CROP PRODUCTION

Winter Wheat Conditions Plunge as Drought Grips the Southern Plains

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:56:52 GMT

The 2026 winter wheat crop is off to a rocky start as dry conditions and harsh weather take a toll on production across the Southern Plains. According to USDA’s first Crop Progress report of the season, just 35% of the winter wheat crop is rated in good to excellent condition. It is a sharp decline from the 48% reported at this time last year.

While a third of the crop is rated fair, the situation is particularly dire in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Nebraska following a combination of challenging winter conditions and persistent dry weather. “Things are looking pretty rough, as we get into the heart of this early growing season for 2026,” says USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey.

(United States Department of Agriculture)

Texas Facing Extreme Moisture Deficits

In Texas, the situation is especially critical, with more than half of the winter wheat rated poor to very poor. Rippey says the state recently endured its fourth-driest stretch from September to February in the last 131 years.

Cody Pruser, a farmer near Winters, Texas, says the recent moisture hasn’t been enough to save much of the crop. “We got some rain recently, but it’s all too late, wheat’s burned up and it’s not going to make a whole lot, it’ll be below average in most places,” Pruser says. His area received about 1.5 inches of rain last week — the first significant moisture since December.

However, the timing was far from ideal. “We’ve missed the February to March rains. We’re getting them toward the end of March, the first of April, but it seems like it’s a little too late. We had decent moisture when we planted, but not much after that,” he explains.

Drought Conditions Broaden Across the Plains

Data from the latest U.S. Drought Monitor confirms the severity of the situation. More than 95% of the Southern Plains are experiencing some level of drought or abnormal dryness. In Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado, that figure reaches nearly 100%.

Despite the moisture deficit, Pruser remains cautiously optimistic he will harvest a better crop than last year, though he notes disease pressure is now a growing concern. Pruser says the biggest concern for his wheat this year is damage from High Plains virus on wheat. He predicts about 10% of his crop is impacted, which means quite a few of his acres will be unable to be harvested.

“It’s really the main concern we have with our wheat going on right now. [There is] no way to control it, nothing really to do about it,” he says.

Driest spots in the U.S. over the last 180 days.

(Brad Rippey, USDA Meteorologist)

Rippey’s Weather Outlook

Rippey says the subsoil moisture in Kansas means the state could see a turnaround from drought. The 1" to 2" of rain expected to hit the southern great plains and lower Midwest could make a big difference. “Maybe for some of the earlier wheat on the Southern Plains, we can still turn the corner and bring back some yield potential,” he says.

However, Rippey isn’t sure Western acres, or those in the central Great Plains will be able to come back from dry conditions. “Wheat’s already heading out in the far South. When you look at the numbers coming in out of Oklahoma and Texas, there’s only so much recovery at this point you’re going to have,” he says.

Control the Controllables To Capture More Bushels

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:27:18 GMT

A solid game plan addressing key fundamentals could be the most powerful risk-management tool farmers have going into the 2026 season, according to Randy Dowdy and David Hula. Here are four they encourage farmers to review and work on this winter:

Fuel The Crop Adequately

Hula stresses that even in low-margin years, you can’t cut corners on fundamental crop needs. He emphasizes using soil tests to manage N, P and K, looking at soil pH and applying lime where needed.

“When you think about where you’re spending dollars, you can’t waiver from that,” he says. “We have to cover the basics… there’s nothing that’s sexy about farming right now, [everyone’s] just trying to survive.”

Why Your Planter Is the Lowest Hanging Fruit for Yield

Randy Dowdy says the planter represents the “lowest hanging fruit” for yield improvement on 90% of U.S. farms.

“The planter is just not performing at the levels to reach the maximum potential that most farmers need to support and service debt,” Dowdy says.

He encourages growers to spend time in the shop, ensuring that every row unit is capable of delivering “picket fence” seed placement and performance. For Dowdy, this means every seed is placed at a consistent depth and spacing, emerging within a tight window of 10 to 12 Growing Degree Units (GDUs) of one another

“Does every seed have the same standard deviation between them, the placement from one seed to the next? Are they all singulated, and are they all coming up at the same time? If that’s not happening, that’s a big deal,” Dowdy says.

Consider Seed Size Along With Good Genetics

While every farmer is tuned into genetics, Dowdy and Hula say they can benefit from taking seed size into consideration, too.

One of the questions Hula says he often gets is, “What’s the best seed size to plant?”

After years of analyzing small rounds versus large flats, his philosophy has evolved into a practical rule of thumb.

“My answer now is simple: whatever your planter plants the best, that’s the seed you want to plant,” he says.

But that only works if you’ve done your homework on the meters—cleaning them, replacing worn parts, and calibrating them with actual seed to determine the vacuum and speed settings. Taking these steps can eliminate guesswork that leads to skips and doubles.

Generally, Dowdy observes that “Deere likes rounds, Precision likes flats.”

Both Dowdy and Hula caution against the temptation of buying plateless (mixed-size) seed just because it carries a lower price tag. Their take: if you use it, run side‑by‑side strips with good, graded seed so you can see the real yield cost.

“I’d really challenge [anyone using plateless seed] to plant some graded seed next to it… just so you could know what it’s costing you. It’s costing you money,” says Hula.

Take Only Calculated Risks, ‘Miss Small’

Dowdy says this is the year to “control the controllables” and stick with practices you know consistently pay. He warns that farmers can’t afford big mistakes in this economy. While he’s not afraid of trying new practices, he is afraid of not being profitable and not being able to service debt, so due diligence and ROI have to come first.

“If we’re going to have a fail, we don’t need to fail in a big way. We need to miss small in an economy like this,” Dowdy says. “I’ll put my big toe in the water, but it won’t be my whole foot and a bunch of acres.”

A Checklist For Reference This Winter

Here are additional highlights of recommendations Dowdy and Hula listed during their most recent Breaking Barriers With R&D podcast. These are not all-inclusive, but rather a starting point for farmers preparing for spring:

1. Soil and Fertility Basics

Lime and pH: Check pH by zone or grid. Apply lime only where pH is low. Avoid wasting inputs on ground at 6.5 or higher.
Manganese Alert: Watch for potential deficiencies in high pH spots (above 6.8).
P and K Strategy: Use recent soil tests to determine if Phosphorus can be reduced. Keep Potash a priority where base saturation justifies the spend.

2. The Planter Bar and Row Units

Parallel Arms: Inspect for “oblong” wear or side play. Replace any arms that aren’t tight.
Double-Disc Openers: Use a jig to check run-out. Only use blades that meet tight tolerances for a clean V-trench.
Gauge Wheels: Lift by hand. If they feel loose or drop instantly, adjust or replace the bushings and arms.
Alignment: Use a tape measure to verify every row is exactly on target (e.g., 30 inches). Ensure the toolbar is perfectly level front-to-back at operating height.

3. Seed Trench and Closing System

Centering: Run the planter across concrete. Ensure closing wheel marks are perfectly centered over the seed path.
Row Cleaners: Adjust “trash whippers” to move residue without gouging a deep furrow that could lead to erosion or crusting.

4. Seed and Meter Calibration

Match Seed to Meter: Generally, John Deere/ExactEmerge systems prefer rounds, while Precision Planting systems prefer flats.
The Meter Test: Replace worn belts and brushes. Calibrate meters annually on a test stand using your actual seed to determine the exact vacuum and speed settings.
The “Plateless” Warning: Avoid the temptation of cheap, mixed-size seed. If you use it, run a side-by-side strip against graded seed to measure the true cost of lost bushels.

5. Management Mindset

Miss Small: This is the year for calculated risks. Put your “big toe” in the water with new tech, but don’t commit the whole farm until you see a proven ROI on your own soil.
Check Strips: Always leave a clean, untreated check strip when trying new products for evaluation.

Hear the latest Breaking Barriers With R&D to learn more about Hula and Dowdy’s recommendations at Farm Journal TV and the YouTube link below.

$900,000 Grant Helps Dakota BioWorx Take Bioproducts from Lab to Market

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:48:29 GMT

A grant from the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development to Dakota BioWorx will help move South Dakota into the new bioeconomy.

South Dakota Governor Delivers Grant to Daktoa BioWorx

South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden was on hand to announce the $900,000 Future Fund grant for the non-profit bioprocessing facility at South Dakota State University.

“It makes perfect sense to focus on value added agriculture, and so the investment here is an investment in the future of South Dakota,” Rhoden says.

Dakota BioWorx is part of the POET BioProducts Center that opened for business in October of 2023. The facility helps startups developing new uses for crops to become commercially viable.

Bill Even, commissioner for the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development says without Dakota BioWorx some research would never make it out of the lab.

“How do you get something from the bench to actually scale and get into the full blown business world?” Even asks. “This investment is designed to bridge that gap.”

New Biotech Products

Dakota BioWorx has over 30 businesses interested in working with them on biobased products. According to Dakota BioWorx president and CEO Craig Arnold says some are biotech products with functional uses for farmers.

“Lots to do with improving yields, alternative fertilizers, alternative herbicides, insecticides, soil adjuvents,” Arnold says.

Biobased Innovations

Others are biobased innovations using corn, soybean oil, meal and hulls produced in South Dakota and the region. Jeff Thompson, is a Colton, S.D., farmer and director on the South Dakota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, which provided checkoff support for the facility. He says they are excited about the future for South Dakota crops.

“A lot of the feed stocks are coming from, you know, the crops we raise to go into these new products,” Thompson says. “You just have to break them down and build them back up again to a new usage.”

Opening New Market and Revenue Streams

Daniel Scholl, vice president of research/economic development at SDSU says the goal is to provide new markets for farmers.

“Opening new markets for products that have corn or soybeans or derivatives, their processed derivatives as ingredients,” Scholl says, “so its all about new market opportunities domestically and globally.”

And building demand through new uses helps improve the bottom line of farmers like David Struck. He farms near Wolsey and is chairman of the South Dakota Soybean Research and Promotion Council.

“Over time I think its going to improve usage, which if there’s usage, there’s price increase usually,” Struck says.

The other hope is demand from new bioproducts will help lessen the soybean industry’s dependence on China.

Farm CPA Estimates Per-Acre Bridge Payment Rates In Anticipation of Final USDA Numbers

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 20:47:39 GMT

The Trump Administration, recognizing the challenges in farm country related to trade negotiations and the impact on production costs and prices, is rolling out a new $12 billion aid program. The Farmer Bridge Assistance program is a one-time payment delivered to farmers, which the administration says have been impacted by unfair market disruptions.

“We have been looking at the impacts of a lot of components related to agriculture,” explains Richard Fordyce, USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation. “Some prices are not where we want to see them from the commodity perspective, and inputs seem to be very reluctant to come down, whether that’s fertilizer, crop protection, seed or equipment.”

Higher safety net reference prices for the major crops, approved in the One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year, are on the way but they won’t be available until October 2026. Hence, the decision to deliver a “bridge” payment was made, given the income challenges plaguing farmers in several corners of agriculture.

“The increase in those reference prices is going to really make a big difference from a safety net standpoint,” Fordyce adds.

Farmer Bridge Assistance Enrollment Starts Today

Getting enrolled begins today. Eligible producers must verify 2025 acreage reports by Dec. 19.

“I’m going to guess 99% of acreage reports are complete, but we want to give folks who maybe haven’t done an acreage report up to this point the opportunity to get that acreage report filed,” Fordyce says.

He says most farmers likely did an acreage report by July 15 and fall-seeded crops were done in fall 2024.

"[These few days are] for the folks who have not done one or maybe historically don’t do them,” he explains. “It’s an opportunity for those folks to get that done.”

Payment Estimates Before Christmas

Fordyce says once the acreage numbers are in, they’ll finalize the payment rates by crop. Those will be ready by the week of Dec. 22.

“The reason we wanted to get that done before the first of the year is to give some certainty to producers,” Fordyce says. “If they’re trying to secure financing for the 2026 crop year, they’ll understand where they are financially and where this bridge payment will come in [to help] make a difference.”

Farm CPA Paul Neiffer says USDA appears to be considering a calculation for the Farmer Bridge Assistance similar to the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP).

“ECAP took the December 2024 marketing year average estimates from USDA and then subtracted the estimated cost of production for the 2024 crop and then applied a payment percentage,” Neiffer explains. "$10 billion was authorized for ECAP, $11 billion for Farmer Bridge Assistance. Therefore, it is likely Farmer Bridge Assistance payment rates will be at least 10% higher on average.”

Neiffer assumes any increase in the cost of production for 2025 compared with 2024 will be about the same percentage for all crops. Therefore, the only difference between ECAP and FBA is the estimated marketing year average price.

Here are his estimates for final Farmer Bridge Assistance payment rates for six crops:

If this tracks with USDA’s final calculations, it’s clear Southern farmers, those raising cotton and rice, will see higher per-acre payouts than soybean growers in the Midwest. USDA says these payments are expected to be delivered by the end of February 2026.

USDA says Farmer Bridge Assistance applies to producers of a broad list of row crops and oilseeds, including:

Barley
Corn
Cotton
Peanuts
Oats
Rice
Sorghum
Soybeans
Wheat

Plus crops such as canola, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sesame and sunflower, among others.

A Bridge to 2026

The administration had been expected to roll out as much as $15 billion in aid back in October, but Rollins said the 43-day federal government shutdown pushed back the timeline.

During his first term, Trump directed about $23 billion in aid to farmers. Reuters reports producers this year were already on track to receive nearly $40 billion in ad-hoc disaster and economic assistance.

The new trade aid package is widely welcomed, but many U.S. farmers say the damage from the trade war, and China’s boycott of U.S. soybeans through harvest, has already taken its toll. Billions of dollars in lost soybean sales pushed China toward South American suppliers, creating long-term financial and market consequences.

“Certainly we have an idea of what that gap is between where prices are and where the cost of production is [along with] just a whole bunch of other economic indicators,” Fordyce says. “We’re not going to be able to make up that full difference with this eleven billion but it certainly is a step in the right direction and it will offer some relief.”

Southern Rust Delivers A Harsh Wake-Up Call For Disease Control

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 22:50:46 GMT

Southern rust swept through the Midwest this past summer, taking big bites out of corn yield potential and forcing many growers to consider making late-season fungicide applications they hadn’t budgeted for.

Now, many farmers are asking themselves and their agronomic advisers how to plan for next season. A common question: Is southern rust going to be a significant problem in the Midwest again in 2026?

The answer: No one knows. Southern rust does not overwinter in crop residue – it has to blow in on winds from southern climes to be a problem for Midwest growers. So, what happens next year with the disease depends largely on how Mother Nature behaves.

Another fun weather fact from summer of 2025...
Chart showing why disease pressure was at biblical levels in areas this summer. Over two months of humidity levels WAY above average.

Mid June until beginning of September, nearly every day was above average humidity (blue line)… pic.twitter.com/eFHEDs4hs1
— Pioneer Troy (@deutmeyer_troy) November 18, 2025

Fungicides Paid Their Way
If there’s any silver lining to the challenge many farmers had with southern rust this year it’s that now almost everyone knows how yield-crippling the disease can be and the value fungicides can deliver.

Mary Gumz says she was fielding calls from concerned corn growers as early as the V10 to V12 growth stages of corn.

“It was a very different scenario than we’re usually in most years, and we were recommending that farmers spray earlier than usual,” recalls Gumz, a Pioneer agronomy manager.

With the tough economics farmers faced this season, some opted to forgo an application. But where corn growers made the hard call and applied fungicide, those fields delivered at harvest.

“We got some big yield increases, and you could visually see the difference between those plants where we did make the early call [with a fungicide application] compared to the usual application at tassel timing,” she says.

Another factor that made southern rust so difficult to control this season is that, in many cases, a second application of fungicide was warranted where the disease had time to rebuild.

“You can get about two or three weeks of efficacy from a fungicide on southern rust, but don’t expect you’re going to get season-long control,” says Randy Dowdy, Valdosta, Ga., and partner in Total Acre . “I’m not aware of a fungicide that you can spray at tassel for southern rust and that will last 50, 60 days or until black layer.

Southern rust does not overwinter in corn residue like some other diseases, such as tar spot. Instead, if it shows up in the Midwest, it has arrived via winds from southern climes.

(Corteva/Pioneer)

Proactive Planning For Next Season Can Help
While southern rust is a concern, Kim Tutor, BASF technical marketing manager, encourages farmers to keep in mind those tough diseases, such as tar spot, northern corn leaf blight and gray leaf spot, that are annual disease challenges in the Midwest.

Tar spot overwinters in corn residue, ready to rebuild in corn crops when weather conditions are favorable to its development, and is making its way across the Corn Belt.

“Tar spot can be infecting a corn plant, causing damage internally for two to three weeks before we are able to detect a lesion or see symptomology on the surface of the leaf,” Tutor adds.

She says if you are in a situation where models show significant disease pressure is moving into your area or you are based in an area with tar spot pressure, for instance, to consider making an early application with a fungicide that has residual control during what she calls an optimized application window – as early as V10 and through at least R3.

If you are in an area with heavy tar spot levels or you are looking to push the envelope for yield, Tutor recommends making two fungicide applications in corn, keeping applications 20 to 28 days apart.

As for which fungicide you apply, for so-called driver diseases like tar spot or southern rust, Missy Bauer, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, recommends going with what she describes as “Cadillac” type chemistry, newer technology that features multiple modes of control.

Extension plant pathologists annually update fungicide efficacy ratings for various crops, including corn, via the Crop Protection Network website. You can check the ratings for each fungicide’s performance on various diseases using the Corn Fungicide Efficacy table. Some products work better on tar spot or gray leaf spot, whereas others are more effective on rusts and other diseases.

Given the outlook for grain prices next year, be sure to also check out the new Corn Fungicide ROI Calculator on the Crop Protection Network.
You can use the calculator to look at different scenarios (grain prices, expected yield, disease severity) to see the potential ROI on fungicide applications.

Currently data available in the calculator are from university uniform corn fungicide trials conducted across 19 states and Ontario, Canada between 2019 and 2022. Primary diseases in this data set were tar spot and southern rust.

(Crop Protection Network)

Your next read: Red Crown Rot Rising: What Every Soybean Grower Needs to Know For 2026

Wisconsin Farmers Battle Remnants of Big August Rain and Disease Pressure at Harvest

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 21:33:13 GMT

A slow start to the day due to drizzle is the perfect opportunity to get grain to the dryer.

“Three weeks ago we did some corn just to test everything, and it was 28% to 29% moisture,” explains Casey Kelleher, a farmer in Whitewater, Wis. “We got back into it last week, and it was down to 18%. Now we’re into some 15%, and it’s going right into the bin.”

That quick dry down is keeping their harvest pace high and trucks rolling across their on-farm scales.

“We got beans done in about a week,” Kelleher says.

Big August Rain

That quick turn followed a challenging finish for the crop, which saw a massive 11" to 13" rain in early August.

“The biggest impact we saw was in soybeans,” Kelleher says. “It brought in disease, even though we had treated with fungicide and really killed our yield. It’s still a respectable yield, but not what we were expecting going into pod fill.”

While disease took a bite out of beans, Kelleher credits that timely fungicide application for preserving the crop as he watched disease pressure ravage the corn belt.

“If you walk and look at our corn, we have tar spot,” he admits. “Iowa and southwest Wisconsin got hit with a southern rust pretty bad. We had a little bit; we were fortunate it didn’t come in until late.”

Casey Kelleher farms in Whitewater, WI

(Wyffels)

Yields Keep Pace with 2024

As their combines roll into corn this week, the yield results are proving respectable.

“I think it’ll be just a touch better than last year,” he says as 240 flashes across the yield monitor (although he doesn’t always trust its accuracy). “Test weights are probably the same to a little better than last year.”

Today, they’re harvesting a farm that was underwater during that big August rain.

“We had to pump water off because the water was as high as the ears in some spots,” Kelleher says. “We got it off fast enough that it didn’t take the crop down.”

The biggest challenge this harvest has been back at the bin and deciding what needs to go through the dryer. Much of the corn is within a point of being dry enough, and so it’s forcing them to mix and match and make decisions load by load.

Input Costs Top 2026 Concerns

It’s all part of the harvest process as this Wisconsin team hustles toward the finish line of 2025 and makes plans for 2026.

“At the top of my list are input prices,” Kelleher says. “We’ve been so religious with putting down inputs, not over-applying, but using our variable rate prescriptions to put on what we need, where we need it for the yield we’re getting, but we’re going to cut back this year just because of the prices. I mean, you’ve got to be able to try to turn a profit and not put it all into the ground.”

They continue to face the unknowns of the future while counting this season’s performance in the present. Fundamental agronomy, timely applications and reasonable weather teamed up for this farmer to hit their 2025 expectations.

Master The Use of Growing Degree Units to Boost Corn Yield Potential

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 16:11:15 GMT

The calendar used to play a significant role in David Hula’s decision on when he would head to the field and start planting corn. That’s not the case anymore.

“I’m not so hung up on the date now as I am on the temperature at which we’re putting seed in the ground,” says Hula, owner of Renwood Farms near Charles City, Va.

That doesn’t mean he pays no attention to the calendar, though. Sometime during the last week of April through the first week of May is usually the sweet spot to start planting corn, Hula says.

But that’s not always true. Experience has taught him that it’s more important to focus on the extended weather forecast than the date, making sure he has a soil temperature above 55°F at planting time and growing degree units (GDUs) that are accumulating quickly.

“Fifteen or so years ago, we used to talk about wanting to get 40 GDUs in a five-day forecast after planting,” he recalls. “Now, as we’re getting into these higher-yield environments, I want an even higher GDU accumulation in those first five days after planting.”

That kind of attention to detail has helped Hula achieve top honors in the National Corn Yield Contest 12 times over the years. His 623.8439 bu.-per-acre yield in 2023 marked the fifth time he set the record for U.S. corn yields.

The More GDUs, The Better For Emergence
While the required amount can vary somewhat by hybrid, a common range of GDUs needed for corn to emerge is between 100 to 150 GDUs, according to Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal field agronomist.

Ferrie says referencing GDUs offer growers a more reliable method to predict corn emergence as well as key development stages during the season than the use of calendar days.

“The amount of GDUs a specific corn hybrid requires to reach each development stage during the growing season remains constant from year to year,” he says. “However, the amount of time a specific hybrid needs to accumulate those heat units can vary considerably each year due to planting date, field conditions, soil temperature and weather conditions.”

Those factors, which can be highly variable, are why Hula focuses so much on having a good extended forecast at planting. “We want that corn to come up out of the ground fast,” he says. “In our best yielding years, that’s one of the things we’ve had.”

Hula defines fast as seeing the crop spike at between six and (not quite) seven days, emerging in a uniform, picket-fence stand across the field.

Scrutinizing management and agronomic details and tweaking them as Mother Nature dictates instead of just relying on a calendar date makes fast, uniform emergence achievable, he tells fellow corn yield champion and Total Acre business partner Randy Dowdy, who’s based near Valdosta, Ga.

Planting Practices Impact Corn Development
Something Dowdy and Hula say other corn growers could benefit from is paying more attention to planting depth and germination depth. Ideally, they end up being one and the same.

“I want my seed to be planted at 2”, and I want it to germinate at 2” and stay there,” Hula says. “I don’t want a scenario where all of a sudden we get some rain, and the soil is compressed, so now that seed germinates at 1.5”.”

Planting corn at a depth of 2” when soil moisture is adequate is ideal for nodal root development , according to Paul Yoder, Pioneer field agronomist. Nodal roots are vital for structural support and are responsible for most of the water and nutrients the plant needs. Five sets of nodal roots are optimal for maximizing potential.

The Mystery of Shifting Soils Explained
Dowdy tells Hula that corn growers are often puzzled by how their corn roots have developed when they check fields a month or so after planting. The growers are certain they planted their corn at 2”, but the evidence says otherwise.

“We’ll be digging some plants, and we’ll see a lot of brace roots above the ground,” Dowdy says. “That initially makes me wonder if the farmer had a wind event or some type of stress, because there’s a lot of issues with the root development.”

More often than not, Dowdy says the issue is the soil above the seed settled – either because of poor attention to detail while the farmer planted or from a significant rain event. If the ground settled, then the corn likely germinated and emerged at a soil depth shallower than desired.

“It often depends on what type of tillage you’re using, if you’re running trash sweeps, or a no-till coulter, and then what kind of closing system you have,” Hula explains. “A lot of times people don’t want to believe that, but it happens.”

Dowdy adds that it’s not just the conventional growers who experience the problem of the ground settling.

“It happens in all scenarios, whether in vertical till, strip-till or even in a stale seedbed,” Dowdy says. “Year to year, we just don’t know how much that ground is going to settle.”

A Pro Tip For Checking Planting and Germination Depth
Corn growers can simulate ground settling with a practice Dowdy and Hula use for that purpose: they smack the soil.

“Take your hand and use the bottom of your palm to hit the soil just above where you planted the seed. That’s going to simulate a rain event and give you a good indication of how that ground would or did settle, and what your emergence depth is,” Dowdy explains.

For growers in the process of planting corn, Hula encourages them to get off the tractor and check the quality of their planting practices.

“Check every corn row, not just one of them,” Hula advises. “Every row is an individual, so take time to check each one and make sure they’re all the same. Adjust as necessary for uniform planting.”

More Insights Available In Breaking Barriers Podcast
Dowdy and Hula are sharing their agronomic insights in their Breaking Barriers podcast to challenge growers to think differently to farm better and maximize profits.

In this week’s discussion, they address a variety of timely topics, including:

reasons to plant three or four different populations of corn in a field
how to use a flag test to evaluate emergence and development
the value of setting yield goals to reach higher yield levels
using tissue sampling in-season to add more yield

Watch the podcast at Farm Journal TV - Agriculture video on demand

For more insights on Hula and Dowdy’s planting progress and agronomic insights, check out their discussion with Chip Flory on Breaking Barriers - AgriTalk

Your next read: Want to Boost Soybean Yields But Not Costs? Sunlight Can Help

Cornhusker King: Visionary Nebraska Farmer Paved Road to Modern Ag

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 12:05:05 GMT

What is the measure of a farmer at twilight?

Record yields, big dollars, giant acreage? All for naught, says Stan DeBoer.

“The only things that mattered were the Good Lord, my wife, my daughters, and helping other farmers,” he insists. “The rest was noise.”

A strongbox of a man with python arms, hands of stone, every inch of 6’4”, dark hair flowing under a trucker hat, garbed in t-shirt, Levi’s, and cowboy boots on Nebraska dirt, DeBoer was a force of nature. Think Elvis with muscles.

Decades ahead of his time, DeBoer rode risk as an ethanol pioneer, Tractorcade driver, irrigation innovator, gubernatorial candidate, and vital player during the wildest soybean heist in U.S. history, each endeavor toe-tagged with an undeniable maxim—first bird to fly gets all the arrows.

Stan DeBoer paid the costs of success for future generations of American farmers.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

In the FBI’s labyrinthine basement, at the back of a forgotten filing cabinet, a surveillance file surely exists on the activities of a renegade DeBoer. Likely spilled across the first memo: This Nebraska farmer is a born leader, keeps his word at all costs, and stirs the passions of fellow producers. Stan DeBoer is a damn problem.

Roll the Dice
In 1938, on the flats of Gosper County in southcentral Nebraska, a stick-built home with no electricity or plumbing saw the birth of DeBoer. Six months later, after surrounding land was slated for the bottom of a 2,000-acre irrigation reservoir, DeBoer’s father, George, put the bare-bones home on wheels, and as bread dough baked in the tiny kitchen’s wood stove, he rolled the structure to dry ground roughly a section distant—supper ready on arrival, still warmed by the waning embers.

House moving and bread baking—all in a day for the DeBoer family.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

The bliss of a rural childhood doglegged in 1945 after the loss of DeBoer’s mother, Effie, to cancer. With George punching a clock at an ammunition naval depot in nearby Hastings, young DeBoer spent every summer into his teens chasing the shadow of an older brother, Bryce, working corn and soybean rows in Cozad, 100 miles west of Hastings. Farming became DeBoer’s outlet—and gameplan in life.

“What I was doing in those fields was a disaster, but fall still came every year,” he says. “Bryce looked out for me and he became like a second father. I learned and learned, and it stirred an internal desire to farm.”

At an early age, DeBoer hoed his own row beyond farming, and at a head taller, he kept an eye out for the weaker party. “Maybe nothing bothered me as much as someone pushing down an underdog. I was always capable of defending myself, and I did likewise with my friends. I never worried about sharing the same opinion with the crowd.”

Young Stan DeBoer, bottom left.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

At high school’s end, DeBoer clawed for a toehold in agriculture. Despite no father in farming and no family land, he possessed unshakeable belief and a willingness to roll the dice.

“Risk has always been farming,” explains DeBoer, now 86. “I was never afraid of debt. I’d go buy a tractor tomorrow, because the moment you make that purchase and drive away onto the road, you’ve made a statement: ‘You believe.’”

Eighteen-year-old DeBoer was certain his future ran along a straight line to farming—until a young lady crawled under his 1951 Mercury 4-door.

It was obvious: She was the one.

Dark Elvis
Born by fire. Literally.

Young Bonnie Nielsen, bottom left.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

In 1940, heavily pregnant Vivian Nielsen, along with her husband, Herman, scrambled to put out a prairie fire adjacent to the couple’s dairy operation. The exertion triggered the premature birth of Bonnie Nielsen—raised to weather every wind of the farming life.

When Herman wasn’t tending cows, he drank coffee by the pot at the Dixie Inn in Cozad; it was his office. In early 1958, 18-year-old Bonnie walked into her father’s haunt and slid into a booth just as DeBoer entered the joint.

Thunderstruck, Stan and Bonnie: “Taken together, they were an awesome looking pair—really special. Hook’em up together to any wagon and they could pull it,” describes Wayne Cryts.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

DeBoer eyeballed the girl with hair spun from sunshine. DeBoer was thunderstruck by the dairyman’s daughter. Dark Elvis met blonde beauty.

“I remember the exact booth where Bonnie was sitting,” he says. “I just happened to know the girl she was with, and I walked over to them. Bonnie was a nurse’s aide at the hospital, so I asked if I could drive her to work.”

On the road into town, DeBoer’s tire caught a nail. A most fortuitous puncture.

The DeBoer daughters: Kris, Ginny, Johna, Leigh, and Stephanie in the arms of Stan.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

“I got out to change the tire, and the next thing I knew, Bonnie was laying on the ground, helping to fix the flat. I knew right then she was the best thing ever to happen to me—the luckiest night of my life. I was afraid she might not be real.”

Real, indeed. Bonnie was golden-hearted, steel-backboned, razor-tongued.

Months later, the Nebraska teens walked the aisle. Truly, a matched pair.

“She was my everything and my world to this day,” DeBoer says, his voice breaking. “A lover, and I have five children to prove it. A hugger, and I have a widespread community to prove it. A homemaker, and I have the quality of my lifetime to prove it. What role didn’t she play?”

Stan and Bonnie impacted the lives of thousands of rural Americans—repeatedly standing in the gap with no gain at hand.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

“Bonnie guarded our home, patterned five daughters after herself, and was beside me for every farming step I ever took,” DeBoer adds. “Of every event to come in our life, she was never afraid. All the dumb ideas I had were never dumb to Bonnie, and that made the world easy to conquer.”

The pieces were in place for a monumental farming life.

Return to the Plow
Presenting his bride with a pink, two-bedroom home north of Cozad, DeBoer’s domestic bliss contrasted with an agricultural operation stretched painfully thin—one well and a handful of cattle. “Generally, we were raising 100-bushel corn and getting $1 per bushel, with the elevator probably taking a nickel. Inputs were cheap, but accumulation of money was impossible. I don’t remember holding a $100 bill in that era, and very few $20 bills.”

No fear: Stan DeBoer takes the mic and rallies farmers at a benchmark moment in agriculture history—the Ristine soybean raid.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

At 22, DeBoer talked his way into a temporary carpentry job (along with Army Reserve duty) with AT&T to build a link in a chain of line-of-site towers. “I should have paid them for the lifetime of knowledge I gained in five months,” he says. “I never stopped using those skills on the farm.”

When AT&T’s Cozad construction was completed, the outfit boss approached DeBoer with a lucrative work offer at another location, and a potential spot in the leadership chain.

DeBoer returned to his plow.

11-Mile Snake
When old money owns the land, sometimes a switch is in order.

In 1966, DeBoer pulled stakes and moved his family 30 miles southeast to the edge of Bertrand in Gosper County, trading the little pink house for a curiosity hidden behind a vast curtain of sunflowers. The inner core of DeBoer’s new home was an old railroad depot.

DeBoer’s tractorcade train snakes toward Washington, D.C., 100 miles per day.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

He worked rented ground for $300 per month and a fifth of the yield. His first year, targeting 125-bushel irrigated corn, he rolled snake eyes: The crop was hailed out for a total loss. Roll’em again.

Row by row, field by field, DeBoer pieced together an operation into the 1970s, but as he navigated between stability and prosperity on his own ground, commodities nosedived and the agriculture economy plummeted in tandem, pulling down farms across the U.S.

“We were like so many other farmers—always extending the numbers to go one more year,” DeBoer recalls. “Always having to convince a lender to go again. Something had to change. And it can never just be about solving your own farm problems: What about all those farmers coming after you? There’s right, wrong, and responsibility in farming, and part of that is trying to work for change beyond your own lifetime.”

A farmer army in Washington, D.C., 1979.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

In 1977, amid the agricultural maelstrom, 350 miles southwest of DeBoer in Baca County, Colorado, five farmers seeded the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), aimed at two basic principles. One, parity: A fair price on crops to just cover the costs of production and enable a farmer to make a survivable living. Two, country of origin labeling (COOL).

A true populist surge, with no official leadership, AAM exploded via local farmer meetings and phone trees, resulting in a series of protests at county, state, and national levels. Ringleader by example, DeBoer leaped into the fray. Tip of the spear by nature.

Foremost among the protests was the 1979 Tractorcade (DeBoer also participated in numerous AAM events and provided congressional testimony on Capitol Hill about the state of U.S. ag) to Washington, D.C.—an epic 5,000-tractor farmer army that crossed the continent at the height of winter in four separate convoys. The producers rumbled into the nation’s capital and occupied the National Mall, demanding Congress address the realities of an agriculture industry in collapse.

DeBoer’s Tractorcade branch set out for D.C. from North Platte, Neb., in January: 100 miles per day, 8 mph, dark morning to dark evening, 17 days on the road with snowfall on each day, including a blizzard.

At its furthest, the line of tractors and support vehicles snaked 11 miles—including the steady roll of an International 1256 with Bonnie at the wheel.

Respected and loved by all: Bonnie DeBoer.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

Fellow Tractorcade participants Eugene and Laurie Schroder (son and daughter-in-law of Gene Schroder, one of AAM’s five original Campo, Colo., founders) recall DeBoer and Bonnie. “Stan was so well-respected,” Eugene says. “So big and strong that he always stood out, but known more for being trustworthy. The whole family was that way, just outstanding.”

“Bonnie was a miracle lady,” Laurie echoes. “A blondie with a smile always on her face, yet so tough. A kind touch and looked so nice, but tough as nails.”

In a moss gold, 1976 Chevy pickup, DeBoer drove point ahead of the tractor train, negotiating with law enforcement to find highways and resting stops at amusement parks, fairgrounds, and parking lots.

Concerned over the D.C.-bound procession, the FBI dropped moles into the procession, garbed in blue-collar clothing. “At least from Galesburg, Ill., the government had plants with us dressed up like farmers,” DeBoer notes. “The message had hit Washington that we were truly coming, and they did their best to stall us on the road, because they knew we were going to converge with the other tractor trains and roll into town together.”

Scouting in front of the 11-mile snake, DeBoer was told by highway patrolmen to change routes, away from a major highway. Bulldog with a bone, DeBoer was not a man to be pushed. “I told them, ‘No way.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you drive back to the guys in the tractors and try telling each one which way they can go?’ That settled it.”

Stan DeBoer’s brother, Bryce, made waves to ensure the AAM message gained attention in D.C.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

Once in D.C., DeBoer, alongside producer Corky Jones, became the voice of Nebraska farmers. Every day, inside the offices of congressional reps on Capitol Hill, DeBoer laid out the why’s and how’s of the agriculture crisis and the extreme need for change.

Each night, he walked the farmer encampment stretched across the mall between Capitol Hill and the Washington Memorial. “I’d go from facility to facility to the trucks and trailers to answer questions. We’d have a final meeting at a motel each night, and every state had at least one representative individual. So many of us were fighting for our very farm existence.”

Several months later, the last remnant of AAM producers left D.C. “We tore up and reseeded the mall before we left,” DeBoer describes. “No doubt, we left it in better shape than we arrived. Did we do any good in Washington? We sure tried.”

After the 1979 Tractorcade and participation in other farmer protests in multiple states, with reputation building and profile expanding, DeBoer jumped headfirst into a buck-wild grain heist.

The Great Soybean Raid
In January 1981, in open defiance of the federal government, producer Wayne Cryts announced his intention to steal 32,000 bushels of his own soybeans held at the bankrupt Ristine elevator in New Madrid County in southeast Missouri.

Who else? Stan DeBoer front-and-center at the historic soybean heist in southeast Missouri.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

The soybeans, despite being grown and owned by Cryts, were considered part of the elevator’s bankruptcy losses. Cryts selected Feb. 16, George Washington’s birthday, as the day of liberation—the Great Soybean Raid.

Over 750 miles northwest of Ristine, DeBoer and Bonnie were incensed by the news of Cryts’ plight. Already on the federal radar after the AAM protest involvement in Washington, and despite nothing to gain except a felony prison sentence, they hit the highway, bound for the Missouri Bootheel. Arriving at the Ramada Inn in Sikeston, where Cryts was preparing for the logistics of the breakin-breakout with trucks and bucket brigades, DeBoer immediately threw his weight and reputation into the fray.

Recalling DeBoer’s support, Cryts is deeply grateful—and still impacted 44 years onward. “Stan DeBoer. Stan DeBoer,” Cryts repeats with emphasis. “Let me tell you about Stan DeBoer.”

“The first time I met Stan, he was somebody I respected from the first words he said and the standout way he conducted himself: A man of truth. The guy you want in your corner.”

“He was such an impressive physical specimen,” Cryts describes. “I’d say he had to be 6’4” or taller, and his wife, Bonnie, was a very nice-looking lady. Taken together, they were an awesome looking pair—really special. Hook’em up together to any wagon and they could pull it. Guaranteed.”

Wayne Cryts hold a sample jar of “stolen” soybeans from the Ristine raid.

(Photo by Chris Bennett)

DeBoer and a host of other farmers from Missouri and the Midwest were prepared, short of violence, to physically retrieve Cryts’ crop. “We wanted the American people to know exactly what was going on,” DeBoer says. “We hid nothing. I got on television and did an interview that night, letting everyone know what the government was up to and why we were taking the beans the next day.”

Surrounded by nervous U.S. marshals and FBI agents, DeBoer faced a genuine prospect of imprisonment. “They were tired of us and they had already experienced several months of us in Washington. Yes, I knew they recognized me by then, but I didn’t care. I was helping Wayne Cryts no matter what. If not, I could be next, or any farmer could be next. I could never just sit back on my own farmland and watch bad things happen to another farmer.”

Peeling tin, taking beans, making history at Ristine.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

At 10 a.m., Feb. 16, before the eyes of U.S. marshals and FBI agents, Cryts and a massive throng of farmers entered the Ristine elevator grounds, loaded almost 80 trucks (over two days), and drove away with 32,000-plus bushels of soybeans. Pressure cooker rattling, the feds stood down.

“I was in and out of the elevator office, dealing with federal authorities,” Cryts explains. “While the raid was going, there were a lot of guys out there who listened to Stan’s opinion of how to proceed. That’s how influential he was; that’s how powerful his reputation was.”

And when the trucks were loaded and leaving, after the intensity of the action waned, how did DeBoer behave? No glory; no backslapping. He organized the grating and cleaning of the elevator grounds.

“That’s my last memory of Stan,” Cryts says. “I saw him leading by example. I saw him and Bonnie walking around the elevator, holding a bag, and humbly picking up trash and cigarette butts out of the gravel. There they were, 1,000 miles from home, helping me for no other reason than they believed it was the right thing to do. Says a lot about a man. Says a lot about a woman. Says a lot about them.”

Trucks loaded with Wayne Cryts’ bushels at Ristine.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

On the elevator grounds, federal officers recorded every name and action. And DeBoer was already on their radar, Cryts says.

“I want to go on record and make people realize what I believe is the most important part of the whole deal,” Cryts emphasizes. “After Ristine, it was always said, ‘Wayne Cryts has courage.’ Let me tell reality. I acted out of desperation. The real courage on display was by Stan DeBoer and others there like him. Why? They jeopardized all they had for someone they didn’t know, and they knew they could get hurt, injured, in jail, or pay lifetime penalties—all of those consequences were very, very real. I’m saying Stan and Bonnie were the people with everything to lose, and that is rare courage in farming or any part of life.”

“Justice and freedom don’t depend so much on standing up for yourself as they do for standing up for others,” Cryts emphasizes. “That’s what Stan believes and that’s how he lived his life. I’ll never, never forget what he did. Stan DeBoer put his head in the noose for me.”

After the surreal raid at Ristine, firmly in federal crosshairs, DeBoer risked it all on a giant brew of corn and milo—fuel alcohol.

Keep the Wolves Away
In 2023, ethanol contributed $54.2 billion to GDP and sucked up roughly 40% of all U.S. corn yield—an industry partially built on the shoulders of DeBoer and other likeminded farmers who laid the foundation stones of modern renewable fuels.

Gasohol gallons.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

In 1981, DeBoer and his three farming brothers visited the Schroder family in Baca County, Colorado, to eyeball a fledgling ethanol operation. Remarkably visionary, the Schroders erected one of the first ethanol plants in U.S. history, built from scratch.

By hand, DeBoer and his siblings then constructed Nebraska’s first ethanol plant of sizable production—mild steel and 10,000-gallon tanks. “It was a financial opportunity for myself and a bigger one for my entire region. We could see how the future was shaping up.”

Right idea; wrong time. After trial and error, DeBoer hit the wall.

“Our plant worked so well, but it didn’t matter. We didn’t have the volume needed, and when the corn price went up 40 cents, and we couldn’t rely on the cattle industry to take our byproducts, we were in trouble. Additionally, we should have built with heavy stainless, but we didn’t know that earlier. Bottom line and final problem: Our debt limit.”

When the funds ran out, DeBoer and his brothers took an ethanol bath. “We had no means to pay what we owed. The only solution was closure. If you’re going into a venture and you don’t recognize the numbers, be careful. If you don’t have that number to lose, you better think hard. I didn’t listen, and it all ended on the debt line. A life of debt. That was me.”

“If you don’t have that number to lose, you better think hard,” says DeBoer.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

No blame. No self-pity. Just a fight to keep the wolves away.

On countless late nights in the 1980s, consumed by angst over his wife and daughters and the dismal state of agriculture, DeBoer walked the floor of Kirk’s truck stop outside Lexington, alongside a cohort of other farmers who couldn’t sleep. Their world looked different when the sun came up.

“The average outsider would just tell us to work harder and rent more land,” DeBoer says. “Sure, but when you have outside factors undercutting that, you better react. You better make sure the politicians care about what the country has for dinner.”

Words backed by action. DeBoer ran for governor.

Refusing the Plum
In 1982, with minutes to go before deadline, DeBoer filed paperwork and entered Nebraska’s gubernatorial race. “The guy in office (Charles Thone) had little care for the problems of agriculture, and my objective was to get him out.”

Stan DeBoer at Farm Aid lll at Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Neb., Sept. 19, 1987.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

At 42, DeBoer was still a physical presence, explains his grandson, Isaac Kuck.

“He’d never lifted weight in his life, unless you count tractor weights,” Kuck says. “At one of the primary debates, the candidates were sitting on stage and the guy beside my pop was leaning back in his chair, when the legs slid off the edge. Pop saw it happening and reached back with a single, giant hand on the back of the guy’s neck to keep him from crashing backwards and getting a serious injury. Incredible strength.”

DeBoer fared well in rural communities—but his campaign lacked the financial legs of other candidates. In 1982, Bob Kerrey was elected as governor of Nebraska. In the aftermath, over dinner, Kerrey offered DeBoer a plum job in his administration.

Stan DeBoer: Keeping the Wolves Away

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

“I suppose a lot of people would have taken the offer,” DeBoer reflects. “No, thanks. I went back to plowing.”

Back to his fields. Back to his Chevy pickup. Back to life as a creature of habit—leaving the rows at midday to answer the dinner bell and drink a glass of tea. Back to Bonnie.

A Farmer at Twilight
In 1981, a year prior to his gubernatorial run, DeBoer was blessed with the first of a “cream of the crop” fleet of 20 grandchildren and 34 great-grandchildren, a figurative beginning for his finest years—all devoted to family and friends.

Stan and Bonnie DeBoer, surrounded by legacy.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

In 2003, he handed the business end of the plow to his younger brother, Byron, and nephew, Jesse, still maintaining a mild hand in the operation. A workaday farm grind changed to mentorship, countless hours coaxing wood into handcrafted masterpieces (still to this day), and attention to a flowerbed and prosperous garden alongside Bonnie.

In July 2023, over 40 years past the peaks and valleys of tractorcades, grain grabs, and ethanol endeavors, Bonnie passed away at 83.

DeBoer pauses, gathers his emotions at her memory, his voice shaking. “Together. Always. Me and her. I’ll tell any man out there: If you are fortunate enough to marry a lady that is of the same mindset, you will be a tough pair to duel with.”

Stan DeBoer, alongside a golden-hearted, steel-backboned, and razor-tongued lady: Bonnie DeBoer.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

Hands-on, or indirectly, DeBoer and Bonnie impacted the lives of thousands of farmers and rural Americans—repeatedly standing in the gap with no gain at hand. See a need, meet a need.

“Theirs is a story where financials are not the determiner of wins and losses,” Kuck says. “My pop was never afraid to dream, and those dreams are what helped make others successful today.”

A man ahead of his time, DeBoer refused the comforts of status quo in favor of risk and rectitude. At every juncture of his farming life, DeBoer had the option to stay within the bounds of his own rows. Each time, he chose otherwise: “I’m a right and wrong fellow. I’d take any of those risks again if I thought it would help us all. Every risk was worth it because I have grandsons and nephews in farming now. I’ll tell them or anyone younger: Protect your ears; be careful with desire; don’t follow the crowd; and never believe anybody has magic.”

The last dance: Stan and Bonnie, forever and a day.

(Photo courtesy Megan Motis)

Full circle, what is the measure of a farmer at twilight? The integrity of Stan DeBoer.

“At the end of life, what does a man want on his tombstone? I hope mine says, ‘Helped the Underdog Farmer, Loved His Family, and Loved the Good Lord.’” DeBoer concludes. “Nothing else ever mattered.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

Corn on Corn Takes Root As Farmers Look for Profits

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 13:31:02 GMT

Last fall, a number of farmers in central Illinois told Ken Ferrie they were thinking about shifting acres to corn on corn for 2025, because the crop penciled out better than soybeans. Back then, only five or six months ago, it was mainly talk.

“But now growers are asking us to change their spread maps,” says Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist and owner of Crop-Tech Consulting, Heyworth, Ill. “When we start changing spread maps and shifting bean MAP to corn, we know growers are actually shifting acres to corn on corn.”

He adds that as farmers make the shift to follow the money they hope will be in corn, they need to be cautious. “Don’t make the shift on today’s market without protecting yourself,” Ferrie advises.

That’s sound advice and timely. If the window of opportunity to take crop insurance is still available, now is the time to consider it.

Here are some of Ferrie’s agronomic recommendations to help those farmers new to corn on corn create success for this season:

1. Use realistic yield goals. As a rule of thumb, plan on a 10-bushel reduction to your corn on corn yields over rotated corn.

“I know the experienced guys say their corn on corn out-yields their corn on beans, but that’s when we’ve got four or five years of corn on corn rolling nutrients forward,” Ferrie says.

If you aren’t experienced with corn on corn, that is unlikely to be your result. “The first year of corn on corn (the second year of corn) tends to be the roughest,” he says.

2. Plan on more insects and disease pressure. With insects, the main challenge is corn rootworm.

“If you’ve been using crop rotation to control your rootworm, you’ll need to add a trait or an insecticide,” Ferrie advises.

In addition, disease pressure will be higher in corn-on-corn acres, as well. This problem can usually be managed by hybrid selection and/or fungicide use.

“I would recommend not using the same hybrid in the field that you used there last year,” Ferrie says. “Stacking the same hybrid back-to-back in fields ups the chance of expressing the weakness of that hybrid.”

3. Be ready for the carbon penalty. Ferrie says paying the carbon penalty is something that gets new corn on corn growers in trouble most often.

Last year’s carbon left in the field will need to be decomposed to recycle the nutrients in it. This is done by the soil biology. To do this, it will consume phosphor, sulfur, nitrogen out of your soil.

Your corn plants cannot compete with the massive amount of biology out there, Ferrie notes. If the carbon penalty is not paid, your crop will stall out – sometimes for weeks – causing yellowing and stunting in the corn. How severe the carbon penalty is depends on a number of things.

Ferrie says to help you determine the potential severity, answer these four questions: How much residue needs to be decomposed? How much did the residue break down last fall or this winter? Where is the residue located? Is it on top of the field, or is it buried?

“This residue will cause a biological explosion when the soil temperatures get above 65 degrees Fahrenheit,” he says. “Corn can be green on Sunday, and yellow and crappy looking by Wednesday. You cannot stop the carbon penalty. You can only try to keep the corn plant happy while it’s taking place.”

4. Evaluate how much carbon needs to be decomposed. Ferrie offers several scenarios to get an idea of what to expect:

If you’ve chopped silage off the farm and brought back pit manure, the carbon penalty is less, more like corn on soybeans.

If you build corn stalks for bedding, the carbon penalty will be less. Corn stalks that you can see on top of the ground are not part of the carbon penalty, but the corn root system is, Ferrie says.

If you chiseled the corn stalks last fall, the carbon penalty will be much higher than it would be in a no-till corn on corn cornfield. “You chiseled the carbon into where the biology is, and it will be very aggressive,” he says. “If the fall was long and warm, some of the decomposing would have happened in the fall and early spring.”

Spring chiseling will deliver the highest carbon penalty, because you’re burying the residue right in front of the growing season.

Ferrie says some farmers’ fields were set up last fall to go to soybeans this spring and have cover crop rye growing in them.

“The carbon penalty will be a factor of both last year’s corn stalks and the rye that needs to be decomposed,” he says. “The trick is keeping the corn plant happy while this carbon penalty is consuming all the available nutrients.”

This will take implementing the four Rs of nutrients, most often in one of two ways. Ferrie explains:

A. One option is to flood the zone with nutrients, putting on a high enough rate of sulfur and nitrogen broadcast to the surface to get the corn through it. “This would probably take about two-thirds of your nitrogen and sulfur program,” Ferrie estimates.

Problem here is, if you receive heavy rains after application, it could push the nitrogen deeper into the soil, leaving behind some yellow corn until the root system is caught up with it at the depth that the nitrogen moved to.

Fall anhydrous is not good at paying the carbon penalty because of where it’s placed, Ferrie notes. “The carbon penalty happens at the surface, right there where the fence post rots off. Corn has to grow roots down to the anhydrous to be able to pick that N up and it may be caught in the carbon penalty before it gets there,” he says.

B. Option two, the second method, is using timing and the placement parts of the 4Rs. “Applying nitrogen and sulfur with the planter or the strip freshener is the most efficient way to pay the carbon penalty,” Ferrie says. “In most cases, that entails putting on 60 to 90 pounds of N with the planter, then following that up with the sidedress pass. You’re using timing and placement to overcome the carbon penalty. While the carbon penalty is raging all around the corn plant, it has a band of nutrients that it can pull from.”

5. Keep in mind that a picket-fence stand still matters. A corn-on-corn crop demands the same good stand to maximize yield as does corn after soybeans.

Trash pinning – when surface crop residue is pushed into the seed furrow by the planter coulters, potentially hindering seed-to-soil contact and germination – is a big problem with stand establishment in corn on corn. This is a much bigger issue if you chisel corn stalks where the residue is buried, and a row cleaner can’t sweep it away.

“Putting a kernel next to last year’s corn trash will bring in a lot of seedling blights and a lot of emergence issues,” Ferrie says. Soybeans aren’t bothered by this issue like corn is. Row cleaners in strip-till and no-till handle this issue fairly well.

Be aware that spring chiseling can create some very tough seed beds, full of clods, if they get dried out.

“When you’re spring chiseling, these fields need to be fitted down in a matter of hours,” Ferrie says. “Now, you may be able to chisel through the night and fit the field the next day, but don’t let these clods dry out before you level that field, or you’ll fight them the rest of the season.”

Spring strip-tilling of no-till stalks with a coulter and a row cleaner combination works well. “You put the row between last year’s row, right down the middle,” Ferrie says.

Spring strip-tilling with anhydrous and a mole knife brings the most risk. “You need a couple inches of rain to settle the strip and get all the air pockets out, as well as tame down the anhydrous core. I’ve seen February anhydrous burn corn in strip till, if we don’t get enough rain. Waiting for it to rain so you can plant your spring strip till could cause planting delays,” he says.

6. Look ahead to harvest. Ferrie says to consider whether you have the capabilities to handle a bigger corn crop. You may want to break up your harvest by widening your hybrid maturity selection.

Also, remember that when last year’s corn crop decomposes, it gives off a toxin corn doesn’t like. This toxin is water soluble and will keep flushing away with timely rains. But if you have a drought this summer, you cannot protect yourself in corn on corn. The toxin will tap yields.

“When I remind growers of this, the typical response is, ‘I can insure against that better than I can insure against low bean prices,’” he says.

Listen to Ferrie’s complete comments on how to create a successful season with corn on corn in this week’s Boots In The Field podcast, posted below:

Your next read: Give Corn A Big Push Out Of The Starting Gate

5 Things You Need To Know About The H-2 Programs

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 21:56:14 GMT

As labor shortages persist in the ag industry, many farms might be looking at using the H-2A and H-2B programs. Megan Wright, senior director of business expansion at másLabor, recently joined an Ag Retailers Association (ARA) webinar to explain the key aspects you need to understand to be successful.

1. Know the Specific Type of Labor You Need
While it might seem obvious farmers would need seasonal, agricultural labor, it’s important to think through exactly what tasks those employees will be completing. This determines if you need to hire H-2A or H-2B labor.

“The H-2A program is designed for all temporary or seasonal agricultural labor needs. On the flip side of that coin, we have the H-2B program — that’s also temporary and/or seasonal but for non-agricultural labor needs,” Wright explains. “Maybe some of the job duties that you have labor needs for take place on on the farm, but heavy tractor trailer drivers would be construction workers, or maybe you need to build a new farm building. What if you have manufacturing-style job duties?”

The H-2A program is uncapped because agriculture is considered a matter of national security, but the H-2B program does have a finite number of visas available each fiscal year.

2. Start the Process Early
Once you’ve decided whether you need H-2A or H-2B workers, the legal process can start. Wright recommends beginning these conversations 180 days before labor is needed for the H-2B program and 120 days for the H-2A program.

“There are an infinite number of H-2A visas, and the filing process itself is also just shorter,” she says. “The true nuts and bolts again of the process takes 75 days in a normal scenario, and I say normal because first-time program users can actually qualify for what’s called an emergency filing at no extra cost. That allows us to shrink that down and have workers arrive in as little as 45 days.”

3. Prepare for Housing and Transportation Requirements
The H-2A program does require employers to provide free housing.

“We always recommend to think of housing solutions as the the first thing you do when considering the H-2A program,” Wright says.

And though the H-2B program doesn’t require housing, it can still be an opportunity to ease the process.

“We still have folks coming into the country, potentially for the first time, who wouldn’t know the first place to look for housing. As an employer, if you wanted to take that extra step to provide a housing solution for the H-2B workers, you would then be allowed to deduct rent. So, we actually do find that a lot of our employers go ahead and do that knowing that they can recoup funds spent again through those payroll deductions.”

Travel expenses are another area some employers might be surprised by. That’s because it encompasses more than just the gas or plane fees.

“Both H-2A and H-2B employers are responsible for inbound and outbound travel, aka getting them from their front door to your front door and then back home again at the end of the contract period. I think what some folks tend to forget is that this isn’t just the literal transportation itself. It also includes a daily sustenance. It also includes potential motel stays,” Wright explains.

4. Be Willing to Hire Domestic Labor Also
If you want to hire international employees, you must be open to hiring domestic ones as well, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“The U.S. Department of Labor is in charge of the certifying process, and they’re clearly going to want to make sure that we’re not discriminating against U.S. workers by participating in these programs. You have to engage in positive U.S. recruitment,” Wright says. “As an employer, you need to be willing to hire a qualified, willing, available and able U.S. or domestic worker.”

The U.S. worker would need to have your minimum skill requirements and agree to the terms of the H-2 contract.

“If they come to you and they meet those requirements during this overall approval process, you absolutely have to interview them, and in that case, you would have to hire them on as well,” Wright says.

5. Stay Informed on President Donald Trump’s Immigration Reform Policies
Because H-2 workers have a lawful presence in the U.S., Trump’s deportation policies should not apply to them.

“It’s always important to note that Trump himself participates in both H-2 programs at Mar-a-Lago and at the Trump winery in Virginia,” Wright says. “But there might be misunderstandings, and there might be miscommunications. We might need to keep in mind that law enforcement may not be familiar with the H-2 programs overall.”

She recommends these best practices for avoiding any discrepancies with H-2 employees and law enforcement:

1. Your workers should have possession of copies of their legal documents, their passport, their visa, and are carrying those copies with them — especially if they leave the work site.
2. Make sure they have an emergency contact who can be reached at all times.
3. Create a document explaining the employee’s legal status in the U.S. and their rights (másLabor has these available).

'Stay Tuned, We'll Be Right Back With Your Forecast'

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 22:14:43 GMT

What if you could know the timing of significant weather events for your area during the next six months with 91% accuracy?

Now you can, according to Gary Lezak, a former meteorologist with KSHB-TV in Kansas City turned weather entrepreneur.

Lezak’s business, Weather 20/20, provides weather-based data analytics on a global basis to its customers, who range from farmers to retailers to general consumers.

Eighty Years In The Making
Lezak learned in the mid-1980s that a weather cycle exists, an insight he attributes to Jerome Namais, who first addressed the concept in the 1940s. Namais, a renowned American meteorologist, was Chief of the United States Weather Bureau’s Extended Forecast Section in Washington, D.C. from 1941 to 1971.

“What it’s all about is the weather pattern above us – the river of air that goes across North America through the westerly belt, across to Europe, Asia, and then back around across the Pacific. That jet stream flow, that river of air above us, has an order to it,” Lezak told Andrew McCrea, host of the Farming The Countryside podcast, during a recent conversation.

For the next 20 years Lezak continued to study the weather cycling concept, refining what he learned as he went along.

By the early 2000s, Lezak was blogging about what he had learned, eventually calling the concept he developed the Lezak Recurring Cycle (LRC). He founded Weather 20/20 in 2008.

“The LRC is all about the cycle,” Lezak says. “After many years of practicing it, 20 to 30 years of using it, we are able to predict when and where and a little bit of the what,” with regard to weather, he told McCrea.

The core tenet of the LRC is that a unique weather pattern establishes itself every year. It starts to set up in early October, with develpment continuing through early January. By then, Lezak says the pattern can be identified and predictions of every day’s weather around the world can be produced.

Based on the LRC, Lezak says he can predict with a 91% accuracy level when and where there will be major weather events – from snowstorms to hurricanes to droughts – for the next seven to eight months in the U.S.

“That (timing) is the sweet spot of the LRC and fits agriculture perfectly,” Lezak says.

He adds that Mother Nature still creates weather disruptions he can’t predict 9% of the time, based on influences such as El Nino, La Nina and the Arctic Oscillation.

Lezak’s take on the accuracy of weather forecasts differs from what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports, though an apples-to-apples comparison is not available.

The NOAA says a seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather about 80 percent of the time and a five-day forecast can accurately predict the weather approximately 90 percent of the time. However, a 10-day—or longer—forecast is only right about half the time.

Agriculture Takes Notice
As Lezak was honing the development of the LRC in the early 2000s, fellow meteorologist, Dean Wysocki, then based in Nebraska, learned of it and reached out to Lezak for more details.

Wysocki started using the information he learned during his broadcasts, noting that Nebraska farmers were hungry for more accurate weather insights and predictions.

“I’ll tell you what, it’s a game changer. That’s the easiest way to put it,” says Wysocki, who joined Lezak on the podcast.

Wysocki, now based in Fargo, N.D., got LRC certified and began telling farmers in the Dakotas and Minnesota about its benefits.

“It’s a major piece of long-term weather forecasting, and the accuracy on it has just been amazing,” Wysocki says. “We’ve signed up between about 50 to 100 in our ag community and we’ve got nothing but positive feedback. Is it 100% correct? No, nothing is, but it’s a great tool to have on your tool belt.”

The Weather Outlook Ahead
During the conversation with McCrea, Lezak and Wysocki shared some of their weather predictions for late winter and early spring 2025, based on information the LRC has provided. Here are three of their predictions:

1. Lezak says a La Nina, which is the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, has a grip currently on parts of the western and upper Corn Belt areas, but he expects that to ease up.

“That grip that it has tends to shift precipitation patterns to the eastern Corn Belt. That’s not good for Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota,” Lezak says. “It shifts precipitation patterns to the East, but that grip we think is going to be let loose by March.”

2. Wysocki says he foresees a wetter spring, in March and April, for most of the Dakotas.

“We’ll get our moisture that we need in March and more than likely into the first part of April, and that should be good for planting season,” he says. “I’m still concerned about the western Dakotas into areas of Montana and Wyoming, worried that they’ll remain dry.”

3. With regard to drought, Lezak encourages farmers to keep an eye on the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, as he says droughts are constantly either shrinking or expanding.

“It appears that over the last year or so that areas of drought, as we look at the entire nation, have begun to decrease,” he says. “This one has been shrinking for weeks, and that is a good sign. The likelihood of that trend continuing is high.”

Wysocki and Lezak offered additional weather insights during their conversation with McCrea. You can hear more of those specifics on the podcast, available here:

Your next read: With More Arctic Air Set to Blast the U.S., Why This Winter Could Be Remembered for Its Extremes

Robot Bees? Check Out This New Pollination Innovation

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:09:12 GMT

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed advanced robotic insects that could aid farming through artificial pollination. They could prove especially useful in the controlled indoor environments of high-tech ‘vertical farms’.

“These type of robots will open up a very new type of use case,” co-lead author Suhan Kim, from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), told Reuters.

“For instance, we can think of artificial pollination. So since our robot looks like an insect, and it’s real lightweight and small, if you can really precisely control the robot we might be able to do something on top of flowers or leaves, which really requires very delicate interactions.”

The robots, each lighter than a paperclip, can hover for approximately 1,000 seconds, over 100 times longer than previous models. They are also capable of performing high-speed acrobatic maneuvers, including double aerial flips.

The new design halves the size of the team’s earlier model, with increased stability while also freeing up space for electronics.

“We want the robot to be able to have a [circuit] board, battery and the sensors on board. So to do that, we need much higher payload than now. So what we’re currently pushing very hard right now is to optimize the robot design to be able to lift more and more so that we can afford these potential payloads,” said Kim.

Long term, the team hope this will enable autonomous flight outside the lab. This technology could significantly boost crop yields in multi-level warehouses by providing a more efficient method for artificial pollination.

Vertical farming, the name given to the production of crops in a series of stacked levels, often in a controlled environment, is a fast-growing industry with billions of dollars being pumped into projects across the globe.

It is seen as part of the solution to the food security challenge posed by population expansion at a time when climate change and geopolitics threaten supply.

“This doesn’t really mean that we want to entirely replace honeybees in nature, but what we sometimes hear from the people in the relevant field is that there are really good cases where we can’t rely on honeybees anymore, such as like indoor farming, where we can’t really have honeybee homes in it because of safety issues or some environmental issues. So in that case, we can start thinking of using our robot, if it works well, for tools like indoor farming,” added Kim.

Despite the team’s improvements, the robotic insects still cannot match the capabilities of natural pollinators. However, the researchers aim to improve the robots’ flight time and precision to enable them to land and take off from the center of a flower.

The research was published in the journal Science Robotics.

Farmer Poses 4R Question On How To Make Fertilizer Use More Efficient In Soybeans

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:20:04 GMT

In this week’s Boots In The Field podcast, Farm Journal Field Agronomist Ken Ferrie addresses a 4R-type question regarding strip-till fertilizer placement. The grower says he currently is strip-tilling phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) ahead of corn and also broadcasting some P and K ahead of his soybean crop. He’s contemplating changing his practice in soybeans.

The grower’s specific question was asked in two parts: “Would strip-tilling fertilizer ahead of soybeans increase efficiency, in terms of increasing yields? If so, with that improved efficiency, could I reduce the amount of fertilizer I apply?”

Ferrie began his response by asking the grower about his current row spacing in soybeans.

“Are you in 30-inch beans, and do you plan on planting into the strip? Our data from test plots show a yield advantage to narrow-row beans planted at the same population as wide-row beans, along with better weed control,” Ferrie noted. “If you change to 30-inch rows, you may be giving up some yield and weed control that stripping may not make up for. If you’re already in 30-inch rows, this wouldn’t be a concern.”

The grower responded by telling Ferrie he is stripping in 20-inch corn and would be using the same bar to strip into 20-inch soybeans.

Consider The Amount Of Residue Present
Ferrie noted, “From experience, I can tell you that trying to run a 20-inch strip bar with fertilizer knives on it through 250-bushel corn stalk residue in the fall is a major challenge. Sometimes, getting it to flow through a 30-inch strip-till bar can even be a challenge. Twenty-inch rows just don’t leave a lot of room to put all that fresh residue through the machine in the fall.”

However, Ferrie did consider the benefits that might be available if the farmer could get through the residue adequately. For one, the strips would allow for a warmer spot to plant soybeans next spring. This could aid in early planting situations to get the beans out of the ground quicker.

“We know this is especially true when we’re planting into cover crops compared to no-tilling into covers,” he said. “However, with that said, our test plots do not show a consistent enough response to strip-till beans over no-till that’s high enough to pay the bill.”

Consider Nutrient Removal Rates
As for improving fertilizer efficiency with a banded strip to the degree the farmer could reduce total fertilizer amounts, Ferrie said the lack of efficiency would have to be causing a yield drag in the grower’s current program.

“That can occur in low-testing soils or in soils that have a lot of fertility tie-up, such as in calcareous soils,” Ferrie said. “But soybean yields are created a lot later in the growing season, during pod fill. In our test plots, many times we see visual effects of our planter fertility, but it’s been hard to get that to correlate to a yield increase here in central Illinois.

“With soybeans, just because the crop is bigger and taller in the beginning of the season that doesn’t mean it’s going to yield more in the end,” he said.

While banding fertilizer can make it more efficient, it doesn’t change the law of nutrient removal rates. Applying less fertilizer than removal rates call for over time will deplete the soil.

“Based on our plot results, we are struggling to get a yield advantage in our strip-till soybean plots high enough to pay the bill,” Ferrie said. “But the good news is we’re not seeing a yield loss to strip tilling, either.”

Consider The Availability Of Subsidies
Something Ferrie encouraged the grower to consider is whether he is getting or able to tap into subsidies for subsurface banding of phosphate and for using cover crops.

“We have some growers (in central Illinois) who can pick up $45 an acre by subsurface banding P and another $30 per acre on the cover crops,” Ferrie said. “This would go a long way of shoring up some of the cost involved, even if there wasn’t a yield advantage. My advice would be to experiment on your farm on a small scale before going whole hog to see if it’s going to fit your operation.”

Listen to the complete Boots In The Field podcast here:

Your next read: 10 Smart Ways to Start Cutting Your Fertilizer Bill

Ferrie: Four Sure Ways To Make NH3 Applications More Effective

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:04:34 GMT

A lot of farmers are crossing the harvest finish line for 2024 and preparing for fall tillage and anhydrous ammonia (NH3) applications, says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

While soil moisture levels have improved in some parts of Illinois and other states, soil temperatures are still too high in most areas.

“Maximum soil temperatures are still north of 70 degrees in many places, and part of our 4R program is to wait for those soil temperatures to get below 50 degrees before applying anhydrous with a nitrogen stabilizer,” he says. “Based on the 10-day forecast in central Illinois, it looks like November 7 will be close (to a good start date for applications).”

There are two huge potential negatives to applying anhydrous ammonia prematurely:

· Anhydrous will “gas off” in dry soil and is then lost for next year’s crop, costing you a lot of money, time and effort you can’t recoup.

· Anhydrous applied in warm soil can create an environmental problem for everyone, farmers and the general public alike.

Ferrie offers four reminders to help you make sure the product stays put once applied, so it’s available for corn next spring.

1. Soil temperature has to be right to keep product in the ground. Make sure it is no more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit – and trending downward – before making anhydrous ammonia applications this fall for the next year’s corn crop.

2. Make sure you have soil moisture available. Soil moisture is needed to temporarily hold the ammonia in place, so it can become attached to clay or organic matter in the soil, according to Iowa State University Extension.

If dry soils are cloddy and do not seal properly, the ammonia can be lost at injection, or it can seep through the large pores between clods after application.

3. If the local soil temperature is cooperating but soils are dry, Ferrie offers some ‘tricks’ that can help decrease volatility if you don’t have adequate moisture.

“One trick to lessen the volatility is to decrease the rate of ammonia you’re putting on. Lower rates need less water,” he explains. “But you’ll have to adjust the spring applications to square this rate back up.”

Another possibility is to go deeper to expose the ammonia to, potentially, more soil and more water.

“I know you retailers are cringing when I say that because, as I’ve been talking to some of you, this has been a bad year on shanks as a lot of guys are using the toolbars as subsoilers,” he notes.

4. Check behind the application rig for a good seal. Ferrie is usually most concerned about not having adequate moisture to seal applications. However, where too much moisture is present, he says the knives will smear in the soil.

“If you’re too wet to seal, the bars will be gassing off right there at application, right behind the machine,” Ferrie says. “Just because you don’t see smoke, don’t assume it’s sealing.”

He says to have someone walk behind the machine to sniff for ammonia leaks.

“My suggestion is once the toolbar goes by, someone needs to jump down on their knees and sniff the trench. If your trench sniffer is gagging for air, you’re not sealing it,” he says.

Ferrie adds that if you are doing tillage or applying anhydrous where seagulls typically drop behind the tool to scoop up worms brought to the surface – but they’re leaving and not coming back – that’s another tip the soil is leaking ammonia.

“When I get the call that a grower can still smell anhydrous in a field a day after application and wondering how much is lost, I know of no calculator or computer model that can predict that,” he says.

“You only have nitrate testing next spring to help us predict the loss. In those situations, it may be a good year to separate your strip-till from your anhydrous application,” he adds. “If you can’t get it to seal so you can get your stripping done, we can always sidedress the anhydrous next spring.”

You can listen to Ferrie’s complete instructions on his weekly Boots In The Field podcast below:

Your next read on AgWeb:
Unlock Profits from Agricultural Lime to Transform Your Soil pH
5 Ways To Prioritize Fertilizer Dollars
EPA Announces Final Rule for Application Exclusion Zone

Will USDA Fumble The 45Z Football?

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 15:29:11 GMT

The clock is ticking on the U.S. government to provide clarity around the 45Z tax credits outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act. The provisions are scheduled to go into effect beginning Jan. 1, 2025.

But the latest efforts in Washington D.C. could change the size of opportunity for farmers who sell their grain with a carbon intensity score.

“USDA is trying to put some guidance together to help the Department of Treasury with the final 45Z rules,” explains Mitchell Hora, founder of Continuum Ag. “This administration has been keen on climate smart ag and climate smart commodities. But climate smart ag and low carbon feed stocks for biofuels are not the same thing.”

Hora says the distinction between the two will help ensure farmers are able to pursue the largest incentive. Whereas bundles were used with 40B and other previous programs, Hora contends 45Z needs to use the Department of Energy’s GREET model.

“If bundles are used, it stifles farmer innovation—it waters down the impact,” he says.

As an example, he offers a farm from northeast Iowa.

When implementing no-till, cover crops, and manure, the farm averages a 250 bu. yield. With a bundled approach, there’s $0.00 incentive. However, using the GREET model, there’s a -4.6 carbon intensity score equating up to $1.82/bu value.

“We have to get this done right. The weight of this decision is massive. The ripple effect 45Z could have is tremendous.”

Continuum Ag has scored more than 330 million bushels using the GREET model.

“It takes five minutes, is very scalable, and we’re offering it for free,” he says.

Hear more in Hora’s latest conversation on AgriTalk with host Chip Flory.

Your Next Read:

Carbon Intensity Is Going To Be A Team Sport

USDA Surprises the Market By Raising U.S. Corn Yield Estimate, Leaves Soybean Yield Stagnant

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 18:37:59 GMT

USDA’s September World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) produced a bit of a surprise with the agency raising their national corn yield estimate. USDA left the soybean yield estimate unchanged, which sparked a bullish reaction in the markets. However, analysts chalk it up to how early it is in the year and the uncertainty around soybean yields in early September.

Leading into the report, surveys showed analysts expected USDA to decrease yields. Instead, the agency bumped the national corn yield by a half a bushel.

USDA’s updated September forecast shows

U.S. corn yield: 183.6 bu. per acre
Corn production: 15.2 billion bushels, up 39 million bushels from August
U.S. soybean yield: 53.2 bu. per acre
Soybean production: 4.6 billion bushels, down 3 million bushels from August

USDA’s September WASDE report is the first time USDA actually goes into fields to measure yields. The field samples, along with farmer surveys, are then used to update their yield and production forecasts. The change to the national corn yield caught analysts by surprise, according to Matt Bennett with AgMarket.net.

“The crop didn’t finish great,” Bennett said. “I think overall the Corn Belt was fairly dry in the month of August. But I think what USDA found is that obviously there’s a lot of ears out there, and it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good size ear. Corn looks like you’re going to have a pretty big crop.”

Where did USDA’s higher yields come from? The state-by-state breakdown shows even though USDA trimmed the Illinois state yield estimate by 3 bu. per ace, the agency raised Iowa’s yield by the same amount compared to August.

The largest increases came in Texas, where the agency raised the yield from 117 bu. per acre in August to 121 bu. per acre in September, which is a 3.4% increase for the state. Pennsylvania’s yield was increased 3%, from 135 bu. per acre in August to 139 bu. per acre this month.

The biggest declines came to North Carolina where drought has hammered the crop there. USDA now forecasts the state yield to drop to 88 bu. per acre, a 12% decline from August.

Corn yield changes from August to September

(USDA NASS )

Arlan Suderman of StoneX Group points out even with the increase in yields, the corn balance sheet isn’t a disaster.

“I originally thought USDA came up really kind of back in May, fluffed up their demand estimates to keep sending stocks down around below 2.1 billion bushels,” said Suderman. “I feel better about the number now because we have a smaller Black Sea crop and we’re generally expecting acreage to be planted in Argentina to be down 20 to 25%, granted, that’s going to soybeans and that’s bearish soybeans. But if you have a much smaller crop in Argentina, you have a smaller crop in the Black Sea that could boost our exports in the last half the marketing year. I generally agree with the stronger ethanol demand. Cheaper prices are creating demand.”

USDA also adjusted ending stocks for corn, lowering it 55 million bushels to 1.8 billion bushels of old crop. That adjustment was based on increased exports. The agency is forecasting 2 billion bushels of new crop corn.

“USDA raised ethanol by 15 million bushels, you raised exports 40 million bushels,” Bennett added. “And so that 55 million bushels basically of a lower carry out coming into this year offset the 39 million bushels more corn that they came up with production. So, you actually brought carryout down.”

U.S. Ending Stocks

(Data Source: USDA; Graphic: Lori Hays)

Bullish for Beans?

The soybean side of USDA’s latest report was more mundane. USDA’s decision to leave soybean yields unchanged from the last report, despite the late season dry weather that could impact the crop, might have been the safe move for USDA this early in the season.

“I think the trade was really bracing for much higher yields,” said Suderman. “I think they saw the possibility that maybe we would be up there close to 55 bushels per acre. That was kind of the whisper number, so to speak, not necessarily the average trade guess that was published. So there’s a little bit of a sigh of relief.”

USDA also made revisions to carryout, with old crop soybean carryout now sitting at 340 million bushels, according to USDA. New crop was revised down 10 million bushels from last month to 550 million.

“When you see USDA increased domestic crush a little bit, 5 million bushels for the old crop, not making any adjustments upward on yield overall, you think, ‘Okay, maybe the bad news is into this market.’ I don’t know that we can really take that assumption this early in the game because soybeans are still fill in pods and so there’s a lot of potential changes. I think USDA mostly just took a safe route this month,” Suderman said.

Suderman says what was one of the more interesting details of the changes to soybeans were the soybean pod counts from USDA.

“It was interesting to note that pod counts in this in this report were below year ago levels. And that was a little bit surprising considering the pod populations that Pro Farmer found on their Crop Tour last month. Maybe we lost a lot of pods there in late August. That would be a possibility. But on the other hand, what counters that is you do the math and USDA’s numbers suggest a pretty good sized seed size. You don’t usually lose a lot of pods if you have conditions conducive for good seed size.”

Suderman said bottomline is he thinks USDA wasn’t comfortable in making big changes when the soybeans aren’t fully mature. He called USDA’s September report a “safe route” for siybeans.

“Over the last five years, pod counts have gone up every year of the last five years from September to October by varying amounts, sometimes significantly. So I don’t really think we’ll have a good handle on the soybean crop size until the October report,” Suderman said.

Nonetheless, Bennett points out you can’t discount how hot and dry the month of August was for parts of the U.S., a trend that has continued into September.

“August was pretty darn dry,” Bennett said. “I would say coming into the month of August, most people had a pretty full soil moisture profile. And so you’ve got to think that maybe some of these early beans, especially, had plenty to get to the finish line. Whenever you look at the USDA report, I mean, essentially there wasn’t a whole lot in the way of changes. The crop size didn’t change or just marginally, if you look at the balance sheet, it’s just a slight amount.”

Soybean yield changes from August to September

(USDA NASS)

USDA made some steep revisions to their yield estimates in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. USDA lowered the Ohio yield estimate by 6.8%, now at 55 bu. per acre. Tennessee was revised 6% lower, to 46 bu. per acre.

However, Louisiana’s yield was increased 6% to 52 bu. per acre. USA also raised Iowa’s state yield to 63 bu. per acre, a 3% increase from August.

Old crop soybean carryout sits at 340 million bushels, according to USDA. New crop was revised down 10 million bushels from last month to 550 million.

“Carryout did come down 10 million bushels, but it’s still at 550 [million],” Bennett said. “And so this is a big enough crop considering we’re carrying a pretty darn big crop to boot. Now most of the time whenever you raise a soybean yield, it’s like 80% of the time Pro Farmer goes up from the August USDA report, USDA in September also typically goes higher, and that was not the case, but again, there are a lot of pods out there. We just didn’t have enough rain to fill them.”

Burning Question This Fall: Do You Store or Sell at Harvest?

The heat and dry weather means harvest is rapidly approaching for some, while it’s well underway for others. And as farmers weigh the current commodity prices, it’s a big decision this fall: do you store the crop or sell it off hte combine?

Suderman says there are three things farmers need to keep in mind this fall when making that decision.

Rapid Harvest: “It looks like we’re going to have a weather pattern that facilitates a rapid dry down, which means that harvest of both record corn and soybean crops coming in very quickly, really stretching our our storage facilities,” said Suderman.
Low Water Levels and Possible Port Strike: “We also could end up with some problems on the Mississippi River with low water levels. There’s even a risk of a port strike by longshoremen on the East Coast as well as the Gulf Coast, and that could create some problems for exports as well,” added Suderman.
Basis at Risk: “With all of those factors, basis could be at risk. Amount of grain coming on at harvest time could be at risk. So depending on your on farm storage, you need to really pay attention to that risk. If you don’t have the on farm storage, you need to take steps to protect yourself, protect the equity that you’ve built into your farm,” Suderman said.

Your Next Reads: U.S. Braces for a Hotter and Drier Fall as La Niña Looms

USDA’s Latest Farm Income Data Looks Brighter Than Early 2024 Numbers

Roscoe’s Rebellion: Ohio Farmer’s Fight Against Federal Power Still Echoes

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 12:53:18 GMT

When Roscoe Filburn dared to feed his family and cattle without government approval, and USDA fined him $117 for exceeding quota and harvesting 239 bushels of wheat, the Ohio farmer charged into one of the most consequential fights in U.S. history.

Reacting to a game-changing expansion in federal power, Filburn sued, contending his crop was beyond the control of Congress. The resulting legal battle turned Filburn’s land into the farm that birthed a monumental government grab via a mere 16 words of the Constitution—the Commerce Clause, which became the vehicle of federal reach into every facet of American life.

Eighty years later, Filburn’s court battle is the Lazarus case—resurrected daily. “He was way ahead of his time,” says Roscoe ‘Tom’ Filburn Jr. “My dad was just a small farmer, but he looked into the future and saw harm coming to our freedoms.”

Kicking The Hornet’s Nest

In 1940, the Second World War raged across the pond; Franklin Roosevelt was elected to a third term; Captain America was born in comic books; nylon stockings hit store shelves; Gone With The Wind debuted; and Roscoe Curtiss Filburn planted winter wheat.

(Photo by Chris Bennett)

In late fall, Filburn, 38, planted 23 acres of wheat a stone’s throw northwest of Dayton on his Montgomery County farm in central Ohio. It was the age of transition from mule power to mechanization, and bushel-per-acre average U.S. yield was relatively lean: winter wheat, 14.1; corn 29.5; and soybeans, 20.7.

“Our family had been in the Dayton area since 1811 and farming was what my dad did,” says 82-year-old Filburn Jr. “Everyone called him, ‘Ross,’ and he was well-respected as a man to trust. He spoke up when he saw wrong and tried to make it right. We had a hammer mill to grind our own grain, and at the time we had dairy cattle.”

By government quota, via the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938, Filburn was permitted to grow 11.1 acres of wheat, yet he exceeded the allowance by 11.9 acres. Months after planting, in July 1941, Filburn harvested his 23 wheat acres and cut too much grain—462 bushels in total, of which 239 bushels exceeded his allotment. USDA levied a penalty of 49 cents per bushel for a fine total of $117.11, dropped a lien on his wheat crop, and seized his marketing card.

Filburn refused to pay the fine and declared that Washington, D.C., 500 miles east, had no power to regulate his yields in Ohio because he sold part of his wheat locally, fed a portion to his livestock, ground some into flour for personal use, and kept the remainder as seed for the next year.

“Basically, my dad said, ‘The government has no business in my wheat because it’s not going into the open market,’ Filburn Jr. explains. “He said, ‘I’m using it, not selling it. Therefore, leave me alone.’”

Filburn sued (1941) USDA and Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard (an Indiana farmer) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Filburn won in a ruling issued in March 1942.

However, Filburn had kicked the hornet’s nest. At lightning speed—indicative of the federal concern over loss of power—the government fast-tracked the Filburn fight ( Wickard vs. Filburn ) to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) roughly 60 days later.

The government was in panic mode.

Pontius Pilate

Roscoe’s rebellion hit a SCOTUS buzzsaw on May 4, 1942.

Wickard vs. Filburn was heard before nine justices—eight of them nominated by the sitting commander in chief, Roosevelt, and likely to back the president’s push toward an economy increasingly controlled by federal officials.

The Stone court (1941-1942): Seated, L-R, Stanley Reed, Owen Roberts, Harlan Stone, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter. Standing, L-R, James Byrnes, William Douglas, Frank Murphy, Robert Jackson.

(Photo courtesy Library of Congress)

SCOTUS made one of the most consequential decisions in U.S. history in November 1942, and ruled in favor of the government and against Filburn in an 8-0 (minus one justice due to a previous resignation) unanimous vote, redefining the Commerce Clause to declare Congress could regulate any activity, in or between states, that had an economic effect on commerce. Period. Full stop.

However, the Commerce Clause was a mere 16 words in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, giving Congress the power: to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.

Commerce, according to the founders, and particularly the Constitution’s driving author, James Madison, was trade. Only trade. Not manufacturing. Not energy policy. Not conservation. Not retail. Not agriculture.

Explicitly listed in the Constitution, Congress was given 18 powers, such as declaring war and coining money, but every other power kicked backed to the states, explicitly stated in 1789 by James Madison in the capstone to the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

A year prior, in 1788, Madison provided the same explanation in the Federalist Papers : The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

Yet, according to SCOTUS’ Wickard interpretation, the 16 words of the Commerce Clause were the most powerful tool of the regulatory state in U.S. history. There had been other Commerce Clause-related cases before SCOTUS, but the Wickard decision was the broadest, most expansive interpretation ever.

In a nutshell, SCOTUS gave the government an inroad to control anything and everything. Via the Commerce Clause, per SCOTUS, the government hand could reach any realm of American life via a connection to the economy—no matter how tenuous or thin the thread.

“In a Pilate-like sense, the Supreme Court washed their hands, and said, ‘This is Congress’ problem,’” explains Roger McEowen, Professor of Agricultural Law and Taxation at the Washburn University School of Law, and author of the Agricultural Law and Taxation Blog . “They handed Congress the authority to regulate private economic activity that made no distinction between interstate and intrastate commerce. It was a dramatic, giant increase in regulatory power and set up precedent for government expansion.”

L-R, Vice President Henry Wallace, President Franklin Roosevelt, and Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard.

(Photo courtesy Library of Congress)

“Those justices decided the tiny amount of wheat on Filburn’s farm impacted the entire country and they knew they were increasing government’s power to a level never really considered before,” McEowen adds.

Wickard vs. Filburn became bureaucratic bedrock, and with SCOTUS’ ruling in hand, Congress and the U.S. government began regulating activity in a granular manner, down to the actions of individual citizens—all the way from Filburn’s farm to the Endangered Species Act to Obamacare implementation.

Astoundingly, Roscoe Filburn’s grain was the key that picked the lock on the present age of government regulation.

The Looming Bushels

Born in 1941, Filburn Jr. was 1-year-old when his father’s case went before SCOTUS.

“My dad knew he was going to lose,” Filburn Jr. says. “But win or lose, he didn’t like the government telling people how much wheat they could grow or what they could do with it. He didn’t believe it was right and he knew what it would lead to in other areas of life.”

Roscoe Filburn declared that USDA had no power to regulate his yields in Ohio, and in doing so, kicked a hornet’s nest.

(Photo by Chris Bennett)

In 1985, Filburn suffered a stroke and died two years later at age 85. “Honest. Hardworking. Trusted. He understood the government’s position about his wheat—and he didn’t agree in the least and fought with everything he had,” Filburn Jr. adds. “That was my dad.”

“It’s ironic,” Filburn Jr. adds, “because he was by no means a farmer living in the past. He was instrumental in the development of farmland into residential and business areas of Dayton and he was comfortable with change. But he wasn’t comfortable with losing freedom and he believed the Commerce Clause had been twisted from its original meaning.”

In 1829, 42 years after writing the Constitution, Madison penned a letter to Virginia state senator Joseph Cabell, emphasizing the true intent of the Commerce Clause as a: negative and preventive provision against injustice amongst the States themselves; rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government.

“He was way ahead of his time,” says Roscoe ‘Tom’ Filburn Jr. “My dad was just a small farmer, but he looked into the future and saw harm coming to our freedoms.”

(Photo courtesy Library of Congress)

Roughly 240 years after the Constitution’s framing, and 195 years after Madison’s letter to Cabell, and eight decades after SCOTUS’ monumental Wickard decision, Filburn’s bushels loom large.

“A little wheat on a little farm was used by the government to regulate all aspects of America,” McEowen concludes. “That is essentially limitless power.”

For more articles from Chris Bennett ( cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud

Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion

Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

New Research: Four Ways to Accelerate Conservation Via Ag Retailers

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 14:00:23 GMT

New research outlines the key obstacles in adopting conservation agriculture practices, and how the path of least resistance forward is via ag retail.

Ag retailers are some of the most trusted of a farmer’s stable of advisors. Syngenta, in partnership with America’s Conservation Ag Movement, recently used Farm Journal data and intelligence to dig into that relationship and how it can be leveraged to carry conservation adoption forward.

Questions Answered
Through behavioral, demographic, psychographic intelligence as well as quantitative research done in the Corn Belt, the partnership uncovered a variety of interesting insights from ag retailers, including what holds them back from bridging the conservation gap with their customers.

The report, available now through Trust In Food , sought to understand the following key questions from the perspectives of ag retailers:

How willing are you to advise farmers on conservation topics?
What factors influence discussions with farmers about soil health and conservation?
Which key barriers or incentives could motivate you to help these conversations advance?

Key Sentiments and Findings

62% of retailers reported they believed that farmers were satisfied with the status quo and would be unwilling to abandon current farming techniques to adopt conservation practices on their farms.
37% believe farmers have a lack of awareness of conservation practices
25% believe conservation is not aligned with farmer goals

What Resonates With Ag Retailers, Resonates With Farmers
To shift the tide, the report found that ag retailers could be the key, based upon their significant level of trust with farmers, but only if the retailer “authentically believed that the practices would help their customers achieve their goals.”

Accomplishing that, according to the report, means companies and organizations in the value chain need to arm the retail sector with the information they need to reach that level of comfort, including:

Providing a steady drumbeat of messaging and material

Conservation is not a one-size-fits-all approach and retailers need support from value chain leaders to keep that conversation going with customers.

Using the correct terminology

Different terms and phrases resonate differently with audiences. The report looked into which terms are preferred by retailers in the Corn Belt, encouraging value chain partners to select carefully the terminology used when providing conservation messaging.

Embedding conservation into existing conversations

Retailers need communications that connect conservation to existing motivators, such as risk mitigation and long-term financial viability for farms.

Helping to build existing relationships

Retailers believe that providing conservation advice can be an added value that helps to strengthen relationships with farmer-customers.

To learn more from the report, visit Trust In Food . To learn more about the public-private partnership that fuels conservation adoption, visit America’s Conservation Ag Movement .

Aphids Are Munching Their Way Through Illinois Corn Crop

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:10:46 GMT

Corn aphids are usually no longer a significant problem in Illinois corn crops by early August. That’s not the case this season. Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, says the pest is still the biggest yield threat he is seeing in cornfields throughout the central part of the state.

“I don’t remember a year when we had to fight aphids for so long,” says Ferrie, who is based just south of Bloomington, Ill. “We started spraying some of these fields three leaves before tassel to make sure we could get them pollinated, and many fields were sprayed to keep the top leaves from getting waxed up. This week, we’re still spraying, especially the later-planted corn,” he adds.

Usually when aphid pressure gets to a certain population level, it will become diseased and self-implode. For some unexplainable reason, Ferrie says that’s not happening this season. Instead, the high aphid populations are contributing to poorly filled ears on waxed-up corn plants.

“Many of the waxed up tops are on what we would say are very uniform stalk diameters, or uniform plants that should have produced a normal ear, but now we’ve lost a third to half of that ear,” Ferrie says. “It’s definitely a hybrid-sensitive situation. In some cases, where split planters were used, you can see 24 rows of corn that are loaded with aphids, while the next 24 are somewhat clean.”

Identify The Main Culprits

Farmers have been calling Ferrie to express concern about aphid pressure around corn ears and those even lower in the plants, especially after heavy rain events. While those aphids are pulling sap from the corn and creating a bit of crop stress, good moisture levels have prevented serious yield docks from occurring.

“It’s the aphids that are at the top of the plant that we worry about,” Ferrie says. “If you have aphids at the bottom of plants, keep scouting those fields every three days to watch for whether colonies form at the top of plants.”

Aphids are known as tasters, meaning they have flavor preferences. If they liked the flavor of a specific hybrid earlier this season, that hybrid might now be subject to a new aphid infestation, given the pests’ determination to hang around. Those infestations will show up as aphid colonies at the top of the plants.

This week, Ferrie says some central Illinois farmers have wanted to spray hybrids that have already been impacted significantly by aphids.

“Where kernels have been lost in the ear tips, where they are blowing off, we can’t get that yield potential back by spraying,” he reports. “We can only slow down the growth of other colonies that might start at the top.”

Actions To Take Now

Ferrie advises getting ear counts and estimating realistic yield potential before deciding your next action. Here are the four steps he recommends:

1. Count all the plants for your population.

2. Then do your ear count on the good ears that don’t have waxing at the top of plants, and calculate the potential on those ears.

3. Pull the remaining ears – the ones that are waxed up – off and get an accurate yield estimate of what those ears are going to make. Add that number to the potential you got from the good ears.

4. Divide by 65 or 70 for those corn ears not affected by aphids. Where you have had aphid feeding, Ferrie says to divide by 90.

Significant Yield Losses Have Occurred

In those fields where aphids have fed extensively, Ferrie says is seeing anywhere from a 10- to 35-bushel yield loss, depending on the hybrid. Not all hybrids have been equally affected by aphid feeding.

Fields planted to L2 hybrids – which flex in length – seem to have been hit the hardest, he says. This flex happens because of stress occurring between R1 and R3. These hybrids will have aborted kernels on the ear tip and will have visible cob sticking out, resulting in an “L2” rating. As an example, if a hybrid pollinates to 45 long and aborts back to 30 long, Ferrie calls that an L2 hybrid, meaning it flexed after tasseling.

He encourages farmers impacted by excessive aphid feeding to be in regular contact with their retailers or applicators to schedule insecticide applications.

Get In Touch With Retailers

“Some of our applicators are out about four days, so it’s good to know what you might be working with,” he says. “If your crop’s pollinated and has aphid pressure, I’d pull the trigger and put and insecticide with your fungicide, even if you’re not at brown silk.”

“Usually I’d like to see the field with a wave of brown silk, but in this case, on this later-planted corn if the aphids are out there, as soon as you get the tassels out and get pollinated, let’s go ahead and clean them up. We don’t want these aphids to do any more damage than we have to.

“If you sprayed a fungicide without an insecticide, odds are higher than usual that you’re going to have to go back and get these aphids, because the fungus that usually wipes those aphids out hasn’t showed up yet for some reason.”

Listen to this week’s Boots In The Field podcast here:

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Is it Time to Panic Sell Corn?

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 18:04:55 GMT

Major political events shaped the news cycle this week, impacting the stock market and spilling over into some commodities. From the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last Sunday, to new reports that President Biden may announce as early as this weekend plans to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race, major news events played a role in the stock market this week.

“Something unique happened on Wednesday,” says Tommy Grisafi of Advance Trading. “We had the Dow Jones close at record highs and the Nasdaq had one of its worst days in the past six months to a year.”

Grisafi says as he witnessed the stock market make a huge shift, it didn’t have a big effect on corn, wheat, soybeans or cattle, but it sets the tone in the markets for the weeks and months ahead.

“You have to wonder, will we be paying a little bit more attention to breaking news headlines as we come into this election with 100 days left until the election,” Grisafi adds. “I do think politics will have a significant move in agriculture in the next 100 days.”

USDA confirmed on Thursday morning a purchase of 18.74 million bushels of soybeans to “unknown destinations” for the 2024/2025 year. The assumption is that buy was from China.

“A couple of days before that we had heard they were looking at U.S. soybean prices out of the PNW, looking for six or seven cargoes,” says DuWayne Bosse of Bolt Marketing. “So, that kind of matches up. Normally, export sales or a flash that size would rally the market sharply. But in this case, we’re so far behind in new crop export sales, it just kind of maybe stabilized the market, stopped it from going down, which as a producer myself, I’ll take that at this point in time.”

The purchase of new crop soybeans came the morning after GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump announced his running mate, JD Vance, a GOP Senator from Ohio who has a tough stance on trade. In Vance’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) this week, Vance called NAFTA a bad trade deal and also talked about how he would be tough on China.

“We’re going to build factories again … together, we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens,” Vance said.

Vance’s protectionist stance hints at more tariffs on countries like China. So, could China come in and buy more U.S. goods ahead of possible tariffs? That’s what we asked Grisafi on U.S. Farm Report this weekend.

“There’s a certain amount of grain they need, and there’s a certain amount of people they can get it from,” says Grisafi. “It’s so easy to poke fun at politicians, especially when you’ve been in the game for 50 years. The truth is, getting politics out of it, China needs X amount of grain and when they need it, they’re going to come to us. Maybe we saw a little taste of that this week, maybe there’s a little bit more to come.”

At this point, Bosse thinks a weather premium may still be built into the soybean market. But for corn, the crop is showing huge potential in parts of the Midwest, but also trouble in those areas that have an uneven crop, especially in areas planted extremely late.

“I’m not even close to seeing a tassel pop out of any of my cornfields up here, which maybe isn’t crazy unheard of this far north, but we are definitely behind,” says Bosse, who also farms in South Dakota. “That doesn’t mean we can’t produce bushels. I always go back to 2009. It was horribly wet, we had a really late harvest, but we did have bushels.”

He also says while the crop was big that year, it wasn’t particularly good quality and shrunk in the bin.

“Basically, if you had a 20,000-bushel bin, you only took out 15,000 bushels because the crop was poor quality and very wet. So, I mean there’s holes out there in the corn crop. I think we’re close to a trendline yield of 177 bu. per acre to 181 bu. per acre for the national corn yield. But I do think we’re close to a low. I always had $3.93 as kind of a harvest-low projection for December corn, and we’re not far off of that.”

Bosse says the first sign of a low is running out of sellers, and he thinks the trade action is starting to look that way.

What should a farmer do? With on-farm corn stocks the highest since the 1980s, some farmers may be forced to move grain before fall. Do farmers keep holding on, or is it time to panic sell?

“You need to get control of at least one year,” Grisafi advises. “It’d be awesome if you said, ‘I have nothing to worry about with ‘23, that grain is gone.’ Then, get 100% control of your ‘24 crop, whether it be making cash sales, using futures and options, etc. Talk to your crop insurance agent. If you’re bold and aggressive, be smart enough to remember you do not have crop insurance on ’25. I need you to get in control of one whole crop year. If you want to invest a little bit of money in ’25 floors, I suggest it might be the best money you lose. Let’s take a chance to losing 15 to 20 cents so we don’t lose another dollar.”

Russell Hedrick Aims To End Fertilizer Guesswork

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:34:36 GMT

At 15 cents to 25 cents per acre cost, can a farmer save $5 to $10 per acre in foliar sprays? Absolutely, says Russell Hedrick, pointing to proof in his own fields and the use of an artificial intelligence tool.

“Underapplying or overapplying nutrients are equally bad,” Hedrick explains. “I want to give a plant the exact amount of product needed for balance with the cheapest digital technology possible.”

That tech, according to Hedrick, is Foliar Scripts. “The fertilizer guesswork is over in my fields,” he says. “We get it right down to the ounce.”

Goodbye Guesswork

Hedrick keeps a foot in both high yield and profit-per-acre management on his corn and soybean operation in Catawba County—classic foothill country in western North Carolina, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Piedmont Plateau.

“I see so many examples of guys spending dollars to save pennies—this is the opposite” Hedrick says.

( Photo by JRH Grain Farms)

In 2019, frustrated by the loss of dollars through inexact foliar applications, Hedrick began compiling a spreadsheet detailing fertilizer use to the drop. “Guys can pull a tissue sample and get back fertilizer recommendations of 10 ounces to a gallon. What’s right? Or they’re stuck with a product that says to use 1 quart up to 6 quarts. Which one? That guesswork is where everyone suffers major losses.”

“Farmers already get a recommendation and a way to manage fertility with soil tests,” he adds. “It’s time to bring tissue sampling up to the same standards.”

Hedrick took his brainchild to AgWise, and the digital ag data platform ran with the ball, building Foliar Scripts . The recommendation tool allows growers to map what nutrients are being supplied by the soil and enables correction of in-season deficiencies. From year to year, Foliar Scripts also maps potential problem spots and stores data in a single location.

“Let’s say you have a foliar script and a 24% potassium acetate. Log in and it’ll show you are deficient by x amount and that you need to spray exactly 18 ounces,” Hedrick details. “You spend 25 cents per acre to run the program and save anywhere from 80 cents per acre on the low side to $16 per acre on the high side.”

“The program is not brand specific and has dropdowns to make sure guys anywhere in the country can pick the exact products that are local to them,” he adds.

Sarah Martello , CEO of AgWise, echoes Hedrick. “It’s so easy and as simple as doing nutrient tests. It’s a huge opportunity for farmers to use only what is needed and save money at the same time.”

“Here’s reality,” Hedrick continues. “One quart of a particular foliar product may cost the producer $2 per acre, but 2 gallons may cost you $20 per acre. There’s $18 per acre the farmer has no management decisions on how to make the educated, scientific application. That’s where AgWise comes in and works with foliar scripts where now a grower can use a soil sample, correct their soil, and then if they have deficiencies in the plant, or an imbalance, they can come back in-season and pull a tissue sample. It costs 13 cents for a 40-acre sample and 26 cents for a 20-acre sample.”

Calculus Change

AgWise partners with numerous commercial labs that send the company tissue information from a given grower. AgWise then generates a precise recommendation report to be used by the grower. “Do your tissue sample and put this as an add-on to your test. It costs the lab absolutely nothing. And if your lab doesn’t offer this yet, you can still go online and sign up,” Hedrick says. “Just enter the numbers and the script generates off that—so user-friendly.”

“I want to give a plant the exact amount of product needed for balance with the cheapest digital technology possible,” Hedrick explains.

(Photo by JRH Grain Farms)

Hedrick’s yields are proof positive of Foliar Scripts , Martello notes. “Precise recommendations save farmers a lot of money. This is great now, but it’s going to become amazing when we continue adding data into the system.”

Precise nutrient applications have paid huge dividends on Hedrick’s operation. “I see so many examples of guys spending dollars to save pennies—this is the opposite” he says. “At 25 cents per acre, there’s no way I can afford not to use this.”

In 2012, Hedrick began farming solo and was blessed with strong commodity prices. Two years later, prices dropped, but inputs were relatively low. In 2024, the calculus has changed, and Hedrick leans on the fractional cost of digital data.

“We’re at a point where prices are down and inputs are generally up. Since 2021, we’ve seen fertilizer jump 300 percent and chemistry 200 percent. Now is the time to pay 25 or 50 cents per acre to track inputs and reduce them by 25 percent, just for example. However, that 25% savings now is 200% greater than savings 10 years ago,” he concludes. “That’s how we can still make money in farming right now.”

What You Need to Know About USDA's Surprisingly Friendly Changes to Corn, And Why Prices Seem Unimpressed

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 20:26:37 GMT

USDA threw the corn market a curve ball in the July World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report released Friday, and it was a good one with an unexpected cut to old crop corn stocks through increased demand.

Here’s a snapshot of the surprise changes:

· USDA projects corn ending stocks to fall to 1.877 billion bushels, down from 2.022 billion last month

· USDA raised old crop exports by 75 million bushels

· The agency also increased feed usage by 75 million bushels for old crop corn

· Increased new crop corn feed usage by 75 million bushels

Joe Vaclavik of Standard Grain says the substantial increases to old crop demand forecast came out of nowhere.

“It was about the friendliest report you possibly could have received from USDA today,” Vaclavik says. “They added hundreds of millions of bushels of demand. A lot of it was old crop, there was a little bit of a new crop. Relative to expectations, it’s a friendly deal, because that demand that they added for old crop, that’s real demand. Everything on the new crop balance sheet — the yield the acres, the demand — that’s all smoke and mirrors. That marketing year hasn’t started yet, but the old crop stuff is real. And you can take it to the bank.”

However, the markets were unimpressed by the friendly adjustments that came as a surprise to demand. Vaclavik says the report was friendly compared to what it could have been, but corn prices barely inched into the green, with the September corn contract closing 1 ¾¢ higher at $4.02. New crop December contract finished up 4¢ at $4.14 ¾ .

Peter Meyer of Muddy Boots Ag says he doesn’t trust the demand numbers. He anticipated USDA would increase demand, but it was a matter of where, and he says he just doesn’t trust the demand side at this point.

“One of the more telling things to me is that I always look at year on year supply versus demand, and especially in corn, there’s a very high correlation between changes in supply and changes in demand. Total supply now from 23/24 to 24/25 is up 270 million bushels. Demand is up 50. This is very telling to me, because typically during the year, they will adjust that by 50%. And we did a 25-year study where actually the correlation is probably closer to 85%. But the fact that they did not use their 50% rule and increase demand by 135, and only increase it by 50 suggests to me there’s very little confidence in their demand numbers.”

Even with the surprising adjustments to demand in the July WASDE report, the factor haunting the grain market is the fact farmers are holding on to 3 billion bushels of corn in on-farm storage. That’s what USDA’s June Grain Stocks report revealed. And at 3 billion bushels, that’s the highest level of on-farm storage since 1988.

“The general narrative among traders and analysts is that the market cannot rally in a material fashion until that stuff is sold,” Vaclavik says. “I don’t know if that necessarily has to be the case. If you see demand enter the marketplace in a material fashion, and I think it’s got to be on exports, I think that’s what could move the needle real quickly.”

Vaclavik says U.S. corn prices are competitive on the global market again. So, if China or some big buyer came in and really wanted to buy U.S. corn, he says the situation could change, and it could eat into the 2 billion bushels of old crop carryout USDA is currently estimating.

“The new crop marketing year hasn’t started yet. I still think overall, this report today, it was a friendly item. The on-farm stocks issue isn’t, but we did get some good news today,” Vaclavik says.

Meyer says the battle in the market right now is almost a game of chicken between the farmers holding on to a large amount of crop grain, and the funds being record short.

“The funds really don’t have a fundamental view, to be honest with you, they are still trading the path of least resistance, and the farmers are holding on for higher prices,” Meyer says. “I agree with Joe, and this is a friendly WASDE report, but how friendly can it be? $4? $4.25? $4.30? Is that going to get the corn out of the farmers’ hands? I don’t know.”

He says the funds will keep selling and stay short until the farmers capitulate and start selling the corn they have stored in the bin.

“Funds are not stupid,” Meyer says. “They saw those 3 billion bushels in on-farm storage, and they know what’s going on.”

USDA July 2024 WASDE Crop Production Forecasts

(Lindsey Pound)

USDA left yield for corn and soybeans unchanged in the July report, which wasn’t a surprise. For new crop, USDA currently has yield and production forecast as:

· 181 bu. per acre yield for corn with corn production forecast at 15.1 billion bushels.
· Soybean yield pegged at 52 bu. per acre and production at 4.4 billion bushels.

When could USDA adjust yield, and how big of a yield could we see? Plus, why is the corn market immune to the storm that caused widespread hail damage in Nebraska and parts of Iowa this week? Vaclavik and Meyer discuss in the video below.

EU Seeks Revised GMO Rules to Loosen Curbs on Gene-Edited Crops

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 18:38:16 GMT

The European Commission proposed revising its rules on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Wednesday to loosen some restrictions for plants resulting from newer gene-editing technology.

The EU executive said the move would give farmers more resilient crops and reduce the use of chemical pesticides and offer consumers food with higher nutritional value.

The Commission launched a review in 2021 after concluding that GMO legislation from 2001 was “not fit for purpose”. The EU’s top court had ruled in 2018 that genome-editing techniques should be governed by GMO rules.

On Wednesday the Commission proposed splitting new genomic technique (NGT) plants into two categories.

Those that could also occur naturally or by conventional breeding would be exempted from GMO legislation and labelling
requirements. All other NGT plants would be treated as GMOs, requiring risk assessments and authorization.

Plants will qualify for the first category if there are no more than 20 genetic modifications.

A faster track approval process would apply for the second category of plants if, for example, they are more tolerant to climate change or require less water or fertilizer.

Related Story: John Phipps: The New Technology Helping Cool the GMO Debate

The proposal needs approval from the European Parliament and EU governments and may be revised.

The most prominent example of the new technology is the CRISPR/Cas9 “genome scissors”, for which Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Bayer, the world’s second-largest seeds and pesticides maker, described the proposal as “ground-breaking”.

“Plant breeding normally takes more than a decade from the first positive research results to market entry. Gene editing allows us to cut five years out of this process,” said Bayer’s head of sustainability Matthias Berninger.

Biotech industry group EuropaBio urged an extension of the rules to cover micro-organisms.

Environmental groups say NGT plants need careful controls and the proposal risks making European farming dependent on large agribusiness companies.

Friends of the Earth campaigner Mute Schimpf said it was essential labelling requirements remain so that consumers could make informed choices. The need to label has effectively prevented sales of GM food items to EU consumers.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; additional reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; editing by Jason Neely and Alexander Smith)

In The Shop: Those Wonderful Chopping Corn Heads

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 21:09:02 GMT

I know you’re scrambling to finish harvest, but if you’ve got a chopping corn head that uses “lawn mowers” under the row units, be prepared to do some preventive maintenance before you put that corn head away for the winter.

Some of those chopping units have cutting heads/hubs that rotate around a small gearcase. There is a fairly small clearance between the spinning cutter hub and the stationary gearbox.

Sap from green stalks and weeds, dew from cool mornings, and general crop debris collects between the hub and gearbox during harvest. No problem, as long as the components are rotated daily.

But once the corn head is stored for the year, and especially if it’s stored sitting on the ground, corrosion and other issues can freeze up the cutting heads.

I just spent too many hours with a 10-pound sledge hammer freeing up frozen cutting heads on a 12-row corn head. To prevent that from happening, take time to liberally soak the narrow gap between the cutting head/hub and the lower gearcase with penetrating oil or oily protectant before storage.

You’ll thank yourself next fall.

Agronomic-Centered Focus Delivers Complete Product Line-Up

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 13:55:19 GMT

In baseball, having the right line-up can position a team well for offensive results. But, defense-minded coaches also know they need to anticipate challenges to round out that team for long-term success. The same could be said in farming, with farmers depending on the farm system to always be developing those new players that will help to eventually overcome challenges.

For Bayer, that solutions-focused farm system pulls through with a comprehensive portfolio that is built to meet changing needs of today’s farmers.

“When we decide where to invest in new products, Bayer starts with an agronomic need that farmers have and we design products to meet that need,” says Kim Helgen, Bayer PLUS Lead. “You can see that first-hand through our crop protection portfolio where we look to tackle disease pressure or weed challenges, but also pair it with other Bayer products to ensure it works on-farm.”

Bayer’s legacy is unique in that they have the complete pipeline – seed, traits, crop protection, digital – for full farm solutions. And, the R&D pipeline is unmatched in the industry. Helgen says that agronomic focus leads to products that provide broad acre options for farmers.

“One of the more recent solution-driven products brought to the market was Delaro Complete^®Fungicide, a fungicide with three modes of action,” says Helgen. “In recent years, we have heard from farmers struggling with tar spot in corn, as well as white mold in soybeans. Delaro Complete adds another option within Bayer’s portfolio to help farmers get the right product on the right acre.”

Helgen says that Bayer’s portfolio offers a robust crop protection product mix. The large portfolio allows Bayer to help farmers customize a plan based on their specific needs in specific fields.

“When you think about stewardship, there is a lot of benefit in having multiple modes of action,” adds Helgen. “One thing Bayer brings to customers is that our portfolio has different products with multiple modes of action. Ultimately, that provides farmers with versatility through different product mixes, helping them avoid using the same thing across their operation year over year.”

For farmers focused on the agronomic solutions and competitive price point Bayer provides, Helgen notes that Bayer PLUS Rewards* is an added benefit to farmer customers.

“With a pipeline like Bayer’s, Bayer PLUS Rewards enables farmers and retailers to customize the solution for a given field versus focusing on one product or one product line on all their acres,” says Helgen. “It’s about finding products that complement each other, taking all inputs into consideration.”

Navigating the variables and unpredictability of any given season is something farmers know all too well. Adding bench strength through Bayer’s portfolio, aka the farm system, is one way farmers are harnessing data and analytics to manage like a pro.

* See program terms & conditions for full details.

ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Not all products are registered for use in all states and may be subject to use restrictions. The distribution, sale, or use of an unregistered pesticide is a violation of federal and/or state law and is strictly prohibited. Check with your local dealer or representative for the product registration status in your state. Bayer, Bayer Cross and Delaro® are registered trademarks of Bayer Group. ©2022 Bayer Group. All rights reserved.

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 16:38:32 GMT

Like last bits of skin clinging to gaunt ribs, yellowed plastic holds stubbornly to the skeletal frame of a greenhouse vault as Mitchell Kelley looks at the decrepit shell and shakes his head. “There have been a lot of dirty scams in farming, but this is the damnedest one I’ve ever heard of. You want to meet the devil? Go find Jamie Lawhorne; he’s got everything but the horns.”

Agriculture’s most outrageous crime story is seemingly copied from the script of a Coen brothers’ film. Spanning multiple states, three years, a motherlode of hijinks, bounty hunters, and enough greenbacks to choke a dozen mules, hundreds of small farmers were hustled by the saccharine sweetness of a con artist selling a towering pyramid of lies.

Pulled straight from central casting, Jamie Lawhorne lit the fuse on a bizarre swindle and then went on the lam, stumbling from one misadventure to the next, leaving behind a telltale trail of tomatoes, worms, pickles, shattered growers and financial ruin. Wearing overlapping shades of Walter White, P.T. Barnum and Elmer Gantry, Lawhorne took a grow-for-the-green swindle and turned it into one of the most outlandish episodes in farming history. “I’m not sure if anyone will believe it,” Kelley adds “but it’s one helluva tale.”

Lemmings off a Cliff

In early 2013, Marguerite McClintock was operating Alchemy Farms and Plants in Hampton Cove, just southeast of Huntsville in northcentral Alabama, when Lawhorne blew in from nowhere, almost landing on her doorstep, trumpeting an extensive agriculture background and sizeable family farm. In an office building across the street, catty-corner from McClintock, the charming carpetbagger set up Cypress Creek Organic Farms—the engine that enabled him to drain over $2 million from the surrounding area in just eight short months.

By radio, billboard and Facebook, Lawhorne offered a golden goose to farmers and small business owners—$25,000 to $40,000 of income per year growing organic tomatoes, backed by a direct advertising pitch: “Cypress Creek Organic Farms needs farmers now. Work From Your Home FARM Business.”

At 50, Lawhorne casually blended into crowds with a nondescript figure—medium height, slight build, moustachioed, balding gray hair—and used the traits to his advantage. “He didn’t really have much of a southern accent, and he was so common you’d barely notice him, except for his strong confidence,” McClintock remembers. “No matter how crazy things got, he always had a reasonable explanation.”

John McMillan, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, says the Cypress Creek affair has no parallels. “In my career, I’ve never encountered anyone as slippery as Lawhorne. Frankly, I’ve never even heard of anything this tangled or twisted happening anywhere, anyplace.”

For a one-time fee of $9,950, “affiliates” were promised a greenhouse (100’ x 20’ high tunnels covered in plastic sheeting), 100 hours of training, buyback of all tomatoes at organic market value, daily pickup of product, free provision of organic seedlings each year, and guaranteed USDA organic certification. On the flip, according to Lawhorne, major grocery chains (Publix, Bruno’s) were contracted and waiting to gobble up every tomato Cypress Creek could procure. In 2013, while the farm economy slid toward a deep rut, Lawhorne offered water to the thirsty: a steady stream of secondary income.

Positioned adjacent to Alchemy Farms, Lawhorne proposed to build a greenhouse on McClintock’s land, and allow her to pay it off in produce, in lieu of cash, provided Lawhorne could use it as a model. Within weeks, the demonstration site was drawing potential affiliates stretched from southern Tennessee to Birmingham. The Ponzi was cranking into gear. “I was a Cypress Creek demo. It was astounding because so many people started coming over to see the greenhouse. Row crop farmers, teachers, and retired people came almost like in tours, all sucked in by what Jamie promised,” McClintock explains. “Looking back now, it was crazy, kind of like watching lemmings drop off a cliff.”

Art of the Lie

In March 2013, Mitchell Kelley, 53, clicked a Cypress Creek advertisement on Facebook, dialed the phone number, and listened as Lawhorne tickled his ear with a tomato pipedream: Grow’em, pick’em, put’em in a box, truck collects’em; and it’s a surefire $25,000-plus. Lock, stock and smoking barrel.

“I went to meet Lawhorne shortly after and there were no alarm bells. Nothing sneaky or odd. Nothing stood out. Seemed like a harmless guy starting a business,” he says.

Kelley, a medical inspection company worker in Morgan County, obtained a bank loan for $10,000, signed a Cypress Creek affiliate contract, and prepared to grow tomatoes year-round at $2.50 per pound. Lawhorne played Kelley as he did most marks, coating the process in a scientific veneer by requesting a soil sample from the proposed greenhouse site for testing at Auburn University. “It was really weird because he asked me to deliver the soil sample to a house address and leave it on the front porch,” Kelley recalls.

Kelley had no inkling: His dirt likely ended up in a soil sample graveyard in Hampton Cove. Witnesses would later testify to Alabama authorities that Lawhorne sometimes chunked affiliate soil samples out the backdoor of the Cypress Creek office. The samples were merely a hook and a means to add a layer of credibility. Simply, claims of Auburn soil testing were a lie.

Out of the gate, the venture started square on Kelley’s land. Lawhorne sent a crew to build the greenhouse and Kelley watched in delight as the tomato plants climbed 13’ high. “Hell, I told him I wanted two more greenhouses right away. If he’d acted faster, I’d have been out $30,000. But’s that when Lawhorne disappeared and I literally never set eyes on him again.”

“He never gave a s*** about hurting us or taking our money.”

Stacking the Pyramid

A month prior to Kelley’s misfortune, in early February, Cliff Wooten, 36, owner of Grateful Acres farm in St. Clair County, spotted a Cypress Creek ad on Craigslist, and emailed Lawhorne. Wooten was already growing to organic standards, but USDA certification and the promise of a long-term tomato contract were irresistible. Lawhorne responded with a silver tongue: Up to $45,000 per year, 85% royalty on $2.85 per pound, and a 10-year contract.

A few weeks later, Lawhorne arrived at Grateful Acres—in khaki slacks, a polo shirt and leather loafers. “I should have smelled the bulls*** right then,” Wooten admits. “What man with a supposed agriculture background walks around a farm in fancy shoes?”

Lawhorne pulled the requisite soil sample and assured Wooten it would be tested by experts at Auburn. Several weeks later, when a Cypress Creek van delivered a load of seedlings to Grateful Acres, the driver exited the vehicle, followed by a nicotine cloud. “It started bad right there,” Wooten says. “A van full of tomato seedlings soaked in cigarette smoke. What more can you say?”

Wooten, Kelley and scores of other growers didn’t realize Lawhorne had triggered a system designed to fail. Assurances of USDA organic certification were false. Contracts with Publix, Bruno’s and other grocery chains were fiction. The daily produce pickup system was a farce. Soil sampling was a fabrication. Lawhorne stacked the pyramid ever higher with $10,000-contracts while bleeding out the base, and when the clock struck midnight, he would bounce out of town.

“He was pushing so hard,” McClintock recalls. “Selling so many greenhouses and basically doing nothing else. Certification and training? All these affiliate growers had questions and frustration building, but he was charging ahead, making sale after sale.”

Wooten clearly remembers the first time he heard a Cypress Creek jingle on the radio and realized the scale of advertisement: “Lawhorne was advertising everywhere. That’s when I knew it was beyond oversold and I got chills up my spine. How many people was he bringing in and how could he handle that many tomatoes?”

Keeping Up Appearances

In August 2013, while surfing online for job prospects in an all-night coffee shop in Chattanooga, Tenn., Garver Akers spotted a post for an agriculture opening in Huntsville. The next morning, he dialed the advertised phone number and spoke directly with Lawhorne. On Aug. 5, Akers began a stint as Cypress Creek’s organic horticulturist. “The main office was impressive, with nice conference rooms and smaller offices for staff and a big digital screen for presentations,” Akers details. “From the start, I thought it was absolutely legit, and that’s one of the most tragic parts—the company could have worked if not for Lawhorne.”

Cypress Creek utilized a fleet of large white vans to ferry supplies and pick up produce from affiliates. The drivers began transporting Akers to meet growers and inspect tomato progress, but with each visit, he noted prolific fungal disease symptoms and heavy insect presence: “The tomato plants were a disaster because the greenhouse builders were just augering holes in the ground and dropping in low-quality castings, and the results were awful, especially for growers with harder, clay-packed soil types. I requested soil sample test results several times, but never saw any at all.”

Akers assumed his new Cypress Creek job role entailed proper tomato production and best management assistance to growers. Instead, his presence was a means for Lawhorne to feign agronomic legitimacy; a cover. Lawhorne was hell-bent on sales, and he would keep the band playing as long as possible, regardless of what improprieties Akers uncovered in the affiliate greenhouses.

Only a few weeks after arriving, Akers’ suspicions mounted. “I walked into Lawhorne’s office, sat down, and said, ‘I’m seeing symptoms of at least a half a dozen fungal diseases, and tons of insect pressure in all of the greenhouses.’”

Akers explained to Lawhorne why the disease and stress were due to a lack of soil preparation and proper plant care: “You simply cannot grow successful tomato plants this way.”

Lawhorne stretched backward in his chair for several seconds and looked deep in thought, according to Akers, then leaned forward and spoke words that burned into Akers’ memory, “Garver, your job, now, is to convince these growers that these problems are their fault, and not ours, so that we can sell even more products (organic pesticides, herbicides, soil amendments).”

“Jamie, I won’t do it,” Akers shot back.

Lawhorne switched tracks and threw up a typical detour: “Well, just come up with a new plan and get back to me.”

A Feast for Chickens

With the swindle running full-steam and the pyramid groaning with the compounded weight of new growers, Lawhorne had scant time for the inconveniences of agronomy or horticulture. Even more striking, Lawhorne had no concern for the physical tomato product, yet at least a few of the early-adopter affiliates were beginning to produce a crop: Beyond a few local restaurant purchases, where were all the tomatoes going? Where was the lifeblood of Cypress Creek?

On multiple occasions, Cypress Creek sent trucks to collect tomatoes from Wooten. As he describes, the pickup was bedlam. No specification on tomato variety, grading, size, or condition. No questions; no concerns. Without scale confirmation, the driver accepted Wooten’s claims of weight, loaded the tomatoes and drove away with the haul. “We received several payments totaling several hundred dollars, but it was crazy and I wondered how in the hell Lawhorne was selling the tomatoes,” Wooten recalls.

“They were throwing tomatoes out when they were delivered back to the office. There weren’t many, but when they came in, some of the staff actually threw the tomatoes outside,” Akers contends. “With no real contracts, Lawhorne sure didn’t need’em.”

Lawhorne also fed at least some of the tomatoes to chickens. McClintock’s poultry feasted on the fare of Cypress Creek. “He would bring over boxes of tomatoes or have me pick them up for the chickens. He said these were ‘tomatoes that didn’t meet the grade,’” she describes.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Steve Moquin, facility manager at the Huntsville Airport, fell into Lawhorne’s Ponzi trap when a relative gave him a Cypress Creek flyer. Moquin ran the numbers, calculated a minimum of a $20,000 per annum profit, and cautiously approached, visiting a demonstration site and meeting with Lawhorne four times. “Lots of eye contact—extremely friendly guy. He was like a chameleon and I swear you’d never notice him in a crowded room.”

“Lawhorne was so slick and said he had contracts with Publix and Bruno’s to buy every single tomato I could grow. I couldn’t figure out the logistics. They pick up every day driving from Hampton Cove? Didn’t make any damn sense, but so many red flags slipped by me.”

“Everybody has to make money for something to last. Everybody’s got to get happy. I couldn’t see how Lawhorne was gonna get happy with this set-up. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

As Moquin handed over a $10,000 check for a $2.50 per pound tomato buyback, the curtain was falling on the con. Moquin suspects he was the last mark in line; the final signer of a Cypress Creek contract. His greenhouse went up and Lawhorne’s Ponzi pyramid crashed down. “I was the last. The last. I couldn’t find him and knew I’d been had.”

In only six months, Lawhorne’s spiel reeled in 250 Alabama and Tennessee growers to the astounding tune of at least $2.2 million. Lawhorne operated as the official president of Cypress Creek. His son, Brandon Lawhorne, carried the title of vice-president, and Jackie Wilson, a Huntsville local, was positioned as executive vice-president. Below the trio hovered a mix of lower-tier staff. Who was in the know?

“I hate believing Jackie was in on it, but she was close to Jamie, and I just know she was involved. I think Brandon was also in on it, no question in my mind,” McClintock says.

“Besides Lawhorne, I believe Jackie and Brandon knew all of what was going on, and I thought maybe a couple of others knew as well,” Akers adds.

“All of them at the top were involved,” Wooten contends. “I believe they all knew.”

“The inner circle was aware,” Moquin agrees. “Lawhorne was the one that got the ASC crosshairs, but the entourage knew everything.”

Moquin was pulled into the Cypress Creek collapse, but Laura Watts, an affiliate grower from Cullman County, was a half-step ahead of the fall: “I found out Lawhorne had once orchestrated a similar scheme in Tennessee and knew I had to get my $10,000 back or else.”

On an early August morning, she stood outside the front door of the Cypress Creek office in Hampton Cove, waiting for employees to arrive. When Brandon Lawhorne drove up, Watts demanded her money and threatened to call police.

According to Watts, Brandon Lawhorne offered to give back $5,000. “I went toe-to-toe with him and screamed until he gave in.”

“I took Brandon to the bank and we waited for it to open. It was quite a scene because the tellers knew Brandon was under duress, but I got a cashier’s check and drove straight to my bank to make the deposit. I felt awful because maybe I was the last to get my money back. Everyone needs to understand, Jamie Lawhorne was a sociopath.”

The Great Tomato Caper

In July 2013, the Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) received an inquiry from the Madison County Better Business Bureau related to Cypress Creek’s representation and Lawhorne’s claims. The case fell into the lap of Special Agent Charles Traywick, a top-notch seasoned veteran with service at the Criminal Investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service: “Lawhorne was already associated with old cons in Tennessee. Usually these cases take years to unfold, but he was so bold with the greenhouses, and it’s really rare for schemes to happen this fast.”

Traywick contacted several Cypress Creek growers and began connecting the dots between affiliates, contracts and Lawhorne’s bank account. The grower checks matched with Lawhorne’s account, according to Amanda Senn, ASC deputy director of enforcement and prosecutor in the case: “It started as a typical white collar investigation. The records don’t lie and there is always a paper trail. However, this case was unusual and it quickly became known as the ‘The Great Tomato Caper,’ with Lawhorne, a crook, at the helm. The scheme was the first of its kind in my line of work and we tend to see it all. Sadly, in the wake of Lawhorne’s scam were 250 victims of securities fraud and a traceable loss of $2.2 million dollars.”

Lawhorne siphoned significantly more than $2.2 million from growers, Traywick explains. “Expenses easily rose above the $10,000 contract for many affiliates. Some people needed a pad built for their greenhouse. Some ran an irrigation setup to the greenhouse or spent thousands cutting down trees to remove shade.”

Take the Money and Run

On Sept. 2, 2013, with the Huntsville news media on his heels and the scheme nearing its death rattle, Lawhorne orchestrated a brazen show of strength at a meeting of 50-plus growers, Cypress Creek staff and several media reps. Intended as a vehicle to buy time and placate growers, the meeting serves as public record of Lawhorne’s audacious assertions. Standing for almost two hours, the con-man faced the cameras and reeled off half-truths in staccato fashion, blindly navigating between fact and fantasy.

Cypress Creek was going major league: “This is going to be a $100-million company. Maybe we’ll be located here in Huntsville, Ala., maybe we’ll go somewhere else close by.”

Federal prison—no problem. Piling on to the remarkably surreal atmosphere, Lawhorne admitted to incarceration as if mentioning the triviality of a parking ticket: “There’s my checkered past …..Yes, guys, yes, I admit, I did get arrested for counterfeiting. I did go to jail and I’m not proud of it.”

Pared down, the meeting was an exercise in self-exoneration, with declarative promises of bigger and better. “This company is going to be massive. We’ll be a $100-million company within five years.”

Catch Me If You Can

In mid-September, while returning from an affiliate visit in Tennessee, Akers got a call from the main Cypress Creek office instructing him to conduct widespread low-level layoffs across the board: “When I got back the office was bedlam and people were running around in total confusion,” Akers recalls. “I sat in my office with several of the van drivers and you could feel the disgust in the air.”

“Jamie walks in with all his back-slapping and fake smiling cheer, and says, ‘Don’t worry at all; this is all BS and we’re a team. Are you on board?’”

Akers was visibly shaking, almost angry beyond control. “No more. No more lies from you while you take advantage of people. I’m done.” Akers walked out of the building and never again laid eyes on Lawhorne.

Despite Lawhorne’s bravado, he couldn’t stop the exit of Cypress Creek employees, shake the northern Alabama media attention, or deflect the pressure from irate growers preparing for frontier justice. He packed his bags, quietly skipped town, and smashed the hopes of 250-plus growers.

A year later, Lawhorne would return to Alabama in shackles, but calendars held little sway with the flimflam man—he operated within phenomenally narrow windows of time. Lawhorne slipped on a new skin, going by the alias Jim Gilley, and set about wreaking havoc in North Carolina. The top hat tomato barker was reborn as an earthworm evangelist .

Musical Chairs

Searching for part-time work in February 2014, retired school teacher Mary Ann Smith came across WormzOrganic on Facebook. As advertised, an “associate” grower could earn $10,000 per year for part-time work, and significantly more for full-time hours. For $4,950, an associate signed a 10-year contract guaranteeing buyback of all worm castings and red wigglers at market prices: $8.25 per sack of castings and $9.30 per pound of worms.

The marketing language was coated in honey: “WormzOrganic provides everything needed. You and your worms produce the organic soil. WormzOrganic buys everything you produce.”

Startup equipment and supplies were provided by WormzOrganic : 60 lb. red wigglers; one-year supply of peat moss, worm food, dolomite lime, and pest control products; rolling harvester table; harvesting screens; unlimited shipping sacks; 60 worm bins; and support, customer service and training. Growers were responsible to deliver buyback castings and worms to WormzOrganic’s office/warehouse in Concord.

According to WormzOrganic advertising, the potential for profit was wide open, depending on scale and labor: “Anyone will be successful if they follow our proven system.” Sixty trays of worms required 1.5 hours of work per day and yielded up to $12,000 yearly; 200 trays meant 4.5 hours of daily work and provided up to $35,000 annually; 900 trays demanded 10 hours of labor per day (split between two people) and might reel in $100,000 per year.

As long as new member contracts dwarfed buyback purchases, WormzOrganic would make money. Sell, sell and sell until the music stops. Lawhorne (aka Jim Gilley) was operating another shell game, based entirely on dead-end worm contracts. He kept a low profile, pulling the business levers off-site.

“At first, none of the associates I’m aware of even knew he existed,” Smith says. “The vast majority of associates never heard the name ‘Jim Gilley’ until later.”

Jennifer Langford was the company president and business face of WormzOrganic. Curious and hopeful, but also a bit gun-shy, Smith took her first tour of WormzOrganic in March, driving to the facility from her home in Waynesville, a full three hours from Concord. “Jennifer told me they were only contracting with a limited number of growers and were nearly at quota. Looking back, it seems like contracts were selling like candy. She said they had contracts with several Fortune 500 companies to buy worm castings,” Smith asserts.

(Langford was contacted by Farm Journal and declined all comment related to WormzOrganic.)

In April, Smith signed on as an associate grower and forked over the payment. “This con was carried out by multiple people beyond Jim Gilley,” she notes. “They scammed way over 100 growers while Gilley was hiding in a nearby apartment. I can’t say for certain who all was involved.”

Red worms hatch in 30 to 60 days and the rate of increase is exponential. With 100-plus growers ramping up production, WormzOrganic was on pace for an arithmetic and geometric explosion. Lawhorne’s worm scam was a facsimile of his tomato scam—but on a heaping dose of steroids. “We were to grow 30 days, harvest, turn in compost and repeat the process, receiving payment for each compost bag. As worms multiplied, you could sell them as well. Very quickly, I could see the math was crazy,” Smith details.

By June, WormzOrganic was in disarray, according to Smith. “Training was a joke and supplies were hard to get. Then Jim Gilley (Lawhorne) stepped out of the shadows where he’d been invisible all this time. He got on the company Facebook page and started giving worm management instructions. I’d never even heard of the man before and he called himself an ‘undercover boss.’ He said he couldn’t be out in the open because people were trying to sabotage him.”

In mid-June, Smith drove to Concord to pick up additional supplies, and found a queue of associate growers outside, waiting to drop off bags of compost for buyback. “There was literally a long line of people with trucks and vans in the parking lot. Beyond disorganization.”

“They took money from way over 100 people trying hard to make extra income: farmers, retirees, semi-disabled, and even a mother trying to find a way to stay home with a child suffering from cancer. It was a heartbreaking and sickening con, just to make a buck,” Smith describes.

Brenda Brown was homeschooling two children outside of Charlotte, with a husband on the edge of retirement, and searching for secondary income when she encountered WormzOrganic. In May, she wrote a check for $4,950 and hopped on the grower train. In less than a month, Brown says she was peppering the WormzOrganic staff with questions—and receiving no answers. “In my opinion, the staff covered for Jim Gilley (Lawhorne) at every turn while he pulled the strings from an apartment somewhere in Concord. It was all delay tactics to draw the whole scheme out.”

Almost the same day Brown was signing a grower contract, Chris McManus drove by the WormzOrganic office and spotted the storefront from the road, purely by chance. McManus, 43, a detective with the Hoke County Sheriff’s Office in Raeford, walked through the WormzOrganic doors and observed a hive of activity and palates of worm castings. “There were people giving demonstrations, and others giving hourly tours. Jennifer Langford was in charge and told me they were taking on growers and had established contracts with Lowe’s and Home Depot to buy worm castings,” he describes.

McManus invested far beyond the $5,000 contract, all in the hope of helping provide an income opportunity for his older, disabled brother (Ronald Lee McManus, 46) who lived on the family farm. McManus paid $8,200 for a pre-fab building to house the worms, followed by costs for wiring, insulation and central air.

“I got in just as things started breaking down. Gilley (Lawhorne) was the mastermind, but he wasn’t running the show from the floor. As many times as I was in that office or as many times as I called on the phone and asked for him, they told me Gilley was out of town at sales meetings with potential clients for the business. I think the whole upper administration was lying to me and knew the truth.”

In mid-June, Donna Hamilton heard the WormzOrganic jingle. Living 30 minutes outside of Concord, and hoping to add a source of side-stream income, she attended orientation alongside McManus and received assurances of massive contracts from major business interests, particularly Home Depot: “Jennifer Langford told me this was being offered to a limited number of people and we needed to sign fast, because they had a quota and once it was filled, they wouldn’t take on more growers. She said they couldn’t produce the worm castings fast enough and had huge, million-dollar worm casting contracts with major companies, but weren’t at liberty to reveal which ones.”

“They claimed to be endorsed by North Carolina State University, and it all had just enough truth to be credible. It was right on the edge of making you believe,” Hamilton adds.

Within days of the scam’s collapse , she took out a loan for $3,000, dipped into savings to make the difference, and returned on June 19. She handed over a $5,000 cashier’s check and signed on as an associate: “I was rushed in and rushed out. They said they were simply ‘behind.’”

Hamilton had just poured her money into a void. Literally, she received nothing in return. No phone calls, training or equipment. Not a single worm. Hamilton walked in on the tail-end of a pyramid scheme.

“The people in the office all denied knowing anything, but they took our money to the very end,” McManus says. “I needed special shelves built for the worms and they accepted a $500 check from me at the beginning of July. Next thing I knew, the doors were locked for good. Nobody was going to give us back our money or tell us where it went.”

Undercover Boss

On July 3, WormzOrganic shuttered and left panicked growers without recourse. Four days later, despite the pandemonium dialed high, the atmosphere skyrocketed to a surreal level. On July 7, Langford sent a six-page email to WormzOrganic associates, pulling the Jim Gilley mask away from Lawhorne, and declaring: “This circus is full of lies, and betrayal, wire taps, bugs and tracking devices, personality traits that include yelling, demanding, bullying and threats, followed by using endearing terms.”

She presented the WormzOrganic operation as a scam perpetrated by Lawhorne, acknowledged that not a single bag of worm castings had been sold to a major company, and announced her pursuit of a restraining order against Lawhorne. Langford proclaimed her innocence, citing “new found” information about Lawhorne. “Due to new found knowledge of the true identity of Jim Gilley, I can no longer work for who I know as Jim Gilley due to his history of illegal and fraudulant [sic] behavior.”

Further, she revealed Lawhorne’s association with Cypress Creek and rattled off a chain of his aliases: “Jim Gilley, Jim Davis, Jamie Lawhorne, James Lawhorne, Jamie Anderson, and Roger Clemmons are all names I am aware that Jim Gilley used.”

Lawhorne couldn’t resist. Within hours of the email, he was pounding a keyboard, typing a response to associates and claiming Langford as a liar, “Jennifer has known my true identity for several months and has only now said something to you.”

Conveniently, Lawhorne poured a heavy dose of disinfectant over his “undercover boss” role: “My name is Jaime Lawhorne, most of you know me as Jim Gilley…I had to use an undercover boss approach because of my other companies having issues and I did not want the bad press for WO (WormzOrganic).”

Four days later, on the night of July 11, Lawhorne was nabbed for DUI in South Carolina—and eventually received a one-way ticket to Alabama. Cuffed and stuffed into a police vehicle, Lawhorne was hardly a penitent passenger keen to plead mercy from the court system. The smooth-talking grifter was already crafting an escape to the Sunshine State and the promised land of pickles.

Chasing the Pickle King

On Oct. 31, 2014, ASC indicted Lawhorne on 24 counts of illegal activity related to Cypress Creek. Wilson was also indicted and pled guilty. Essentially, she turned state’s witness, cooperated with prosecutors, and served no jail time.

Initially, Lawhorne’s bond was set at $600,000, but when it later dropped to $100,000, he posted bail and was released on Dec. 19, 2014, with a state monitoring bracelet wrapped around his ankle and a no-contact order related to victims of the scam. “He appeared to be a low-flight risk,” recalls Bill Honea, #1 Bail Bonds in Huntsville. Honea, a highly reputed 27-year veteran bondsman in the Southeast, and associate of Dog the Bounty Hunter, took a long look at Lawhorne. “He came off as motivated and knowledgeable, but as a guy who would rather do wrong than right. His daddy came in and put up the money, with some property.”

A month later, on Jan. 17, 2015, Lawhorne violated the no-contact order by emailing several Cypress Creek growers in what amounted to a “perpetuation of his scheme” and “witness tampering,” according to a State of Alabama bond revocation filing . Lawhorne’s email—a 19-page polemic jam-packed with an array of rabbit trails—deflected blame and excoriated the media, Better Business Bureau, Jackie Wilson, disgruntled growers, the ASC, the DA’s office, a former Tennessee state senator, and even another con-man. The email also included the bogus draft of a lawsuit (possibly written in late 2014) by Lawhorne and “266 AFFILIATE FARMERS” against WAFF Channel 48 (Raycom) in Huntsville. Claiming WAFF coverage as the ruin of Cypress Creek, Lawhorne demanded a settlement of $3,444,700 to be divided among the 266 affiliates. If WAFF declined his offer, he threatened to “sue for $86,500,000.”

Lawhorne’s email feint was accompanied by more than words. According to Honea, on the same day Lawhorne sent the email (Jan. 17), he cut off the electronic monitoring device and hopped a bus out of town. Once again, adios to Alabama.

The Chameleon

Scrambling into action, Honea was inundated with tips from across the United States and several foreign countries. “I was confident we’d find him, but it was just going to take a whole lot of work.”

Honea first tried stakeout operations at the homes of several relatives and known associates: No Lawhorne. Honea beat the bushes in Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee: No Lawhorne. He notified Dog the Bounty Hunter for help in the West: No Lawhorne.

After well over 1,000 tips with no hits, an informant dropped a hot lead on Honea: Florida. In mid-February, Honea arrived in St. Mary, Fla., north of Orlando, and found Lawhorne using the name Jamie James, waist-deep in another agriculture scam. Welcome to Pockles Pickles (or Poco Pickles, Plantation Farms or Plantation Pickles). Lawhorne had a warehouse location, over a hundred interested growers, and was cranking out $5,000 contracts for 10 years of organic cucumber production. “He already had a team hired and a website,” Honea says.

Honea swooped on Feb. 22, catching Lawhorne entirely unaware in a motel hallway. Restrained with a transport belt and placed in the front passenger seat of Honea’s vehicle, Lawhorne was again on the highway to Huntsville for a 12-hour road trip, but he wouldn’t return gently. “Lawhorne actually tried to bribe me into letting him go on the side of the road and said he could get me lots of money in just a week.”

“He never quit talking for the whole ride, and frankly, it scared me. He recounted check scams, forgery, all kind of frauds, prison time in Leavenworth, and more. Listen, this guy is a chicken-eating dog. Once a chicken-eating dog; always a chicken-eating dog. I’ve had a long career chasing thousands of criminals, but I’ll never forget Lawhorne.”

Despite Honea’s blunt summation, the truth regarding Lawhorne’s criminal past is far darker, according to Mark Pflanzer, and involves a stunning tangle of businesses centered on fruit juice, robo-calls, telemarketing, underground survival bunkers and more. “There are people that slide in and fit with any crowd,” Pflanzer describes. “They behave like chameleons. Lawhorne is a master chameleon.”

Eternal Smoke and Mirrors

Across the wide scope of Lawhorne’s criminal past, the ghost he cannot shake is Pflanzer. A plainspoken military veteran with 23 years in the lending industry, Pflanzer, 48, is the owner of Banc Services Group in Murfreesboro, Tenn. In 2006, after a referral from a banking colleague, Lawhorne approached Pflanzer seeking capital for two large projects. One was a cosmetics business which Lawhorne claimed was supported by over $1 million in purchase orders. The second, which Pflanzer chose to back, was American Broadcasting Solutions, and Lawhorne asked for $90,000 to purchase high-end auto-dialing equipment to be used for robo-call contracts with Worldwide Travel, a North Carolina company. Lawhorne’s paperwork projected a net $1 million in only 12 to 18 months, according to Pflanzer.

Only 40 days after the ink dried on the $90,000 contract, the details fell apart, Pflanzer explains: “It was one excuse after another, disconnected numbers, smoke and mirrors. I’d been given a bogus Worldwide Travel contact. When I called the legit business, they’d never heard of Lawhorne.”

Despite his dire legal circumstances, Lawhorne doubled-down on swagger. In addition to assurances of pending payment, he offered Pflanzer a buy-in investment on a miracle juice with curative powers. “Holy hell,” Pflanzer exclaims, “Who was this guy?”

Allen Hale, Assistant District Attorney General, Sixteenth Judicial District, Murfreesboro, Tenn., traced Lawhorne’s tracks and says the convicted felon is a study in exploitation: “Lawhorne will steal without conscience from salt-of-the-earth folk or sophisticated businessmen. He is a master manipulator adept at lying without remorse.”

Pflanzer slapped down a civil suit—but Lawhorne was gone.

“For several years after, I’d look on the internet and find him in Florida or California. He royally ripped off another guy in Colorado over an autodialing scheme. Hurting people, stealing their hopes and ruining lives; that’s what he was really good at.”

“By about 2011 or 2012, I found him online in Fayetteville (Tennessee) with a business call Fortune Place Café. He was actually offering coaching services on investment and marketing. Lawhorne was also selling dietary supplements called macrocea and he tried to sell a fake online newsletter for big money. There are so many scams I can’t even remember how the convoluted pieces fit together.”

Yet, the discord surged with the online advent of MEGA-ARC in 2012. Outside Louisville, Ky., at the renowned Mega Cavern, Lawhorne participated in advertising underground survival bunkers in the event of flood, fire, nuclear explosion, meteor impact, earthquake, chemical attack, solar flare, or volcanic eruption, Pflanzer notes: “You gotta be s******* me. Lawhorne was claiming ownership and selling bunker units from $25,000 to $100,000. He had an entire referral pyramid set up to bring in more and more people.”

Tennessee authorities caught up with Lawhorne in 2011, and indicted him on fraud charges in Rutherford County related to the robo-call scheme. A deal was brokered in which Lawhorne was allowed to walk, provided he pay Pflanzer $10,000 per month toward full restitution of the $90,000. At the time, Lawhorne was warming to the role of tomato apostle in Alabama. At first, Pflanzer received several checks totaling $35,000, and then the repayments stopped cold.

Lawhorne was a man on a wire. He had to pay Pflanzer to keep Tennessee authorities off his back, but when the tomato Ponzi toppled, his incentive to pay Pflanzer was gone. “That’s how he operates,” Pflanzer contends. “He gives back a little as long as he has to, and then he hauls ass.”

Swinging Doors

On July 22, 2015, Lawhorne was sentenced to 15 years after pleading guilty to two counts of securities fraud. However, after a tangle of Alabama litigation related to overcrowded prisons, the correctional gates swung wide for a select number of white collar criminals and drug offenders—Lawhorne included. Much to the disgust of his victims, Lawhorne was released from prison in 2018 and is currently on probation.

What about prosecution in North Carolina? According to spokesperson Nazneen Ahmed, the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office (NCAGO) was in the process of investigating WormzOrganic in 2014: “When we learned that James Lawhorne-Jim Gilley had been imprisoned in Alabama and had a lack of assets available to pay consumers in North Carolina, we suspended our investigation. It could potentially be reopened in the future.” (Ahmed declined to state whether the NCAGO investigated anyone at WormzOrganic beyond Lawhorne.)

Short Memory

Reflecting on Lawhorne’s release and legacy, the “affiliates and associates” are of one accord, labeling Lawhorne as a “sociopath” and offering repeated warnings to the next mark in line. As a group, they are adamant: The clock is ticking on the next con.

“People wonder why we believed it all,” McClintock says. “Jamie was just on the cusp of credible. He didn’t offer riches, just a means to get some extra income. It was just believable enough. It’s only a question of time, but he’ll do this again.”

“He violated and preyed on people who weren’t wealthy and he knew it,” Smith adds. “Everything took a high degree of forethought and planning, and that’s predatory behavior. He was a predator. Stealing is as big a motivator to him as money.”

Smith insists Lawhorne will engineer another scheme: “He’ll wait his time out and then launch another scheme, but he won’t be the face. He’s learned the success of staying out of site and letting others be visible.”

“This is the guy you’d better be watching for because he’ll pop up again doing close to the same thing,” McMillan concurs. “I’m no criminologist, but according to what I saw, Lawhorne will think about why he got caught and what could be done differently next time.”

“In my career, I’ve dealt with innumerable criminals, but he stands out as a career con man,” Hale warns. “This is a lifelong pattern of stealing and taking advantage of people, and he won’t change his behavior.”

Has the mild-mannered charlatan already conveniently faded from memory? “He loves money, but maybe he loves taking money even more. He’ll get quiet for as long as necessary and then try something new,” Watts adds. “Just think: It’s only a couple years after Lawhorne’s crimes and his name is already under the radar.”

“I want to forewarn folks about these scams and what to look for,” Moquin echoes. “Lawhorne was a sociopath, on the prowl for eager and needy people to hit. Take your blinders off and be prepared, he’s going to do this soon where nobody has heard of him. If I’d have gone on facts, instead of emotion, I’d have never lost my money.”

Former investigative reporter Carrie Marchese covered the Lawhorne story for WHNT 19 in Huntsville, and conducted an on-camera interview with Lawhorne during his tomato crash in 2013. When Marchese asked about Cypress Creek’s business practices, Lawhorne offered a callous response, “I don’t think this is a high-risk business. Worse-case scenario: You get a greenhouse out of the deal.” (Lawhorne’s reply was fiction, according to McClintock. Many growers, approximately 20, never received a greenhouse. The orders were left unfilled.)

Even with a litany of stories under her belt, the Lawhorne saga sticks with Marchese. “It never fails that he comes back on the radar. So many victims who were just hard-working people willing to help their community, but in the end, they got ran over by a guy who believed his own BS.”

“He’s already done this in Tennessee and Texas,” Wooten exclaims. “He wrecked lives. The depression rate in farming is high enough already without a sociopath getting involved. This guy will steal and hurt again. Right now, mark my words, he’s working on another con.”

In Lawhorne’s sphere, crime pays, Pflanzer insists: “I’ll bet any amount of money he’s up to a con right now. Maybe under a different name, twice removed, but as I speak, I know he’s taking money from someone.”

“I have seen a lot of slippery people in my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this man,” Akers adds. “Lawhorne was the most convincing silver-tongue I’ve ever met in my life, but look how he groveled and ran. In the end, the con-man was a coward.”

For more, see:

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

Blood And Dirt: A Farmer’s 30-Year Fight With The Feds

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Living the Dream: Honoring A Fallen Farmer

Pigs Don’t Fly: Feral Hog Spread Is A Man-Made Mess

Who Killed the Finest Soybean Soil in the World?

Hemp Fraud Hits Farmer With Clone Scam

Seeds of Discord: Crossing the Great Cover Crop Divide

The Living and the Dead: Black Vultures Expand, Farmers Pay Cost

Bald Eagles a Farmer’s Nightmare

In The Shop: How to Ruin a New U-Joint

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 19:02:39 GMT

If you are installing a new u-joint, here’s a quick way to dramatically reduce its lifespan: Over-tighten the bolts on the straps that hold the caps in place.

If you crank on those small bolts until they no longer turn, you risk distorting each cap so the needle bearings inside can’t rotate properly. Even if they can rotate, there’s so much pressure they build heat, cook-out the grease, and kill the u-joint.

Exact specifications vary according to the size of the u-joint, but those bolts should only be tightened to around 20- to 30 lb/ft. Less is better than more. Many of the bolts come with dabs of Loctite on them, so don’t be tempted to crank them a little tighter because the recommended torque “feels” too soft. If the instructions that came with the new u-joint don’t specify a torque value, Google-search the internet for that model number and come up with a value.

A final check when assembling a u-joint is that when you hold the driveshaft horizontal, the u-joint should “fall down.” If the u-joint doesn’t swivel freely either the caps are too tight, the snap rings are the wrong thickness, or the snap rings have been installed incorrectly.