On this edition of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by CultivAce, we head to Amboy, Ill., where Dave Thompson shares his top takeaways from harvest season. Univ. of Illinois soil scientist Andrew Margenot discusses why some no-tillers might want to dial back P and K rates next growing season. Associate editor Mackane Vogel checks in from FIRA USA 2024 in Sacramento, Calif., with a look at the latest in ag robotics innovations. No-tiller Jimmy Smith interseeds cover crops with a fertilizer applicator in western Oklahoma. And finally, in our Video of the Week, we catch up with the creator of the first-ever strip-till rig.

This episode of Conservation Ag Update is brought to you by CultivAce.

CultivAce is a West Coast manufacturer and distributor of a comprehensive line of foliar and starter fertilizers. CultivAce offers innovative solutions that drive agricultural crop yields and cultivate profitableoutcomes.

With a relentless focus on delivering the highest quality foliar and starter fertilizers, we are committed to empowering growers with the tools they need to achieve remarkable results. CultivAce is built on two fundamental principles: products must be the highest quality, and they must make the grower money. If a product doesn’t meet these standards, CultivAce doesn’t manufacture it.

For more information go to CultivAcegrowth.com.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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Favorable Weather Leads to Speedy Harvest, Great Yields

Welcome to Conservation Ag Update! Our harvest season odyssey continues in Amboy, Ill., where I spent the day with Dave Thompson, a farmer turned precision specialist for Case IH dealer Johnson Tractor. Dave says most of his customers were done harvesting before the calendar flipped to November and they’re happy with the results.

“Beans went fast this year. Guys were able to combine beans all day long, rather than maybe just an afternoon because of the dew. What a nice year.”

“Of course they’re not happy with market prices. That’s not that uncommon with where the markets are, they’re not great, I’m well aware of that, but the yields are incredible. I’ve yet to talk to anybody that’s not happy with their yields. It was a fairly dry year, so kind of surprising the yields are where they are.”

Of course, I’m sure not everyone was so lucky with the weather. Shoot me an email —nnewman@LessiterMedia.com — let us know how harvest is going in your neck of the woods.

Should No-Tillers Consider Dialing Back P & K in 2025?

How will those tough market prices affect your nutrient management plans for 2025? Univ. of Illinois soil scientist Andrew Margenot says you might want to think about dialing back P and K rates if possible. 

“This is a lot like the MRTN (calculator) — the economic return to nitrogen. We think all the time about maximizing dollar per acre for our nitrogen, but we don’t really do that for P and K. It’s good to think about — and this is for each person to decide clearly based on their system — whether the couple of bushels that we won’t lose by applying P and K, again depending on the soil test, is that worth it economically? And in some years like this one if grain prices are low, and the prices of P are pretty high, it may be OK to lose a couple bushels of yield by not adding P because the P wouldn’t pay for that 5-bushel maintenance. I would just suggest that — to think about the economics of P for this season.”

Catch my full conversation with Andrew Margenot about phosphorous applications and more on the latest Strip-Till Farmer podcast.

Aigen Shows Off New Weeding Technology at FIRA USA

I’m in Sacramento, Calif., this week at FIRA USA and we’re just going to get right into it. Why don’t you take a look at some of the newest and most exciting Ag technology on display at this year’s conference. 

“Aigen is a solar powered autonomous weeding robotics company. We are a truly solar one with a solar panel on top charging the robotics system. And it runs in a fleet format so you deploy these robots on the field from the emergence of the crop all the way to full canopy. And so, the system drives through the fields with camera systems pointing down, identifies the weeds and the crops and it removes them with mechanical hoes on the back.”

“So we like to think of the element robot, which is what you’re looking at here, as a terrestrial satellite rover. It has all the connectivity and data collection capability of a satellite out in space that’s part of that true solar, fully off grid, totally autonomous — but it’s here on earth so, it’s roaming around. And what we wanted to focus on was delivering value to customers. So, what we heard loud and clear from all the growers we spoke to was that data is great and insights are better but none of that matters if you can’t immediately turn that into action. So the robot is equipped to identify crops, differentiate them from weeds and then make a striking decision and eliminate the weeds in real time. It’s all edge compute, it’s happening on board so you have the data but you have action and that’s kind of our internal tagline is data to action.”

No-Tillers Interseed Cereal Rye with Fertilizer Applicator 

Longtime western Oklahoma no-tiller Jimmy Smith and his son Spencer keep their sandy soils in place by interseeding cereal rye into standing cotton. They’re using a Dalton Ag Mobility 600 fertilizer applicator to get the job done. Check it out. 

“We used to always interseed cotton with modified grain drills to go in between rows. The cotton varieties progressed so much that we were doing a lot of damage to our crop. 2 years ago, we went to broadcasting cereal rye in our crop. This machine here — it’s a fertilizer applicator and it’s tall enough that it won’t do any damage to cotton. We’ve got it set to 40-inch rows. It takes 12 rows, which is the same as our planter. We run probably 6-7 mph with it. We can cover a lot of ground, plus it pumps a lot of seed, where our grain drills didn’t hold maybe 30 bushels, so we were filling all the time. This one here, we can cover a lot of acres. It’s efficient, easy and doesn’t do any crop damage, which is the main thing.” 

Their seeding rate is about 70 pounds per acre. Smith says the rye also helps with weed suppression. “When we’ve got bare ground, we’ve got weeds,” as he puts it. 

The Story Behind the First-Ever Strip-Till Rig 

We’ve got an exclusive interview with Ricky Brown, who developed the first-ever commercial strip-till rig with Leo and Jerril Hardin in Alabama. Our Mike Lessiter catches up with Brown for a look back at the groundbreaking creation.

“We built the very first one in 1972. Then 1980, we redesigned it totally and the strip-tillage units today are exactly like we were building in 1980. The technology has been around a long time. It got a little too big for us, and in 1981 we sold our patents to the Bush Hog corporation. They called it Precision Applied Tillage. They were in it for a few years. For whatever reason they abandoned it. Now about 80% of the cotton is grown with strip-till in the U.S. We were on the right track. We just didn’t last long enough or pursue it hard enough. We were at least 20 years ahead of our time. That’s how it got started — by subsoiling on the back side of the field where you couldn’t see it from the road and planting perpendicular to it, and the corn grew much better over the slots.” 

Catch the full interview on StripTillFarmer.com.

Have an interesting photo or video from your farm? Or a story you’d like us to feature on the broadcast? Send me an email at Nnewman@lessitermedia.com.

And that will wrap things up this edition of Conservation Ag Update. Until next time, for more stories visit no-tillfarmer.com, striptillfarmer.com and covercropstrategies.com. Before we go, let’s send it out to Dave Hula for a preview of his upcoming presentation at the National Strip-Tillage Conference. Thanks for tuning in! Have a great day!

Of course, I’m sure not everyone was so lucky with the weather. Shoot me an email—nnewman@LessiterMedia.com— let us know how harvest is going in your neck of the woods.