Jan. 20, 2022 Edition

 


“One time when I was playing poker, I thought I had a full house.  Turned out that I only had two pair!  Nobody let me off the hook; I still had to pay for that mistake!” – North Dakota farm producer

We all make mistakes and yes, mistakes usually cost money at the end of the day.  However, it’s the learning we get from making those mistakes that is the most valuable.  It’s the winter season and even though we’ve done the winter planning numerous times before, it’s always key to confirm where our business is at and where it’s headed towards to minimize any mistakes down the road (more on this below).

During the growing season, I usually let our regional Pioneer customers drive most of the activity we converse about in this newsletter, but as we get into the winter season, I try to find good topics to help improve our businesses, improve crop productivity, and/or give a glimpse into the future.  Therefore, I’ll hit these topics this month: winter planning, potassium fertilizer, NCGA corn yield contest winners, and a broadacre technology update.

 

 

Winter Planning

FarmWeekNow.com had a great article on the evaluation of a farm business with a “health check-up”.  This list can look awful intimidating at first glance (https://bit.ly/FarmTest), but I’d guess many of you have several of these items already accomplished.  From my understanding, it was developed as a template for all successful farms to strive towards to make their business more robust and to measure an individual farm’s performance against the leading farms of the country. 

Some of our businesses are still fairly young and growing and thus may have a lot of work to accomplish on this list, and other healthy mature farms probably have most of these addressed.  Regardless of where your business is at, giving this list a review and then getting some key partners in on the discussion should lead to a productive business session.

https://www.farmweeknow.com/...new-year-great-time-for-farm-business-checkup...

 

 

Nexat Technology

It’s not every day that we read, hear or see something relating to the next big ag technology in farming.  Of course, there are always questions to the validity of such claims and/or how long it will take for the technology to become prevalent enough to be accepted as the next wave.  However, this proposal has some merit and has been in testing in eastern Europe (Ukraine) since at least 2019.  I’m not going to take anything away from autonomous machinery, but I think this “Nexat” technology should have some significant short-term influence in our broad acre farms.

Basically, up until this point in history of raising agricultural commodity crops, we’ve had the system of horsepower being connected to an implement to accomplish the desired field level task.  Yes, we’ve had self-propelled sprayers and especially combines for a while now, but what if every pass in the field was under a self-propelled interchangeable setup?

Meet the NEXAT:

·         Next-generation Agriculture Technology

·         14-meter (46 ft) wide power unit

·         Has several generators that are powered by two independently controlled 550 horsepower engines

·         Functions with the ability to create a self-propelled unit no matter the task – tillage, planting, spraying or harvesting

·         Less physical weight than traditional equipment, and thus less material is needed for attachments – improves cost effectiveness

·         More fuel efficient than tractors with implements

·         Very even residue distribution demonstrated over a 50 ft wide corn head (with 27.5” row spacing)

·         Over 1,000 bu harvest holding capacity that can be emptied in under 60 seconds (17 bu/sec)

·         Easily utilized to maximize controlled traffic farming – CTF (https://www.agric.wa.govv/...controlled-traffic-tramline-farming-system)

·         Working widths of 6 to 24 meter (20 to 79 ft) – planting, tillage and harvesting

·         Maximum 70-meter (230 ft) boom width for spray applications

·         Website: www.nexat.de and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDyDPdf9Dyo

Supposedly, they will have a demo unit in North America this upcoming summer.  It will be interesting to see where and what type of hype it garners.

 

 

Potassium Fertility in North Dakota

Any region big or small is going to experience variability across the area.  Many of us don’t think about these changes, but the changes are significant and can be exploited to generate more financial opportunities.  One example in our ag businesses would be the benefit from different management practices from one field or farm to another.

When it comes to soils and crop fertility, it’s these variable differences from field to field or even within the same field that really make the art of crop fertility a true challenge.  Yeah, I guess a guy could just over fertilize every acre and thus remove any type of potential fertilizer deficiency as a crop limiting factor on every square foot of soil.  However, I’m sure sooner or later the banker would respond with some financial recommendations of his own.

When it comes to potassium fertility in corn, NDSU has done some fantastic work in fine-tuning their recommendation based on soil clay content.  Basically, they evaluated those soils higher in smectite clay require more exchangeable potassium.  Soils with higher smectite clay content will shrink and swell with the addition/subtraction of available soil moisture.  Even though these soils may test high in available potassium (over 150 ppm K), they more tightly hold potassium and thus provide a positive crop response to the addition of potash fertilizer.

The NDSU soil science team has developed the following map (illustration) and potassium calculator (weblink) for farm managers and crop consultants to manage through the situation.  Basically, it states that if you farm soils in or near the dark shaded area of North Dakota that are high to very high in clay content, then we should more closely evaluate our potassium recommendations for corn and probably other crops as well.


In a nutshell, you may consider added potash fertilizer for most all crops in these situations:

·         Crop yields that are habitually under-achieving expectations

·         You have fields or significant zones within fields of high to very high clay content that are prone to shrinking when very dry (with deep soil cracks) and swelling when very wet

·         Soils that test under or around 200 ppm potassium

Conversely, if you have sandy fields with low cation exchange capacity (CEC), these soils should be closely monitored for potassium as well.  Low CEC soils testing under 150 ppm available K should have potash supplemented regularly since they will not be able to hold potassium in the soil solution (prone to leaching potassium when in excess).

https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/soils/corn_k/

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/publications/crops/north-dakota-clay-mineralogy...



David Hula Does It Again!

Well, the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) has announced their annual winners for state and national categories for the 2021 cropping season.  This year’s overall top yielding corn farmer in the U.S. is starting to create a status of legendary fame.  David Hula once again topped the 600 bu/ac mark with his national winning entry with Pioneer’s P1222YHR hybrid (although not a record, see list below).  Mr. Hula has set the last three national corn yield records over the past seven years and his 616 bu/ac performance from the 2019 growing season still stands as the all-time corn yield record.

List of prior NCGA winners:

2014: Randy Dowdy – Georgia – 503 bu/ac – * set new record; first to exceed 500 bu/ac

2015: David Hula – Virginia – 534 bu/ac * set new record

2016: Randy Dowdy – Georgia – 521 bu/ac

2017: David Hula – Virginia – 542 bu/ac * set new record

2018: Don Stall – Michigan – 477 bu/ac

2019: David Hula – Virginia – 616 bu/ac * current record holder; first to exceed 600 bu/ac

2020: Don Stall – Michigan – 477 bu/ac

2021: David Hula – Virginia – 602 bu/ac

It was probably only 12-15 years ago that many industry-leading corn breeders thought the genetic yield potential was about 500-600 bu/ac maximum from any given hybrid.  Leave it to the American farmer to show ingenuity and determination to top even the expert’s expectations!

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2021/12/15/602-bpa-field-earns-hula-top-honors

For NCGA state winners in North Dakota and Minnesota, we have the following:

·         Non-Irrigated MN: Chris Sobeck of Winona at 309 bu/ac under the no-till category with DKC60-80RIB

·         Irrigated MN: Fred Bauer of Hastings at 307 bu/ac (no-till) with P0720AM

·         Non-Irrigated ND: Betty Huber of Berlin at 299 bu/ac with DKC45-66RIB

·         Irrigated ND: John Hofer of Milnor at 289 bu/ac with DKC50-08RIB

https://www.ncga.com/get-involved/national-corn-yield-contest

Congratulations to all the NCGA participants and winners for the 2021 cropping season, and “Good Luck” in the upcoming 2022 season!

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