From the Seed Shed: Is grazing back?

In this episode of Under the Covers, Bill and James sit down at the cribbage board to discuss what happened in the warehouse this spring and what we think it means for agriculture overall.

From launching a new alfalfa line (yes, named after legendary tractor models) to expanding our turf and forage lines the guys break down what’s been happening at Iowa Cover Crop.

But this episode goes beyond seed sales. The conversation turns toward the bigger shift they’re seeing in agriculture right now: more farmers looking beyond the standard corn-and-bean rotation, growing interest in grazing and annual pastures, and a stronger focus on cutting input costs while building resilient systems.

The guys also dig into:

• Why cattle markets are pushing more acres toward grazing
• How small grains can improve the bigger farm picture
• Reducing nitrogen and herbicide needs through cover crop systems

As always, it’s practical, unfiltered, and occasionally derailed by a good hand.

Follow the show so you don’t miss the next hand.

Subscribe to the show so you don’t miss the next hand. Also, if you have enjoyed the podcast, leave us a review and share this episode to your support!

Find us on social media in between episodes on:
Facebook: https://facebook.com/iowacovercrop
Instagram: @iowacovercrop
X: @iacovercrop
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@iowacovercrop
Learn more about Iowa Cover Crop at www.iowacovercrop.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Under the Covers. Where all of our cards are on the table, whether we meant to play them or not. I'm Bill. And I'm James. We're the founders of Iowa Cover Crop, and we disagree about nearly everything. These are the same conversations we've been having for years. It starts with farming and usually ends up somewhere else. No script, no sales pitch, no guarantees, we're right. To keep this from turning into a three-hour debate, we play a game of cribbage while we talk. When the game's over, the episode is over. Somebody's probably wrong. Someone's definitely losing. This is under the covers.

unknown 0:38

Hey.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Last time I saw you was Saturday. Yep. We uh things have been a zoo lately on the farm, in the warehouse, everywhere. The warehouse guys are like blending one palette and selling two pallets. Uh and they're getting upset with us. They're getting a little stressed out. So yeah, you and I came in on Saturday and we blended some seed. I really wasn't much help. But I was present. The effort was there. The farm was yeah, it's that time of year. Everything is thin. So um yeah, so that was the last time I saw you. We were in blending seed and bagging seed and trying to play ketchup because it has been a wild spring. Um, just extremely busy. Um, fortunately, a lot of growth in the business. Yep. Um yeah. Yeah, it was it was very warm and nice before planting. Anytime it's warm and nice before planting, um people have things to put in, but that's too early to put in corn. So they fix up all their stuff. Yeah. Farmers start getting itchy to do something. I just gotta do something. So patching in little pieces of uh grass and waterways and pastures and uh establishing hay fields and whatnot. Yeah, so this year we started our own um lines of well, last year we had lines of turf and of waterway mix. Uh this year we have our own alfalfa that we're doing too. So we have three types of alfalfa. This is way past alfalfa season. So it's like, I don't even know why I'm talking about it, but we'll just, you know, while we're here, while we're here, we'll talk about alfalfa. Um anyway.

unknown 2:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

You get it. Yeah, I know. Uh anyway, so we have three types of alfalfa. We went and bought our um our own genetics this year, and we have three types. No one liked the name good better best, but essentially we have three price points of alfalfa with how they are. Um basically good, better best. We named them after like three super popular tractor models, is what we did. So, like our good is the 1086, you know, like nothing flashy, you know, but uh starts every day. Starts every day, you just get in it, you go. Uh mid-range is named after the John Deere 4020. Uh, just a solid, reliable, one of the most collectible tractors of all time. You don't have to have a battery for a 4020. You can just pull it to start. Which is actually a really good feature. That's true, yeah. I remember, and there's a little bit of art to that. You gotta be going just fast enough, pop the clutch. Did you ever do that? Did you have a 4020? Uh no, not a 4020, but uh I grew up with a lot of junk, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

So I've done that.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yeah. You know the hardest thing about that is finding the chain. Once you can identify the chain, then you can get the tractor going. Uh do you think the new tractors have that, like as a feature? Pulse like an 8R250. I don't know if you can do that with uh like a like a variable speed transmission. I'm not sure. So I might have sold this on uh we growing up had Massy Ferguson. Well, since we're talking about tractors, we're talking about Falfa. We had Massie Fergusons. We had like three Massy Ferguson 85s. I think in a podcast we were talking about your Massy Ferguson. Oh, yeah, the 1100, yeah. Yeah, so we that was pretty new compared to what we had. We had 85s, and we had we had them on Schuler wagons at the feed yard, two of them. And one cool feature the Massy 85 had was if you drove backwards with the PTO on, the PTO would go backwards. Oh and I'm gonna tell you, Bill, how this came in handy in Iowa Cover Crop. There's one time I was loading oats into a bin. I can see it already, and I didn't get the RPMs fast enough, and I plugged the whole 80-foot auger, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do here? Like, this is a disaster. You gotta take the auger apart, you gotta do everything, right? Well, my dad's like, hook on to the 85, and we'll just pull it, or we'll just hook onto it and go reverse PTO on. Sure enough, like we undid the right things, did that, unplugged the auger. That was actually that is kind of smart. That is a you know forward thinking, Matt Massie Ferguson. Yeah, uh the only reason my dad obviously knew that is because it had to have happened to him sometime. But he didn't tell you that, didn't you? No, he didn't tell me that. He wasn't gonna admit that he made that mistake. Okay, what did okay, what should I do here? Should I play my cards? What cards do you have? Should I play my Jack to have a pair or my five to have fifteen? Oh my gosh. Um I'm not gonna tell you. I'm gonna take the no, I'm gonna take the five. I think either way I'm sure. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go with it. I got two points.

unknown 6:18

Damn it.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

I you have triple jacks. Uh yeah, I would have paired your jack. That would have been awesome. You still got two. Yeah. But I would have had six, so you made the right choice that time. All right. 30. Go. 31. Oh, you had a jack too. Jeez. I know. They're all out there. What are the chances of that? Well, no, there's only three of them. 19. Um all right, so we have 4020 as our mid-range alfalfa. And then our high-end alfalfa is the best tractor of all time. 4440. John Deere 4440. Um we really couldn't think of. We did some polling of like what are other brands, because you don't want to have like two John Deere's. And my dad's like said, he's like, Oh, Ford had some, Oliver had some. But nobody really knew, like, yeah, the numbers are so universal with those three. So, yeah. So, yeah, so we have the three alfalfa's, and they've been flying through the through the door, and we're super excited to to see them grow, have our own proprietary line, and they're on our own bags that we're really proud of. And um, yeah, looks good. I see them going down the highway every once in a while, and I'm like, they're branded, they say have a cover crap on them, and it's like it's kind of a little point of pride. It's it's pretty cool to see those going down the highway. Yeah, it is. It is it is really fun. Um, and then also we've added a couple more products that you might not even know about this year. I sometimes I go in there and I see new stuff, and I think, I don't know what that is. Yeah, that's okay. Well, one of them is something new that you don't know what is. So we added fescuflex, which we'll probably talk about fescue in a for in a uh a podcast on the future, but it is a grass mix with fescue in it. We've always had GrassMax, which is non-fescue waterway mix. Grass Max is, yeah, like our utility. We use it for waterways, we establish pastures with it. It's just a good um all-purpose. It's like the Pete Rose of Waterway Mixes. Yeah. Yep. Hit singles. We'll never be in the Hall of Fame. But pretty dang good. One you want on your team. One you want on the team, yeah. All right. That's what we should have done. Baseball players with the should we change it next year to baseball players? Let's do it. Who would be okay? This is super off topic. Who would be your 4440 if it was a baseball player? Ozzie Smith. Ooh. I saw Ozzie Smith over spring break, actually. Like you had coffee with him? No, but I saw him in person. What? Uh we were at a Major League Soccer game in St. Louis, and Ozzie Smith was the honorary ball. Okay, you didn't like spot him in the wild. He wasn't, but still pretty cool. Isn't MLB soccer game kind of the wild? Yeah, I guess so. All right, so that's pretty cool. Mine would probably be Kirby Pocket. But Ozzie Smith could do flips. Yeah, that's that was the only reason, really. I don't know if I know anything else about him. Shortstop could do flips. He won he won World Series. I don't feel like we're talking about what we're supposed to be, but I did watch a game of Banana Ball on TV this week. I don't think I could go to a game, but it was kind of entertaining for a little bit. It's just a little too much gimmicky for me. It's a lot of show. Yeah. But I would like to see somebody catch a ball while doing a backflip. That's unreal. Ozzy did it. Well, he just did the backflip. He just did the backflips. He did it. Yeah, not at the same time. But if he could have, I bet you he could have. He'd have been great at banana ball. He maybe he'll still play. Maybe he's maybe he's like the commissioner. Um grass mask, fast Q flex. Uh, we added one called Fast Grass. I don't know what fast grass is. I see it. It has annual ryegrass in it. Oh, okay. Uh see, 28. Um go. So it has annual ryegrass to get like that fast establishment. Okay. Yeah, and we're doing like turf grass and stuff like that at this time also. And I'm gonna give you your points. Thank you. You're welcome. I get to count first, right? Yep. Perfect. Yeah, we're doing a lot more turf grass, selling selling to a lot of like uh landscapers that actually know what they're doing. And we're buying raw components, so we have our kind of main blends, but then if you are somebody that really knows what you're doing, um we'll just custom blend stuff for you. Yep. We have those straw mats this year, those are new. Straw mats, yeah. Uh what is the other thing? Uh uh oh, like the uh Hydro mulch. Hydromulch stuff, yeah. Yeah, we really don't know anything about those. That's all Josh's thing. Yeah.

unknown 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Sometimes people call me and ask me about turf grass, and I say, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know anything. You know, it takes a man to admit that you don't know what you're doing. That's I I've always said that I've been really good at pointing people to to the right person. Yeah. It's my key strength. Mostly Google. Yeah. 12 out of that deal. That's pretty good. All those low cards. Yeah. Um, all right, so those have been flying through the roof, uh, flying through off the shelf. We haven't been able to keep them in stock. It's been awesome. We've been really excited about it. But what are people coming in saying this year that what you know, commodity prices are again in the doldrums. Um, you know, as of our us talking this, 45Z hasn't, rules haven't come out yet. So like we don't know if there's we don't know if we have a big bailout, huge planting intentions. Um what have been people been coming in talking about? Like, what are they wanting, what are they wanting to change about their operation? Um, more than ever, I have heard a lot of people saying, uh, I'm gonna put annual pasture in and graze some cows or buy some stockers or whatever, uh, because the cattle market is hot right now, and so what farmers do every year is they all rush to the thing that's hot and ruin it. Yes. So that's what we're doing right now. We're rushing, but also like I don't think. We did that with buckwheat one time. I mean, they might ruin it, but it's gonna take them a long time because uh numbers are down and demand is good, and um so So we're definitely seeing more pasture. Yeah, a lot of pasture, a lot of a lot of, yeah, a lot of like uh full-time pasture and a lot of of just like yeah, summer annuals and and um people gonna graze their trip or their rye or something and then plant a summer mix. Um you cut. Uh yeah. And some people like people that you out of left field that you don't really expect to do that. So yeah, and we've had some that don't even know what they want, they just know that they don't want what they're doing now. Yeah, they don't want to lose $100 an acre on beans, is what they don't want. Yeah, and then also Bill here about a month ago just got done driving his drill around. How many acres did you do? Yesterday I drove like 30 miles in my tractor, I did seven fields, and I completed almost 10 acres, which makes me want to pull my hair out. Yeah. So obviously, people are putting some unproductive spots into CRP. That's 31. That's 30. But you do get a go. 35 is 25, 30. Okay, go ahead. Uh see, when you correct me, it we lose all of our focus. Well, you want me to let you get away with that extra point? What if it comes down to one point? It won't. I don't even okay, all right. Oh no, I got a pretty good hand right now. All right. Uh I'm up. Um you didn't even know what you're talking about. Yeah, we're talking about drilling uh niche stuff. I I did a little bit of CRP, not very much. Um and then some waterways, and a couple people that had like goofy spots in their yard that wanted some native grasses in there, and so we did a little bit of that. Uh yeah. So what do you think the pressure is from? Like, is it coming from poor prices? You talked about the cows. Do you think it's coming from like obviously markets, foreign conflicts? Like, what do you think is pushing people to do something? Um I mean, I think kind of a poor long-term outlook for the commodities that we're used to raising is one of them. Um, like I said, like, you know, if you're cash renting stuff, boy, it is it is tough to see much profit in this year's crop, uh, the way I pencil it out, anyways. Um so that's part of it. You know, the cattle prices are good, so like, hey, w when there is a little ray of sunshine, you may as well go and and try and get after it. Um and then I've heard, have you heard this? I heard there was like a a wildly high percentage of farmers that have not booked fertilizer for this year. I heard that too. I think in a couple podcasts ago, we talked about how I talked about how much corn was on deferred pay, and I gotta assume fertilizer's the same situation. Yeah, that's uh so like yeah, putting some of this stuff in that the fertilizer requirement is minuscule compared to corn and beans. Um, and you know, you're you're probably not spraying any herbicide, you know, you're just your inputs are way less other than the beef to put on it. Yeah. So um, yeah, I I guess I think that's what it is. Right? Do you have other fears? I think so many people are listening to this podcast that just are flocking to us. I didn't think about like the Kardashian effect or something. Yeah. Is that a thing? I guess. Uh like we're getting about a hundred people watch, at least on YouTube. Megan won't tell me how many are on Spotify or those other ones, probably because it's pretty disappointing. Are we close to Rogan yet? We are close to Rogan. Okay. We aren't quite there yet, but um, you know, we're top ten in Green County. I've had several people locally stop me and say, hey, keep it up. That's kind of fun to listen to. So when we were at Boost, which was like the school fundraiser, there was multiple people that came up to us and said, We love cribbage and we listen to your podcast. Yeah, I feel like I feel like they were like younger and hipper than what I thought they were gonna be. I feel like they were maybe trying to like get us in a gambling match with them or something. They were trying to weasel in on our podcast because they're jealous of this cribbage match. Yeah. I think that's what it is. The cool kids are paying attention to us, Bill. I feel like I should hide my cards from the camera now so they can't pick up on my strategy. Yeah, that's probably it. We're gonna talk about grazing a lot in the next couple podcasts. So we're not we're gonna kind of like stay grazing neutral. Um, but we can talk about how like just on my farm, what things are different is I'm trying to save as much as possible on inputs this year. And so what am I doing to save on inputs? Um, I am not putting as much nitrogen down. I am you know gonna be really lean. I mean, we kind of talked about fungicide, and I'll probably still spend money on fungicide, but like maybe like just like more pointed on what the things that I'm gonna be spending my money on. But one of the things that like in the last couple of years, which I can see is happening, it hasn't happened yet, but I think we're we're gonna be we're gonna get a lot of calls on it, is I would plant rye uh or soybeans green in derive. Do you plant soybeans green? Quite a bit, yeah. Okay, well, that's kind of like my standard MO now is planting green. And um what a huge savings for me is, is I don't have to I roll so I plant green and I let the rye get really big and I plant green and I spray it and then I roll it so like the rye falls down flat like a mulch. Well, in years past, because prices were kind of good and and it shouldn't make any difference, but I would always still like do my post sprays, even though I really didn't need to do it. Like the peer pressure of like I can't have a weed. Yeah, it's scary. It's scary. But now that I'm an organic guy and I'm wearing this hat, it's really nice, which Megan dared me I wouldn't wear on the podcast wearing it. Uh anyway, because of those two things, I'm gonna try to spray just around my fields to like you because all the weeds seem like are on the edges anyway. So that's one way I'm gonna try to save some money. Sure. And that's that's one thing that people are probably gonna be talking about when they come in the next couple months of like how like I think that's gonna be a pretty hot issue. Sure. Yeah, I'm the same way. I I know that I uh should be able to cut back on my herbicides, but I'm scared to I and I think part of it is like people look at what we're doing 31 again. Uh I think you've gotten all your points here on the ghost. You are in trouble, my friend. Yeah. Um I got a pretty good hand. You know, people look at your operation and my operation, and they I feel like the skeptics are always like looking for like a chink in the armor or something. Uh, and then they can blame it on cover crops or no-till or whatever it is. And so I try not to like screw up really bad. And I think that's part of the why I don't cut back on my herbicide as much as I could. But I should do it. And I'm gonna do it. Okay, hold on. Nine ten. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're not even showing me the cards. I got like all these runs. 8910. Yeah. 8910. 8910.

unknown 21:30

Shh.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

8910. I might not have counted this right. Holy cow. So 212, 14, 16.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Man.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

That's a pretty good hand, isn't it? That's a great hand. Um so like what type of demographic of people are coming in, do you think? Coming in what? To the office wanting to do changes. Oh. Um trying to think of the people that I've been talking to. Um A little bit of everything. Probably more like in their thirties people of who I've been talking to. I talked to your sister. Yeah. She's putting grass on. Yeah, she's she did it yesterday. She's in her thirties, too. No, she isn't. I was gonna flatter her on the podcast. We'll find out if she listens. I guess if she is, I'm in my 20s, so that's fine, I guess. Fine with you. So uh yeah, I'd say the the younger crowd is definitely calling. And the like Megan had one the other day of someone that uh came in, they're like, we don't want to do corn and beans, we don't know what we want to do, we want to plant oats. Oh, and we're and we're getting more people planting oats too. And they're like, well, we well, we want to plant oats. And there's just not a great market for oats, like, unless you have a plan. And even oats don't really pencil that great. I mean, they're okay, but unless you're gonna like do something afterwards, they aren't really uh we make more money on the after oat than we do on the oat. Yes. But the oat like pays for all the inputs, basically, you know, and then and then you you usually make some money, but then uh the goodie comes after it. Yes. The after oat is where where the money's made. Do you I don't remember if we talked about this, I don't think we did during the oat uh episodes, but um oh gosh, I'm not gonna remember his name, but one of the like founders of PFI had done a long-term study on his farm and found that putting a small grain into his operation yielded him more money than just having a two-crop rotation, even though he wasn't making that much money on the small grain, his corn and beans were making way more money. Yep. Yeah, I am really excited about system approach because that's how I'm really trending my farm anyway. So we should probably do like a scoring update because you count first and you gotta get six. I need six. You need thirteen. So I have it. I have thirteen in my hand, but how hot are you gonna be if I if you're one point short from that one point I took from you a while ago? I have this much, but I don't I don't count first. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You discard and then you flip. You discard. You didn't discard yet. You haven't been called quick and you're gonna pick which ones you discard based on what you Oh my gosh. You know what? Oh, you discard these cards. Well I was gonna say I don't know if we can count this game. That's that's actually fine. I was gonna say I kept all my little cards just for the for the counting. You know what? I'll even give you your two points for flipping the jack. All right, go. Let's go. It's the big time. I'm a little nervous because I don't have a very good score in hand here. You have five. Boy, I'm yeah, yeah, I do. I'll say it with confidence. I don't know. I gotta do some work here in the count. Let's go. I gotta do some work in the count. 24. 28. 27. Go. Go. 29. Uh wait. I think it's actually my start. Nine. Eleven. Sixteen. Seventeen. All right, let's see him. Because I discarded all my good hand good cards. The jack on the flip saved me. Because I got two pair and then I got two fifteens because of the jack. I got lucky. Yeah. I had a good hand. You you were like 20 points behind two hands ago. I know. I have uh three. Uh and I threw all my good cards in there. Yeah. Two doubles. A for effort. Uh that's a good hand, too. That turned into a way closer game than it should have been. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to say about Spring? Spring was fun. Spring, spring used to always be our like warm-up for fall. Like, fall is when the action happened. And uh several times I walked into the warehouse this spring and I thought I need to like help these guys so they come back tomorrow. Yeah, I came in one time at like 8:30. Um, well, I'll give you two examples. I came in at 8:30 and I was like, I'm gonna be here for five minutes, so I need to pick up like one bag of brome grass. And I left at 11 or 1.30. One time I'm like, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna be sneaky, I'm gonna show up at six, and then I was there till eight. So yeah. That's called getting warehoused. Getting warehoused. We that we started out by saying the last time I'd seen you was we were blending Grass Max. We made six pallets, and it was gone Monday morning. So it was a zoo. Spring has sprung, and now it's summer almost. Yeah. So all right, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for tuning in. Um I think the next couple, this was a little bit of a transition podcast, wouldn't you say, Bill? Yeah. Really gonna get into meat and potatoes of some fun stuff that we're excited to talk about. Yeah. I mean, not that we weren't excited about this time. But yeah, no. More excited. I'm really excited because I beat you by more than one point. I was gonna feel bad if I only beat you by one point. All right, till next time. Thanks for watching or listening. See ya. Follow us between episodes on Facebook and Instagram at IowaCovercrop. Or send us an email and tell us what you really think at info at iacovercrop.com.