Confessions of a Plot Whisperer
When Good Plans Go Sideways
2024 Winter Conference
As many of you know, because I ramble about it often, I have a fetish for winter ag meetings and farm trade shows.
I tickled said fetish this week when John and I cruised the Family Truckster to Fargo for the 2024 Precision Planting Winter Conference (PPWC).
After attending Precision’s 2023 conference in Grand Forks and receiving this handy, and get this, dandy, furrow-finding seed-checking digger outfit, I pledged never to miss another PPWC.
The furrow finder was an excellent appreciation token for exchanging a day with the technology wizards selling planter and sprayer modification parts. Still, it wasn’t just the furrow finder that had me itching to return, but the value Precision Planting provided during the conference.
At the Precision Planter Winter Conference (PPWC), not only are attendees fascinated by the impressive technologies on display, but they are also treated to a series of informative talks and presentations on planters and sprayer maintenance.
These sessions provide valuable tips and insights on the items that should be inspected before spring to ensure your equipment operates optimally.
John was so impressed by the engaging content that he confirmed this was the first meeting/conference where he didn't have to clothespin his eyes open. However, he was disappointed that this year’s gift was a Precision Planting Richardson cap instead of a furrow finder to replace the one I lost last year on the first planting day.
I only got to find one furrow and two seeds with that sucker before mindlessly leaving it on the planter, where it quickly fell off and took a dirt nap.
With its blaze orange handle, you’d think it’d be easier to find in a sea of black dirt, but things are often more complicated than we expect, like life and my failing Bingo caller career.
So I felt like a bit of a shit-dip after promising John a new furrow finder for attending PPWC this year, and all he got was the same Richardson hat that 86% of ag companies offer their clients these days.
Win some, lose some.
Sorry, John. Life is full of disappointment.
Not to worry, though. Precision Planting sells the furrow finder for a reasonable $19 (shipped) under the super-sneaky merchandise store link buried at the bottom of their web page, and I’m happy to report a pair (backup for the likely event of me losing this one on the third round of the year) is scheduled to arrive next week.
Today, redemption is spelled ADAM. If it weren’t for my resourcefulness, John would’ve likely sent me to the bread lines months ago.
Back to tacks of brass. Brasstax? Brass tacks.
Has that ever happened to you where you’re trying to spell a word, and the more you look at it, the more wrong it seems? It makes a man feel like his mind is slipping.
Ah, midlife.
So beautifully frustrating at times.
For over ten years, Precision Planting’s engineers have been working to overcome original equipment manufacturer (OEM) shortcomings and improve planter performance with assorted bolt-on attachments from the row cleaners up front to the closing system at the rear.
The big announcement at PPWC this year was the company combined most of its attachments to assemble the Ready Row Unit, a complete row unit assembly that looks like something out of a Sci-Fi movie and bolts to your existing planter bar in place of your OEM unit, all in the name of better seed placement and seed-to-soil contact.
It’s spendy but cost-effective for those looking to upgrade planters without taking out a second mortgage on the north forty to afford the astronomical cost of a new or slightly used machine.
The Mad Max look, and cutting-edge technology of the Ready Row Unit remained the most remarkable thing we found at PPWC until the afternoon session when they broke out something called the Radicle Lab.
Radicle Agronomics is working to change how farmers test nutrient levels in their soil, which they say hasn’t changed since the 1930s. The Radicle Lab is a soil-test system designed to eliminate the old-fashioned way of bagging soil, shipping it to a lab, and waiting at least two days to get your results.
An impressive machine, the Radicle Lab is an L-shaped monster that looks like it would take up two walls in your average two-car garage. It’s self-contained, self-calibrating, and self-cleaning. All you need to do is plug er’ into a standard household outlet, plumb in compressed air and a garden hose, load the accompanying soil tubes, and it goes to work.
As with most innovative technologies, I imagine there will be plenty of bugs to work out before devices like the Radicle Lab become mainstream, but it’s fun to get a glimpse of where the future may take us.
Precision Planting’s Winter Conference remains a must-see if you’re interested in the forefront of ag technology.
Attendance is free, and they usually serve a Yankee Pot Roast.
What more could a farmer ask for in the middle of January?
Test Plot Troubles
Alright, it’s time to come clean.
I made a metric ton of mistakes this year.
In our first year running the seed company, I wanted to make a splash and had visions of neon signs and test plots and biological trials and websites and YouTube videos, and all the things that make a seed business stand out.
The good news is, though some of those things got shoved to the side, many did indeed happen. But, as these things go, hardly anything went according to plan.
As I’ve told you a time or two, nothing goes good without a bit of trouble.
The problem with offering multiple products is that you want to try them all, so instead of sticking to my plans and attempting to keep the variables to a minimum, I turned into Jojo, the idiot circus boy. I began throwing more products in the tank than planned.
Amidst the chaos of ADHD and the nagging fear that I’m not good enough rattling around my brain box, adding more trials and tests seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.
A test here and a trial there, and why not throw some of his in, too?
Not sticking to the plan leads to a bit of a mess.
Shite.
The long and short of it is this. Not all is lost. Even without proper yield maps, most of the products we tried showed promising results and produced more than enough ROI to warrant more trials this year.
I got too excited, like a trio of truckers lining up at a Chinese buffet.
But it’s not all bad. Learning what not to do is part of the process. It’s embarrassing, but we had to get these first-year jitters out of the box.
Our mistakes improve us if we admit what went wrong and learn from the errors.
If you’re interested in what we learned from our experiments, you can give me a jingle or an emizzle or stop by and visit me at headquarters, and I’d be happy to share and decipher the data. It’s much easier to explain this stuff in person than in writing.
We are also building a company website where our clean plot and trial data will soon be published.
It’s the dingleberries when things don’t go right, and you have to admit your blunders, but I’m human, and it’s the right thing to do, and it’s not the end of the world because we are fortunate enough to try again.
This year, I’ll stick to the script.
This year, I’m going to keep it simple.
This year, I’ll learn as many of the lessons from last year as possible to make room for a whole new set of lessons next year. That’s what it’s all about.
Every year is different.
That’s what makes farming so exciting, so fresh.
Like a true farmer, I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it: there’s always next year.
Calling All Seed Peeps
Speaking of test plots, I’m tired of being disappointed in the limited corn and soybean variety data in our early-maturing area north of I-94.
A few years ago, when I got my start in the seed biz, an outfit called First Trials used to publish tons of variety data in our area. I don’t know if they ran out of funding or what the heck the deal is, but it seems they forgot that there is farming north of Fargo.
We need more data on our early-maturing corn and soybean varieties.
My goal in 2024 is to make that happen.
When I started at Riopelle Seed, I didn’t want to be another seed salesman slinging seed off a spreadsheet somebody three states over sent me from an office. I wanted to grow the seeds we offer on local ground so we know what’s best to provide our customers.
We’ve done our part there, growing over twenty varieties last year along with four separate strip trials, and we got some great data.
The problem is that most of the data only shows our products.
How will we know what works best in our area without competitor seeds next to ours in our trials?
Wouldn’t it be best to know how multiple varieties from multiple companies perform on a piece of ground instead of showcasing varieties from the same company like most plots?
What can we learn from that? It’d be like watching the Vikings scrimmage against the practice squad.
Even the Vikings stand a chance to win, but it doesn’t make it less boring.
This is probably a long shot, but we’re looking for progressive seed dealers interested in working together to pick up where First trials seem to have left off.
If you’re reading this and know a seed guy or gal who might be interested in gathering data that will help us all make better choices, please do me a solid and send them our way.
We’re more interested in knowing what works and where than in marking another sale. To prove it, we’re willing to stick our necks out and take the risk that our seeds may not always perform the best.
Instead of selecting the best tiny square of a field, like many plots in the area, we try to set up our trials to represent how a variety performs across an entire field accurately.
Sure, it’s fun to see how different varieties function in the best spots, but I don’t see much value in that.
It’s better to see how different varieties perform in the good spots and the bad, the fertile and the unproductive, so we shoot to make our trial lengths at least a half-mile instead of the industry-standard plot the size of a great room rug.
Reach out to me if you’d like to be a part of our research crusade. You’re welcome to participate in the entire process: planting, scouting, signing, and harvesting. We’ll make a mini-party out of it. It’ll be a hoot-and-a-half.
Right now, we’ve got a couple of competitors signed on, and there are only so many available slots in our plot, so please let me know if you’d like to be a part of what we’re putting together.
In the meantime, have a jolly good weekend, and I’ll catch up with you next time.
Later, gators.
Adam, I have no idea what you're talking about but I absolutely love this. You write beautifully!