Crops beginning to dry out in Iowa and Arkansas

This week we hosted a regenerative farming field day in partnership with Truterra, Primient, CovationBio, and XtremeAg. The entire day was focused on showcasing the sustainable and regenerative farming practices that we do at XtremeAg to increase our efficiency. We had about 75 people attend from various industries including shoes, clothing, cleaning products, beauty products, and flooring. The representatives from the various brands were here to see how a product is created from a polymer derived from corn. 

While Temple Rhodes and Matt Miles were visiting, one of our bulls got out of the pen and wander across the road. I enlisted the help of Matt and Temple in getting the bull back into the pen. Not surprisingly, the bull was not in full agreement with our plan. As we attempted to guide it back to the pen, it decided to put a little scare into Matt Miles that resulted in him running behind his pick-up to hide from the bull. He swears that the bull was “over 100,000 pounds and breathing fire.” I am not sure about the weight or fire breathing, but I am pretty sure Matt is heading back to Arkansas with a new appreciation for raising cattle and is happy to solely focus on raising high yield crops on his farm.
 
We are continuing to spray our post-chemical applications on corn including our MegaGro and Shield X, as well as LiberateCa, FullTec Zinc, and NutreKit. We will spray our beans next week.

Unfortunately, it is very dry around the farm right now. There have been a few rain showers about an hour outside of the farm, but none have hit us directly. The crop looks OK, it’s not going backwards yet, but it needs a drink soon. NutraDrip is coming out next week to start up the drip system on our irrigated acres for the first time this season. 

I am looking forward to meeting everyone at the upcoming XtremeAg Field Day on June 22 at my farm.

MATT MILES – MCGEHEE, ARKANSAS

Matt Miles is a fourth-generation farmer in southeast Arkansas who grows corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton.

This week was a challenge, but none the less, a productive week. It has been so dry, like it has been for everyone else, that we can’t break much from running our wells to irrigate. We operate around 180 pumps, and for the most part haven’t been able to turn them off once since we started irrigating. Our water storage reservoirs for holding surface water are dangerously low.

On a positive note, all the wheat is harvested and in the bins. Wheat harvest went like a champ with little to no problems. Now we are planting soybeans behind the wheat and will have to irrigate those up. This is extremely tricky. The success rate is never 100% and sometimes a complete flop, but most years we have done this, we have been able to obtain a decent stand. 

The soybean planting and irrigation has been all done by Layne and the crew, as I have been in Iowa with Kelly Garrett and Temple Rhodes participating in a sustainability field day. We had some great conversations about regenerative agriculture with all different types of people. Hopefully these practices will continue to adapt and have a positive impact on all farmers.

KEVIN MATTHEWS – EAST BEND, NORTH CAROLINA

Kevin and his wife, Cindy, own and operate Matthews Family Farms of North Carolina, Inc., Precision Nutrient Management, Inc., and Deep Creek Grain, Inc. in East Bend and Yadkinville.

It’s not normal to need a jacket in North Carolina during June, but we’ve had multiple days that a jacket has been needed. We have also been blessed with rain the last two weeks. Our irrigation pumps have not been set in the water just yet since the rain is buying us time to get the wheat harvested before doing so.
 
Planting has wrapped up except for our double crop soybeans. The combines will be rolling at the end of this week in wheat. Our plan is to plant the soybeans in the ground as quickly as possible.
 
We’ve spent time walking fields and digging roots to look for any differences in our fertilizer, PGRs, and biological trials. It has been interesting to compare root masses and stalk diameter. We’ll take it to yield this fall to see if our findings correlate to yield.

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