Farmer Sense
Pioneer Hi-Bred Intl- Steve Myers, Shelby Schaa and Scott Walker
I love everyone welcome to the farmer's sense podcast. I am your host Rick Willard. Normally Andrew Fof would be with me and he was on the interview but he's not on this intro. He's a busy guy. So he had some softball games and stuff to attend to this week. So I just thought I'd take it upon myself to do a little intro on my own. See how things go. So anyway we had some pretty exciting guests from Pioneer with us this week. We actually recorded it. Today's June 21st we did the 13th or 14th. So it was last week when we did this but Steve Myers was one of our guests. He is Andrew's agronomist from southwestern Iowa. Scott Walker and Shelby Shea from Pioneer were also our guests. So Scott's kind of a customer guy with corn and everything else. I'm sorry I'm kind of ruining his whole intro but Scott's a big deal. Here's a big deal when I was there and he still is and Shelby is a soybean guru. So she kind of talks about the Z series soybeans. Scott kind of goes over some of kind of the all-around Pioneer stuff and some of the corn and of course Steve fills us in on the agronomy. So it was a really good, really good interview. I definitely want to listen to it. What did I do this week? A bunch of horseshit fixing this and that did some a little bit of spraying. God. When they tell you to spray 20 gallons of water per acre, do it. 10, 12, that doesn't always work. Actually I can't say I was told to spray that much because I spray a lot of generics and I was kind of doing it on my own but I got a 1600 gallon tank on my sprayer and I was like, well I'm going to do 160 acres of fill. Some of the pres I did probably would have been fine and it says that on the label for pre-emerge but there was weeds that had already emerged. So some of that calisto and what else did I have in there? Stinger worked really good on the thistle but it didn't work as well in the giant rag as that it hoped. It worked but probably should have done at least 15 gallons. So I did some 17 gallon which is kind of odd but I did some 17 gallon rates and that worked really well but I had to do some border spraying this week on a couple cornfields which I didn't that want to do. It's well well over the G to use that I'd want to be spraying at but threw in some radiate which helps kind of soften that glyphosate load for the plant. So I did use some, yeah I threw in a couple ounces of radiate with that but well we'll see. I mean overall for me corn looks like shit. Oh wow. I honestly don't know if I'm going to spend many more dollars on my corn crop. The stuff I planted May 30th, May 30th through June 2nd is by far my best looking corn. Anything before then looks horrible and that would have been like the 18th through the 21st ish I think. Don't quote me I don't may, the evening of May 17th I think is when I started but let's say May 20th the end there. Well we had that a two inch piss pounder washed away. I mean I had rose like the seed actually washed out of some of the rose covered up rose from the silting. I mean I think Andrew and I have talked about that but I got some really shitty looking corn and I know when to not spend any more money and I I know right now it's like yeah with the markets where they are maybe it's an insurance here with my luck it won't be I'll be like right on the edge like I'll get completely fucked on all my yield and the price and I won't get any insurance it'll be like I'll probably have 200 bushel corn which yeah that won't pay nothing so but what do you do hope and pray I guess honestly pray that we get another rally I don't know Brian split my marketing guy from agmarket.net he thinks that we might be done we might have got our summer rally a week 10 days ago of course prices were better in like January or before but I mean who knew we always we always think we're going to get a little bounce on the markets or whatever but we didn't get that this year and everybody thinks the weather is perfect I mean we're we're warm right now we needed that heat it corn corn is greening up looking better it's switching from seed to nodal roots all that kind of stuff but um it beans overall I think look pretty good there was um I think the last time I spoke there was just a lot of guys that were planting in corn and beans but the more I've drove around in the last week I've seen some actual field cultivated areas in corn fields where they actually dug it up and replanted um not as much as you would think but yeah there's definitely some around the area and um I haven't seen any dug up beans most but I've seen some really short ones like guys that were planting the June 10th 9th 8th yeah um further soybeans but anyway um 2024 it's just it's going to be a shit show I mean good for you if you've had not too much rain and or not or just the right amount and you got everything planted at a good time but um I don't think everybody's in that boat I think everybody has a field or a farm or or whatever that you know got planted at the wrong time and we haven't seen that the last couple years we've had some good springs and and everything's come out of the ground but um this year wasn't that year so do you stop spending money on a crop that didn't come up good yes yield is very much predicted on emergence so if you planted 34,000 and you had 34,000 plants emerge that's great good for you good seed quality good planting conditions if you planted 34,000 and it took a week for those plants to come up don't bother if they're not up within 12 24 hours of each other like in the same time frame don't spend that extra money on I mean I'm not I'm not saying in a two-day period you're not going to have 250 260 bushel corn but if you're planting on 275 280 300 yeah don't bother just it's corn at this point so I'm at that point I am definitely at the it's corn and I even had some that came that all came up within 24 hours and I'm still saying fuck it it's corn it's 99 day maturity planted at 30,000 if it if it was 300 bushel corn I'll tell you I will I'll be the first one I'll scream from the top of my lungs on this podcast that I had 300 bushel corn and what corn it was and I'll give you the whole down low but I'm not even gonna I'm not even I'm not even like entering any contest corn this year like it's ROI mode right now I mean look at the markets I know there was opportunities and I have I'm well I mean I have puts in place I have all sorts of things but I'm not gonna even after the puts and sold the head grain I'm not gonna have like 550 priced corn or 13 dollar beans my goal was to have 475 and 12 dollars and 12 dollars is not looking good on beans right now I'm 475 I guess if if I can make you know 40.50 cents on the the puts I have in place yeah but no I mean it's not looking good and gosh I'm just like negative Nancy right now but I'm just being I'm just being a realist like I guess I'm just trying to tell you like don't spend money on a crop that isn't going to make any money okay I mean don't put that 30 dollar foliar application out there or don't add that other 20 or 30 dollars of your wide drop application I mean do what I mean if you think you're gonna have 220 bushel corn wide drop for 220 bushel corn but don't push it and think that it looks like 220 but maybe I'll get 270 yeah you could or you could spend a shit ton of money to get 270 and only get 230 so just putting that out there think about it okay not telling you what to do just being a realist I've been through this I know I'm only 43 years old but I've been through enough shit and yeah we talk about that all the time so all the bullshit I've been through in the last 25 years I think I have a pretty good idea what's going on out there so but anyway enough of the negativity let's think of something positive how about today was the longest day of the year nothing wrong with that we got some rain we got about four tenths of rain today I know some people got piss pounded north of us but all in all I mean the rain has been okay I could have held off during planning we know that but now that we're we got crops coming up and everything I mean we're not going to say no to rain that's for sure but I think a lot of you out there have realized where you might need more tile or where you thought you had enough and now you need more I've seen a lot of that on my own but no anyway I guess I'm just kind of rambling now so I can quit rambling Andrews not here so I had to kind of fill the space but I hope you enjoyed this um little pioneer interview we had and thank you for listening web westernware if you use armor since 10 you get 10 off otherwise if you're watching this on youtube please like and subscribe we have hardly any and I know it takes like a hundred thousand subscriptions or something to like make money or do anything but yeah we have like less than a hundred so if you could help us out just hit the thumbs up leave a comment ask a question um do whatever and we'll kind of we'll try to push just a little farther and go with that so anyway everybody take care and hopefully talk to you and see you next week um scott walker with pioneer as well as shelby shay and steve minor so scott i'll let you start kind of give us a little bit of background to who you are what you do with pioneer yeah good morning me andrew rick i am our corn marketing manager and customer experience lead for essentially the western u.s um and and what that means i guess for the listeners viewers for this is we kind of divide the country in half from the mississippi river over to the rocky mountains Canada down to the uh Texas real grand valley so work all three all things related to corn and now just kind of just different customer experiences and that one that we uh that we'd drive and and try to provide to growers across the the u.s so thank you shelby would you like to go next yes good morning crew my name is shelby shay and i hope cover the soybean um marketing for the western commercial unit so anything related to programs and pricing and supporting the group on how we're going to grow market share in the west perfect and steve Myers yeah uh field sales agronomist uh kind of cover from basically in southwest Iowa cover from mount air clear up to harlan so kind of all walks of life and keeps us busy and keeps things fun all growing season yeah yeah steve is my agronomist so for pioneer so i i know steve pretty well scott i've got to meet through total eakers the last couple years down at their annual meetings and shelby's new to me so let's kind of get started with what are you guys seeing out in the field right now Steve you want to start and then we'll kind of go to the bigger picture yeah absolutely um i mean what aren't we seeing this spring has been i mean where we're at the amount of rainfall we've had it's kind of a different change of pace for everything we've had from the previous five years honestly and it's kind of really accentuated the the issues and the unevenness we've seen um i was kind of joking with somebody their day it feels like this year is going to be a year of holes and fields um you know we're going to feel pretty good about things here in about two weeks and i know we've kind of shifted our mindset already on are we going to throw money to this crop or not and it appears you know we're starting to feel better about it um i think we're going to forget about the holes that are out there which is a good thing they look a lot smarter a lot better not than they were but i think we're all going to peel some endros off in the fall and be like oh crap yeah it's still there isn't it um the biggest thing going on right now i mean we've we shifted from nutrient deficiency showing up and a hydro burn and now kind of shifting into that mindset of putting more urea out there and that kind of stuff as far as how much more nitrogen we want to throw at we talk about getting 10 plus inches of rain in certain areas in the month of may um it puts a lot of things into question as to how much you know flushing we get to that system as far as what nitrogen's left and that kind of thing so we've spent a lot of time this week doing nitrate tests and coming back with that and i know a lot of things you guys do to your total acre is a tissue sampling being everything talked about two going through and sounds like waypoints getting busier than as i visited them just last night so kind of a world of everything going on um bean stands look really good so far and they're kind of starting to come along but kind of getting the corn spray and wrapped up and shifting the next assets kind of what we're moving into now so yeah i was going to ask if you're going to talk about beans or not everybody always starts and leads off with corn so yeah i used to sell pioneer i don't know if you guys knew that i sold for 14 years and uh they didn't fire me i promise and but i didn't i did quit because uh my dad was at retirement age and i just i wanted to farm it's hard to be a pioneer rep and and compete out there for farming you know it's not it's not right for your uh to do against your customers so i gave it up a good friend of mine took it over and he's done a good job with it so um we were always taught to lead with soybeans you know because everybody always led with with corn when we go out to sell and it seems like if everybody's willing to try anybody's soybeans right it's kind of like that what do they call poverty beans or you know poverty crop and uh it seemed like once you got in the door with beans then you could get some corn on their farm or whatever so um anyway that's a little background of me too but uh glad to have you guys on here um i let Andrew kind of take the lead and he's done a good job so far so i'm gonna let him keep doing it but i did want to talk about that you said there was some anhydrous burn was there was it all burn or was there some uh striping also due to just placement like it hadn't you know hadn't uh got to the nitrogen yet i mean some guys put it on at an angle you know some guys put it on straight back and forth i got a neighbor that applied it um straight with the way he plants it was applied in the fall corn on corn but it's funny because well it's not funny it's it's it's too bad actually but when it was applied in the fall it was done at a different ab line or whatever you'd want to say and on one half of the farm it's all green and lush and the other half it's all yellow because it it got off when they were planting so uh why have we seen more of that this year than in other years Steve i think i think the biggest thing we've seen is my favorite thing to go back to in the fall we talk about corn gas in the fall right and i've never met an anhydrous applicators not every time you ask them how's it going no no one ever says oh it's okay they're all it's perfect it's never pulled better everything's awesome and they just keep going right on through right i mean we've seen some struggles this year as far as no getting the ceiling to go in and that kind of thing with the dry weather we had getting a deep enough um to pick on bars one versus the other it's tough to do but i mean typically i kind of have my own scones about things as far as i like to see that stuff go deeper with a dmi bar or some of the highest beat deer bars that go on and feel like we wear those bars out pretty fast i know from an applicator standpoint it's nice to cover the acres up but i really like to get that anhydrous down where we're going to use it and need to keep it at right um we talk about things too with the insert you know you never know if insert is going to be a big thing that pays off until you see the spring to be bad you're like well i guess i'm glad i did it it kind of sucks right in some of those big checks for a bolt-on that may not be necessary at that point in time but i think just with the rainfall this year it's really kind of print announced the differences we're seeing as far as different passes and that kind of thing we had a call the other day i was on um the guys like it's for sure not in the hydras you know everything's good and the the reason why he thought this because he didn't hit the angle in the north south road that we went down was you get oh it's just it's up and down it's wavy right um we ended up going the right angle and you could see exactly every nice mark that we went through so with a damper underneath them we realized and it sat in that zone a little harder probably you know we need moisture to make sure we get the anhydrous to tie to something and then spread out into what it's supposed to do with struggle to move um that's another thing we talked about yeah it's truly not anhydrous but i pulled it last fall there is some hot pockets and zones in there too and i don't know if anybody follows a chroy duet miron x or twitter whatever you guys want to call it formerly twitter he had an excellent excellent kind of little post he had on it basically talking about his your corn doing the ways and it was a really neat article he kind of put together about kind of explained the difference in the situation scenarios we're looking at and then kind of how that costs us yield-wise and kind of trying to equate how severe or major it could be but i think the weather this year to answer your questions really exponentiated the the visual symptoms we've seen so far at troy's post came out what a few days after uh andrew i made that big stink on tiktok i mean i posted on tiktok how i said this is why you don't apply anhydrous at an angle oh my gosh i had no i only been on tiktok a few months i think i'm up to like 24 000 views or something but which is like way more than i've ever had like 500s a lot but oh gosh people are ruthless out there some of the compliments they make i'd hate to be a pioneer agronomist anyway uh everybody was calling me out for being an idiot a moron why do you care well we care because andrew and i started this podcast because we're trying to help farmers be better and not make mistakes that we make before at least share and and walk through the mistakes and how to fix them whatever so i brought that up and wow it it was crazy so then i did a follow-up i actually walked out in the field and showed what i was seeing i got a lot better responses from that i think a lot of people learn from it and then a few days later than troy came out with that and that just solidified everything i said you know so i was like okay i feel a little better now and it's like three days just so that everybody in the whole world hated me or at least 20 000 people but no uh yeah we did see that on troy's and i know andrew shared it with me and and that was good that he came out with that and so much planning so speaking of screw-ups let's talk about replanting scott shall we have you guys seen a lot of replant coming in from all around or is it like certain pockets yeah and i'll speak from the corn corn side of things we have seen probably enough tick and replant this year obviously for all the reasons that that steve talked about with the ten inches of rain and geographies and we've been getting quite a quite a bit of rain in and across the west um actually there's some areas in north Dakota that still haven't even planted we're probably gonna be some prevent plant from from corn acres up there uh small pockets now i'm not talking like i think less four or five years ago when they had thousands of acres that didn't get planted it's smaller than that but uh still still it could impact the markets at some point throughout the growing season um but yeah replant a little bit more than than usual some of it is there's been some hail storms up in arasco they've been catching some storms we've been catching storms here in iowa um actually some seeds out in the ground and some dry and dry dirt in central Kansas for for a long time around salina so there's maybe some some uptick and some replant in Kansas but as far as like far west uh Colorado western Kansas Texas fan handle they're sitting in a pretty good spot you know right now they've been catching some rains they're actually dry land acres look pretty good so yeah um uptick versus normal but i wouldn't say it's it's extraordinary from a corn standpoint i'll let Shelby speak from us soybean side yeah i'll let go quite a bit of the same thing from soybeans i think we've seen some acres switch to um just with being the date from corn to soybeans so we've seen an uptick in um some sales as it relates to that like he said talked to a territory manager actually just yesterday in nebraska i think they planted you know uh April 24th and they were doing some replant in holes just yesterday so i think we're going to see a little bit of both steve you talked about the holes that are going to get covered up here probably shortly and then we're going to find them again uh going into harvest but yeah like scott said i think last year our replant numbers were actually pretty low we had a pretty good spring across the west but i think we're going to see those numbers tick up uh for the 25 season last year so i guess we'll jump go ahead i was gonna say i replanted some bean holes yesterday yeah i'm i'm currently tor up corn and replanting so i got to finish replanting some corn today i don't know that'll probably be a disaster as myer knows that i normally have one or two by the highway every year just for entertainment value oh yeah i will say we're moving some 80-day corn out of north Dakota down into Missouri and southern Iowa so yeah we're we're seeing some of that happen them i mean when i talk about that it's put up perspective it's not thousands of units it's it's hundreds yeah i finished planting my corn june second that was the first planting of it i plant my beans first and uh but anyway uh ninety nine fifty five is what i ended up switching out for pioneer number but gosh i came out of the ground quick like six days boom everything was up so i'm excited well pioneers got some interesting stuff to talk about you know so shall we let's start with you the new is a z-series soybeans i'm not a soybean grower so yeah oh man come on nyres what are you doing he's going on corn guy he loves it lives for it yep pretty much yeah yeah right we've got z-series coming in uh 2025 we have about 500 000 units across the u.s today um but really excited about what 2025 will bring so at commodity classic we kind of launched um z-series externally back in February march time frame um z-series is going to bring 2.5 bushels to the acre over our current a-series varieties and you're only going to find z-series in a pioneer bag so this will be exclusive to pioneer and then they're going to be packing a punch as far as just overall agronomic and disease tolerance over our a-series as well so readers have um done a fabulous job over the past couple years kind of building up this new z-series of just pent-up genetics as we've been transitioning our trade platform over to solely enlist for the 2025 season so super excited about the data that we're going to get um this growing season and super excited about what our reps and our field teams are able to sell going into 2025 so specifically for Iowa I think um I think specifically maybe in series area about 50 percent of their soybean portfolio for 25 will be in the z-series lineup again only an extend only an enlist technology yeah good awesome then on the corn side you got vorsy that's a new one i'm excited about that one we do we we've got vorsy that's that's going to be replacing our chrome over time um as as you i'm sure you're well aware of chrome it's it's been out since 2019 um the good thing about vorsy is that it's still going to use that same chassis that same breeding process that we use with chrome which allowed us to expand our germplasm so we've been traits and genetics don't really work well together um so when we switch from our mxt products in 2019 to chrome it opened up our germplasm so we're able to bring essentially you're putting more in the funnel during the breeding process and you really as you kind of work through it you get more selections more possible products to look at so when we can utilize roughly 90 to 95 percent of our genetic library now and when we're breeding in the triple segment in which vorsy will be it'll bring free modes of action below ground and free modes of action above ground so the additional motor action below ground for the corn on corn folks is RNAi and it's it's a more of a slow kill uh and it'll it'll really suppress the adults for for future years so if you plan vorsy didn't this this summer you should see a reduction next year so really looking forward to to that technology the other thing so you get the expanded obviously the expanded germplasm then higher yield potential you're bringing more protection with the different different modes of action but the fourth or the third piece of that is it's an additional flexibility from a spray standpoint because we're going to add the 240 into that as well so you got glock who fascinate glyphosate and 240 in there as well with five tolerance so it gives us really four modes of action from a from a spray standpoint so really is good so for the growers so looking to we've got a handful of products out there this year we advanced a handful from last last fall and then moving forward but i think within the next three to four years we're going to be completely out of our chrome and everything will be into the four seed technology well you brought up a great point about the spring you added the 240 gene into it so it's a corn on corn guy i like it because now i can maybe kill some bonds here corn how am i going to kill a volunteer corn when i have vorsy that's my next question right right so that i was hoping they'd leave out liberty or round up out of that one you know so i had an option to go back with something different that's probably a question for your technical pioneer or field of ground must come how you're going to kill that to volunteer corn yeah but yeah i mean it's certainly exciting oh he's muted he made it he shed himself off for some reason ice is going to say you're going to get a good kill for one i mean for one year with your assurance too and that kind of stuff but outside of that we're going to have to do some different looking around what we're going to have happened as far as the volunteer corn side of that but it is going to be a get out of jail free card for one year for sure right i mean we had some issues and she was some guys planted some corn at soybean rates because they didn't change their rec from last year in their plant market so you know those meters had to be smoking hot when they came out of the planter so we went ahead and tested some other technology this spring already so it worked for now so that's nothing like a hundred and thirty thousand corn plants we're going to be pushing yields with hula aren't you yeah hula was actually here yesterday so he was out here at my farm so that was interesting he's like it looks like corn to me i'm like yeah i guess i talked to him over the weekend he said he was going to be in Iowa in Nebraska this week so it took a trip so yeah very cool so you talked about how traits don't and technology don't go or play well with each other i remember 0339 uh was a i liked it as a corn it was um back when it was in the am version or am xt it was a good corn but when it came out chrome wow it really took off so that's one of them that i i remember being better uh with uh different technology or different traits but so i kind of wanted to go 1376 is going to be in that same oh when we brought 1366 or transition from am xt to to chrome it was about eight to ten bushes better okay and that's all about technical piece of it and how how we breeding and the insertion points within within the breeding process so yeah that gets to be kind of a late corn for me up here i do plant some later stuff but not in abundance that's for sure Andrew might have played in 1366 at some point during this life cycle oh yeah planted a lot of it so but i wanted to ask i wanted to go back into the soybean since i plant them and i actually enjoy planting and growing soybeans i'm one of the few but i was gonna ask Shelby and uh tell me if i shouldn't be asking this but we get into so many questions about populations and stuff and uh how far how much do you get into testing and what kind of populations is kind of the you know the the hot spot or does it just depend on soil types does it depend on location kind of delve into that a little bit because i mean we got guys planting where from 140 to 80,000 and 15 inch and 30 inch yeah that's a great question i think um there has been some testing done that i know of i think from a regional more local perspective steve and i'd take your feedback all day long um i think that you know in your neck of the woods rick where are you located in relation north central northeast Iowa yeah yeah so in Iowa i don't know probably north of steve you correct me north of 80 140 is probably pretty normal um and i'd say we see a hell of a lot more 30 inch rows than 15 but i know there's some growers playing with a little bit of both so yeah i would say testing is definitely being done i would say lean on your local field agronomist or p l c m or product agronomist as it relates to particular areas i'm gonna probably vary by variety as well yeah good call yep so what's your approach rick then i'm just curious on that too because i mean we had this discussion a lot and some of our approaches are you know we were planting beans earlier and earlier all the time and then that was my kind of hold back this year i see a lot of guys that never planted beans that started before in the life and they got away with it right i've also had a lot of may third frost that come back in like ah nothing like doing things twice it's my favorite so i mean what's what's your approach on that we started talking about 140 and that kind of thing too and i know a lot of guys are getting lower and lower but you talk you know let's just say 90, 92 percent germ on some of these beans you're already back how many you know 10 to 10, 12,000 and you get a frost or you get a hail storm where you kind of start nipping and tucking pretty fast at that 60, 70,000 mark and then we're coming to a weeds versus flex deal right so i mean i'm just kind of curious what your approach is on that so a couple years ago i did have some a frost damage and i left some go at 60,000 and i i did see or pockets at 60,000 and i saw i can't remember what it was three to five bushel less or something versus the where it was planted at 130 and this was in 15 inch rows by the way and um i thought well gosh you know if it's only like five bushel off you know how much lower can i go so lately i've been down to the 100 to 105 in 15 inch rows which it's okay but you don't get the push out of the ground like you would with 30 inch rows because i mean i they're almost five inches apart you know when they're coming out of the ground at 105,000 it's like 4.8 or something and and um i've seen some broken necks but i've seen where you can like cross check the field like a corn field almost it's like perfect stand you know so um the one thing i can say is i'm i don't i haven't seen a yield drag at 105,000 in 15 inch rows i did get rid of that planter and now we have a 30 inch we actually traded the middle of the season and so now we have 30 inch only um but i'm excited to see that lower population in a 30 inch and i also feel that in 15 inch beans that there's still um trouble with heat escaping from the canopy and just like corn you know we want to cool the plants and also with just white mold you know in general you know we want to get through the plants it's excellent weed control love the weed control of 15 inch bean but i i you know the world is record holder plant of 30 inch beans i mean all these guys plant 30 inch beans it can't be that bad but um treated beans though i found out is very important so i did a little trial this year and i was planting in where i didn't treat the beans and it was mostly wet pockets and i've known this for a year i mean the first year i sold pioneer beans um they were just coming out with beans from you know treated beans they'd send you out a new number they'd be treated well i remember we had a wet pocket in one of our fields and we ran out and i told dad i was like well we got this new number you know here's some treated bags so i gave them to him i think it was 91 91 or 91 why 91s i think i was yeah that dates me but uh i planted started over with those treated beans wow all of them came up i was like oh my gosh we have to treat all of our beans and we did forever and then this year i got the hunch i'm like oh let's save some money let's see what they do and then we get like the wettest spring ever if we're planting untreated beans and it didn't work out to do so i will caution people to make sure you do treat your soybeans it's good yeah so you said you came in with your replanted beans treated yes correct yes and there were some leftover ones i had some from a couple years ago that you know we're still in a box so i wasn't i'm not expecting them all to come up and uh pioneer wasn't going to cover me on those untreated beans so i didn't even go to my uh rep and say anything i just planted what i had left over but i i probably did i don't know 12 acres total so it was not a big deal but yeah it was mostly just drowned out spots or even where a waterway kind of ran them out or covered them up with stars not a big deal well the new z-series beans have a different seed treatment on them or something they will not we do have some new seed treatment that our growers were learn more about here in 2025 um but no but it'll be the same treatment what about the vorseed is it the same it will come in our our mid-rate version okay vorseed well so yeah our standard that we've had another loom would be a loomie loomie also the seed treatment that we've been running for the last couple years no perfect is there talk about maybe a different insecticide in the soybean treatment or maybe we can't talk about that and uh as far as fungicides go on corn and beans obviously we know we get them on our soybeans but what what is the fungicide package on corn because a lot of people talk about just applying fungicide in furrow you know an extra shot of a stroll or something but um what does pioneer have in their package or lineup that we can get in a fungicide treatment so as far as the seed treatment on our corn so all of our corn obviously is we've got our seed treatment package i'd have to send you the tech sheet exactly which ones are on their mires unless you have it handy but we do run through all of our testing all of our seed treatment goes we've got a seed treatment testing facility here on site you test treatments from from all different companies and we've got we've got agreements with with everyone that we can test and so we feel really good about what we're putting on that seed and protecting that seed because it's important to protect it early on and making sure it's getting up and out of the ground so and and i think we've seen i mean both from the genetics and our seed treatment over the last two few years some of the step changes that we've made in early season bigger early season emergence etc home from our seed treatment and our genetics it seems like you guys have kind of lucked out i don't know if that's the right word in your genetic line with the tar slot that maybe you guys handle it better than other companies per se or other trade lines is that something that you guys are really focusing on now since they're starting to find it already in Iowa um yeah and now maybe go back and say i i wouldn't like to think that we didn't luck out um we put a we've put a focus around our late season stay green uh late season plant health probably in 2014-2015 timeframe from a breeding standpoint and i think we're seeing growers are seeing the benefits of the additional research that we were doing during that probably eight ten years ago because it takes five to six years to for a product to come to market and tar spot showed up around that time or shortly thereafter over in Illinois Indiana Ohio Michigan and it's slowly as you said creepin west as you guys are seeing but yeah our lineup is is we see the data we see how our products and buyers you can step in here out in the field but uh we see what we're doing and how our products perform against competitors and and it's a nasty nasty nasty disease and that can kill a plant in a hurry late August early September we've got multiple side-by-side where we're still staying and pretty green and and the competitor products suddenly you name it is is not doing well all that being said we're continuing to research we're adding two more research locations focused on tar spot research this year one in Michigan and one in Wisconsin and we're doing another and another location in Iowa next year specifically looking at tar spot so yeah number one is hybrid selection i would tell growers as you're looking through and you're making putting your plan together for what you guys will be now for 2025 here this this late summer fall time frame i would definitely be looking and asking questions talk to your local pioneer sales rep talk to your if you're getting competitive seed corn from a competitive company i would certainly ask for them about tar spot gradients and buyers what i miss on that well the only thing i would i would add just for the sake of social media and that kind of thing if you guys want to really follow a guy that's just absolutely delved into it and kind of a guru he's really a guy to start with but Matt Vandahar he puts he kind of found it in Iowa here first the other day he just lives to find it and that kind of stuff and obviously we're still learning a lot about it um fungicides are still huge in my opinion the thing i struggle with when somebody's like you know we want to throw the fungicides out well i think even late it can come in be so detrimental you know let's not plan on throwing the fungicide out until you know it's something we're sure the crops completely gone or lost or whatever it may be um but kind of picking and choosing hybrids we want to we want to approach and sprays the big one too but i think if we can just kind of put it in our plan which i know you guys do a lot of already and through your your conferences you guys talk about is it's important to plan for that and make sure we're protecting that plan all the way through i know Rick i'm not sure you've dealt with it very much where you're at i'm sure you have but i know they were doing two and three applications to fund a site there when they first came on in northeast Iowa and the way they said it would jump not just one county at a time it'd jump three counties over just with the storms and the wind movement it is an insane disease we're still trying to wrap our mind around but i think obviously stay in the course and stay in the plan as far as keeping that plan healthy is number one priority so yeah my goal so Andrew and i've already kind of talked about this for this year we you know especially with my late plant corn you know do i spend more money on it do i just let it be corn you know let's see what the stand is see what you know everything but the one thing i'm not going to cut out is the i always do a v7 v8 fungicide pass i like to protect that earleaf and by doing that and then doing a later um like a 28 days later 21 day later pass um i haven't seen any tar spot to speak of and i actually did a plot last year with pioneer and they had me do my program versus just you know a one pass and uh yeah it blew it out of the water it was 20 some bushel butter so it's well worth the fungicide and yeah i mean if you think you want to give up on the crop i wouldn't give up on the fungicide just well harvest ability stand ability i mean all that plays in but um i did see a definite a benefit from that that early fungicide pass too is it is there any um disease like that in the bean side that you're starting to see in some pockets um so far haven't heard too much on the disease side um i think again i'll maybe bring up just the advancements that we're making within the z series so excited to see maybe where we've got some A's versus Z's and that agronomic conjure more defense that they're going to be bringing in areas maybe we where we saw some heavy white mold or some IDC in Iowa and Nebraska etc so um more to come on that but hoping that's a really good talking point uh going into the going into the fall and into 25 gotcha the scary one of these gold midge though Andrew i mean that thing spread more and why we don't know what the heck to do with it yet and then we we dealt and we just gonna sound like Sasquatch for us but we had white mold south of AU last year which is unheard of so what in the funny thing is you talk about 15s versus 20s actually found it in Andrew's uh family farm there first it was on 20 inch rows versus 15s to begin with and then it just delved up more but it's uh between the white mold and the gold midge we uh it's a fun farming i mean it's not ever boring right it's because that's right i had a bean field i was i was pushing kind of hard as a 50 acre field and i was going on doing a lot different test strips i do you know an r1 pass r3 r5 you know all i did but i got so much foliage so much height especially most 15 inch rows it just all died of white mold i didn't even get a good yeah any good data off of it i mean it literally just wiped it out and that that's what stinks of the 15s you know and it was still at a lower population but yeah it just almost pushed them too hard and if you could say that and that's what i see a lot of uh high yield growers saying you know as they're trying to figure out ways to keep them short you know close you know all that yeah it's tough how big of an issue is gold mill image i mean i know about it because it's around here but is that a is that a like small pockets or is it getting to be a bigger issue yeah i think it's been getting to get a bigger issue and i think cv did a really good job kind of bring it up we're really trying to wrap our minds around it and no internally we're doing a little bit of testing um or it's continuing to you know to grow in in interest um so expect more to come from pining here on that but i know we're kind of in its infancy of again trying to wrap our minds around it and and what do we know about it and how can we be varietal specific to try to combat it not sure i just didn't know if it was like certain pockets or if it's in multiple states i don't know much about it yeah i real myers if you've got any insight i love he was frozen i was frozen yeah wake up yeah we have a map of it i wish i had it pulled up for i'll get it to andrew later but it's like it's kind of in the brassica and kind of working it's way kind of north and west it kind of found in cast county where i'm at right now we are so lucky andrew to have this kind of crap happen around us you know north and east and then it just kind of starts to pop up on the map never really get map of it i know the hard part about trying to learn more about everybody's invested in trying to learn about this thing and get in under control but i think one of the things they had and this could be completely romped i'm pretty sure it's a story i heard that you know they they caught them trying to make them grow in a life cycle well then they just stopped growing in the lab they just would just go dormant for a long time so that makes it hard to try figure out life cycles and that kind of you know based off the hash and fly and that kind of stuff so it's uh it's frozen is that all it takes to get myers to shut up yeah that's it's in that connection how do how do i get that one? i don't know what happens but no it's not real yeah we have problems like this all the time technology is so great isn't it? okay let's look at big picture i guess i'll start with shilby what's like something that you see coming down the pipe that you're excited about i mean other than the z series that you can actually talk about so yeah that's a tough question i'm sorry but no no i think there's a lot of good things coming from pioneer i think overall just innovation traits and genetics will be a big story we you know kind of tout as we go into our kickoff meetings this summer with both employees and reps excited to kind of feed that story and then take that down to the grower level as we look to grow the business so no super excited about what's to come and just the overall investment in research and development that quarteva has um you know kind of invested in and really stood um you know planted the flag i think too specifically from soybean side and growing obviously on the corn side is just our our endless technology and where we've um again kind of planted that flag around our genetics and our traits so super excited about what's coming uh excited for um this summer and and looking to the next sale season perfect scott what are you on anything i guess maybe i should have a refreeze the question what is something that you want to tell customers a pioneer or possible people that would want to plant pioneers so for the social media side yeah so shall be touched on it it's it's all about innovation we're bringing more innovation now annually than what we in from a genetic standpoint than what we did in the previous 98 years of our history and and it all starts with yield we got a lead with yield that's what pays the bills for growers it's got to be harvestable yield so we're doing all kinds of research from an agronomic standpoint so that we're bringing the yield but we're bringing the agronomics with it but from a from a trade innovation um we will be bringing more traits in the next three to five years and we haven't the last 30 years so we haven't necessarily always been known as a trade leader that's changing um obviously we talked about borsey and earlier we've got a new trade in our in our double lineup so above ground only will be our new power core lineup so again it's going to be bringing more yield with our newest and best genetics but it's also bringing additional motorbaction above ground for for additional insect protection and then it's going to bring you that endless technology below ground as well so whether you're planting power core products or borsey products on your farm you don't have to worry about what's in the spray tank it's going to be the same across both platforms so so that's a really nice benefit and ease of mind for growers when they're planting pioneer genetics and and also know that it's going to have the best to best products in the bag from a yield standpoint so that's kind of where we're at from a I mean what I can talk for for for another hour on what we have coming but there's some more exciting stuff coming at the probably the end of this decade the the beginning of 2030s um we never even talked on it but maybe a whole other podcast on its own but reduced at your corn we're working on that as well so um probably within the next 18 months to 24 months well we'll have something on the market but we're going to do it the right way we're going to make sure it's tested vetted and we've got it dialed in and ready for ready for the growers farms when we do release it can I ask a question about it yeah okay so on this because I like short short statue corn that's interesting to me are they going to shrink the nodes throughout the whole plant because I know other companies have only shrink the nodes below the ear have you guys found a way to shrink the entire plant so yes we are breeding it differently than say our competitors as you mentioned we are shrinking all the nodes equally whereas they're shrinking nodes below the ear so that is a major concern of ours is that we need to make sure that the ear height is at the right level obviously if you farm in Cass County I think I've been to your farm probably 10-15 years ago I know exactly some of the hills that you guys are working on you get some of those those big heads out there and and if you get a near 12 inches off the ground that's not going to be good for anyone so yeah ear height is very important to us I mean ideally we're going to if we had a name your favorite 11 name your favorite hybrids and call it 1366 we talked about that before if we made that a short corn it would be about 33% shorter than the big boy corn in the ear heights would be about 25% lower than than what the yeah than what it would have been on on the big boy corn so nice that's kind of cool I now have a new term to call my corn big boy corn I like it I'm going to use it now Myers what do you got to add what do you what do you think could really help farmers bottom line from what you see out in the field Singulation is that a big thing or planting depths what do you see that's the most limiting I'm going to stick to corn because that's all I know that's fine no I think the biggest thing is making sure we're staying with the course you know I mean keeping up on technology trying different things I think the biggest thing though too to keep in mind is as things get tough from commodity side is making sure we're still putting the fertility out there it's hard to yield through a drought or yield through a wet spell without the fertility to start with it's fun having new tractors and new toys but at the end of the day we've got to start the foundation right I think fertility is the biggest one to me and make sure we're like you guys talked about budgeting then your fund is bypasses and that kind of stuff make sure we're given the crop a chance every year year in your house so awesome thank you yeah Rick you got anything I did but I forgot I get so in I get to listening to everybody and learning things and I forgot what I was going to ask but I don't think I really had anything too pressing um I get and I know it's way too soon to say but I mean what and maybe you did say this shall be what percent of the Z series beans will did you say half we're going to be maybe the lineup next year or yeah yeah about 60% across the US will be at Z series and then we'll have a series you know kind of as demand plans roll in but probably through the next couple of years there's about 50 total varieties that were launched in 2025 from a 00 to a 6 across the US we'll see that number back down as we you know continue to advance products but in the original launch year we've got about 50 varieties in in the new series lineup yeah that's what I was going to ask is what maturity because sometimes you know you might be a heavy-ended one way or the other but that seems like it that's a good spread you got there okay Myers can I plant six oh beans that's all it that's the question I mean I always plant the longest season corn I thought maybe it worked the same way with beans I didn't know maybe you'd have a stimmy mess that's for sure they come by like a part where I'm kidding you know perfect anything you guys want out I would appreciate your time you know nothing no I'm just appreciate all the listeners listening in appreciate their business and look forward to working with them into the future as we bring new traits new yields new genetics kind of continue to push that you'll level kind of like as you guys work with David Houlan and what he's doing and just the potentials out there and everybody as he tells you I'm sure Andrew is that we got to keep trying different things if we're doing the same things and expecting different results it's kind of crazy so keep trying new things and reach out to your local pioneer sales rep local pioneer field field sales agronomist or territory manager as well they're an excellent asset I mean even though it is Steve Myers he's an excellent asset I love to pick his brain he probably gets tired of my questions I'm guessing so nope we're good I got Nate Lavey and he's mine so he's another good one yeah awesome well thank you guys very much for your time I appreciate it so hopefully everybody can listen to this and enjoy it and learn more about pioneer so thanks for having us on appreciate it thank you appreciate it thank you thank you you guys yep