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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. Glad you’re tuning in with us. This week. We are doing a little special episode. I am not in my office. I am actually on campus at Mississippi State. We’re in one of their production studios and I’ve got Dr. Angus Catchot with me. Angus, before we get started, I’m gonna go ahead and throw it out there.
We’ve probably known each other a little over 30 years. We’re not gonna tell any stories today. I don’t wanna do anything to incriminate either one of us. So we’re going to stick strictly to the facts today. But before we get started, Angus, if you would go ahead and tell everybody what you do here at Mississippi State.
[00:01:11] Dr. Angus Catchot: Well, Mike, it is good to see, and we might have to get into a story before this is over. I don’t know, we’ve got a bunch of big Catfish stories and everything else, so I’m the director of Extension here at Mississippi State University. Been in this role for about two years. I’ve been at Mississippi State for 22 years, and as you know, in my previous role in the faculty, I was a hundred percent extension.
I was an entomologist, worked with farmers all over our state and kind of missed those days a little bit, but in a role now that hopefully can make a difference.
[00:01:38] Mike Howell: Well, Angus, I ran into you a couple of weeks ago at an alumni function and you asked me why I’d never had you on the podcast, and I said, well, we gotta fix that.
So, kinda wanna take a little while this morning and talk about the extension service, and we’ll kind of talk about extension in general and then we’ll focus in a little bit. Kind of drill down on Mississippi and talk a little bit more specifically about the Mississippi State Extension Service. So I guess to kind of get us kicked off, we’ve talked about extension, we’ve talked about the three branches of the Land-Grant University system a little bit, but remind our listeners exactly what the extension service is.
[00:02:09] Dr. Angus Catchot: So, you’re right, we’re obviously part of a land-grant system, so research, teaching, and service. I’m very passionate about the land-grant system and my goal is to stay on mission with Land-grant extension. Obviously, when extension was created with the Smith Lever in 1914, that created the Cooperative Extension Service.
But the way I try to explain it, and you gotta realize, AG is a huge sector, and I’m very passionate about ag. That’s where I cut my teeth. But we do a lot of everything, and we can talk about that some in a minute, but when I try to explain it to people that are not. Familiar with ag or showing something in the four H Livestock Show?
The way I tell people to get an understanding, if I was trying to explain this to my mother, what extension is, it’s basically we take that research, that complicated research that our fabulous scientists do on the experiment station side, and essentially we translate it down and we expanded out across the state to everybody in the state where they can use it.
In a way that they can apply and understand, but research based, that’s essentially what we do. We translate it down and we disseminated it out to all the citizens of the state.
[00:03:16] Mike Howell: Now, Angus, I know extension has changed a lot over the years. Probably my first dealings with the extension service was in the 4 H program.
I started showing cattle when I was nine years old, and back then we had a county agent in every county. Most counties had an assistant county agent. At least one or two four H agents, a home economist, several other people in the county extension offices. And I know it’s not that way today. Things have changed, but back then it was called the Mississippi State University Cooperative Extension Service.
And somewhere along the way, the cooperative got taken away. I know some other states the service got taken away and there was a running joke there for a while that we don’t cooperate and some of the other states don’t serve. Talk about some of the changes that have happened over the years with the extension service.
[00:03:58] Dr. Angus Catchot: Well, I’m gonna say we’re still the Cooperative Extension Service. I think if you look at our official name, we’re still the Cooperative Extension Service, which is essentially a partnership through USDA, so federal, state, and local. So that’s still there. I believe they dropped that name if I’m correct, the cooperative part in 1996 maybe.
But I think the reason that they did that and a few other states around is really to show the alliance with the main university itself. It really makes no difference to me. We still have some extension services across the country that use the word cooperative. Honestly, I kinda like that. But at the end of the day, we’re gonna do what we’re supposed to do and we’re gonna follow the Land Grant mission, and we’re gonna walk fields.
We’re gonna be in the relationship business at Mississippi State. We’re gonna keep heading that direction no matter what you call us.
[00:04:45] Mike Howell: So IGAs, you know, as well as I do, I’ve worked for Extension for 10 or 12 years in the south part of the state, and then covered the whole state for peanuts. But part of what I remember working with the extension service is there were four program areas that was the focus of everything.
Talk a little bit about each of these four program areas and what each one is kind of responsible for.
[00:05:04] Dr. Angus Catchot: We still follow the four programmatic areas, and I’ll tell you what they are, but they could be splintered out a thousand ways. But ag and natural resources is obviously a really big one for us. Then we have four H in youth development.
That’s another very big one, and then family and consumer science as we’ve recently renamed that Family Health and Wellness here at Mississippi State to try to revive that program and really get our feet under us to move in a new direction and grow. Then we have community resource development. Those are still our four programmatic areas, and I’m not gonna say necessarily one’s necessarily bigger than the other.
We give attention to all of ’em. I would say ag is probably our biggest, just by the nature of us living in a rural state, but we give equal credence to each of the four programmatic areas.
[00:05:47] Mike Howell: So Angus, obviously, most of our listeners are gonna be interested in the ag and natural resources. We’ll talk a little bit more about that.
But as I travel around the country, I get the opportunity to interact with extension professionals from many different areas. I’m proud to say that Mississippi State Extension is top notch. I’ll stack it up against any extension service anywhere in the country, but the producers in the state. Interact with their local agents, they interact with the state specialists.
And sometimes when I go to other states, the producers just don’t even know who their extension agents are. It’s an old joke going around extension that the best kept secret is the extension service. So how can we get this secret out there and let everybody know more about it? And why is Mississippi Extension Service so special?
What makes it so much better than some of these other programs around the country?
[00:06:31] Dr. Angus Catchot: That’s a big question. It’s one that hits home. I obviously heard the same thing before, that extension is the best kept secret. There is some truth to that, but I’m gonna be honest. I hate hearing that When I came into this job, when I interviewed for this job and for the last two years.
One of my main goals is to change that. I don’t wanna be a secret, and the reason I don’t want to be a secret is because I do think we have something to offer Every citizen of this state, every citizen of this state can benefit greatly through extension, and that’s not just here at Mississippi State.
That’s across the country. I’m not sure we do a good job. Telling our story, but we are working really hard to change that. We got a number of initiatives that we’ve been working on. Something that I’m really proud of is some of the direction that we have been heading recently around social media and really trying to increase our footprint.
Some of the things that we’re doing with social media, I would say is fairly unique. I’m beginning to see others copy that and that’s completely fine. But right now, I was just told recently, looking at some of our stats. We’re currently right now at Mississippi State number two and the entire nation across all extension services on our followers on Facebook.
I think we’re tied with number two on Instagram, and I don’t use all these platforms. I obviously use some, ’cause I like to keep up with some of the stuff we’re doing, but yeah, we don’t do a great job. There’s a lot of things that we can do. We recently had a campaign, tell me about extension in six words or less.
All of our agents and faculty and staff came together, and in their mind I wanted a definition, something that would resonate with the people, and we had 10 people that we selected and we’re getting that message out. So maybe the traditional ways that we’ve always explained extension don’t resonate with everybody.
I want it to resonate with everyone in this state. Extension in a nutshell, we’re a relationship business. We just recently completed a needs assessment on how people want to get their information. And I was really surprised by some of this. Also, Oklahoma State did the same thing. So I’ve looked at theirs and I’ve looked at ours.
We asked similar questions, but some of the things that I saw in that needs assessment is gonna change the way that we do business. And I’ve talked to our ed comm group and I’ve showed them this needs assessment and it’s really how do people wanna get their information? I mean, things are changing. We got ai, we got all this social media, uh, and all the various things that we do.
One of the things that people are gonna do now, they’re just gonna go to an internet browser and they’re gonna just Google something or search for it. But surprisingly, one of the things that I think was our number two spot across all age groups is instructional how to videos. So essentially what is a, that’s YouTube.
So we’re looking at all the different age groups, how they wanna receive their information. So instead of just doing what we have always done, we’re gonna listen to what the people are telling us and we’re gonna change, even if it’s stuff that’s uncomfortable or things that we haven’t done before. We’re gonna do those things to reach the people.
And I think if we keep that up and we keep heading in that direction. We are gonna eventually break through the, what you said earlier about we’re the best kept secret and eventually I’m also hopeful that I’ll have ramifications if we make ourself so popular and so valuable that it’ll translate to dollars back into our programs that helps us get bigger and even better.
[00:09:46] Mike Howell: Angus, you mentioned how people want to get the information. When I first started working with Extension, I worked for Dr. Blake Layton, checking cotton there at Raymond. And I remember he would have to close his office door and get on the telephone and record the insect situation and folks could call in and find out and he would send out a newsletter once a week.
And of course that took about a week for everybody to get that and read it. So insects in the field a week late, that doesn’t do you a whole lot of good, but we can get that information out a lot quicker these days. I’m glad to see y’all are doing things to get that out there. You mentioned social media and I did see something on social media a couple of weeks ago from the state fair.
Y’all had a big program going out, walking across Mississippi. Talk a little bit about the program that you introduced there at the state fair.
[00:10:27] Dr. Angus Catchot: First, lemme say it’s walking Mississippi, not necessarily across Mississippi, so I’m gonna explain what I mean by that. This is something that I’m actually super excited about, again, in the area of health and wellness.
If you look at the state of Mississippi, we rank almost last or dead last in a lot of. Metrics, no matter how you wanna look at it. I think obesity, we’re a little bit over 40% if you look at diabetes. So these are areas that traditionally people don’t think about extension. Yeah, we’re very active in that.
So this program came up, some of our team put this together, working with our agents and working with our specialists. What can we do to possibly move the needle on health in the state of Mississippi? So they came up with this program and we’re calling it Walk Mississippi, one Step at a Time. The walk across Mississippi Park, we decided to look at Mississippi, east to west.
It’s roughly about 180 miles, no matter how you wanna measure it, but we chose 180 miles. But let me stress this, it’s only a six week program, so that’s a lot. That’s about 8,000 steps or a little over about four miles a day. We don’t expect you to. Not everybody. We think there’s a place in this program for everybody, whether you’re a child, no matter your age, you could be elderly or whatever.
The goal of this program is really to do more than you were doing. Take me for example, all I do is walk from one meeting to the next. I mean, I’m feel like a slug half the time. These days, I’m not getting any steps. But this program has motivated me personally enough. So we just kicked it off this week Monday.
This past Monday was our first day. So I have been very intentional. I’ve walked to lunch more. I get up a couple times a day and at least make a step. My goal is to do more than I did, and I’m gonna tell you whether you actually make it across the 180 miles. Or whatever you do, what we want you to do is to do more, be active, and hopefully get some movement, which will help.
And what’s different now, I’ll tell you this too. There’s been a lot of walk programs, a lot of extension services, a lot of third parties. A lot of people have introduced programs like this. One thing that’s somewhat unique about what we’re doing is when you sign up for this program, you’re gonna get an email weekly and weekly.
In that email, it’s gonna also give you dietary and health tips, recipes, and so forth, ways that you can be healthier besides just the physical activity. So I am really excited about this, and again, personally, it’s motivated me. I’ve talked to people all over the state. That are a part of this and they’re all happy.
I mean, everybody’s wanting to be a part of this and programs like this, and as we build this program, I think even bigger in the future, I think that we have the potential to make impact. And I think as long as we stand behind this and we push it and we continue to strive for it to be better and better, we’ll get more and more participants.
And again, maybe we can lead to Mississippi being a healthier state.
[00:13:18] Mike Howell: And we definitely need to do that. And now Angus, I’ve known you a little over 30 years now, and I’ve never known you to back down from a challenge, whether it’s Big Macs or crawfish or going fishing. We won’t get into any details about all of those, but you’ve never backed down from a challenge, and you said it’s 180 miles across the state.
So I’m gonna throw a challenge out there. A lot of folks in Mississippi know what’s going on. You said you were participating in this. Why don’t you do it the other way? Go from Memphis to Gulfport. Go from north to south. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s about double the distance. There’s you a big challenge.
[00:13:47] Dr. Angus Catchot: Well, here’s the problem though, but let me back up just a minute.
You said we weren’t gonna tell any stories. I am gonna tell one story. When we were in graduate school together and they were ran Dollar Big Macs and we had a study session, it turned into a Big Mac eating contest. Do you remember? I won that? You won. Do you remember how I ate seven.
[00:14:03] Mike Howell: You ate seven
[00:14:04] Dr. Angus Catchot: and you ate six and a half?
[00:14:05] Mike Howell: Yep.
[00:14:06] Dr. Angus Catchot: If you would’ve ate seven, I would’ve ate eight.
[00:14:08] Mike Howell: We didn’t have another one for you to eat though,
[00:14:11] Dr. Angus Catchot: but uh, do you see why I need to walk Mississippi?
[00:14:13] Mike Howell: Exactly, exactly.
[00:14:15] Dr. Angus Catchot: That’s something interesting. So you bring that up, and I’ve mentioned this to my team on a bunch of occasions. One thing about the South, everything we do is structured
around food. I mean, I invite somebody over at the house. All I can think about what we cooking, what we cooking. We gonna cook ribs, we gonna cook a brisket. It’s in our culture in the south, we’re gonna fry catfish. So part of this is not just about people. A lot of people know what to do, but it’s bred into us in the south that we’re gonna gather, whether it’s church or whatever.
Around some kind of cooking. So some of that needs to change too. That brings a whole different element in there. So we’re looking at that kind of stuff also.
[00:14:52] Mike Howell: Well, Angus, let’s move on. There’s another program that I wanted to spend a couple of minutes and it kind of hits close to home. I’ve got a daughter that’s had to do some therapeutic riding therapy and it’s really helped her.
And I know that y’all have a program up here in the north part of the state with the therapeutic riding, and I want you to take a few minutes and talk about the benefits of that program and who that’s reaching out to.
[00:15:12] Dr. Angus Catchot: I’ll tell you, when I first started in this job looking at budget constraints and everything else, I started looking at almost every sector of extension and every program that we offer, every agent specialist staff trying to figure out how we can complete the mission of extension.
That’s, I’m about the mission of Extension, but to do that under the situation that we’re in, I was looking at is there anything I can cut? I was looking at this therapeutic riding or equine assisted therapy, several different names depending on what you do, and I was looking at the amount of money that we put into it and I didn’t understand it, to be quite honest with you.
I’ve never been a part of that, and I was really looking at that pretty heavily. And as I dug into that. I started realizing a little more about what it was. I was talking to people about it, but then I was looking at some of the media over the years that we’ve put out and some of the testimonials that have come out of that program.
And right now we offer the program to obviously children with special needs. We do some drug and alcohol rehab type stuff as a part of that. Veterans. We got a big part about veteran, but as I read some of those testimonies, I mean, honestly, again, I didn’t know much about this going into it. I was absolutely blown away.
I mean, some of this honestly bring you to tears about how it’s literally changed people’s lives. And again, I didn’t understand the connection that some people can have horses, but we have stories, for example, of autistic children that weren’t interacting in school, and they go through these programs.
And the next thing you know, they’re coming outta their shell and they’re interacting. So when I dug in and really understood it, it was no longer something that I was thinking about, is this where I need to pull resources and divert somewhere else? We’ve doubled down on it and in fact, we’re trying to grow it and expanded even more because it is one of those really good life changing stories.
I have been extremely excited about that, and I’m looking for ways to grow it even bigger and better. Again, you read somebody’s testimony and how it’s changed their lives, that’s worth doing and I’m gonna support it.
[00:17:11] Mike Howell: Well, if you can expand it to South Mississippi, I know several folks who would jump on in a hurry.
Angus, we talked about extension being a secret and not a lot of people seem to know about it, and we’re trying to change that, but how can people take better advantage of the programs that you have to offer? We’ve talked about a lot of programs around the state. How can they better take advantage of these programs?
[00:17:29] Dr. Angus Catchot: So one thing I would say is just figure out a way to. Plug in. I mean, everybody has instant access to the internet, to social media, to whatever. So the first thing I would tell you, and again, I’m obviously gonna be talking about Mississippi. I’m very obviously biased to Mississippi State, but I don’t care what state you’re in, your extension service, your land grant, plug in.
Go intentionally if you got to and find their social media channels. Sign up for the things that they have to offer. I’m telling you, we have every extension service. I wanna say us better than more, but every extension service, to be honest, has something to offer that you may not have thought about.
Whether it’s your PA needs to be cleared up because you got all this. Aquatic weeds. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff we do every day. Or if we got some kind of program that we’re doing about healthy living, or if we’re in your community doing digital literacy or helping pull programs together to strengthen your rural community, we have something to offer.
Every citizen and your other states do as well. But some of it, if you are not familiar, just go Google it. Get on the site, sign up for what we do. Be on the lookout, follow our Facebook page, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. Follow that stuff and you will see the advertisement. We are out there everywhere. I mean, we’re everywhere, but just go out there and find it and be a part of it and begin to look for those type things and those opportunities that we have to offer.
I’m telling you, in some sectors, depending on what we’re talking about, we will help you increase your bottom line of whatever business you’re in by offering you research based education and curriculum that you may not have known, or we might just enhance your life, both socially or culturally, or wherever you wanna see it, but we have something to offer you.
[00:19:11] Mike Howell: Angus. The last thing I wanted to bring up today, and I know it’s a topic that everybody likes to step around, but it’s kind of gotta be addressed. We know where it’s a financial crisis around in a lot of different sectors, but extension’s been totten the load here for a while, and I know funding’s an issue.
Talk a little bit about how extension is funded and what folks can do to help out with that situation.
[00:19:31] Dr. Angus Catchot: So first, let me say, and it’s probably like this at every extension service, but for us, I don’t have a lot of buildings and stuff all over the state. Our money is in people. We’re people, we’re in the people business.
Our business is relationships, and I still believe in that. Boots on the ground extension, and as long as I’m director, we’re gonna keep doing that at Mississippi State. No matter what happens, that’s what we’re gonna do. People wanna see you and we’re gonna keep doing that. Now the problem is because all of our money is in people, anytime we see big budget swings on years where we have a decent budget, we can build people in areas that we need to build in that are again, working with the citizens of the state.
The unfortunate side of that is when we’re in budget woes for whatever reason. I don’t have places to pull back from, except again in people. And again, we’re in the people business. We have not had great budgets, although our state has done very well financially over the last few years, and there’s reasons for that.
I’m not gonna necessarily throw anybody under the bus, but again, it goes back to what you said we’re the best kept secret. I honestly believe if I could get the message out to every state legislator that we have and let everybody realize what we are contributing to this state, that I don’t think we’d have a choice but to fund us.
Because public demands, they’re not gonna not be able to do it when they see the public outcry for what we have to offer. But on the state side, that’s the majority of my budget. It’s probably a little over 70% of our funding that funds our people, whether you be a specialist at the faculty level staff, or at the county level.
Most of my money from the extension service comes from the state. Probably the next highest number, a little over 20%, is federal funds. And then the county and then again, this is that cooperative we talked about the county pays portions on each of our agents. But where we’re at right now talking about the budget, like currently I have 22 counties outta 82 in the state of Mississippi that has a single agent in it.
’cause we don’t have the money to hire anymore. Despite the fact that the counties are kicking in some dollars, we don’t have the money to match. And if you’re a county agent in a single county, that with one person, you’re trying to do all four of those things that we’re talking about, you’re trying to do four H trying to do ag and natural resource.
You’re trying to do family health and wellness. It’s not a good situation. It’s almost we’re putting ’em in an impossible situation. Now, I will say this, our people are very motivated, they’re excited. I think they see the path forward that we’re trying to do with the extension service here at Mississippi State, and I think they’re excited and motivated.
I don’t know how long we’re gonna be able to keep up doing all these great things. There comes a point of diminishing returns. If we don’t get the dollars to support our program, something’s gotta go. Right now, I think we’re just living on will and, and sure, I want to help people. If you want to help people, you’re gonna do it.
But how long that’ll last? You know, I don’t know. We’re gonna keep trying. Obviously we’re doing some unique things too. We’re beginning to hire a single agent that covers two counties now. I hope we had never got to that, but that’s just where we’re at right now. So we’re doing everything we can to not drop our level of service to every person in this state.
But how long can we keep it up without the proper funding? I don’t know.
[00:22:40] Mike Howell: We’ve gotta be able to pay these agents to get the job done. Angus, we’ve covered a lot of ground here. Is there anything else that you think we need to bring up before we wrap up today?
[00:22:49] Dr. Angus Catchot: I’ll just add one thing in the area of ag and natural resources, particularly for your podcast Row crop farming.
Right now, I think there’s no secret our people are in trouble all across the country. I mean, we got low commodity prices, high equipment costs. Labor is a major problem. Our president here had asked me not long ago, Dr. Mark Keenan had asked me about six months ago. He recognized obviously the problem that we’re having and that we got farmers going outta business and everything else.
And he had just asked me, what can we do? How can we contribute? How can we fix this? And I never missed a beat, and I believe this with all my heart. My answer was, we need to get more money at the state where I can hire more people. I need more people. I said, because what we do, we bring that research based.
I cannot control commodity prices. I cannot control equipment prices. But what we can do is we can tell that farmer, you’re about to spend whatever, $20 an acre on this when our research shows. You don’t need to do that. Or the other way I could say, you’re not spending enough money. If you would drop this $20, whatever it is, insecticide, fungicide, herbicide.
This right here will make you $40 or protect that yield. That’s the kind of information that we’re providing every day on farms that is making a difference. And if we had more of us both in Mississippi and really across the whole us. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing and that’s what we are doing.
But going back to we’re the best kept secret. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t realize that Now our farmers realize that and our farmers in the state of Mississippi love us ’cause we’re gonna keep doing that every day. But honestly, I think that’s the answer to some of this, is we need more of us on the ground that’s providing that third party.
Unbiased information that is helping improve those economic bottom lines for our growers.
[00:24:38] Mike Howell: Angus, I couldn’t agree more. The farmers in this state definitely know who the extension service is, or people that wanna see that firsthand. I invite ’em to come to Starkville. First week of December, Mississippi State is hosting the annual row crop short course.
You know the dates off the top of your head for that. How can folks find out more about that? That’s a big event every year.
[00:24:55] Dr. Angus Catchot: I’ll give you the dates, but I’m going to back up just a minute. The way these things work now, the Farm Bureau, a great friend and partner of ours, they’ve always advocated for us here at Mississippi State.
They kicked the weekend off, I believe it, maybe fourth, fifth, and sixth. It’s right around there, whatever that weekend is in December with their big annual conference in Jackson. Then that Monday we roll into the row crop short course. If you come to Jackson and catch a lot of stuff on policy and all that kind of stuff with Farm Bureau, move right here to Starkville and pick up at the Row Crop short course.
Maybe seventh, eighth, ninth, or whatever that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is, but we have been getting 6 50, 7 50. We get a lot of people at this, and let me give you one more fact about that row crop short course. By the way. One of the things that we’ve been doing lately is we’ve been working really hard on economic impact of extension.
That’s another way that I’m helping trying to tell that story. We’re looking at almost every program working with our ag economist and our economists to show what we have to bring to the table. Self-reported acres from last year’s row crop short course. These were self-reported by the farmers and the audience.
This is what they’re telling us. We were just under a million acres represented at that meeting by all the people. The number that they put on paper themselves without being prompted, worked out to an economic impact. That short course of about $17 million back to our state from the information that they were able to obtain at that meeting that they felt like was gonna help their bottom line on that farm.
[00:26:26] Mike Howell: Angus, I remember that meeting all the way back when it was just a cotton short course, and it’s getting bigger and better every year.
Any of our producers that are within driving distance, or even if you gotta get on a plane and come to Starkville, it’s worth your time to get here to come to this meeting. I guarantee you, you’ll get something good out of it. Angus, I really appreciate you taking time to sit down and visit with us today.
Really hope we got this message out there and folks can unlock this secret of extension and start taking better advantage of it. Listeners, we appreciate you tuning in today. If you will hang around for just a couple of moments 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 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 for segment two. We’re glad you’re sticking around with us this year. This is one of our asking agronomist questions, and we’ve got Lyle Cowell back in the studio with US. Lyle, welcome back and remind our listeners who you are, if you will.
[00:27:34] Lyle Cowell: Hi, Mike. It’s great to be on the Dirt again.
Who am I? Lyle Cowell. I work as the agronomist here up in Canada, edging into the wintertime. Quite a different weather than I’m sure that you’re having, but looking forward to next year’s crop.
[00:27:47] Mike Howell: We’re already thinking about next year law. I know it’s probably getting cold up there where you are probably a little snow on the ground already and nobody’s wanting to do any field work, but everybody is talking about next year and everywhere I go people are talking about high prices.
Today’s question is kind of along those lines, law and people are wanting to know. How should they view fertilizer on their farm compared to all the other rising input costs? How does fertilizer stack up?
[00:28:12] Lyle Cowell: Mike, this is a question that’s a bit near and dear to my heart. In a way, understanding the economy of farming is very important.
Just wanna make a bit of a note that to that end, we’ve introduced what’s called the profit planner on the economics website. So if you want a little bit of a help on understanding the. Potential profitability of your farm and the costs associated with that profitability. Go to economics.com and take a look at the profit planner and see how that works out.
I’ve gone through these costs many times over the course of my career, and in the endless cycle of costs, fertilizer costs go up and down and become a larger, smaller portion of the total budget. But I think that when it all shakes out, most farmers realize that crops are built from nutrients. There’s very few things that we can add to our crop that actually increases yield.
We spend money on a lot of things that might protect yield, pesticides, fungicides, but there’s very few things that actually build yield and nutrients are one of those very few costs that actually build yield. So when we think about, should I save some money on fertilizer? There’s two sides of this.
There’s the, you might save some money, but on the other end of the coin, there’s that risk that saving money might actually reduce your yield, and that is the greater risk. So you have to start putting the perspective of fertilizer into the cost, your total farm. Now, just before we chatted, Mike, I just.
Went through the profit planner, just to give a bit of a feel for where costs are and looking at wheat. Everybody grows wheat. You grow cotton. We grow canola, everybody grows wheat. If I look at typical cost of growing wheat in Western Canada, you’re probably looking at a total cost of about 400 Canadian dollars per acre.
A lot of that is fixed. It’s the fuel. It’s the machinery payments, it’s all those things that you have to pay no matter what. So my estimate is that for most farms, 40 to 50% of your total costs in a farm are fixed costs. You can’t change them to a great degree. Now, fertilizer costs, in my estimation, run at about.
25% of total costs for a typical wheat crop in Western Canada. You take a nutrient like potassium, 15 pounds of potassium that’s only representing about 1.5% of your total cost of growing a crop. So do you want to meddle with potassium rates at the risk of reducing yield? Do you want to reduce your nitrogen rate or your phosphorus rate by 10 pounds to save money, which would really only save you maybe 2% of your budget and then risk a lower yield?
We really have to think about that. Not just the cost of something, but the cost of not using it as well. It’s true that you don’t probably need every nutrient on every acre. You should use soil tests and take some good advice and understand what you really need, but don’t cut costs for the sake of cutting costs.
There’s probably other places on your farm that you can find a few dollars of savings that will not impact your yield. You and I, Mike, have talked about this whole idea of the value of a nutrient like potassium and farmers spend money on a lot of things. Some of them are probably going to help them on the farm, some of them may not, and you have to take each one in stride as far as is it going to help you?
And a lot of farms are faced with brand new products. They’re brand new products with a lot of promises, products that might promise to improve water use efficiency products that might promise higher yields, better standability products that don’t have a lot of research with them. But there is a product, and we’ve talked about this, Mike, there is a nutrient product that we can promise, can increase yield, can increase water use efficiency, can.
Increase the efficiency of use of other nutrients can reduce the lodging of the wheat crop and a lot of other benefits. And as we’ve talked about that nutrients, potassium. So before you take these steps to buy new products, approach it slowly. Approach it carefully. Assess it carefully to see if you’re actually gonna get a benefit.
But don’t forget about those nutrients and those other expenditures in their farm that are actually essential and proven and will show return on your dollar on the farm Again. Every farm’s different. Every farm’s the same. Watch your costs. Make sure you spend your money wisely and make the best bang for your buck out of it.
[00:32:46] Mike Howell: That’s some great information you gave us there. You mentioned the economics website. We have several calculators there. We’ve got the ROI calculator, the nutrient calculator, so I wanna encourage everybody, if you haven’t visited that site, check out that website. That’s nutrien-ekonomics.com.
We can answer a lot of your questions there. If you still have some more questions, there’s a button there that says Ask the agronomist, and that’ll send that question to me, Lyle or Alan Blaylock or Karl Wyant, the agronomy team, and we’ll get you a more direct answer if you can’t find what you’re looking for on that, what website.
So listeners, we really appreciate you tuning in this week. Check out our website if you need more information on anything we’ve talked about today. We’d like to invite everybody to come back next week. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with the Dirt.
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