In a bi-level red barn setback from a winding country road that weaves through the Central Ohio landscape, first generation farmer Brent Pence has built a corn and soy operation many never imagined would come to fruition.
“Everyone told us we wouldn’t make it, that we weren’t going to make this dream happen, and we’re still here,” says the easy-going farmer on a sun splashed, breezy spring morning.
Folks in town had doubts because they knew Pence didn’t grow up on a farm or hit the genetic lottery by inheriting thousands of acres. His father spent his career as a skilled machinist in New Carlisle, Ohio, a quaint rural enclave halfway between Dayton and Springfield. If that town sounds familiar, it might be because in 1933, the infamous cat burglar John Dillinger commissioned his first bank heist there — nabbing a cool $10,000 from the New Carlisle National branch on Main Street.
Meeting Pence for the first time, you can tell there is a fire fueling him beyond big scores and scale ticket dollar signs. After starting with 123 acres of rented ground from his longtime business mentor, Jerry McMahan, today he calls the shots across 4,500 acres of cropland spread over a 50-mile radius. Pence jokingly refers to his area as the “Boulder Belt” due to its rock-filled, clay pan soils.
The college-grad-turned-row-crop-farmer speaks with a booming, rapid-fire cadence and bounces back and forth from what he’s excited about at the time to tales of hilarious adventures on the goat and livestock showing circuit with his wife, Christine, and daughter, Paige.
Luckily for us, Pence was all fired up about his new approach to nitrogen management and application technology when we dropped in on him. Planting season was so close in his neck of the woods that you could almost taste the airborne soil dust dancing on the early spring breeze.
Shifting to Spoon-fed
Many seasons ago, Pence dove head first into late-season nitrogen on corn research. Convinced it would drive his yields higher and pay off, he got his hands on a Hagie high-clearance sprayer and went in at V13-V14 to spoon-feed nitrogen on 400 acres that first year. Before the Hagie came roaring into his life, he often steered a side dress rig to put nutrients on around V4-V5.
“I don’t care who it is – whether it’s DeKalb, Channel or Pioneer – all of these hybrids today react to late-season nitrogen,” Pence says. “Most of the guys around here put anhydrous on and maybe do a side dress before they head to the lake, then we normally get really dry, and you’ll see the corn brown out. But ours stays green. We don’t go to the lake either. We work all summer.”
Pence saw a yield bump of 14 bushels per acre. He also noted hardier plants that better withstood the blustery mid-summer windstorms common to mid-Ohio.
“I would call it standability. The corn is not cannibalizing itself anymore to make an ear. Now the nitrogen is right there where the plant can use it to make the ear,” he adds.
Last winter, Pence signed the papers on a brand new 2025 Hagie STS 16 from his local AgPro dealership. He’s excited to run that shiny, hulking graphite and yellow sprayer all summer long - the pilot seat his favorite throne of all.
Tech Tools
Another benefit Pence discovered – after running two passes over 350 acres of winter wheat this spring – is how easy it is to steer the new Hagie around his smaller, oddly shaped fields with a front-mounted boom. Add John Deere’s ExactApply technology, which turns off individual nozzles on the boom where it knows the sprayer has already applied, and AutoTrac guidance with the G5 display, and you get why he’s so at home in this cab.
He also says John Deere’s Boom Recirculation upgrade has saved him money and headaches. Now, he’s able to reclaim 50 to 70 gallons of product from the boom back into the tank.
And then there’s the John Deere Operations Center mobile app. Pence whips out his iPhone and knows exactly what his machines and operators are doing, how long until they finish a field, and where he needs to send the tender truck to keep those guys working. Christine, who has a day job with the Ohio Department of Agriculture, can also keep track of everything going on from her office upstairs in the farmhouse.
During one particularly busy spring planting season, before she knew about the app, Brent was watching her work a field in Operations Center when he noticed she was stopped for awhile.
“I called her and said, ‘Hey, you’re not moving. I’m almost done. I can come help you in a few minutes.’ And she goes, “You knew I wasn’t moving? How the hell did you know that?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that’,” he recalls with a chuckle. “So, I get down there and she’s standing there pointing this screwdriver at me and she goes ‘You have two options, so you better tell me how you knew I wasn’t moving,’ and I was like ‘Well, there’s this app I have on my phone.’ and she’s like, what!?”
Of course, that transparency goes both ways. Brent has had to answer for his own periods of inactivity as well. And when Paige makes her return to the farm this summer from college, she’ll have the Operations Center app, too. When she’s not out helping her customers win awards on the show animal circuit or breeding new goats for the future crop of customers, she’ll be on the farm helping out right next to mom and dad.
That basically sums up Brent Pence: he loves his family and farming, and he’s always thinking about that next piece of machinery or technology that can give him a leg up on ol’ Mother Nature.
“This journey we’re on as a family, the whole farming thing has been such a blessing,” Pence says. “And when Paige came into this world, we were able to spend time showing livestock all over the country with her. It’s just been pretty unreal, and it’s been a hell of a ride, that’s for sure.”
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