Flip the Script on Profitability

Adam Chappell was a slave to pigweed. In 2009, he was on the brink of bankruptcy and facing a go-broke or go-green proposition. Drowning in input costs, Chappell cut bait from conventional agriculture and dived into a bootstrap version of innovative farming.

A decade later, Chappell’s farm is transformed. He conducts a symphony of wide rows, public varieties, low planting populations, non-GMO production, cover crops, livestock and intercropping — all with a keen eye fixed on savings.

Buzzwords Versus Bottom Line

“Money fuels my engine,” he says. “Call it soil health, conservation, sustainable, regenerative or any other buzzword of the day — frankly, I don’t care. My savings have been incredible, and I just call my farming what it is: survival and profitability.”

Four generations of Chappells have farmed in northeast Arkansas, just outside Cotton Plant. On 8,000 acres, Chappell and his brother, Seth, grow corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and a mix of small grains.

In 2009, Chappell was neck-deep in Palmer amaranth, battling a weed plague, and noting the gradual inefficacy of herbicides.

“We were fighting an uphill battle and spending so much money on chemicals, but I didn’t know what else to do,” Chappell recalls.

Each season, Chappell began burndown in February and followed with a mix of glyphosate, 2,4-D, dicamba and a residual, in hopes of staying clean until planting. Next, he’d bed up, and almost without fail, get a 3" or 4" soaker and watch as a flush of pigweed jumped from the ground. In response, Chappell re-bed to bury pigweed seeds, or sprayed gramoxone depending on bed condition. It was clockwork frustration, and the Palmer parasite sucked cash straight from Chappell’s pocket.

Once a crop was in, the pigweed melee was back to full bore. Cotton, for example, got Reflex two weeks prior to the planter, and then gramoxone and Direx behind the planter, followed by glyphosate and Dual. Finally, Chappell rolled with hooded sprayers for an application of MSMA and Caparol.

“It was bam, bam on herbicide inputs. The answer floated by the big companies was more and more chemicals, and meanwhile we were steadily going broke,” he recalls.

YouTube Lifeline

Chappell began looking for help in early fall 2009, a lifeline to relieve heavy chemical costs, but he was essentially a man on an island.

Where to turn? YouTube. Watching videos on organic production, Chappell stumbled over an upload from a Pennsylvania pumpkin grower planting no-till into tall green grass — 6' cereal rye. The field was clean. After more research, Chappell rolled the dice and planted all he could afford — 300 acres of cereal rye. The following spring, pigweed control was substantial.

Even for a farmer with degrees in botany and entomology, Chappell didn’t care about science or soil health; all that mattered was a major Palmer decline.

“I wasn’t worried about why or how because I could see with my own eyes that pigweed was few and far between,” he says. “They weren’t nonexistent, but the ones that did get loose, we could walk out there and pull them up. No chopping crew and no chemicals necessary.”

The next season, Chappell planted 1,300 acres of covers, followed by 2,300 acres in 2011. Despite his optimism, Chappell’s operation was about to undergo four years of body blows. His father, Dewayne, and brother lost homes to flooding in 2011, and severe drought took a toll on operations across the Mid-South in 2012.

In 2013, commodity prices sank, and in 2014, the Chappells were skinned by Turner Grain in one of the most infamous agribusiness scandals of the modern farming era.

Yet, in the middle of the turmoil, Chappell noted marked differences on cover crop ground planted with multiple grass and legume species.

“Our crops under covers were much better, even better than no-till or conventional ground,” he says. “It wasn’t a big yield bump in corn and soybeans on covers, but it was the less money spent on those yields.

“And in cotton, the cover difference was in irrigating once every 10 days and making 1,200 lb. per acre, instead of irrigating twice a week and making 1,000 lb. per acre.”

That was the light-bulb moment for Chappell. “Cover crops were no longer optional — they had to be on every acre. No doubt, if we hadn’t changed our way of farming, we’d have been out of business. In my opinion, farming has become a convenience-first enterprise, and not a profit-first enterprise.”

Profit Over Convenience

Covers are only one facet of change in Chappell’s approach to farming. He hasn’t put out phosphorus (P) and potassium (K)in granular form since 2016, and doesn’t rely on soil samples for fertility recommendations. Instead he uses the samples to gauge soil level changes.

On the ground, Chappell has cut P and K; the levels haven’t moved, and in some cases, they’ve gone up. “We’re cycling nutrients from deeper in the profile and bringing them up. The savings on P and K alone are really big.”

In 2019, Chappell bought 40 cows to feed off covers, upped the number to 70 in 2020, and intends to buy more. He’s also added sheep.

Chappell grows wheat and hairy vetch together, separates the seeds, and comes back with the vetch as part of his cover crop mix.

“That’s two products off the same acre, and vetch is providing my wheat with nitrogen,” he says.

Relay cropping is his next experiment. Chappell has waited three years for a decent weather window and hopes to plant twin-row 38" wheat with a full-season soybean in between. He would harvest the wheat, aiming for 40 bu., and let the soybeans fill in the gaps.

“Think about profit potential,” he says. “If you make a half crop of wheat, maybe 40 bu., but you make a soybean on top, look at the added value per acre. If you can get $6 for your wheat, you just added $240 per acre on top of your soy.”

Non-GMO crops make up 90% of Chappell’s grain acres. He leans on the low cost of public varieties and the ability to save seed. He planted 2,000 acres of soybeans in 2019 and estimates a 40% to 50% drop in costs.

Crazy on the Block

Chappell is unique in his goal to harvest every bit of profit off every inch of his land, says Robby Bevis, a fellow Arkansas row-crop farmer. “Adam is not afraid to break the mold, and he’ll push the envelope to extremes,” Bevis says. “Try 10 acres and see what happens? No, he’ll try 100. So many guys won’t come out of their box, but nobody told Adam he’s even got a box.”

What does tomorrow look like for a grower marching to his own unique drumbeat?

“I don’t mind being the crazy person on the block because I don’t pay anyone’s bills but mine,” Chappell says. “Money drives me, and one thing for sure, convenience and farming are not a combination that means more money.” 

Profit Equation: Wide Rows and Low Population

Adam Chappell is highly dubious about conventional seeding rates, and he is trialing wide 76" cotton rows. In 2019, one particular 40-acre cotton field, planted in 76" rows, showed noteworthy returns. Planted late into a cover mat on May 28, he recorded nearly 100% emergence on a 20,000-seeding rate.

Per-acre costs included:

• Seed: $51
• Seed treatments: $5 (Chappell treated it himself)
• Ammonium sulfate: $52 (based on 300 lb. per acre)
• In-furrow micronutrients: $16
• Herbicides: $38
• Pesticides: $3 (1.5 sprays with imidacloprid)

The field yielded 1,097 lb. per acre at 74¢ per pound — $812 per acre. Prior to fixed costs and overhead, the margin was $586 per acre.

Consider a 40-Acre Trial

Conservation agriculture methods take commitment and a willingness to break the mold. Keith Scoggins farms 700 acres of corn, rice and soybeans in Newport, Ark., and is in the process of moving all of his ground to no-till and covers. Beyond farming, Scoggins is Arkansas’ state cropland agronomist for NRCS.

Scoggins’ advice is to take 40 to 80 acres and split the field down the middle, one side in covers for multiple years. “Keep track of inputs and let the field pencil out the truth,” he says.