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[00:00:16] Rod: Happy holidays from A Better Way to Farm, where we help farmers improve profit and increase their yields. It is a 12 days of nutrients. We appreciate you guys tuning in. Today is day 10, and we're going to talk about manganese. Manganese is a nutrient that we've known for a long time and has come up short. We've seen the need increase a lot. We started 29 years ago, I think our whole group sold about 20 gallon of manganese. Now we sell thousands and thousands of gallons. 

[00:00:45] Why is that? Well, the need has went up for a lot of different reasons. One of them being just that we have formed our soils for hundreds of years and we have removed a lot of different crop nutrients. All of these that we're talking about during these 12 days of nutrients. But the fact of the matter is, we've normally only put back the N, the P, and the K. Now, sometimes we've used that extra N, extra P, extra K to mask or hide other nutrient deficiencies. 

[00:01:12] Sometimes nutrient deficiencies that we see visually are actually caused by a different nutrient being deficient. Not letting the one that's getting in there. Maybe we have a lot of it, but we can't get it in. So, we are very much likely to be short in manganese in a couple of situations. One that helps create that is cold soils. If we plant and it's cold and it's damp, then we are very prone to being deficient in manganese in our plants. We also know that it's another one of the nutrients that has the pH that gets above seven, starts to become a lot less available. By the time our pH gets to 7.5, we're probably really in trouble. 

[00:01:49] Sensitive crops would include corn, soybeans, cotton, tobacco, a lot of your fruits and vegetables. It's very, very important because it is another component of chlorophyll. It also has a lot to do with the metabolism, carbohydrates, and more importantly, the metabolism of nitrogen. So again, here's another nutrient that's responsible for appropriate use of N. So, if we're short on manganese, then we can come in and put on extra nitrogen and sometimes kind of mask that. Of course we know that the problem with extra nitrogen is that it makes other nutrients unavailable into the plant. It is really important because it also helps with stock strength.

[00:02:31] We talked, when we talked about potassium, I mentioned this and the fact of the matter is that manganese and copper and potassium all work together in order to make stock strength better. To help stand ability, to prevent lodging. It is another nutrient that is really important in maturing. I want to make sure if we get that corn mature, that bean crop to mature right. Adequate manganese is one of the things we need. It's actually needed in higher parts per million than, even iron. Iron is close second, but uh manganese is, uh, we need far more parts per million in the soil than we do zinc or copper or even iron. We're looking somewhere to be in the high range where we can get that maximum yield at 13 to 30 parts per million.

[00:03:14] Now, the problem with that is, the book that I was reading talked about the fact that in order to raise most soils up to the sufficient or adequate level, if we're going to try and do that with a dry broadcast manganese, it's going to cost us somewhere, probably north of a hundred bucks an acre. But the fact of the matter is, it's actually much more efficient at any rate and much more successful if we band it or foliar feed it. 

[00:03:39] Part of our soil testing program. We'll probably have you putting manganese right on the seed and probably won't be able to get enough. I was working with one of my friends in Nebraska yesterday, and his manganese levels are very low and he's needing a bunch. He's needed to put a couple of pints in the seed trench and then he was needing to put another four pints on some other way, whether it be through a foliar feed or through a two by two, he's going to do it with a strip till and a two by two situation there. 

[00:04:07] So guys, what's the symptoms? How do we know? Well, obviously we understand that it is a yellowing. Now magnesium tends to do a little more of the interveinal chlorosis, interveinal striping. And magnesium, remember, if that's deficient, it starts at the bottom of the plant or in the old growth. However, if it's a manganese deficiency, it tends to be a little bit more yellow everywhere, less stripes, but it will be in the new growth first. It will show up where the new growth is. The problem that we have is that again, by the time we see it, we have lost significant yield.

[00:04:43] So that's why we want a soil test for it guys. It's really important to do that soil test and give that plant the best start it can get. We want a soil test. We want to do what it needs there. And then we want a tissue test and make sure we got enough in the plant because just relying on a visual, just relying on scouting means we're going to have a bunch of yield loss before we come to grips with the fact that we have it. If we're just doing it through a visual type analysis. 

[00:05:07] So I would encourage you guys. That's why our soil testing is so important. We're going to talk a lot more about this on Monday and Tuesday in Kearney and Thursday and Friday in Bettendorf. Would love to have you join us at one of those two programs, feel free to get us a text at 6 4 1 9 1 9 1 2 0 6 or you can hit us up with a message here on the Facebook, or feel free to give us a call of course. 

[00:05:29] Guys, a little plug for the podcast. We just put one up with a guy who has drones that he's marketing and he had a lot of great information, nothing salesy in it, but he was talking about all the things that they can do and that they are doing. And I want to encourage you to go over to A Better Way to Farm on your podcast platform of choice and give that a listen. 

[00:05:48] One last thing on manganese. It's been probably 20 years now. I was headed out to Nebraska to work out there with some growers and out on highway two. I can take you to the back exact spot cause it stuck in my brain. I got a call from Midwest Labs and somehow in talking with Purdue, they had figured out that the application of glyphosate was creating yellow flesh and yellow flesh is nothing more than the glyphosate sequestering the manganese and the bean plant or the corn plant and therefore the plant turns yellow.

[00:06:18] Now the conventional wisdom, the guys who are, a lot of them are in this business. They will look at you and they'll say something that is, sounds like this. It'll grow out of it. Yeah, it's yellow, but it'll grow out of it. Guys, wrong question. You know, I believe you have to ask the right question. Question is not will it grow out of it because you will never harvest a crop of yellow beans. You will never harvest a crop of yellow corn. It'll be green or brown, but the fact of the matter is, it turns yellow and we get yield loss. 

[00:06:46] One of the land grant universities in playing with manganese figured out that if you use a 100% chelated manganese, which is what we have, at one point per acre, co applied with your glyphosate, it will get you an yield increase in soybeans of anywhere from two to 17 bushel. Guys, we're talking about spending five or six bucks an acre here to get back somewhere between two and 17 bushel of beans. Same on corn. It's quite the investment. And guys, it's a real low hanging fruit. You don't have to set up your corn plant or for anything special. You don't have to do anything special except dump manganese in the tank mix when you're spraying and it co mixes perfectly. 

[00:07:25] So, if that would be a value to you, let us know. Guys, we appreciate you tuning in. Feel free to stop by abetterwaytofarm.com. Take the profit calculator. Take a look on those five questions and see what you can learn from that. We would love to have it. I really appreciate you tuning in. I hope you guys are having the merriest of Christmas season and we wish you a better day.

 

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