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A key component of the Profit Maximizer Wheat Summit is the Grower Panel, where a select group of producers discuss production methods on their individual farms and give the audience ideas to take home for their own operations. This year’s Grower Panel included growers from a wide range of backgrounds. Some can be classified as young farmers building their operations, others are maintaining their family farms, and a few are even looking toward the future and planning for life after farming. The panel included: Richard Cott, Clay Center, Kan.; Jesse Doll, Garden City, Kan.; John Evans, Hutchinson, Kan.; Adam Froetschner, Kinsley, Kan.; Josh Lloyd, Clay Center, Kan.; and Carl Schroeder, Okarche, Okla. Moderator Kyle Bauer, KFRM Radio general manager, posed several questions to the growers and took questions from the audience. Profit Maximizer Wheat Summit is sponsored by Bayer CropScience, High Plains Journal and KFRM. Farming goals Each grower was asked to discuss his objective for his own farming operation, and profitability was an underlying theme. With good farm prices, Bauer asked the growers their financial goals. For the most part, all said they were looking to pay down their debt, build infrastructure on the farm, and upgrade equipment. “Probably, our focus is to build grain storage and a shop,” Cott said. “And, we want to pay down our debt.” “I hope to upgrade our equipment and apply some lime to some land that needs it, and purchase or rent some land in my area,” Lloyd said. “I’m looking for an exit strategy, and so I think I’ll use it to pay down debt,” Evans said. Rotational preferences Rotations are always a topic of discussion for farmers, and the Grower Panel was no exception. For example, Schroeder is in his third year of no-till in an area of Oklahoma that is prime wheat and cattle country. “I have to stay flexible,” Schroeder said. “Almost all ground is in wheat on wheat, but this year weather kept us out of the field and we’re trying to decide if we’ll let those acres winter fallow and plant in the spring.” He added for three years he planted wheat after wheat, but this past year he had a bad Hessian fly infestation on his acres, and so he plans to try a different crop to curb the issue. The panel was varied in how they use no-till in their operations, but all were very positive toward the practice. “We have a rotation of wheat, milo, fallow and wheat,” Doll said. “Our milo is in strip-till, and we spray our stalks about two times and then blade our ammonia on before we drill back to wheat.” Froetschner added he’s used no-till to recoup some badly terraced land. Rotations also depend on crop prices, according to panel members. “Input costs may be coming down, but when you run the figures, wheat doesn’t look profitable right now,” Cott said. “So, do we plant less acres to wheat? Maybe we drop some irrigated wheat acres we normally would have planted after corn.” Balancing inputs and profits It’s difficult to operate effectively with rising input costs, and Bauer asked the panel to give advice on how they manage to do so. “Most all farmers try to operate as effectively as they can, and I’m pleased that costs have gone down as much as they have,” Cott said. “We adjusted our rates last year, cut some phosphorous applications. This year we may be back to normal because costs are down. We run as lean of a shop as possible, but there aren’t a whole lot of places you can cut.” Doll and Evans agreed with Cott and said while they’d cut their phosphorous applications recently, they’d return to normal rates this year. Lloyd explained while input costs are down, he’s trying to get caught up on improving his wheat acres by applying some lime this year, so it’s available for future crops. “We try to stay lean, too, with our machinery,” he added. “We only have an air seeder, a sprayer and a combine.” Scouting decisions The panel agreed scouting their wheat isn’t high on their priority lists. Several use consultants, while others scout their own acres and take their own samples. “Scouting is one of my weakest areas,” Schroeder said. “I use a consultant and I learn not to second-guess him.” “We do our own scouting, in the fall and spring, and I take tissue samples to see if we have fertilizer issues,” Lloyd said. “I do most of our scouting with my brother in the winter months,” Doll said. “We can go December to January without looking, but do more in the spring.” Soil testing was another topic of discussion for the panel. Most on the panel sampled, but for Doll and Lloyd, they leaned more on tissue sampling to determine fertilizer application need. “With our tissue sampling, we can see where the crop is at and use that data for when we grow next year’s crop,” Doll said. “We had a field of second year milo on milo, and it looked a little yellow,” Cott said. “I thought we were short on nitrogen, but the samples showed we were short on sulfur. We learned that ahead of next year.” Fungicide use Fungicide usage varies geographically, and Bauer asked the panel to tell a little about their own experience with fungicides. “I’ve never used fungicides, but there have been a year or two where I should have,” Schroeder said. “I’m usually late in figuring it out.” Schroeder’s area has had several wet springs that can call for fungicide applications. “Traditionally, we don’t use fungicides, but we began about two or three years ago,” Lloyd said. “We prefer to manage through selecting resistant wheat varieties. But, if we’re going back into a field with wheat, we’ll go ahead and spray and monitor ourselves with a check strip. It doesn’t pay for us to apply fungicides to soybean ground, so we just monitor it. We’ve seen a 5- to 15-bushel difference on our wheat on wheat acres.” “We grow seed wheat, and so we’ve used fungicides for years,” Evans said. “We get higher test weights and lower clean outs. We’ve seen a lot of head scab in our area in prior years, too.” All applied their fungicides using ground sprayers. When it comes down to deciding to apply or not, though, it’s a financial decision, the growers said. “If it works with the price of wheat, we apply,” Evans said. “A year ago, wheat prices were high and fungicide was the same. This year, it’s closer. It makes a difference if you apply at $4.50 wheat versus $8 wheat.” “Marketing is a big part of the decision,” Froetschner said. “We have dry winters and so, if the stuff looks good, we’ll put the money to it.” Phosphorous and nitrogen placement Nitrogen and phosphorous applications also varied among the panel members. “We apply our phosphorous in furrow at planting, and nitrogen on the bare ground,” Cott said. He follows up with an application of anhydrous ammonia on his no-till acres. Doll, though, pastures most of his wheat, and so he applies his phosphorous at the pre-plant stage, in furrow with the drill. “We start planting about Sept. 10 to 15, and then we pasture ours,” he said. “If we have the opportunity, we’ll topdress some after we pull off the cattle.” Evans said he applies about 10 to 34 pounds of phosphorous in furrow and follows with 30 pounds of nitrogen, either at pre-planting or during planting, which works for his seed business. Schroeder, in Oklahoma, likes to apply his phosphorous in furrow at planting, and then splits his nitrogen application between the fall and spring. Variety choices Seed selection is as individual as the farmer who plants the seed, and the Grower Panel had some interesting reasoning behind their selection decisions. “I plant a lot of blended seed on our acres,” Cott said. “I know we should have some early and some late, but this way we’re pretty close in planting and harvest.” Doll said he’s planted hard white winter wheat on his southwestern Kansas farm for many years, but recently his elevator has started docking his wheat. So he may have to change his plans in the future. “We plant some Post Rock, some TAM 111, Jagalene, and some Danby hard white winter wheat,” he said. “We’ve planted white wheat pretty regular since Trego was first out.” Seed treatments Treating seed can be a costly measure, but some farmers, like a few on the panel, find it helpful to their overall bottom lines. “We use seed treatments pretty regularly,” Cott said. He and his brother apply Raxil at the time they are blending their wheat seed, he added. Others, like Evans, Froetschner and Lloyd find it helpful to apply their seed treatments on the truck as the seed is going into the drill. “We apply as we’re going into the drill through the auger,” Lloyd said. “This year, we plan to have the seed dealer do it for us, though.” Marketing philosophy Savvy crop marketing is the key to farming success, and Bauer asked the panel to share their insights. “We set goals on a per bushel basis,” Doll said. “We look at contracts and the futures market and set our goals. It’s hard to figure sometimes, though.” “It’s changing for us,” Cott said. “We don’t market a lot ahead. Last year, we had the opportunity to pay down a little debt, and we did. We mostly market in the local area, and we sell ahead some. Our consultant works with us some.” “We haven’t figured out what to do,” Evans said. “With the seed business, we forward contract at times, but not now. It’s difficult to latch hold (to a selling point) on the way down, when you think the market should be higher.” “We figure our goals on about half of what we normally raise, and then everything else is put into options,” Froetschner said. “We are doing better,” Lloyd said. “We plug in our expected yield and our cost to break even. We’ve done some forward contracting in a few years. But we changed our mindset. It used to be that we’d harvest our crop, put it in the bin, then worry about selling it. Now, we sell it a year before and then harvest.” “I hope to take Mark Gold’s advice from today and spend five minutes on our plan,” Schroeder said. “My wife and I have talked for years about the need to do that, and it’s time.”
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