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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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They're here to help farmers identify and defend research and development tax credits using your real data. Learn more at Onshore.com slash Farm for Profit. That's Onshore.com slash Farm for Profit. I wonder how much this topic has to do with resistance to herbicides because people weren't treating it correctly.
And basically the effectiveness wasn't as good in just building that resistance up in plants. I think it's not going to take care of all of it, but I do believe there's a decent amount that if we were to take care of the water quality...
and take care of our pH, and we can talk about half-lives here in a minute, that you're going to have so much more active ingredient that you're going to see a pretty good response. And what I like to ask people, and Caden, I'll put you on the spot, you think about a post-pass, I mean, how many dollars per acre are you talking on your post-pass in terms of hard chemistry?
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We could do one of their, what's the boron, what's the molybdenum, what's that product? M-O, moly. Boron dual. Oh, boron. XR5. XR5. KSB. KSB. Right? Yeah. Can't go wrong with that one. I'll have to give it like talk like November Henry 802. The XR5 KSB radio show. Morgan. I was going to say, now you're no longer a pilot and you're a radio. Yeah. We could do it all.
Well, wherever we pick this up, listeners, thanks for joining us. If you got to listen to some of that, that's what it's like day two of Trade Show Morning. Glad to be sitting here in the AgX booth. Going to have a great conversation here, talking a lot about how important water is and probably not the conversation that you're thinking we're going to have.
It's very important after a night of karaoke. It is. What would be your karaoke song, Dave? Oh, David Allen Co. For sure. You never even call me by my name. Yes. Wow. I'm a Johnny Cash guy. Yeah? I like a duet.
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Chapter 2: Why is water quality crucial for herbicide effectiveness?
I can get my wife to come up. What's that one song that you just... Like, you just... Tequila. That's it. That's all you... Tequila. That's the me one. We did not go karaoke last night. What were you guys singing? We sang Simple Man, Leonard Skinner, some Eagles, I think. And then, yeah, I sang the Jack Black Tenacious D. Can't go wrong with a little Tenacious D. Yeah.
I think we should hear a little bit. Yeah. Maybe tonight. Yeah. Maybe tonight. Deal. Got it. Pixar didn't happen. Well, that's a really fun opening to a pretty serious show. It is. So if you want more shows like this, you've got to send ideas to connect at farmforprofit.com. Make sure you send us text messages and voicemails, 515-207-9640.
And if you can't see us right now, go to YouTube, hit subscribe, and you can, voila, get to see our matching shirts. You can also see us on Spotify. That's cool. You can. It is. And coming soon to Apple Podcasts. Video? Oh, I feel like that's a relief.
Chapter 3: What chemical interactions occur in the spray tank?
That's like news I didn't know. It's news that not very many people know. We're going to be part of the trial of putting video out on Apple Podcasts. So more to come. Hopefully it goes smoothly. If not, you can watch us on Spotify and YouTube. YouTube. We've got two friends here from AgEx and excited to have them back. Of course, one of them I think we've had on one, two, three. Too many times.
Twelve. Twelve times. Dr. John. He's got a doctor in our house. Yes. Doctor. And Caden. Right? Correct. Just Caden.
Chapter 4: How should herbicides be mixed for optimal performance?
Just Caden. One name. Karaoke Kaden. Well, we know John. Karaoke Kaden. Let's get a little background because we don't know Kaden yet. Kaden, who are you? What do you do for AgX? Where are you from? I'm Kaden Alexander. I'm a sales agronomist out of Nebraska. So I live up in northeast Nebraska, but I cover the whole state. So you're like Ben Westendorf's counterpart? Is that what that would be?
He'd be our agronomist, yep. And I'm the sales to his brains. So he's your boss? Yeah, pretty much. No? No.
Chapter 5: What role do adjuvants play in herbicide applications?
Oh, okay. There you go. You're his boss. That's good. So do you like Nebraska? I don't know any better. That's the only place I've ever been. So, yeah, I love it there. It's fitting, though, that we're talking about water because water is very big in Nebraska. Yes. Water is a big deal in Nebraska. I just realized that we started this show off wrong in so many different ways. Why?
they're over there doing jumping jacks, getting ready to go for their show. And, uh, we didn't, they sang way too long at karaoke last night. They have, they need, they're just going to bed. Yeah. Sorry. I, I digress. Great. Nebraska. So how did you grow up? Farm kid. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up small town on a, on a small farm kind of thing. And, uh,
Went to school for that kind of thing and ended up right back in that same hometown and get to go hang out on the farm and help dad out and then do the AgEx stuff during the day. How long have you been with AgExplore? Oh, man. It's about two years. A year and a half now. A year and a half. He looked at me like I know. Yeah, I was looking at Zach. Yeah, about a year and a half.
We all have the same shirt. Yeah, it looks the same right now. This is the debut of AgEx's new shirts, and I don't think anyone has ever put a soybean flower on a shirt before. And whose idea was it? Oh, come on. Waiter. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. Must be the guy that asked the question. Nobody cares. I ask all the questions. Scenes. All right.
John gave a little... Our listeners probably know you, but if they haven't, they'll give a little background... who you are, what you do for AgEx? Yeah, I'm an agronomist for AgExplorer. I spent 18 years in higher ed getting a chance to teach, and I like to tell people I lied to Tim and Gunny, our CEO and EVP, and they're stuck with me now.
So I told them I could help them out, and now it's too late to do anything about it. I think if they were up here, they'd say you've done more than help out. You've had a huge impact and have been an extreme asset to our listeners as well. Yeah, they were.
When we first started working with AgEx, you were not on the team, but you were very much in their mind because they kept telling us about this guy that they were chasing. They wanted this guy and they were going after him. They want him.
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Chapter 6: What are the economic implications of water conditioning?
And they finally got you. And I see why. Yeah. Very educational. So water. Back to water. We've had a couple of episodes. I had the pleasure with the Des Moines Waterworks and Central Iowa Waterworks to do an interview to try and address the topic of water quality when it comes to runoff and drinking water. We're not talking about that type of topic.
We're talking about making sure that the expenses that we have, the inputs that we're purchasing and applying, are mixed with the right kind of water? Yeah, I think it's something that's overlooked in the spray solution when people are doing their burndowns and their posts and their fungicides and all that, because do you get it from the city? Do you get it out of a well? What's your pH?
All that kind of stuff. So... John, why is that important? Yeah. I mean, when we start talking about water, it's probably the least fun thing to talk about. Let's be honest. As Cade and I were talking about earlier. I mean, you guys don't sell water. 95% of your spray tank. Yeah, we definitely don't sell water. But it's 95% of your spray tank. Okay. But how often do we actually talk about it?
No, I mean, we focus on, I mean, what's our tank chemistries that we're running? Then we get into what's the right adjuvant that we're supposed to put in there. And then normally we just kind of stop right there. Yeah. And we don't really focus on everything else that goes into it. And what I like to tell people is we have great tank chemistries. We do. You know what I mean?
But when you look at the cost that you have in your tank chemistries compared to what it's going to cost you to fix your water to make sure everything works right, you're talking percentages. Yeah. So, Caden, what kind of water are you guys working with in Nebraska? Is it hard? It's hard. We've got hard water basically everywhere and everything's seven and a half to eight for a pH.
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Chapter 7: How does water pH affect herbicide performance?
That's pretty normal no matter where you go. You may get a little more iron in your water depending on where you're at, but a lot of calcium and higher pH for what we want. So growing up, I always knew that we put just AMS in, right? And I was always told that was to condition the water. Let's go over some of the base AMS. Ammonium sulfate. Ammonium sulfate. Right.
So what are some of the basics and what are we looking for when we want to treat the water for a spray tank? Yeah, definitely. I want to jump on what Caden said, right? I mean, we get a chance with AgEx to cover a lot of United States. We've looked at hundreds of water samples.
I mean, we've got some of our agronomists out here that we've looked at all of them and rarely does a water sample not need condition in some way. Now, I mean, we've seen water pHs up to 9.1. Let that sink in for a second. And hardnesses of over 600. And so when we start thinking about, man, what do we need to take care of? The AMS is where we need to start.
And we've used it, but we haven't always understood why we used it. And there's really more than one reason. So the first one is obviously taking care of our hard water. So we think AMS. Right. AMS stands for ammonium sulfate. And we have it as the white granule or you can melt it down and you can have it as a liquid.
But you put it in the water and it dissolves and it breaks into two different components when you dissolve it in the water. It breaks into ammonium. And I hate chemistry, but these things we have to look at. It's NH4 plus. Right. Has a positive sign to it. And then the sulfate is SO4 and it has a negative sign on there.
And we've got to keep that in mind because it's the sulfate side that takes care of our hard water. So, Caden, you were talking about the calcium. Right. Yep. Right. So talk to me. I mean, when we put that in, when's that timing and why do you want to put it in then?
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Chapter 8: What are the best practices for mixing chemicals in the spray tank?
Yeah. So, you know, the Wales-Dales mixing order, you get your water in there and then you've got to get your AMS in the tank right away because the sulfate in there is going to bind with your calcium and your positively charged ions because a lot of our weak acid herbicides, they will get bound up with that if we don't bind them up first with that sulfate.
So it's really important you get that in there first and get that right. If you don't get that right, everything else could be a waste. Is the AMS soluble? Will it like go into all the water? Do we need to mix it? Do we like, how's that work? Yeah, so I like to tell people, put as much of your carrier in as you can. We're never going to get 100%.
Now, I mean, if I can get guys to put 80% to 90% of that in there, then put your AMS in. A lot of labels, if you look at it, actually say to agitate it for 5 to 10 minutes, just because some of our loads can be fairly large, right, as we're thinking about thousands of gallons at a time. Definitely want to make sure that we're agitating it through there. How do you agitate yours?
Just by pumping it into the spray tank. And then your sprayer has an agitator too that once it's so full, you can turn on. So you're agitating. So it's constantly mixing. But I want to talk about the actual water before we even treat it. I mean, there's different sources, right? Yep. Where are those hard... water's coming from, why is the pH high? Yep.
So this is the thing, is you can be on a well. We work with guys down in Florida that are pumping out irrigation ditches. You can be pulling it out of city water or rural water, however you want to look at it. No one's taking care of your hard water side. So pretty much the majority of the water that we look at is going to be hard water.
USGS has published a really cool map that shows a distribution of water sources throughout the United States, and almost all of them are considered to be on the hard side. And what's causing the heart? Is it like, is it the, is there metals? Is there heavy? Yeah. All that kind of stuff? Yep. So most of it, what we're dealing with is calcium, right?
And I was doing a thing with my daughter and she's 11 and she's like, how can water be hard? And it's almost a misnomer, right? Yeah. But it's just simply talking about those positively charged cations that Caden brought up. And really the ones we focus on is that idea of calcium, a little bit of iron. And again, they have that positive charge, which is going to interact with our herbicide. Yeah.
So my well, when I was growing up, was out of limestone. Yep. Higher pH, but it was soft. Like, it was extremely soft, almost slimy. Yep. But what do I got to do for that? Yep. So if you're going to be on that side of it, you'd still want to see what your total calcium dissolved is or your calcium carbonate that's going to be in there.
Because even if you have that calcium carbonate, and some of our water tests will show that, again, once it's in that solution, it's going to interact with those weak acid herbicides, right? And once it interacts with that, it'll either precipitate it out as a salt or it binds it up and our plants just can't take it up efficiently.
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