By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics®, Inc.
If the TV show MythBusters ever did a program on farming, there are several common myths about farmers they could bust. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #15
May 23, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics®, Inc.
“Your rows sure are straight.” Those may have been the most pride-filling words I ever heard. They were first spoken to me by one of my landlords, Orville Larson, the spring after my dad passed away and all farming operations fell entirely on me. Orville made a habit of driving out to his farm to see how things looked. He stopped in to see me the day he checked on his crops, and those were the first words he spoke. That same day, I received the same compliment from my dad’s best friend, who was regarded statewide as one of the top farmers in Illinois. That’s when I knew I was a farmer. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #14
May 16, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics®, Inc.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That popular saying could just as easily apply to planting corn. It’s impossible to recover from planting time mishaps. Don’t believe it? Try this. Walk into a cornfield where plants have recently emerged. Identify a plant that’s shorter than the rest (some call these runt plants). Tie a ribbon to the small plant and watch it all season. That plant will likely never catch up to the size of its peers. It may not even produce a harvestable ear. But it will drain water and nutrients. My friend Steven Abracht – 11-time NCGA national yield contest winner – famously called these plants weeds. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #13
May 9, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics®, Inc.
Corn came screaming out of the ground in just five days on my farm at Agricenter International in Memphis. Other than the seed and herbicide, I’m using 100% Huma Gro® products. My belief is that you don’t just farm the crop, you farm the soil. These Mid-South soils have low organic matter levels, so the pre-plant application included Huma Gro® Zap® to help add life to the soil; Breakout®, Max Pak® and Calcium for fast, uniform emergence and sustained vigor; and for macros we applied Super Nitro® and Super Phos®, along with X-Tend®. Right behind the planter, we made another pass of Super Nitro®, Super Phos® and X-Tend®, along with Acuron herbicide. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #12
May 2, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics, Inc.
#Plant23 is well underway. From the time seeds are sown, how many days should it take for crops to emerge? That can vary greatly, from days to weeks. But for many crops, it’s not really about calendar days, but Growing Degree Days (GDD). [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #11
April 25, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics, Inc.
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge seed products by their bag covers. There’s lots of telling information on them. Just look at this bag of seeds going on my farm. The bag itself prominently features the brand name and logo (AgriGold), type of product (corn), the actual product name (A647-79VT2PRO) and weight (61 lbs. in this bag). Seed corn bags contain 80,000 kernels. The heavier the bag, the heavier the weight per kernel. While there are studies suggesting no link between final yield and the weight of the seed, many successful farmers ardently believe this to be true and prefer heavier seeds. Each bag also contains a tag that provides specific information that farmers will want to record. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #10
April 18, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics, Inc.
Football may be a game of inches, but farming is a business of fractional inches. Take planting. Seed placement is paramount to the success of a crop. Farmers spend lots of time calculating the optimum rate and depth to plant their seeds based on genetics, soil type, soil conditions, weather, management practices and the desired output of their crop. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #9
April 11, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics, Inc.
Regenerative agriculture is not some passing fad. It’s now a movement. And it’s here to stay. How can we be sure? Just look at who’s driving it. Unlike well-intentioned predecessors, such as LISA (Low Input Sustainable Agriculture), regen ag has a financial benefactor: food companies. From lofty goals articulated by their CEOs to multi-million-dollar investments, consumer brands are rushing to attach their name to nature-based growing practices. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #8
April 4, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics, Inc.
Farmers love to grow corn. Only twice in modern history has corn not held the title of the most-grown crop in the USA. That was in 2018 and (if you count it) 1983, when the government’s PIK program artificially swayed planting practices. Spurred by record fertilizer prices, many projected soybeans would overtake corn last year in their annual acreage tug-of-war. But the allure of maize once again prevailed. [Read more…]
This Week in Ag #7
March 28, 2023 by
By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Bio Huma Netics, Inc.
For most farmers, April means the start of planting season. It’s a lot like opening day for a baseball team: heavy planning, great excitement and anticipation, lots of optimism and more than a few watch outs. So when exactly do farmers start planting? While they all have a plan, Mother Nature usually has the final say. There is an art and science to determining when to first drop the planter. Here are some key factors that determine the right time. [Read more…]