S8 E6 - Desiccation

choked up or just cause some issues. You know, back in the day, you know, harvest day was mainly looking at, you know, desiccation of weeds well. And thought has really changed over the last, I'd say, 10 to 15 years, especially here in the Mid South, we've got farmers lot acreage that gets a desiccant. And the timing. We'll talk about timing and stuff. You know, that varies from state to state, but somewhere around, you know, R6, R6 1/2to R7 farmers are going out, typically as paraquat and

log. I'm sure we'll talk about products as well. They spray, you know, prior to normal maturation of our soybeans. And a lot of them do that, just to get you know, starting with soybean harvest, maybe to try to dry the beans down a little bit to try and take advantage of a little bit earlier marketing schedule. But we, we've got, I've got a lot of experience with harvest aids over the last several years. I'm not a really

big fan of it. You know, it's just, especially, there's, like, this year, that's just an extra cost that farmers are having to look at here at the end of the season, a lot of them pretty much ran out of money. It does gain you a little bit, but, you know, there's also the advantage of just go ahead and let them mature on out. Normally, they knew not the cost of that, you know, that application. So we can discuss more about that, you

know, during the podcast. But that's just kind of 1000 foot overview in the south.

foreign restored beans that we deal with in the Mid South. But I don't know if there's so much, you know, correlation between, you know, cotton desiccants. You know, if a farmer puts out cotton desiccants, you know, he's going to put them on the soybeans, but there's getting to be, you know, a tremendous amount, especially here in Arkansas, in the Mid South, that farmers are putting up against just age or trying to speed along the maturation of the soybeans. A lot of it is a and

again, we can talk more in details on that. Some of them trying to take advantage of August delivery, even that point, some of them are just trying to, you know, they've been so many acres that they're trying to get it out before a hurricane that we're getting ready to get, you know, in

another two days. You know, just different things, logistics. You know, some, some farmers like to spray some to kind of get some of the trucks and combines moving, you know, that delay between either corn harvest or rice harvest and so as there's a whole host of different things and practices that farmers are, I think trying to use this for just to try to see the soybeans

was really, really a kind of a true harvest aid there. Then now, as far north as I am, other crops, we use a lot of desiccants on and that for us, a lot of times, has replaced swathing and so things like dry beans and canola, where we can have some shatter issues and weird maturity, or lengths of maturity, and traditionally, would swath it. But this, this desiccation type of application for those crops, has kind of replaced swathing with soybean is kind of a different beast, or

maybe some different reasons. That's maybe a good time to turn to Shawn for more northern perspective about these desiccation types of applications within soybeans in the in the northern us.

20 years ago. And then, if we were just talking about that this morning, about redrawing our maturity group map, yeah, we redrew it about, I don't know, about eight years ago, and that map, when we redrew it, you know, you look at southern Wisconsin, we were recommending soybean maturity groups that were a full maturity group later the last time that map was

drawn. So I think we see farmers planting earlier. Then they are trying to get in and plant as late a maternity group being as possible to take advantage of a longer growing season, you know, to capture as much yield and rainfall patterns as possible. They have it, you know, a larger seed size. But then we kind of factor in the flip side, in the north, we have this big challenge with trying to get as many cover crop acres planted as

possible. And we just, you know, can't really wait until, you know, mid October, get our beans out and think we're going to get any cover crop biomass out there to utilize. These are captured, you know, the beneficial properties of those. And in addition to that, we still have somewhere between 300,000 and a half a million acres of winter wheat to feed our dairy industry. And what we see is starting after roughly September 20, we lose a bushel of wheat per acre per day, we delay

planting. So I think we're really trying to fine tune our production practices, to get as much out of our soybean yield as possible, but then also get that crop out quickly, and then be able to either plant winter wheat or, you know, from for the most part, we're kind of cereal rye country up here for a cover crop, to get that cereal rye established as quickly as possible to be able to meet that need. And I think, you know, Joe and Sarah and Jeremy, you guys are all deal with these cover

crops too. Is Rodrigo Werle, our weed scientist, says we need about, you know, 4500 pound dry biomass to have any influence. So you get about 50% of reduction in weed biomass the following spring. Well, for plant or cover crops on November 1 in Wisconsin, we're not going to get 4500 pounds of biomass in

order to have any bearing on that. So there's a lot of play and Interplay going on that farmers are looking at, you know, is this something that we can bring into the system and really try to utilize this to, you know, maximize our soybean yield, but also get our cover crops and winter wheat established in a timely manner to be able to utilize those

tools as well. So it's, it's fun and interesting that, you know, something we wouldn't even thought about 10 years ago up here north, and we're like, well, let's, let's see if we can make it work or not. Again, given the the markets and demand, I mean, we probably want to see a ton of farmers doing it this year, but I think that's our role here in the land, great universities and systems to figure out, all right, if we can make it work, this is the best, best timings and applications.

And then, you know, the farmers will figure out how to make it pay. That's what they they're really good at figuring out those pet, you know, penciling those pennies and make sure if it'll pay or not.

established, that's, that's one of our biggest challenges. And we've got some crops we'll take out in in August and July, but in the corn soybean rotation, that is our biggest challenge is, if we want to use cover crops, where and when we get those introduced into the system?

our beans in the corn. But you know, farmers like to go out there and work that soybeans stubble a little bit to so they don't not tilling, no, they're not no tilling corn into soybean. So again, we're really trying to protect that soil and protect our water supply as well. So it's kind of an interesting flux that we are always dealing with. Again, this not just northern issue, but across the United States. But it's a challenge that farmers are always trying to drive both

profitability and sustainability. But it gives us researchers a lot of flexibility to do, you know, play around and see what works and see what doesn't.

soybeans, just to speak. You know, maturation and and really that, you know, Louisiana deals with some of these late season diseases that you know, some of the other states don't deal with just because of the environmental conditions they have to deal with, probably more hurricanes and as well as Mississippi, and so they got some farmers that you know want to try to get that out before, you know, a hurricane comes in or something like that. And then also it really kind of got

started because of the sugar cane industry. So, you know, sugar cane is a little bit different down in Louisiana, it's grown for multiple years, and then they'll pull it out for a year. And usually soybeans are the rotational crop for the sugar cane. And they typically want to start planting the sugar cane the first of August. And so, you know, they'll plant an early, mature variety for the US, and then come in with a harvest aid just to get those beans out so they can come back

in and then plant sugar cane. So I think that's really kind of

where a lot of this got started. If you look at the data coming out of LSU and Mississippi State, you know their recommendation is they can apply harvest aid at R6.5 and you know, me and Shawn have had multiple discussions, you know, what is the definition of R6.5 you know, if I took out 10 consultants in Arkansas and and we were out in the field, and, you know, said, you know, over the R, 6.5 would probably get 10 different, you know, explanations on where we were.

And so, you know my definition, if you go out in the bean field, pull a pod from one of the forevermost nodes, you're able to split that pod open, and that membrane separates easily from those beans. And you know, across the majority of the field are 6.5 and so we started looking at that, that timing, and actually did some research plots me and Dr Tom Barber did a

few years ago looking at different timings. And so we looked at starting R6, R6.5, R7 and then, you know, really R7 leaves left late r7 we did an application from that study, if we go out in R6 our data is showing that there's a 57% yield reduction compared to the untreated check that we just let go to maturity normally, when we looked at our 6.5 application

timing, we had 7% yield reduction. And so then if you look at our seven application, we actually increased a little bit compared to the entry to check, and I think it was just because we kind of evened out the plots, and the harvest efficiency was a little bit better on those plots compared to the plots that you just kind of let go to maturity. So for Arkansas, our recommendation, we're a little bit more conservative, you know, just based on our data, compared to

Mississippi and Louisiana, our recommendations are seven. Once you start getting some mature colored pods on those plants, you're starting to get some leaf drop. You know, leaves are starting to turn yellow. You still may have, you know, you know several, you know, a large percentage of it green leaves. Our data is showing you know, if we can wait till R7 we know for a fact that, you know we can, we can put up a harvest aid and not

lose any yield. And so that's, that's kind of, you know, our, you know, where we've been, Starting our recommendations on then if you look, you know, I've had, you know, especially in the past couple of years, farmers get in a hurry to consultants, maybe not looking at the fields late in the season like they have been. You know, earlier in the season, they kind of jumped

the gun a little bit. You know, I've had some farmers that have had some significant, you know, yield decreases just because they pulled the trigger just a little bit too early, and probably on the sixth side of a 6.5 versus being on the r7 side, the 6.5 and so, you know, if you look, you know, between r6 and r6 and a half depending on environmental conditions, you're looking at about, you know, a two week, you know, 14 days to 10 days depending on environmental conditions. You

know, there's a 50% swing between r6 and r6 and a half. If you're five days early, you know you're potentially looking at 10-15, maybe 20% yield reduction, just because you're pulling that trigger too early. And so we've had some farmers that have gotten themselves in some trouble lose some yield and some quality. We can talk about quality as

are you all talking about? I mean, up here, I think enough farmers have been especially good at the North Dakota, Minnesota, we've all gotten that early freeze that came in and hit us at our six and a half. I mean, we could lose up to 20% yield loss up here with that, you know, early of a termination. So I think we're just trying to let you know, farmers and kind of back that off a little bit in that to kind of pause, and we're right in that early I mean, again, we all

love soybean growth and development, right? You know, it's kind of like a wishy washy. It's half arts and half science. I mean, if I had to pick a perfect timing, it would be R7.2 I mean, what the hell is R7.2 you know, that's kind of one of those things I think we kind of make up sometimes. But we're trying to push farmers, you just wait to that r7 growth stage.

That's the time we tell farmers, you know, stop irrigation, if you're, you know, running a pivot, you know, lower it up at that point, and you should be fine through, through harvest. So that's the timing we're we're looking at, is that our seven growth stage? And mean, just like we have up here when we have a frost issue, we start digging our beans at our six and a half, and they mature, we're going to have butter beans in there. And I know Jeremy said we've kind of talked about that

a little bit later. So the quality issues, I mean, we've all, you know, elevators in the north don't want to be dealing with butter beans and having some, some of the beans, you know, what, being at 34% moisture, and, yeah, half of them dry and half of them wet, and you get docks and not only is that, is there a yield loss component to it, there's a big component in terms of Dockage at the elevators really kind of get farmers to kind of hold off and, you know, we're all antsy. You

know, I'm a farm kid. I grew up. You look at the weather, you look at the wind, you're like, all right, five days from now, it's going to be a thunderstorm, or I'm not going to get in. I'm just to go hit her today. Well, you hit her today, you lose 15% yield, and then you're going to be kicking yourself tomorrow. So I think those, these are all good timings to kind of, you

know, refine it in and try and get forwards. It's going to hold off a little bit and pause and not especially you're like this when we're talking sub $9 beans and 75 cent basis. In some of those, I don't even know what basis is in North North Dakota. I don't even know how the hell you guys make money. Up there, being sometimes the basis up there, that's, that's a topic for another day there. Joe,

But I did want to circle back and discuss some of the quality, because, as you're talking about pulling the trigger too early, and it made me think it was it's been a couple years since we had a pretty widespread freeze in early September, and I know that year the quality was what we still had green beans in the pod, and Mother Nature desiccated all of our acres for us. But what are some of the quality issues or considerations just based around making these applications? And maybe we'll

start with Jeremy on this one too. So,

in July. We asked them what their growth stage was. They said they were six. Look at little past R6, not quite the r6 and a half. We both said, Don't do it. You're gonna You're gonna regret it. Then listen to us. Went ahead and spray. And then right after they sprayed is when, say, a hurricane, but a low front came in and just kind of hung over Louisiana, and it just kind of clipped the southern edge of Arkansas, and it rained for 10 , solid days. And so they sprayed those beans.

It rained for 10 solid days. Once it got dry, they decided to go in there and harvest what they were thought they were going to take advantage of, you know, August delivery premium. They were getting 50% and some of them were getting rejected, just because the seed quality was was so poor. And so I use that as the example that, you know, if you go too early, you know, these beans still retain a lot of moisture. You know,

they're still 50 50% 55% you know, moisture. And you just kind of shut those beans sitting there, you know, kind of as a, you know, a soppy, you know, and there's a lot of opportunity for, you know, disease Well, diseases, but sacrifice and other fungi to get in there, molds to get in there and cause problems. And so, you know, we've had some disasters on that. You know, as soon as you spray it, you need to deal with

the clock's ticking. You need to get in there. Now, we can talk about products and labels, but, you know, follow the label, but get in there as quick as you can after that desiccant's Put out to get those beans out, because the longer they sit out there, the more likely they're going to have some some mold, mildew issues, quality issues, you know, if it's done right, you know, Shawn mentioned some beans, you know, we have had some situations where, you know, some of the, you know, the the

younger pods still have some beans in them. You know, when we look at, you know, putting out some desiccants, but you know, some of the farmers, you know, they're just taking some some hits onto the quality, just having some of those bun beans. But again, you know, anytime you pull a trigger on a harvest aid and it sits out there longer than it should have, you're setting yourself up to have some problems.

bit. Our dust gives don't quite work as fast in the north either, because we don't have the, you know, the heat and the humidity to drive them. So it's kind of a play, you know, we might not get as many seed related issues up here, but then we also get it as quick a movement. And yeah, we can kind of talk about some of the our experiences from last year, what didn't work, and then hopefully, based on our work this year, what did did work. So that's kind of what we're sitting here in the north

of things. So we're like, all right, you know, we kind of, I talked to Jeremy last year. He's like, Oh, you know, saflufenacil, Sharpen. I mean, it's a good, you know, it's a good secondary product in the south, but we tried it up here in the North, and it didn't work. We just did not get the kill, if you will. You know, the defoliant action that I was looking for. I mean, basically, it matured about the same rate as if we didn't really spray anything out there. So it was,

it was somewhat surprising. Again, it could have been the one year effect, you know, it's kind of hard, Joe, and you there, you guys know this. You know, environment drives a lot of these post emergence contact herbicides. We it was just slow, and we didn't really see anything. So that kind of moved

us, you know, over to the sodium chlorate part of that. We started working in with this year, and the product we were using with Defol5 not giving them a prop or anything, but that's the product that we use, that was a sodium chlorate, where we've seen some really good activity this year up here in the North. With that, it was much more rapid and quick than

we saw previous years with sharpen. Again, saying not that, I'd say sharpen isn't a good product, but at least in that last year, it just didn't do what we wanted it to do in terms of expediting that soybean canopy to drop its leaves. So I think I worked over Jeremy,

an annual basis in dry beans. But yes, we should shift gears and talk to Jeremy, since he made the recommendation for Shawn to follow.

know, we you know that. Then again, you know, I'd say, you know, 90, 98% of the soybean acreage, I think it's a state is basically gonna be required, and that goes out in variety ways. If farmers have their own spray equipment, they'll put it out on Airplane implicators, they'll put it. It's a little tricky, because air quad is pretty showy, if it gets on, you know, other crops, and we have shown, you know, the, you know, we've got over a million acres of rice, and it quite gets on rice.

It could cause some yield loss at certain stages. But, you know, just in the last two years, we've gone from four drone licensed drone operators to over 100 drone, you know, in just about 12 months. And so there's, there's been some acreage that's been applied, you know, using a drone. And then that throws in its own issues, you know, but, but, you know, majority is probably put out by General applicators, and then farmers have that capability, you know, that's, that's, that's

what we're looking at. And, you know, there's talk of paraquat, maybe disappearing that, that does, you know, I don't know if there's something else out there, but, you know, with buying, you on certain core a, you know, we'll probably take the take the bulk of that acreage, if what does happen to get pulled from.

crops than we do it in the spring burn down period. And exactly as you mentioned, come August, early September, our corn pathologist and I get to arm wrestle every year about some spots showing up on some corn fields, because it it can move just like any other product can be quite showy when it does, that's a good way to describe it showy. It's one of those. It's a scientific term. One

finish off the soybean crop and heart with the harvest aid. So maybe you know, what about do you have any experiences with them for weed control at that time of year? And I'm guess, going to guess more instances of that in the South and the North. But so maybe we'll go ahead and start with Jeremy of because for us, it's this balance. Sometimes we do the tank mixes because we're looking for that desiccation of the crop and

controlling some of those green weeds that are out there. And so curious in the experiences Jeremy with, with that kind of scenario.

glories. Morning glories are one issue. You know, I've been in combines, and you know morning glories, you know, 10, rows across, and you try and pull in, you know, what you're harvesting, along with everything on either side of it. And that could cost some grounds, you know, some, you know, pigweeds. You know, we have a tremendous problem with

pigweeds down here, you know, going to the season. I mean, I think it's just a vengeance application, because they've already party put on their seed for the year, you know, 90% so, you know, if you got pigweed sticking up above the canopy, they've already done their damage. And so it's just a, you know, a vengeance application. But again, you know, if you got some pretty healthy pigweeds out there that have been growing, you know, all season, you could have some pretty stout stems on

those pig weeds. And so that helps kind of dry those down so you're not busting sickle bar, you know, knives and things like that. And the trimming these massive, you know, wet weeds through, through the, you know, we're, you know, our guys have been pretty diligent on keeping, you know, weeds control now, you'll, you'll see the occasional field just kind of loose, you know, for some reason. But you know, probably

morningglory is probably the biggest thing. You know, some grasses, especially some Lake planted beans, that didn't canopy quite, you know, well enough, you got some, you know, pretty significant grass populations, kind of in the middles, that didn't get shaded out and just kind of got fast from the post applications. So there's those situations, but, but as a majority, you know, you know, the hardest days here in the Mid South to help maturation of the soybeans and really for weeds.

the rest of the day unplugging that hammer mill. And so they learned pretty quick that, you know, if you have heavy pigweed population and you want to run, you know, the weed instructor, those, those pigweeds need, unless they do a total revamp on the manufacturing. And there's just too much volume, too much wetness trying to go through, you know, something that says basketball, you know, coming into that, that hammer mill. But, yeah, it was, it was a mess the next day, and he was one, he

wanted to take it down. So I can tell you, I mean, those, you know, it's kind of getting off and, you know, something different topic. But, you know, if we can ever get that, that piece of equipment going, you know, I think it's really going to help seed, make, you know, the seed, and really helping, you know, to eliminate some of the stress we've got chemicals in, I'll tell you right now, you don't want to be standing behind

that thing. You know, when it takes off, especially if there's a rent or something else in there that gets slung out of about 500 miles an hour, it'll it'll take,

have that. At least those weeds, you know, don't quite have that moisture difference between between the weeds we're trying to feed through that machine in a soybean crop, some of our other crops we might want to utilize. That's a kind of a whole different podcast and story. Yes, Sarah, you laugh like you've had some issues.

that has to be had pretty much every summer. But the flip side of that is, yeah, to have a harvest aid that would have taken out some kosher would have made my experience with harvest, weed, seed control much less painful. Or because, yeah, it, it doesn't doesn't work well. But note again, that's why we sometimes call them harvest aids, right? Instead of desiccants. Is because it's about helping to speed up and make harvest more efficient. So,

properties like the other ones. The other ones are typically herbicides that we use, but sodium chloride is kind of the one that's there for desiccation. So Shawn, as we were talking through weed seeds and other things. Any, any other thoughts from the North? Yeah,

production at that time of growing seeds. I mean, maybe, maybe we'll get some of those smaller ones that haven't quite set seed yet. You'll have some they've been hiding out underneath that soybean canopy that maybe only have 15 to 30 seeds on them. So maybe we'll reduce it by that much. The one right next to it that's got a million we probably, probably really didn't influence that one very much, that one's already set and already started dumping seed out. So I don't really see

it as that big of an advantage, at least for us. And then in Northwood and most of the weeds that we're dealing with, like all of our escapes, gonna be giant ragweed. That'll be done. At that time foxtails, they're more than done at that time in waterhemp, well, you know, it's if we're gonna see anywhere from black, mature seeds to those red, immature and bore across. So I don't think we're gaining a lot on that side in Wisconsin.

plants, you know, by all means, a harvest day. And this is one of those, those recommendations I always stand but, you know, go ahead and use our state in that situation. Go ahead and knock those leaves off. But it is not going to do anything to those green stems. Really freeze, a hard freeze is going to be the only thing that's going to be able to desiccate those green stems, you know, a harvest. So employed, you know, any of the

products are really not going to touch those stems. So in those situations, the farmers just need to slow down, you know, and go ahead and get those crops out. But, you know, unlike the north, you know our first you know harvest dates, usually, you know, about mid to the end of October. And so if you look at the harvest, you know, this year so far, we're over 50% and so we're still another month out from, you know, looking at a hard freeze. But that's one of the situations where I would,

you know, really recommend harvest stage. You know, some of these others, you know, just to speed up harvest. You know, it hasn't spit but

trying to get, you know, beans out. But, yeah, that's a good point, because a lot of the green stuff that we deal up here is a lot of environmental issues, not necessarily, look at the south. They've got viruses, they got insect feeding, they've got a lot of other things. But a lot of ours does do, like a variety, varietal, by environmental responses, and just the point that it's not going to speed that up at all is

really important for farmers to know. So thank Thanks, Jeremy, I'll give you your one I have always thanked you for two things, for taking our taking Brett Bielema from us, and for making this whole thing about green stem. So thanks for those two things.

frankly, it's going to be more expensive. So that's something that we need to think about when we're going forward and penciling out, working with our operating loan, as you know, maybe we could spend less money on these fufu dust things that people spraying soybeans that don't do a darn thing, and invest those money, those dollars into, you know, controlling those weeds that can influence the long term sustainability of these fields. So I'll stop there and turn it over to Jeremy. Yeah,

there's some new chemistry coming down. Some of these populations are resistant to that population just because of

action, and it's kind of scary. So, you know, right now, paraquat and Moab are, you know, the only thing that's saving us, you know, in some of these populations, you know, we've got populations that, you know, of course, glyphosate, but you know, the oxens, you know, PPOs, hppds, you know, ALS, you know, I mean, just go down the list and, and, you know, you look five years down the line, you know, if we can, kind of to continue down this project, you know, this, this path, You know,

there's gonna be some of these, and it's not widespread. I'm not saying it's a total disaster across the whole state, you know, additional areas in the state that potentially could have problems, and then it's just gonna spread. You know, we've seen it with horse weed, you know, in four or five years, it went across the state. Same with palmer amaranth, and I totally agree with Shawn. I mean, weed management is going to get more complex. We're going to have to include cover crops.

Look at, you know, fall, you know, if you don't put a cover crop, looking at Fall residuals, trying to control these small weeds, you know, looking at maybe our row spacing, you know, there's just a weed destructor, you know, I think that would help a lot with the seed bank and so, of all the production practices that deal with we weed management is probably the one concern in the near future. You know, we're potentially, we could have, you know, populations of Palmer Amaranth

that no chemistry is going to control. We can control in season. And you know, we may have to break out the foot kill. You know, the cultivators, they've been sitting in weeds for the last. You know, 25 years, not progressed off of them, and to go back and to go back cause more problems. I think if we had to go, you know, hopefully, you know, some of these chemistry, chemistries and chemists, and some of these companies a little bit smarter than me, maybe they can come up

with something. But just, you know, stacking, you know, these old chemistries on top of one another is not really going to gain us a whole lot. That's my two cents,

short. So this is another great resource that's driven, by extension, scientists at different universities for pest management. And with that, we will see you next week on the war against weeds podcast. You.