Brazil Is Coming For American Corn

Paul Gieselman (0:00)

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name.

Sawyer Whisler (0:22)

Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're gonna let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a great guest episode. Got two guests coming to the barn today. Talk all things, farm and agriculture, corn. It's going to be a good one, but before we get into it, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know. Leave your view on Spotify or Apple. Another thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We have a goal with that right now.

If we get to 10,000 newsletter subscribers, we're going to throw a live event right here on the farm. You can join it at joinbarntalk.com. We're just basically talking about everything going on in rural America. Dad and I have a perspective on it and putting it in your inbox every week. It's completely free and just a good way to get some more stuff outside of the podcast.

Tork Whisler (1:13)

If we have that, we might just do duck races. Because we have so much water around here, we can't seem to get our pits busted out, so we might just leave them filled and do duck races.

Sawyer Whisler (1:24)

Well, you must have pissed Mother Nature off because she just keeps crying.

Tork Whisler (1:27)

I have made a lot of mothers mad in my life. I hadn't made Mother Nature. Maybe you are, I don't know. But I feel like it's raining everywhere.

Sawyer Whisler (1:35)

She's crying.

She just won't stop crying. So Tork must have done something because yeah, it's wet here in Southeast Iowa. The crop is ready to go. It's just too damn wet to get out and do anything and try anything unless you're a guy that doesn't care. I mean, we have had a few guys that have started to go around us that are not afraid to till anything. So they're fine if they get a couple tough spots in the field and then they can go over it with the...

Tork Whisler (2:02)

It'll buff.

Sawyer Whisler (2:03)

It'll buff out. But for the no-till guys, I don't think anyone's really going.

Tork Whisler (2:07)

Yeah, corn's dry.

One of my neighbors went yesterday. We had two days in a row of sun and no rain and had some people go, like Sawyer said, 24% was the corn that one of my neighbors was doing. So I mean, it's prime time to be going. But I mowed down along one of the fields today or yesterday and there was literally water running down the hill in the rows that was coming out of the hillside. So I was like, yeah, no, probably not.

Sawyer Whisler (2:38)

Yeah. What do you think we'll be going?

Tork Whisler (2:42)

We got three days of rain and then next week looks like dry weather if the forecast holds. So I would say by the middle of next week, we will go try it somewhere and probably try to get some stuff done. If it stays dry, we'll probably go try to get beans first because I think this is a year that you don't want to let your beans go because who knows when you might get back in to get them. So get the beans if you can and then just start plugging away on corn because it's only going to get drier.

And so hopefully, well, I mean, moisture wise on the corn, it'll just keep drying down and we'll just keep plugging away at it. Hopefully, we're not doing it in the snow.

Sawyer Whisler (3:22)

Yep.

Well, our guests today are about as local as this show gets. Will Cannon farms between Colfax and Prairie City. He calls himself a first generation full-time farmer. His dad was a school teacher. He spent 10 years at Ag Leader with patents to his name and might be running the most experimental dirt program in Iowa. He's a District 5 Director of the Iowa Corn Growers Association and chairs the Research Committee. Paul Gieselman farms just down the road from us near Morning Sun in Lwysa County, ground his family's been on since 1955 He grew up with hogs. His grandpa built one of the first finishing barns in the state of Iowa. There's a story about why he doesn't own a single pig today, and we'll get into that. He runs corn, beans, and a herd of British White Park cattle.