XtremeAg: Cutting The Curve Podcast

The smarter we get the more we realize we don’t know, or at least, didn’t know. So it goes with nutrient stratification in your fields. The traditional (easy) answer has been to throw more fertility at the problem, but as XA's Kelly Garrett says, “I believe we often times have more than adequate fertility, it’s just not where it needs to be or readily available.” And that pretty much sums up the s...

Twice this season — in spring and during summer — we checked in with Garrett Land & Cattle Agronomist, Mike Evans about residue problems on some of their fields. This time we hear from Mike as well as Kelly Garrett with harvest results. Turns out residue build up in certain parts of the farm cost them yield due mostly to poor emergence and a thin stand. You can’t change the weather but you can...

You've gotten your Crop into the last stages of the season, do you stop pushing it to the end? Damian Mason talks with Robb Dedman, Temple Rhodes and Agroliquid's Galynn Beer about how to spend that last dollar. It might be the best investment you make all season. Or it might not.

Are biologicals the next wave in the evolution of farming? Will drones replace aerial applicators? What’s the future of fertility look like? How did crop input shortages change production Ag? Trey Curtis, CEO of Concept Agritek joins Damian Mason to discuss trends impacting Agriculture today and tomorrow. Presented by Advanced Drainage Systems

In the past decade or two, soil sampling evolved from pulling a few plugs of dirt from each field to doing so on a grid. Grid sampling — if you’re unfamiliar — means gridding your field into blocks of 5 acre or even 2.5 acres. The more samples from each field, the better to more accurately prescribe your crop inputs. But sometimes dividing your field into 2.5 acre chunks isn’t small enough to stra...

Mike Evans doesn’t think soybeans get enough nitrogen. He talks about what they are doing with their soybeans to increase the amount of available Nitrogen through a trial with Sound Agriculture's Source.

What’s the difference between a put and a call option and when should you use them? That’s the subject of this discussion with Layne Miles and the guys from Silveus Financial. If commodity marketing is your strength, this episode will be a refresher course. For the rest of us who get a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of commodity markets, this is an excellent explanation of how to use puts and c...

Is your water source working against your fertility plan? If you you have irrigation on your farm, you likely sleep a little better at night knowing that you have some control over stress levels of your crop throughout the season. But, as Kelly and Mike discovered, the EC of their water was a pretty big yield limiter for them. They talk about how they are using biologicals as part of the solution.

There comes a time each season when you look at your fields and say, “this crop is made, nothing from here on will change the yield.” But what if we’ve been wrong about that and it’s not too late? What if another pass — even if it’s only a month or so before the combines roll — could make a meaningful difference to yield for a small price? Chad Henderson and Temple Rhodes experimented with late (l...

Lee Lubbers is all about soil biology. He is also consistently one of the top wheat producers in the country. Damian talks with Lee and Brian and Brad from ProFarm (formerly Marrone Bio Innovations) about how he uses biologicals in his wheat crop to not only deliver higher yields, but to keep his soil full of life.

Here at XtremeAg we like to point out ideas and products that work so effectively, they become standard practice. Sometimes you need to prove to yourself that your standard operating procedure is still viable. Kelly Garrett and his agronomist Mike Evans did that this year when they varied from their standard practice of applying variable rate nitrogen. The results: A 12 to 15% yield drag. The two...

Kevin takes the opportunity to learn from 36 years of agronomy expertise when he talks to Leslie Lloyd, agronomist for Agrigold. An in depth conversation about hybrids, diseases, fungicide responses, application timing, stalk strength, drought stress, kernel depth, row spacing, population, when to combine and perhaps most importantly, a trick for keeping the gnats away. ----- The information conta...

After doing a total soil digestibility test, Kelly and Mike were surprised to see the amount of fertility that was in their soil. They don’t need more fertility, they need more availability. That is why they are experimenting with a sort of "fertility enhancer" from Sound Ag.

Water, oxygen and biology help break down and move nutrients into the root zone for uptake by plants. But it is not always a free flow of nutrients throughout the soil, in fact it is often not. So how do you get the nutrients that are below the root zone into the root zone and into the plant? Kelly and Mike talk about how they are "unstratifying their nutrients" with some help from Concept Agritek...

Kelly talks about the practices he is doing on his farm that make him money in the carbon marketplace. He also talks with Mariah from Truterra about the other marketplace opportunities besides carbon credits that are coming down the pike soon.

Kelly Garrett had a plan to go heavy on soybean acres in 2022. But that changed in a matter of days when he made the decision to switch 500 acres from beans to corn just a few weeks before the season. This presented a problem since these fields had no fall applied nitrogen on them. Mike Evans turned to a new product from SoundAg that is designed to pull more plant available nitrogen out of the soi...

You probably didn’t realize this, but seaweed has been utilized as a crop input for 40 or 50 years in some specialty crop production systems. Now, seaweed’s benefits are being discovered and put to work in commodity cropping systems. With several of the XtremeAg guys trialing seaweed-derived crop inputs, it was time to sit down and discuss kelp technology in farming. In short, seaweed helps crops...

Kelly Garrett and Mike Evans have identified that one of the biggest yield limiters for soybeans is branch strength. They have spent a lot of time getting enough fertility into the plant in order to grow more pods, but if the branches can’t hold the pods, that’s a problem. Kelly and Mike talk about the calcium program they are implementing to increase branch strength in their Agroliquid trial this...

Garrett Land & Cattle is almost completely no-till farming due to sloping fields and Kelly Garrett’s adherence to carbon programs. Being no-till presents emergence problems for soybeans following high yield corn with massive amounts of stalk residue. Mike Evans with Integrated Ag Solutions and Garrett's business partner, explains the challenges faced and lessons learned with this year’s soybea...

The potential for renewable fuels in the future will make soybeans in high demand. That means that US farmers will need to produce more soybeans to keep up with demand. Traditionally, farmers have not grown soybeans on the same ground in back to back years, and there are some good reasons for that. Kelly and Mike from Garrett Land and Cattle talk about their 40 acre experiment to overcome the chal...

If harvest time isn’t upon you, it soon will be. So, what is your fall marketing strategy? How sold are you on your commodities at this stage? Are you one third sold, half sold, not sure? Information from the USDA and WASDE August reports didn’t hold a lot of surprises. However, there is still volatility-induced upside and downside that could be costing you money without a proper commodity marketi...

SourceCorn is a product proposing this promise: Spend $14 per acre for this foliar applied product and you’ll save more than that in nitrogen application and maintain the same yield (or even do better!). This matters as we increasingly are impacted at the farm level by environmental policy or pressure to reduce our utilization of the big macronutrients — N & P. SoundAg is the company behind So...

The number of nozzle types/sprayer tips to choose from can be daunting. So how do you know which nozzles are the right ones for the right applications? Chad talks with Pentair Hypro's Nick Fleitz about the nozzles he uses and why he prefers them in each different type of application.

We’ve been instructed since the advent of soil testing on the importance of the macronutrients — nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. But what about carbon? Where’s it on the soil sample, why do I need it, and where do I buy it for my crops? That inability to buy carbon — or for the inputs industry to sell it to farmers -- is precisely why Kelly Garrett says we’ve never been advised on carbon’s i...

Drain tile systems have come a long way in the last 20 years. What started as a functional way to drain water off a field has now become a a complete water management system that delivers precision control of the water table in their field. Damian talks with Darla Huff from ADS and Chad Henderson about the high-tech drain tile system he installed this spring.