October 28, 2024 • 42 mins
Unlock the secrets to enriching small farm nutrition and maximizing crop yields with our special guest, Dan Peterson, a regional agronomist from AgroLiquid. Dan brings an exciting blend of expertise in agriculture and a love for music, sharing how liquid fertilizers can revolutionize small farm operations. You’ll leave with a deeper understanding of how products like AgroLiquid can offer an efficient and economically sound approach to nourishing your crops, while maintaining soil health throughout the growing season.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Just Say hey.
The podcast.
A podcast where we talk aboutthe things that matter to small
farms.
You know why?
Because we are a small farm.
Today's really cool.
I've got a guy sitting herenext to me, a regional
agronomist for AgroLiquid.
They're a liquid fertilizermanufacturer, but one of the
things we like well, several ofthe things we like about them.
First, they put a lot ofscience behind their product and
(00:20):
do a lot of continual studies.
But the most important thing tous as a farmer, we've seen some
major turnarounds in our cropand I attribute a lot of the
success we have had to the useof their products.
So let's get into it today.
Welcome to Just Say hey.
The podcast where we talk aboutwhat matters to small farms,
(00:41):
whether it's business, marketing, agronomy, equipment, livestock
health.
If it matters to small farms,we'll probably talk about it
here.
So let's get into it.
Welcome back.
So sitting next to me here isDan Peterson.
He is the field agronomymanager for the Midwest.
Is that, technically, yourtitle?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, close enough.
Regional agronomist.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I saw all the things across your name that looks like
a doctor.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, well, I'm a certified crop advisor and a
certified sustainabilityspecialist Very cool.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I'm going to throw a question at you that I asked you
earlier, because I think it'sfun, and it's just going to be
fun, I'm going to throw it backat you what's your favorite
music album?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Tapestry by Carole King.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You know, carole man, what a great songwriter, and we
shared her off the podcast.
We both I was, I was in themusic business for a long time
and share a passion for music.
You said your kids were intomusic too and what you know.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
So I know farming was a passion as well, and so
that's it's kind of weird tomeet somebody that has the same
two passions when I walked intoyour, into your studio, into
your office, and saw that musicproduction equipment, like, okay
, I'm definitely going to haveto get to know you, john.
We share that passion for music.
But we are also discoveringthat we share a passion for
(01:56):
forages.
And that's going to be excitinggoing forward, because I think
you're on a very interestingpath here.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
On what you're trying to do with alfalfa and grass
forages, sharon, that need foran economically balanced
approach to nutrition, becausewe've talked about that from the
agronomic side.
We know what it needs.
But you also have to balancehow do we afford it?
And agri-liquid, at least in myexperience so far, has really
helped me get a little bitbetter economically on the farm.
(02:41):
How to get those nutrients tothe plant in a more economical
way.
Better economically on the farm, how to get those nutrients to
the plant in a more economicalway.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Dry fertilizers yes, we need them, right, but dry
fertilizers are very inefficientwhen it comes to getting into
the plant itself.
Okay, they have to be dissolvedin soil moisture for the roots
to take up any of the nutrition.
But when that happens, they'rereactive with other elements of
(03:05):
the soil, phosphorus inparticular, and so you start
getting this tie-up, and so weonly get 10% to 30% efficiency
out of dry fertilizers.
Well, with forages, they'regrowing rapidly and you're
taking multiple cuttings, soyou're getting multiple crops,
so they need that nutritionevery time you're going to be
(03:27):
taking a cutting, and so how canwe make that more efficient?
Well, one of the things thatwe've discovered with AgroLiquid
is that our products can besoil applied, yes, but they're
very, very efficient when youput them on as a foliar
application.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So we can use less actual nutrition and get more
nutrition on a per acre basis.
For example, Right Fewer poundsof a nutrient like phosphorus
or potassium and actually useless of it, but get more into
the crop itself, get more intothe plant Right and they respond
to that.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And we've noticed it into the plant Right and they
respond to that and we'venoticed it.
I mean, I know, again beginningfarmer, I've noticed things.
Like you know, applyingfertilizer will apply in the
fall.
It takes a long time for thatfertilizer to break down and
become available to the plant,Correct, and so we've originally
looked at agri-liquid as a wayto solve an immediate problem.
We see a deficiency in a fieldand we need to fix it
(04:25):
immediately.
Well, dry fertilizer can't dothat.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Correct.
Yeah, we like to look at it interms of the dry fertilizer is a
soil amendment, use it tocorrect a long-term, to correct
a deficiency, say to build up apotassium deficiency.
Right, and we know forages usea lot of potassium.
But we look at agri-liquidapplied as a foliar.
(04:49):
As we're feeding this crop thiscutting or this year, we're
giving it what it needs rightnow.
Well, we're not necessarilyfeeding it for the future, we're
feeding it for what we needright now.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And that's interesting because the way I
think about it is you know, theguy out there in the field every
day mowing and raking andbaling and all of that.
The way I've thought of it isexactly that way that the soil
is, basically I want to be ableto give that plant everything it
needs to survive and then, whenit's done for the season, I
will have taken as little out ofthat soil as possible.
(05:24):
So I leave my soil in thatgreat condition it was in before
the season started, instead ofthinking about I'm just going to
deplete the soil and then I'mgoing to refeed it and then I'm
going to deplete the soil again.
Is that an accurate way for meto think about it?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It is.
And while we always considerdry fertilizers as a tool in our
toolbox, you have to look atthe economic side.
And how much are we spending onfertilizer, especially in the
face of low crop prices and soon and so forth?
And fertilizer can be a majorexpense, oh yeah, you know,
regardless of crops, butespecially on forages, because
(05:57):
when we remove the whole plant,we're taking a lot of nutrition
off of the field, right.
So how do we deal with that?
We're taking a lot of nutritionoff of the field, right.
So how do we deal with that?
We have discovered that in ourresearch that when we replace
some of that nutrition as afoliar okay, so you're putting
in nutrition into this cropRight Now, you remove it, now
you repeat the process for thenext cutting.
(06:18):
In the meantime, that plant isdrawing less from the soil,
right?
So we have found thatoftentimes when we bring in an
agro-liquid foliar program, wecan start reducing our dry
fertilizer.
In fact, we have customers whomonitor their fields quite
closely and have for years, andthey've used agro-liquid for
years and they have found thatthey have been able to drop
(06:40):
their dry fertilizersubstantially.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Right, because this past year was the first.
I think we did a test two yearsago, but this was really the
first year that we've usedagri-liquid as a major component
of our fertilizer plan.
We still do dry fertilizer.
We still replace that potash.
Potash is a good one to put onwhen the price is right, but
balancing that economic needwith that nutritional need and
(07:03):
sometimes it's a balancing actbecause you have X number of
dollars and the plant needs thiswhere do you sacrifice?
And we found, at least in ourexperience thus far, that we are
spending less money on overallnutrition than we were the year
(07:24):
before, right.
So you know, especially asfertilizer prices have gone
through the roof Now they'vekind of settled a little bit,
but you know it's still prettyexpensive and still not back to
2018 levels.
So you know we were talkingbefore we jumped on here about.
You know, we really talked to alot of small farmers in that
(07:44):
two, five, 10, 50, 100 acre kindof guys.
How can a person that's runningan operation that's that size
really take advantage ofagri-liquid as a product?
Looking at that same dry versusliquid.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
That's a really good question and I would say the
versatility of our productscomes to the top and our
packaging.
So, whether it's a tote, twoand a half gallon jugs are very
convenient for these smallerguys.
They don't have to worry aboutbringing in any kind of storage
tank or anything like that.
So we have flexibility with ourpackaging.
That makes it convenient.
(08:18):
Some of our products are blendsalready packaged.
For example, Fertorain is justan outstanding foliar product
for alfalfa grass haze,especially small grains.
But looking at, say, a mixedgrass alfalfa blend or a
(08:39):
straight grass blend, Fertorainis terrific.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
No, that's one of the products that we use.
In fact we worked with someother small farms using that
product.
It was interesting.
It was already pre-blend, madeit easy, right.
But from their point of view,you can't get the big fertilizer
companies to come look at afour-acre patch.
They can't get their equipmentin and turn it around because
they're running such largeequipment Right, and you can put
it on with a small sprayer.
(09:03):
You know a lot of these peopleare also growing vegetable
gardens.
They could easily put that asfertigation into an irrigation
of a small vegetable garden,correct.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's a 12% nitrogen, 3% phosphorus, 3% potassium,
1.5% sulfur and then somemanganese as well, and really
those nutrients are all neededby grasses in particular, right.
But they also work very well onWe've had great success with
them on tomatoes, right.
A lot of our customers that areputting for rain or other of
our products on, say, an alfalfafield or grass field, they uh
(09:45):
will take some of that in thesmaller about, just put it in a
hand sprayer and use it othergardens, you know, and it was
pretty good stuff so we werewalking a field earlier today
and you were telling me about,you know, working with a lot of
different forage guys and thatyou've worked.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
You know really been passionate about the forage side
because, let's face it, thereis a lot of different forage
guys, and that you've worked.
You know really been passionateabout the forage side Cause,
let's face it, there is a lot ofguys doing corn and beans,
especially down in our area.
The vast majority of farms thatare commercial scale are corn
and beans.
When you get to the smallerscale guys, we're doing a lot of
little things to make a farmwork, whether you're running
livestock, whether we're we'redoing vegetables, we're doing
(10:22):
pumpkins.
I've got a friend who doespumpkins and some vegetables in
the summer.
So we have to figure out waysto become economically viable on
a super small scale.
So we look at least in ouroperation and we're getting to
where we're larger.
I mean we're about 850 acres offorage and that's a lot of
(10:44):
throwing bales.
Yeah, imagine being a kid doingthat with 50-pound bales or
something.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Hey, when I was a teenager I got heat exhaustion
throwing small bales up in anA-mile on a 95-degree day.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I got to ask you how much did you get paid to bale?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I just got paid by the hour.
Oh, I got paid $1.50 an hour.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I worked for a guy down the road here when I was a
kid and we got I think we gotfive cents a bale, a nickel a
bale and I remember another guypaid me 10 cents and I thought I
was king of the world 10 centsa bale I'm going to take over
the world.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Well, you talked about how can we help these
smaller farmers.
What I find interesting is thatin the course of my career I
saw so many traditional familyfarms.
You know I'm from Wisconsin soit's called the dairy state for
good reason.
At one point in time 90% of allfarms in Wisconsin had dairy.
Obviously, today that's shiftedand you know I've watched in
(11:40):
the course of my career farmafter farm after farm after farm
get sold, get rented out andcow herds get sold and now we've
got these grand old dairy barnssitting empty.
But there's been a kind of aninteresting movement.
We would lament the loss of thefamily farm and what also has
(12:00):
happened is land prices havegone very high, equipment prices
are very high.
What's an entry point forsomeone who wants to get into
agriculture, who wants to dofarming at some scale.
Maybe it's going to be apart-time endeavor, but we've
seen the rise of the craftbrewing industry, the
(12:20):
microbreweries, right.
We've seen the rise of thecraft distilleries We've like in
Wisconsin there's severaldistilleries that are now farm
to bottle, which is afascinating thing.
But vegetable gardening, maybespecialty livestock like goats,
for example.
Now we have smaller scale Now.
(12:42):
Maybe it's an entry point.
That's right For somebody to getin, and we'll call it craft
farming.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, you know we were talking about this before
the podcast that it's hard for ayoung guy to get started.
I talked to a guy the other dayhe's a friend of mine, he's
probably third or fourthgeneration here, works for the
family farm during harvest Worksbut has an off-farm job and
(13:10):
then on the side runs, you know,does vegetables and pumpkins
and stuff like that, and he'strying to make his own way,
doesn't have a, you know, noneof the family because they row
crop.
They don't have that.
You know that equipment thatyou need on the small scale.
So it's difficult but notimpossible, right?
So you know, we see you readarticle after article after
article of people saying, oh, weneed to change our food
industry, we need to buy local.
(13:30):
And the big challenge isgetting the consumer to follow
through and actually buy local,because there is a growing
industry of having a vegetablegarden down the road.
Buy your vegetables from them.
We go out of our way to buy oureggs from local farmers, go out
of our way to try, during theseason, buy vegetables.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And if you're one of these local, we'll call it a
craft farmer.
Now you're not going to getserved very well by the larger
farm supply companies, theretail farm supply companies,
because you mentioned it earlierlarge equipment they sell
thousands and thousands of tonsof fertilizer, you know crop
protection chemicals in largevolumes.
(14:09):
You know you can't bring in acustom application machine with
120 foot boom On four acres.
Because it doesn't work.
That's right.
So people like that are caughtin a kind of a between a rock
and a hard place, in that theyneed nutrition, they need advice
, they need equipment.
(14:31):
They need Right, but it has tobe scaled.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, we sort of joke that it's between the farm
store and the farm.
You know you're too big to beable to go down to your local
farm store and buy the cheapoproducts on the lot there.
But you're too small to go toyou know store and buy the
cheapo products on the lot there.
But you're too small to go toJohn Deere commercial.
And that's not anything againstJohn Deere or the small farm
store.
But you need that servicethat's at the same type of a
(14:55):
level that you get from yourmajor ag retailer.
But you don't have that kind ofa budget because they do.
I mean those guys.
What are they spraying?
1,000, 1,200 acres a day?
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean four acres.
They can't even afford the timeto turn off the road and turn
around for that Correct, theygot to keep moving.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right.
So I think, going back to thehow do we help these farmers?
I like our packaging two and ahalf gallon jugs.
I like the fact that some ofour products are already
pre-blended, for that.
The other thing about them isthat mixing and matching.
When it comes to liquidfertilizers, you oftentimes have
(15:35):
to be careful with what youblend with it what products you
blend together.
So, for example, if you blend aliquid calcium and a phosphorus,
you're going to get cottagecheese.
Yeah, our products areformulated differently, and so
we can blend our calcium and ourphosphorus and be perfectly
fine, right.
But that also comes to likecrop protection chemicals.
(15:55):
You need insecticides sometimes, because we were talking about
army worms earlier.
Sometimes you just cannotafford to not put on an
insecticide because you don'tlose a crop.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
That's right.
Well, we had that problem.
We were talking about it.
We had a spot that was a halfmile off the road.
From the road it looked like itwas about the size of a dime
and by the time we could get toit it was probably 15 acres.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Right, but what did you do?
You were going to spray foliarnutrition on that field anyway.
That's right.
Put in the insecticide and allin one.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
So that need for that goes all the way down to our
craft farmers.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I'll tell you the need that I see and we've talked
about it a little bit offcamera and Ryan and I have
talked about it a lot over theyears is education.
You know, if we've got a greatproduct, it's very complicated.
I mean, the things you do go,the things that AgriLiquid does
go so far over my head in myunderstanding, but the kind of
(16:53):
grassroots, down and you know,down and dirty, how, when and
why should I use this?
And understanding that, becauseI know, when I first got into
farming I didn't have anybody toask and so I hunted and pecked
until I got it right, and thatwas a very expensive way to
learn, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
So I mean, one of the things that I've liked about
AgriLiquid is you guys have donea really good job of putting a
I think you called it.
I think I saw it was calledBack to Basics.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, it's a to Basics.
Yeah, ryan's been on that.
Right, you mentioned Ryan, andit's a Back to Basics video.
You can access it on ourwebsite.
Right, and it just talks.
It goes back to basic cropnutrition, right, what are the
kind of basic requirements forvarious for crops?
Right, you know?
And from what are the basicprinciples of crop nutrition, of
(17:42):
fertilizer technology, you know, how do we use these products
and what's the timing of theseproducts.
It's a great series.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, and I mean they're helpful to me.
I've watched a couple of them.
I've watched more than that,but you know they help me make
decisions because education Iwent over and did our friend
Ryan, who's?
You can't see him, but he'ssitting over there in the dark.
He's keeping me on it, that'sright.
But Ryan invited me to aseminar that one of your guys
did Galen Beers did and it wasfantastic for me because it was
(18:13):
mostly big farmers in there.
These guys were.
You could tell they were, theyknew what they were doing and a
guy like me sat there andlearned so much in that room
because the decisions I have tomake on our farm are basically
agronomic, economic and time.
So how do you make thosedecisions?
And if you've watched thispodcast or listened to it, you
(18:34):
know you make the best decisionyou can with the information you
have.
You move forward and hopefullyyou didn't screw up too bad and
you learn and move forward.
But the more education we canget and we can provide in easily
understandable nuggets forsmaller farmers helps them make
those decisions which yourproduct does.
You know your line of productsI really like because of that
(18:57):
flexibility.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And we, as a company, believe in education Right,
believe in education.
We believe that the more ourcustomers know and understand
about agronomics, the better thecustomer they're going to be,
because then they'll understandwhy we're telling them certain
things right.
So if I'm giving you someagronomic advice and you don't
(19:18):
know much about agronomics,you're not going to really be
able to discern whether I'mtelling you, giving you useful
information.
If I'm just trying to sell youa product and I don't care about
more economic outcome, I'm justworried about my economic
outcome From our standpoint, themore we can teach you as a
(19:40):
customer about what's a soiltest, what does it mean?
How do we use it?
How do we read mean?
How do we use it?
How do we read it?
How do we read it?
How do we use these numbers?
So that when I sit down withyou and start formulating a
recommendation and we're lookingat the soil test and I'm
justifying what I'm telling youbased on what I'm seeing, field
needs or what your crop is,you're going to have that
(20:02):
ability to discern whether I'mleading you down.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You know a good path or a yellow brick road and we've
all, you know, we've all beenthere before and one of the
things you know I bring up Ryanquite a bit because I know him
really well but one of thethings that I liked early on was
the questions that Ryan askedfrom an agri-liquid point of
view was, you know, was aboutanswering my questions and I
(20:29):
could tell right away these werenot selfish economic questions.
So I mean, I've had sales guyscome out here and try we were
talking about one earlier triedto sell me a half a million
dollar tractor.
Well, I'm a hay farmer.
I don't know how much he takesa bale of hay goes for, but you
know, uh, you know, and and Icould tell he wanted to sell a
tractor, not he wanted to helpme get to be the biggest best
(20:52):
farm I can be.
So you know that's been, that'sbeen helpful in that kind of
question, the open dialogue thatwe've been able to have, you
know, since I met dan I met youthis morning but a lot in common
becoming fast friends, butbeing able to ask those
questions and say how do webalance that need?
For I told you I want toproduce the absolute best crop I
(21:13):
can, but I also know that at acertain point my customers
aren't going to pay $700 for abale of hay.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Right.
No matter how good it is Kindof going back a little bit to
the value of foliar nutritionRight In these forages.
I think we saw a good examplethis morning when we were out
looking at fields and you showedme a field that had been seeded
, I believe the previous falland lack of moisture, and so a
(21:42):
lot of seeds did not germinate.
You went ahead and put on agri.
seeds did not germinate, right,you went ahead and put on
agri-liquid blend I did On thatfield I don't remember exactly
what the portions were at thetime Right, right.
Anyway, you put that blend outthere that coupled with some, at
least a brief, incident ofrainfall.
You can't tell that that's anew seeding field anymore.
(22:03):
That field looks lush, it'shealthy.
We've got a good stand.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Well, I'll tell you there was no alfalfa there, and
I mean Ryan will attest to this.
We went out there and west ofthat one landmark, that oil
derrick there, whatever it is,there was no alfalfa.
And now it looks as good as anyother part of the field.
And between those two points,the only treatment that received
(22:32):
was agri-liquid and I probablyreceived a little bit of luck
with some rain and temperatureand things like that.
But Well, sure you know.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I've discovered earlier in my career, even
pre-agro-liquid days, thatalfalfa liked foliar nutrition.
What I've discovered withagro-liquid products and we
talked about the research I didback in 2015, 16, 17, is that
alfalfa has real propensity, areal ability to absorb foliar
(23:02):
nutrition.
With agro-liquid products I canuse rates and timings on
alfalfa, like with our liquidsulfur product Access.
For example, I can put on threeto five gallons of Access per
acre on nice lush alfalfa.
I don't get any leaf specklingat all.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Really.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
And the alfalfa just loves it.
Because alfalfa, being ahigh-protein crop, needs sulfur,
because sulfur is a criticalcomponent of protein.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right, and alfalfa is just like come on, bring it on,
bring it on.
I wonder if that sulfur couldhave been a deficiency, helping
with.
You know, when we talked aboutearlier in that field, that it
produced tonnage, but thequality was not where I wanted
it to be, yep, and so I wonderif Mm-hmm that I could put on
(23:54):
foliar on alfalfa, if I waslimited, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You said, dan, there's a new law.
You can only put on onenutrient on alfalfa from this
point forward, it would besulfur.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, Access in it's a 17% sulfur Right.
But that foliar in alfalfa justdoes remarkable things.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, we've noticed and you know the way you said it
earlier kind of gave me a newway to think about it.
We are, we're harvesting thatcrop, we're asking that root
system to generate plant matterand then we're taking it away.
It's got to generate it fromsomeplace.
And I thought you know, likewith our grass crops, we're
doing two treatments of anagri-liquid product on our grass
(24:32):
crops and we're doing three onour alfalfa and we saw we see
the tonnage go through the root.
I mean we really did see almosta ton an acre increase.
Now I think we need to startfine tuning them.
We've talked about that before.
It's the things we need in someof that.
Some of that may be the sulfur.
That one crop we were talkingabout is a new seeding that had
not gotten treated the way, theway the other crops had.
(24:54):
So you know, I think thosethings are interesting.
We've talked about how do wehelp small farmers utilize this.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
One of the ways I think we can help these small
farmers is through soil testing.
Some of these farmers, you knowthey're new to agriculture.
Okay, they've had a career offthe farm, right, they've maybe
never been exposed to farming atall, but they want to grow
something.
They want to be productive.
They love the idea of growingnot only their own food but
(25:27):
growing food for their neighborsand bringing back.
I grew up in the era of theneighborhood grocery store.
Yep, you know, we had littleneighborhood grocery stores.
We didn't have Walmarts andMeyers and Kroger's on these
huge supermarkets, so we boughtlocal, we bought from people we
knew.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I grew up outside of Philadelphia and I, even as a
kid, I loved farming.
You know what I did to make alittle extra money.
We would grow cucumbers andsquash in our backyard and you
know what I'd do?
I'd walk around with a wagon.
There you go, sell cucumbersand squash.
There you go.
So yeah, yeah, but you're right, you bought from your neighbor.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
You were passionate before you didn't even know.
You were passionate aboutagriculture.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Actually, there's a pretty girl that had a mother
who liked to cook, so I went.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Well, that's something to be passionate about
.
It doesn't take a lot of timeto kind of coach people through
that.
Okay, what does this mean?
I got this result.
I can coach somebody throughthat fairly quickly and we don't
have to get really down anddirty.
We don't have to give themcomplicated programs.
We don't have to get realcomplicated with blending and
(26:28):
mixing and so on and so forth.
We can keep it at a prettysimple basic level and do them a
whole lot of good from anutrition standpoint, because
you know what?
Maybe they're getting horsemanure from a neighbor, maybe
they're getting cow manure froma neighbor.
But in many cases they're not.
So they're in a situation wherethey're kind of pulling
nutrition out of the soil.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And that's two different situations there One
where you have no additive,manure or anything like that,
and some where you do so.
It's different mineraldeficiencies.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Correct.
Yeah, absolutely.
And even if you are able toamend your soil with, say, a
neighbor's manure, which isalways good, we have found that
oftentimes some foliarsupplementation to that really
brings it to a different level.
I saw that out in WesternKansas.
13 to 15 tons of dry lot beefmanure on alfalfa.
(27:19):
The previous fall on paper.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Looked right.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Giving the alfalfa all the phosphorus and potassium
and sulfur it needed.
Yet we got huge.
We almost doubled the tonnagewith five gallons of agri-liquid
as a foliage.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
To supplement, I'll tell you a challenge we have
here in this part of the countryand we've talked about it a lot
as we've gone through thefields and how much work it has
taken to get rid of invasivespecies the waterhamps, the
amaranths, the spiny amaranths.
So if you're getting yourneighbor's horse manure or
cattle manure and they haveeaten bales where they have that
seed pod still there that flowsthrough, it's a really good
(28:00):
point.
You know, we don't have thebenefit in a lot of cases here
of having high quality you knowhigh quality hay which is free
of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So you know that's a challenge.
So we end up fighting the weedproblem as well.
So you know it's just achallenge.
We have a lot.
Every, I'm sure, every area,every region you go to, because
you handle Illinois and you goall the way up to Western Canada
.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Well, yeah, five or six states do some national
stuff too, but then all ofWestern Canada in addition to
that.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, it's a large territory,it's a challenge, but it's also
a blessing, and they gave you a.
You get 500 miles a month onyour truck.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, lots of sky miles, yeah, but no, it's a
challenge and a blessing.
You know, I have the kind of aunique position of working with
just a huge variety of crops.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
You know from yellow peas.
It's part of my heritage.
By the way Just a little funnyside here I'm a Swede, so I grew
up Swedish.
My mom was still fluent inSwedish when she died.
But one of our traditions wasyellow pea soup, really,
especially during the winter,and we would get whole yellow
peas out of Canada Right To makethat soup with Well, now with
(29:18):
agri-liquid.
Now I'm up in Canada workingwith that crop Really Yellow
peas as a crop, so it's kind ofcome full circle for me.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
What's the variety of crops you have to deal with?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Well, all the small grains, Right, you know so.
Barley malting, barley, springwheat, durum wheat, right
malting barley, spring wheat,durum wheat, all the varieties
of wheat, triticale for foragegrass haze, you know, the
farther north we go the morechallenging it gets, for alfalfa
especially, although it isamazing how far north we can
(29:52):
grow alfalfa up into Canada.
But potatoes, you know you getinto short season crops.
So potatoes work, you know youget into short season crops.
Right, right, so potatoes workwell.
Up there, the southern plainsregion of Canada, the vast
Canadian prairies, as it were,are a really great place to grow
potatoes.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
And so there's quite a bit of that up there, and I
get into lentils and dry beans.
Really, you know, pinto beans,black beans, Two of my favorites
, several varieties of lentils,you know, yeah, canola, right,
that's a huge one.
Boy, you go up into Canada.
You think it's amazing, middleof the summer, when it's
blooming, the vast, you know,5,000 acre fields of yellow,
(30:33):
bright yellows, where it's justas far as you can see.
It's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I'm kind of an equipment dork.
I love just driving differentpieces of equipment, what's your
favorite piece of farmequipment to drive.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Believe it or not, one of my favorite jobs in the
entire world is planting corn.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Really.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
I love running a corn planter.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Really.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, there's just something about it.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I'll tell you they've gotten so big.
I talked to a guy.
Well, I'm not sayingnecessarily.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It would be my favorite now running a 36 row.
You got to be pretty smart torun one of those.
Oh yeah yeah, my hair's gettingpretty gray.
That would be a big challenge,but no, the bottom line is I
just have always loved plantingcorn.
Yeah, I like planting any crop,but corn in particular just
gave me a lot of respect.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
You know, we don't plant with a drill, we plant, we
actually work soil.
We use a vertical tillage toolto kind of put a nice thin layer
, plant a seed bed, okay, andthen we airflow.
Oh sure, we airflow our alfalfaon with potash, or, yeah,
usually potash as a carrier, yep.
And then we come back with acultimulcher and roll over it,
(31:40):
yep, and we've had really goodluck doing that.
Right and true method.
Yeah, and it seems to be easierthan drilling, maintaining the
drill and the depth and havingthe right moisture content in
the soil.
We can be a little bit morevaried in wind and Sure, you
know, and the speed of it I meangood Lord know.
And the speed of it, I meangood lord.
They can airflow it on the way.
If there's 120 foot airflow,they could be in and out of an
80 acre field in 30 minutes welland early in my career.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Sometimes guys would try doing that with spinner type
dry fertilizer applications andyeah, that never worked very
well because that small seed,you know, just wouldn't carry
out from the spinners very farright.
These air flows now are veryconcise.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
GPS guidance.
You know we don't get theoverlap or the skips and it
worked really well.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
What we ended up doing.
We did one field this year witha spinner type truck and they
set up a pattern.
They set up all the boxes andmade sure all the seeds are
falling there.
But we did a dual pattern.
So they spread at half rate butcovered the field twice, doing
multi.
You know multi pattern.
So they spread at half rate butcovered the field twice, doing
multi.
You know multi pattern.
So it'll be interesting to seehow that field comes up this
year.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, yeah, that'll make it better.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, Not as good as an air flow.
No, we tried it.
We tried it a couple of yearsago with with not only alfalfa
but a grass seed, and so we gotstriping because of the the
different gravities of the seed,Absolutely so it was kind of
weird.
It was an interesting lookingfield.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Well, you know, going back to grass hay, you know,
and it's a little bit of a it'sa crop that I, you know, over
the course of my career I'veseen grass hays neglected from a
nutrition standpoint and amanagement standpoint, probably
more than any other crop.
You know, I have seen it a lotout on the Great Plains, where
(33:22):
guys will have permanent pastureand never fertilize.
Well, the universities haven'thelped us in that situation.
When you know, when you've hadthese land-granting,
universities have traditionallysaid it's not worth fertilizing
permanent pasture.
But we have found that evensmall amounts of agri-liquid out
(33:42):
there as a foliar will makethose pastures pop and we can
double the production.
And that doesn't sound feasibleuntil you realize that because
they have never been fertilizedor they've been dramatically
under-fertilized for years ordecades, they're not producing
much.
So it doesn't take a lot toreally increase that production.
(34:03):
Take it back in, exactly right.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Well, we see that with guys, especially as you go
south of where we are, you getdown into the rolling hills and
more of the more difficultterrains.
They graze cattle on it yearafter year after year after year
, and there's no fertilizer.
Now they'll fertilize their hayfields, but their pastures get
neglected, right, and you seesome of the guys around here
starting to do what we do, whichis a rotational grazing.
(34:26):
So we rotationally graze ourcattle, so we always give that
ground.
It gets eaten down to where youknow, about three to four
inches and then they're off ofit and that plant gets
rejuvenated, right, and with theagri-liquid product we sprayed
it on.
That we did, I showed you thattest we did on that 30 acres
over there.
Uh, where pull our, pull ourfences up, run over it, spray it
(34:50):
doesn't hurt the animals, notgoing to hurt them, you know.
wants it to dry you know, now weleft them off of there, for I
think the next time they wereback on was a week.
That plant had the time toingest that.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, yeah, Right, that's a little interesting side
issue.
I do get that question quite abit oftentimes from smaller
producers that are running 10,15, 20, 50 cows on relatively
small acreages.
How can I fertilize thiswithout endangering my cows?
And you know my response is, aslong as you've given that, I'll
(35:26):
speak for agri-liquid, notother liquid products because I
can't represent them.
But from agri-liquid standpointI'll probably give about 90% of
my product into the plantwithin 24 hours.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Really yeah.
So what we did is we left it offseveral days because I, you
know again new farmer, not verysmart you know we would
fertilize it and then we couldwalk our, because we just use a
single line fence to separatethem as they're rotationally
grazing through there and wehave a we call a central hub
that has our waterers and thenwe you know we've talked about
spreading our mineral feedersout but pull our fences down
(36:02):
takes an hour, run over it,spray it takes an hour and then
our fences can go right back upand then that's ready.
The next time they come out ofthat next paddock they go into
one, that one that's beenfertilized, and you can see I
mean you can see a distinctdifference of that field, run
right down the fence line.
You know where one side gotnothing.
(36:23):
It didn't get treated.
Now it was fertilized in thefall, but you can see how fast
it got beaten down and howunresponsive it was.
Coming out of the drought,those plants that had, where
those roots had built up alittle bit of reserve, a little
bit of extra strength, came outof the drought ready to go.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
And we saw that with the alfalfa too.
Even during the drought, we'dhave new sprouts coming up
within a day, a day or two,you'd start to see that green
start to come back, and once wegot that rain after we went
through the drought, it was likean explosion.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, you know, in agriculture none of us are very
smart, john, no matter how longwe've been in it, because
agriculture is going to keepteaching us lessons, right?
Yeah, you know, we get to apoint where we think we've seen
it all, never have seen it all,because we're always getting
thrown curveballs, right.
So if there's a career outthere to keep you humble, it's
(37:18):
agronomy.
I'll be the first to admit that, you know.
You can't be a know-it-all andbe an agronomist.
It doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Man, don't tell some of the farmers I know, man, some
of these guys are smarter thanyou know they'll tell oh, this
is what you do, you got to dothis and you walk right.
Mother nature comes in and saysnah, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, so you know, one of the things it's kind of a
given.
Sometimes there's things thatyou assume in agriculture that
become just assumed knowledge,even though you maybe haven't
actually experienced it yourself.
But you hear and one of those isfrom a foliar standpoint is if
(37:57):
the crop is under stress, ifit's under drought stress, don't
bother putting any foliarnutrition on it, right, because
it's not going to absorb it,it's under stress, not going to
be able to use it.
Well, I'll accept that, maybeas a general rule of thumb,
right.
But again, agronomy teacheslots of lessons and sometimes
it'll teach lessons that youdon't see coming, and one of
(38:19):
them was out in North Dakota,actually in Manitoba.
Okay, so we have an agri-liquiddealer there and the owner of
this agri-liquid dealership alsohas a personal family farm,
right, and part of that farm isirrigated, part of it isn't, and
he's selling agri-liquid, sohe's also using it on his own
(38:42):
farm, which is actually a quitelarge farm, and so on the part
of the farm that's pivotirrigated, you have these
corners right that the pivotsdon't get deep, and he's got
some 160-acre pivots.
So some of these corners arequite large.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Right right.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So he's one of these guys that I'm selling the
product.
I want to see it work on my ownoperation, which is great you
talked about.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
That's how we got.
That's how we got into it.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
That's why I'm an agratimus for agri-liquid,
because I see with my own eyes,you know, and I can do my own
field research, which has beenawesome.
But so dry years this goes backmaybe three years ago.
They were pretty significantdrought and he had some leftover
.
It was a blend, our Shirke, Ithink there was some furthering
in it, uh, some pro germinator,and the corners were had
(39:42):
basically gone dormant becauseof the drought, and alfalfa will
do that.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Right Lack of water.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Right.
So there was one corner, hethought probably about four
acres worth.
He drove up, made a boom, passacross it, um, just basically
empty out the rest of thisproduct and finish up.
It was about a week later,maybe 10 days later, and he got
a call from one of his farmhands.
He said hey, what did you do inthat corner?
(40:08):
He had a name for thatparticular pivot, you know.
Hey, what did you do in thecorner on, you know, pivot
number 12?
And Ray said well, I just wentacross it with the foliar blend
I'd been using.
And he said why?
He said you need to come outand see this, even though
(40:29):
ostensibly that alfalfa wasdormant, right, Right.
Still dry.
Hadn't rained in the meantime,but there was new growth on it.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Really when he had sprung.
Came out of dormancy, Didn't?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
yes.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Well, it got enough nutrients to pop a little bit.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, exactly, there was a visible response to that
fully nutrition, even thoughthere shouldn't have been,
inventional wisdom would havesaid no.
And then, when he did get rainlater in the fall bang, that
strip really took off.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Well, I think we saw.
You know, one of our ways ofthinking was when we were
putting down our fertilizer andour you know, our agri-liquid
products.
Putting them down is thatdrought.
If you farm alfalfa in Illinois, there's no crop insurance.
That drought.
If you farm alfalfa in Illinois, there's no crop insurance.
None, yeah, and it's just.
I mean you might as well go toAtlantic City and throw some
money down, but the thing thatyou can do to prepare for
(41:26):
droughts is make sure that yourplants are as healthy as
possible.
So when we went, I think it wasclose to eight weeks yeah, it
was close to eight weeks with norain.
The minute that rain came nowthere was one field.
I showed you that field that'snot in the, it's a more
traditional alfalfa that didn'tget treated.
The field across the roadtreated that field across the
(41:47):
road.
When we got that rain exploded.
I mean, alfalfa was 12, 16inches high in a matter of
almost no time and the fieldthat didn't get fertilized
didn't get the same programmight've made it to six inches.
I mean massive, massivedifference in yield by making
sure that plant was ready toaccept that challenging
(42:09):
condition.
Dan, it's been great having youon the podcast.
Man, when you're back downwe'll do it again because you
and I have so much in commonwith the music and stuff that's
been fun all day.
I gotta say it's been what awonderful day just going around
talking about the two thingsthat I'm really passionate about
yeah, including including music.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
That was such a surprise.
When I walked into your officeI thought, oh my gosh, look at
the keyboard, look at the stereosystem, oh my gosh, and yeah,
uh, gold records on the wall,yeah, stuff that you've produced
, and it's like wow, instantconnection.
But it's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Man.
Well, it's good talking to you.
Thanks all for watching.
We'll catch you on the next one.
Welcome to Just Say hey.
The podcast.
A podcast where we talk aboutthe things that matter to small
farms.
You know why?
Because we are a small farm.
Today's really cool.
I've got a guy sitting herenext to me, a regional
agronomist for AgroLiquid.
They're a liquid fertilizermanufacturer, but one of the
things we like well, several ofthe things we like about them.
First, they put a lot ofscience behind their product and
(00:20):
do a lot of continual studies.
But the most important thing tous as a farmer, we've seen some
major turnarounds in our cropand I attribute a lot of the
success we have had to the useof their products.
So let's get into it today.
Welcome to Just Say hey.
The podcast where we talk aboutwhat matters to small farms,
(00:41):
whether it's business, marketing, agronomy, equipment, livestock
health.
If it matters to small farms,we'll probably talk about it
here.
So let's get into it.
Welcome back.
So sitting next to me here isDan Peterson.
He is the field agronomymanager for the Midwest.
Is that, technically, yourtitle?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, close enough.
Regional agronomist.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I saw all the things across your name that looks like
a doctor.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, well, I'm a certified crop advisor and a
certified sustainabilityspecialist Very cool.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I'm going to throw a question at you that I asked you
earlier, because I think it'sfun, and it's just going to be
fun, I'm going to throw it backat you what's your favorite
music album?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Tapestry by Carole King.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You know, carole man, what a great songwriter, and we
shared her off the podcast.
We both I was, I was in themusic business for a long time
and share a passion for music.
You said your kids were intomusic too and what you know.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
So I know farming was a passion as well, and so
that's it's kind of weird tomeet somebody that has the same
two passions when I walked intoyour, into your studio, into
your office, and saw that musicproduction equipment, like, okay
, I'm definitely going to haveto get to know you, john.
We share that passion for music.
But we are also discoveringthat we share a passion for
(01:56):
forages.
And that's going to be excitinggoing forward, because I think
you're on a very interestingpath here.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
On what you're trying to do with alfalfa and grass
forages, sharon, that need foran economically balanced
approach to nutrition, becausewe've talked about that from the
agronomic side.
We know what it needs.
But you also have to balancehow do we afford it?
And agri-liquid, at least in myexperience so far, has really
helped me get a little bitbetter economically on the farm.
(02:41):
How to get those nutrients tothe plant in a more economical
way.
Better economically on the farm, how to get those nutrients to
the plant in a more economicalway.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Dry fertilizers yes, we need them, right, but dry
fertilizers are very inefficientwhen it comes to getting into
the plant itself.
Okay, they have to be dissolvedin soil moisture for the roots
to take up any of the nutrition.
But when that happens, they'rereactive with other elements of
(03:05):
the soil, phosphorus inparticular, and so you start
getting this tie-up, and so weonly get 10% to 30% efficiency
out of dry fertilizers.
Well, with forages, they'regrowing rapidly and you're
taking multiple cuttings, soyou're getting multiple crops,
so they need that nutritionevery time you're going to be
(03:27):
taking a cutting, and so how canwe make that more efficient?
Well, one of the things thatwe've discovered with AgroLiquid
is that our products can besoil applied, yes, but they're
very, very efficient when youput them on as a foliar
application.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So we can use less actual nutrition and get more
nutrition on a per acre basis.
For example, Right Fewer poundsof a nutrient like phosphorus
or potassium and actually useless of it, but get more into
the crop itself, get more intothe plant Right and they respond
to that.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And we've noticed it into the plant Right and they
respond to that and we'venoticed it.
I mean, I know, again beginningfarmer, I've noticed things.
Like you know, applyingfertilizer will apply in the
fall.
It takes a long time for thatfertilizer to break down and
become available to the plant,Correct, and so we've originally
looked at agri-liquid as a wayto solve an immediate problem.
We see a deficiency in a fieldand we need to fix it
(04:25):
immediately.
Well, dry fertilizer can't dothat.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Correct.
Yeah, we like to look at it interms of the dry fertilizer is a
soil amendment, use it tocorrect a long-term, to correct
a deficiency, say to build up apotassium deficiency.
Right, and we know forages usea lot of potassium.
But we look at agri-liquidapplied as a foliar.
(04:49):
As we're feeding this crop thiscutting or this year, we're
giving it what it needs rightnow.
Well, we're not necessarilyfeeding it for the future, we're
feeding it for what we needright now.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And that's interesting because the way I
think about it is you know, theguy out there in the field every
day mowing and raking andbaling and all of that.
The way I've thought of it isexactly that way that the soil
is, basically I want to be ableto give that plant everything it
needs to survive and then, whenit's done for the season, I
will have taken as little out ofthat soil as possible.
(05:24):
So I leave my soil in thatgreat condition it was in before
the season started, instead ofthinking about I'm just going to
deplete the soil and then I'mgoing to refeed it and then I'm
going to deplete the soil again.
Is that an accurate way for meto think about it?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It is.
And while we always considerdry fertilizers as a tool in our
toolbox, you have to look atthe economic side.
And how much are we spending onfertilizer, especially in the
face of low crop prices and soon and so forth?
And fertilizer can be a majorexpense, oh yeah, you know,
regardless of crops, butespecially on forages, because
(05:57):
when we remove the whole plant,we're taking a lot of nutrition
off of the field, right.
So how do we deal with that?
We're taking a lot of nutritionoff of the field, right.
So how do we deal with that?
We have discovered that in ourresearch that when we replace
some of that nutrition as afoliar okay, so you're putting
in nutrition into this cropRight Now, you remove it, now
you repeat the process for thenext cutting.
(06:18):
In the meantime, that plant isdrawing less from the soil,
right?
So we have found thatoftentimes when we bring in an
agro-liquid foliar program, wecan start reducing our dry
fertilizer.
In fact, we have customers whomonitor their fields quite
closely and have for years, andthey've used agro-liquid for
years and they have found thatthey have been able to drop
(06:40):
their dry fertilizersubstantially.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Right, because this past year was the first.
I think we did a test two yearsago, but this was really the
first year that we've usedagri-liquid as a major component
of our fertilizer plan.
We still do dry fertilizer.
We still replace that potash.
Potash is a good one to put onwhen the price is right, but
balancing that economic needwith that nutritional need and
(07:03):
sometimes it's a balancing actbecause you have X number of
dollars and the plant needs thiswhere do you sacrifice?
And we found, at least in ourexperience thus far, that we are
spending less money on overallnutrition than we were the year
(07:24):
before, right.
So you know, especially asfertilizer prices have gone
through the roof Now they'vekind of settled a little bit,
but you know it's still prettyexpensive and still not back to
2018 levels.
So you know we were talkingbefore we jumped on here about.
You know, we really talked to alot of small farmers in that
(07:44):
two, five, 10, 50, 100 acre kindof guys.
How can a person that's runningan operation that's that size
really take advantage ofagri-liquid as a product?
Looking at that same dry versusliquid.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
That's a really good question and I would say the
versatility of our productscomes to the top and our
packaging.
So, whether it's a tote, twoand a half gallon jugs are very
convenient for these smallerguys.
They don't have to worry aboutbringing in any kind of storage
tank or anything like that.
So we have flexibility with ourpackaging.
That makes it convenient.
(08:18):
Some of our products are blendsalready packaged.
For example, Fertorain is justan outstanding foliar product
for alfalfa grass haze,especially small grains.
But looking at, say, a mixedgrass alfalfa blend or a
(08:39):
straight grass blend, Fertorainis terrific.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
No, that's one of the products that we use.
In fact we worked with someother small farms using that
product.
It was interesting.
It was already pre-blend, madeit easy, right.
But from their point of view,you can't get the big fertilizer
companies to come look at afour-acre patch.
They can't get their equipmentin and turn it around because
they're running such largeequipment Right, and you can put
it on with a small sprayer.
(09:03):
You know a lot of these peopleare also growing vegetable
gardens.
They could easily put that asfertigation into an irrigation
of a small vegetable garden,correct.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's a 12% nitrogen, 3% phosphorus, 3% potassium,
1.5% sulfur and then somemanganese as well, and really
those nutrients are all neededby grasses in particular, right.
But they also work very well onWe've had great success with
them on tomatoes, right.
A lot of our customers that areputting for rain or other of
our products on, say, an alfalfafield or grass field, they uh
(09:45):
will take some of that in thesmaller about, just put it in a
hand sprayer and use it othergardens, you know, and it was
pretty good stuff so we werewalking a field earlier today
and you were telling me about,you know, working with a lot of
different forage guys and thatyou've worked.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
You know really been passionate about the forage side
because, let's face it, thereis a lot of different forage
guys, and that you've worked.
You know really been passionateabout the forage side Cause,
let's face it, there is a lot ofguys doing corn and beans,
especially down in our area.
The vast majority of farms thatare commercial scale are corn
and beans.
When you get to the smallerscale guys, we're doing a lot of
little things to make a farmwork, whether you're running
livestock, whether we're we'redoing vegetables, we're doing
(10:22):
pumpkins.
I've got a friend who doespumpkins and some vegetables in
the summer.
So we have to figure out waysto become economically viable on
a super small scale.
So we look at least in ouroperation and we're getting to
where we're larger.
I mean we're about 850 acres offorage and that's a lot of
(10:44):
throwing bales.
Yeah, imagine being a kid doingthat with 50-pound bales or
something.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Hey, when I was a teenager I got heat exhaustion
throwing small bales up in anA-mile on a 95-degree day.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I got to ask you how much did you get paid to bale?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I just got paid by the hour.
Oh, I got paid $1.50 an hour.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I worked for a guy down the road here when I was a
kid and we got I think we gotfive cents a bale, a nickel a
bale and I remember another guypaid me 10 cents and I thought I
was king of the world 10 centsa bale I'm going to take over
the world.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Well, you talked about how can we help these
smaller farmers.
What I find interesting is thatin the course of my career I
saw so many traditional familyfarms.
You know I'm from Wisconsin soit's called the dairy state for
good reason.
At one point in time 90% of allfarms in Wisconsin had dairy.
Obviously, today that's shiftedand you know I've watched in
(11:40):
the course of my career farmafter farm after farm after farm
get sold, get rented out andcow herds get sold and now we've
got these grand old dairy barnssitting empty.
But there's been a kind of aninteresting movement.
We would lament the loss of thefamily farm and what also has
(12:00):
happened is land prices havegone very high, equipment prices
are very high.
What's an entry point forsomeone who wants to get into
agriculture, who wants to dofarming at some scale.
Maybe it's going to be apart-time endeavor, but we've
seen the rise of the craftbrewing industry, the
(12:20):
microbreweries, right.
We've seen the rise of thecraft distilleries We've like in
Wisconsin there's severaldistilleries that are now farm
to bottle, which is afascinating thing.
But vegetable gardening, maybespecialty livestock like goats,
for example.
Now we have smaller scale Now.
(12:42):
Maybe it's an entry point.
That's right For somebody to getin, and we'll call it craft
farming.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, you know we were talking about this before
the podcast that it's hard for ayoung guy to get started.
I talked to a guy the other dayhe's a friend of mine, he's
probably third or fourthgeneration here, works for the
family farm during harvest Worksbut has an off-farm job and
(13:10):
then on the side runs, you know,does vegetables and pumpkins
and stuff like that, and he'strying to make his own way,
doesn't have a, you know, noneof the family because they row
crop.
They don't have that.
You know that equipment thatyou need on the small scale.
So it's difficult but notimpossible, right?
So you know, we see you readarticle after article after
article of people saying, oh, weneed to change our food
industry, we need to buy local.
(13:30):
And the big challenge isgetting the consumer to follow
through and actually buy local,because there is a growing
industry of having a vegetablegarden down the road.
Buy your vegetables from them.
We go out of our way to buy oureggs from local farmers, go out
of our way to try, during theseason, buy vegetables.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And if you're one of these local, we'll call it a
craft farmer.
Now you're not going to getserved very well by the larger
farm supply companies, theretail farm supply companies,
because you mentioned it earlierlarge equipment they sell
thousands and thousands of tonsof fertilizer, you know crop
protection chemicals in largevolumes.
(14:09):
You know you can't bring in acustom application machine with
120 foot boom On four acres.
Because it doesn't work.
That's right.
So people like that are caughtin a kind of a between a rock
and a hard place, in that theyneed nutrition, they need advice
, they need equipment.
(14:31):
They need Right, but it has tobe scaled.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, we sort of joke that it's between the farm
store and the farm.
You know you're too big to beable to go down to your local
farm store and buy the cheapoproducts on the lot there.
But you're too small to go toyou know store and buy the
cheapo products on the lot there.
But you're too small to go toJohn Deere commercial.
And that's not anything againstJohn Deere or the small farm
store.
But you need that servicethat's at the same type of a
(14:55):
level that you get from yourmajor ag retailer.
But you don't have that kind ofa budget because they do.
I mean those guys.
What are they spraying?
1,000, 1,200 acres a day?
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean four acres.
They can't even afford the timeto turn off the road and turn
around for that Correct, theygot to keep moving.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right.
So I think, going back to thehow do we help these farmers?
I like our packaging two and ahalf gallon jugs.
I like the fact that some ofour products are already
pre-blended, for that.
The other thing about them isthat mixing and matching.
When it comes to liquidfertilizers, you oftentimes have
(15:35):
to be careful with what youblend with it what products you
blend together.
So, for example, if you blend aliquid calcium and a phosphorus,
you're going to get cottagecheese.
Yeah, our products areformulated differently, and so
we can blend our calcium and ourphosphorus and be perfectly
fine, right.
But that also comes to likecrop protection chemicals.
(15:55):
You need insecticides sometimes, because we were talking about
army worms earlier.
Sometimes you just cannotafford to not put on an
insecticide because you don'tlose a crop.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
That's right.
Well, we had that problem.
We were talking about it.
We had a spot that was a halfmile off the road.
From the road it looked like itwas about the size of a dime
and by the time we could get toit it was probably 15 acres.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Right, but what did you do?
You were going to spray foliarnutrition on that field anyway.
That's right.
Put in the insecticide and allin one.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
So that need for that goes all the way down to our
craft farmers.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I'll tell you the need that I see and we've talked
about it a little bit offcamera and Ryan and I have
talked about it a lot over theyears is education.
You know, if we've got a greatproduct, it's very complicated.
I mean, the things you do go,the things that AgriLiquid does
go so far over my head in myunderstanding, but the kind of
(16:53):
grassroots, down and you know,down and dirty, how, when and
why should I use this?
And understanding that, becauseI know, when I first got into
farming I didn't have anybody toask and so I hunted and pecked
until I got it right, and thatwas a very expensive way to
learn, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
So I mean, one of the things that I've liked about
AgriLiquid is you guys have donea really good job of putting a
I think you called it.
I think I saw it was calledBack to Basics.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, it's a to Basics.
Yeah, ryan's been on that.
Right, you mentioned Ryan, andit's a Back to Basics video.
You can access it on ourwebsite.
Right, and it just talks.
It goes back to basic cropnutrition, right, what are the
kind of basic requirements forvarious for crops?
Right, you know?
And from what are the basicprinciples of crop nutrition, of
(17:42):
fertilizer technology, you know, how do we use these products
and what's the timing of theseproducts.
It's a great series.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, and I mean they're helpful to me.
I've watched a couple of them.
I've watched more than that,but you know they help me make
decisions because education Iwent over and did our friend
Ryan, who's?
You can't see him, but he'ssitting over there in the dark.
He's keeping me on it, that'sright.
But Ryan invited me to aseminar that one of your guys
did Galen Beers did and it wasfantastic for me because it was
(18:13):
mostly big farmers in there.
These guys were.
You could tell they were, theyknew what they were doing and a
guy like me sat there andlearned so much in that room
because the decisions I have tomake on our farm are basically
agronomic, economic and time.
So how do you make thosedecisions?
And if you've watched thispodcast or listened to it, you
(18:34):
know you make the best decisionyou can with the information you
have.
You move forward and hopefullyyou didn't screw up too bad and
you learn and move forward.
But the more education we canget and we can provide in easily
understandable nuggets forsmaller farmers helps them make
those decisions which yourproduct does.
You know your line of productsI really like because of that
(18:57):
flexibility.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And we, as a company, believe in education Right,
believe in education.
We believe that the more ourcustomers know and understand
about agronomics, the better thecustomer they're going to be,
because then they'll understandwhy we're telling them certain
things right.
So if I'm giving you someagronomic advice and you don't
(19:18):
know much about agronomics,you're not going to really be
able to discern whether I'mtelling you, giving you useful
information.
If I'm just trying to sell youa product and I don't care about
more economic outcome, I'm justworried about my economic
outcome From our standpoint, themore we can teach you as a
(19:40):
customer about what's a soiltest, what does it mean?
How do we use it?
How do we read mean?
How do we use it?
How do we read it?
How do we read it?
How do we use these numbers?
So that when I sit down withyou and start formulating a
recommendation and we're lookingat the soil test and I'm
justifying what I'm telling youbased on what I'm seeing, field
needs or what your crop is,you're going to have that
(20:02):
ability to discern whether I'mleading you down.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You know a good path or a yellow brick road and we've
all, you know, we've all beenthere before and one of the
things you know I bring up Ryanquite a bit because I know him
really well but one of thethings that I liked early on was
the questions that Ryan askedfrom an agri-liquid point of
view was, you know, was aboutanswering my questions and I
(20:29):
could tell right away these werenot selfish economic questions.
So I mean, I've had sales guyscome out here and try we were
talking about one earlier triedto sell me a half a million
dollar tractor.
Well, I'm a hay farmer.
I don't know how much he takesa bale of hay goes for, but you
know, uh, you know, and and Icould tell he wanted to sell a
tractor, not he wanted to helpme get to be the biggest best
(20:52):
farm I can be.
So you know that's been, that'sbeen helpful in that kind of
question, the open dialogue thatwe've been able to have, you
know, since I met dan I met youthis morning but a lot in common
becoming fast friends, butbeing able to ask those
questions and say how do webalance that need?
For I told you I want toproduce the absolute best crop I
(21:13):
can, but I also know that at acertain point my customers
aren't going to pay $700 for abale of hay.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Right.
No matter how good it is Kindof going back a little bit to
the value of foliar nutritionRight In these forages.
I think we saw a good examplethis morning when we were out
looking at fields and you showedme a field that had been seeded
, I believe the previous falland lack of moisture, and so a
(21:42):
lot of seeds did not germinate.
You went ahead and put on agri.
seeds did not germinate, right,you went ahead and put on
agri-liquid blend I did On thatfield I don't remember exactly
what the portions were at thetime Right, right.
Anyway, you put that blend outthere that coupled with some, at
least a brief, incident ofrainfall.
You can't tell that that's anew seeding field anymore.
(22:03):
That field looks lush, it'shealthy.
We've got a good stand.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Well, I'll tell you there was no alfalfa there, and
I mean Ryan will attest to this.
We went out there and west ofthat one landmark, that oil
derrick there, whatever it is,there was no alfalfa.
And now it looks as good as anyother part of the field.
And between those two points,the only treatment that received
(22:32):
was agri-liquid and I probablyreceived a little bit of luck
with some rain and temperatureand things like that.
But Well, sure you know.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I've discovered earlier in my career, even
pre-agro-liquid days, thatalfalfa liked foliar nutrition.
What I've discovered withagro-liquid products and we
talked about the research I didback in 2015, 16, 17, is that
alfalfa has real propensity, areal ability to absorb foliar
(23:02):
nutrition.
With agro-liquid products I canuse rates and timings on
alfalfa, like with our liquidsulfur product Access.
For example, I can put on threeto five gallons of Access per
acre on nice lush alfalfa.
I don't get any leaf specklingat all.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Really.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
And the alfalfa just loves it.
Because alfalfa, being ahigh-protein crop, needs sulfur,
because sulfur is a criticalcomponent of protein.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right, and alfalfa is just like come on, bring it on,
bring it on.
I wonder if that sulfur couldhave been a deficiency, helping
with.
You know, when we talked aboutearlier in that field, that it
produced tonnage, but thequality was not where I wanted
it to be, yep, and so I wonderif Mm-hmm that I could put on
(23:54):
foliar on alfalfa, if I waslimited, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You said, dan, there's a new law.
You can only put on onenutrient on alfalfa from this
point forward, it would besulfur.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, Access in it's a 17% sulfur Right.
But that foliar in alfalfa justdoes remarkable things.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, we've noticed and you know the way you said it
earlier kind of gave me a newway to think about it.
We are, we're harvesting thatcrop, we're asking that root
system to generate plant matterand then we're taking it away.
It's got to generate it fromsomeplace.
And I thought you know, likewith our grass crops, we're
doing two treatments of anagri-liquid product on our grass
(24:32):
crops and we're doing three onour alfalfa and we saw we see
the tonnage go through the root.
I mean we really did see almosta ton an acre increase.
Now I think we need to startfine tuning them.
We've talked about that before.
It's the things we need in someof that.
Some of that may be the sulfur.
That one crop we were talkingabout is a new seeding that had
not gotten treated the way, theway the other crops had.
(24:54):
So you know, I think thosethings are interesting.
We've talked about how do wehelp small farmers utilize this.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
One of the ways I think we can help these small
farmers is through soil testing.
Some of these farmers, you knowthey're new to agriculture.
Okay, they've had a career offthe farm, right, they've maybe
never been exposed to farming atall, but they want to grow
something.
They want to be productive.
They love the idea of growingnot only their own food but
(25:27):
growing food for their neighborsand bringing back.
I grew up in the era of theneighborhood grocery store.
Yep, you know, we had littleneighborhood grocery stores.
We didn't have Walmarts andMeyers and Kroger's on these
huge supermarkets, so we boughtlocal, we bought from people we
knew.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I grew up outside of Philadelphia and I, even as a
kid, I loved farming.
You know what I did to make alittle extra money.
We would grow cucumbers andsquash in our backyard and you
know what I'd do?
I'd walk around with a wagon.
There you go, sell cucumbersand squash.
There you go.
So yeah, yeah, but you're right, you bought from your neighbor.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
You were passionate before you didn't even know.
You were passionate aboutagriculture.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Actually, there's a pretty girl that had a mother
who liked to cook, so I went.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Well, that's something to be passionate about
.
It doesn't take a lot of timeto kind of coach people through
that.
Okay, what does this mean?
I got this result.
I can coach somebody throughthat fairly quickly and we don't
have to get really down anddirty.
We don't have to give themcomplicated programs.
We don't have to get realcomplicated with blending and
(26:28):
mixing and so on and so forth.
We can keep it at a prettysimple basic level and do them a
whole lot of good from anutrition standpoint, because
you know what?
Maybe they're getting horsemanure from a neighbor, maybe
they're getting cow manure froma neighbor.
But in many cases they're not.
So they're in a situation wherethey're kind of pulling
nutrition out of the soil.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And that's two different situations there One
where you have no additive,manure or anything like that,
and some where you do so.
It's different mineraldeficiencies.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Correct.
Yeah, absolutely.
And even if you are able toamend your soil with, say, a
neighbor's manure, which isalways good, we have found that
oftentimes some foliarsupplementation to that really
brings it to a different level.
I saw that out in WesternKansas.
13 to 15 tons of dry lot beefmanure on alfalfa.
(27:19):
The previous fall on paper.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Looked right.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Giving the alfalfa all the phosphorus and potassium
and sulfur it needed.
Yet we got huge.
We almost doubled the tonnagewith five gallons of agri-liquid
as a foliage.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
To supplement, I'll tell you a challenge we have
here in this part of the countryand we've talked about it a lot
as we've gone through thefields and how much work it has
taken to get rid of invasivespecies the waterhamps, the
amaranths, the spiny amaranths.
So if you're getting yourneighbor's horse manure or
cattle manure and they haveeaten bales where they have that
seed pod still there that flowsthrough, it's a really good
(28:00):
point.
You know, we don't have thebenefit in a lot of cases here
of having high quality you knowhigh quality hay which is free
of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So you know that's a challenge.
So we end up fighting the weedproblem as well.
So you know it's just achallenge.
We have a lot.
Every, I'm sure, every area,every region you go to, because
you handle Illinois and you goall the way up to Western Canada
.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Well, yeah, five or six states do some national
stuff too, but then all ofWestern Canada in addition to
that.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, it's a large territory,it's a challenge, but it's also
a blessing, and they gave you a.
You get 500 miles a month onyour truck.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, lots of sky miles, yeah, but no, it's a
challenge and a blessing.
You know, I have the kind of aunique position of working with
just a huge variety of crops.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
You know from yellow peas.
It's part of my heritage.
By the way Just a little funnyside here I'm a Swede, so I grew
up Swedish.
My mom was still fluent inSwedish when she died.
But one of our traditions wasyellow pea soup, really,
especially during the winter,and we would get whole yellow
peas out of Canada Right To makethat soup with Well, now with
(29:18):
agri-liquid.
Now I'm up in Canada workingwith that crop Really Yellow
peas as a crop, so it's kind ofcome full circle for me.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
What's the variety of crops you have to deal with?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Well, all the small grains, Right, you know so.
Barley malting, barley, springwheat, durum wheat, right
malting barley, spring wheat,durum wheat, all the varieties
of wheat, triticale for foragegrass haze, you know, the
farther north we go the morechallenging it gets, for alfalfa
especially, although it isamazing how far north we can
(29:52):
grow alfalfa up into Canada.
But potatoes, you know you getinto short season crops.
So potatoes work, you know youget into short season crops.
Right, right, so potatoes workwell.
Up there, the southern plainsregion of Canada, the vast
Canadian prairies, as it were,are a really great place to grow
potatoes.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
And so there's quite a bit of that up there, and I
get into lentils and dry beans.
Really, you know, pinto beans,black beans, Two of my favorites
, several varieties of lentils,you know, yeah, canola, right,
that's a huge one.
Boy, you go up into Canada.
You think it's amazing, middleof the summer, when it's
blooming, the vast, you know,5,000 acre fields of yellow,
(30:33):
bright yellows, where it's justas far as you can see.
It's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I'm kind of an equipment dork.
I love just driving differentpieces of equipment, what's your
favorite piece of farmequipment to drive.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Believe it or not, one of my favorite jobs in the
entire world is planting corn.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Really.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
I love running a corn planter.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Really.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, there's just something about it.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I'll tell you they've gotten so big.
I talked to a guy.
Well, I'm not sayingnecessarily.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It would be my favorite now running a 36 row.
You got to be pretty smart torun one of those.
Oh yeah yeah, my hair's gettingpretty gray.
That would be a big challenge,but no, the bottom line is I
just have always loved plantingcorn.
Yeah, I like planting any crop,but corn in particular just
gave me a lot of respect.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
You know, we don't plant with a drill, we plant, we
actually work soil.
We use a vertical tillage toolto kind of put a nice thin layer
, plant a seed bed, okay, andthen we airflow.
Oh sure, we airflow our alfalfaon with potash, or, yeah,
usually potash as a carrier, yep.
And then we come back with acultimulcher and roll over it,
(31:40):
yep, and we've had really goodluck doing that.
Right and true method.
Yeah, and it seems to be easierthan drilling, maintaining the
drill and the depth and havingthe right moisture content in
the soil.
We can be a little bit morevaried in wind and Sure, you
know, and the speed of it I meangood Lord know.
And the speed of it, I meangood lord.
They can airflow it on the way.
If there's 120 foot airflow,they could be in and out of an
80 acre field in 30 minutes welland early in my career.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Sometimes guys would try doing that with spinner type
dry fertilizer applications andyeah, that never worked very
well because that small seed,you know, just wouldn't carry
out from the spinners very farright.
These air flows now are veryconcise.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
GPS guidance.
You know we don't get theoverlap or the skips and it
worked really well.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
What we ended up doing.
We did one field this year witha spinner type truck and they
set up a pattern.
They set up all the boxes andmade sure all the seeds are
falling there.
But we did a dual pattern.
So they spread at half rate butcovered the field twice, doing
multi.
You know multi pattern.
So they spread at half rate butcovered the field twice, doing
multi.
You know multi pattern.
So it'll be interesting to seehow that field comes up this
year.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, yeah, that'll make it better.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, Not as good as an air flow.
No, we tried it.
We tried it a couple of yearsago with with not only alfalfa
but a grass seed, and so we gotstriping because of the the
different gravities of the seed,Absolutely so it was kind of
weird.
It was an interesting lookingfield.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Well, you know, going back to grass hay, you know,
and it's a little bit of a it'sa crop that I, you know, over
the course of my career I'veseen grass hays neglected from a
nutrition standpoint and amanagement standpoint, probably
more than any other crop.
You know, I have seen it a lotout on the Great Plains, where
(33:22):
guys will have permanent pastureand never fertilize.
Well, the universities haven'thelped us in that situation.
When you know, when you've hadthese land-granting,
universities have traditionallysaid it's not worth fertilizing
permanent pasture.
But we have found that evensmall amounts of agri-liquid out
(33:42):
there as a foliar will makethose pastures pop and we can
double the production.
And that doesn't sound feasibleuntil you realize that because
they have never been fertilizedor they've been dramatically
under-fertilized for years ordecades, they're not producing
much.
So it doesn't take a lot toreally increase that production.
(34:03):
Take it back in, exactly right.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Well, we see that with guys, especially as you go
south of where we are, you getdown into the rolling hills and
more of the more difficultterrains.
They graze cattle on it yearafter year after year after year
, and there's no fertilizer.
Now they'll fertilize their hayfields, but their pastures get
neglected, right, and you seesome of the guys around here
starting to do what we do, whichis a rotational grazing.
(34:26):
So we rotationally graze ourcattle, so we always give that
ground.
It gets eaten down to where youknow, about three to four
inches and then they're off ofit and that plant gets
rejuvenated, right, and with theagri-liquid product we sprayed
it on.
That we did, I showed you thattest we did on that 30 acres
over there.
Uh, where pull our, pull ourfences up, run over it, spray it
(34:50):
doesn't hurt the animals, notgoing to hurt them, you know.
wants it to dry you know, now weleft them off of there, for I
think the next time they wereback on was a week.
That plant had the time toingest that.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, yeah, Right, that's a little interesting side
issue.
I do get that question quite abit oftentimes from smaller
producers that are running 10,15, 20, 50 cows on relatively
small acreages.
How can I fertilize thiswithout endangering my cows?
And you know my response is, aslong as you've given that, I'll
(35:26):
speak for agri-liquid, notother liquid products because I
can't represent them.
But from agri-liquid standpointI'll probably give about 90% of
my product into the plantwithin 24 hours.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Really yeah.
So what we did is we left it offseveral days because I, you
know again new farmer, not verysmart you know we would
fertilize it and then we couldwalk our, because we just use a
single line fence to separatethem as they're rotationally
grazing through there and wehave a we call a central hub
that has our waterers and thenwe you know we've talked about
spreading our mineral feedersout but pull our fences down
(36:02):
takes an hour, run over it,spray it takes an hour and then
our fences can go right back upand then that's ready.
The next time they come out ofthat next paddock they go into
one, that one that's beenfertilized, and you can see I
mean you can see a distinctdifference of that field, run
right down the fence line.
You know where one side gotnothing.
(36:23):
It didn't get treated.
Now it was fertilized in thefall, but you can see how fast
it got beaten down and howunresponsive it was.
Coming out of the drought,those plants that had, where
those roots had built up alittle bit of reserve, a little
bit of extra strength, came outof the drought ready to go.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
And we saw that with the alfalfa too.
Even during the drought, we'dhave new sprouts coming up
within a day, a day or two,you'd start to see that green
start to come back, and once wegot that rain after we went
through the drought, it was likean explosion.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, you know, in agriculture none of us are very
smart, john, no matter how longwe've been in it, because
agriculture is going to keepteaching us lessons, right?
Yeah, you know, we get to apoint where we think we've seen
it all, never have seen it all,because we're always getting
thrown curveballs, right.
So if there's a career outthere to keep you humble, it's
(37:18):
agronomy.
I'll be the first to admit that, you know.
You can't be a know-it-all andbe an agronomist.
It doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Man, don't tell some of the farmers I know, man, some
of these guys are smarter thanyou know they'll tell oh, this
is what you do, you got to dothis and you walk right.
Mother nature comes in and saysnah, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, so you know, one of the things it's kind of a
given.
Sometimes there's things thatyou assume in agriculture that
become just assumed knowledge,even though you maybe haven't
actually experienced it yourself.
But you hear and one of those isfrom a foliar standpoint is if
(37:57):
the crop is under stress, ifit's under drought stress, don't
bother putting any foliarnutrition on it, right, because
it's not going to absorb it,it's under stress, not going to
be able to use it.
Well, I'll accept that, maybeas a general rule of thumb,
right.
But again, agronomy teacheslots of lessons and sometimes
it'll teach lessons that youdon't see coming, and one of
(38:19):
them was out in North Dakota,actually in Manitoba.
Okay, so we have an agri-liquiddealer there and the owner of
this agri-liquid dealership alsohas a personal family farm,
right, and part of that farm isirrigated, part of it isn't, and
he's selling agri-liquid, sohe's also using it on his own
(38:42):
farm, which is actually a quitelarge farm, and so on the part
of the farm that's pivotirrigated, you have these
corners right that the pivotsdon't get deep, and he's got
some 160-acre pivots.
So some of these corners arequite large.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Right right.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So he's one of these guys that I'm selling the
product.
I want to see it work on my ownoperation, which is great you
talked about.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
That's how we got.
That's how we got into it.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
That's why I'm an agratimus for agri-liquid,
because I see with my own eyes,you know, and I can do my own
field research, which has beenawesome.
But so dry years this goes backmaybe three years ago.
They were pretty significantdrought and he had some leftover
.
It was a blend, our Shirke, Ithink there was some furthering
in it, uh, some pro germinator,and the corners were had
(39:42):
basically gone dormant becauseof the drought, and alfalfa will
do that.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Right Lack of water.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Right.
So there was one corner, hethought probably about four
acres worth.
He drove up, made a boom, passacross it, um, just basically
empty out the rest of thisproduct and finish up.
It was about a week later,maybe 10 days later, and he got
a call from one of his farmhands.
He said hey, what did you do inthat corner?
(40:08):
He had a name for thatparticular pivot, you know.
Hey, what did you do in thecorner on, you know, pivot
number 12?
And Ray said well, I just wentacross it with the foliar blend
I'd been using.
And he said why?
He said you need to come outand see this, even though
(40:29):
ostensibly that alfalfa wasdormant, right, Right.
Still dry.
Hadn't rained in the meantime,but there was new growth on it.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Really when he had sprung.
Came out of dormancy, Didn't?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
yes.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Well, it got enough nutrients to pop a little bit.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, exactly, there was a visible response to that
fully nutrition, even thoughthere shouldn't have been,
inventional wisdom would havesaid no.
And then, when he did get rainlater in the fall bang, that
strip really took off.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Well, I think we saw.
You know, one of our ways ofthinking was when we were
putting down our fertilizer andour you know, our agri-liquid
products.
Putting them down is thatdrought.
If you farm alfalfa in Illinois, there's no crop insurance.
That drought.
If you farm alfalfa in Illinois, there's no crop insurance.
None, yeah, and it's just.
I mean you might as well go toAtlantic City and throw some
money down, but the thing thatyou can do to prepare for
(41:26):
droughts is make sure that yourplants are as healthy as
possible.
So when we went, I think it wasclose to eight weeks yeah, it
was close to eight weeks with norain.
The minute that rain came nowthere was one field.
I showed you that field that'snot in the, it's a more
traditional alfalfa that didn'tget treated.
The field across the roadtreated that field across the
(41:47):
road.
When we got that rain exploded.
I mean, alfalfa was 12, 16inches high in a matter of
almost no time and the fieldthat didn't get fertilized
didn't get the same programmight've made it to six inches.
I mean massive, massivedifference in yield by making
sure that plant was ready toaccept that challenging
(42:09):
condition.
Dan, it's been great having youon the podcast.
Man, when you're back downwe'll do it again because you
and I have so much in commonwith the music and stuff that's
been fun all day.
I gotta say it's been what awonderful day just going around
talking about the two thingsthat I'm really passionate about
yeah, including including music.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
That was such a surprise.
When I walked into your officeI thought, oh my gosh, look at
the keyboard, look at the stereosystem, oh my gosh, and yeah,
uh, gold records on the wall,yeah, stuff that you've produced
, and it's like wow, instantconnection.
But it's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Man.
Well, it's good talking to you.
Thanks all for watching.
We'll catch you on the next one.
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