Aerial Cover Crop Seeding

In this episode of Under the Covers, Bill and James talk aerial cover crop seeding: how it works, why timing matters, and why airplanes have become such an important tool for getting cover crops planted ahead of harvest.

The guys walk through the process from the farmer’s side: send in a map, choose the seed, and let the Iowa Cover Crop team handle the logistics, including loading planes with the beloved “unicorn” tender truck.

They also cover the pros and cons of aerial application, from speed, convenience, and catching early fall rains to the realities of streaking, drift, and precision. Bill and James compare airplanes to drilling and drones, and explain why each method has a place depending on the field, the species, and the timing.

Because when it comes to increasing cover crop acres, it is not airplanes versus drones versus drills. It is using the right tool for the right acre.

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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. Live. I don't know. You can do it. I don't. No, I don't think I'm good at it either. Like the problem is, the problem is, is the microphones don't come down from the top. So I think this will probably be part of the like we'll we'll get all this on the podcast. So if the microphone came from the top, I think it'd be easier. I think my problem is I start thinking about Rush Limba when I'm doing it, and I'm just not gonna be Rush Limba, you know? Like I'm not that good. As as a coordinator or as like a political view or uh past. I've listened to talk radio recently, like not that long ago. Seven. Nice dang. Three in a row. Um doesn't make any difference. Yeah. Um it's like the handicap at Facebook. Oh, yeah, we were supposed to say live from the shadow of the bell tower. Yeah, the Art of Aries Studios, sponsored by Deals Hard Cider. Yeah, something like that. Did we get in contact with those guys yet? What is the what is the address of this place again?

unknown 1:54

Uh 112.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

112. Studio 112. Studio 112. Yeah. That's what it is. Uh um Talk Radio. I've I was on WHO. Was that what you were listening to? I didn't know what I listened to. Like that's probably a year or two ago. But they repeat the same thing they talk about for three hours. Oh, yeah. And it's kind of almost so repetitive that it's boring. Yeah, it's like it's like too repetitive. Uh I mean I think that's that part of the brainwashing. I Ooh, gonna get some negative comments there. My grandpa listened to Rush Limba all the time. And I think it was just like whether you agreed with him or not, Rush Limba was good at what he did. He had such a smooth four hours about stuff you don't know anything about. What was his assistant, Mr. Snurgle, Mr. Something? I don't remember. And he didn't exist. He's like, Well, let me ask so-and-so. And he was just a made-up person, and then he'd say, Oh, okay. Oh man, we have a real one. Yeah, we have Tolaf. He's back there. He brought his wife this time. Morgan's in the welcome to the show. Yeah. Thank you for coming. We have a studio audience now. This is awkward. So does he rig up the laugh sign, or how does that work? Like, where's the applause? Yeah. Hey, what are we talking about today? We are talking about airplanes. It's getting that time, isn't it? It is that time. Airplanes. We and this would also be a good time to talk about how your flight training, and I'm pilot, and we have a plane. We can talk about that too. That's not that's not even on this agenda. Jeez Louise. Uh uh I'm in in between here. Um, it is getting close to the busy season right now. Yep. Corn's growing. Ooh, that's a good card. Uh, you get two for that. Damn right I do. Um, yeah, we're gonna talk about application methods today and like kind of getting ready for the season. Like, if you're thinking about doing cover crops, you need to have a plan now. Yes, and you need to tell someone else about that plan, right? Like uh we get a lot of like, hey, it's gonna rain tomorrow, and I know I haven't talked to you. Can you apply 600 acres of cover crops 60 miles from your house? Yeah, and we'll say no. And and it has to be a diverse blend because that's why I signed up for NRCS. Can you just can you handle that? Yeah, and because I heard your spray, I heard your plane at that airport yesterday. Yeah. So don't be that guy. Um plan ahead a little bit, right? Yeah, plan ahead. So, Bill, why don't you tell the audience what aerial application is and what we're talking about? So the main part of our business and the thing that uh kind of made our business start to grow is not just selling seed, but doing the custom application. Um we found early on when we were building the business, there was a lot of people that were curious about cover crops, um, but didn't know how to actually get it done on their farm. Wow, what a cut for you, huh? If there was a five in there, that would be really awesome. That's not bad though. No, I don't even know where to start. Three, six, ten total. Ten? Yep. Sure. Double run of four. So there's four, eight, and then a pair is ten. Yep. Um, so we do a lot of custom application. 80% of it is with an airplane. Um basically our role, James and I, is to find a customer, line the seat up, and get it to the proper place for the proper people and make maps for the airplane. Then dole out maybe advice of what they want, essentially. Yep. What what make hit fits their best goal? Yep. And so how we really started is this is really the basis of our business is Bill was raising some small grains, I was selling some just small seed, and then we thought it was smarter to not have to package the seed and apply it at the airport for said farmers. And so when we went there, we discovered that a lot of people were buying small grains a lot more expensive than what we were selling them for in 50-pound bags, and it was a lot of work, yeah. And they're like, Well, I can just buy this from you and not do anything, and then all of a sudden, boom, business started. And um we were doing it cheaper, easier. Our customers now they don't do anything, they tell us where they want it, and they sit and they watch the airplanes fly. Yep. As we say, it's easy as you give us the map and then write us a check when we're done. Bingo. Conservation with convenience. Yeah, Bill, you you Melissa. She she came up with that? Yep. Really? I did not know that. This is pre like really even starting a business. Yeah. So so our business has changed a few times, but like in the middle, most of the business was the custom application and the seed sales combined. Um and now we have like built our dealer network to where our dealers are kind of replicating that model across the state. Um so we are getting ramped up right now. Two for me. Well, that's two in a row. Um we're getting ready right now to start chasing the airplanes. We're we're greasing up the seed tenders and the and the uh conveyor and getting ready to go. We go to about a dozen airports a year, and we just chase the airplane and we line up, you know, a day's worth of work at each airport, and then we move on to the next one. So, what are the primary species that you're putting on with the airplane? The big ones are rye and oats and wheat. And then we do a lot of our winter kill blend, which is uh rapeseed, radish, and turnip.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

25.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Um, 30. And uh that's probably the big ones we do through the airplane, anyways. Um what is the strangest thing you run through the airplane? Uh we had one guy that wanted to put on that wanted to put on like three bushels of rye, so we actually had to fly it twice at a bushel and a half because we couldn't go that heavy. How did it work out? I don't know. Not well enough to do it two years in a row. Three kind of that was three bushels. That's 153 times six, eighteen, 168 pounds per acre. I kind of it was one of those things where I kind of tried to tell him, like, I don't know if I would do this if I was you, but you're the farmer, so customer's always right. Customer's always right. So yeah. Um I don't know, but for the most part, it's just like we fly a lot of stuff on with the airplane because it is efficient, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

You can get we can do 2,500 acres in a day. Whereas I have a drill, you have a drill. Yeah, I have a 15 foot drill. Yeah, that's I can 80 in a day. Yeah. On a good day. If I hustle. And uh the problem is you're always like finishing harvest up and you should be drilling, and instead you are trying to drill cover curves. I think there's some cheating going on here. I saw that. There's a whole hand of you picked up both at the same time, so I don't remember where the first bag was. That's right. Tola, if you'll have to I get you. Tola, if you'll have to roll this tape. Throw that back on the roll the tape and back on the slomo. Yeah. See what the deal is there. So why do farmers use Aerial application? I guess we'll just start going through the list here. Why do they use it? I think the main one is it is fast and it's hands-off. It's easy. Yep. So that's the big one. Like, it's gonna get done. It's gonna get done fast. But the the other thing is, so like I have a 40-foot drill. I could drill my own and save a bunch of money, but I drill about half and I aerial apply about half. Because A, I'm swamped in the fall because I'm understaffed. Um, and B, because sometimes you catch that timely rain like first week of September, like right after you did it. And about it seems like about every other year, like one year your drilled stuff looks better, one year your aerial application looks better. So you're getting too much far in the weeds. Okay. Um, so uh is the airplane is applying the the seed? Yes. In a standing crop? In is it growing? Like, when do they do it? We are flying seed on when the beans are starting to turn yellow, um, or like the corn is at black layer. So, like almost all of our work is done in the last week of August to the second week of September. Um, the idea being you fly your seed on, and then the soybean leaves uh reach maturity, fall off, and mulch the seed in, and then it grows up underneath there. Um that's perfect, especially if you can catch a half inch rain. And so you're so tell me how the process works. You have an airplane, a yellow airplane, and then you so if you're a Joe Farmer, you call me and you say, I want to put 80 acres of rye on. Yep. And I say, Okay. And you get me a map of where your field is located. We talk about pounds. Yep. I shoot you a price, you say go for it, and then I take that seed to the airport, we load it onto their tender truck, their tender truck loads the airplane. And their tender truck's pretty unique. Yeah, they come out of like Louisiana, they're built for like fertilizer. Um they're pretty cool little things. They've got an auger on them, they've got like a 200-bushel hopper on them, a scale. I don't know what the correct normal culture of them is, but I call it the unicorn truck. The unicorn truck. It looks like a unicorn going down the road. It draws a lot of attention from like the DOT. It's pretty easy to get pulled over in. Have they ever really gotten pulled over? Is that just a bad Dan got a ticket last year? For what? Uh having too much unicorn. Too much unicorn. Yep. I think it was actually rolling through a stop. Okay. Okay, was the unicorn rolling? Yeah, the yeah, the the truck was within its boundaries, but uh no, it's just it draws a lot of attention, especially like when we go in a longer haul with a lot of like I'll drive the semi full of seed, and then we'll have a conveyor that we can slide under my semi to load their truck. So the unicorn truck pulls the conveyor. It's quite the traveling like uh gypsy show. So the next thing you're gonna start is a circus? Yeah, I mean, we have all the skills required. Can you spell menagerie? No, I don't think I could either. Yeah, exactly. We learned that last episode. Um boom! Yeah, that was that was stupid, yeah. Um so and that's basically it. Like that was that was kind of the idea behind it was to make it super easy for the farmer to get conservation on. So basically, you provide a map, and then we will do all the work, we'll send all of the necessary uh information to the FSA so that basically you just say go and we do it. Why does um early establishment matter? Like like why does it matter to get it on that early? It's pretty like especially in the last five years where we've been in a really dry trend. Um you don't want to miss one of those rains that late in the season. So if there's a rain in September 10th, but you were gonna wait to drill it and you don't get it drilled until October 5th, you missed that rain. So some of that stuff that gets drilled doesn't germinate until the spring because it never catches a rain. Um, so like a lot of the places where I graze, I will fly on just to get that early growth going. Yeah. And that's why perfect conditions aren't real, like you never know. Like it doesn't like think about rye and oats and wheat, they don't take a lot of water to get going, really. Right. I mean, like what tenth or two, three tenths. Yeah, it's probably a heavy dew sometimes. Yeah, and so you really don't need a lot of moisture to get them going. And so just having it out there is what's really important. And so a lot of guys are like, well, if it rains, I'll put it on. Like what we like to say, well, by the time it rains, it could be too late and we'll be behind schedule or like or your feel that you're going, because it's all really about how close to the airport or what airports your fields go under, right? And so, like, if we're in Perry today and you want to hold off, and then we go to Sack City the next day, we're probably not gonna go back to Perry. Right. I mean, we might, but yeah, Perry, I mean, but yeah, some of the closer ones we will, but like we go to we go to Cherokee, which is two hours away from us, and it's like once we're there, we're not coming back. Um, and there's only so many people doing the application or in Iowa. So and a lot of them are are our dealers. So if you aren't in our trade territory, a lot of our dealers are doing this. So contact a lot of our dealers are young farmers like ourselves, and um they own drills that they wanted to put some more acres through to help pay them off. Um just played me there. Well um, good play. So we do have a lot of we probably do I don't do very much, but um our dealers, some of our dealers will drill two, three thousand acres. They're just better farmers than you are. 100%. I will not deny that. So so there is a lot of drilling within our network, but um if you call me and tell me to drill your ground after harvest, I'm probably gonna not answer my phone because you're sick of it. I just I just don't have the time to do it. So, like, what species would you put? I I mean uh if if someone's completely new to cover crops, they're like, hey, I want to try cover crops this year, and I have uh 80 of corn and 80 of beans, what would you suggest to them? And like what and let's say they want they just want to put it on the airplane, see what happens. If this is your first year, I am going to tell you to put either rye or wheat ahead of your beans for next the next year. Um it's gonna be like the most foolproof, like it's gonna grow. It's not going to interact poorly with the beans next year. Like you're not gonna you you have a little bit of management to do, but in your first year, it's gonna be pretty easy management. Ahead of your corn, I either do wheat, uh, because it's not as aggressive as rye, or I do like oats and winter kill, which is turnips, radish, rapeseed. Um because it's gonna die in the winter, you go right into it and plant in the spring. You don't have to worry about it. There is virtually zero management. What are some species you wouldn't put through the plant? Ooh, um I think things like we've tried things like red clover or even like hairy vetch, I don't think they grow as well. Yeah, we we talked about that a couple episodes ago. Yeah, I I think they like to be uh incorporated into the soil a little better. Um, so I would not broadcast those. Um even Camelina sometimes is hit or miss through the airplane. Um yeah, so I kind of stick with like the things that are like super hardy and we know we're gonna just get up and get after it. Um we should probably talk about the Hegi a little bit. We have that on the next episode. Oh. That's on the that's on the queue. We should not talk about it. No, we shouldn't, because that's we're talking ground application next preview to the next episode. Yeah. Um Yeah, I don't know. What else do you want to talk about about it? Go. 24? Um, drones. Drones. Oh, you love drones. Yeah, they're the best. Drones are super slick. Um they're becoming really popular. Yeah. I've had probably three or four of our neighbors in the county call me and say, hey, I have a drone and I am willing to do some custom work. Um drone guys. Keep me in mind. And I'd say, awesome, we will do that. Um drones are like their capacity is like 50-ish pounds. Is that about right? For the average drone. Um so they don't carry a ton, like, you know, some of the it might be one acre, two acres. We do make a drone mix of like smaller seed so they can cover a little more ground at a fill. I think some of these drone guys, they do a lot of fungicide with it, and they get nothing. Ah, darn it. Get excited about putting some more acres over their drone, and then they get into the cover crops and they realize cover crops can be put on by drone, but it's more of like a tight quarters, like smaller acreage type stuff. You don't want to go out and do a 160. I would say handling seed is harder than handling water. Yes. Especially the amount of seed you're going to be handling. So if we're going to be doing a drone, you need to be using small seeding rates. Because if you're putting on a bushel of rye, you're basically going to be filling every acre. Now, if you're putting on two or four pounds of Camelina, which is the NRCS requirement for Camelina, then that's only four pounds an acre. Yeah. So it's a lot less fills. Yeah. And so if you are going to do drones or have someone do drones, it you got to kind of look at your species of which one you wanted. My advice on the drone thing is talk to your drone operator and make sure they understand what they're getting into. Because we have last year we had to bail a couple drone guys out because they took on some jobs and then realized that they weren't up to the task. Um just as far as like handling the amount of seed that they were gonna need to do. Um so make sure. Yeah, make sure you know your guy is comfortable or gal. Um with with handling that much bulk. Supposedly. There are a lot of great drone people. Um just make sure you get one of those people. Look at these little cards. Just hammer. I don't even know how to done the math. Time out. I have six over here. You have 11. 15. Last card. No, not last card. Oh, yeah, you uh dang it. Get out of here. Have we ever done this where we got out without having a go? I think episode two. Really? Yeah. That's wild. We didn't even get to 20. Right? Uh 21. We got 21. Yeah. That's not that many. So drones work great in like where they're meant to be. Just make sure you're talking to the right person. Oh my gosh. I don't even have any, I don't even have anything. You don't have enough to do 15? Well, you got eight. You got a double run. Yeah, I have a double run, but I thought I could get enough 15s. I'm I'm one short. Darn it. That's not good. That's six. Not eight. Six plus pairs. Yeah, you got more than me. You're so close to winning here. I'm not going to. Um. Scoring update. I am eight points away, but I get to count first. Tell me about it. Bill has his crib right now. Probably got 20 in there. I got six in there. Well, this is close. I'm down two. But you count first. Yeah. But it's 10. You gotta get 10. Yeah, 11. Yeah. Yeah. This is a typical thing where you'll get to go first and you'll win. What do you see with the airplane that uh maybe is a downfall? Um, I think the biggest downfall is well, we talked about this the other day. Um, how I recently rented a farm that's within the uh pattern of the airport. Oh, yeah. And um I was telling you this is a conventional farm, and I was out there planting corn, no-till corn, and um uh a guy bought it that wanted all regenerative practices, and I obliged. Um, and I was like, gosh, there's rye all over this field. And it kind of took me a round or two to figure it out, but um essentially the rye had been trickling off the airplane because like you can't get everything completely clean of rye, right? And um had been seeding this seeding this field. So that's one that's one downfall that that I see. I I got into my neighbors, um, I had it 80 that I got into my neighbor on one pass. I think that's just gonna happen. The difference between rye and fungicide, let's just say, is fungicide you can see it, yeah, and rye you can't. No, no, no. Backwards. Uh fungicide you can't see. Rye, you can see it. You know, we always talk about a handful of rye in oats, and you can see it. It it looks forever. It looks like so much rye is out there, and um that's why we're like we we're we're really careful about contaminants. Basically, rye is a contaminant. Um because it just kind of goes everywhere. Can you go? I cannot. 24. Yeah, that's kind of the problem. It's not as precise, like even like a drone is more precise in an airplane. Yes. Um the ground rigs, all of them are definitely more precise. Uh so you're gonna go out, aren't you? Yes. You have no idea how good of a hand I have in both these. Uh so that's the thing. Like, a lot of times where I fly on, I I will drill my headlands. I'll tell them to stay off the like stay away from the neighbors a little bit, and then I'll go afterwards and I'll drill the headlands because they're going 140 mile an hour, you know, eight feet off the ground or whatever. Like it's it's not gonna be perfect, and you can't expect it to be perfect. It's gonna be a little streakier than drilling, you know, it's just not gonna be as consistent. But it's but it's gonna get on. It's gonna get on when it gets on ahead of a rain, it's gonna look better than anything after a rain. Yes. So there's a give and take. There's gonna be some years, like in those dry falls. Man, it was tough. But when it catches a rain, it looks awesome. Yep. Yep. So you just have to kind of take the average, I think. Yep. And it's gonna get done, and it's the quickest, dirtiest way to put on cover crops. And if we're going to get a lot more cover crop acres, we're gonna need drones, we're gonna need airplanes, we're gonna need ground rigs, and we're gonna need fertilizer spreaders, everything. So yeah. Till next time. See ya. Like what you heard? 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.