The Max Yield System Saved One Grower $40,000
“Using that program saved me $40,000 this year.”
Welcome back to the EZ Ag Podcast, where innovative farming meets practical solutions. I’m your host, Matt Long, and today we’re going to dig into exactly what that program is and how you can save by using it, too.
I want to step back and tell you about the customer who made this comment to me last week. He’s made this comment before, but we’ve worked pretty closely with this operation over the years, and every year, they’ve started putting more and more of our program into place on their farm.
Over the years, several things have changed on their operation.
They went from planting about 13,500 population on their dryland acres to around 15,000. They went from using one or two hybrids across most of the farm to using a seed plan that matches the hybrid to the field and builds some flexibility into their overall portfolio.
But one of the biggest changes they made this past year was using our soil testing program, Get the Dirt on Your Soil, along with our fertility and biological recommendations to change the way they looked at fertilizer.
As a general rule, in the past, their dryland corn and milo acres received about 100 pounds of nitrogen and 20 pounds of phosphorus while targeting a yield goal of around 100 to 120 bushels per acre.
Through the Max Yield System, we’ve worked with them to get more of those systems aligned. The fertility system, seed system, biological system, and crop protection system are all working toward the same goal.
One thing you have to understand when we talk about the Max Yield System is that it’s not just focused on yield. It’s also focused on ROI.
If we were simply focused on yield, we might always push for more nitrogen, more phosphorus, and higher populations in an effort to grow a higher-yielding crop.
With the Max Yield System, we use our in-season decision-making tools of push, protect, and pull back to adjust those decisions throughout the growing season.
We put a plan in place early, but then we use push, protect, and pull back to evaluate whether those earlier decisions are still right and make changes based on the conditions we’re seeing at the time.
That’s how we helped this grower save $40,000 on his farm last year.
Knowing When to Pull Back
This grower has been adopting new fertility technologies over time, and that’s been one of the big pieces we’ve been able to pull together. But they also understand that sometimes pulling back is the biggest lever we can use.
This year was one of those years.
With high fertilizer costs last winter, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, they decided that soil sampling through our Get the Dirt on Your Soil program was something they needed to look at more closely.
More importantly, they took the recommendations we made seriously and put them into place on their farm.
That saved them a lot of money.
Beyond saving $40,000, the grower told me he still felt like he had a system in place capable of growing the yield when the opportunity was there.
They had a couple of fields with really nice dryland corn this year, while other areas of the farm were completely burned up.
That’s exactly why these decisions have to be made field by field and throughout the season.
Bringing the Systems Together
Within the Max Yield System, we have a seed plan, fertility plan, biological plan, and crop protection plan. We bring all of those together to achieve the same goal: maximize yield when the opportunity is there while also maximizing ROI.
These plans are developed field by field, but that doesn’t mean every application has to be completely different on every field.
We understand logistics and economics. Sometimes those factors keep us from applying products in an exact field-by-field manner.
For instance, say we have two fields just down the road from each other. One needs 35 pounds of nitrogen, and the other needs 42.
Realistically, how accurately can anyone determine the exact pound of nitrogen that field is going to need?
There are a lot of things happening in the soil throughout the season, including the release of organic nitrogen. Trying to pinpoint the exact amount of nitrogen a field will need down to the pound is a futile attempt.
Instead, we can look at fields that are close together and have similar properties and find a practical solution. We may develop the field-by-field plan and then decide with the grower that applying 40 pounds to both fields makes the most sense.
That’s a logistical decision we can make without losing the value of field-by-field planning.
Building a Hybrid Portfolio
We take a similar approach with our seed plans.
We always recommend our top hybrid choice for each individual field, but we also know it can be impossible to identify one “perfect” hybrid.
There’s no silver bullet in the seed industry, and there’s no silver bullet for an individual field.
That’s why our recommendations include a hybrid portfolio.
Let’s say you’re planting in the spring and one part of the farm gets rain while another stays dry. You have the planter full of 62K69, but the dry field you’re moving to was originally supposed to be planted to 45F31.
Instead of automatically dumping the planter, we can look at the portfolio.
If 62K69 was included in the portfolio and still fits that field, we’ve saved ourselves the time and work of changing the planter over when moving between fields.
A single hybrid recommendation doesn’t necessarily give you that flexibility.
A hybrid portfolio does.
That’s an important part of the seed plan within the Max Yield System.
Connecting the Seed and Fertility Plans
Once we have the seed plan in place, we can bring in the fertility plan.
One of the biggest ways we connect the two is through soil testing.
Soil testing allows us to learn more about the properties of each field. High-yielding fields often have different soil properties than lower-yielding fields on the same farm.
Some of that may be tied to soil pH. Some may be tied to soil type.
By testing the soil, we can better understand whether a field has the characteristics needed for high yield or whether certain soil properties are likely to hold it back.
That’s something we want to know before we make the seed plan.
Another important consideration is that the highest-yielding fields aren’t always the fields that need the most fertility applied to them.
Fertility application generally isn’t the only limiting factor on yield. Often, the properties of the soil itself are playing a major role.
When we understand those soil properties and the yield potential of the field, we can make better decisions about whether we need to push fertility or pull back.
Get the Dirt on Your Soil
Through our Get the Dirt on Your Soil program, we use soil testing to build those fertility recommendations.
Get the Dirt on Your Soil is a free soil sampling program for every field committed to Axis Seed by October 28. We also offer soil sampling at a very low cost on acres that aren’t being planted to Axis Seed.
Through the program, we develop a complete synthetic fertility plan. We also develop recommendations that combine synthetic fertilizer with biological nutrient replacement products.
Right now, there are very few fields where we feel we can replace all synthetic fertilizer with biological nutrient replacement products.
But we can marry those two systems together.
When we understand what the biology needs to do its job effectively, along with what the crop needs from both synthetic and biological sources, we can build a more complete fertility strategy.
If biological nutrient replacement isn’t something you’re interested in, we can still develop a complete synthetic fertility plan. But we’ll also provide those biological recommendations so you have the opportunity to evaluate a different approach to fertility on your farm.
Crop Protection Is More Than Herbicide
The final piece is the crop protection plan.
A lot of growers might ask, “What does it matter which herbicide I use on my corn?”
The truth is, it may not matter unless you use the wrong one.
But the crop protection plan is about more than herbicides.
We’re using biological crop protection products, including products for rootworm and fungicide applications that we’ve been evaluating in corn. We also have herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and foliar nutrition products that can help mitigate the negative effects of abiotic stresses such as heat and drought.
All of those pieces come together in the crop protection plan.
One of my favorite things about building the crop protection plan within the Max Yield System is looking at every pass across the field as an opportunity to accomplish more than one thing.
Whether that pass is for fertility, crop protection, or planting, we ask what else we can accomplish while we’re already there.
A lot of people look at a herbicide application as simply a herbicide application.
But if we look at that application as part of a larger system, is there something we can apply at the same time that could increase yield and improve our return on investment?
Maybe it’s a nutritional product designed to mitigate the effects of abiotic stress. Maybe it’s a micronutrient that doesn’t provide a strong return when applied to the soil but can make a difference when applied foliarly to the growing crop.
Those are the opportunities we’re looking for.
We don’t sell most herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides, so I’ve gone back and forth on why we continue working with growers on their crop protection plans.
A big part of the answer is that it gives us opportunities to do things from a fertility standpoint that we wouldn’t have if we weren’t considering those in-season sprayer passes as part of the complete system.
Push. Protect. Pull Back.
That’s what the Max Yield System is about: bringing the seed plan, fertility and biological plan, and crop protection plan together to achieve the same goal.
For this grower, that approach saved $40,000 last year.
It could save you money, too.
You just have to look at things differently.
A big part of that is understanding when to push, protect, or pull back.
We’re going to push a good crop to become a great crop.
We’re going to protect a crop that has the potential to produce but is under stress from factors we can’t control.
And when things have gone completely wrong because of abiotic stress, such as heat and drought, we’re going to pull back wherever we can.
If the yield potential is no longer there, we want to save the money we can because there may not be an opportunity to generate a return from those additional inputs.
With the Max Yield System, you have the opportunity to confidently maximize both yield and ROI on every acre, all season long.
That’s what this grower was talking about when he told us how much he saved last year just from our soil sampling, fertility recommendations, and overall approach.
We still have a few weeks left to enroll in Get the Dirt on Your Soil.
If you’re not ready to commit those acres to Axis Seed, that’s okay. We’ll work with you first on your fertility plan and build into other parts of the system over time if they fit your farm.
Thanks for joining us today.
Remember, ag is easy when you tune in to the EZ Ag Podcast.
Grow your yield. Grow your legacy. Grow strong with Axis Seed.
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