by side.
[00:48:43.170]We see, could easily pick it up on the yield maps.
[00:48:46.548]I actually think that
[00:48:48.608]no-till rye grain map is the best kept secret out there.
[00:48:54.198]Yeah.
[00:48:55.398]Say that again.
[00:48:56.238]He said the best-kept secret is plantin'
[00:48:57.568]soybeans after, cereal rye after corn,
[00:49:00.290]and then plantin' your soybeans in there.
[00:49:03.740]Plantin' green into cereal rye is a no-brainer
[00:49:06.130]is the way I put it.
[00:49:09.070]My biggest context is don't get in a hurry to
[00:49:11.170]terminate it unless you're goin' hot and dry.
[00:49:13.890]You know, if you're where I'm at up there,
[00:49:16.030]we can, we can burn the heck outta the moisture up front,
[00:49:20.330]but we, 99% of the time we'll get that big June rain,
[00:49:23.950]and replenish, you know,
[00:49:24.960]long as we can get it in the ground, we can use it.
[00:49:28.580]Question over here.
[00:49:33.278]How much would it hurt
[00:49:35.080]to graze that rye to start with in the spring
[00:49:38.720]before you're gettin' ready to plant your soybeans.
[00:49:41.770]If I had enough growth, you'd have free grazing.
[00:49:45.467]Like I said, you know, I'm far enough north of,
[00:49:47.430]if we, on a normal year,
[00:49:48.720]we'll probably get two, three inches,
[00:49:49.990]I don't know if that's worth runnin' a cow out there.
[00:49:52.380]But, you know, if, go back to that October picture
[00:49:55.327]of the innerseed cover crop and standing cornstalks.
[00:49:58.750]I've been offerin' that field for five years
[00:50:00.810]to people for free grazing, I can't get any takers.
[00:50:05.200]Question over there.
[00:50:06.760]Yeah, you mentioned
[00:50:07.620]the hybrid rye, have you harvested any of that
[00:50:10.530]in the relay cropping, and what kind of yield?
[00:50:13.050]Hybrid rye was an expensive cover crop experiment.
[00:50:17.151](laughter)
[00:50:20.320]With that said, I'm not givin' up.
[00:50:21.870]I mean, that's gonna be some of where we're goin' with 2020.
[00:50:25.560]The first thing we learned with hybrid rye
[00:50:27.430]is you've gotta treat it gentler than winter wheat probably.
[00:50:32.010]In our area, they're tellin' us that we wanna be
[00:50:34.071]puttin' the hybrid rye in by the first week of September.
[00:50:40.130]Well, this year we didn't start combinin' corn
[00:50:41.690]until November first, so we're gonna get creative,
[00:50:44.197]but if the stars align,
[00:50:46.280]chances are we're gonna have a robot runnin' this summer,
[00:50:49.500]and we'll be puttin' our hybrid rye
[00:50:51.080]in that first week of September.
[00:50:56.470]Do you put seed treatment
[00:50:58.090]on your soybeans when you plant that early?
[00:51:00.560]Everything's naked.
[00:51:03.300]I've seen enough data that if you really wanna talk
[00:51:06.990]to somebody on seed treatment, Cameron Mills,
[00:51:08.690]out of Indiana has some very compelling evidence
[00:51:12.230]on slugs and stuff like that.
[00:51:14.950]Side by side, no beans versus beans,
[00:51:17.576]and the biggest difference was the seed treatment.
[00:51:20.920]You take out all the beneficials, the slugs thrive.
[00:51:25.460]You know, we're, you might not be ready for it,
[00:51:28.360]but where our system is, we're evolved enough.
[00:51:30.740]You know, I don't see any advantage
[00:51:32.510]to seed treatment any more.
[00:51:33.940]Corn, on the other hand, you know, we did have a failure
[00:51:38.215]a bunch of that stuff out today.
[00:51:39.820]But we did a lot of open pollinated corn.
[00:51:42.120]We're startin' to look, we had an open pollinated corn plot,
[00:51:45.210]and five outta the eight varieties had zero stand.
[00:51:50.970]On corn we're a little more skeptical.
[00:51:52.830]I'll still use the basic seed treatment,
[00:51:56.610]but we're, you know, I don't know if I got that slide
[00:52:00.420]in here today, but I'm not afraid to tell people,
[00:52:02.625]2018 our cash outta pocket expenses
[00:52:05.750]was $100 an acre on corn, beans, wheat, rye, barley,
[00:52:08.694]you know, averaged across every acre,
[00:52:10.390]that's all we spent on a crop.
[00:52:13.410]I know my neighbors are spendin' over $100 an acre
[00:52:15.640]just on seed.
[00:52:19.230]When you're doin'
[00:52:20.063]with the relay cropping, how do you deal with the tracking
[00:52:23.143]on the combine equipment?
[00:52:25.687]How do we set up the combine to do the relay?
[00:52:29.653]Everything is 120 inch tram lines on our fields.
[00:52:34.550]We do have to break that cycle when we do the relay.
[00:52:37.983]You know we shift over 15 inches,
[00:52:39.360]so we still fit in between the rows,
[00:52:41.590]but that's kind of why we're doin' the precision covers.
[00:52:44.250]You know, the twin row covers and stuff like that.
[00:52:46.340]That gives us a gap to sneak in.
[00:52:49.500]But then like the IH planter, that's shifted over,
[00:52:52.410]the drill, that's shifted over.
[00:52:54.620]You know, everything is on 30 foot,
[00:52:56.330]but we change row spacings accordingly.
[00:52:59.250]I don't need three planters,
[00:53:00.770]but that's why I have three planters.
[00:53:02.453]Now, most of the time the tractor's on the same track.
[00:53:07.080]Other than when we're doin' the relay,
[00:53:08.700]then we do have, you know, if there's a standing crop there,
[00:53:10.620]I'm not gonna drive over that.
[00:53:11.730]We'll shift over and drive in between.
[00:53:16.970]What's the market for the rye?
[00:53:19.132]Cereal rye market is mostly the cover crop side.
[00:53:24.090]But with the hybrid rye there's supposed to be
[00:53:26.020]a feed mill lookin' at switchin' to a hybrid,
[00:53:28.660]or a cereal rye ration for hogs.
[00:53:33.280]And one of the companies we're workin' with,
[00:53:36.240]they're gonna be offerin' us a pretty good premium
[00:53:38.050]on our soybeans, so if I can do four to five dollars
[00:53:42.100]over Chicago on my soybeans and get a good market
[00:53:45.090]for the cereal rye, that's gonna be a pretty neat market
[00:53:48.900]if we can get that one goin'.
[00:53:54.810]I'll carry on here, hopefully we'll have a little time
[00:53:56.970]at the end yet.
[00:53:58.350]But you know, this is where I'm at today.
[00:54:01.050]Commodity production, you're gonna need to be
[00:54:02.640]low cost producer.
[00:54:04.130]Where we're at, long story short, says quality pays.
[00:54:06.780]Why grow commodity or feed?
[00:54:10.437]This is, everybody talks about plantin' green.
[00:54:13.090]This is combinin' green.
[00:54:15.140]That same field that we've kinda been talkin' about
[00:54:17.180]quite a bit.
[00:54:18.340]The week before, the soybeans were about that tall.
[00:54:21.840]The clover was that tall in there.
[00:54:24.760]I won't advise that one for everybody.
[00:54:26.710]You know, when I first started seein'
[00:54:28.010]what was happening, I called a friend of mine
[00:54:29.990]down in Southern Illinois, and he's like,
[00:54:32.177]"Hey, that clover's gonna scare the daylights
[00:54:33.847]"out of you, but you're gonna be all right."
[00:54:35.900]And I mean, them beans went 60 bushel an acre.
[00:54:39.880]But this is that field.
[00:54:41.560]40 bushel an acres cereal rye, 60 bushels soybeans,
[00:54:45.620]conservatively 12 bushel an acre.
[00:54:48.237]I pulled that $100 an acre seed chemical, fertilizer cost.
[00:54:53.620]Oh, we have to plant it twice, harvest it twice,
[00:54:55.800]so I'll do that for $100.
[00:54:57.800]Left us $1000 an acre for land cost and management.
[00:55:01.610]The biggest thing I like to stress,
[00:55:02.780]most of us farmers get paid for management
[00:55:04.910]and drivin' tractors.
[00:55:06.220]Why do we wanna give that all away?
[00:55:09.610]The old easy button.
[00:55:11.810]You know, yield becomes somewhat irrelevant
[00:55:13.590]when we've become the low-cost producer
[00:55:15.730]while producing quality products.
[00:55:19.720]Go after them premiums.
[00:55:20.750]I mean, if you watch on Twitter,
[00:55:22.450]we were in a heckuva battle last night.
[00:55:24.090]You know, a guy, "Oh you can't get them contracts."
[00:55:26.100]Yeah you can.
[00:55:27.330]You just gotta look for them.
[00:55:28.670]The biggest thing I'm tryin' to secure,
[00:55:30.120]so the people we're workin', I want a little security.
[00:55:33.290]You know, some of these guys we're dealin' with
[00:55:34.670]have an aversion to paperwork.
[00:55:35.850]So I wanna say make sure you cross your Ts and dot your Is
[00:55:39.170]if you're going that route.
[00:55:41.871]But you know, that's right where that combine
[00:55:43.910]was runnin' in that picture before.
[00:55:46.080]You know, that clover came back again.
[00:55:48.840]It'll be there again next year.
[00:55:51.500]But this is kinda, the what if section.
[00:55:56.680]You know, five years ago we started playin' with the,
[00:55:59.800]tryin' to figure out the in-row rolling.
[00:56:02.213]Well, the first day out we canned the project.
[00:56:05.613]We called in the reinforcements.
[00:56:07.550]Well, Mother Nature said the reinforcements
[00:56:09.460]ain't gonna show up.
[00:56:11.680]We had six foot tall cereal rye
[00:56:13.980]with corn about that tall in there.
[00:56:15.360]If you look real close,
[00:56:16.270]you can see the corn row right there.
[00:56:19.660]Most of you guys know, cereal rye and corn
[00:56:21.280]ain't very good friends,
[00:56:22.120]especially when the rye goes down over top of it.
[00:56:25.010]You know, and I seen that happen.
[00:56:26.060]We had 200 acres.
[00:56:27.910]I laid awake at night one night,
[00:56:28.852]and about 2:00 in the morning it hit me.
[00:56:31.300]We had all the right parts and pieces,
[00:56:32.950]I just had 'em bolted up wrong.
[00:56:35.200]So I went out to the shop that morn, right away there,
[00:56:37.783]at 2:00 in the morning.
[00:56:39.370]Six hours later the drill rolled out of the shop.
[00:56:42.070]We saved 200 acres of corn that day.
[00:56:44.457]That's just kind of a close up of what we're,
[00:56:47.670]Now we're gatherin' that cereal rye in,
[00:56:49.320]and makin' our residue mat in between.
[00:56:51.760]That's how we're gettin' by now without the herbicide
[00:56:54.300]in between the rows where can smother 'em, stuff like that.
[00:56:58.230]But there's a fine line when you're testin'.
[00:57:00.870]You can go too far.
[00:57:03.623]If you were at the field day in June,
[00:57:04.770]this was the day after.
[00:57:06.590]Loran got a little brave.
[00:57:08.880]Gramoxone and corn do not mix,
[00:57:14.370]over 80 degrees.
[00:57:16.280]Under 80 degrees, you can get by with a lot.
[00:57:18.400]But if you think dicamba volatizes,
[00:57:20.440]gramoxone really volatizes.
[00:57:23.840]But this is kinda, this year we kinda seen
[00:57:29.210]what was happenin' with the clover
[00:57:30.210]and I wanted to make sure I had a separate way
[00:57:31.660]to management, so we hurried up
[00:57:32.900]and built ourself a hooded sprayer.
[00:57:35.240]And now we are going in
[00:57:37.110]between the rows, that's what it looked like
[00:57:39.070]the day we sprayed gramoxone on that corn.
[00:57:43.130]We just sneaked down in between the rows,
[00:57:44.920]take out the clover.
[00:57:46.080]It's pretty dang neat 'cause the gramoxone
[00:57:48.480]is just like cuttin' it off.
[00:57:49.560]Two weeks later the clover is comin' back,
[00:57:52.680]just like it was part of our innerseed program.
[00:57:58.540]The neat part about that field, this is the field,
[00:58:01.610]we left a 12 row check strip,
[00:58:03.520]'cause that's where we were gonna test the row mow
[00:58:05.467]and the in-row roller.
[00:58:08.520]But part of the program we're involved in,
[00:58:10.817]and we do a lot of testing right now,
[00:58:12.750]this is a university test we'll talk about shorter, shortly.
[00:58:15.630]But just on that side we produced
[00:58:19.200]an extra 40 pounds of nitrogen.
[00:58:22.430]Where we delayed terminated, even later,
[00:58:25.160]we produced 80 pounds of nitrogen.
[00:58:28.410]So started thinkin', how can we get the cover crops to pay?
[00:58:31.130]Make 'em work for us.
[00:58:32.387]You know, that was five pounds of seed in 2017,
[00:58:36.704]producin' them kind of results.
[00:58:39.950]But the other neat thing that we figured out this year
[00:58:42.880]with the gramoxone, I'll back up to this one,
[00:58:45.960]knowing what I know now, after lookin' at the yield map,
[00:58:49.820]I won't be in a hurry to use the gramoxone again.
[00:58:53.070]Just for that simple fact,
[00:58:54.200]I want that extra 40 units of nitrogen.
[00:58:57.400]But the big picture of that whole field was,
[00:59:00.060]I had $8 an acre herbicide program for non-GMO corn,
[00:59:04.620]but the key part is we're extending
[00:59:06.430]that carbon sequestration period.
[00:59:09.650]It's cycling that carbon all the time.
[00:59:14.260]But back to, you seen the kids pullin' samples in the field,
[00:59:17.800]this is a part of a multi-cropping Iowa test data
[00:59:20.370]that we're involved with.
[00:59:21.820]A lot of mumbo-jumbo, but the key part down here
[00:59:24.260]is they're suggesting, and in this field's four years,
[00:59:27.427]we're on par beating native soils.
[00:59:31.570]They went in the native timber and native grasslands,
[00:59:35.220]pulled the samples and compared 'em to these fields
[00:59:37.940]that we're workin' on.
[00:59:39.800]And we're on par or better than native soils.
[00:59:44.660]Another little thing I wanted to make sure I touch on,
[00:59:46.900]I know it's topic has been the 60 inch corn,
[00:59:50.116]for some reason again.
[00:59:52.000]We've been working with Bob Rucker for probably,
[00:59:55.790]I think goin' on 12 years now.
[00:59:57.950]But this is Bob's bar code plot.
[01:00:00.540]If you wanna ask questions on the 60 inch corn,
[01:00:03.260]we'll cover that in the end here.
[01:00:05.380]But biggest thing on the cover crop aspect
[01:00:08.470]I wanted to point out, if you're lookin' at 60 inch corn,
[01:00:11.270]right there's your bang for the buck.
[01:00:14.050]That's the take-home.
[01:00:14.883]If you're gettin' into 60 inch corn for yield,
[01:00:17.750]you're in the wrong market.
[01:00:19.030]If you wanna do the soil health benefit,
[01:00:20.670]or producin' your own nitrogen, or cover crop benefit,
[01:00:23.800]for grazing or something like that,
[01:00:25.700]then we can talk.
[01:00:27.190]This is side-by-side essentially,
[01:00:29.050]30 inch same seeding mix, versus 60 inch.
[01:00:34.900]All that is leading up to the new frontier,
[01:00:36.850]where I think we're goin'.
[01:00:38.230]And I'll probably scare people when I tell everybody
[01:00:40.560]we're, you know, part of my job right now
[01:00:42.090]is to look into making no-till organics work.
[01:00:48.500]Our little project started out in April the other year.
[01:00:51.880]We frost-seeded clover, kinda the quick and dirty,
[01:00:54.630]let's make a test plot.
[01:00:56.880]My daughter was real happy that day,
[01:00:58.270]but this plot was never destined for harvest.
[01:01:02.800]This is plantin' June 16th or 17th, if I remember right.
[01:01:06.460]We had the Dawn ZRX roller in there,
[01:01:09.430]but that's the bio mass we had.
[01:01:11.890]You know, that year we didn't start plantin'
[01:01:13.360]until May 16th, the frost,
[01:01:17.047]the snow left about a week before,
[01:01:18.780]so that's about 45 days growth at the most,
[01:01:22.440]with the clovers.
[01:01:24.170]But that year, there was our backup plan (laughter).
[01:01:32.900]We did get the row mow out there finally,
[01:01:34.790]once it got done test, for the final test.
[01:01:38.300]Most of those people are gonna look at me
[01:01:40.040]and tell me that field is ugly.
[01:01:42.380]I tell everybody they're right,
[01:01:43.580]but that's probably the most educational test field
[01:01:46.064]I've ever had.
[01:01:48.380]If you start lookin' around here,
[01:01:49.780]you'll see kinda some darker green areas.
[01:01:53.160]That's where we're startin' to pay attention to.
[01:01:56.600]But here's just a quick and dirty on the row,
[01:01:59.160]this is one of the things we've been testing.
[01:02:00.630]We're gonna mow in between the rows, stuff like that.
[01:02:03.310]This was the impeller we ran last year.
[01:02:06.420]This was a version we introduced a year ago.
[01:02:09.200]That one never made it outta the test stand.
[01:02:11.390]The biggest problem with a lot of these is power management.
[01:02:16.430]You know, people don't realize how much power it takes,
[01:02:18.770]and hydraulics is the least efficient method
[01:02:22.270]of transferring power.
[01:02:23.300]So we're playin' with that.
[01:02:26.160]But this is a version we ran this summer.
[01:02:29.580]And the day I blew that up is the day
[01:02:32.014]we finally got the go-ahead that the in-row rolling
[01:02:34.550]is probably gonna take the forefront.
[01:02:36.600]It's simpler, cheaper, easier, you know, functional,
[01:02:40.610]you can fix it, you can make it work.
[01:02:43.500]Where, you know, this is,
[01:02:44.820]I probably better not say the price on this,
[01:02:46.735]but it's gonna be a fraction of what the mowers would be.
[01:02:50.320]Nearest I've heard, the one guy sellin' a mower
[01:02:52.630]for $7500 a row.
[01:02:55.010]This is a fraction of that.
[01:02:58.190]But that's what we're gonna hopefully test
[01:03:00.270]in the next week or two down in Louisiana.
[01:03:03.310]If that passes a test, I mean, it's a proven concept,
[01:03:06.010]so it shouldn't be too hard.
[01:03:07.380]You know, this is the same roller as the Dawn ZRX,
[01:03:10.090]the original version.
[01:03:11.480]Basically all we gotta worry about
[01:03:12.810]is it gonna wrap or stuff like that?
[01:03:14.650]So hopefully here in a couple weeks,
[01:03:16.700]we'll know if that's gonna come to market.
[01:03:19.160]But for me it's kind of a pride and joy,
[01:03:20.690]I've been working on it for about five years now.
[01:03:23.990]But, how many guys would be proud of that
[01:03:25.700]as their cornfield?
[01:03:31.350]You're still a university guy, right?
[01:03:34.840]Are we supposed to have a clean, green period,
[01:03:37.730]or a weed-free period?
[01:03:39.810]Yep.
[01:03:40.960]This would prove you wrong.
[01:03:43.190]Corn is in there, right there.
[01:03:45.023]It's about yay tall right now.
[01:03:47.590]That's clover right before it heads out.
[01:03:50.950]There's after the first pass of the roller.
[01:03:56.991]This is on the test plot where the kid was pullin' samples.
[01:04:01.600]Where I'm at today is I'm startin' to think
[01:04:04.020]we need to figure out how to create a sufficient
[01:04:07.230]lack of nitrogen, you know, the ground's gotta be hungry.
[01:04:10.030]The legumes gotta be hungry to keep feedin' that system.
[01:04:14.910]And nitrogen to me is like crack to corn,
[01:04:19.090]just need to figure out how to balance that, movin' forward.
[01:04:21.750]And that's somethin' workin' on this summer,
[01:04:25.480]but start studying, you know, Christine Jones.
[01:04:30.290]John Kemp was talkin' about it pretty good
[01:04:31.780]at No-Till on the Plains.
[01:04:34.540]Nicole Masters, another one to really
[01:04:35.910]be payin' attention to on some of this stuff.
[01:04:39.520]But back to our test field.
[01:04:41.960]Last spring I was really intrigued when we started seeing
[01:04:45.020]these dark green patches like that.
[01:04:47.160]The context of this field is,
[01:04:48.700]its only input is seed.
[01:04:51.670]It's corn on corn, no-till organic.
[01:04:56.310]We're tryin' to see how far we can push it,
[01:04:58.070]but all of a sudden, we had corn poppin'
[01:05:00.057]like you applied nitrogen to it,
[01:05:02.100]and we're tryin' to figure out,
[01:05:04.180]when we wanna start doin' the data testing and that
[01:05:06.810]to figure out exactly what.
[01:05:08.070]I think I got some pretty good ideals,
[01:05:09.510]but pay attention to that stuff,
[01:05:11.330]'cause that's what that corn looked like
[01:05:12.670]a couple weeks later.
[01:05:14.810]Right after pollination, pretty nice ears on there.
[01:05:19.638]Quick and dirty number on that field was 147 bushel an acre.
[01:05:24.530]But remember, that's a test field,
[01:05:25.527]and we slaughtered a pretty good chunk of it.
[01:05:28.340]I hope one of these days I gotta get time
[01:05:30.310]to get the yield map.
[01:05:32.130]But the guy that combined it said that she was
[01:05:33.780]goin' over 200 pretty easily in quite a few areas.
[01:05:38.090]What is your ideal?
[01:05:39.907]What?
[01:05:40.740]What is the ideal that you have
[01:05:42.345]about what's happening?
[01:05:43.610]It's that whole corn sensing thing
[01:05:45.050]that Christine Jones and that's talkin' about.
[01:05:47.270]He asked what's the ideal that we're workin' on.
[01:05:49.443]I mean, we're workin' with a few companies,
[01:05:52.300]they wanted to come out and pull samples.
[01:05:54.380]We didn't let 'em pull samples for the the simple fact
[01:05:56.487]they wanted access to all of what they find.
[01:06:00.020]So we kinda held off on that.
[01:06:02.010]You know, we're movin' that plot home this year,
[01:06:03.890]so I'll have total control of it.
[01:06:06.870]But we're gonna see if we,
[01:06:08.360]I'm keepin' that plot goin'.
[01:06:09.788]It's goin' third year corn on corn,
[01:06:11.340]just to see what happens.
[01:06:13.030]But we're gonna expand it at home,
[01:06:14.910]try to see if we can duplicate what we're seein' there
[01:06:16.900]before we get too excited.
[01:06:19.520]But you know, a lot of the experts are tellin' us
[01:06:22.260]we should be able to get,
[01:06:23.093]you know if we get our soils fully functioning,
[01:06:24.750]we should not need to apply nitrogen.
[01:06:27.210]I think we're startin' to see it.
[01:06:29.407]How much after,
[01:06:30.359]how long after you plant do you roll?
[01:06:35.640]In this picture, I mean, that was.
[01:06:40.310]Repeat the question.
[01:06:41.480]He asked how long we're waitin' to roll it
[01:06:43.020]after the corn emergents.
[01:06:44.130]I mean, we're wingin' it.
[01:06:46.540]This is what we did this year.
[01:06:48.190]I've got a few ideals to try to figure out
[01:06:49.850]what to do better next year.
[01:06:51.290]What V?
[01:06:53.033]I would say V3, V4 right there.
[01:06:55.300]You know, basically when we would be innerseeding
[01:06:57.585]is when we rolled that clovers down.
[01:07:00.740]But Rick Clark in Indiana, he shredded everything
[01:07:04.220]over the top and then
[01:07:05.053]he mowed it in between, similar results.
[01:07:07.850]Let's hold questions
[01:07:09.150]until after lunch with him, so we stay on time.
[01:07:11.850]Okay, got time for a few more?
[01:07:15.470]Few more slides.
[01:07:16.303]Okay, we're almost done.
[01:07:17.810]But get back on track here.
[01:07:20.320]But common denominator is management makes the difference.
[01:07:25.403]The biggest thing is we're trying to set up
[01:07:27.340]to manage a living, continuous carbon stream.
[01:07:30.498]Another reference to Australia, eight to one carbon ratio
[01:07:34.010]is kind of the key thing to remember.
[01:07:36.140]For every gram of carbon we can hold in the soil,
[01:07:38.900]we can hold eight grams of water.
[01:07:40.800]That would bring you full circle
[01:07:42.610]to that test we talked about earlier.
[01:07:46.460]But here's where we're at right now.
[01:07:48.370]This is that original field that we talked about.
[01:07:50.950]Down here we have the months of the year.
[01:07:52.590]We're going to three year cycle here.
[01:07:54.490]Your average corn and bean producer down here on the bottom,
[01:07:57.260]what I want you to focus on is the sunlight.
[01:08:00.190]That's that peak carbon sequestration period,
[01:08:02.250]according to Kris Nichols.
[01:08:06.310]If we're addin' cereal crop in the fall,
[01:08:09.740]very long vegetative period.
[01:08:12.530]Followed by soybeans, that five to six weeks,
[01:08:16.110]right before pollination.
[01:08:18.550]But then if we get the right year,
[01:08:19.890]we're comin' in with that buckwheat overlapping
[01:08:22.830]the volunteer cover crop.
[01:08:24.330]So we're goin' for seed quality,
[01:08:25.910]so we're settin' the combine a little tight, blowin' over.
[01:08:29.468]Followin' with the corn, then the innerseed cover crop mix
[01:08:33.918]showin' up there, corn and soybeans.
[01:08:38.069]But the biggest thing is now,
[01:08:39.520]bringing out that perennial,
[01:08:40.580]so we got two different streams of carbon
[01:08:42.760]comin' in at the same time.
[01:08:45.292]And that's all possible 'cause we're focused
[01:08:47.150]on suppression, not termination,
[01:08:49.360]for maximum carbon sequestration.
[01:08:51.700]I'm gonna leave you guys with these thoughts.
[01:08:53.820]Most of you guys are focused on the barrel, law of minimum.
[01:08:57.490]Where I think we should be focused
[01:08:58.730]on the condition of the barrel.
[01:09:01.173]You know, we gotta figure out how to plug the leaks
[01:09:03.250]before we start figurin' out,
[01:09:06.060]'cause, you know, back to Jill Clapperton,
[01:09:07.880]she'd tell you we're runnin' a leaky system.
[01:09:11.310]Figurin' out how to get that carbon in the soil
[01:09:12.373]is helpin' us plug the leaks.
[01:09:15.360]And here we go, how something appears
[01:09:18.300]is always a matter of perspective.
[01:09:21.970]There's my contact information.
[01:09:24.836]If you need to get a hold of me, I usually have,
[01:09:26.830]you might have to text me.
[01:09:27.900]It's probably the simplest,
[01:09:29.250]and then I'll try to get back to you.
[01:09:30.280]But Facebook or Twitter's pretty good avenue.
[01:09:34.100]Let's give Loran a round of applause.
[01:09:35.410]Thanks, Loran. (applause)
[01:09:36.243]Thanks, Loran.
[01:09:37.076](applause)

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2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

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