This Week in Ag #23

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Move over carbon credits, and make room for carbon intensity scores. That’s the sentiment of many in the ag industry. Launched with plenty of fanfare, and hailed by celebrities and politicians alike, carbon credits seemed to represent a modern-day gold rush. Yet we’re multiple years in, and adoption sits at about 1-3% of farmers. Why is that? For starters, farmers already employing the cultural practices required to qualify for carbon capture payments – no-till, cover crops, NUE, etc. – are ineligible to participate. Among those who are, lengthy contracts, significant investments in time and resources, and a lack of clarity serve as deterrents. Enter carbon intensity scores. [Read more…]

This Week in Ag #18

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

In the sports of track and swimming, relay races are often the most exciting events of the meets. You know the concept: a team of usually four athletes races as they follow each other in succession, showcasing performance and precision. For a split moment, while handing a baton or projecting yourself toward the pool as your teammate touches the wall (while your toe remains on the block) both athletes are simultaneously performing. There’s a similar practice in farming called relay cropping. [Read more…]

This Week in Ag #17

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Today we commemorate one of the most important dates in history, D-Day. In 1944, the fate of the world literally depended on the success of this amphibious invasion. The bravery of our soldiers abroad – and the perseverance of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers in the factories at home – were paramount to our ultimate victory. But so was our nation’s ability to feed our allied troops. [Read more…]

This Week in Ag #16

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

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

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

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 #10

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…]

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