Ahead of the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky the XtremeAg farmers gathered with their members for a social hour and panel discussion. Farmers Kelly Garrett, Chad Henderson, Matt Miles, Temple Rhodes, and Kevin Matthews shared their approach to machinery purchases and maintenance.
1. Examine the details of your planter and sprayer.
For North Carolina farmer Kevin Matthews, the planter and sprayer are the most important pieces of iron on the farm. “You can go down the road and get a tractor, you can go borrow a combine. The planter and sprayer are critical,” he says.
Check your sprayer out ahead of the season. “You need to really look at your booms,” Matthews advises. “You need to be going through your pumps. Make sure you did a good job cleaning them out. Open all your valves. Did you have any freeze damage in the winter?”
If anything is in bad shape, replace it now. “It’s going to get hot this summer when we’re out there pushing, trying to get stuff done,” Matthews says. Fixing a problem then that could have been addressed now will be a lot more frustrating.
If sprayer tips have been used for four seasons, Matthews encourages fellow farmers to replace them. Tips cost a lot less to replace than the price of chemicals that could be wasted or improperly applied by worn out nozzles.
2. Retool what you’ve got.
Good equipment doesn’t have to be a 2023 model.
“You can take an old planter and see people do a great job,” says Chad Henderson of Alabama. “Don’t think you have to go out here and have a brand new 60 foot planter to get this done.”
An older piece of equipment can be retooled for a big return on your investment.
“If people don’t have in-furrow or 2×2, I’m not saying you need to pick both of them, but there’s a lot of bushels that are left on the table by not having them,” says Maryland farmer Temple Rhodes. On his farm, Rhodes uses this technology to apply fertilizer, plant growth regulators, and micronutrients with the planter. “It’s something to give that plant a little extra bump. Those things pay back big dividends,” he says.
Matt Miles of Arkansas agrees, “We finally bit the bullet and did 2×2 and in-furrow on our planters. There’s so many products and technologies where you can not only increase your yield, but save money. Things you can put out there where you reduce your fertility costs and usage.”
Iowan Kelly Garrett has planters that are nearly 20 years old. He echos, “I went out and found basically the oldest bar I could find. We put so many different components on that planter that we’re basically building a new planter. I just need the central commodity tanks and the bar.”
3. Pursue best, not easiest.
Retooling your planter or implementing other recommendations from the XtremeAg team isn’t necessarily easy. It requires many hours in the shop and dealing with multiple suppliers.
Miles says, “There are so many different things between [retrofitting the planter] and Y-drops, or liquid fertilizer in general. We were all granular because it was the easy way to do it. That’s something I’m actually proud of today is that I quit trying to find the easiest way and started trying to find the best way.”
Best doesn’t always mean highest yielding. It can mean being more friendly to the environment or maximizing returns on investment.
4. Do the math for your specific farm.
Give your pencil a workout and do the math before breaking out the checkbook for new machinery. People question why Matthews grows 20 inch soybeans and 22 inch corn. Long story short, the math says to.
“We actually wanted to go to 15 inch soybeans,” he explains. “But, at the time, when you looked, a 15 inch set up on a 40 foot toolbar cost $89,000 more. There was a small yield benefit being in 15 inch rows versus 20s. But, when I looked at the numbers, I saw that when the planter was worn out and ready to be rebuilt, I would just be breaking even on that extra $89,000.”
The 20 inch soybean system made more efficient use of his existing sprayer, too. “I also figured I would have less yield loss from spray damage with 20s,” Matthews continues.
At the end of the day, the decision to stay in 20 inch rows netted the farm more money.
5. Time is money.
During peak planting and harvesting seasons, time is of the essence. One could argue Garrett has an extra planter and combine on his farm, but in his mind, the ability to maximize windows of opportunity justifies the additional equipment.
“Planting date, especially on soybeans, is big to us,” he says. “I want to get the soybeans in as early as possible because I want them to make as many nodes as possible.”
Come harvest time, Garrett says he’s managing moisture with a third combine. “I don’t want those soybeans to get below 13%. I really don’t want the corn to get below 19%.”
A hot, windy fall afternoon can take soybeans from 13% to 8 or 9% moisture, Garrett explains. “That costs a lot of money. Getting the crops out at the appropriate moisture really pays for itself.”
Henderson jokes people in his area call him “scratch and dent.” With his mechanical savvy, he’s been known to buy older machinery to have on hand if their main machines go down in season. “We learned through the COVID years that we had to have extra equipment to get the job done because we can’t get parts,” he says. Having a backup that was purchased at a rock bottom price is cheaper than downtime during a busy time.
6. Look for the long term.
An audience member reached for the mic. “This past year we went up a series in combine. I buried our grain handling facility. That was our biggest problem. How are you addressing those situations?” he asked.
Garrett says keeping the big picture of your farms infrastructure in mind is key. Your trucks, augers, the leg, the dryer, the size of your wet bin all needs to be taken into account.
Miles chimes in. “When we built our set of bins, we built pads for three more. We get tied up sometimes in looking at a one year plan. Try to plan out five years, 10 years. Have goals for three, five, 10, and 15 years.”
As you make machinery or infrastructure decisions for this season, keep in mind what you’ll need to meet your longer term goals.
“One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the past is getting in too big of a hurry when I’m doing something and saying, ‘Well this is all I’m ever going to need.’ Then I’m having to go back and spend double the money to build what I needed and should have done,” Miles says.
7. Update your technology.
With on farm tests and trials, there’s money hidden in the data, says Rhodes. “If you don’t have the technology to put it in, download it, and look it over, you’re losing money every chance you get.”
He acknowledges XtremeAg wouldn’t exist without precision ag technology.
“If I had one thing I could tell everybody here to do, I’d say go invest a little bit of money every year in technology,” Rhodes says.
