Successful harvest wraps up for XtremeAg farmers

After a dry fall, timely rains help winter wheat emerge for XtremeAg farmers in North Carolina and Iowa.

Kevin Matthews – East Bend, North Carolina

Kevin Matthews and his wife, Cindy, are fourth-generation farmers in East Bend and Yadkinville, North Carolina. Matthews Family Farms, Deep Creek Grain, and Precision Nutrient Management farm corn, soybeans, wheat, and barley.

Soybean harvest is complete. We have never been finished this early. Corn harvest should wrap up this week. Our focus will shift to finishing up cover crops and spreading fertilizer, lime, and poultry litter. Mowing around fields and ditch banks are also very important jobs this time of year as they allow us to inspect our ADS drainage tile outlets.

We are beginning to look through yield data. We are looking at each trial completed and breaking down what did and did not work. This is driving our decisions for next year. So far, we are seeing a huge benefit from growth regulators and stress mitigators. Our soybeans experienced dry hot weather right at the end of the growing season allowing us to see what products help hold the plants.

This week there is rain in the forecast. It has been a dry fall making harvest easier, but now the wheat and cover crops need the moisture.

Kelly Garrett – Arion, Iowa

Kelly Garrett is a fifth-generation farmer in western Iowa. Garrett farms 4,000 acres of corn, over 1,800 acres of soybeans, and 170 acres of winter wheat.

Harvest is wrapped up. We are applying plant food and anhydrous to the ground. The crew is in the process of the fall transition around the farm. Mike Evans and I have been in the office going over data as well as the XtremeAg trials. One of the corn trials that is significant is the grower standard practice (gsp) and the AgroLiquid trial with their product Kapitalize. It is a potassium product that also has sulfur, phosphate, and calcium in it. We applied it at R1 to our standard program and it showed a 13-bushel yield gain which equates to a net of $67.50 an acre for us. 

Our winter wheat is planted. It has come up out of the ground and so far is looking excellent compared to previous years. For the first time in three years, we received rain after drilling the wheat. Our wheat this season is planted in soybean stubble, next year we will plant it in corn stubble. We see an increase in germination in the soybean stubble compared to the corn. Next year we plan to change some things to see if that increases the germination in the corn stalks. The reason we switch off is because we are so heavy corn-on-corn, so we are trying to reduce some of those acres. To do that, we are going to put the wheat behind the corn instead of soybeans to try to minimize that. 

The cows are out on the corn stalks and grazing on the cover crops. We are in the process of moving them from field to field. To me, the cattle represent the greatest carbon transfer system in the world. They eat the corn stalks and defecate it back out which results in a sped-up carbon transfer process. Cattle are a huge part of our renewable, regenerative system. We do use our cattle to provide the beef for our GLC Beef operation.

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