Harvest USA Report

The Brad Scholarship is now accepting applications! Please encourage the students in your life who might qualify to apply for it. It is not a difficult application to complete (no submitting letters of recommendation, SAT/ACT scores, certified class rank, etc.). Applicants can choose between submitting a video response and writing an essay. The committee's goal is to get money into the hands of students who will use it in pursuit of an agricultural education or career, or an ag-adjacent education or career.   The "ag education or career" is pretty self-explanatory: The applicant plans to join the family farm, become a large-animal veterinarian, work at an equipment dealership as a diesel tech, and so on.   But what is meant by "ag-adjacent education or career"? This is someone who wants to become a doctor and practice in a rural area, be the ag teacher and FFA sponsor in a high school, get a mechanical engineering degree to work in product development at one of the major equipment manufacturers, open a small-town grocery store, or become the police chief in their hometown. Ag-adjacent education and careers are vital to agriculture, but don't involve actually growing the crops, fixing the tractors and raising the cattle.   Applications are due April 4, which would be Brad's 44th birthday. If you have questions, you're welcome to contact us. Please apply, encourage the students in your life to apply, and spread the word. (And yes, feel free to share this post!)

Our host David Woodruff has Nathan Cummins on the phone talking about employees during the harvest season. Do you find enough people that want to work and can work? It's a really, really big challenge. I mean, anybody who's in the ag industry knows that the seasonal fluctuations that happen are probably the toughest part of the employee aspect or finding employees is probably one of the toughest parts for the for the ups and downs of the busy times. That's really hard. Thankfully, I have a just a really good crew. I got a really good crew of guys and some of our sort of is the foreign worker program.  We bring in some some help from Mexico and we've had the same guys come in for quite a while, like probably 10 years that we bring those guys in and house them and they kind of help buffer out a little bit of the manual labor to where our full our more full-time guys can be more focused on specialty labor, you know, tractors, semis, planting, harvesting, running pivots. They can be a little bit more focused on that. Oh yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So do you have any the language problem or anything like that? A lot of my main guys that are here speak Spanish. As far as farm Spanish goes, I'm actually fairly fluent. Well, I was raised on a farm in southern Idaho, right? And so I started learning Spanish when I was very young. And so I, you know, was able to pick it back up and and continue doing that. So I mean, I can speak pretty good Spanish and slowly getting better at it as I continue to use it. Nathan Cummins with David Woodruff on the Harvest USA report. 

Our host David Woodruff with our guest, Nathan Cummins. So do you mostly use semis or you've got some straight trucks? No, we use semis. We had a little bit of a change in our equipment program. Oh, it's been six years now going on seven, where we started. Sputnik builds a deal called a crop cart. Yeah. And they've got a cleaning table right in them. And so we eliminate a lot of dirt in the field and leave that dirt in the field using these crop carts. And that's helped a bunch. So we were able to just basically load, just like grain harvest, basically. It's loaded into a cart, load that into a semi, truck it out to the storage. And the dirt problem isn't nearly as bad. Do you follow the digger with the crop cart or do you follow with a straight truck and unload it into separation, separating the dirt and rocks out? No, the crop cart runs right beside the digger. Okay. And then semis pull into the field. Guys can load a semi in a matter of three and a half minutes, something like that. They can load a semi very quickly. And it handles them pretty smoothly. It's brought our bruising down. It's brought our storeability up. And so we're finding we're storing better. We're bruising less. We're handling less. But then we used to. We used to translate them right in the field because we didn't want to hold the dirt all the way back to the storage. We would clean them and everything right in the field. Well, that means you've got mobile grading equipment moving all around the countryside. And that causes a whole host of problems. Moving that stuff up and down the highway is never fun. Nathan Cummins with our host, David Woodruff.

This past winter's rains were beneficial, bringing a favorable year with a protein-rich desert plant called Filaree growing abundantly. This plant’s unexpected growth pattern is compared to wild oats, suggesting its resilience by lying dormant until conditions improve. David also notes the logistical ease and economic sense of managing cattle in Arizona but mentions the setback caused by border closures with Mexico due to the screwworm issue.

Host David Woodruff with Keith Flake of Snowflake, Arizona; Keith shares his experiences and updates on ranching at Gold Canyon, near Mesa, Arizona. Despite a lack of impactful monsoon rains, the past winter's rains were beneficial, bringing a favorable year with a protein-rich desert plant called Filaree growing abundantly. This plant’s unexpected growth pattern is compared to wild oats, suggesting its resilience by lying dormant until conditions improve. Keith also notes the logistical ease and economic sense of managing cattle in Arizona but mentions the setback caused by border closures with Mexico due to the screwworm issue.

Host : David Woodruff Guest : Nathan Cummins This conversation delved into Nathan's harvest logistics, including the use of semi-trucks and crop carts to improve efficiency by reducing the amount of dirt transported during harvest. This method not only minimizes logistical challenges but also enhances the preservation of crops.

Let's jump back in on that conversation between David Woodruff, our host, and Taff Hughes, custom harvester from Great Bend, Kansas. So now, is that fall rye? Yes. Yes, correct. Fall rye is a big crop up here. Not that it's so much of it is grown, but rye is forgiving, you can do everything wrong and it will still give you a good crop. Just historically, it hasn't sold for very much. So, but it's so great for keeping bean ground and potato ground from blowing. Yeah, and that's where we can raise it here in the sand. It keeps it from blowing. And then also, if you get fall moisture, you can really get some good grazing out of it, we raise a lot and feed our calves on rye here through the winter. Does anybody use it for silage? Yes. That's getting more popular. Some of the feed lots are doing that now on the irrigated. They take it for silage. Never used to. It looked quite a bit. Used to be harvested for grain and now it mainly grays in it out. And it depends on the price. We have a feedlot that I'm neighbor to and they've been, oh, it must be over 20 years now. And the original owners, they used to plant grain corn and if the price of corn was up, they could combine it. Great Bend Kansas custom harvester, Taff Hughes with our host David Woodruff.

Let's jump back in on that conversation between David Woodruff, our host and Taff Hughes, custom harvester from Great Bend, Kansas. We're on the road to Iowa to the US Custom Harvester Convention, rest of the week here. Oh yeah. Looking forward to that, like always, get together with like-minded people and people in the industry and look forward to seeing everybody learning some new stuff and have a great time. And where is that convention? Des Moines, Iowa. Okay. So I would love to get down there sometime. I got my nose to the grindstone up here with the school bus. Oh sure. I don't know why I've got such a big long nose. It should be a little nub of a thing. Yeah. Yeah. And tell them all hi from Harvest USA! Very good, David. And Cattlemen's Corner and Horseman's Corner. Okay. Thanks for calling. See you later. Have a good one. Bye-bye. Great Bend, Kansas Custom Harvester, Taff Hughes with our host David Woodruff.

Harvesting Progress and Winter Preparations: Glenn Jones from Greenfield, Iowa, reports that the harvest has been completed successfully, despite previous weather challenges. The cattle and calves are now settled for the winter, and recent snow has melted, improving conditions. Severe Weather Conditions in the U.S.: There are upcoming storms across the United States, with severe cold and snow expected in states as far south as Texas and across to North Carolina. Temperatures are forecasted to be below freezing in many areas, including Oklahoma City, leading to potentially treacherous conditions. Challenges with Crop Moisture Levels: Discussions involved trading and storing crops, with a focus on the challenges of maintaining optimal moisture levels in soybeans. Neighbors had to harvest soybeans at higher moisture levels and used aeration to manage their storage, though drying conditions have been less than ideal due to weather fluctuations. Concerns were raised about methods for drying high-oil-content seeds like canola and soybeans using low-heat techniques.

David Woodruff with Nathan Cummins Nathan detailed his current farm operations, including winter activities like rebuilding potato harvesters and managing shipments. His farming crew expands from 10 to 30 people during the harvest season. Staffing, especially during peak times, is challenging, but Nathan utilizes the foreign worker program to maintain labor consistency.