Ep. 105 Exclusive Interview from Emerge Experience

 

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:08):Welcome to AgCredit Said It, your go-to podcast for insights on farm finance and maximizing your return on investment. Join us as we talk to industry leaders, financial experts, and area farmers, bringing you skillful advice and strategies to grow your farm's financial future. AgCredit Said It, where Farm Finance goes beyond the balance sheet.

Phil Young (00:40):Hey, this is Phil Young again with AgCredit Said It. We're at the Emerge 2026 Conference, and we pulled in Glenn Arnold here, and he's going to share a little bit about who he is and what he presented on today and kind of what happened. So welcome, Glen.

Glen Arnold (00:53):Appreciate the opportunity to be here. Yeah.

Phil Young (00:55):Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you presented on today?

Glen Arnold (00:58):Sure, sure. I was born and raised in Waterford, Ohio. So I live now in the little town of Glandorf up in Putnam County. And I've worked for Ohio State now for about the extension service for about 37 years or so. So I'm going to hang it up, I think, at the end of this year.

Rod Mobley (01:15):Oh, wow. Okay.

Glen Arnold (01:16):So for the past 15 years, I worked primarily with manure, conducting manure research with farmers, with commercial manure applicators, just trying to find out how we can use manure, how we can make best use of it, especially the liquid manure. When you look at hogs and you look at dairy, we handle a lot of liquid manure in the state of Ohio and liquid manure contains a lot of ammonium, especially the hog manure. So if we can put those on growing crops, if we can top dress wheat or side dress corn or put on hay between cuttings, we can really grab a lot of that nitrogen and make good use of it and replace nitrogen that we would've bought for the very same purpose.

Phil Young (02:01):Okay. Gotcha. When you do a session like this, what's common questions you get from folks that you face?

Glen Arnold (02:08):Well, today I was kind of talking about two ways I thought they could make money from manure. Number one would be to better utilize their manure, whether they put it down ahead of a particular crop that needs a lot of nitrogen in the growing season or top dress or do other uses with that. And then the second thing that we talked about is there's an industry out there of commercial manure haulers, and whether it's poultry litter, whether it's liquid manure, whether it's dry stack manure, but there's always a market for the opportunity to load, transport, and apply manure products all over the state of Ohio. So when young people, perhaps they already have a farm and they're looking for another source of income, and we just wanted them to be aware that the commercial manure industry has really, at least from the liquid side, it's only about 30 years old in the state of Ohio, maybe 40 years old.

(03:07):And so there's still a lot of opportunity to grow in that area. And you may start out with used equipment, you may start out small, but you just never know what it could grow into.

Phil Young (03:18):Yeah. It seems like that's the conversation I hear a lot now is what else? How can I diversify and how can I have just a little bit more income where it makes sense with what I'm already doing and can put more money in my pocketbook. So we're good.

Glen Arnold (03:32):Right.

Speaker 1 (03:32):Well,

Phil Young (03:32):Good. Is there any misconceptions or things that people come in with whether you always feel like, ah, people think this one way and you always end up ... It's always a revelation to people when they hear you speak about this topic?

Glen Arnold (03:46):Well, there's a lot of public perception of manure that manure is bad, et cetera, et cetera. So realistically, manure has a lot of nutrients. It's absolutely the perfect product to put on fields because if you're looking at our dairy and our hog farms, more than 90% of the nitrogen that's in that manure actually came from those fields as the corn was harvested to feed the pigs or the silage was harvested to feed the cattle. So most livestock farms are not big importers of phosphorus in the state of Ohio as composed to a grain farm with no livestock base or no livestock nearby where they would buy all of their commercial fertilizer every single year. So there's a lot of those misperceptions that people think minor is bad, that it gets into water all the time. And we operate under the Ohio Pollution Abatement Law, which basically says you can't put anything in ditches, and so we don't.

(04:44):And our farmers do a much better job. Our commercial applicators do a much better job than the non-farm public would know. They're not out there every day watching these guys work. And I'm pretty proud of what I see out of most of them, their efforts, their attention to detail. They're looking at their soil test levels in their fields. They're trying to make sure they don't get beyond the maintenance range in our phosphorus numbers. So those are, again, things that as in agriculture, we look at that and we understand that stuff, but the non-public, they just drive by and see manure on the field and think, "Oh, that stakes." And that's unfortunate.

Phil Young (05:25):Yep. Well, good. Well, hey, Glenn, thank you for sharing and thank you for presenting this year. And I hope you look forward to retirement here. Sounds like that's coming around the bend, so well earned.

Glen Arnold (05:34):That's what I'd hope. I have a grandchild now, so I want to spend more time with him.

Phil Young (05:37):Gotcha. Good. Well, thank you, sir. Hey, this is Phil Young with AgCredit Said It. I'm actually sitting down with Rod Mobley with Becks. He was one of our breakout speakers at our Emerge conference, and so wanted to sit down with him, pick his brain, and have him share just a little bit about what his presentation was on and how he helped out and kind of fed knowledge to our farmers at the recent conference we had. So welcome, Rod.

Rod Mobley (06:00):Well, thanks, Phil. And it was a great opportunity to come down to Columbus and meet with you guys and meet with a lot of the new young farmers that are involved with that credit. So it was a great day, a great evening, some great presenters. But what we briefly talked about, or I just talked about myself first, I guess I am a seed advisor with Becks Hybrids. I cover Northwest Ohio, Northeast Indiana. It's just a great opportunity and a great company to present what we have to offer. And what we're very proud of is something that we call PFR, which is our practical farm research, which allows us to take a lot of the nuggets that we test on a daily basis and a lot of the stuff that we do and put it to an ROI. How can we bring value back to the farm?

(06:42):So a lot of times you'll hear us refer to something that's PFR proven. And what PFR proven is, is products or practices that we have tested for at least a minimum of three years. And over the three years, it had to average a positive ROI and increase yield every year.

Craig Pohlman (07:03):Okay.

Rod Mobley (07:03):So if it does that at least a minimum of three years, then we will stamp what we call PFR proven. And usually in the front of our PFR book that we distribute every year, it'll have all our PFR proven practices and products. So when a guy's looking for a down nitty gritty on what we can do to add some value back to the farm, right to the PFR and look for a practice or a proven product that we know is going to work for you.

Phil Young (07:26):Okay. I guess, did you highlight any of what those are in that session or what did you drill down in?

Rod Mobley (07:32):Yeah, we did. We talked about soybean herbicide, soybean fungicides, corn fungicides, fertilizer as far as starter fertilizer, nitrogen efficiency, and foliar feeding on soybeans. So I know

(07:47):It was a lot of topics, but we tried to bring the things that are probably going to bring the most return on investment or the most opportunity without a lot of commitment on the farm that a farmer can look at bring back some value.

Phil Young (08:02):Okay. Do you see guys doing multiple of those things or they pick one and focus on it or what do you see when

Rod Mobley (08:09):You talk with guys? We do do multiple, but usually what we tell guys is pick two or three of the low hanging fruit that maybe is not going to be a lot of investment on your farm, but yet we know that can bring some return. Try those one or two things the first year. And after that, maybe next year, add one or add two more at a time to see which ones work the best for you.

Phil Young (08:29):Okay, gotcha. Did you have any good, I guess, questions asked in the session that maybe you thought were good, just good thought provoking questions that you weren't ready for? Or what was the chatter, I guess, after during the session?

Rod Mobley (08:42):Yeah, I've had a couple people come up before and even afterwards and we were talking. Something that Becks is really getting into is we're looking at categorizing our corn hybrids based on what we call silk review, root review and kernel review,

(09:01):Which was something that we didn't really talk a lot about at the conference, but it's all product characteristics because we know that based on certain product characteristics, we know how they react to fungicide. We know how they react to whether it's a nitrogen application, nitrogen timing, we even know how they react to population being planted. So saying that, one, if we know a farmer farms a certain way or has certain practices that he relies on, we can also offer the hybrids that matches those practices, or we can talk about hybrids that we know that are high yielding and how they can change their practices to help that perform at its best opportunity.

Phil Young (09:45):Okay. Do you see a lot of willingness at a farmers to change and venture down trying new things, or are they usually kind of weary to venture out of their normal practice?

Rod Mobley (09:56):I think it has a lot to do with age and comfort zone in past history. There's some things that somebody gets very comfortable with doing and they've been pretty profitable doing it that way. Sometimes that's pretty tough to change. And then when a new generation comes in, I think sometimes they're a little more hungry, looking for opportunity on ways that they can either improve their bottom line or just improve their efficiency at doing things.

Phil Young (10:24):Okay. And I know this probably wasn't a part of your presentation, but we kind of talked off air just about technology and the advancement of AI. Is that something that you see in Becks and just what you guys do? Are you able to share a little bit about that side of it with artificial intelligence?

Rod Mobley (10:45):Yes. We're using it a lot more as employees of Becks, but we've also offered a lot of these platforms available to our customers. So you can go to bexhybrids.com and there's one at the top that you'll see right away. When you go there, it's called SeedIQ. And what SeedIQ is, it's a AI based data resource that you can actually put in. It's going to ask you some questions, some qualifying questions, whether it's population, whether it's productivity levels, nitrogen applications. And when you put all the information in there, AI can actually help you determine which are the best hybrids for you to plant on your farm. It can narrow it down to two or three hybrids that's going to perform very well based on maturities and product availability.

Phil Young (11:34):Okay, nice.

Rod Mobley (11:35):That's a really nice one. The other one that we have that's based on data is we actually called ASPFR. So we've got like over 150 tests going at one time in our PFR studies and trying to find the data that relates to what you're looking for can be tough. We've got a great big thick book. So you can actually go to ask PFR, describe to them what you're looking at, whether it's a fungicide study or a nitrogen study or, "Hey, I'm looking at comparing a drone spraying versus a ground rig spraying." And if we've tested it, it can actually go to the database and bring up the information that you're looking for at just a very, very quick speed.

Phil Young (12:15):Yeah, that is true. The information's there, but sometimes it's hard to weed through it and you don't want to read a 300 page analysis on everything. You want to find what you're looking

Rod Mobley (12:24):For. So that's a great tool. Right down to the nitty gritty quick and figure out what you're looking for. So there are both AI based tools that are available to all of our customers or anyone that wants to access bexhybridge.com. Don't even have to be a customer.

Phil Young (12:37):Okay. Good, good. Anything else you want to highlight from your presentation at Emerge or we cover pretty much everything?

Rod Mobley (12:44):I think we pretty well covered it. I mean, without going into the actual studies, but I always offer that if anybody wants a PFR book or needs some information on PFR, don't be afraid to reach out and we'll make sure that we get them taken care of.

Phil Young (12:56):Good deal. Rod, thanks for joining us and thanks for helping out at the conference. Okay. Well, thank you. Appreciate it, Phil. Thanks, Rod. Hey, this is Phil Young with AgCredit Said It. We are here with Craig Pohlman. We're doing some follow-up interviews from our Emerge conference. He was one of our breakout speakers, so wanted to snag Craig and have him share a little bit about what he shared at Emerge, and so welcome, Craig.

Craig Pohlman (13:18):Thank you. Thank you.

Phil Young (13:19):Yeah. So first off, we'll have you share a little bit about yourself and kind of what you do.

Craig Pohlman (13:23):Yeah. So my name's Craig Pohlman. I farm in Southeast Valmark County. I consider it a small to mid family farm for this area, mostly cash grain. And then I also do some seed sales and some seed treating and get into the cover crop side of things, selling stuff too as this adventure has rolled on for me.

Phil Young (13:40):Good, good, good. Yeah. And we pegged you to kind of do a breakout session at our emerge conference. Can you share what topic you shared on and how that went?

Craig Pohlman (13:49):Yeah. So my, I guess, title for my talk was my cover crop journey. So I kind of started with the issues I had at the start and why I was looking at doing something different and rolled through my steps into starting to look at no-till and then into the cover crops. And then I kind of went down the rabbit hole pretty heavily myself on the farm of getting into no-till and cover crops real heavy. So I just discussed what I learned, some of the things that went wrong, some of the things that went right, just those little high level things that I learned. It was a little different for me because I usually talk to guys one-on-one or two on one around coffee shops or shops in their offices and things like that. So having a big group like that was definitely a different way to do that for me.

(14:36):Luckily the group had a lot of really good questions and kind of spurred some of the thoughts that I didn't necessarily have in my program properly, but it was great.

Phil Young (14:44):Yeah. How did you get started in cover crops?

Craig Pohlman (14:47):So like I said, I explained to them why I looked and it started with when I came home from college, I felt like we were replanting a lot. For several years, the ground just kind of sealed off on us up here in these clay soils. We worked it up fine enough to plant beautifully and then you'd get a good cold rain and it'd seal it right shut when the sun came back out. And so we had some emergence issues and we replanted a lot and dad's been selling seed since the 80s. So we got to see a lot of other farmers' fields too. And I just got to see some other looks, how fields looked and I felt like our soils just were getting tougher. I don't know a better way to explain it. And so that made me go look at some things. And I ran into a guy at the National Farm Machinery Show and talked to him for a couple hours about annual eyegrass.

(15:31):And that's what spurred me to first try it. And I tried 40 acres. I drilled in annual eyegrass and just loved what it did to the soil and kind of just, like I said, I fell down that rabbit hole and off the cliff, whatever way you want to say it. Yeah.

Phil Young (15:43):Nice. Well, good. Yeah. So this is a major part of what you guys do? Yeah.

Craig Pohlman (15:46):Yeah. So that was, I think, I was trying to remember this for this presentation. I think 2007 is when I first planted that annual eyegrass. And that field has been no-tilling cover crops since then. And the rest of my operation has transitioned that way since at least 2009, 2010, with a few oddballs here and there. Every once in a while you got to dig something up just to level off some ruts or something that a fertilizer buggy or something has happened and you just need to do some fixing. But other than that, I have not dug a field and it's had cover crop almost every single year, as long as the weather lets it grow. Like this last fall, we were so dry, some of it struggled to get going.

Phil Young (16:23):Just because you were probably ... Will you describe yourself as an early adopter in the county as far as cover crops or ...

Craig Pohlman (16:30):Maybe in the area, I would say. As I went down this journey, I went to the National No-Till Conference. And so you start talking to some people that are light years ahead of you. So I didn't feel like I was an early adopter at all. But when you start playing with those things around here, the neighbors do start raising eyebrows and asking you if you're okay and what's going on. And so I guess I was probably early around here, but man, there's a handful of neighbors that I'd say have probably almost gone around me at this point in time and what they're trying to do too.

Phil Young (17:02):Okay. Gotcha. Nice. Yeah. Were there some really good questions that were asked during the session that you were like, "Man, there's some really good questions."

Craig Pohlman (17:11):I guess I should have taken better notes afterwards. I was too amped up from doing it to remember all the questions real well, but just a lot of personal things on their farm, like what they're seeing, certain cover crops or am I having issues with slugs and bowls. I actually talked about that in my presentation because that's one of my biggest problems. And so some of them weren't even questions. They were just verifications of, "Oh yeah, that's been a problem for me. " Because the people in my session, I did find we had everything from guys who were doing almost what I was doing, the guys who hadn't really looked that way at all. So you guys had a nice smattering all the way across the board of people at the conference that were looking for answers or had already been doing stuff and just looking for an advanced knowledge.

(17:57):So it was a good cross section.

Phil Young (17:58):It's always good to get people that are like- minded or doing the same practice together and having those conversations because sometimes you feel like that an issue you're having is just you and it's good to just commiserate, but also just be like, "Okay, it's not just me. " Other people that are doing this are having this issue too. So you can kind of tweak the dials maybe if you need to and kind of come up with some best practice on how to tweak. But yeah, no, really appreciate you doing your emerge presentation and thank you again for doing it. So appreciate it.

Craig Pohlman (18:29):Yeah, not a problem. Thanks for having me.

Phil Young (18:30):Thanks, Greg. Yep.

Speaker 1 (18:39):Thank you for listening to AgCredit Said It. Be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app or join us through our website at agcredit.net, so you'll never miss an episode.