09 10 26 Importance of Micronutrients in Crops

0:00Hello and welcome to Ag PhD Daily, I'm Brian Hefty, along with Zach Hefty. We are live in the Terriplex Studios and today we're going to be talking about the importance of micronutrients in crops. Oh, I'm excited to talk about this one. If you've got any questions about micronutrients or anything that's going on in your farming, we certainly give us a call, 844, 44 Ag PhD or send us an email, mailbag at agphd.com. All right, we're going to get to the Ag PhD mailbag here just shortly, but before we do, I just wanted to give you a couple of quick things about micronutrients. And yes, we're going to talk about it throughout the show today, but these are two things that have really stood out to me here, especially lately because I've heard a lot, I've heard from a lot of farmers that have been doing the same thing we are, which is comparing soil tests to yield. So what I mean by that, just a step back for a second. So if we go back to 2019, we began comparing our one acre soil test grids because we've

1:06been doing one acre grids since 2016 and you don't have to do one acre grids, okay? You could do two and a half, you can do five acre, whatever you want to do. But the point is we started using in 2016 GPS points. So we go to a GPS point and then we pull soil cores within a five or 10 foot radius around that point, okay? Number one that gives us repeatability. But most importantly, what I'm after is on our yield monitor, we absolutely have GPS points correlated to every single yield piece of data on our farm. And we have for decades, I'm sure you do as well. Well, what are you doing with that? A lot of people go, boy, I got all this data. What can I do with it? And then people start talking to me about AI. I'm like, AI, you don't have any AI data. Well, I got all this yield data. Well, yeah, but you don't have it correlated to anything. You don't have it tied to in a lot of cases variety and you especially don't have it tied to your soil tests. Start polling soil tests based on GPS points.

2:08Now we used to do this manually where we'd make this comparison, but now we use the verify software to do the comparisons for us, but it's awesome. I'll tell you two stories from guys just in the last two or three weeks. One, it was the farmer found out when his copper levels got over five parts per million on a melee test, his dry bean yields were up 500 pounds to the acre. Well, that's huge. That's a micronutrient. By the way, with copper, it's considered the disease micronutrient. So in other words, if you have good copper levels, you usually have less disease. You also with good copper levels have more flexibility in the plant. That means less green snap, okay? More ability for that plant to flex. Zinc is the other one. What a farmer found out is on his farm. It didn't matter what his phosphorus levels were. You know what mattered and you could see it. It's very plain as day in this graph that they were able to create when they compared the soil test yield and found out the higher the zinc, the higher the yield.

3:13Okay, zinc is cheap. Copper is cheap. Boron is cheap. A lot of these micronutrients, you don't have to spend much. Everybody's complaining about fertilizer prices. And don't get me wrong. I am too. But you know what? With these microbes, you don't have to spend a whole lot of money and it could have a massive impact on your yield. So if you take nothing else away from our show today, I just want you, when you start soil testing or whoever does your soil test from now on, this is the rule. No soil test unless you do it using a GPS point that absolutely is going to make a huge difference, especially when you start comparing those points to yield. You know, one other thing about the soil test and we'll talk about a soil test later on the show that doesn't even have the microbes on it. So that's something else too. If you're going to get a soil test, just do a complete test with all of the different nutrients on it. You got it. Even though there's not very much that you need, you still need some of those micronutrients. You have to. You have to.

4:13And half the soil tests we get and we get lots of them in every single day. You've got to get micronutrients tested because like I was saying, that may make more of a difference for yield for you on your farm than anything. And most importantly, it might make the most difference for profit. That's really ultimately what we're after. If you don't look at microbes, you're probably missing out. So we'll talk more about microbes on the show today, but right now let's get to the egg PhD mailbag. Get the mailbag! So to start out the egg PhD mailbag today, we have this question that came in from Dave and Michigan. And since we're getting into harvest, he's wondering about grain dryers and grain bins. And if you have any things that should be a pre-harvest checklist, what are the things that someone should get ready or think about just to make sure that they're trying to reduce all the possible issues that could happen during harvest when you're super, super busy? Okay. So on our farm, and I know the reason why this question was kind of directed to me was

5:14I ran our grain dryers for 20 years in a row, drying every single bush on. We dried everything. I mean, I'm not talking. Oh, just did it need it? What? No, we ran everything through there. So that way we had consistent moisture coming out. And also we wanted to basically kill off anything we thought needed to be killed off. We could do that with heat. And we like to start harvest a little early with wet or corn because that's how we ended up with more yield and more profit. But anyway, the number one thing is really making sure you have cleaned the dryers out tremendously well. You got to grease everything up. Just check everything. The belts, the, I mean, you name it. You just have to go through it, start to finish. And on every grain dryer, it's going to give you a list of a lot of the things or you just talk to that grain dryer's manufacturer and they will give you a list of all the preseason checklist things that you need to run through. But yeah, it's number one cleaning, number two, just greasing everything up, checking everything

6:15over. And another big thing is just having spare parts around odds are like for me, I knew what was likely to go bad in season. So I would either replace that in advance or we'd just have parts around. So at, you know, just in almost no time, we could get the part replaced, we could get the dryer back running and then we were in good shape. And then the same thing for green bins was also part of the question. Yeah. And for green bins, we talk about that fairly often on the show here, just green bin preparation is obviously huge because once you put that green in there, I mean, you're stuck for a long time. So you can dry your, you can clean it out and you can replace things, fix stuff, whatever else. And sure, I suppose you could with a green bin too, but if you have problems with the auger, that's, that's not good. So here again, clean it out very well first. I mean, like super clean. And then just stand in your bin, look around, see if you got anything that needs to get fixed in these spots that need to get repaired.

7:15Take care of your auger, make sure that's in good shape. And then we want to spray on the walls and on the floor, we like using a pyrethroid and melathion and then make sure you have all the weeds under control outside the bin as well. Stay tuned, we'll be right back. UPL is proud to introduce the UPL Unlimited Financing Program, whether it's seed treatment, crop protection products or biosolutions, get what you need when you need it with no payment until after harvest, build to support both growers and retailers by offering great financing terms and long payback periods. The UPL Financing Program delivers more control, transparency and flexibility. Contact your UPL retailer today to find out how you can protect your fields and your wallets with UPL Unlimited Financing. Spot less. Introducing the cleanup for tar spot, gray leaf spot, southern rust and more. Novel next generation at Astro-Oponjaside. Brought into your spectrum and strengthened your residual when it comes to full your disease control and corn.

8:16Visit your FMC retailer or at astro.ag.fmc.com to clean up this season. Follow 2WE for tar spot management and corn. Follow it until 131.28. Always read and follow all label directions. Your Farm Data Platform might let you manage your fertilizer plan by helping you set sample points, determine management zones or create fertilizer recommendations. With Verify, you can do all that. But what Verify does that no one else can is take yield data straight from your combine, correlate this info to soil test points and immediately generate variable rate fertilizer maps based on your nutritional goals. Whether you want to build soil levels, balance your field for uniform nutrition or maintain fertility levels by simply applying what you removed at harvest. And with full integration with John Deere Operations Center, Verify can send recommendations directly to application equipment no matter the color.

9:18Sign up for your Verify account today at Verify.com and keep your farm moving. That's V-R-A-F-Y.com. V-R-Corn Herbicide from Valent USA has proven to be a key part of growers success in fighting problematic weeds. But don't take it from us. Take it from Farmer Rob Schaefer. Residuals have become a big part of our chemical programs with trying to melt water hemp and also mayor's tail is our big one. It's done a real good job in controlling those. You don't have to put a bunch of gallons in your sprayer cover a lot of acres that way. Visit valent.com-slash-maverick to learn more about Maverick Corn Herbicide. Always read and follow label instructions. John wasn't adding up. Yields were down. But where? When? Why? Case was getting cold. Colder than a tractor seat in January. So I called in John Deere Operations Center. Details stored and organized from every step. Every acre. Case closed.

10:18John Deere Operations Center stores and organizes farm data at every step. Your partner in solving what's working and what's in mind. In the mystery at johndeere.com-slash-operation-center. Welcome back to AGPHD Daily. I'm Brian Hefty. Along with Zach Hefty, we are live in the Terriplex Studios. Today we're talking micronutrients. Next up on the show we've got both Schrappscheyer with us. He's a consultant out in the state of California. Working with micronutrients quite a bit I assume out there, right, Bo? Yeah, exactly Brian. One of the things that most people don't realize is that when your minor elements aren't correct, the plant actually uses more water than it needs to. Yeah, we're always fighting water. You guys know that as well as anybody with a limit amount of rainfall you get. And with us having very little rainfall and ordering irrigation, it's important to understand

11:18where your minor elements are at. Okay, so in our region of the United States, I would say people are most efficient in zinc, coppers number two, boron's probably number three, then it's manganese, then it's iron. So how do you look at those five micronutrients? Or is there something else that really stands out to you where you go? Oh, this one is the one we have the most problems with. Now that particular scenario is exactly where we're at. We're low in zinc, we can need some more copper, some situations we need boron. Iron here is showing low, but we have a fair amount of iron if you can get your calcium levels up enough to allow that iron to be released. And then one thing we don't worry about too much here is we've started playing around a little bit looking at cobalt, especially on our alpha yields. But cobalt is one of those kind of deals where if you have a situation like some of the

12:20guys down in Texas where they have deer leases or Colorado where they're doing elk, you don't worry about cobalt here much because cobalt is really important for raksize. So if you're trying to do a deer deal or an elk program, cobalt is something you ought to pay attention to. But other than that, you don't worry about it. Well some of our listeners and viewers today, their ears just perked up when they heard raksize. What? I could get more of a trophy buck if I have good cobalt levels out there. Yeah, cobalt a lot of times. Yeah, we talk about that a lot just for overall livestock health. But yeah, honestly, I had not heard the thing about the raksize either. I just thought it was more for general livestock health, but that's a pretty specific thing. Hey, I want to go back to you said get your calcium levels up to help iron. A lot of times in our soils around here, we worry about people putting too much calcium or having too much calcium out there and maybe inhibiting iron uptake.

13:22So what do you mean exactly by that getting the calcium at the right level? Well, like for instance, when I started doing this stuff way back in the late 90s, our iron levels here on our soil pests can be one part per million or two parts per million. And obviously you'd like to be like about 200 parts per million. Well, what's interesting is as over time when we have low calcium levels, we get our calcium levels up, all of a sudden we have iron show up. I mean, I've got spots now where iron was one or two parts per million and we got our calcium levels up into the 70s and 80s or you know, at say mid 70s up to 80 and all of a sudden we'll have two or 300 parts per million of iron show up. We haven't had any iron. So you know, it's interesting how some of those things can affect availability. So were you starting with really low pH? Is that the issue and then once you got that calcium up into the 70% and 80% range, the

14:25pH was better or what was going on? No, the opposite Brian, we have really high pH is here. And so you know, we've got pH is in the say 8 1 to 8 5 range. And we'll put on and we'll be low in calcium. We put on calcium and all of a sudden kind of watch our pH levels come back down to a closer man, you know closer what we'd like to see. And but yeah, it's an interesting situation there when you get that calcium available to the plant available to those nutrients, how they become available. Yeah. So let's go back to that with the calcium thing just a little bit more was the issue too much sodium or what did you have an excess of in that soil that was pushing that pH so high? Yeah, we hear we fight high sodium levels. Yeah. You know, normally we've got, you know, I've got some stuff right now that we've got calcium levels.

15:26We've pushed to 80% so that we can get the mag down to about 10. And because of that our sodium levels have gone like from 3 to 5 down to 1 1 1 half. Yeah. Parts for me, you know, I mean percentage. So it's interesting how we get those base saturation percentages down on sodium as we continue to add calcium and balance the other things out. But you know, it's important to look at those minor elements. I mean, I had a situation I've mentioned before about a guy that was putting on so much compost, he had got his phosphate levels up, you know, like an Olsen number 150 is an excellent rate. And his Olsen numbers were 900 to 1200. And his zinc levels were like, you know, 20, 25 parts per million. But the problem was we didn't have an zinc there to take care of the plant. So, you know, the plant looked like a limp wash rag.

16:27It was it was spinach and lettuce and some other, you know, leafy greens, masona and a rugal and stuff. Okay. So, okay. So, what did you do? Because this is one of the things I do talk to people about if they have a history of manure compost, they get the phosphorus so high. And I just say, well, you can raise the zinc. My concern is if at some point you don't have your phosphorus that high because we can draw phosphorus down fast, we can't draw zinc down near as quickly. So, what did you do? How did you rectify the problem? Well, we wound up doing was putting on zinc sulfate. We had some powder. I had I had some thick customer, some zinc sulfate granules. Yep. And he hadn't applied it. And so then we went out there and put on some zinc sulfate powder, blended into water and put through the sprinklers. Oh. And those plants, like I said, they look like a limp rag and the following day after applying that zinc sulfate to the sprinklers, the plants stood back up.

17:29So, I mean, it was really immediate. I just was shocked how fast they were. Well, yeah. It's interesting stuff. There's always things to learn out there. Well, we've been talking with Bo Schropps-Shire from out in California. Hey, both thanks as always for being on the show. This was great stuff. How are you? Welcome, Brian. And make sure you keep sack between the ditches. Okay. We'll work on that. Thanks. All right. Next up, we've got Nicholas post with Boa Sofra. Nicholas, we've been talking about micronutrients a little bit today. But with Boa Sofra, this is one of the things that does enter in when we start talking about legacy nutrient deductions. And I've got had a lot of farmer questions about this. We wanted to have you on the show again. And just real quick, just talk about how do micronutrients impact that value of fertility in the soil and what a farmer could potentially deduct right off income tax? Yep. Absolutely. Pleasure to be here as always, gentlemen.

18:29That was a great conversation, listening in on that. And there's no question that micro and macro nutrients come into play when it comes with an understanding of a tax deduction based upon these subset values of excess nutrients. So at Boa, we're doing an analysis to give a good report on the value of those excess nutrients when we acquire a piece of property. So at either purchasing or an inheritance of a piece of agricultural property, we're going to put into a report and understanding of what the value of those macro and micro nutrients are. And essentially, we can use that as a depreciation on the basis of the property and in turn, as a deduction for income taxes. And that's essentially what we specialize in at Boa is being able to put together a detailed analysis on the report of what those excess nutrient loads look like in both the macro and the micro of our nutrient levels on soil. Yeah, I've done that work with you on ground that I have owned and some of it I don't for a while. I was just talking to a farmer and a ground mess last week and he goes, Brian, this, this

19:32Boa software thing. Why aren't more farmers doing that? Because he goes, you cannot believe how much it saved me on my income tax last year. And I said, I know I get it. So anyway, if you want to get ahold of Nicholas or anybody at Boa software there at BoaSophra Ag.com. So that's B-O-A-S-A-F-R-A-G.com. Well, Nicholas, thanks a lot for being on the show today. Really appreciate it and good luck to you here through this fall. Absolutely. You guys have a great day. Always have to be here. Let me know when we can help in the future. All right. Thanks. We're going to continue to talk more about the importance of micronutrients in crops. But as always, if you have any questions, feel free to send us an email, mailbag at agpg.com. And we are live. So if you want to give us a call, you sure can or film lines are open 8444424743. When it comes to making successful crops, there's a lot of ground to cover.

20:35It's time for the agpg spotlight. On today's agpg.d spotlight, we're going to talk about this question we got in from Evan. So we post a lot of videos on social media. And his question is basically about do we buy the kind of from someone else or do they get made when we have a spare hour here? And so that's the question for the spotlight today. All right. So let me just give you a little history on kind of what we do here at agpg.d. So for my brother, Darren and myself, we grew up on our farm right here near Baltic, South Dakota. So right by Sioux Falls, South Dakota, if you're familiar with that, or if you look on the map where Iowa and Minnesota and South Dakota all meet, or maybe 20, 30 miles from that spot. So that's kind of where we're located at in the United States. Well, anyway, for both Darren and me, we'd been agronomous for a good number of years and farmers. And so we had been doing lots of meetings with farmers just talking to them about, hey,

21:38here's how you control this weed and here's what you need to do with that. Talking about hybrids and fertility and all these kind of things. And anyway, at one point, we got approached by someone to do some advertising. And my dad was there too and he goes, ah, yeah, I'm not interested in that. I said, yeah, I'm not either. And then my dad goes, well, you know, we could do a TV show ourselves. And I go, well, we could, but I'm working just a tremendous amount of hours. Where am I going to find the time? And he goes, no, I think it's a really good idea. I think you need to look into that. And that had been 1996. So we looked into that for a while. In 1997, we shot a pilot episode for Ag PhD. And quite honestly, it was terrible. We were terrible. And we realized we had to have lots of background footage. So Darren, my brother Darren, spent all that summer, and not just that, but he obviously had lots of other things too. We spent that summer with a cameraman and they went out and got all kinds of footage that we could then use for background footage. And then we did start the Ag PhD TV show in April of 1998.

22:39So we've been doing a brand new half hour TV show every week since spring of 1998. And the very first year, we had somebody else do the production work for us. Somebody else did the camera work and the editing of the show and all that kind of thing. And we just during the year decided, hey, we could do that ourselves. That was one of the things our dad always talked to us about is, hey, do things yourself on your farm. That way you have control. So it comes out the way you want. And then you also can usually maximize profit. So we started producing the show ourselves that following year, and we've done so ever since. Well, we started the Ag PhD radio show about 13 years ago. And now it's Ag PhD daily. So you can hear us on the radio or on RFD TV every day. And we still have that half hour weekly show as well. But yeah, we put out lots of content because we have people that work for us that run cameras and run editing equipment. And I mean, these are fantastic people that do an amazing job.

23:40Like today, for example, my sister, Janelle, is producing the show for us. And we've got Brett back there running a bunch of other controls and video and everything else that's going on with some of the stuff we're doing with RFD. So we just have a great team. And then in the last three years now, Zach's come back. And he's part of our operation too. Well, Zach had a lot of experience with social media things. And we're like, okay, Zach, do some more social media stuff because it's really good. So yeah, I mean, we do have a lot of content. And we continue to put more out. We've got a magazine. We have a website. We have just a lot of training things, meetings, you name it. We're trying to do everything we can to help farmers. That's it for our spotlight time. And now let's get back to talking Micronutrients in Crops. On the Ag PhD Daily Show, we are talking about the importance of micronutrients in Crops. But as always, feel free to send us your agronomic questions, pictures in the field, soil test.

24:44You can do all that to the email mailbag at agpg.com. Or you can give us a call. Our film lines are open. 844-442-4743. Because we just got a call in from Roman. He's wondering about testing new products on the farm. Roman, what questions you have for us? Oh, hi. Yes, I'm a tech engineer at South Dakota Mine. So kind of basically a neighbor. I have a question. So if farm come up with great idea and started to commercialize something, let's say, drought protection. Let's call it for now without too many details, some sort of chemical input. How one do it? So what type of evidence are you looking for? And what is the process of getting it from maybe some production facility to actual farmers? Okay, so there's a lot that can go into that.

25:45A lot of the big companies that you've seen out there over the years, BSF, Bear, all those companies, they have an enormous research team that works on things and then they have their own systems in place on how to market things. What I often tell farmers though is if you look at a lot of the great inventions that have come out in the United States, it's been from individuals. It's been from people who they don't have the ability to market things or anything like that. And I would say that's where a lot of those people end up going to people like a BSF or Bear or somebody like that, or they start talking to people like us and we say, okay, well, I mean, we'd certainly be interested in maybe taking a look at it. So like for us here at Ag PhD, we've got a research team. So we have several people super experienced, really good. And then they will sit down with people who have new inventions, new ideas, new chemistry, whatever would happen to be. And then they take a look at it and compare it to some of the things we've been working

26:47on. Then we may put it in trials. We also have independent partners that could put things in trials. And then we just see out in the field. But yeah, I mean, there, there ends up being a lot that has to go into it depending on the type of product that it is. So for example, if it's a chemistry product, well, then my goodness, you have to go through EPA and FDA and all these organizations and it just takes an awful lot to get that labeled. They say anymore in the United States, if it's chemistry, you're looking at a minimum of 13 years and probably millions of dollars just to get that done. But if it's let's say a natural or? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. What if this chemical is actually, you know, it's natural growth. That's what I'm making. Yeah, I'm not making this naturally, but it is a natural kind of pathway of, you know, vertical and pathway of wheat. Yep. And that's where that's just where I was going to go next to say if it's a biological or natural, then that's way easier to get through with things.

27:51Now, what a lot of companies will do is they will label their biological or natural product as a fertilizer. And then it's almost immediate labeling. But the problem with that is then you can't make claims like let's, there are some products out there right now that are biologicals that have activity on certain diseases, for example. But the company can't make that claim until they get that approved and then it has to run through the government and it costs money and it takes years of testing. So it all depends on how far you want to go, what claims you want to make and we kind of go from there. So I would just say, Roman, like in your case, if you've got something specific, I can just have you hang onto the line here and then our people can get you in touch with our research team and then they can spend a little more time with you going through some of the details if that works for you. Yeah, I would be very nice. I mean, I was actually trying to first kind of get to the team, but I think everybody was very busy. I realized that this was a busy time of the year. Yep.

28:51Well, it's always a busy time when you're on our research team because we're looking at things all over the place. But anyway, yeah, Roman would just hang out on the line and our people will get your contact info. All right, Zach, let's jump back into the edge PhD mailbag. What else do you have for, or do you have any micronutrient questions? Well, yeah, I had to. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Micronutrient questions. So I hear a lot about being toxic with a lot of different micronutrients and putting a lot on and then, but it would be nice to put a lot on because you don't use a lot of them so then you could hold it in the soil for a long time. So how do you kind of balance that between like toxic levels of putting stuff in the soil versus just building up the soil for the future? Yeah. So boron is probably the biggest one where people say, oh, it's toxic. Well, look, I hate to tell you this, but everything is toxic. You live in a world that's filled with toxic things and I'm not talking about chemicals and pesticides that people think are so dangerous. Many of those are way safer than the household cleaners you have right below your kitchen sink.

29:52But for example, I'll bet you in the last couple days you pump gasoline. It's unbelievably toxic. You've also drank water and you might say, well, the water's not toxic. Actually it is. If you drink too much, too quickly, you're dead. So anything can be toxic. If you do too much, my dad always said, I mean, just so many times over the years, he said the dose makes the poison. So don't get too hung up on, oh, this one is toxic and that one, they're all toxic. We just have to use the right levels. And when we use the right levels and we're smart about stuff, it's all fine. Like with boron, for example, just look at your calcium level in your soil. Divide that by a thousand and that'll give you a rough idea how far you can push the boron. So for example, a lot of my ground has 4,000 parts per million of calcium as long as I don't exceed four parts per million then of boron or fine. And boron is tremendously important. All these microbes are tremendously important. So we just have to put on the right rate. And this is another reason why we really encourage you do grid sampling and small grid sampling.

30:55If you want to do zones, that's fine, but don't do great big zones. Do small zones like five acres or less. That way you can identify where do I have zinc, where do I not, where do I have copper, where do I not. So you put the investment where it needs to go. You don't make it so it's toxic and you're getting a better overall return on your investment. A quick question, another one too. We've mentioned this a lot before, but different soil tests read differently on the micronutrients. So is there ones that do a little bit better? Which ones should you watch out for on that? Yeah, well, I mean, honestly, I love the Mealick 3. The DTPA, it's fine. It's just it's going to read lower levels. Okay, so if you get a Mealick 3 test, that's my preference. And that's what we talk about on the show all the time. It's very inexpensive. It's very accurate. I love it. The thing I don't like about the DTPA test is manganese. I don't feel with the manganese. This is my opinion and I've got lots of data to back my opinion up, but I would just say the DTPA, we don't believe that's accurate at all on manganese levels. Everything else, it's fine.

31:56It's just the level will be lower than what you'll see in the Mealick 3 test. Yeah, so those are a few of the questions that I had and we're going to get to a lot more other agronomic questions in the Meal bag coming up next on the show. But if you have any questions, feel free to send us an email or just give us a call because our phone lines are open right now. 844-442-4743. We'll get to more of those questions coming up right after this. Stay tuned for more ag PhD daily. Maverick Corn Herbicide from Valent USA has proven to be a key part of growers success in fighting problematic weeds. But don't take it from us. Take it from farmer Rob Schaefer. Residuals have become a big part of our chemical programs with trying to melt a water hemp and also mayor's tail is our big one. It's done a real good job of controlling those. You don't have to put a bunch of gallons in your sprayer cover a lot of acres that way. Visit valent.com-slash-maverick to learn more about Maverick Corn Herbicide.

32:56Always read and follow label instructions. Some guys are really into smoking meat. Some are really into golf. And some are into pouring over soil samples to determine ideal phosphorus rates. Weird. Not when it works for your crops. At agro liquid our agronomists live this stuff every day. Meaning you get expert advice, trial data, and products that deliver the nutrients your crops need to thrive. Find your weirdly knowledgeable agronomists today at agro liquid.com. In tough times, invest in what pays, like the in-zone bin system from Farm Shop MFG. The moisture increase has been a huge benefit for us. We have a hauling out of our bushels that we hauled in. Pay for itself and beyond already the first season. At Farm Shop MFG.com. As a global company, SprayTech is proud to present solutions to the problems you face in the field, like full-tech adjuvant, the most complete solution on the market. Save time when spraying your crops. Low rates, high yields. Learn more about full-tech adjuvant at SprayTech.com.

34:00Your Farm Data Platform might let you manage your fertilizer plan by helping you set sample points, determine management zones, or create fertilizer recommendations. With Verify, you can do all that. But what Verify does that no one else can is take yield data straight from your combine, correlate this info to soil test points, and immediately generate variable rate fertilizer maps based on your nutritional goals. Whether you want to build soil levels, balance your field for uniform nutrition, or maintain fertility levels by simply applying what you removed at harvest. And with full integration with John Deere Operations Center, Verify can send recommendations directly to application equipment, no matter the color. Sign up for your Verify account today at Verify.com and keep your Farm moving. That's V-R-A-F-Y.com. So how's harvest?

35:01Higher yield potential starts with the season-long systemic disease protection of Zaiway brand fungicides from FMC. Zaiway brand fungicides protect corn crops from key foliar diseases and support physiological benefits that help develop healthier, higher yielding corn for a difference you'll appreciate at harvest. Visit your FMC retailer for an at-plant advantage. Always read and follow all the directions. Tolvera herbicide is all about flexibility. With tank mix compatibility to combat weed resistance, a nine-month plant-back rotation to most major crops that helps boost profitability. And an active ingredient new to the cereal's market. Tolvera herbicide can easily manage hard to control broadleaf weeds and fox tails. Oh, now if it can only manage the traffic. For more flexible weed control, visit corteva.us slash flex. Tri-vote corner beside from Bayer delivers clean fields for up to eight weeks.

36:03But don't believe us. Listen to some of the growers who've already sprayed it on millions of acres. They performed great for a long past eight weeks. The proof is in the field. And the proof is in the results. Tri-vote kept my fields clean from the time I sprayed it clear through pastly. Results growers are more than pleased with. It doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense. They've tried it. You should, too, talk to your local dealer. Tri-vote is a restricted use pesticide. Consult your state pesticide regulator for specific restrictions. Read and follow pesticide legal directions. Thanks for tuning into AGPHD Daily. My name is Zach Hefty. Alongside my dad, Brian Hefty, live in the terrorplex studios. And we're talking about the importance of micronutrients in crop. And next up on the show we got Chase Gardiner. He's with Spray Tech. Chase, how are you doing today? I'm doing it. How are you guys doing? Fantastic. Now, to start off, you work kind of a big region there down in the South. What are all the different crops that you kind of look over or oversee? Yeah, so we got corn and soybeans.

37:04And then we got cotton, rice, peanuts, and a whole bunch of specialty crops down here. So talking about micronutrients, there's probably a wide variance of different ones you might suggest for different crops or might see different deficiencies on that. So let's just start there. Where do you see the biggest micronutrient deficiencies? Yeah, so a lot of guys here still doing their standard NPK applications. And what we're seeing here is we're starting to play with the foliar feeding and starting to get these micronutrients in the plant. And we're starting to push these yields. When we start talking about NPK, for instance, I look at that as the horsepower. And then I look at the micronutrients that makes the horsepower usable. Just take corn, for instance, we can have plenty of nitrogen available in the plant, but we have to help metabolize that nitrogen. And then we have to help with photosynthesis. So that's a key part here, what we're seeing with the micronutrients.

38:06So like in corn specifically, which ones are you having success with foliar applying with some of those micronutrients? Is it the zinc? Is it the boron? Is it the copper? Which ones are you seeing? Yeah. So what we're seeing is we're getting big yield bumps with the zinc, with the zinc application, and then adding boron. And then coming in with, we're having that copper. We have our product cube, having that copper in there and helping keep that plant really healthy. So for all these different applications, you talked about three different products there basically, or three different nutrients. What timings are you looking at for those two? When you're going out, if you're doing foliar feed, is it better to get out there early? Is it better to do it around reproduction? What do you see? Yeah. So if you're talking about corn, I like to go out early in corn. And then if you're talking about soybeans, I like to go out early in soybeans, but I also like to have that late application too.

39:09I feel like the reproductive is way more important than soybeans. Kidding it then, when he gets those reproductive stage. And then in corn, I like to hit it V4 to V7, and then come back and hit it, that pre-tackel shot. And then I have a few guys now that are starting to play with corn in the reproductive stages too, so we're starting to see, it's always been, we've got to hit a pre-tackel shot, and we can walk away, but we're starting to see better results when we hit the pre-tackel shot, and then coming back in the reproductive, coming back with another micronutrient then. So Chase, you mentioned ones that work out well doing foliar. Which ones have you seen not work out as well? Is there any ones that you would watch out for to applying late in the season or foliar and ones you might just want to have built up in the soil? You know, I don't think there's anything that's been bad. I think it's more of like your application timing. You have those windows that you have to hit, and it's important that we hit those windows at the right timing. So when you look at a plant, I'll take charge.

40:10It tells you, you know, when to apply what nutrients. And I just think it's really important when we're doing these foliar feeding that we hit those windows with the right nutrients, so we don't waste any money. Yeah, absolutely. Now there's a lot of different windows, a lot of different application timings, and there's a lot of different products out there too. But overall for the micronutrients, there anything else that you would add that we didn't talk about already, Chase? No, you know, there's a few products that we sell that have a full micro macro pack. And I really like those because we're giving the plant everything in one shot. So you know, that's when you're looking at these products, you know, just look for the best things for your buck because you know, at the end of the day, everybody's just looking for an ROI. Absolutely. ROI is definitely a big factor in all of these different applications. Again, we've been talking about Chase Gardner with SprayTech. Thanks so much for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you guys. All right, Zach, let's get back to the mail bag.

41:12Absolutely. So we got this next question in from Tony. He actually has a couple different questions here. His first one is talking about DAP versus triple super phosphate or TSP. And wondering why you would prefer DAP over that because he's seeing that TSP doesn't build phosphorus in the soil. But what's the reason why is this happening? Okay. So I'll put it this way a couple of years ago on the show. We had Neil Kinsey on with us and I'm going to just read roughly what I had wrote down from his comments from a couple of years ago. So basically, he just said this. He said that triple super phosphate reverts to try calcium phosphate after one season. So it's not good for building that long term pee in the soil. It's going to end up getting tied up because when you start talking about calcium phosphate, that's insoluble in water. The plant's not going to access it. I mean, sure, maybe you could break that bond somehow.

42:14That's what plant roots are trying to do with their organic acids. They kick out. They're key leading agents. But I would just say they're not super effective at that. So with the map and DAP, we just find that that builds the soil better long term. We don't see the amount of tie up that we would have with triple super phosphate. So his next question actually is about a micronutrient about magnesium. So his magnesium on a soil test, malic3 is reading around 30 parts per million. But I'd like to increase that value to around 60 parts per million. But based on my calculations of magnesium sulfate, it would take a lot to do that, like 180 to 200 pounds an acre. So are my calculations correct? And should I even be considering applying magnesium sulfate or is there another alternative? Yeah, magnesium sulfates usually the best way to go. It's the cheapest way to go. But here's the thing. Okay, there are five micronutrients that I mentioned earlier. Zinc copper and boron, you don't need much of any of those.

43:15The levels can be pretty low. And they're all really inexpensive. I mean, you can put enough out there for years with zinc and copper for not a whole lot of money. 30 to 50 dollars and you're going to solve your problem for 20 years in a lot of cases. Boron, pretty cheap as well. That one's somewhat leachable. So you can't necessarily say, oh, it's going to last for 20 years. It might only last for three to five years depending on what you do. Okay, then we get to manganese and iron. Those two we want to have much higher levels, like on a malic3, I want my number to be 50 parts per million, maybe 100 parts per million, something like that in a lot of cases. And yes, I mean, you might have to put out 200 pounds of magnesium sulfate and it's going to cost a lot of money. So that's where before you do that on a big scale, I would say do it on a small scale. And let's just see. Let's see what you get for yield because ultimately I don't care what I put out in the soil. I just want more yield and I want more profit and I want whatever I put out to pay.

44:15So try some different rates on a small scale. See if that works for you in your situation. If it doesn't, walk away. If it does, now address that on the rest of your farm. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Get the job done with tires that are built to work for you, available in VF technology and backed by an eight year warranty. Maxime tires are engineered for farmers and growers, no matter the job. Discover more at maximtire.com. Optimize your soil and your bottom line with the soil warrior from environmental tillage systems. Combat the toughest field conditions with an efficient tool optimized to fit your fields without sacrificing yield. Discover the potential of your farm at soil warrior.com. Some guys are really into smoking meat. Some are really into golf. And some are into pouring over soil samples to determine ideal phosphorus rates. Weird? Not when it works for your crops. At Agro Liquid, our agronomists live this stuff every day, meaning you get expert advice,

45:19trial data, and products that deliver the nutrients your crops need to thrive. Find your weirdly knowledgeable agronomists today at agrolyquid.com. They say seeing is believing and nothing catches the eye like the seven bushel breaker yield advantage of Veltima fungicide over other fungicides. But don't just take our word for it. See it for yourself. Run a comparison of Veltima fungicide. Enter the real results yield challenge and experience the difference it makes in your fields. And when you share your experience with us, you'll get a chance to win a two year lease on a new truck. Find up at yield challenge dot BASF dot US. No purchase necessary. See official rules for details. Always read and follow the directions. Your farm data platform might let you manage your fertilizer plan by helping you set sample points, determine management zones, or create fertilizer recommendations. With verify, you can do all that. But what verify does that no one else can is take yield data straight from your combine,

46:19overlay this info to soil test points, and immediately generate variable rate fertilizer maps based on your nutritional goals. Whether you want to build soil levels, balance your field for uniform nutrition, or maintain fertility levels by simply applying what you removed at harvest. And with full integration with John Deere Operations Center, verify and send recommendations directly to application equipment, no matter the color. Find up for your verify account today at verify dot com and keep your farm moving. That's v-r-a-f-y dot com. Trivote corner beside from bear delivers clean fields for up to eight weeks, but don't believe us. Listen to some of the growers who've already sprayed it on millions of acres. They performed great for long past eight weeks. The proof is in the field. And the proof is in the results. Trivote kept my fields clean from the time I sprayed it clear through past. Results growers are more than pleased with.

47:19It doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense. They've tried it. You should too. Talk to your local dealer. Trivote is a restricted use pesticide. Consult your state pesticide regulator for specific restrictions. Read and follow pesticide legal directions. Introducing this year's instinct next gen and insert nitrogen stabilizers, featuring the same leading active as always, and now announcing nothing new because our performance still leads every competitor. Our nitrogen stabilizers aren't new. They're proven with thousands of field trials and decades of experience leading the competition. No gimmicks, no empty promises. Now that deserves some hype. Go to Quartiba.us slash hype to learn more. For tough residue this fall, the Insight Universal Tillage and Quadratil Primary Tillage Tools from McFarlaneag are ideal for one past seedbed management. www.McFarlaneag.com to find your closest dealer. Nitrogen management should be simple. Now there's a line-in delivering nitrogen directly on and into the leaf for stronger

48:20in season nitrogen response. Average yield gains over 7 bushels per acre and more than $18 per acre a net return. Protect your fertilizer investments with a line-in. Learn more at tidalgrowag.com. Welcome back to Ag PhD Daily. I'm Brian Hefty, along with Zach Hefty. We're live in the Terriplex Studios and today we've been talking about micronutrients in crops but we're happy to take your phone call to 84444 Ag PhD. Right now we have Doug calling in from North Dakota. Hey Doug, what can we do for you today? Hi, it's Good Bear. I was wondering, would there be any benefit to composting solid manure before hauling it on the field? Well Doug, you've stumbled into a big topic here because there's a lot we can talk about there. I will just say, here's one of the things you may not have thought about or may not be aware of. Did you know that crossing state lines with manure is one of the things that in a lot of

49:20cases you're not supposed to do? But if you turn it into compost, you can cross state lines. There are advantages and there are disadvantages. Let me explain just a couple of the advantages. If we're going to take manure and convert it over to compost, it's going to take a little time and you may have to turn the pile on that kind of thing or we use a product called decompt to help speed the time that the manure switches over to compost. But there's a little cost and it takes a little time. But because we do this conversion, what happens is we'll heat that pile up a lot of times to 150 degrees or more which kills weed seeds, kills pathogens and we have a lot less smell. So go by a bag, a compost at a hardware store or something and I mean, there's no horrible smell like a lot of times what you have with manure. You'll also have a lot less water. So if you're trying to haul stuff to the field, as soon as you said, I'm going to haul this, okay, well, if I'm going to go spread it, it's going to be a lot less in terms of total pounds by the time you get that compost.

50:22So what we're doing is we're reducing a lot of the water that's in there. Now one of the downsides is that we are most likely going to have a lot less nitrogen in this ultimately and we're going to have much slower release of the nutrients in the compost compared to the manure. So what happens in this conversion of manure over to compost is there will be a firm on a nitrogen that ends up going up in the air as does carbon dioxide. So if you want as much nitrogen as possible, you don't want it to go compost. You want to do manure. You want to get it into the ground as quickly as possible. So if you're dry spreading it, you work it in right away like in our farm, we use a lot of liquid manure. We inject it as we're applying it. And so that locks in the most nitrogen and it's expensive as nitrogen is anymore. That's one of the biggest things that I kind of look at. So I would just say it's a really good product that compost. I like it. We've done some of that ourselves, but for the most part, we use manure because I end

51:25up with a lot more nitrogen in total and faster release of the nutrients. Does that kind of answer your question? Yeah, it does. All right. So are you looking, yeah, have you been looking at doing this? Are you already doing some? What's the situation? What's the situation? I was looking at doing it. We just spread it right now and work it in. Yeah. And honestly, in most cases, that's the best way to go. It's quick. It's easy. You get the most nitrogen. You get the fastest release of nutrients. That's usually what we recommend to most farmers. But if somebody wants to go compost, you absolutely can do it. I just don't see a real big benefit to it on my own farm, which is why we don't compost our manure. I never have. Well, that's what I was wondering if the investment would pay for the difference between the two. Yeah. Yep.

52:26Yep. So yeah, the biggest thing for me is the loss of nitrogen. If I'm going to lose some nitrogen, I don't like that number one. And then the other side of it is, it all depends on my situation. I mean, yes, it's nice having organic matter, which I get with the compost. But if it's going to be a very slow release of nutrients, I mean, I'm old. And this is not going to go into either. But all right. This includes my cultivation that comes in. I also know to the mł refescat like racing. Blue and brown and other blue and brown on the plains is one of those things along. I do know that they used it. to DTPA Zinc. I live in Wisconsin. Our Soletest Lab uses Brape 1 for parts from million phosphorus and HCL for parts from million zinc. Does the 10-to-1 ratio still apply to my soletest or is there a different ratio I should aim

53:28for? Yeah. So it's in that ballpark most likely. But the problem is every lab is a little different. I mentioned that earlier in the show. Every test is a little different. So I can't promise you that's the best ratio. Honestly, like for us, we run our samples through Midwest Labs. We use MALIC 3 now instead of DTPA and Brae. So we found the ratio maybe even a little less. Depends on the crop. But 7-to-1, 8-to-1, 9-to-1, something like that. It's even less than the 10-to-1 that we often talk about. But if you're a 10-to-1, that's at least going to get you in the general ballpark you're going to be close. So I would start there. I'd start comparing my soil test to yield and you'll figure this out over time. All right, the next question comes in from Darren. And he's located down in Central Missouri getting ready to pull soil samples. We'll be switching to grid sampling this year. Great. My question is as follows, can you explain the difference between MALIC 3 and the Brae test and why you prefer the MALIC 3 because I reached out to Midwest Labs and they recommend the Brae test?

54:28So I found mixed information about this, corn-sobbing rotation. Just wondering what your thoughts were about the two. Okay. So I like the MALIC 3 for a couple of main reasons. Number one, it's cheap. Number two, it's got a better score for me on manganese. I don't trust the DTPA test on manganese. But if we're talking about phosphorus, the MALIC 3 test is going to compare very similarly to the strong Brae analysis, the P2 test. The advantage to running the Brae test is you get a weak Brae and a strong Brae. And that's nice to know because if the weak Brae is really, really low, what the weak Brae is telling you, that's what's available today. If you say, ooh, I'm only at one part per million on the weak Brae. I've got all kinds of phosphorus and the strong Brae. That might come available later this year, but it's not ready today. With the MALIC 3, we don't really know that. We just know that I'm not going to say total soil phosphorus, but what we think will come

55:29available in the next year. We don't know for sure how much is available today. So that would be an advantage to the Brae. But it's going to cost a little more money. So it's totally up to you, whatever you want to run. Just understand that that MALIC 3 test, it's going to be fairly similar to the P2 or strong Brae test. And you will get that when you're running both of those Brae tests. Thanks for the question. This next one's from Justin. He's wondering about a fall burn down program. So he wants a quality burn down program for his soybean rotation in any central North Dakota. So he's planning to spray his wheat stubble mid September with the glyphosate to kill off volunteer wheat next spring. That feels the extent like soybeans. So some of the problem weeds are kosha, mustard, pigweed, wild buckwheat, prickly lettuce, wormwood, shepherds, purse, penny crest, canadethystyls. So those are all the weeds. Wondering if I should add anything to the tank mix for more effective control or just go with glyphosate and also wondering what two ounces of valor right now be safe.

56:32They also sprayed five ounces of subfenture zone in the spring, medium textured soils, medium CEC, pH from 6, 8 to 7, 9 and 3 to 4% organic matter. So we got a lot of needs to kill and we would need to kill them. That was a lot. That was a lot. That was a lot. Okay. So here's the thing. If we're just talking about burn down, then I'm going to run glyphosate to kill off that weed. If you don't have other weeds, then fine, just use the glyphosate. But he mentioned a bunch of other weeds. Let's assume that they're out there, especially what I care about is weeds that would be resistant to the roundup. And that's mainly pigweed that he put on his list and if there's kosha out there. So I look at pigweed and kosha and I say, all right, I get to do something else. Can I add valor and some crop oil and burn those down? Sure I can. So I'd be fine with that. I'm not, I'll just tell you this though. One of the things we've been doing now is we're running our full spring program for

57:36pre. We're running it in the fall. The issue that I have is if we're going to spray in September and we're doing a burn down, we might use up some of that residual this fall. That's my concern. So to answer your question specifically, if I do two ounces in the fall of valor, I do five ounces, so if I enter zone in the spring, is that going to be fine with the soybeans? No problem at all. What I'm trying to get out on my own farm is how do I avoid having to spray in the spring? Can I just put everything out in the fall? Yes, we have had great success with that, but we usually spray right before freezer. The problem when you spray right before freezer, you're not going to kill these weeds that are out there now. But the thing is, do I really care about kosha, pigweed, mustard, any of these things as long as they don't go to seed? No, they're kind of a cover crop out there. I do care about the perennials and the winter annuals. So if I get a whole bunch of weeds, unfortunately, that means I'm probably going to have to make two passes. So yeah, if it's me, I might go out with a roundup, throw a little valor, two or three ounces,

58:37along with some prop oil. That should work pretty well. I could also use dicamba. I love that. You could certainly use 2.4D as well. I just want to say thanks to a production staff, guests, and everyone who sent in questions. And thank you for tuning in. Be sure to join us again each weekday for more Ag PhD daily.