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John Dobberstein:

Welcome to the latest edition of the No-Till Farmer Podcast brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment. I'm John Dobberstein, senior editor of No-Till Farmer. In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Podcast, Lessiter Media President and CEO Mike Lessiter caught up recently with Cambridge, Illinois No-Tiller and Ag Solutions Network Co-Founder, Monte Bottens, who shares why the USDAs announced 700 million dollar commitment to regenerative agriculture is a big deal for the no-till and soil health movement. Bottens also explains why he's excited for the upcoming National No-Tillage Conference and the new TED-style talks he's participating in, as well as cutting edge technology for killing weeds and planting non-GMO seeds.

Mike Lessiter:

Well, the next thing I wanted to talk to you about, and our editors back at the office were glad that I was seeing you to make sense of what this week's news have, between the Trump Bridge program, the interest rate cut, and then what you notified me of this afternoon, which was this regenerative program. Can you put some perspective around what this means from the farmer's perspective?

Monte Bottens:

Well, we're after harvest. There's snow in lots of parts of the country, so farmers have a lot of things to say right now on social media about these programs. And one thing I'm seeing, because I'm plugged into a lot of the soil health, no-till, regenerative community, a lot of them are like, "Oh, this is a bridge payment, a bridge to what? And this is a classic bridge to nowhere."

We're not really changing the model. We're farming. We still have large ag buyers consolidation. And in that kind of declining end of market cycle, it's just always a race to the lowest cost per unit. But it's exciting. I mean, it's good to see. Who knows how the math is going to wind up. 12 billion can get divided pretty quickly over 300 million farm acres. So it sounds like a big number, but I don't know how far that'll go, but I'm sure it'll make an impact. It'll certainly help some people. We're thankful for that.

Albeit it's still... I got a friend of mine from Australia who's a no-till farmer. His name's Robo, and he always says, "Yeah, mate, there's no bad farmers in Australia, right?"

And I'll say, "What do you mean?"

He says, "Well, there's no government programs in Australia, so you have to be a good farmer." Are we encouraging bad behavior or bad fiscal management with bailouts? That's a bigger question, right?

The second part that you were just talking about is they've earmarked 700 million dollars for regenerative agriculture pilot projects that are farmer led. So at this moment in time, we're about two hours after the live stream announcement. You and I know as much about that as everyone else. There's a lot of devil in the details here. So what is that going to mean? I don't know. I like the fact that they're recognizing soil health is connected to human health. So that's a point. I like the fact that they're going to focus on farmer led pilots. So it's what is right for that context and let the farmer lead the pilot. I like that.

How this is all going to happen could be really interesting because they want to use existing NRCS programs. So using an existing program to get money to a pilot of something that doesn't ever exist, I'm not quite sure how that's going to work, but it's a start. It's a recognition that it can affect human health. So I was pretty excited about the combination of actually getting something done to where farmers who do the right thing, grow crops in the right way, can be rewarded for the outcomes that they're getting. And I think this is a step in that journey.

Mike Lessiter:

Can you tell us a little bit about this precision planting technology and what... I know it's on the early adoption, so what people might not recognize about it and what's different than the seed and sprays out there, that model?

Monte Bottens:

The new SymphonyVision is a way that they've taken the SymphonyNozzles that they've had out for a few years. And now they have cameras that are on this sprayer behind me. Every five feet, it'll be able to triangulate the weeds in the field and identify, is it broadleaf or grass? How big is it? How thick are all of the weeds? So it's going to map everything as we're going. And then there's parameters inside of the 2020 monitor to control what rate does it spray at. So if it's big weeds with high density, it'll increase the rate. If there's no weeds, it won't spray. And if it's small weeds and low density, it'll spray a nominal amount.

So we're going to get variable rate herbicide spray, so that way we're not spraying where we don't need it, and we make sure we've got a very effective rate where we do need it. So this year is, I believe, the first commercial availability for it. They're sold out for the '26 season, but there'll be a larger launch in the '27 season.

Mike Lessiter:

Can you relate what you had said about herbicide yield drag?

Monte Bottens:

On herbicides, there can be yield drag. It depends on what the mode of action is. But typically the corn plant or the soybean plant that you're spraying has to process those chemicals. So whether it's a phenoxy that's causing growth patterns or an inhibitor of some kind, there can be sometimes none, but sometimes there can be some significant yield drag when we do spray a herbicide across the crop, even if it is glyphosate resistant, or liberty resistant, or dicamba resistant in case of beans, there can still be some yield interaction.

So the less that we have to spray out there, typically the better we're going to have for final yields. But we spray now because the weeds would hurt us more than what the herbicide does. But I think this is going to allow us to be better stewards so that way when we have these areas, and every farmer knows that when you have water hemp or some of these smaller seeded weeds that are a problem, there'll be very dense in certain spots where the mother plant was the previous year. So when we're in those spots, rate can be increased in order to make sure that we kill those and get rid of any sort of herbicide resistance we might have. Then in areas of the field where we don't need those high rates, it's either at standard rate or shut off.

My understanding of other manufacturers have a revenue based model where it's either you pay based on the herbicides that you're saving, so you're paying for the portions of the field that you don't spray, and you pay different rates compared to, like if you're doing a chem fallow in maybe the western states where you want to just spray anything that's green, but don't spray where there's brown residues, is one rate. But if you want to spray in a standing cornfield and spray the weeds in there, it's a higher rate.

What Precision's chosen to do, and I think it's great for farmer freedom and choice is buy the hardware, which costs more upfront, but you don't have the subscription fees on the back end. So there's a couple different models out there. I think the other OEM is you don't have to pay for it upfront, you just pay for it as you use it. But I think farmers, there's lots of jokes on the internet with the farmers swiping a credit card in the side of their monitor related to these things. And farmers don't like that. Software as a service might work for other industries, but I think that's a hard sell in the ag community.

Mike Lessiter:

In terms of the interest rate impact on both the farmers' economy and you guys knew this well in the dealership world and manufacturing world, what impact does this quarter percent cut in interest rates have on what we all do here?

Monte Bottens:

Some, but not enough. It needs to be more. We're really at kind of near historical high on interest rates. And I think there's hope for more to come. I don't remember 20 years ago interest rates being such a political football. It's not supposed to be. And then you have the whole thing that Thomas Massey introduced a bill today to eliminate the Fed again. Why should one person in our economy of 300 million people decide what the interest rate is? Let it be free market. The market can decide that quickly and easily, but that'll happen at glacial speed. So in the meantime, the quarter point is welcome.

As you look at how much it's cost to produce an acre of corn or soybeans, how much that cost has increased in the last 10 years. Is it double, Mike? I mean, there's probably nearly double those inputs in there. So all of that requires additional working capital, which typically is from operating notes so that we've doubled our interest expense. And as those percentages go up, that eats into our bottom line even more. Look at what equipment prices have done. 10 years ago, was there a million dollar combine? There is today. And you take that times a quarter point on a million dollar note, that gets to be some serious money pretty quick.

So anything there to help with the liquidity of the farm and be able to make working capital more available is always welcome. Anything that can help us on the mid-range debts associated with farm equipment is welcome. And the other thing that'll do is it'll improve the balance sheet of farmers who own land or long-term assets because as interest rates go down, typically land values go up, which then gives them more ability to flex their balance sheet, to do additional acquisitions for equipment and those kind of things because they have a larger base in order to borrow from.

John Dobberstein:

We'll come back to the episode in a moment, but first I'd like to thank our podcast sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment. Looking for innovative solutions to maximize your farm's productivity? Look no further than Yetter Farm Equipment. We're dedicated to providing farmers with the highest quality equipment from row cleaners and closing wheels to fertilizer management, strip till units, installed devastators, Yetter has the tools you need to optimize your farming operation. Visit YetterCo.com to learn more and find a dealer near you.

Monte Bottens:

I'm excited to be a part of the No-Till Conference this year, and thanks for asking me back. So I didn't make too many people mad last year, so that's a good sign. But it looks like a great lineup for St. Louis. St. Louis is always a great place to have one. And looking forward to a lot of the speakers that are there, but also this new format that you're doing this year where you got a select group of people and me, good people and me, and then that are going to give short TED style talks, so 15, 17-minute presentations. So the neat part about that is a person has to get to the point and make it quick.

A lot of times we've all been to meetings and we all have... We're in the fourth season right now of farming, right? There's planting, there's growing and there's harvest. Then the fourth season's meeting season, and it can get a little tiresome, but I think it's going to introduce a new excitement into the whole program and be able to allow us to venture into some new ideas with new thought leaders. So pretty excited to be a part of that. And then I think each one's going to have a follow-on classroom. If it's something that you're interested in, you can dive deeper in with that person and speaker. So hope to see everyone this year at the No-Till Conference. In addition to the good information, it's good to be able to get back together with friends. It's essentially a no-till reunion, too.

Mike Lessiter:

Where'd that idea come from for this?

Monte Bottens:

Well, we talked about it a little bit, and we had designed that idea, just copying TED, TED Talks. So it's like TED Talks for agriculture. And we'd done that with our Aggie Merge conferences that we held prior to COVID, and it worked really great. And farmers liked that format, kept them engaged. And one thing I liked is when you're asking in a lot of these speakers that you've seen, they've kind of all got this canned one-hour presentation that works really well, but then all of a sudden when you ask them to get to a 15 minute or 17-minute, they have to rethink and rewrite everything. So the nice part about you doing it, Lessiter Group doing it here at the No-Till Conference is you're guaranteeing that they'll have fresh content.

Well, one of the things we decided to do, we've been growing non-GMO soybeans for a long time. And one of the nice things about non-GMOs is that we can replant them ourselves. We pay a royalty to the genetics provider, but we are allowed to replant them. So that's a nice part about doing that. And so what we noticed over time is we started doing a process where we'd separate off the 20% best beans within a lot. So soybeans are a variety, not a hybrid. So when you plant 100,000 seeds in an acre, there's 100,000 individuals out there that are fairly close, but they're not exact copies.

So what we're trying to do is just like how we breed cattle, let nature decide. We're letting nature decide and we select the 20% best beans, and then we plant those the next year. And then, Dad and I found that lo and behold, wait a minute, we're gaining 1.8 to 3.6 bushel to the acre in replicated tests. So we thought, "Well, there's something here."

So we continued to do that over the last five to six years. And now, we've decided to launch a new company to let other farmers take advantage of this. We call it EpiYield and it's non-GMO soybeans that allow people to take our seed stock that we've produced within no-till only conditions with a horse seeder, planting green into a cover crop with no seed treatments. So we're not babying these things at all. We're in real world, no-till environment. And then we harvest those off, and we get this yield gain. So then we take that better bean and we deliver it to a farmer. And then that farmer again can plant it within their own conditions because guess what? You've got different soil, weather, management considerations than I do. And then that farmer can save their seed, we'll process that seed for them, and give it back to them so they can get the epigenetic yield effect on their own farm.

And you've had several at National No-Till Conference speakers talk about epigenetics and just mention it as a thing, but what do you do with it? So I'm pretty excited to allow farmers to take advantage of this, to be able to navigate the licensing challenges and all the handling and logistics in order for them to grow seed, have it processed, have all the licenses and everything taken care of for them and be able to plant it back on their own farm.

Mike Lessiter:

How can people who are interested, how do they find you?

Monte Bottens:

We've got information on the Ag Solutions Network website. You can Google EpiYield, E-P-Y Yield and come up with it. But we're rolling it out this year. We've got four numbers for this year that we're going to market with. They're all black hilums. In the future, we'll have more clear hilum and other specialty soybean products. But we have a 1.8 designed for double cropping after small grains. We've got a 2.8, a 2.9 and a 3.2. The following year, we'll introduce a 2.3 and a 2.5 that are in the pipeline. But each one of these, we record how many generations they are and monitor that progress. And it's really neat to see how much yield you can gain out of the same variety just by how you manage it and allow the genetics to adapt to your soil and your conditions. So it's something I learned out of the no-till conference and other conferences I've been to, and we're just trying to help farmers take advantage of that on their own farm.

One other thing that's interesting about non-GMO soybeans is with Enlist, there's been quite a few problems and escapes now. So we're paying a high price for the Enlist soybean. We're paying quite a high price for the Enlist herbicide program, and then we wind up getting weed control equal to or less than what we're getting on our own non-GMO soybean weed control program. So in the old days, the seed... Right now, we're still about half the price of Enlist for the non-GMO soybeans, and you can't replant an Enlist. The black helicopters come and haul you away.

But you can replant our non-GMOs, but our non-GMO herbicide cost all in last year was, I think, $48.26. So it worked out pretty well and competitive. And I've heard several people in the Enlist programs that were north of 50. So in the past, it used to be twice as much for the seed, half as much for the herbicide, you add them together, and lo and behold, it wound up being the same thing. So anyway, it's cost competitive and weed control actually has better options.

John Dobberstein:

Well, that's it for this episode of the No Till Farmer Podcast. We'd like to thank Monte Bottens for sharing his viewpoints on what's happening with farm aid in the US, what's happening with the Ag Solutions Network and for previewing the TED style talks coming up at the National No Tillage Conference.

We also want to thank our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment, for helping us make this podcast possible. A transcript of this episode and our archive of previous podcast episodes are both available at NoTillFarmer.com/podcasts.

For Monte Bottens, Mike Lessiter and our entire staff here at No Till Farmer. I'm John Dobberstein. Thanks for listening. Keep on no-tilling and have a great day.