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[00:00:08] Mike Howell:
The Dirt, with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podKast 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, news, and issues, helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in. Well, hello again, everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. Today, we have Shaun Haney with us. He’s going to be our guest today. Shaun, welcome to The Dirt.
[00:00:46] Shaun Haney:
Hey, Mike. It is great to be on The Dirt PodKast. You do a fantastic job. Have some great guests, and I’m really looking forward to the conversation, man.
[00:00:53] Mike Howell:
Shaun, I’m looking forward to it as well. But before we get into it, if you will, introduce yourself to our listeners. I know a lot of people will recognize you and your voice already, but tell them a little bit about yourself and what you do.
[00:01:03] Shaun Haney:
I’m the founder of RealAgriculture, which I started really as a hobby going back to 2008. I was a very unmechanically inclined farm kid that was working in our family seed operation, and we had a feed yard as well. And started doing some moonlighting and writing some blog posts at the time. And started taking a camcorder to farm shows to interview people in their booths. And it snowballed and took off from there and realized that probably had a lot more talent for broadcasting than I ever did farming. Things just started rolling. And I feel so blessed to be able to do what I get to do on a daily basis. We now do a daily radio show on Rural Radio 147 on SiriusXM. I appear regularly on places like RFD-TV and AgriTalk in the US.
[00:01:47] Shaun Haney:
Our media company has really grown. We started out just talking about Canadian issues targeted towards Canadian farmers and ranchers, but I think we’ve really become much more of a true North American media company with some of our work on SiriusXM. I feel very blessed.
[00:02:01] Mike Howell:
Shaun, I know your travel schedule is pretty hectic. We were talking before we started recording. You’ve been on the road for over a week now. Tell us a little bit about where all you travel, where you’ve been over the winter.
[00:02:09] Shaun Haney:
I go coast to coast and north-south. I think I probably have more border crossings between Canada, US, than anybody else in Ag Media. I used to always just do a lot of conference coverage, where I’d go to Commodity Classic, or go to CattleCon, and cover those events. But in the last couple years, the speaking side of the business has really, really grown. And I’ve been intentional about that. So, I have been really across rural Canada and rural America the past two years quite a bit. I’m probably doing like 35, 40 speaking events in the year, which is a lot of time in hotels and on airplanes. When you’ve got premium status with three airlines and two hotels all at the same time, you know you’re traveling probably a little bit too much.
[00:02:49] Shaun Haney:
I have been to everywhere, from Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona. I’ve got a couple of events coming up in Iowa. And then, you look at Canada, I was in the Maritimes in New Brunswick, all the way to speaking in a place like Abbotsford, British Columbia, and everywhere in between. It’s not all big city stuff. A lot of it’s landing in the airport and trying to figure out how far you got to drive to the event. And, “Is there a hotel?” That’s always a question as well. But honestly, no matter if you’re in the US or in Canada, the issues are really the same. Now, where they fit on the priority scale may be a little bit different, or there could be a different angle and take to it, but for the most part, it’s a lot of the same sort of stuff.
[00:03:28] Shaun Haney:
And I think because I get to talk to so many different audiences in agriculture from so many different geographies, it really allows you to provide better aggregated perspective. Like, “Hey, this is happening in Alberta. That’s also an issue in Colorado. And this is how the people in Colorado actually solve this problem.” It actually helps you get to solutions faster for the audience. I just love it. It’s a great job.
[00:03:51] Mike Howell:
Shaun, that’s where we wanted to go today. We’re just getting ready to start planning down here in the South for our 2026 crop. And each year’s going to be a little different. We know we’re going to have challenges that we’ve got to overcome every year. You visit with a lot of growers and a lot of people that work in the industry. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges that these growers are facing this year. What’s top of mind?
[00:04:10] Shaun Haney:
Well, it’s tough. And you mentioned the South. And when I try to tell audiences and show them through some of the numbers from USDA and American Farm Bureau, the Southern US is really in the worst spot, from a profitability perspective. You look at USDA’s forecast on, say, the average cotton acre, like $380 an acre loss that wins, and that’s not a competition you want to win when it comes to this game. Rice, peanuts, cotton, sugar, sorghum, those are all southern crops, and they’re in a bad shape profitability-wise. No matter where you are though, across North America, you hear the same thing. Concern about the abundance of crop supplies, the need for more demand for those crops, domestically or internationally through trade.
[00:04:51] Shaun Haney:
Prices have rolled over and input prices have remained, what we’ll call sticky. And in a lot of my presentations, there’s a lot of focus on something like fertilizer prices, for example, but that doesn’t tell the whole story, Mike. And American Farm Bureau put out a great chart where they showed fertilizer prices as a percentage of overall cost. And as an overall percentage of costs, fertilizer actually is declining, meaning it’s the entire cost complex that is rising, right? And so, it’s not just variable costs. I think a lot of times, the farmer focuses on those variable costs and that’s only about a third of the cost complex. It’s the other two-thirds.
[00:05:27] Shaun Haney:
The fixed costs that are also been rising, that’s machinery, its labor, it’s things like that, that have really put the farmer in a negative margin position and put a lot of pressure on them to try to find some more revenue, so to speak. And I think that is the case from coast to coast. You could be in Oregon or you could be in New York State or where you are in Mississippi. And I guarantee if you went to local farm meeting, they’re talking about exactly that.
[00:05:52] Mike Howell:
I hear it everywhere I go. These variable costs, yeah, we can do some things to manage those. The fixed cost is where it gets a little more challenging. And do we want to sell this tractor? I mean, we can sell a tractor and get rid of that cost. Do we want to sell this piece of ground? That gets really challenging and folks don’t want to do that, but we’re having to look at some of these tough challenges. What are you seeing? How are folks overcoming that challenge?
[00:06:13] Shaun Haney:
Well, I think a big part of it is really, you got to know your numbers, right? And everybody’s in a different point in that pendulum, just like they are with agronomics. You’re an expert in agronomics. I am not, but I am trying to improve. That’s the important point here, is what am I doing to incrementally improve my knowledge on the subject? That works for agronomy. It also works for farm financial knowledge. And a lot of us got into the world of agriculture, whether it’s raising livestock or growing crops. It wasn’t to dig into the numbers. “Oh, I love the numbers of farming.” What farmers said that? They got into the business because they like raising livestock or growing crops, and that’s where their expertise is. But as the entrepreneur, we can’t ignore the numbers. We got to know them.
[00:06:52] Shaun Haney:
And it’s a part of being that farmer CEO, if you want to put it that way. So, I think that’s really one of the most critical things, is having a handle on that. And when it comes to the decision making, I’m a huge proponent of one of the things we need to talk a lot more about in the world of agriculture, when it comes to being the farm manager, is return on investment. And when we’re trying to come up with, “Does it work to buy that combine?”, or, “What seed hybrid should I go with?”, and all that kind of stuff. A lot of times, it’s the upfront cost, is really one of the criteria where it’s like, “Oh, that cost sounds about right,” or, “It doesn’t sound about right,” really put in its most simplistic terms. But that only tells a portion of the story.
[00:07:29] Shaun Haney:
It’s really about the return on investment that we need to move more of the discussion towards. And so, what I talk about in my presentations is if that’s a $20 per acre cost, some may say, “Oh man, I can’t afford 20 bucks an acre,” or, “I can,” but maybe what we need to do is move more to, “Well, what does that actually return me?” If it’s $10 back, well, get rid of it. I don’t care how much you like your sales rep, you shouldn’t be using that product. But if it gets you back 50, it’s a no-brainer. That’s a yes. But in order to get to that, we need to have more access to the data, and be able to synthesize that data and turn that data into information, so we’re able to make those kind of decisions. And I think that’s a big challenge for a lot of growers, to get to that point where they actually know the ROI.
[00:08:12] Shaun Haney:
It’s much easier in a livestock operation like in a dairy or maybe a poultry barn because it’s a contained variable environment. Being outside with crops, there’s a lot more variables that’s a little bit more difficult, but we got to do the best we can to get there.
[00:08:24] Mike Howell:
Shaun, I’m looking at an accounting class this year and trying to brush up a little bit on that and understand some of these costs and where they come from. And that’s something we’re talking about. Where do these costs come from? And you hit on a lot of these things we’re talking about in that class. And it’s hard to determine where these costs are actually coming from a lot of times, the fixed cost and the variable cost, and how you assign those costs. Something like, “These tractors, do we associate that as a fixed cost across the whole system or do we break it down?”, “Okay, in each field, it’s going to cost us this much to run that tractor in each field.”
[00:08:54] Mike Howell:
And when we start breaking it down and looking at it like that, we can really get a handle on how much that piece of equipment is going to cost us.
[00:09:00] Shaun Haney:
One of the things that comes up a lot is I’ll hear a farmer say, “You know what? I got to get rid of some of this expensive ground, right? Oh man, Mike, I’m paying too much rent on this piece.” But maybe that most expensive ground is the most productive ground you have.
[00:09:13] Mike Howell:
You got to look at the profits.
[00:09:15] Shaun Haney:
Exactly. Maybe you should be getting rid of that cheapest ground that produces the least, assuming that all correlates in that way. That’s the ground you should be getting rid of because the return is probably higher with that more expensive, more productive land than it is with the cheap, unproductive land. And again, that may not be true in all situations, but it’s about knowing that information to get you to the higher probability of making a good financial decision. I was in Lincoln, Nebraska back in the fall. I was doing a presentation on breakeven analysis from an entrepreneur standpoint. I’m not an accountant. I’m an entrepreneur.
[00:09:49] Shaun Haney:
And one of the things that we were talking about is, a grower said to me, one of the things that they did was we’ve convinced ourselves agronomically, get the crop in as early as possible, early start. And this farmer said to me that when I looked at it, I was actually having another hired person on the farm for the whole season for, in reality, that one week. And that doesn’t make sense. Am I actually getting that crop in that week early or did it rain, and then we were pushed back anyways? It’s thinking about it from that standpoint. I think what some of the farmers on the higher end of this farm financial literacy curve, the things that they’re looking at is the real efficiency and productivity of their farm equipment. “How much do I really need?”
[00:10:33] Shaun Haney:
The matching of that to the acres and doing the same from a labor perspective. And some of the states, you got overtime rules, right? And so, does it make sense to have more staff around you, minimize the overtime hours, versus maybe what you were doing previously? And the same goes for equipment. The matching of… “We’ve got two combines in our geography. What’s the most efficient amount of acres for that amount of equipment?” It is really trying to pair those and match those, and mapping them. I think it really helps farmers out here is when they’re not doing this alone. The benefit of things like peer groups, the benefit of things like the ability to benchmark to other farms of your shape and size.
[00:11:12] Shaun Haney:
They may not be in the exact same geography, but they’re up against some of the same scalable challenges as you. That will really assist you in getting to probably a lot more of an efficient structured farm.
[00:11:24] Mike Howell:
Well, Shaun, we’ve talked a lot about the economy and that’s top of everybody’s mind. What other challenges are you hearing growers talk about coming into this growing season?
[00:11:32] Shaun Haney:
Honestly, I think it’s… Outside of the economy, I think a lot of farms are really struggling with, what I hear from people is something like access to labor, is a real major one. And that kind of is an economic one, but it’s more on the HR side, outside of the accounting department on a farm. And not just a body that can breathe, but somebody that has the skills or the aptitude to get to the proper skill level through a little bit of training.
[00:11:56] Mike Howell:
You know, Shaun, it wasn’t too many years ago, a body that could breathe could do an awful lot on the farm, but these days, everything is automated. You’ve got computers in every tractor. You’ve got to have a little bit of intelligence to get things to even flow through the planter. Not just anybody can do this job anymore.
[00:12:11] Shaun Haney:
Isn’t that kind of funny? We always talked about how once we had this technology, anybody could run the equipment. Well, I hear from farmers all the time… I was with some farmers last week in Calgary, Alberta, and they said, “Dad can’t run the combine anymore. He’s a couple generations of machines, now, away from where his prime was in terms of being an operator. Can’t stick him in there anymore. He’s so intimidated he can’t do it.” But there will be a point, and who knows how long this is, where we won’t need the operator. I was at a feed yard in Nebraska back in the fall where, man, they are super close to something like a robotic feed truck. They are one step away. All the technology is there. They’re almost to the point where they wouldn’t even need a driver.
[00:12:50] Shaun Haney:
Technology can make one more little bit of a leap. So, that kind of automation and autonomy is coming, but again, not for all operations. The first place is not going to be a corn and bean farm in Iowa or Indiana, more likely to be in horticulture, or more of a confined livestock environment, in my opinion.
[00:13:08] Mike Howell:
Shaun, we’ve talked a lot about challenges and we know we’re going to have those, but with every challenge, we’re going to have some opportunities. What’s the optimistic outlook? What are you seeing, as far as opportunities, for these growers in 2026?
[00:13:19] Shaun Haney:
You put it in that context at ’26. This is “live to fight another day” for the cropping sector, for sure. In all honesty, that’s the way that I see it. Can things turn around on a dime, and all of a sudden, the market takes off like it did post-pandemic? I’m not going to rule that out. But it very much feels like a “live to fight another day.” When it comes to the beef sector though, we hear Secretary Rollins say all the time, “The golden age of agriculture is coming.” Well, the beef sector is going through a golden age, especially for the cow-calf sector. It is absolutely amazing, what we have seen from a beef profitability standpoint here in the last 24 months at the ranch level.
[00:13:52] Shaun Haney:
And much deserved because there’s been a long period of really making no money, and wondering why the heck we have these cows on the farm. I think longer term though, for the cropping sector, there is a lot of opportunity. People are going to say like, “Hey, if you’re not optimistic, you couldn’t be a farmer.” And there’s that great Will Rogers quote that I can’t totally remember in terms of optimism, but I think there is opportunity. Agriculture really is the cornerstone of rural economic development. We have the energy sector in a lot of rural areas, but agriculture is probably a little bit more of a stable horse when it comes to rural economic development.
[00:14:25] Shaun Haney:
I think we’re making some serious inroads when it comes to domestic consumption of crops through things like biofuels, whether that’s in Canada or in the US. We’re figuring that out, that there’s a little bit more friction to trade as of late. And so, we need to have some domestic solutions for some of the crops that we’re growing. And at the same time though, I think there is opportunity on the trade front, as well as we see the middle class grow. USDA has talked a lot about the longer-term opportunity in Africa, but there’s also, of course, trying to make inroads in places like China, and you can’t ignore India as well. And if you’re an old timer, we like to reminisce in this industry. We’ve been through poor cycles profitability-wise before, and we’ve come out of them.
[00:15:06] Shaun Haney:
And the adversity is probably going to help us build up some calluses a little bit, when it comes to some of the farm management, and making sure our farm is structured with some resilience. So honestly, Mike, I think there’s lots of reasons to be optimistic and think that there’s a strong future in front of us. Just in the short term, it’s tight, and we’re going to have to really show some grit to get through it.
[00:15:26] Mike Howell:
I couldn’t agree more. Shaun, you go to a lot of trade shows. You see a lot of exciting things. It’s not quite here yet. Talk a little bit about what you see coming in the future. We’re talking about… You mentioned robots and the autonomous vehicles coming out. How far down the road do you think that kind of stuff is?
[00:15:42] Shaun Haney:
I think if you’re in Oregon, in a horticulture like a blueberry or maybe an apple orchard, I just think we’re really close. Obviously, there’s a lot of optimistic about drone spraying, and some of the size of these drones and the speed of these drones. There’s an example of a technology that farmers are just really chomping at the bit. Now, our regulations around what products we can use are probably a little bit behind, where the drones are, where farmers want it all to be. I think that’s one that people are very excited about. Obviously, you think back to four or five years ago at Farm Progress Show and Commodity Classic, there was a lot of large broadacre solutions or prototype showcased when it came to autonomous tractors. That seems to have slowed down a little bit.
[00:16:26] Shaun Haney:
I was at multiple agritechnicas in Germany in a row, and there was a bit of a battle between, “Are we going to have autonomous 500-horsepower tractors?”, or, “Are we going to have more of a swarm situation where there’s multiple units?” I always thought the swarming made the most sense. And also, retrofitting the tractors we already can drive. Retrofitting those makes more sense than buying a 600-horsepower tractor with no cab on it. That didn’t make any sense to me, but I’m sure you’ve talked about weed resistance and dealing with weeds. And we’re going to need all the tools. And some of the things that are happening with see-and-spray, that technology’s here and only going to get better.
[00:17:00] Shaun Haney:
And when I think about having to tackle some of these crazy weeds like Palmer amaranth and waterhemp, and kochia is a terrible one in the northern plains and into Western Canada. We need as many of these tools as possible, whether it’s weed-picking robots, it’s drone spraying, it’s sensor technology to only spray certain weeds with higher-concentrate targeted products. We need all of that. And I think a lot of times, Mike, we focus on autonomy, the operator. But I think when it comes to the technology, I think we should be the most excited about all the different ways we’re potentially going to be able to remove weeds from the field because that’s the battle that we’re losing. We love driving the planter. We love driving the combine.
[00:17:40] Shaun Haney:
Not saying we don’t like driving the sprayer, but we’re spending more and more time in it, and the weeds are winning. And so, we need some help.
[00:17:46] Mike Howell:
We’re definitely getting more resistant weeds and we’re not getting a whole lot of new chemistry coming out. We’ve got to come up with other ways to control these weeds. And I’m excited about what’s coming, in the terms of weed control. A lot of new exciting technology coming there. Shaun, we started off talking about RealAgriculture and how you got that started. Remind our listeners again about some of the programs you have going and where they can find out more information about RealAgriculture.
[00:18:07] Shaun Haney:
For a lot of The Dirt audience, a great place to check us out is the RealAg Radio show. RealAg Radio is every weekday on Rural Radio 147 on SiriusXM. You can also download the podcast. Another show that might be of real interest to your listeners, Mike, is on Monday nights, we do an agronomist show. And The Agronomist is a live, YouTube-based show where we focus in on an agronomic issue, and we have different researchers or agronomists from different parts of North America. And it’s not like a slideshow. It’s not like, “You present for 15 minutes.” It’s a conversation with some real key experts, and there’s a great live chat and people participating every week, and you can also get CCA/CEU credits as well for that.
[00:18:45] Shaun Haney:
And we also have a number of different crop schools across corn, soybeans, wheat, canola, and pulse crops that people may be interested in as well at realagriculture.com. So, we’re doing lots of agronomic stuff, which is, hey, that’s why farmers got into the business.
[00:18:57] Mike Howell:
Well, Shaun, we really appreciate you being with us today. Do you have any closing comments, anything you want to leave our listeners with before we wrap it up?
[00:19:03] Shaun Haney:
It’s easy to focus on the adversity and some of the margin pressure like we talked about. But I always try to take people back, Mike, to during the pandemic. I remember doing an interview with Jim Mintert from Purdue University. It was right during the pandemic, and things were hitting the fan. It seemed bad if packing plants were shutting down and, “Could we get chemistries?”, and all this kind of stuff. Huge profitability concern. And I remember Dr. Mintert saying, “Shaun, whoa, slow down. There’s opportunity here. Farmers with strong balance sheets, farmers with good working capital.”
[00:19:35] Shaun Haney:
And I remember he used this exact phrase, “This is when they pounce. This is where there’s opportunity because they have a plan, and they’ve prepared their farm business for these kinds of struggles. And if you get lost in the chaos and you’re in the noise and the fog of it all, you’re going to have a hard time staring through it. It’s the people that can get above it, and see the horizon, and see how they have to navigate through some of these challenging times. Those are the farmers that will really come out the other side a lot stronger.” There is a message of positivity here as well.
[00:20:02] Mike Howell:
Shaun, we really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to visit with us today. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in. And if you will, hang around for just a couple of moments. 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 eKonomics, 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 to segment two. Glad you’re back with us for this section where we ask an agronomist our question of the week. Today, we’ve got Dr. Karl Wyant in the studio. Karl, glad to have you today.
[00:20:46] Karl Wyant:
Yeah, appreciate having me on.
[00:20:48] Mike Howell:
Karl, today’s question has to do with starter fertilizers. We need to know when starter fertilizers are most effective, and are they more effective in certain crops?
[00:20:56] Karl Wyant:
Fantastic question as we gear up here into planting season. In my experience, starter fertilizers don’t really impart an impact on specific crops that you might be putting in the ground, say, soybeans versus corn, or something like that. Really, what I found across my career is that starter fertilizers work really well when you think of the when you need it and the where you’re using it. So, if you’re trying to grow a crop or establish a crop during a time of year where soils tend to be cool and moist, same conditions that limit phosphorous availability and movement in the soil, that’s a great time to add a starter fertilizer. Give it that little boost that the crop needs and get around those soil conditions that might otherwise get in the way of your phosphorus program.
[00:21:38] Karl Wyant:
Another thing to think about is the where you’re planting. If you’re planting in the soils that are low phosphorus just to begin with, just background rates of phosphate, that’s a fantastic place to add starter fertilizer. Add the needed nutrients as indicated by the soil report, and give your crop that headstart that you’re looking for.
[00:21:55] Mike Howell:
Great advice, Karl. We really appreciate you joining us today. Listeners, thank you for tuning in this week. And as always, if you need more information about anything we’ve discussed today, you can visit 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. It could be your neighbor, your friend, your crop advisor, or whoever you think would enjoy it. Your support helps ensure future episodes. So, please like, subscribe, share, and rate the show wherever you’re listening from.
