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[00:00:00] Mike Howell: The Dirt with me, Mike Howell, an ekonomics podcast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by ekonomics.com farming’s go-to informational resource. I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research use, and issues helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
Well, hello again everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. We’re glad you’re tuning in. This week we’re kind of doing a little something different. Traveling to all the farm shows over the last few years. Had the opportunity to run into some people that worked with Farm Rescue. We thought we would get them on the program.
They’re doing some great work across the countryside and wanted to find out a little bit more about Farm Rescue to help us do that, we’ve got Bill Gross with us here today. Bill, welcome to the Dirt.
[00:01:03] Bill Gross: Well, thank you
[00:01:04] Mike Howell: Bill. If you will, take just a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners. Let ’em know what you do.
[00:01:08] Bill Gross: I’m Bill Gross, the founder and president of Farm Rescue. I started a nonprofit organization 20 years ago this year to help farm families that have experienced a major injury, illness, or natural disaster so they could continue their livelihood.
[00:01:25] Mike Howell: Bill, tell us a little bit more about Farm Rescue.
[00:01:27] Bill Gross: Farm Rescue is a nonprofit organization, like I said, that it provides planting, haying, harvesting, even livestock feeding assistance and commodity hauling.
For those farmers that have had a devastating injury, illness, or natural disaster, through no fault of their own, maybe they. Are dealing with cancer. Maybe they got a hand cut off or a broken back or a leg. Farming is a very dangerous occupation and there’s a lot of things that can happen and do happen, and that’s where farm rescue comes in.
A farm family can’t get the work done themselves. We come in, we’re like a big mobile farming operation operating in nine states. And we come in and plant or hay or harvest that crop for one season free of charge till the farm family can get back on their feet. And again, we don’t give any money out.
This is not about a handout or anything like that. The farmers still provides the fuel and the seed and the fertilizer and the inputs and so on. But we come in with manpower and equipment and get it done in a timely fashion.
[00:02:29] Mike Howell: Bill, it kind of sounds like neighbors helping neighbors the way it used to be. In the old days. It doesn’t seem to happen that way as much anymore.
[00:02:35] Bill Gross: Well, that’s right, and that’s why farm rescue is here. I saw that many years ago. I was raised on a family farm and nowadays there isn’t as many family farms. And they’re further apart and there’s less children staying on those farms, and you just don’t have as many people to help you.
And the economies of scale, everyone has their hands full, just getting the work done themselves.
[00:02:58] Mike Howell: Well, Bill, tell us a little bit about how farm Rescue began. When did it start, and how did you come up with this idea to start this program?
[00:03:04] Bill Gross: It really started, I have to give you a bit of a backstory. I went on mission trips over the years through the church over to Romania and Croatia and so on, and I would usually go over for a month at a time and maybe build houses, teach Bible study, or do a variety of things just to help people.
And I started to think that there’s people back in our own country that needs help. And I always loved farming and was not able to stay on the family farm myself actually. My folks said, we can’t help you just because of financial constraints to get going on the farm right now. Go ahead and get education and get some training, and if the farm is still here, you’re always welcome to come back.
Well, that’s what happened, and so I went on to. Take training to become a pilot. And I’ve been a Boeing 747 captain for UPS airlines for over 30 years already. That’s my main job. It still is to this day. But like I said, I went on the mission trips and I was flying overseas over the Pacific Ocean with my co-pilots, and I was only in my thirties at the time, and they said, what are you gonna do when you retire?
And I said, I’m gonna get this big John Deere tractor and planter, and I’m gonna show up in the morning in my own state. I started it in North Dakota. And I’m gonna be there at 6:00 AM This farmer will say, what’s this guy doing in my front yard with a big tractor and planter? And I’d get out and say, fill it with seed and fertilizer and I’ll plant a few hundred acres for you and go on to the next one.
I was basically gonna be this random good Samaritan, this Johnny Apple seed, and everyone thought it was kind of a crazy idea, I have to be honest, but I was serious about it. Having traveled all over the world, literally for 30 years, everywhere from Dubai, all over Europe and Asia and Central America and so on.
I wanted to return to my roots and help people. So this was my way. I was telling a chaplain friend of mine, my idea when I was in my thirties there and he said, bill, don’t wait till you retire. ’cause I was planning on doing it when I retired from flying. He said That day may never come or you may not be physically able.
And he says, there must be other people that are like-minded like you that would join in. And he said, you should start a nonprofit. So that’s what I did. Started a nonprofit. I approached other people, retired farmers, people that grew up on a farm like myself and weren’t able to stay on the farm. And so basically farm rescue, it’s run by primarily volunteers, including myself and the board of directors are volunteers.
And we have nearly a thousand volunteers that have applied to help nationwide from all 50 states, and it’s just grown every year from North Dakota onto South Dakota, Minnesota, onto nine states now, and we’ll continue to grow.
[00:05:44] Mike Howell: Bill, that’s quite impressive. But I did not realize it was quite that big. I knew you had a lot of volunteers there.
You mentioned that as volunteers, do you have any paid employees with the organization or is it 100% volunteers doing all the work?
[00:05:56] Bill Gross: Well, we do have some paid employees and you get a certain size, it just can’t get it all done with volunteers anymore. So we do have seven full-time employees. But when you think about that, we operate in nine states and only have seven employees, and we have many good volunteers that are team leads that get the work done and they’ve come back for over 10 years in a row.
Very experienced operators of equipment, be it planting or harvesting or such, and retired farmers helping. So we have a lot of good qualified people helping us get the work done to help these farm families when they’ve had an unforeseen crisis.
[00:06:32] Mike Howell: So Bill, this has been going on for quite a while. How many families has farm rescue helped over the years?
[00:06:37] Bill Gross: Well, farm Rescue has helped many, many farm families already. It’s approaching 1300 farm families.
[00:06:44] Mike Howell: Bill, if there’s someone in need out there, I know there’s things that happen all the time. How can somebody get in touch with you or one of your staff and get on the list if they need some help?
[00:06:54] Bill Gross: Well, it’s simple.
The best way is to go to our website, farmrescue.org. You can apply to be a volunteer there. You can watch testimonials from actual farmers that have had a crisis in which we’ve come in and help and sponsors and volunteer testimonials also. A lot of good things shows our coverage area and how to apply and volunteer.
That is really the best way, but if you really want to give us a call, you can call us at (701) 252-2017 and speak to someone live. Also, I might. Add here. You can nominate a farm family. If you don’t need the help yourself, go ahead and call us up and tell us about a farm family that might need help. ’cause farm families are independent, prideful people.
A lot of times they don’t want to ask for help, God bless them, but a lot of times they need the help and should have the help. And so we have families that call up, or even business sponsors and so on and say, we know this family, something bad happened to them. They’re not the type of people to ask for help, but they sure could use a helping hand.
And then we contact the family and just say, someone called in just anonymously. And we’d like to extend a helping hand, and in most cases, that results in us helping that farm family and later they are so thankful that that family nominated them. So go ahead and if you know a farm family, let us know in any of the states, the nine states we operate in is.
North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Kentucky Farm Families in any of those states can apply for assistance free of charge. There’s no catch.
[00:08:32] Mike Howell: Bill, you’ve mentioned that a couple of times, that it’s free of charge, and you just mentioned sponsors, and I know Nutrien is a sponsor of Farm Rescue.
How can somebody be a sponsor? I know you have to have a lot of help to get this done being a nonprofit. Talk a little bit about sponsorships and what somebody needs to do if they want to help out.
[00:08:49] Bill Gross: Well, that’s right. Thank you for asking. Yes. Nutrien is definitely a large sponsor of Farm Rescue. They’ve been a sponsor for many years, and without the help of Nutrien, we would’ve never been able to help this number of farm families.
So big hats off the Nutrien for helping us and caring for the farm families. And in a sizable way supporting farm rescue to keep the wheels in motion to help these families. But there’s other companies like John Deere that sponsors equipment and a lot of good sponsors visit our website. We got Anheuser-Busch, they’re another large sponsor, even have a portion of their proceeds go to Farm Rescue.
So there is many good companies helping us out. And we need it. I mean, we do. Otherwise, we can’t help these farm families. We use the money efficiently. Like I said, it’s not a handout. None of your money is going to be handed out to a farm family. It’s just going to mobilize volunteers and equipment, and we have trucks and some tractors and combines and so on.
There’s repairs to those things and it can be expensive nowadays. And to keep all that in motion does require funding. And we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which means that donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent by law. So we appreciate any donations. You can go to our website, farm rescue.org.
There is a secure page to safely donate there. That’s where most people go to, but you can also mail a check if you want to. PO Box 28 in Horace. H-O-R-A-C-E, North Dakota 58047 also that way, or call our phone number again, (701) 252-2017 and talk to someone in person if you wish to do that, to feel more comfortable before making a donation.
And thank you.
[00:10:34] Mike Howell: Well, Bill, I’m sure we’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg with what farm rescue is all about. Is there anything else that you wanna leave our listeners with before we sign off today?
[00:10:42] Bill Gross: I just want to reiterate again that a lot of times farm families feel that someone else needs the help more than them.
We had a farmer not too long ago get his hand cut off in a combine. And when we called him up for help, he says, surely there must be someone else that needs the help more than me. And I like, are you kidding? So even if you think that you’re not injured or Ill that bad, give us a call and we might be working near you or such.
It doesn’t hurt to call and ask and we’ll see if we can help you. We are fortunately with our good sponsors, able to help most of the cases that apply.
[00:11:18] Mike Howell: Well, Bill, we really appreciate the work that you and the team there at Farm Rescue are doing. I know there’s a lot of people out there that need help and it’s just a great effort that you’re doing to give these people a hand up and, and help ’em get back on their feet in their time of need.
Listeners, we hope you’ve learned something today and, uh, wanna encourage you to check out the website, learn more about farm rescue, and if you can help these people out there doing some great work out there, if you will, hang around for just a moment and we’ll be right back with segment two. Farming Isn’t farming without questions and now.
There’s a place to go for answers at economics. An entire team of agronomists is waiting and ready to help for free. No question is too big or too small. Visit Nutrien-ekonomics.com and submit your question with the ask an agronomist feature.
Listeners, welcome back for segment two. As you know, by now, segment two is where we ask one of our agronomists a question of the week to help us With that, we’ve got Alan Blaylock back in the studio with us. Alan, welcome back to the Dirt and refresh everybody’s memory what you do with Nutrien.
[00:12:22] Alan Blaylock: Well, Mike, good to be here again.
I am senior agronomist with Nutrien Wholesale. I’m based in Colorado, primarily covering the western part of the Corn Belt, the Great Plains, and into the Pacific Northwest. Although, as you’ve probably learned from listening to these podcasts, we pretty much cross over each other and help each other out as needed.
But primary responsibility is kind of that middle of the country.
[00:12:45] Mike Howell: Alan, today’s question is one that came in on our ask the agronomist format there. The producer wanted to know how much nitrogen he needs to apply its sidedress to corn. He says that he has applied chicken manure prior to planting at a rate of five tons per acre, and the analysis on that manure was 36 units of total nitrogen per ton.
He says he is shooting for a yield of 175 bushels per acre. What can you tell him about his need for nitrogen going into the season? So Mike, repeat again. How many tons of manure has he applied so far? He has applied five tons of manure per acre. That is 36 units of total nitrogen per ton.
[00:13:22] Alan Blaylock: Okay. Mike, there’s several ways to kind of approach this.
One of the things a grower can do, and it’s kind of depends on the growth stage he’s at, but he can do something called a pre side risk nitrate test, and that’s basically going out. Taking soil sample to a 12 inch depth, have it analyzed or nitrate content, and then we can look at how much that says is in the soil right now in the nitrate form.
That’s obviously not everything the plant’s going to get, but that’s a pretty good indicator if we’re not too late in the season. And we’re approaching the point right now where a lot of corn is taline pollinating. And so that test may not be as applicable for everybody. But basically what we’re looking at in that test is a nitrate content.
Of kind of about 20 parts per million as a critical level. And if we’re above that, it would say, well, you don’t need anymore. And if we’re below that, it says, well, yes, we need need to add some more nitrogen. We wanna take a look at how much does that mean? Let’s look at the total nitrogen budget. Look at how much we’ve applied already in various forms.
In this case, he’s applied five tons of manure at about 35, 36 pounds of end per tongue. He’s applied roughly just. Gross math here, about 160 pounds of N in the manure so far. Now we have to recognize that not all of that becomes planned available in the first year of application. And kind of a general guideline that’s often used is about 50% of the N in the manure becomes available in the growing season.
So he’s put on, I said, about 160 pounds of in, in the manure. So we could say, well, he is probably got about half of that that’s going to be available this year. The crop, then we can look at how much total N is needed for that crop and look at your local recommendations. And people use different formulas.
Some people don’t like to use a yield goal to calculate that. They have other formulas to use, but we have various ways of getting that. The total N that’s needed. Look at that total. Subtract off how much has been applied with the manure and any other pre-plant form starter, anything like that that’s been added.
And we could add the balance as our sidedress fertilizer. A yield goal of say, 150 bushels, he’s put on probably about half of what is going to be needed for that crop for the whole season. Putting on another 70, 80, maybe 90 pounds of end per acre would be close to the crops requirement.
[00:15:39] Mike Howell: Okay, Alan, we really appreciate you walking us through that and how we do those calculations.
Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in this week, and for more information on anything we’ve talked about, you can always go back to our website. That’s Nutrien-ekonomics.com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with the Dirt. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, do us a favor and share this podcast with someone else.
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