Dirt to Dollars
Agriculture, farming, and rural issues in central Kentucky.
Dirt to Dollars
Episode 33 - Dry and Windy Spring
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Thanks to Greg Thomas over at Helena Agri-Enterprises for sponsoring this week's show! You can contact him at 270-723-6019.
Thanks also to our studio sponsor Biotech Innovations. Learn more about them at www.biotechinnovationsag.com.
Welcome to Dirt to Dollars, where we cover everything from the dirt on your land to the dollars in your hand.
SPEAKER_02We're talking all things agriculture in central Kentucky from the field to the farm office.
SPEAKER_01Join your hosts, Daniel Carpenter, Matt Adams, and Mark Thomas as we dig into current ag news, practices, and more. And now, coming to you from the Biotech Innovation Studios, here's Dirt to Dollars. Now let's get innovative. Welcome back to another episode of Dirt to Dollars, episode 33, since we're back here.
SPEAKER_0333.
SPEAKER_0133.
SPEAKER_03Taylor and Hart twice. Yeah. Larry Bird. Was 33? I think so. Scotty Pippen?
SPEAKER_0133.
SPEAKER_00Ron Mercer.
SPEAKER_01Ron Mercer. I was thinking of Roy Mercer. Roy D. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02He probably threatened to whip 33 people.
SPEAKER_00What's the what is the Mark, you were enlightening us on numerology, so what is the what is the meaning behind the number 33?
SPEAKER_02That means we have a gift to share with the world. So here we are.
SPEAKER_01Very fitting.
SPEAKER_02Our gift with you.
SPEAKER_00Some great number stuff.
SPEAKER_01You know who else has gifts they can share with the world or share with the local farmers?
SPEAKER_02Helena Agra Enterprises. Oh man. You're good. Helena Agra Enterprises is one of the nation's foremost agronomic providers of crop inputs, application technology, manufacturing, and data solutions. They have you covered from start to finish and everywhere in between, from planner box treatments like QuickShot to Cohort, the dry spray grade AMS replacement, as well as products like Receptor and Coron to help you make the most out of the dollars you spend. Contact our local Helena rep, Greg Thomas, at 270-723-6019 to learn more.
SPEAKER_01Been getting some loads of stuff from Mr. Greg Thomas the last week or two. I think he's he's been slightly busy.
SPEAKER_02Actually, I was turning in the driveway to the farm, and he was passing by with an empty trailer. And I started to call him and be like, hey, you've got eight empty totes and uh or eight empty boxes and a tote down here if you don't want to take the trailer back empty. But I figured I'd just leave that alone. It was it was like four o'clock, and yeah. I figured he probably a reason he was heading back empty.
SPEAKER_01He made me a little nervous the other day. He pulled in with several pallets of seed corn and had straps across them. And I look across the back of it. I think I sent you all a picture. There's one bag of seed corn sitting on the edge of the stack with nothing holding it in. And he walks back around there and I said, You really made me a little nervous on that that end bag right there. And uh he's oh, it's not going anywhere. And he reaches up and slaps it, and it almost fell off the back of the trailer. He said, Oh, maybe it was.
SPEAKER_02But it made it, that's all that matters. And it took the scenic route to get there.
SPEAKER_01I should have uh I probably should go back and count them and make sure it matches what I was supposed to get, make sure there wasn't a bag on top of that when he left warehouse.
SPEAKER_02There uh there wasn't when he was at my house. So yeah, I think uh since we've recorded our last episode, it's gotten drier and windier.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we talked about that we were in a a D zero an abnormally dry, and then what happens the next day after we record, we move into a D1 drought.
SPEAKER_02Yep. And we didn't get anything. Uh some places got a little shower uh Monday, but nothing nothing of drought breaker status.
SPEAKER_01I mean we got Was that Monday? All my days run together. Yeah, it was Monday.
SPEAKER_02We got uh we're recording on Wednesday, but we got that. We got three tenths and was planting Tuesday afternoon.
SPEAKER_01Three hundredths here.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So dirt wouldn't stick to your shoes five minutes later. It's as dry as I've ever seen it in April. I I can confidently say that I was standing in front of my shop today looking out across the pasture field, and I've said for the last week or ten days you could start to see where pastures were starting to stress. And uh I noticed today was the first day you could look out across the pastures and actually see brown spots, which I've never seen in April.
SPEAKER_00So we were talking about a post that was made online. I think it was Central Kentucky weather. Yeah, I don't know who that is. I don't either, but it was a pretty interesting uh uh post, and it was talking about 2017 and 2010, both being some very dry Aprils. But I don't remember those.
SPEAKER_03I I don't either.
SPEAKER_00So I was gonna say, like, I don't remember that. Um, and I guess it's because just sometimes those years run together, and then if things turned out fine, then it doesn't, you know, it doesn't stay in your memory, right? Like it's just kind of you kind of gloss over that. But uh it it listed uh those two years, seven uh 17, 2010, 92, and then 86. But um I think 86 was the one that uh well even it had all those years they had like normal summer rainfall. No, 80 86 turned out 86 was a bad drought, wasn't it? Well it was, but then it had rain throughout the summer still. Right. I think it was just like two. It wasn't on time enough. 88 would have been, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's it all evens out, and really if we're gonna have drought, we might as well have it now instead of July. But what worries me on the forage and the livestock side is I mean, we're still feeding hay right now, and three weeks ago I'd have said we would have been on grass ten days ago at this point. And they've slowed down, but I'm not turning out on anything that we're not rotating anything around yet because it's like it jumped up a little bit and now it's just sitting there, and you know as soon as you graze it off, it's gonna be gone. And hay fields really aren't growing. I've noticed some alfalfa driving around down here is brown on the hillsides like it gets in July when we don't get rain. Like it's just burnt back.
SPEAKER_02We sprayed our alfalfa for weevils and uh it still hadn't recovered. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it looks really bad. I sprayed mine for weevils three weeks ago, and it still hasn't fully recovered. Some of it has you can start to see like the better dirt, it's greened back up. Uh the weevils are dead, they're gone. It's just nothing, it's not grow outgrowing the damage.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, I mean, either way, if it started raining today, I think we're very short on first cutting A. Have to be. I don't know how you avoid it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you will be. Hopefully, we can get later spring or later summer rains, late spring, early summer rains to make up for it in our second cuttings.
SPEAKER_00Well, that seems like that that weather post still, I mean, he he referenced that uh expected switch tail niño conditions this summer, and I think that's that's the hope is that we'll turn into wetter conditions for us.
SPEAKER_01Which way is that? I've heard it, I always thought all my IFL Nino was cool and wet for us. And then I've seen it both ways since they've started talking about this, that it could be cool that some will say it's cool and wet for Kentucky, some will say it's dry for Kentucky. So are we like right on that line and nobody knows, or just somebody's spouting off on Facebook that doesn't know?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think you might you gotta be careful too, because I think you can get it mixed up with what happens in the winter. Yeah. And I think it's different than what you get in the summer. Um, but I I from what I can remember, I thought it just meant for uh potential for warmer and wetter temperatures for us, but I don't know. So warmer and wetter, not I don't know if that's correct. I didn't I guess I could have I should have Googled that while we were just chatting, but um I didn't. But I think that's right. But if I'm wrong, then I'm not a meteorologist. So actually, maybe I am a meteorologist, I can be wrong. And it's fine.
SPEAKER_01That's okay because they are weather forecaster. Yeah, weather forecast. Key forecaster for dirt dollars.
SPEAKER_02Did you take uh ag weather at UK? I actually did take ag weather. See, I did not. That's one class I didn't get to take. So you're you're more of a meteorologist than either one of us. I'm sure we've got some.
SPEAKER_00I'm a certain I was a certified weather spotter there for a while. That's I got that certification in the class. Um, but if you if you um if if you were somebody that took that class, uh you know that um uh it was it was a good way to bring that GPA up. I really liked it and I learned a lot in there, but at the same time it was easy. And surprisingly, wasn't a lot of basketball players in there. Sometimes those classes you got the basketball players and the football players, um, but there wasn't any wasn't any in that one.
SPEAKER_01So not only has it been dry, is it just me or has it been windier this spring than ever too?
SPEAKER_00It feels like we say that a lot now. Like we it seems like we're talking about wind, like it's the windiest it's ever been, and I I feel like we've said that before on this show.
SPEAKER_02So I was thinking about it today that somebody made the comment a few days ago. It's like I don't remember being this windy when we were kids. It's like, well, I don't either. But then I was like, well, that's not really a fair statement because I didn't care about the wind when I was a kid. Yeah, you weren't paying attention to it when you were and I didn't really care about it until I bought a sprayer, to be honest with you. Because before I had a sprayer, you just picked up the phone and said, hey, this needs to be sprayed, and it got done. Whether the wind was liable on the you you weren't liable for any of that, so now it's like, well, now I have to pay attention to it more because I've got to find a window somewhere to spray. And we've not had a very good window this year. I think I've sprayed three days.
SPEAKER_00Planters are getting ahead of the sprayers by a lot, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Not everywhere. Plant when it's windy and spray when it's not, and we've had a and a lot of days.
SPEAKER_00It's kind of related to what we're talking about earlier. Is it dry enough where um the the spray's not working as great?
SPEAKER_01Or do you think I've had that thought, I've wondered. Because you know, yeah, if you read the labels on a lot of these herbicides, they'll give a warning that they could decrease efficacy when it's dry. And you know, we usually think about that in the summertime spraying post, but yeah, are we gonna have trouble on some burndown getting some stuff killed because it's drought stressed?
SPEAKER_02I haven't noticed that. Um, I will say some cover crop wheat uh has been very slow to die. Which is good. I mean, when you have a slower, if it dies slower, it's usually a better kill. But um I was concerned I was gonna have to re-spray it, honestly.
SPEAKER_00I I think I drove by that field. I drove by that field yesterday, Mark, because I've I've been worried about your cover crops. Um because I want you to have a really good experience with it and keep it up. But the uh I noticed that they still had some green to it, but they were they were it was dying, but it was uh yeah, it was definitely holding on longer than everything else out there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Mark's one cover crop field that he's planted in the last 10 years.
SPEAKER_00He's gonna be a yeah. I'm just I'm very I'm very disappointed. He's concerned concerned.
SPEAKER_02It's a it's a slow you should be because it's all your fault. No, I I love the idea of cover crops, but there's definitely some extra management that uh goes with that.
SPEAKER_00So well, I've I've heard a few people that had uh that just planting conditions and some cover crop ground seemed like uh you know, fields that didn't have cover crop were extremely dry, but I don't know. It doesn't happen every spring, but you know, still had a little bit of moisture there with that cover crop being there and and making the planting conditions just a little bit better than they they might have been otherwise.
SPEAKER_01What I've noticed over the years, because we used to have a lot of trouble getting the planter in the ground uh where we're so droughty and red clay and stuff down here where I'm at. And when we started planting cover crop year in and year out, it seems like the ground's just a whole lot more mellow, and not necessarily mellow six feet down or anything like that, like you've got roots really going down, but that top two or three inches you're trying to plant into seems to mellow out a lot where you've got shallow rooted stuff. So it's just the roots in there, I think just improved the till file a lot. I did see some posts on social media from like that southern Tear County area in West Kentucky where people were talking about they killed their cover crops early because it was so dry and they were worried about them taking up excess moisture.
SPEAKER_02Really hadn't thought about that going into the spring, but well, it's typically not something you have to worry about. Usually we have adequate moisture in April. Um so I think we're just in a year that's every year's different and every year has its challenges, and we're this year the the dry April is hopefully this year's only challenge. And historically, when you look at rainfall trends, uh the rainfall for the year doesn't deviate that much off of the average. So maybe the I was actually talking to Pastor Mike on the phone. Y'all remember him from a couple weeks ago episode, was talking to him on the phone yesterday, and uh we were talking about it. He's always said maybe the good lord's holding it out for us for June, July, and August, and he'll give us what we need then. So I hope you're right.
SPEAKER_01Was he in the fertilized truck?
SPEAKER_02No, he'd already left the fertilized truck. Okay. Yeah. He'd already left that.
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe, maybe, maybe the good lord wants wants us to be done planting by the release date for sheep detectives.
SPEAKER_02Ooh. Yes.
SPEAKER_00That's that's going back several episodes too, if you uh remember that. So we we do still have to find somebody to what's the date? Is it it's in is it in April?
SPEAKER_02No, it's May. May uh May 8th.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm I if if nothing else, I'll give I'm gonna go report live from the from the movie. We missed that as an auction item.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Cheap detective tickets. And you have to go with Texas. Oh man. And you don't even get to like sit on the end, you've got to sit like right in the middle of this stuff.
SPEAKER_02Oh, so something we I guess did we read the synopsis of of the sheep detectives when we first talk about it?
SPEAKER_01I don't think it was out yet.
SPEAKER_02All right. Every night a shepherd reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending his sheep can understand. When he is found dead, the sheep realize at once that it was a murder and they think they know everything about how to go about solving it. Yeah, we did not read that on there. So come May 9th, we're probably gonna find Daniel out in the barn reading books to his sheep.
SPEAKER_01Bold of you to think he doesn't already do that. I know.
SPEAKER_02That's true. That's true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're gonna have to start figuring that one out. We're gonna have to get on it if we're gonna give away a ticket there.
SPEAKER_00Uh changed subjects a little bit. I did want to say congratulations um to uh a former uh uh student of mine back when I did the uh crop scouting team. Yeah, poor guy, but um so this this might show you that maybe it was more the students than it was the teacher and all that. But uh uh Jose Vianos, um, he was awarded the Goldwater Scholarship for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. Uh Jose is uh former LaRue County FFA member, um, was a great kid. He helped out a lot with a lot of local programs uh that we would do, especially when I was at the extension office. Uh he helped out with a lot of things and happy to see him having success at the University of Kentucky. And uh just another another LaRue County FFA alumni that's gone on to do great things, and another crop scouting champion that's uh uh doing great things. So congratulations to Jose. I wanted to mention that this week.
SPEAKER_03Congratulations, and he probably owes that to you for all the things that you taught him.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much.
SPEAKER_02I don't want your head getting in big or anything.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02You know, your head gets too big, it won't fit in free t-shirts, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Oh, yes, okay. Free t-shirts. So we might have to go down this road. Do you all ever get rid of clothes? Uh very rarely.
SPEAKER_02The only time I get rid of them is if they get holes in embarrassing places. Or um or they just get so nasty that I'm like it's not just gonna I'm I'm just not we're cleaning, I'm just gonna throw it away.
SPEAKER_01So you you're throwing them out too quick with the holes. It's just yeah, sometimes the location of where the hole is just determines where you can and can't wear those. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's true. I agree. I I I've I've just, you know, there's like this tier of where clothes are in my house. So like there's, you know, if you get a new shirt, like maybe it was a uh maybe it was a Helena shirt, right? And you wear it and it's clean for a while and you wear it to nice places, and then you spill something on it, well, then it's a farm shirt, right? So it's you know, you don't get rid of it. It's just it's just a farm shirt, goes in the pile with your your farm clothes, and then it stays there for a long time until it just falls apart at the seams, and then then it can either be a rag um or it can or it can go to the trash can. But uh sometimes I've I've I've found that some items of clothing kind of disappeared. I I don't know where they go.
SPEAKER_02It's probably not the washing machine that's making them disappear. Um several of mine disappeared last week during a spring cleaning event.
SPEAKER_04Ooh.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So yeah, to be fair, I will say, to be fair, um I was planting or spraying or something, and Wesley goes, So I got something to tell you. I was like, oh what? She goes, You're gonna love it or hate it. I was like, Oh, what's that? She's like, you know all those t-shirts you don't wear? I kind of looked at her and she's like, You got nervous, didn't you? I said, Yeah, she goes, I sorted through them. So I got back home. I still have two full drawers of t-shirts, so I still have plenty of adequate t-shirts, but I still don't know what was in the bag that's no longer in the drawer.
SPEAKER_01But apparently you didn't wear them. Apparently I didn't wear them, so it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_02So but there was a time not that long ago that I would almost have to buy t-shirts to work in because it is just you'd run out of them. Well, now it's like I come home with a new t shirt every once a month, probably.
SPEAKER_00Somebody gives a t shirt, and it's uh I'm a weird like I have some shirts that I have bought to work in, and I will wear those till they just disintegrate. Like I will get every dollar I With a can out of those. I had a couple of like under armor t-shirts that like I went to go take them off and like the the neck thing just ripped off. Like they were that worn down. And uh, but it's like those I'm gonna wear till they're gone. Now some of those freebies I may not wear as unless they're just really comfortable shirt, but um but yeah, that's that's that's funny. And I'm sure we're not the only ones that that operate like that with with farm clothes and and those freebies.
SPEAKER_02Same way with jeans. You wear jeans till they start fading out or get something on them, then they become jeans. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well they start fading out. Who throws them out when they start fading?
SPEAKER_02No, he said turn them into working out.
SPEAKER_01Then you turn them into work jeans. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Then when they start getting holes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you can get by with the holes for a little while. I can get by with holes for a while. Sometimes you add some ventilation, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. You got you know, summer hats and winter hats. You got summer jeans and winter jeans.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So uh today, I believe, was the end of the um session in Frankfurt. Saw some some bills got uh passed through. One of those we talked about before was House Bill 571 got signed into law. Um that was the light pollution bill. So uh now um Department of Transportation will have to be mindful of of their lights they put up at intersections that doesn't interfere with light pollution onto onto crop fields. And I and I would assume light pollution into uh residential areas as well, I would guess, would be covered under that. Maybe that was already a thing that they had to worry about.
SPEAKER_00But I mean, yeah, if you go to planning and zoning, they're all always talking about making lights where they shine down and they don't shine out into other things. Um now at least got some protections for agriculture.
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_00So deer bill.
SPEAKER_02I have not seen I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I haven't seen that either.
SPEAKER_02I'll uh there's a lot of there was a lot of bills.
SPEAKER_00There was a lot of bills, and you know, we talked about some of these before, but there was a lot that involved agriculture in different ways.
SPEAKER_04And then I think a lot of them got vetoed, and then they got overrode. I think they did.
SPEAKER_03Uh it was that was House Bill 142, right?
SPEAKER_01I think so.
SPEAKER_03It was vetoed.
SPEAKER_02And then the veto was overridden.
SPEAKER_00Well, there we go.
SPEAKER_02So it has been delivered to the Secretary of State.
SPEAKER_00Any other bill talk? I might have a thing about some bills to talk about. But they're different kind of bills. Go for it.
SPEAKER_01Have you um y'all kinda have y'all heard what the tooth fairy is paying these days? Not in bills at my house.
SPEAKER_00I don't I don't know. I don't I don't ever I don't have a lot of memories of getting bills from the tooth fairy, but maybe it's inflation.
SPEAKER_02I think I got like a quarter.
SPEAKER_00I I feel like I I remember getting changed, but I feel like the tooth fairy is is uh making it rain these days.
SPEAKER_01With one makes it she makes it hail at our house, I guess, because it's change like three quarters.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think when I think when ours lost her first one. It was a five or a ten.
SPEAKER_00What so here's the thing like is that it's maybe maybe the tooth fairy's paying like a premium for certain teeth. Because I think I think my my my kids' front teeth got a premium.
SPEAKER_02So she lost her other front bottom last week at school. She bit into an apple at snack time and it came out. And uh Tooth Fairy came with a dollar then.
SPEAKER_01So that's a little more reasonable, but so she better not get too aggressive or the kid will be pulling her own teeth.
SPEAKER_00I know. I know. I don't know some of these teeth that I've been seeing hanging from their mouth. I just I wish they would just go ahead and pull them. I was like, stop playing with that, just pull it out.
SPEAKER_02This one, dude. I walked in school to pick her up, and the teacher hands me a ziploc bag with her tooth in it. Oh, she lost a tooth today, by the way. We had uh she goes. No, not really. I was like, because it was basically three days.
SPEAKER_01We had that happen, it gets got sent home in a ziploc bag in the backpack.
SPEAKER_00So I guess kids, if you're listening, leave the leave the tooth ferry note and try to try to get a premium for those front teeth. Yeah. Because evidently, evidently, sometimes you might get it.
SPEAKER_01Never know gas prices are high, the tooth ferry has to add a fuel surcharge.
SPEAKER_02Oh. Wouldn't that go the other way though?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Don't get greedy.
SPEAKER_00Man, these fuel prices are are insane right now, but I just haven't noticed that people aren't driving. No. No, it doesn't seem to be slowing the day down. Do you you know, I can remember in the past when we'd have, you know, high fuel cost, it seemed like people would slow down. And I don't know, I just maybe maybe some are, and I just haven't seen it, but it's just it doesn't seem to be affecting things yet.
SPEAKER_02I I think it will eventually, but I was about to follow that up with you know, when you pass by the gas stations, one of the fifty that I drive past in Etown every day. God, isn't that the trick? They're always still as full as they've ever been. Now, the thing you don't know is with the higher prices, are people putting in$15,$20 to get by and they're having to stop more often.
SPEAKER_01So here's something ridiculous. I had my service truck the other day, which is a diesel, and stopped in a gas station to fill it up, pulled over to the diesel pump. One of those pumps, it it's like gotta be the slowest diesel pump in the state of Kentucky. It cuts off at$55.
SPEAKER_02So you got 10 gallons of fuel.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I hung up once, re-swiped. I thought maybe that was a fluke of some kind. Got it to$55 again, and I was pretty well dead out. Got it to$55 again, and it shut off, and I was like, I'm done. And just Oh, I was gonna say, did you triple swipe? No, I didn't triple swipe.
SPEAKER_02A lot of credit cards won't let you triple swipe. That's true. Because if you if you triple swipe, they'll think that it's being stolen, and they'll tell you to go inside and see the cashier or wait a day. Hmm. So yeah. Yeah. I understand to uh to the Department of A, and maybe they can check that. I don't know if they can do anything about the speed.
SPEAKER_01Maybe you can do anything about the speed or the dollar limit, but yeah, I understand like a hundred dollars. I can even understand a$75 limit, but$55 is a little off.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a speed limit. Like that's not a dollar limit. Yeah. Can I you want to know one of my big gripes that I hate is when I go to a gas pump and it's one of those pumps that you just that just won't stay pumping. You know what I mean? Yes, and it continually clicks off. Now, sometimes if you're just really slow and you just really slowly pull the trigger and just and you can find that sweet spot where it'll stay on, but I just it just one of my I I might as well just like leave because it affects my so my emotions so much when they don't just stay on.
SPEAKER_01Back to my service truck, it's got a flatbed, and anybody out there listening that drives a flatbed truck is going to feel my pain on this one. You go so the nozzles or nozzles, funnel, what do you call it, neck, fuel tank neck that comes up to the fuel cap where you fill it, are flatter than they are in a regular vehicle that's like a truck bed. And uh if you go to any of these pumps that are like a pump for a semi, but you know, you can they go both ways, I guess. You pull in with a pickup or a semi either one, and they're the big like high flow pumps, they're fast, but they're too fast, and they just keep clicking off because they fill up the neck of that fuel tank and backs up and kicks them off, and you'll sit there and fight with it forever. But yeah, I feel you on that one. That's why you gotta just slow, just slowly, just slowly. Well, you some of those you can put it on like one click and it'll it'll still do it because it's so much flow.
SPEAKER_02Like the it's not as important today as it used to be years ago, but the fuel rock, you know what the fuel rock is?
SPEAKER_01I still I use fuel bolts.
SPEAKER_02Do you? Okay.
SPEAKER_01So you don't have automatic shutoff on your not on my main tank. My truck tank has got an automatic shutoff. But it switched the works like half the time.
SPEAKER_02Okay. That is the problem with automatic nozzle, is that if it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01Well see, usually the the tank on the truck, I pull up like in the fall, pull up to the combine and you stick the fuel nozzle in the combine tank, and it takes a long time to fill up, so you go around and grease stuff and check stuff out. When you're filling up something at the home tank, it's usually filling up a tractor, or you're filling the truck up, or whatever, and you just you I'd rather have it on the on the truck than on the see.
SPEAKER_02I'd be opposite. That way you can stick it in the I mean the nine times out of ten when you full up to the combine, it's gonna take the whole tank.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I don't know. I was I was cheap, and the automatic fuel nozzle that I've got on my truck actually came off Amazon and it only works about half the time. So just enough where you don't fully trust it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that can be problematic. Yeah. Certainly when they don't work, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Could probably buy a good high quality automatic shutoff fuel and ozzle the first time that that runs a tank over.
SPEAKER_02Oh, guaranteed, especially with these prices.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, today's fuel prices.
SPEAKER_02The best thing, we put in a new or or had a new farm fuel tank set last fall. 2,000 gallon tank, and it's got a 30-gallon per minute pump on it. That is nice when it comes to filling transfer tanks and combines or tractors or whatever. So you don't have time, you don't you don't feel that's it's pumping fuel so fast you don't have the the need to want to walk off and do something else.
SPEAKER_01And see, that's where I'm kind of backwards too, because my service tank has got like it's like 13 gallon a minute, and then my truck tank is 20 gallon a minute.
SPEAKER_04So yeah.
SPEAKER_00You're just backwards all the way, right? I am my my gallons per minute is how high I hold the tank up. If I hold up like about halfway, it's probably a couple gallons a minute. If I hold up a little higher, it's a little faster.
SPEAKER_01And sometimes it'll start out fast and your arms start getting tired and it slows down.
SPEAKER_02Do you do one jug at a time or do you have multiple jugs that you go and fill out and then multiple that I keep? Yeah, multiple gas and diesel bow. So you're kind of filling it up. That's right. Your tractor's a gas, isn't it? No, diesel. Okay. Okay. I was thinking your tractor was gas. This kid's here was diesel. No, both diesel. Both diesel.
SPEAKER_00I just don't use them much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Don't have to with all them grazers out there in your field. You don't have to bush hog or anything.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, fuel prices are high and fertilize is still high.
SPEAKER_03I saw this week where our friend Brooke, Rawlins, Secretary of Ag, was calling out mosaic.
SPEAKER_04She was.
SPEAKER_01And Mark, I think you made a post on social media this week kind of referencing the same tweet.
SPEAKER_02Are they called tweets anymore or just you know when I was typing that, I was kind of concerned. I mean, it's on X, so it's not really I guess it's not a X. It's still a tweet. It's not an X. No, it's not really an X. It's still a tweet. But um I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but you know, basically Mosaic come out and and said that the price of fertilizer depends on a lot of different things. And that uh helping the world grow the food it needs is at the heart of everything we do. Global fertilizer prices are shaped by a wide range of well-documented market factors, including global supply and demand dynamics, energy costs, weather and crop forecasts, transportation constraints, and geopolitical conditions. These forces, not individual producers, drive the pricing of phosphate and potash fertilizer products. In fact, U.S. prices are lower than in any other key agricultural regions of the world. This reflects reduced U.S. farmer demand due to the difficult overall economic situation facing American farmers. Our commitment is clear. We are responsible, reliable, and future focused in our work to help feed a growing global population. When I first read that, my first thought was that's mosaic coming out and telling the farmer, quit complaining, you got cheaper fertilizer, telling the American farmer, quit complaining, you got cheaper fertilizer prices than anywhere else in the world. You should be thanking us.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, my kind of first thoughts on that were uh like you peasants, you should be That's what I thought too. Like right, it sounds like something that a king would say. Be grateful for the opportunity for that we're giving you the opportunity to borrow a fertilizer.
SPEAKER_00To the guillotine. Yeah. I let you live.
SPEAKER_02You know, in the in the transportation constraints, yeah, the straight of her mez, you know, geopolitical conditions. Oh, well, there's a war. Let's jack prices, whether we need to or not, you know. Um but a lot of this goes back to, you know, mosaic, uh, as I I did in my uh post I made, you know, Mosaic is the third largest producer of fertilizer in the world. And our governments have let this happen, have let these companies consolidate where we are relying on three to four producers to produce all the uh you know P and K that we need. N P and K, really. That it's only it's the only options you can get it from. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01So uh Brooke Rollins had I guess re do you still call it retweeting that? Whatever had shared that post. Uh said so disappointed in this response and tagged Mosaic Company, especially as you decide to idle two fertilized production facilities, removing one million metric ton of supply from the world market. Uh our president and this administration have farmers' backs, any slide of hand will not be tolerated.
SPEAKER_03I hope that's not just an empty threat. I mean, I really hope that's a lot of people.
SPEAKER_02You know, there's been talk for the last couple months about um the the federal government looking into price and uh commodity or me commodity price and input monopolization. So hopefully they continue to push forward on that and try to straighten some of this out.
SPEAKER_00You know. Yep. It's it's easy to to put out a a post on social media, but right.
SPEAKER_01And here's the thing, I saw the first person I saw that shared that had made comments about if you look into how other countries handle agriculture and fertilizer, a whole lot of the reason why ours is cheaper and why other countries are paying more, even though they're receiving roughly the same prices for their commodities, is because their governments heavily subsidize the fertilizer. And a lot of the government, a lot of the fertilizers government purchased and then distributed to the farmers. So it's not really affecting the farmer directly in their pocketbook.
SPEAKER_02And that's in other countries, that's how they control their farmers. That's how they control their population. They control their population, too. And you know, we're fortunate that farmers here get to make that decision.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So and there's there's also some discontent there because these companies are the same ones that have petitioned for countervailing duties on fertilizer imports from other countries, giving them an unfair advantage here in the United States, and then they're pulling production and pulling product off and sending it overseas because it's a higher bid.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, that definitely needs to be looked into.
SPEAKER_00What did Josh Linville have to say? I saw one of y'all talked about one of his tweets. So I'm not let me try and pull it up here.
SPEAKER_01You know, during I guess it was during COVID, he kind of got popular talking about fertilizer prices.
SPEAKER_02And uh He's one of them guys that kind of he posts enough times on Twitter. If you miss something, you gotta go back several. Yeah, he didn't used to be like that.
SPEAKER_00He does he posts a lot. But also he posts a lot when stuff there's a lot going on, right? There's a lot going on. He does, that's right. The volatility in the markets.
SPEAKER_01But I get a little uh I don't know, I don't always feel like he's a hundred percent pro farmer either. But it was basically throwing some facts out there to uh or I guess facts to uh back up what Mosaic was saying.
SPEAKER_00Was it when he was talking about like it should be$150 cheaper or something? I I saw one post that said urea is he was he he retweeted one of Trump's posts and was like, um your uh New Orleans urea is about uh$150 cheaper than it should be versus global economics, and phosphate is being exported at a rapid pace due to our discount versus the world. Yes, that's our fertilizer is not cheap, but manufacturers are not gouging right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And here, you know, go back one more day. Here's another interesting tweet of his uh updated corn slash fertilizer ratio charts. Uh still not great looks for farmers. Urea is the second highest it's ever been. Highest, high, second highest ever, highest ever at this time of year. UAN is the second highest ever, highest ever this time of year. Phosphate, highest ever this time of year. Potash uh remains well priced and well supplied. And that's kind of been the uh trend over the last little bit is potash has remained, you know, affordable, somewhat affordable, and and no supply issues. You know, it's our our phosphates and our nitrogens, you know, our nitrogens obviously follow. natural gas prices and you know they're they're affected the most but um so I thought that was interesting that we're we're in the either the highest or the second highest ever so just a a bad time of year.
SPEAKER_00Yeah that's not a uh not an experience that I was really looking forward to yeah me neither well but uh I know an experience that you are looking forward to is working with uh Greg Thomas over at Helena Agri Enterprises he was tossing it up and you just swinging a mess that was a slow pitch.
SPEAKER_02Helena Agri Enterprises one of the nation's foremost agronomic providers of crop inputs, application technology manufacturing and data solutions. They have you covered from start to finish and everywhere in between from planner box treatments like Quick Shot to cohort, dry sprayed gray and grade AMS replacement, as well as products like Receptor and Coron to help you make the most out of the dollars you spend. Contact our local helmet Helen Agripp, Greg Thomas at 270 723 6019. And maybe he'll bring it to you and it won't be falling off the trailer. Hopefully or potentially sliding off the trailer. He hasn't lost anything yet don't think that he's that that we know of but don't think he's lost anything yet.
SPEAKER_01So I may go count my bags right now and make sure yeah give us an update on that next week all right well thank you all for listening to Dirt the Dollars.
SPEAKER_00We'll see y'all next week see ya