Episode 161: Increasing Corn Yields with Fewer Inputs with Jake Ewing

Hi friends. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. This is John Kemp and I'm here today to have another fun conversation. You know, the general topics that we often talk about related to agronomy and plant health and improving the entire farm and food ecosystem from many different dimensions. Today I'm here with Jake Ewing. It's a conversation I've looked forward to for a while. Jake has been doing some quite interesting stuff in commercial commodity crop production. And you know, it's for, for folks who have a perspective on, there's certainly a recurring refrain of why, why are we growing the degree of commodities that we are and why are we growing 40% of our corn acres for, for ethanol consumption, so forth. And there's, that's a whole separate conversation. There's. I'm of the persuasion that that doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a, from a macro perspective, but the reality is that is what exists today and we need to figure out how to improve soil health and how to improve our crops performance even in that type of environment. So I'm really looking forward to having this discussion with you. Jake. Thanks for being here. Tell us a little bit about your context, your operation, the scope of the work that you're doing.

Yeah, so it's, it's great to be here. You know, it's, it's really an honor. We are actually at this point just corn growers in western Illinois. We, me and dad split off of our, our larger farm a few years ago and we've just been kind of branching out on our own. And you know, in that we have been, we're a small farm as far as commodity crops go. We're just over a thousand acres, you know, and this year we actually stepped up a little bit to 1300. But you know, as far as the farms in our area, we're a small farm. And so because of that we've had to really kind of think outside the box on, you know, making ends meet and being able to afford to actually exist in this space in our, in our region. And you know, because of that we've, we've started down the path of going we've got to raise the most corn we possibly can, you know, with the cheapest possible inputs. And that's really led us down this path into what I would, you know, consider a, a semi regenerative farm. And we're working more towards that path all the time. But you know, change doesn't happen immediately. But, but yeah.

So how, how has, how have your practices and approaches evolved over the course of the last several years, what are you doing differently today than what you were doing in the past?

So the big step that we made that was kind of an accidental step is, you know, in being a small farm, we went and said, hey, we can't afford to pay the big co ops and other farmers to come in and do our work for us. So we went out and bought a sprayer. You know, it's a high clearance sprayer so we can spray corn throughout the season. And you know, our thought was we can, we can do our fungicide with that, we can do our herbicides, we can do all the passes that know farms typically make. But once we actually got that and started down that path, we started to realize that some of these applications aren't working or aren't even necessary, you know, and we started to get into foliar fertilizers, you know, which mainstream agronomy just says just doesn't work on commodity crops. That's just, just don't do it. But we, we got into that and we actually started with a potassium product that we were spraying on late in grain fill. And we saw massive success with that. And so that's when we started to look into other, you know, we tried applying manganese and some other fertilizers in the soil and we just saw no response. But then all of a sudden when we started spraying it on the leaves, we got huge responses from that. And that's kind of what's led us down this regenerative path is as we start opening, opening these doors and saying that, you know, our plants are no longer deficient in manganese, all of a sudden diseases aren't nearly the problem that they used to be. And so that's kind of what's leading us down this path. You know, we've also cut back nitrogen applications significantly. A few years ago we were applying probably a Hun or 210 to 220 pounds of nitrogen. And this year we're down to 160 on the whole farm and only of which 100 pounds has been applied to the soil. So that's significantly saved us in cost, but also has increased our yields, you know, and hopefully also soil health with that.

All right, let's, let's unwrap a couple of these pieces because I'm sure folks listening in have, have lots of question marks raised by some of the things that you just said. So I want to go back and at some point I want to talk about your fungicide applications and your trace mineral foliars and dig into what you are doing, where you've seen the significant results. And this, this is, this is actually a very important conversation, Jake, because there are, there are a couple of reasons why mainstream agronomy thinks that foliar applications are not effective, particularly on corn crops. Because. And one of those reasons is that, well, I'll just kind of go through them in my mind to kind of establish the groundwork. One of those reasons is that in many ways the corn plant is very robust and it's very resilient and it has given half an opportunity, given at all reasonable conditions, it's going to go and it's going to grow and yield as effectively as it can.

Right? You're very much correct.

Yeah. And so it's. If you want to produce a yield response, it takes, it takes an exceptional product or approach to move the needle very much. Much of what gets used on other crops doesn't move the needle a whole lot for corn production. So that's one aspect and then the other, the other. Another major piece is that a lot of foliar applications, both in terms of product design, product formulation and foliar application, haven't been optimized for corn. They just the thought and the system, the intention that has gone into those hasn't been particularly robust. So I'm very interested in getting into that whole aspect. But I suggest before we go there, or kind of maybe as an adjunct to that, let's talk first a little bit about your nitrogen management. You said you used to be 210 to 220 bushels and now you're down to 160 of only which 100 is applied to the soil. Tell us a bit about exactly what's being applied and how it's being applied and when.

So I'll go back to our. Our default program has always been we apply somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 to 160 units of nitrogen in the fall as anhydrous ammonia, come back with another 50, 60 units as a UAE, an application broadcast in the spring before we ever put seed in the ground. You know, that's has been the historic applications our farm. That's also fairly similar to what everybody in our area does. We are blessed in the fact that our soil is very thick and heavy and it holds nitrogen well. But it also allows you to make what I would call bad nitrogen decisions. You know, I'm sure you've heard something to that effect here and there, but.

Well, I've said some pretty adamant things about applying hydrogen in the fall, just to be clear on the record.

No, and you're very much probably correct on that. And I will say we are, we are still in the process of getting rid of that application and moving it to the spring. The hardest part in that transition is you have to completely change the equipment that's required to apply. You know, if you go away from anhydrous, it's not like you can just unhook the anhydrous tank and hook on a liquid tank and off you go. It's a completely different set of equipment and pumps and application equipment. So we are still in the process of making that transition. But what we have done is we've cut that fall application down to where now we're applying 80 units or less in the fall. We've got a field this year that actually a couple fields that didn't get any anhydrous at all on it.

Working.

On making that transition. But like I said, logistically it's difficult.

Yeah. And then as you're reducing that fallout location, what's happening in the spring.

So what's interesting as far as that is concerned is, you know, I will say in our pursuit of more yield, you know, the conventional agronomy method is you just got to get more corn. That's the whole, the whole goal is to grow more corn. Well, in our pursuit of that, one thing that we started doing was applying urea dissolved onto the leaves through a foliar application. And we'll make that pass several times throughout the year. Well, what we found is we just don't need to apply the nitrogen at all in the fall. It's not that we have to make up for it somewhere else with our foliar applications. We just can reduce the amount of nitrogen we're putting on altogether. You know, so that's. We've cut back in the fall from 200 units or 180 units down to 100 units. And then in the spring, instead of doing the 60 or 70 weed and feed, we've switched to a two by two system on our planter and we've cut that back to 30 units. And in that pass, we're also applying humic substances and molybdenum and sulfur, kind of the, you know, nitrogen efficiency program that you guys are, are talking about. And I feel like that in combination with the foliar applications in the summer has really allowed us to pull those nitrogen rates back.

What do your foliar applications of liquid urea look like during the summer? How frequently are you applying? And at what rates?

So we will typically apply 10 pounds of dissolved urea, which would be, you know, 4.6 pounds of nitrogen. And we'll apply that five times throughout the summer, once around our herbicide pass, and then every couple weeks there throughout. Actually, we're in the process of making those an application right now, and it'll go all the way out through grain fill.

And when you say you're doing them at the same timing of an herbicide pass, are you actually tank mixing it with the herbicide?

We are not. We are believers that mixing poisons and fertilizers is not really a good idea. And truthfully, going down this regenerative ag pass, we are significantly reducing herbicide applications too. And so there's cases where we're not even applying herbicides in the summer. And so that makes it easy. You know, you just do a foliar pass. But in the case where we do need a herbicide, still, we just will make two separate passes on that because, like I said, I really don't like the idea of mixing poisons and fertilizers together.

All right, you have some fields that have such reduced weed pressure that you're not applying herbicides at all anymore. What happened there? What do you contribute that to? How did that begin?

Well, and I'll. I'll preface this by saying we're not completely applying no herbicides. So typically we will make an application of a residual herbicide before we plant, but that's enough to hold us throughout the summer. And, you know, like I said, it's typically not every field. Some of our fields we just got on recently, you know, and for whatever reason have more weed pressure. They also have lower fertility in those fields. So that could be a contributing factor. Other fields, you know, get wet, get ponds in them, and get weeds that come through. And that's a hard thing to suppress for several years after that. But, you know, a couple of our fields, it just feels like you make a application of a residual herbicide and it just holds you throughout the summer. And so adding more herbicide on top of that, which would be the standard recommended practice in our area, just feels unnecessary to me.

Got it. So along with the. These multiple nitrogen applications, this gets back to. Or the foliar urea application patients getting back to the conversation about foliary other nutrients. Are you tank mixing anything else with that foliar year? What all is going. What are the various applications that you're making during the summer?

Oh, man, you're. You're digging into a rabbit hole here. That that is deeper than it should be. You know, we will make applications of. Every application we make has 3, 4 nutrients in it, at least. We're kind of trying to put together what I call a plant stimulating package. So. And it changes throughout the year. This is the big thing about foliar applications in corn. And this is the thing I think that people miss, you know, in mainstream agronomy, is it doesn't make any sense to apply certain nutrients at certain time frames. And it makes incredible sense to spray certain nutrients at those time frames, you know, so early.

Don't you think you should be making a potassium application at about V5?

So we have not put on any potassium in our corn fields until this week.

I was being facetious.

I know you were, but I've got an agronomist that I work closely with and he's been, he does the exact opposite applications that we do. He's out applying potassium all growing season. And his, his belief is for every pound of nitrogen, you need a pound of potassium. And what's interesting about that is he grows fantastic looking plants. You know, these corn plants are the tallest I've ever seen. Huge leaves. They look fantastic. And then when it goes to start setting the corn ears, you get 16, around 36 long grain fill's not spectacular. And his yields are fine, but they're not, they're not as good as the plant says it should be. And I contribute a lot of that to his early applications of potassium because that's really inhibiting some of the more important nutrients in those time frames. Yeah.

Anyway, I took you off your track a little bit. You were talking about what is it then that you are putting into your foliar application. So you started talking about how you're putting in specific things at specific stages. What does that look like? Exactly.

So we will make our first application at V3 or 4, and then usually we're about every two to three weeks after that until tasseling. And so the first application will get urea and epsom salts, magnesium sulfate, as well as manganese and copper. If those are showing deficiency, you know, on our SAP test, which they usually are, we struggle with those two things in our area. We'll also, as the corn gets into rapid growth, we'll start putting in molybdenum to kind of help keep the nitrates down in our plants. And we also will put cobalt in on every pass that we make. And so we will do that for the first two passes. Oh, and boron. I forgot that too. We'll Put so I can't, I can't think of how many nutrients that would be. But we're putting on those key nutrients for the reason that in my opinion, people think about corn backwards. So when you look in the middle of June, your corn's growing several inches a day. People go, well, that's vegetative growth. We need to manage for vegetative growth. But the truth is what's happening in that time frame is it's reproductive growth. You know, you're setting your ear length, your ear count, your ear size, all of that's being determined well before tassel. And so if you can manage for reproductive growth, you will see a reproductive response. But then the opposite is when you get post hassle now it is completely vegetative growth and everyone's now switched over to managing reproductive growth. But now you need to turn on the nitrogen, the potassium, and really try to keep that plant growing.

You are so correct. Many people don't realize that filling a kernel is an expansion process. It's a growth process, not a reproductive process.

Well, and it's completely controlled by potassium. You know, you're, you're, I won't say completely, but you know, your grain will keep filling as long as there's available potassium there. And so if you've made all your application potassium well in advance, you're going to run out and it's going to be a problem for you. You're going to see a reduction in grain fill, you know, which can really look like a grain quality reduction, but even a grain weight reduction too.

Jake, how, how are you continuing? Are you still. So you're managing hydrogen and potassium differently later during grain fill, but are you also continuing with the trace mineral applications during grain fill period?

So when we get to grain fill, what we will typically do is, and we're, we're trying some things this year, you know, we're still showing on our latest SAP test deficiencies and copper and manganese. And so we're trying to put some on now. I suspect it probably won't be quite as big a deal as it was early in the season, but we're, we're still trying it. But the main thing is we will take and continue to put on or we'll, we'll start putting on the potassium. And typically with that, I would like to put on some more urea melted. But we're running against the limit of what we can do without burning the plants, you know, by putting that potassium in there. And we will continue to make the cobalt application. Actually, I Got a fun story for you. But last year we applied one pass of cobalt instead of all these cobalt passes, except for a couple spots, but we just put on one cobalt pass, and it was late. R3, maybe R4. It was August 20. We were out spraying this. And to give you an idea, the neighbor was hooking up his combine, looking at us like we were morons for being out there spraying so late. But that pass of COBALT made us 10 bushel an acre that late in the season, you know, surprise at all. It really isn't a surprise because that's what's contributing to your plant really staying alive and staying green.

Yeah.

But, you know, so this year, and like I said last year, we tried spots where we put cobalt on all the time. And so this year we're. We're doing that everywhere because it just makes such a. A plant health. And then therefore, a yield response.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of. I still remember, probably 20 years ago, I read this paper and there was. The paper wasn't even about. I forget the topic of the paper, but it wasn't directly about cobalt or about ethylene, but it had this. This one sentence buried in there as a nugget that when a plant has adequate levels of cobalt, it inhibits ethylene synthesis and delays plants in essence. I'm like, whoa, what did you just say?

So what's really interesting about that is in mainstream agronomy right now with corn, especially in our area, but it's getting more prevalent. You gotta. You gotta spray fungicide. Like it's just a requirement. If you don't spray fungicide, it's gonna be a problem for you. But the reason for that is not always because there does, there is disease, but because the, you know, strabiliarin type fungicide will help lower ethylene and increase plant health just on its own by default. Well, cobalt will do the exact same thing in a much more natural and healthy method.

Exactly. And the other thing that cobalt does, that's very important at this particular stage, a lot of people don't realize, but cobalt moves down to the root system. And the majority of cobalt will be in the root tips, where it is essential for synthesizing cytokinins. So when you apply cobalt, not just do you inhibit senescence and ethylene formation, but you actually increase root development right at a period when that nutrient absorption is so critical.

I've had conversations with guys. You know, you talk about corn dry down. In most cases, it's. It's not drying down. It's Just died. It's. It's just dying. Well, the thing is, a corn plant will always do that in this order. It will always shut the root system down first, and then it will start to shut down the lower stock and the upper leaves, you know, and it will collapse to the ear as it's trying to move every bit of available energy into that ear if it's dying instead of drying. Well, by applying cobalt and stimulating those roots, you can stop the first step on that. That path. You know, if you can keep your root growth going, you will also keep your plant going by.

Exactly. Exactly. Oh, this is a fun conversation. Now, let's. Let's come back to your. What you're doing at the moment. You're putting on potassium, and you said you're struggling to have room to put in urea because of the high salt index, the high electrical conductivity. So I'm assuming that means you're probably using potassium thiosulfate.

We are using potassium acetate, which we're using a pretty high rate, too. It's a. It's a 25, either 23 or 25% potassium product, and we're using a gallon per acre of that right now. And so because of that, we're, you know, hitting up against that top end of what we can mix urea with. And we're also still putting some Epsom salts in. You know, there's enough salt in that, I suspect. I could probably buffer it a little bit, maybe with some humic substances or folic acid, but I haven't found a real good source of that cheap enough to be worth doing.

Oh, there's one called humicarb.

You know, I knew you were gonna say that.

The other thing that you might try. And this. This definitely has a threshold. It'll work to a certain point, and then it doesn't work. And you could just try including some carbohydrates in there as well. Just put some sugar in the mix.

Yeah, I thought about that. Using molasses or something similar to that.

Yeah, yeah. So we started having this conversation about the use of fungicides and strobilurans to. To limit senescence, but. And to limit. Limit ethylene formation. But I am curious with your. With your early growth stage foliar applications of manganese and copper, and I'm guessing you either have adequate levels of zinc or you've got zinc somewhere in the mix in there as well. I would expect to see a lot less foliage diseases. So what. What does your. What do your fungicide applications look like today compared to a couple of years ago. What are you observing?

So interestingly enough there, I feel like we're still, we put down 5 pounds of zinc pre plant until it into the soil usually. We're still struggling though with the zinc and copper and manganese on our SAP test. So I. We're not fully to what I would call the point where we can do no fungicides, but what we are able to do is cut those. We are now using a half rate instead of a full rate, which I. We're doing tests this year, significant tests on not using fungicides at all. And instead in this timeframe applying copper, zinc, manganese to try to hold it back. But as a whole, we haven't completely gotten to that, you know, no fungicide application, but that's truly the goal. So a few years ago, what we would typically do is we will. We would spray a full rate of like a three mode of action fungicide twice, you know, once about tassel, once, three weeks later, and then truthfully, I think a lot of guys in our area are doing it three or four times, which is, I don't like that. I don't like the fact that that's happening because it's off label for one and for two, it's just, it's causing more disease resistance with fungicides. But what we're able to do now with better nutritional management is again, we've went to a half rate once instead of twice and later we've pushed it back later to when the diseases are really coming on.

Well, a lot of people don't realize, but those, those fungicide applications are close to the top of the list of some of the most detrimental applications you can do from a soil biology and a soil health perspective. I mean, they rank right up there with anhydrous ammonia and with. What's the word that I'm looking for with fumigant applications.

Well, you know what I think is really interesting? In corn growing right now, we have this thing of going disease bad. We gotta get rid of all the disease right up until September 15th. We combine it and then we go, why is our corn not breaking down? Then we got to go out and apply different products to try to break our corn down. And I'm like, the thing is, those diseases are what's doing that. In a lot of cases, the diseases aren't just there because they're there, they're doing a job in an ecosystem.

Well, there certainly are. And yeah, it's not just those potential pathogenic organisms. But all the other, I mean, breakdown of high carbon residue is fundamentally a process that is driven primarily by fungi. And when you're constantly applying fungicides, do you think that's just affecting the plant and not the soil microbiome? Well, you need to have another think.

Even if you're able to make a perfect application to get none of it on the soil at all, in two weeks, all that residue is going to be chopped down and disposited on the soil, you know, and then it's getting in anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Jake, you started this conversation by saying that you believed the, the pathway for your operation to be successful is to produce corn less expensively than everyone else. And when you start describing the half a dozen or more passes that you're making with a sprayer, additional passes with just nutrient foliar applications, I start wondering how much of that is actually happening and how much of that is actually true. You are, you are still making separate herbicide passes. You're making one less fungicide pass. But what do your, what does it cost you to make an application now that you have your own spray rig? And what is it, what is your cost of production to grow a bushel of corn with this, with this approach?

So where we're at currently, we went and bought a high clearance 120 foot boom sprayer for the reason that we want to be able to get over it fast. So we'll usually put 100 hours on our sprayer a year, which are expensive hours, don't get me wrong. But you know, it's still not nearly as expensive as you might feel like it is, especially on an older sprayer. But then our actual nutrient applications are not significantly expensive. You know, it's, we'll put on like, the urea is a buck 80 an acre right now for every pass we make over it. So we do that five times throughout the season. We've spent seven or eight dollars an acre to make that application, plus our other nutrients and all of its lives in that three to five dollars per nutrient range. And what we've been able to do too, in this process is we've cut back our, our nitrogen applications. That's a significant savings. We've cut back on fungicide applications. That's a significant savings. We don't use pesticides at all, insecticides at all anymore. We also have completely stopped using dry fertilizer in the fall, which is a significant cost and grain production right now. And I guess. So to answer your question, where we are for this year, this growing season, we have spent $410 an acre to grow our corn. And if I run.

Is that including seed costs?

That's including seed costs.

Well, actually, let's back up just a step. What, what all does that include? Does it include land rent? Is that your total all in.

That does not include land rent. But we have an interesting situation there that we don't rent most of our ground. We own most of it. And, you know, so that's not a significant cost for us, but it includes everything else. The seed, the fuel, the time. Well, I guess not all the time, but, you know, all the nutrient applications. Every. Every product that we put on out there includes all of that.

So at a cost of 4, 10 an acre, you've been. This is your third year down this pathway, I think. What, what is your productivity look like the last couple of years?

So people don't believe me when I talk about this, but truthfully, our last couple years have been astounding. Like the level of grain production that we didn't really believe possible. Our farm average for the last two years was 275 on the first year and then 285 last year. And, you know, it's yet to be determined what we are, but that is about 50 bushel better than the county average, at least 40.

What are comparative input costs in your local area?

So every year, just the reason I kind of come up with that $400 an acre of cost of production is if I would go back to what I call the old system and say we're going to do the 200 pounds of nitrogen, the dry fertilizer, the fungicide applications. If we were going to do all of that, it would be. I figured it up this year it was 415. So it's. We are trying to stay right on that same cost of production while increasing our yields on the other side. And part of that is just the last couple years we have had really good crops, so we had some extra money to spend on it. I feel like if we were in a little bit tighter position, we probably would. I don't know that we'd make every single pass we make with the sprayer. I also think we would significantly cut seed costs, you know, and we're working on that anyway. Switching from genetically modified corn to non gmo, which is a lot cheaper, too.

You know, this. Jake, your story reminds me a little bit. I've shared this story on a couple of occasions, and we discussed it here on the early podcast interview as well. But Don Huber has shared this story of how in the late 70s there was a three collaborative effort with three universities across the Midwest where they decided to push the envelope, picking the best soils, the best fields, the best corn genetics that they could find, what were, what would, what would be the yields possible with the tools and the technology they had at the time. And across 11 different farms on field scale trials, the least, the lowest yield they produced was 450 bushels an acre. And I asked him the question, what happened and what would have to be true? Like why, why did, why are we going backwards and what would have to be true for us to achieve those yields again on a consistent basis? And his answer was, we don't need to. If there was a legitimate need and the incentives were there, then people would figure it out.

That's it.

We figured it out. Other people can figure it out. Yeah, I'd love to get your take on that.

That's very true. And honestly, you know, to echo what you said in the beginning, it is ridiculous that we waste as much time and effort as we do on growing a single commodity crop, you know, or two. The disappointing thing for me in my area is we don't have a market for anything. You know, we, we can't grow wheat, we can't grow oats, we can't grow. If I, if I grew a wheat crop here, I'd have to drive it an hour and a half away to the local, the nearest elevator that takes wheat. And you know, we don't have a market for sunflowers or any crop. So we're stuck. Even our soybean market, our bases are usually 70, 80 cents off the, off the board of trade. It's just the only option we have really in our area is to grow corn. But it's also really disappointing to me that so much of the Midwest is used in that way. You know, I would love to grow, I've got a two acre patch behind my house that's all sunflowers right now, just, you know, because I, I like growing them and I would love to be able to grow some other crops, but just economically it doesn't work for us right now. But I think you're 100% right that, you know, and you see this happen a few years ago when the corn market goes really high, all of a sudden everyone figures out how to grow better corn. And then when the commodity prices go back down, all of a sudden yields go back down. Well, I think people know in a lot of senses how to grow better corn, but it's just economically doesn't make a lot of sense.

Yeah. So, Jake, this has been a really interesting conversation, but where. Where do you see the. I was about to ask, where do you see the big opportunities? We might come back to that question, but earlier you. You used a phrase. You said that people approach corn growing backwards. You talked about reversing or flipping the focus on vegetative versus reproductive growth at different stages of plant development. What are the other things like that that you see where. Where are other significant misunderstandings where there's opportunity for people to really develop a different perspective and approach things differently? That would be very valuable.

Well, the thing that I think is interesting is you said at the beginning, corn is a very robust plant. Like, it just does what it does. You know, we've made jokes around in the past that, oh, we could. We could have dumped seed on the ground this year and it would have made 250. You know, but that's. That shows the nature of how resistant corn is to everything. You know, it just. It will grow, it'll get 12ft high, it'll put an ear on it, it'll make about 200 bushel corn. That's if you do no management to it at all. You know, I mean, that's not entirely true, but, you know, pretty close. Pretty close.

Yep.

But the problem with that is then we also come back on the backside and go, okay, well, we're going to go out and we're going to treat the seed with fungicides, pesticides, everything else. We're going to plant that. And you better be putting an insecticide in furrow with that, you know, to make sure you don't get a single root worm in that field. And then the second it comes out of the ground, you need to be out there with your herbicides and potentially fungicides. And we manage this crop all year long like it's not a robust crop. We manage it like, you know, you get a single tar spot in the field and all of a sudden your yield's gone. The thing is, we have discussions every year on going, is fungicide even economical? You know, that's how robust corn is, is we make two or three passes of fungicide to get five or 10 bushel. It doesn't make any sense. So if you could step back off of that for a second and say, we can manage that nutritionally, the corn plant will allow you to do that. It's not a sensitive crop.

Yeah. And you know what I find interesting as well is actually, let's talk about. I'd like to understand with the, with the yields that you had the last couple of years, the 275 and 285 bushel, where did those yields come from? And I'm asking in the sense of in which indicators did they show up? Did they show up in row, row count, in, in ear length, in kernel size?

It is entirely in kernel size. And I'm not, I'm not saying there is not a case to grow more corn kernels. You know, I, I feel like that it probably does make sense, but you got to start at the wrong end. You got to go to the backside during grain fill and maximize that first. Because to give you an example, we had a hybrid on our farm last year that this corn was making 20 around every single one of them. And the ear length was decent. It was, you know, 40ish. You know, it was tons of corn kernels. But then the test weight at the end of the year was only 55 pounds, you know, and that was somewhat hybrid specific. It kind of does that. And the field was fine. It made 290. You know, it was a good field. But then right behind my house, we had a different hybrid and this corn was 14 around every single year. I didn't find a, I didn't find a 16 in the field. And the length was about the same, 38 to 40. That field made 3:15 and the test weight was 62 pounds. You know, it's, it's all coming. And what's interesting is part of the reason for that is the field that was the opposite way. We didn't make our late application of nutritionals because we were trying to get it ready to get it harvested off early so we could get some cover crops planted out there. But, you know, in retrospect, we probably could have gotten quite a bit of yield if we would have done that.

You know, we, we see the exact same pattern on soybeans. Soybeans are interesting in that we. It's very easy with a foliar application of accelerate, it's very easy to increase pod count and bean count per plant by 50 to 80%. I mean, that requires very little effort. But in many cases, let's just say that doing that alone without also addressing what's happening on the back end and filling those beans doesn't increase, doesn't correlate to increased yield.

You just get more smaller beans.

You get more smaller beans or they drop off. Yeah, exactly.

And that's, that's entirely true of, I would say, probably most crops, honestly. I mean, if you think about it, the Plant is a decision making machine. You know, it's a chemical decision, but it's constantly using the chemicals and the hormones that it has in it to decide how much yield it can sustain at any given point. And so if you lose any aspect along there, if you have, you know, early in the season, if you don't have the nutritional and hormonal components there, you'll get less pods or less corn kernels or less fruit on the tree. But then if it's there in the late side, it will go ahead and put more fruit on and the size and the opposite's true also. You can have plenty of nutrition early and get plenty of pods or seeds or whatever you're looking for. But then if you run out in the end, you'll just get the same amount of grain. It'll, it'll cut you back and you'll get smaller fruits and smaller seeds. It's, it's, that's the way the plant will make its decisions, you know, kind of, I guess.

What, what observations have you had that surprised you as you've been on this journey? What, what has been really unexpected?

What I think is really unexpected is how much the plant expression will change, you know, on all sorts of things. So one thing we noticed this year is I usually don't spray the corners of the field because I don't want to try to back up. And so I just round the corner off and keep going. The corn on that end of the field tasseled five days earlier than where we were making our foliar applications. It also is about 8 inches taller. And I attribute some of that. We were spraying sea stem on it, you know, every pass with it this year. And so part of that height, I would guess came from that and, but I think a lot of it is also, you know, giving it more manganese, specifically early causes it to be more nutritional or reproductively favored, I guess. And so that caused the plant to just not grow as fast. And in that same way we, we purposely try to manage our corn to grow as slowly as possible. And people tell me it's just based on seasonal length. You know, if you plant 105 day corn, you're going to get 105 day corn. We had corn last fall that Black layered 15 to 20 days later than it should have based off of the growing degree heat units.

That is where you got your yield right.

It's a hundred percent there, it's 100%.

In that, it's right in that window. Michael McNeil, who's a good friend of mine who I've interviewed here early on in the podcast as well. I think this might have been a personal conversation, but he has this rule of thumb that he goes by that every day. I think the starting stage is R1 at R1. For every additional day that you delay black layer, you gain five bushels an acre.

Well, the thing that is interesting about that is it's linear. The rate of growth in a plant or in a corn plant is linear. And so you look out there today and go, oh, we're putting on yield. It's a nice sunny day, nice temperature. We're putting on yield today. That's the exact same as three days before at black layers. You're putting on the same quantity of yield those days as you are today. You know, it's not perfectly linear, but it's really close.

Yeah.

So where.

Where do you see yourself and your operation developing next? What, how are you going to innovate next? Where. Where do you see opportunities that you've not yet taken advantage of?

So our big pushes at this point are to completely eliminate applications of fungicide and pesticide. We already have. Not this year. We did not make any applications of pesticide, did trials last year, and then was felt compelled enough to do it all this year. And also we are trying to reduce herbicide applications. Our big pushes at this point are try to, you know, stop harming the soil. And then we will start focusing on regenerating the soil, if. If that makes sense, kind of. And I know it sounds easy. We'll just don't. Don't spray fungicide next year. Don't spray. And you know, it. It is, and it's getting there. But truthfully, the problem is to compete in this market, you know, our neighboring farmers, 3, 500 acres, and then one up the road from that's 5,000. It's hard to compete as a. As a smaller grower with those guys, you know, that are making these applications. Unless you figure out how to do it and not hurt yourself.

Yeah, well, one of the. You. You mentioned that you still struggle with. With manganese and copper supply in your SAP analysis. And that's. Those are golden indicators. The way. The way that I would approach it, the way that I would suggest thinking about it, is when those levels are adequate, once you have adequate levels of manganese, copper and zinc and other things as well, but particularly those three, when those three are adequate in SAP analysis now you can have some degree of confidence and comfort in that the plant's ability to be resistant to diseases has just gone up by a significant factor and that the need for fungicides will be a lot less and the plant response to the fungicides applied will be much greater if it becomes necessary.

Right.

Well, and what's interesting for us is we have corn this year that are showing adequate levels that we're not making fungicide applications to. You know, I, I made one pass through the field with a fungicide just to make sure that it didn't, you know, I didn't see 50 bushel or something silly. But we're finding every year less and less benefit from spraying the fungicides. And I think that is in part because we are addressing the deficiencies of zinc and copper and manganese. You know, four years ago, we had never put a single pound of zinc or copper or manganese on our farm. You know, and to that end we also didn't apply boron or any other trace nutrient. Even sulfur was, you know, more or less ignored. We were doing the big three nutrients and that was that. And every year our disease pressure was worse. You know, it's crazy how when you manage your plant to be healthier, all of a sudden your plant is healthier. It's. It's a weird concept.

Well, this has been an exciting conversation, Jake. What have we missed talking about?

That's a good question. You know, I guess I will, I will leave with a couple really interesting findings that we found. Last year we applied an application of manganese the day it started tasseling. I was purposely waiting to try to second. I saw that tassel come out. We were making that application. And what's really, what really is interesting that happened is we sprayed it silk, it pollinated really fast. Just exactly what we were looking for. You know, the silk started turning brown and you know, that happened in about a five day window. And then five days later, a bunch of new silks came out. So we had a bunch of brown silks on the top of every single ear. And then a bunch of new white silks were popping out. And when I started pulling ears on that, the ears had physically grown about five new corn kernels in length, just. But it was too late that it had pollinated already. So they never pollinated or grew. But I was pulling ears before that, you know, cutting the leaf sheaths back and finding them. And they were 35 to 40 long. After that application, the same fields and the Same hybrids were 40 to 45 long and all these new silks were coming out. And it's a really goofy. I got some pictures of it to see all these ears that had brown silks and white silks at the same time. And that was really shocking to me to see that happen because I thought we had a. I thought we had, you know, a genetic problem perhaps. But every one of our fields did it. Every field. Every hybrid in the corn was obviously fine. But it's interesting that that happened.

That's intriguing. It makes you wonder what would happen if you did that application, let's say, I don't know, 10 days earlier.

Well, and see, that's what we did this year. You know, I kind of put that in my memory bank. And this year went, we gotta be a few days earlier. And I kid you not, we've got long ears this year, you know, and yet it's yet to be determined if they will fill and if it'll actually produce. But, you know, we were spraying last night and I was in the fields and I found an ear that was 60 corn kernels long.

Whoa.

Which, I mean, is. That's nuts. I told dad, I'm like, it's the longest year I've ever found. And maybe that was part of the application we made. Maybe it's the hybrid. It's hard to know for sure, you know, And I guess I will also leave with this too. I think one of the reasons that foliar applications are so unsuccessful is it's the application method. You know, I drove past a field yesterday that was. It was a bean field being sprayed with a drone. And it was 95 degrees yesterday at 3 o' clock in the afternoon. Sun was out and that stuff wasn't hitting the plants. I mean, it was evaporating faster. And I've heard farmer after farmer, that goes. Yeah, I tried fungicide or I tried nutritionals, you know, and it didn't work. And I'm like, well, when did you spray it? Well, you know, that day it was real hot and in the middle of the afternoon. We will purposely make all of our applications of nutritionals after dark, every night. We will start spraying about 8 to 9 o' clock in the evening and spray into the in as late as I can stay awake.

Honestly, how long does it take you to cover your entire operation with the sprayer that you have?

I'm spraying at night exclusively. It will take probably four days. I can do it in four days. And that's spraying, you know, 250 to 300 acres a night.

Yeah, well, your, your comment about being sprayed during the day when it's hot is it's very simple. The science of designing and Applying foliar applications is very clear. Absorption into the leaf is dependent. Not exclusively. There's other factors. But it could say the first and the biggest factor is that liquid. That droplet needs to stay liquid on the leaf surface for as long as possible. And if you spray in the evening and it's there all night before it dries up the next day, that's when. That's how you get your longest window.

Yep. And that's exactly what we try to do is get it on right as, as we go as early as we can without trying to get any drying happening. You know, and putting some urea in that mix also will help keep it wet a little longer. But that, that's our, our main goal. Another thing that I, I think is just bad information. I, I've heard always, you got to run a, you know, super fine mist. Highest pressure you can run on a sprayer. We don't do that at all. We actually are the opposite. We run about the least pressure we can run with the big droplets and we still see very good absorption into the plants. You know, I wonder how much getting so much mist is. Is not helping.

Well, it's, it's just another dimension of what we said just a little bit ago, which is when you have a larger droplet. Droplet, it stays liquid longer.

Yeah.

Just doesn't dry out as fast.

That's, that's the whole thing is just keep it wet. And the nice thing too about spraying in the evening and when the dew's setting in is you also get several gallons of water for free from the dew helping moving it down the plant and you know, everything.

More than several. More than several. And you know, it's, it would be remiss of me to mention because we have, we have listeners here of the podcast from, from all over the world. Cobalt and the, the effects that were. That Jake is describing from these foliar applications of trace minerals will only be effective if your trace minerals and these trace mineral metals are in the reduced form and they're chelated. And there's a plug for our rebound product line. But you can, you can apply all the cobalt or manganese sulfate you want and you will not get the types of results that Jake is describing.

What's really interesting about, we've been using the rebound products now for three years. This is. Or two or three years, I'm not sure. But what's interesting is spraying rebound manganese on with our other foliar application. You will actually physically see the corn plant green up in about an hour. So, you know, we have some 250 acre fields that takes me three or four hours to spray. And by the time I get across the field, you can see the line on the end rows where we've already sprayed, you know, and it's really crazy to see a visual response that quickly.

Yeah, it's, it is fascinating. It's a lot of fun because you can actually, you can measure that and see it in other ways as well. There's. I know that it would be possible to measure that with a photosynthesis apparatus. I forget what it's called. I want to say lidar, but that's obviously not correct. But anyway, these, these instruments that can measure photosynthetic capacity, but also if you can see a darker green, then you would should be able to measure it with a chlorophyll meter as well. Which is fascinating because manganese is not supposedly a part of what creates additional chlorophyll.

It's really weird because it is specifically the manganese too. When I take that out, it won't do it. You know, I think magnesium will to a certain degree. But manganese is really what seems to give it that green flash.

That's fascinating.

What's interesting though is then it'll get that nice green flash and then like three days later the whole field greens up really nice as it actually starts to assimilate and use some of these nutrients. You know, it's, it's like there's like a three day lag on when you see you spray to when you get the, get the nutrients into the plant.

Well, Jake, this has been such a fun conversation. I'm sure we could continue talking for a while, but I want to say thank you for all that you're doing and thanks for pushing the envelope and for being willing to share that with other people. And I look forward to having other conversation with you in a year or two. And actually I look forward to having a conversation with you again later this fall, if just on the phone, if not here in the recording. Because I want to know what happened to the field that has 60 inch or 60 ear, 60 kernel corn ear.

I'll be sure to let you know. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on here and talk.

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