2024 Commodity Classic: 3 Farmers Talk Technology and Equipment

Commodity Classic – the annual late-winter, all-things-ag mega tradeshow – bills itself as the largest farmer-led and farmer-centric event in North American agriculture.

Naturally then, we set out to connect with as many farmers as we could at the show and see what was on their minds with spring planting season drawing close for most of the country. 

Maryland’s Trey Hill, Harborview Farms, has a unique view on production agriculture. Perhaps the progressive farmer is simply a product of his growing environment: Maryland’s pristine Eastern Shore, where water and environmental regulations on farming are significantly stringent. Pressure does build diamonds, after all.

Upon chatting with Hill, who farms near Rock Hall, you also pick up on an inquisitive yet laid back nature. Hanging around the PivotBio booth last week on the trade show floor – he was looking to lock in his plot trial plans for this season, with eyes at doing some side by sides with PivotBio products to measure their effectiveness across his ground – the wheels were already spinning.

“I think that spraying with drones is probably something that I need to start looking into because flying airplanes in highly populated areas, spraying fungicide and insecticide is probably not going to last through my daughter's life, right,” he said. Hill flies on fungicide and insecticide midseason versus having to source a high-clearance applicator.

Of course, $4 corn and its tentacle-like reach were top of mind for a lot of farmers who made the trek to Houston. Hill said he had been hearing about it for “what feels like months at this point.”

He also said he might just pull back a little on his conventional fertilizer spend and try to bridge the gap with biological, soil-health based products. However, he won’t “go 100% Pivot” right off the rip. And that’s no slight to PivotBio or any of the other biological product formulators out there (there’s many) – that’s just who Hill is. Always evaluating and adjusting. Open minded to the core.

“I think that it's, it's a tool in the toolbox and I just need to learn how to use it and place it right,” he said. "It comes back to that technology piece we were discussing – what’s in my soil? Where is it? What’s available? – based on the soil test. 

“Understanding healthy soils is still kind of a black box, I don't know very many people that really, truly understand it," Hill added. "I think these biologicals will really come into play once we understand that.”

Buckeye State Strip Tiller

Wyandot Ohio farmer Brad Weaver also farms in an area that has experienced heightened awareness (and regulations) around water quality.

The Maumee River, which empties into Maumee Bay – a small section of the greater Lake Erie watershed – has been singled out by legislators and activists in year’s past as a sort of nutrient runoff superhighway. The shallower western section of Lake Erie is especially prone to summer algal blooms due to its shallow depths and the intense crop production taking place along the lake.

Weaver, a sixth-generation farmer with a degree in ag business from The Ohio State University, stood sentry at the Environmental Tillage Systems (ETS) amid the absolutely massive SoilWarrior tillage and planting implement ETS brought to the show. He uses one just like it on his own ground.

“Everything we do – every single pass across a field – is mapped,” Weaver said.

The shift change for Weaver came in 2019, when he decided to try something different rather than paying the local cooperative $18 an acre to broadcast dry fertilizer on his conventional tillage corn fields. He says the move to strip tilling has saved on the number of field passes needed as well as compaction, while making the operation more efficient overall.

“We had kind of hit a [yield] plateau of about 180 bu. APH (Actual Production History). The last three years we've been more efficient and we're building up that soil health. Now we’re at 220 APH on our corn ground,” Weaver shared.

By banding his fertilizer in strips right in the seed zone, Weaver is eliminating up to two field passes each season while driving nutrient uptake where it matters: to the root mass.

“I like to say it’s like a buffet for corn because it’s all right there, right where the plant needs it to be. Now it’s just feeding all the time,” Weaver said.

Locally, the practice also results in a per-acre premium. H2 Ohio Now is a program that incentivizes sub-surface phosphorus applications to keep nutrients from washing off the top of fields during spring rainstorms.

Even with that additional revenue, the use of such a specialized tool is not cheap, which is what Weaver said farmers should know right off the bat.

“We're not broadcasting anymore, so say you raise the same amount of bushels as last season but now you don’t have to pay the local coop for fertilizer application,” Weaver said. “There are cost-share options for farmers who can maybe get a group of neighbors together, and you can go in on something like this, and everybody benefits.”

Oddball Farmer

Evansville, Indiana, farmer Ben Kron sees himself as a bit of an oddball among his farming peers. While most hail from long familial legacies working the land they have now inherited, Kron represents just the second generation of his brood to work ground along the meandering Ohio River in southern Indiana.

Appearing at the New Holland booth, which itself was awash in newish equipment such as the CR11 combine and the T9 SmartTrax tractor, Kron says he makes attending events such as Commodity Classic a priority each year because it helps him improve.

“It's always nice to see the new technology and new equipment out there, and some of the information sessions they have going on all week,” Kron said. “The main thing I come for is to learn from people who know more than I do, and hopefully go back and be able to do something better.”

Kron was on a mission to uncover something to help offset the dreaded $4 corn price that seemed to hang over the proceedings like a cheap JC Penney suit.

“A lot of it at the end of the day is, you know, making sure the dollars going out are going to match the dollars coming in, but there is a lot of technology [that can help] and a lot of it is here,” Kron said. “There’s a lot of stuff here to help us be more efficient, and there's even computer programs to help us spend our dollars more wisely and make sure we're really keeping track of what we're doing.”

Kron was also in Houston to see the new CR11 up close and personal and take a look under the side panels and really understand all of the improvements New Holland has made to the latest iteration. Its dual-rotor power plant and increased capacity equate to potentially replacing two older combines with one, enabling Kron to harvest his 2,000-plus acres quicker this fall with one less operator.

“Some of the things they've changed and updated make little things better and more convenient for us,” Kron added. “It's pretty neat to see, and you’ve got some other equipment around here that's neat to see what's new and what's going on.”

Here's a quick video from the aisles of Commodity Classic.