Steve Fresk uses what he calls a “program approach” in his farming operation. In essence, he sees all the aspects of farming as interconnected, instead of separate operations he has to perform each year. In this article, Steve shares more details about his operation, building on his last article's discussion of soil fertility.

Planter Setup for Profitability

As I’ve mentioned, I think it makes a lot of sense to slow down decomposition in our fields rather than trying to accelerate it. But of course, that has other ramifications. For example, you have to have very good row cleaners on your planter, which we’ve got, and very good downforce calibration. And even though our planter is a high-speed setup, we still plant at five-and-a-half miles per hour to get the best seed singulation, the best depth control, and things like that.

As far as the row units go, we have very good Dawn row cleaners and spiked closing wheels as well. We wanted row cleaners that would just barely skim the soil surface. We don’t want to move dirt; we just want to move any plant material that is in the way and then drop the seed into a very clean seed slot. Then, we have to do a good job of crushing and closing the seed trench, which is why we run the spiked closing wheels. 

For next year, we’re seriously considering a different planting tractor with an on-board air compressor so we can inflate and deflate the tires—deflate them to a lower pressure for planting and then repressurize them to a higher pressure for going down the road. This decision comes down to reading the AgRevival studies on tire pressure and how it can affect yield. We can even put that technology on the planter itself. The thirty-six-row centerfill planter is very heavy. So, if we can manage that tire pressure a bit to prevent soil compaction, we can help our plants along the way.

Timing Planting

I’ve had a lot of April-planted soybeans through the years, and they’ve always been my best beans. Maybe we sort of stumbled into this new trend of early planted soybeans. But then again, we could explain it. We treat our soybeans with an energy source during planting—CarbonWorks RSTC17—and get them up and out of the ground quickly. Young soybeans are much more frost tolerant than most people think, especially when they’re just emerging and have a waxy layer on the cuticle and cotyledon—they’re very frost-tolerant. 

In Minnesota, the earlier you can get the soybeans out of the ground, the more light utilization they can have as the sun is moving into the northern skies. So, planting soybeans in April as an accident turned out to be my favorite thing. 

Staying Flexible without Labels

So far, I’m fortunate that I haven’t had any stratification on my soil fertility. I don’t do a two-by-two; I variable rate the P and K in the fall ahead of corn and then lightly vertical till it in. When I’m doing my soil testing I’m trying to figure out if I have stratification, which some people have, but, like I say, we haven’t discovered it yet. If I do get to that point, I might have to consider strip tillage to get the fertility placed low enough.

That’s another reason why I don’t want to get labeled as one thing or another. I was at Farmfest this summer and stopped to talk with the Soil Health Coalition folks at their booth. We got to chatting, because I love to talk to people, and they asked me to join. But I didn’t; I’m not a good joiner because I want to resist that label, where someone can say, “oh, you’re one of those soil guys.” There’s more to it than that. We could talk about seed hybrids, for example. Why does one hybrid do so well in one location and so poor in another location just a couple of miles away? I’d rather be able to talk to anyone and ask the questions: What are you doing? Why does that work for you? What else could be involved? With labels, that becomes more difficult.  

As I said, if I get to the point where I have some stratification happening, I might consider strip tillage. And then, who knows, we might need to do a real good stir with a field cultivator once. This points back to the advantage I have with my operation: because I don’t own a single piece of equipment, I can just go and rent a machine if I want to do something different. 

Aiming for Uniform Fertility

When it comes to managing my soil fertility, I feel like my sampling program is similar to other farmers’ programs in terms of frequency. I received hog manure every other year on a lot of my acres for several years off of a custom-finish operation. That facility has since closed. We noticed that my P and K levels were not uniform; even with a custom-mapped hose drag, they weren’t getting the volume through the applicator at the far end of the fields. 

With grid sampling, we noticed areas that we needed to get more P and K to, not just because of crop removal but because we didn’t have as much of those nutrients applied. That’s why we went with smaller grids (for sampling) more frequently—just to pick up on these variations with the hog manure application. Now, I think I could almost go back to sampling larger grids a little less frequently. We essentially know what the crop removal is going to be and we’re not getting these big variations in nutrient application. 

I have to consider the rest of my operation with sampling as well. I use an outside source for all my sampling and follow their recommendations. It’s not a huge expense, but it’s an expense. This year, for instance, isn’t going to be a really lucrative year. So I don’t know how much grid sampling I’m going to do this fall because cash flow isn’t great. 

A Dairy Analogy

But I do firmly believe in grid sampling and variable-rate fertilizer application. I like to apply the Dairy Herd Improvement Association’s attitude I first learned when I was younger. They said the biggest thing is to know how well your cows are producing. Feed the higher-producing cows more, feed the less-producing cows less, and get rid of the cow that produces poorly. 

That pretty much sums up what variable-rate technology is for fertilizer. We’re feeding the high-producing acre more, saving money by not feeding the low-potential acre as much, and then maybe doing something else with the really low-producing acre—like turning it into CRP or planting some perennial out there. 

Viewing the Future as Exciting

I’m very interested in a fall-seeded, winter annual crop like Camelina, which may be used for aviation fuel in the future. I would love to find a perennial crop, wheat grass for example, to break up the corn/soybean rotation. Because, in my view, a straight corn and soybean rotation has become a mono crop. We used to talk about corn on corn on corn as being a mono crop, but now a corn/soybean rotation has become a mono crop because the pests keep adapting. My area of Minnesota is one of the first areas that saw Diabrotica rootworm problems.

The adults adapted by laying their eggs deeper in the soil. All of their eggs wouldn’t hatch the first year when there were soybeans on that ground. Then the second year, when corn was present, all of a sudden we had a rootworm problem. If you think you’re ever going to outsmart God or mother nature, you’re in for a surprise; they’re going to adapt. I don’t mean to sound like an old hippie, but we have to adapt to coexist with nature or we’re going to keep getting surprises. 

That’s why I would love to find a viable third crop. Last fall I fully intended to plant some winter wheat after soybeans. Let it go through the winter, go to grain, harvest it, and then put that ground into cover crop. I just couldn’t pull the trigger on it because it was so dry last fall and the wheat market was depressed—it wasn’t a viable option last year. But I haven’t given up on the thought; maybe I’ll try forty acres of it in the future. 

If I had my own livestock operation, oats and barley would be potential third crops as well. When you get out into, say, South Dakota or North Dakota, you’ll find a lot more “alternative” crops because the reliability of a straight corn-soybean rotation isn’t as good out there. So farmers out there have processors or terminals that will accept the grain. The problem in my area is that there is no terminal close to me that will accept the stuff—they just want the corn and beans. 

I don’t want to be the guy that plants something and then has to go find a market for it. That’s a bit too “leading edge” for me. If—and only if—I had a market available for something, I’d be willing to take a risk on twenty or forty acres of something like Camelina. I’m not afraid of the future. I think it’s exciting.