Smart Farming Practices with Lead Agronomist, Darrin Holder
We talk with Darrin Holder, a local pumpkin farmer and Lead Agronomist with Winfield United, Land O' Lakes agronomy division, about how West Kentucky farmers can make smarter calls when margins are thin without sacrificing the yield that lowers cost per bushel.
We dig into why some corn hybrids still respond to fungicides even when disease pressure looks low, and how protecting green leaf area can extend grain fill and improve kernel weight. Then we zoom out to the fundamentals that quietly decide profits: soil type limitations, split nitrogen programs on lighter ground, and avoiding spring tillage when it’s too wet and compaction gets baked in. We also hit the “big rocks” we refuse to skip, including soil pH, weed control, and planter setup for seed to soil contact.
From Italian ryegrass and its waxy cuticle to the value of residual herbicides and fall control timing, Darrin breaks down weed pressure in plain language. We also talk cover crops for erosion control, nutrient cycling, and long term soil health gains that take years, not weeks. Finally, we look forward to new soybean traits and the real role of AI in agriculture and precision farming: a tool for faster insights, not a replacement for judgment.
Transcript
Welcome to Back to Your Roots, a podcast that provides insight into all things farming, financing, and farm life, guiding you back to your roots. Thanks for joining us today on Back to Your Roots. I'm your host, Chris Griffin. And today we have a special guest, Mr. Darrin Holder. He's a local pumpkin farmer. A member of the River Valley Ag Board of Directors and lead agronomist at Winfield United, Land O Lakes Company. So thanks for joining us, taking time out of your day. And anything exciting going on in the work world?
There's lots of exciting stuff going on in the world today. It changes every day.
Yeah, for sure.
Appreciate y'all having me.
So tell us a little bit about yourself. You know, I know you're on the board of directors here and we've met before, and, but I don't know much about your background, you know, what you do. And I know, didn't realize you're a pumpkin farmer either. So I think that's pretty interesting as well.
So the pumpkin farming started about 5, 6 years ago. So back up a little bit. We farmed until '83. So I'm the first generation that didn't get the chance to do anything farm related. Of course, if you were around, you weren't around '83, but extremely high—
Yeah, '86 I was born. Yeah. Yeah. So
Extremely high interest rates. My dad, who helped his father-in-law, my grandfather farm, Both worked public work and it was either go big or go public work. And with the interest rates where they're at, it didn't make any sense. So I can remember a 5-year-old crying when we sold the combine. I can remember that. But so I've always been tied to it, live in a small community, grew up in Clinton or Fulgham, which is just east of Clinton. My grandfather worked public work and then when he retired from that, he helped my uncle on tobacco farm and that's really where I started. So been in agriculture my whole life, went to Murray State, I wasn't going to be an agronomist, to be honest with you. That was pre-round up ready, and I was going to be a chemical rep. And then the year I started college was the year round up ready came out. And so there was a plethora of extra chemical reps by the time I got out of college.
Yeah.
And so I went to work ag retail. And I've always said, if you work ag retail, you are agronomists because you are that grower's first line of defense. You're the first person he calls to ask questions. And I always enjoyed that. I enjoyed being the problem solver. So literally, I just— while I was working retail in Morganville, Kentucky, I went back to Murray at night and online and got my master's in agronomy. And it's just worked out. God's just laid this path out to where I went from working retail to I was a seed rep for the same company for 3 years, and that rolled right into the agronomy position. I've been doing this for about 18 years.
Okay.
With Winfield United. My current role as agronomy lead, just 2 years.
Okay.
So I'm, I'm now a people manager sort of.
Yeah. I know how that goes. So, so how long have you, you said you've been with WinField for how many years?
Been with WinField, uh, over 25.
So all I see is the Land O'Lakes company. So that's, I'll automatically, and I don't know if it's what I'm thinking of, but your butter and all that type of stuff. So explain a little bit more about that and kind of what WinField does and different things.
So Land O'Lakes is known to be a, a dairy cooperative in the upper Midwest. That's how it started about 100 years ago. They have, they have 3 main divisions. Dairy foods, which is what everyone sees, the butter, the—
yeah,
they have some other brands that we probably don't see much in this, this world. They have Purina feed. So livestock Purina.
Really.
Land O'Lakes. And now Purina dog food at Walmart is not. That's owned by Nestlé based out of St. Louis. That same logo. And I don't know the history of that. They were together. They split way, way before my time. And then WinField United, which is the agronomy division. We, we distribute our own brand of seed. We distribute other brands of seed throughout the cooperative and independent retail channel.
Okay, awesome. Well, I learned some stuff there I didn't know. So, well, as far as in western Kentucky, you know, the field right now and the growers, what should they— what's some things they should be paying attention to that are important and kind of keeping in mind?
I think we're set up to have a great crop. Okay.
Yeah, I've heard that from—
Yeah, I mean, and I just, I just took literally— I spent all week on the road and I've gone through Iowa, I've gone through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and back through Illinois. We've got as good looking crop as anybody right now in that part of the world, the western states, if you will. Commodity prices stink. Farm profitability doesn't look good. And so there's always, just like in your own personal finances, there's always this— I won't call it knee jerk, but the reality is, hey, I don't need to just go spend, spend, spend. So I would tell folks, don't quit. On a great crop, because we have the potential to have a great crop. And there's a lot of folks that I guarantee you right now from a corn perspective that are thinking, well, I'm not gonna spray fungicide because we're early. Southern rust is not even showing up on the map yet. There's probably some gray out there. We're way ahead. We're a month ahead of schedule. You know, I'm gonna beat it. But there are hybrids that respond to fungicide applications, and especially these hybrids. And you just, you got to dig deeper and ask the questions of these companies.
We do a lot of research on our own hybrids to see how they respond to fungicide, even in the absence of disease. And there are some that just, I mean, just go through the roof with it. And it's all about kernel weight. It's all about they fly early for their maturity. They have a really long grain fill period. And having that fungicide there to protect that green biomass equals more sugars to pump into that kernel. And I would tell people not to quit. Spend money, but spend it wisely.
Mm-hmm.
Spend it where you know you have the opportunity to get a return, but don't quit on this crop because there's, there's I always tell people this way, this is the way I look at my own operation because we, we, I don't row crop farm, but we own a small farm and we're 50/50 in that. So I get throughout to the end of the year and the first number I figure is cost per bushel produced.
Okay.
Okay. So there's 2 ways that you want that lower, that number to be as low as possible. There's 2 ways to make it low, reduce your cost. It's in the numerator or increase your bushels.
Yep.
And increasing those bushels makes that number get smaller faster.
You know, it's funny, I saw as a marketing major, and my teachers used to always say, you know, like in the economic downturn, don't quit spending money on marketing. Now be smart about it. Because when things come back, people are gonna remember when, you know, see the advertisements and stuff. But people quit spending money. It's like, well, I want to save money. Well, then it comes back. Well, there's nobody that remembers them when they go to spend money, you know. So, so kind of same way, you know, like you said, it's, you know, even though it's going to be a good crop, but obviously the commodity prices are are terrible, you know, hey, could we still do spend some money, increase our bushels, which is still going to be helpful at the end of the day. Still, that's making more, more bang for your buck.
You got to make sure that you stay on the right side of the law to finish your returns.
Yeah, there's always that fine— there's always— that's right, there's always that fine line.
Sometimes that's an art, not a science.
Yeah, yeah, it is. So, you know, when— as far as the soil types in our region, how have they been shaped by farmers when they manage corn, soybeans, wheat, things like that? So,
Our soil types are, they are what they are. That's one thing we can't change. We're, we're, we're in a pretty decent part of the world, honestly. Of course, a lot of our topsoil's in the Gulf from years and years of running moldboard plows and discs. I'm talking years ago. Uh, but we have decent soil. We don't have very deep soil. But it changes. I'll tell you one thing it for sure changes is how we fertilize. How we fertilize. You've seen people change a lot in corn the last 10, 15 years. We used to be all anhydrous up front. And then you had those years where you had knockout great yields and it was because we got the conditions right for mineralization to give us what we had in the soil, which is not a lot, but we do, you know, 1, 2% organic matter, you're getting 15, 30 pounds of extra nitrogen. As you decompose that and mineralize it in a year, and the years you have great weather, your mineralization rates go up. Anyway, not to get too deep in the weeds there, but people figured out that we also have lighter soils and we get big rains and that nitrogen seems to flush.
And they figured out, well, I can't hold it. I don't have the organic matter to hold this nitrogen when it's in the ammonia form. So instead of going all anhydrous up front, you see a lot of folks splitting that and they'll go in a little bit. It's half to 2/3 of their nitrogen up front, then hydrous, and they'll come back and top dress. Or that's with urea, ammonia nitrate, UAN, whatever it is, post. And they may go all UAN, they may go all dry, but they, they're splitting their applications. And that is— it's not 100% soil type driven, but soil type has a lot to do with why that is a good practice.
Well, it's going to be mostly—
That's right.
Okay.
That's right. Soil type affects everything. And that— but that's the one thing you can't change. Right. You can't, like I was in Iowa 2 days ago and I made the joke that I was gonna fill the bed of my truck up with their dirt and bring it home. 'Cause it's just black and it's deep.
It's so different.
Yeah. It didn't smell the same because it's just so full of organic matter and we don't have that, but we're not gonna have that. You, you, it takes years to affect organic matter. I'm talking decades, centuries to affect organic matter. So we have what we have. We just need to be smart about how we, how we manage it. And I think growers here, I told the guy at Iowa yesterday, I was making a joke. I said, man, any idiot can make a crop here.
Yeah.
And I didn't— I wouldn't be ugly about it. I was just joking with my coworker. But we're in a little different spot here. I mean, we've got some really, really, really good farmers in this part of the world who have figured out how to manage not the greatest soil type in the world, but pretty good. They do a pretty good job.
Well, and I know you kind of touched on it, you know, obviously, you know, figuring out what the right mix is and when to do it and on different soil types. What's some of the biggest common, you know, health mistakes, soil health mistakes you see? And, you know, how are some ways that maybe they can learn from those and maybe correct those in the future?
So the 2 things I see in our part of the world, we need to be adding as much fodder as possible. And what I mean by that is there's 2 ways to do that. A continuous cover with using cover crops or putting wheat in your rotation and raising a big crop. That what I call, I call that, that's active carbon. Your residue from a crop is the active carbon. It's the stuff that's gonna break down and feed the microbes immediately. And that helps, that is the foundation of your soil health. Okay. One of the things I see that we do that's a detriment is, and I'm not against metal, okay? We're predominantly no-till. We run metal at the wrong time sometimes when that You know, a lot, especially in the spring, we'll run a field cultivator or a Diamond Hair or Phillips Hair or something like that to open it up and dry it up, make it look good and plant the next day. We're only working an inch, inch and a half. The mud's still there and we're just creating— when that, when that, when that soil has moisture, that much moisture in it, it acts like a lubricant and it pushes those soil particles tighter and tighter.
And we're actually having a detriment to our overall soil.
It's gonna do the opposite almost.
That's right. We're, we're, we're increasing structure up top. Temporarily, we're decreasing it an inch and a half, 2 inches in the ground and deeper. And we're not— a healthy soil needs to be about 50% aggregate. So your soil, about 25% air and about 25% water. When you push that soil together, you make it tighter, you reduce, you change that. Now you're 60%, 70% aggregate and you have less room for water and air, which helps, which decreases your microbiome, decreases your soil biology.
Okay.
Now, Here's what a grower has to do. You can't farm the entire farm off one area, or if you have a 50-acre field and there's 5 acres like that, you, you gotta make a decision, right?
Well, and it's even, I mean, I know when I've, I got, uh, Alan Pace last year, I actually rode in his combine. He was talking about, you know, you looked at yields, you know, on the monitor in some spots, you know, get closer to the trees, lower spots, high spots. Mm-hmm. All that changes. So then, Even when you're talking about, you know, what you're going to do to that soil, I'm assuming would change based on— because we're not flat here. I mean, it's, you know, all those farms, it's funny to watch it because, you know, even the low spots where we've had a lot of rain, you know, corn, it's not really growing. But then those spots look amazing, you know. So, so it's pretty interesting to see that.
So there's probably some areas of the fields that if we're going to do that in the spring, we probably ought to pick it up and just drive through them and not pull the metal through.
Yeah, just— I got you. Yeah.
So I know, like, which this is like a million-dollar question. So, you know, in your opinion, because I have my opinion, because I've been here for 4 years and I've seen planting times when it's too wet and then it's too dry and then it's too wet later and then too dry and then maybe too, and then we complain about it being too hot and then it's too cold. And so our area, are we too wet, too dry? Is it, or is it just kind of one of those things? Because I know since I've lived here my entire life, I play golf all the time. So all I hear about, hey, we, the green, I mean, the agronomist right there. I mean, greenskeepers, hey, greens are too dry. It's too humid. Fungus is growing, you know, all these different things. So kind of going to that, what you think about our weather here? And I know it makes it that much more challenging for the guys that farm in our area.
So in West Kentucky, if you don't like the weather today, wait till tomorrow. Yeah. I mean, basically this year, just looking at '26, but we started extremely dry. But right now we're actually, we're actually in a pretty good spot. We've been getting very timely rains. We're still a little bit behind 10-year average in certain parts of the purchase area, but not drastically. And, uh, we're gonna get somewhere 48 to 52 inches of rain annually on average. Okay. In this part of the world. So right now I think we're in great shape. But here's the kicker is, is we haven't had the extreme heat yet either. Where, yeah, we're, you look at the 10 rates,
we're getting ready too.
That's right. And then you're, you know, you use more water, you're back at that evaporation.
We were, we were joking cuz we, we wore I wore like a little sweater pullover to work the other day. I was like, it was like, you know, but it was only like 70 degrees. But you're so used to it being like 95 or 100 degrees and humid and did not feel like that last week. But then I looked at the weather, just, it says extreme heat coming on.
96, 97. And so your water usage goes up. We keep getting the little rains that we've been getting. And I, I know where I live, we've had, we've had several inch rains, uh, the last month and a half and just seems to be timely. And we get those once a week. We're, we're set up to have a, an excellent crop.
Well, I work in the Kevil office and, and Hunter Bray's our crop insurance, which shout out to him. He's a great crop insurance agent and everybody should use him. But, you know, he, I know last year it was strange because, you know, it was really wet during planting season. Yes. And guys were, I mean, barely hitting the deadline for crop insurance. I mean, it was like, it was a mad dash. This year is like perfect.
Yes.
For planting.
Yes.
But we haven't had a ton of rain.
That's right.
So that's also been. So then it's like, it's like you kind of get one thing or the other. Yes. I know it's difficult. I always, they gotta have a little, there's a whole lot of just faith and, and a lot of things out here.
Whole lot of faith. I mean, a whole lot of faith.
I mean, I tell those guys all the time, like, I don't know how y'all do it on a daily basis because it's It's a lot. So much is out of their hands and they just do kind of take the, take the information they got and just make the best decision they can.
That's all they can do. That's right.
Right. At that point. Yeah. So I know from your experience, and I know you're out a lot, is, you know, growing seasons, you know, they've somewhat shifted differently. Have you seen that over the last 10 years and how have, like, how have our farmers here locally adapted to that?
Yeah. And I'll go back the last 20. This is my, I guess my 26th crop since I got out of college. It is, you'll see trends, right? You'll have trends, you'll have 2 or 3 years where you get in the ground early. Then you have with those, you know, couple years back to back where we didn't plant much until May. And so it's not, I don't say our climate changes daily. I hope we have more years like 2026. Oh yeah. And not like '24 and '25 where we were, we were pushing to get things in the ground, uh, and planted everything in this really short window and it was a little sticky. It's changed, but it's gonna continue to change. And honestly, here's what I want, what I always have always told farmers, do what's best for your operation. Just because it's best for your, your neighbor doesn't mean it's best for your operation. You got to think about what you can physically You can plant way quicker than you can harvest, and you can plant way quicker than you spray.
So you got to kind of, kind of time. But the weather has, has changed. I've seen some people make some adjustments on like soybean maturities and when they start planting soybeans in the last 5 years. It's been the right move. We used to— we would go early with soybeans. We'd go with a really, really, really early maturity. And we figured out that now just keep the maturity what we normally plant mid to late 4. And plant it really early. And that just gives it more time until Sunday, summer solstice, to grow vegetatively and put on more nodes and ultimately equal, equal more yield.
I think even you saying, you know, operation to operation, I mean, some operations may have— I mean, I know some guys, it's, it's their granddad and them and another farmhand. That's all they got.
Yeah.
You know, there's only so much, only so many people will be so many places. You know, other people might have 7, 8, 9 people working. So, I mean, it doesn't like, and then like you said, it's all about that cost of diminishing returns or how much do you wanna spend and how quick do you wanna do it and is it worth it and to hire extra people? So I think that also factors into it. And like you said, every operation's different. You just need to do what, just do what's right for you and what's the best fit.
Yeah.
And I think if you could give farmers one thing to focus on this season or moving into 2027, what would that be, you think?
I would tell them to be a student of the game and be willing to learn, but know where the information's coming from. These things right here, phones, computers, internet, there's so many folks today that are TikTok farming and YouTube farming, and sometimes those are not replicable sources. I couldn't tell you the number of things that people have sent me and just be like, that's not agronomically sound. That's not a good— and grower doesn't know. Grower should ask the questions and shouldn't just take everybody's, any person's word for them unless they absolutely know they're a trusted advisor. So I would tell folks to be a student of the game on their farm, but don't— we have so much knowledge at our fingertips today, but that does not make us wiser. Wisdom comes from, from applying that knowledge and learning from that. And, and that's what I'll tell people, man. Drive, desire the wisdom on what to do in your operation and, and do your best not to TikTok farm. All those things are fine. I'm not, I'm not against any of those things. I mean, we're doing a podcast today.
I feel like I may even, you know, want to borrow money and they've heard about something and I'm like, I don't even know. I've never heard, you know, it's like, but that's what I've seen, you know? And it's like, well, I wouldn't say that's probably the best best idea, but what's one? I know we talked about not cutting back on certain things, especially when crops are good or commodity prices are not good, but what's one thing if you feel like a farmer could cut back on or maybe look at making some changes that might be able to save them a little bit of money and make their operation a little more profitable?
I would think the way I always tell people is not necessarily defining one thing to cut back on. But make sure, number one, you have your big rocks in place. There are some big rocks in farming, in production agriculture that have to be there. Number one, soil pH. You have to have your soil pH right. The cheapest fertilizer you'll ever buy is getting your pH right. Weed control. You have to have good weed control. Weeds compete. They use most weed species, especially you get to some things like Palmer amaranth, even Italian ryegrass, some of those tougher to kill weeds that just get very prolific. They use more water and more nutrition per pound of biomass than a corn crop does. Get them out of there. Start clean, stay clean. And then your fertility levels, those are big rocks. And starting off right from a planting perspective, that planter is the absolute number one most important piece of machinery on the farm. It determines seed-to-soil contact, and seed-to-soil contact is the beginning of your crop. And making sure that you have good— making sure you get started off correctly is very, very important.
Okay.
As far as cutting, just be smart. Here's what a lot of folks want to do. They like— and I understand, especially as operations get bigger and bigger. Absolutely. I mean, operationally, you've got to do things that are efficient. But a lot of times we farm the farm and there's things that I could cut in a certain area or a certain soil type or a certain hybrid or a certain field, certain variety. that I wouldn't cut elsewhere. And that's, that's a little more difficult to manage, but there's, there's money to be saved and made in that scenario by putting the inputs where you have the opportunity to get a return. Just like the fungicide conversation a while ago, if I get Hybrid A that responds in the absence of disease and Hybrid B that does not, and I've got enough money to spray half my acres, I know which acres I'm going to, I know which acres I'm not. Now Southern Rust shows up, changes the game.
Yeah.
Changes the conversation. But—
Well, that, that actually leads into, you know, One of the next questions is talking about the biggest, you know, I mean, kind of talk about some of those weeds and funguses that you're seeing, you know, what are the main ones? And, and kind of like somebody doesn't know anything, explain some of those to the audience and, and what some farmers have to fight on a yearly basis.
So, so the weed that I'm seeing the most just driving up and down the road is that people are struggling to control Italian ryegrass.
Okay.
Uh, it's a, it's an annual.
What does it look like? Because
In a wheat field.
Yeah.
When you won't notice it in the wheat fields, that everything heads out and then you'll see this plant that's got a really long head that's just got alternating spikelets and it's real shiny.
Yep.
That's Italian ryegrass. We did a great job years ago of controlling in wheat with products like Holon and Osprey and then some newer things. But it is, it is coming back.
So do you see that normally, like in your years that you've been doing this, something go away for a while, you get really good at controlling it, and then all of a sudden does it just adapt to it? It adapts to and gets immune maybe, or has some immunity to—
Sometimes it'll build resistance. Sometimes our practices change. Just like marestail used to be a big, big, big deal. Then when we started planting these, the dicamba beans and now the 2,4-D beans, we've— you don't see many people. You still see marestail, but it wasn't the— it's not the problem that it was 10 years ago. So your practices, you're selecting for things. Some things get resistance. Italian ryegrass has built resistance, but the biggest thing that it does is we want to control it in the spring. And once it gets to the spring, it's already— most time when we're spraying, it's jointed just like wheat, and it puts on a very waxy cuticle. And you'll— that's why when you drive by in the field and it's got it, it shines. You can pick it out versus everything else because it's— if the sun's out, it's going to shine. You're going to see it. And that's a— that's a— think about that's armor. You know, I tell people all the time, God didn't design plants to absorb herbicides. God designed plants to repel herbicides and hair, oils, fats, lipids. And Italian ryegrass has a very, very thick, waxy cuticle, which makes it that much more difficult to penetrate because waxes, right?
They don't absorb water. Waxes deter water. So,
okay.
Uh, that's a big one. Uh, now we, 25, 30 years ago, we did a lot of fall spraying. We spray a lot of Simazine and Gramoxone in the fall, but you gotta be careful with that with rolling hills cuz you get erosion. That is the time to control it is the fall, because in the fall it's this, it's this, it's this little old grass hasn't jointed, doesn't have that waxy cuticle, much easier to kill in the fall than it is in the spring. And so that's, that's a, that's an issue from a, a weed perspective. There's pockets of weeds. Amaranthus, you know, Palmer, which is, which is, uh, everybody calls it pigweed, Palmer Amaranth. It's, It's a, it's a booger, but the phenoxy help us there. We need to, we need to spray more residuals. You know, if you went back, the folks that listen to this that are older than me will remember pre-Roundup Ready. And we, especially in a soybean crop, we sprayed on a calendar, right? We, we, we, we burned down, put a residual out, and then we would come back on a calendar and spray our early post. We don't do that as much as we used to, and we're not lapping those residuals like we used to because I always tell folks, a weed that never comes out of the ground will not be resistant and will not rob yield from you.
And so that costs a little extra money on the front side, but it'll save you money on the backside.
Yeah. So it's— instead you're being more proactive instead of reactive at that point.
That's right.
Yeah. So explain, and this is another thing, I mean, because like I said, when people listen to this podcast, there's people that are sitting in the combine and they're out doing something, and then obviously then you got people driving on the road don't know anything about farming. So explain cover crops and kind of how that would help farmers and their soil. And what does that look like? And explain that a little bit.
Number one, ground cover. So you get less erosion. Number two, you are adding most good cover crops like cereal rye, your radish species are very deep-rooted. Those roots, as they get in the soil and they get prolific in the soil, they are building, they are rebuilding, help rebuilding their structure. And they also, some of them like cereal rye and some of your rashes, tillage rashes, they get real deep. They'll actually mine nutrients that have, have leached down the soil profile and bring them back up. So when you terminate them and that crop decomposes after you terminate it, then it's, it's basically helps you with nutrient cycling. The biggest thing it does is, is the active carbon. So you have that biomass that you terminate, you kill that crop. And now you have all this active food, you have this green biomass food that is the immediate food source for those, those microbes, those bugs, the biology in the soil, the microbes, they start decomposing that, that feeds them. And then you just think about how that just builds soil structure because as they feed that, they make casts. They all— it's just a cycle. And it overall helps your soil health.
Now, Don't do it in one year. It's a 3 to 5 year thing before you really see, you start seeing the water. And I tell you an example. I was in Middle Tennessee. This has been 10 years ago. And a buddy and I went to this field and we were, I don't even remember what we were doing there. We followed about a 2-inch rain and this is rolling hill ground around Murfreesboro. And we pull in the old, it was an old turn-in there and it still had gravel in and water's just barely trickling outta this field and just clear as a bell. And I'm just amazed because if we get a 2-inch rain here, it's usually full of sediment and everything else. And it was, it was cover crop and he had already planted beans. Anyway, the grower shows up and I said, hey man, what, how long has this field been in cover crop? I said, because I'm just amazed on how clean, how slow the water's coming out of the field and how clean it is. He said, oh, 1978. He said, I know that. He said, because I got married in '77, I ran this farm the next year and I started cover crops.
And I says, okay. I said, so that's Now it's 48 years at the time, 40 years. I said, how long did it take you to start seeing the benefits of what you were doing? He said, it's 3 to 5 years minimum. He said, you got to do it in a way everybody gets scared of. It's an extra step and it's extra cost. And I get that there are programs that help you do that, but it's also, it's extra steps and you got to be more proactive in termination early. And some folks just aren't set up for it. Like you said, you know, you got a guy that's got one higher hand, his grandpa helping him. They may not be able to do that.
Yeah.
But I think you gotta look at what you can do to do these things to help your overall soil health, because that's important. It's the foundation. We are— farmers ought to get more credit than what they get. They are the original conservationists. They do so much and they continue to go up in production and down on inputs. I mean, so they get a black eye by people who don't know anything, just to be honest with you.
Oh no.
They are the original Conservation. They do such a phenomenal job. Yeah, it's just changing small things along the way to help it better.
So these 2 questions, they kind of go hand in hand, I feel like. So one question was, what do you see coming in the next 5 to 7 years that farmers should prepare for? But then the follow-up question of that would have been, if they're— if it's not technology related, what's some technology that they should be looking at and preparing for maybe down the road that might help them with With, you know, planting, with harvesting, you know, hopefully being more efficient. Because I know, like, I've learned some things last year, you know, you can look at that, those numbers when you harvest, and you can figure out, well, I need to plant a little bit more here because this is better soil, or this is not as good. And so why am I going to put as much here and do these different things? So just talk about that a little bit and kind of what it looks like for the farmers.
Well, what's coming What's coming agronomically to help the farmer? There's, uh, there's new soybean traits coming, uh, '27, '28, or probably '28 for, for our maturity. It's called Viconic. Basically, it's a, uh, it's Roundup, it's glufosinate, it's dicamba, it's 2,4-D, and it's HPPD resistant. So you have 5 modes of action. Now that's a, that's a big deal because it gives you post Post-applied in soybeans, which is, it's just when, you know, Palmer amaranth is an annual that likes to germinate when the soil temperatures get warm. So we don't typically see that April and May. We typically see that now for the rest of the summer. And so beans are planted, beans are up. It gives you post options. We already have the Liberty option, but it gives you dicamba, it gives you 2,4-D, it gives you HPPD. Now that's the one that Doesn't scare me. It's a great tool. But we are relying a lot on HPPDs with our post-herbicide sprays in corn. And then, you know, like I do, 1996, when Roundup Ready came out, it killed everything. It was like a nuclear bomb, killed every weed out there. And by '99, we got horseweed, marestail, that's resistant because all those acres saw was Roundup in soy, Roundup in corn, and all.
And it's really a product of dosage. We— 6-inch marestail was all that was ever on the Roundup label, but we sprayed 6-inch marestail, 18-inch tall marestail with a pint and a half instead of a quart. And so we didn't get the dosage.
Yeah.
And so that concerns me that we're— and we've seen the same thing with Dicamba since it came out. We're a little slow to learn sometimes from our habits, but that's going to be a tool. That's going to be a great tool for the farmer from a weed control perspective. He's going to have options.
Okay.
But I would still encourage him, don't put the stress on the trait. Put your residuals out up front, and then you have options depending on what your weed spectrum is on what you could go across post to help cover those things.
Okay.
That's a big thing coming agronomically. Of course, you know, we've seen a lot, a lot of canola in this area the last few years. We'll see how all that plays out. It's not the first time we've had winter canola in this part of the world, and it kind of phased out, but it's a little different now with the aviation fuel thing. This is a global market, so what China does with us from a trade perspective and other countries, and that dictates the market.
Yeah.
And the market dictates what growers do and don't do. I think long term, I think we'll, we'll still be a corn, soy, wheat world and probably some canola. You know, crap, when I was a kid, tobacco was everywhere. Now it's just kind of, you know, that culture. I hated it, but I loved the culture, the tobacco neighbor. Man, help everybody out. We cut your 4 acres a day and tomorrow, you know, next week we'll go cut mine. Everybody just kind of come together as a community. That culture's died. We still have tobacco. So things, things evolve and things change. So that would say agronomically, I think that's one of the biggest things that's coming technology-wise. This AI is— AI can be a tool and AI can be a detriment. And I would tell growers to, to use the AI Artificial intelligence, use it to help put together their data points to help them make better decisions on their farm. Don't just— AI has become the easy button. Like, I've got a 14-year-old and 11-year-old. The oldest has a phone and they'll just ask AI something. There's value in searching for the answer. And some— there's, there's no wisdom.
Yeah.
And someone just telling you the answer. There's wisdom in finding the answer and experiencing the answer. And so I tell them all the time, and not, not being ugly to them, I was like, man, your generation is going to have the most knowledge at your fingertips and you might be the dumbest generation ever.
I was excited when I got a set of World Book Encyclopedia. Oh yeah, I had to go actually look for stuff.
That's right.
It was crazy.
But yeah, I would— but, but use AI for what the AI is good for. The AI is great at taking—
should be used as a Additional tool, not just as basically your first go-to.
That's right.
Take all this information in a very short period of time. You could do it, it just might take you days, and it can do it in seconds and, and use it to help you get to an actionable insight sooner instead of just, okay, it says that goal. Because I'll be honest with you, I built a presentation for work, uh, yesterday morning. I was in the hotel room and I had an hour or so to burn before I had to be somewhere, so I I was trying to make a presentation. I thought, I'll just put this in Copilot. And it— what it gave me was directionally correct. Okay. But it wasn't— it wasn't exact. There's a few things in there that I'm going to go back now. Hey, you built a really nice—
Yeah.
6-slide slide deck over soybean yield components. Okay. But— and it got some great sources, but it's averaging all these sources. UK was in there. Purdue was a source. I mean, I I, I kept the source list, but it's directionally correct, but it's not 100% accurate either. So I'm gonna go back and fix. Now, it probably saved me 4 or 5 hours of building that.
Yeah, I— well, I laugh because if I see one more Facebook post, everybody who makes a flyer now or a post for an event, it's all AI, and you can tell right off the bat it's AI.
Yes,
Because they all look sort of the same
They are canned. Yeah.
They're just, the theme is just different. And so I'm like, the other day I was, uh, somebody posted something. They're like, I swear if I don't, if I see one more of those, then I, you know, it's the same deal. It's like, you know, it's, it's a great tool to have. Yes. But if it's the only tool you're using, like you said, it may not always be accurate. That's right. It's not the end-all be-all. That's right. And it takes away some of your knowledge cuz you're not searching for the answer or learning through, cuz sometimes I mean, you know this, no matter what you do, learning through mistakes and messing something up, whether it's being a loan officer here and messing up a loan and be like, yeah, I'm gonna make a mental note. I'm not making that mistake again. That's right. You know, there's value in that for sure. So same with you, like you said, with the farmers. I mean, I think some, sometimes trial and error, even though it's not good to go through that, that error and that trial, sometimes you come out with more knowledge and then you pass that down to somebody else and And it's, yeah, I mean, to me it's more valuable than just jumping AI.
Well, Darrin, I really appreciate you taking time. I know you're, you're busy up, I think, where'd you say you just came from?
All over the—
You're all over, basically.
Central and Midway.
Everywhere. So he, he's been on the road quite a bit and luckily we were gonna do this by phone and you had some time and I always like doing it in person better anyways. But I know you're super busy and I, I really appreciate you taking time. I appreciate you serving on our board and, and representing our members. I know that's special to you. Yes. And it's important to River Valley, and we appreciate your time and effort on that.
Absolutely.
And, uh, and again, we appreciate you being here today. And guys, as always, thanks for joining us on Back to Your Roots.
Thank you.
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