Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt with me, Mike Howell, an economics 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, news, and issues helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
(00:38):
Well, hello, again, everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. Glad you’re tuning in this morning. We’ve got a little different setup. We are back in Fargo, North Dakota, and we are in the studio this morning recording another event here in the studio. This morning we have three gentlemen here with me from Ellingson Companies. I’ll let them introduce their self and tell us a little bit about what they do. First, we have Mr. Levi Otis. Levi, welcome to The Dirt.
Levi Otis (01:02):
Morning, Mike. My name is Levi Otis. I’ve been with Ellingson for about just under 10 years. I’m director of government affairs, so I handle all of the public policy that we work on, on behalf of the industry. And then I do a little bit of business development, making sure a lot of our key customers and finding new ones are being led to the right paths, find solutions for their water management issues within their farms.
Mike Howell (01:23):
Next, we have Mr. Jason Gillard. Jason, welcome. Tell us a little about yourself.
Jason Gillard (01:28):
Thanks for having us, Mike. I’ve been with Ellingson for close to 18 years now. I’m vice president of operations, got a background in mechanical engineering and worked through really all of our business units throughout the company.
Mike Howell (01:43):
Okay. Finally, we have Mr. Derrik Ellingson. Derrik, good morning.
Derrik Ellingson (01:47):
Hey, good morning, Mike. How are you doing?
Mike Howell (01:49):
I’m doing great. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and I’m assuming that you’re part of the family with Ellingson, with that last name.
Derrik Ellingson (01:55):
I am part of the family with the company, part owner as well. I’ve been with the company 23 years on the payroll. I tell everybody else 42 years. My whole life I’ve been around it. I’m very fortunate to be a part of this third generation family business that my grandfather started coming up from Iowa into Southern Minnesota and that’s where I grew up was Southern Minnesota. 2010, I moved up to the Red River Valley and now call North Dakota home. Happy to be a part of North Dakota and be a part of this phenomenon valley that is such a great soil here in the bottom of Lake Agassiz.
Mike Howell (02:26):
Well, we’re going to talk a little bit more about that soil here in a few minutes. But before we get into that, Derrik, if you will, talk a little bit about the company and the history with agriculture and how it got started.
Derrik Ellingson (02:36):
No, I’d love to. It’s a great story. My dad loves to tell it even better, but my grandma and grandpa grew up on a family farm down in Northern Iowa. In 1960, they decided it was time to pull up the stake and maybe go make a life of their own. They headed up into Southern Minnesota and searched around and only place they could land was in Dodge County, Minnesota is where they could afford to buy the land.
(02:58):
It didn’t take grandpa along to figure out what was going on there, this pasture ground that he put all of his pennies together to buy, but how he was going to till it and farm it, but it was too wet, Mike. He just says, “How do you guys farm this wet ground up here?” He looked around, looked for a drainage contractor, and he was able to find a local guy that had an old wheel machine and got on his list. Lo and behold, he shows up to put some drain tile into grandpa’s first home farm and shows up with no help, no diesel.
(03:23):
Grandpa loved to tell that story and he went out and helped him put that first drain tile project in. Lo and behold, he says, “You’re pretty good help.” He says, “You want to help?” Here we are today, fast-forward, grandfather and grandma and grandpa worked hard to start the family farm. And then in 1970 they started a drain tile business on their own. He did go to work for that gentleman and carved out a path and started up. My dad joined it and some of the other family members were able to join into that family business and here we are today. It’s a cool story.
Mike Howell (03:53):
Well, I know essentially nothing about drain tiles. I’ve heard it talked about, but in my part of the world, there just isn’t anybody that’s putting in drain tiles. From what I understand, I think we may could benefit some areas from using that, but so far I don’t know any growers in my neck of the woods that are utilizing it. To get started, let’s start off first off, what is drainage tile? How does it work and how do you install it? Just give us the basics.
Jason Gillard (04:16):
Essentially we’re managing the water table. Like Derrik said earlier, the region that we’re from, there’s areas that are almost impossible to farm effectively without managing the water table. It’s essentially we install perforated tile, perforated plastic pipe. We call it the mains. Those are the main lines. The collector lines feed into the main lines. Essentially it’s a grid across an entire farm. Those are the collectors that feed into the mains that outlet the water. The intent of it is to optimize the air moisture soil combination to maximize the agronomic benefit of the crop.
Mike Howell (04:56):
How do we put these drain tubes or tiles in? What’s the process of doing that?
Derrik Ellingson (05:01):
It started out, obviously back in the day, Egyptians were digging it in by hand. Drain tiles has been around forever. The wheel machine was probably one of the most common machines that started back in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, which then migrated into the chain trencher, and then now today we’re just static ploughing it in. Nothing’s really changed in the whole world of drain tile. There’s still geographical regions that want their tile trenched in, but a majority of the tile that’s put today is all static ploughed in, with big self-contained tile ploughs, 26 foot of track on the ground, very little compaction.
(05:34):
Our feet have more compaction than our tile ploughs. We’re working in wet soils and we’ll probably talk a little bit about that, but that’s also a very key thing that a lot of guys are worried about when we’re out there ripping tile across on a grid across their farm.
Levi Otis (05:47):
For the people that are listening that have no clue what a static plower is or what we’re talking about, think of an army tank without the gun. It’s just a massive machine with a big blade on the back. It digs in three to four feet, sometimes deeper if we need it, and it cuts across the dirt.
Mike Howell (06:03):
Well, Levi, that was going to be my next question. How deep do these tiles go and how do you determine how deep? I’m assuming that depending on conditions, some may go deeper than others.
Derrik Ellingson (06:12):
What we’re looking for out there is the sand, silt, clay content, and that’s going to drive everything. We’re going to look at what is the farmer growing, how susceptible is it to water? We’re going to look at their risk, management for risk, and then we’re going to look at what’s underground. Uniformity is one of the most important things to putting in a good solid drain tile system as you want to have the tile in that three to four foot depth range.
(06:34):
If we’re going 30 or 40 feet apart, we’re going to be around 30 to 36 inches deep. If we’re in real sandy soils, we can get the tile farther apart and we’ll be around four feet deep if on like an 80-foot setter. 30 to 80 feet is probably the general rule of thumb of where things are today.
Mike Howell (06:51):
It’s going to be deep enough that if a grower decided he needed to do some tillage operations, he’s not going to interfere with the tiles just doing normal everyday tillage.
Derrik Ellingson (06:58):
That’s right.
Mike Howell (06:59):
We’re talking about getting the water drained off of these areas and drying it up. Talk a little bit about the benefits of putting in tile drain. Is it simply just to remove the water, or is there more benefits to it than that?
Derrik Ellingson (07:10):
There’s lots of benefits to it. There’s little benefits, there’s big benefits. Obviously bushels are what’s going to feed this world and that’s what everybody needs to think about is, how can I get as much productivity out of that ground? One of the biggest reasons producers put it in is obviously to get more bushels out of the ground, but the soil aeration is a major part, from the equipment going across the field, consistency across that farm, they don’t have to farm around any wet spots, go back and replant, less fertilizer.
(07:37):
There’s just a lot of things that go into it. Now, the only downfall to drain tile, too many bushels, is it creates more loads off the farm, but I think all farmers will take as many loads.
Levi Otis (07:47):
You have to buy bigger bins.
Derrik Ellingson (07:48):
Yeah, we’re going to put bigger bins in, right? If there’s any negative, we’re going to burn a little more diesel, bringing all that crop back to the farm. But there’s lots of things that play a part to the positive impact of that drain tile. It’s just gotten to be such a big thing here. Like I said, that uniformity is a huge part and that they can farm consistently. Some of the highest fertile soils are in them low spots on this farmer’s farms that tend to stay a little too wet, so how they can maximize that is super important.
Levi Otis (08:16):
And speaking of burning diesel, it’s kind of a wash, to be honest with you, because on tiled ground, NDSU has studies that show that you’re burning six to eight gallons of diesel less per hour on the average machine. Do you burn more diesel hauling more bushels to the farm, yep, but you’re saving it on the farm itself. That’s my environmental plug.
Mike Howell (08:37):
That’s always a good thing.
Jason Gillard (08:38):
One thing that people don’t talk about a lot is just the bushel impact from farming when you need to farm, trafficability, being able to plant when you need to plant, being able to harvest when you need to harvest. At least in our region, we talk a lot about rain events and providing drainage for the crop while it’s growing, but it’s also critically important, and I’m sure you could talk more about this, the impact of proper planting date.
Mike Howell (09:04):
Yeah, that’s something we always preach is you’ve got to get in that optimum planting window. Anytime you get after that, you’re losing yield. That’s critical to be able to get in when you need to. In my part of the world, harvest time is just as critical. If we can’t get it out in a timely fashion, we’re sitting there looking down the barrel of a hurricane coming in just any minute and we have to be able to get that crop out as quick as we can once it gets ready.
Levi Otis (09:27):
Jason and I were at a eKonomics conference yesterday and we actually had a customer there that was in attendance. He started tiling with us over 10 years ago and quite a bit of ground actually. One thing that he brought up, and I sometimes forget if we have a wet year, but his tile or his crops react during a dry year or even a drought year phenomenally better than a non-tiled farm.
(09:49):
Part of that is because especially up here in the region that we’re at where it’s wet in the winter and spring, you can get your crops in, the roots set, and start growing deeper. By the time it’s real hot in late June, July, August, your crops have such a larger advantage versus an adjacent field that doesn’t have tile in it. And then he said even if it is a dry spring, he said he’s just seeing such a remarkable difference between his tiled and untiled fields. He said, “I’m still paying on them, but they paid for themselves three times already.”
Mike Howell (10:20):
Levi, that brings me to two more questions I was going to ask, and you touched on one of them there. But in my area this year, Poplarville, Mississippi, we are last I checked, 27 inches below average on rainfall this year. It is unbelievably dry. All the pastures are drying up, actually having to haul water to the cattle. The podge have all dried up. What’s going to happen if we’ve got tile drains in when it gets that dry, is it going to dry it out even quicker, cause more trouble?
Levi Otis (10:46):
I like to use the flower pot analogy. When we were kids, they made flower pots without holes in the bottom. Your mom asks you to fill a flower pot. You’re like more water is better. And then all of a sudden, she comes over and kicks it over and you lose some dirt off the top and all the excess moisture runs out. Well, nowadays, those flower pots have holes on the bottom, essentially drainage.
(11:05):
You could pour a gallon in, it’s going to drain out everything it doesn’t want. But is that dirt dry? Nope, it’s wet because 50% of your dirt is soil, 25% is air, and 25% is water. That’s all we’re removing is the free water out of soil profile, but the roots and the dirt itself are going to keep what it wants and what it needs.
Mike Howell (11:26):
The next thing you touched on was price. Obviously there’s going to be a cost associated with this. I know it’s a tough question to answer. People ask me about price all the time, and it depends on your area and what’s got to be done. But ballpark, what’s it cost to tile an acre of ground and what kind of returns can a grower expect from that?
Derrik Ellingson (11:45):
I’d say the average cost today for a pattern grid tile here in the valley is probably running close to that $1,200 an acre. Is there circumstances where it’s less? Absolutely. There’s areas that have a mature industry of mains and stuff that are already in, maybe have a little tile in. Back in the day they only tiled the wet acres. Everything’s wet now today.
(12:05):
He talked a little bit about that question on you talked about is too much, is it going to hurt me? 95% of the guys out there, and I just want to add this, it never hurts, them because all we’re doing is removing the involuntary water out of that soil profile. When it gets too dry, in most circumstances, they get a better crop because the roots go down deeper. They’re healthier in that springtime when it’s wet in these regions. Now, I know in your guys’ geographical region, it’ll get wet in the springs, but not like up here where we have the snowfall and the snow melt.
(12:35):
But back to pricing, you can have some projects as low as seven, 800 if we’re filling in. I’ve got projects that can run up around 2,000 just depending on what they want to do and how chopped up and where we’re dragging water to. And that’s probably one of the most contentious things. Mark Twain says it best, right? Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over. There’s never enough or there’s always too much, right?
Mike Howell (12:55):
That’s right. What kind of yield increases can we see if somebody puts this in? Once you put these tiles in, how long are they good far? Do they have a life expectancy?
Derrik Ellingson (13:05):
Well, there’s no life expectancy. I mean, I know the tiles warrantied for 20 years from the manufacturers, but we ploughed our first plastic tile in 1970. I was out to ADS’ corporate headquarters and they dug up some tile from 1970 and it looked absolutely perfect. What’s that lead me to believe? We’re over 50 years into this run of this plastic pipe in the ground and people ask does living up in the Midwest with the free saw process move them? It doesn’t move them. It keeps working, chugging along, doing what it’s supposed to do.
Jason Gillard (13:34):
To that point, we’re back where our corporate office is in Southern Minnesota and we’re tying onto systems that were installed 20, 30, 40 years ago every day.
Derrik Ellingson (13:43):
Yeah, concrete clay tiles all the time. There’s a lot of the old infrastructure was put in way back in the 1940s, ’50s, 60s, when our soil offices used to promote drain tile.
Mike Howell (13:55):
That brings me to another point I was going to ask, and this one’s probably for Levi. We have a lot of government program out there today that help incentivize farmers for doing different practices. Is there any kind of government incentives to help a farmer get started putting in drain tiles?
Derrik Ellingson (14:09):
Yes, there is. They have the EQUIP program and the EQUIP program is out there in certain regions. Everything’s broke down into regions, and that money can be used in different ways. Primarily here in the Midwest, it’s used for soil erosion. Now, we didn’t touch on that. Soil erosion is a major part of benefit of adding drain tile grid tiling. You can dry that soil up, take that involuntary water. A topsoil is going to tend to stay there better.
(14:37):
But here over into Minnesota where you get in the rolling terrains, obviously they’re doing grass waterways, they are putting in a drain tile to keep the bottom of that dry, and that’s all cost shared. They’re putting in terraces and then putting standpipes behind them to keep that soil from eroding downstream. That is today really the only money that is coming from the government back directly to the farmer. Now, there are some small things. If you want to go in and fill out the paperwork, you can get some cost share on some stuff.
(15:05):
If you want to do some controlled drainage, I know the structures can be shared. A lift station technically falls into that because you could have means of shutting the water on and off, but that’s about it. It’s always on the top of the talking list. It’s crop insurance and how can we get more tie on the ground and get some help.
Mike Howell (15:25):
We’ve mentioned that the start that we’re in Fargo here in the Red River Valley, and we know we have really fertile soils in this area. We know drainage is an issue, and that’s one reason that y’all are in this area so heavily. Talk a little bit about the issues with drainage and how these tiles can actually improve this situation and increase our crop yields. I know we’ve touched on this a little bit, but let’s dig a little deeper and what other benefits may be out there?
Jason Gillard (15:48):
I’d like to come back to one thing, Levi’s flower pot example there. You asked the question about what happens in a dry year. I like to use the sponge example. To open up, we talked about managing the water table. We’re not removing all the water. Soil has water holding capacity. Derrik has said multiple times, we’re removing the free water, essentially the excess water from the profile.
(16:11):
If you take a sponge and you dunk it in a five gallon bucket and you pull the sponge out of the five gallon bucket, that water that runs off, that’s what we’re removing, not the water that comes out when you squeeze the sponge. That’s what’s staying there that’s available for the crop to use. That’s why to ask the question about what happens in a dry year, we’re essentially just optimizing what’s available to it. If there’s nothing available, there’s nothing obviously that drainage can do about that.
Mike Howell (16:37):
It’s just taking the free water and it’s not interfering with the soil’s ability to hold that moisture that it needs. It’s just taking the free water away.
Jason Gillard (16:45):
Exactly. Exactly. Somebody had brought up erosion, right? One thing that we see is there’s the soil profile’s ability to absorb water. When you have saturated soils, you got a rain event on saturated soils, you see an excess amount of water moving overland. You’ve got erosion. That’s one thing that I don’t know if it gets talked about enough. When you’ve got healthy soil, you’ve got a well drained soil that’s able to take those events. We see a significant reduction in erosion on land that has adequate drainage.
Mike Howell (17:19):
By draining the soil and leaving some space for extra water to come in when we do get one of those big events, it’s able to go into the soil profile and not run off across the surface. Is that what you’re saying?
Jason Gillard (17:29):
Exactly.
Mike Howell (17:30):
Okay.
Levi Otis (17:31):
That’s when million dollar rains become billion dollar rains.
Mike Howell (17:34):
Right, right.
Derrik Ellingson (17:37):
Back to the question you did answer. Obviously Lake Agassiz has been a little hidden treasure up here. I think it’s been undervalued, and there’s a lot of people that are realizing that this valley can produce some major bushels up here. Being a lake bottom, what are some of the challenges that we face up here? It’s super flat. Where’s the water going to go? We use an abundance of lift stations here in the Red River Valley in our core business up here. We got to lift that water up and pump it off.
(18:04):
I mean, there’s a lot of farms that might only have a foot of fall across a half mile. We have to make that grade, put it down deeper, and then we’ll follow the natural slope with our laterals to talk about that uniformity and staying as uniform as possible. It is a lake bottom, so it’s got some variables of soils from silty clays to heavy Fargo clay. I know heavy Fargo clays very similar to Sharkey clay coming out of your area.
Mike Howell (18:29):
I know about a Sharkey clay.
Derrik Ellingson (18:30):
I know you know about Sharkey clay, and then there’s big sand pockets as well, and there’s some pretty big tributaries of water underneath that. Them guys are able to tap that and put in pivots. Lots of challenges. Some of the other challenges that exist, our infrastructure, our surface ditches that exist today, were overdue for a major upgrade and trying to get some of them surface drains cleaned out and getting that water moving off the surface, but it’s time. Cattails grow and now they start slowing that water down.
(19:00):
Where I grew up, we have group mains, touched on them a little bit. That’s where they actually go together, find the sub watersheds. They put in 36, 48, 60 inch drain tiles and they put a big tile up. I know it’s talked about a lot here in the valley. I just don’t think it’s cost-effective to do it just because it’s so flat here, the diameter to be so big, and obviously the Red River being our lowest point, that’s where we got to get that water to.
(19:25):
Unfortunately, we’re going to have to stick to the lift stations and lift that water up and use our surface drains to get this water off this infrastructure to keep charging forward.
Levi Otis (19:33):
And for your listeners, the lift station is nothing more than a giant sump pump that you would find in your house. It’s exactly the same thing.
Mike Howell (19:40):
Now, we do have some growers that are putting in lift stations and it’s more for irrigation water. They try to collect some of this runoff irrigation water and recycle that water and pump it out in an irrigation event. Is there enough water coming out that we could collect some of that and use it for irrigation later on?
Derrik Ellingson (19:57):
Yeah, in some areas for sure. We have customers today that we’re piping that water back to a common infrastructure and they’re reapplying it through aerial pivot irrigation. I know you guys, a lot of flood irrigating down in that area. It definitely has the positivity to make something happen. It’s just are they willing to give up the landmass to hold the water? Do they have the attributes to hold the water without putting a liner in? And wherever they’re at, wherever they are in the world, because this is the problem everywhere.
(20:25):
But it’s definitely the way that things are trending. I think we got to be cognizant about recycling the water so we’re not just pumping it off and sending it downstream, and doing the best job we can as being a steward of the land. I mean, that’s really what it boils down to.
Levi Otis (20:39):
Back to some of that government regulation stuff, it’s a fight to drain your water. You should try holding it back. There’s a lot of different state or federal laws about how many acre feet you’re allowed to hold back and then you have to work through your state or local, even federal legislation to make sure that you’re in compliance.
(20:56):
But we do have a large and growing number of customers that say, “All right, I want to drain this into a retention pond. I want to collect my surface runoff, and I want to collect the snow runoffs, so whether it’s rain, whether it’s snow, whether it’s tile. Can I use that to put on a quarter inch on a hot week when I’m between rains,” or whatever that math is. But it’s such an extraordinary amount of water.
(21:17):
People have to understand that. It is a massive amount of water. But as you know in agriculture, if there’s a will and a way, they’ll figure it out. I think when you want to talk about water quality and runoff and some of the goods or the bads, we do have solutions for all the bads. I’m confident in saying that. That’s just another way to manage some of that is drainage water recycling.
Mike Howell (21:40):
Well, we started off talking about the lack of these drains in the Delta area where I’m from. The more we talk about it, the more I could see where this make could fit in down there. I’ve often heard it said that the two things that keep a grower from making a good crop are the lack of rain and then getting the water off of that field. We have to manage that water. I really think some growers could benefit from this. If somebody is listening to this and doesn’t know anything about tile drain and want to explore it more, how can they find out more? Where’s a good resource they could check out?
Levi Otis (22:08):
The simplest is going to Google and typing AG Drainage 101 by Prinsco. They have a six-minute video. It’s probably the best tool that I’ve ever used because it’s really simple to understand. It’s an illustrated video. It’s six minutes long, and everything that Jason described earlier, the light bulb will turn on once you watch that. AG Drainage 101 by Prinsco.
Derrik Ellingson (22:30):
Yeah, there’s a lot of places out there. I mean, obviously you just Google it, you’re going to pull up lots of different data that’s been put together. ADS’ site has good informational data. A lot of the universities have a lot of data out there. Obviously you can go right to ellingsoncompanies.com, to our website, and we can sure help answer some of them questions that a grower may have out there.
Jason Gillard (22:49):
I mean, some of the universities Derrik brought up, I mean, we’ve got University of Minnesota.
Levi Otis (22:54):
North Dakota State.
Jason Gillard (22:55):
NSDU, Iowa State.
Levi Otis (22:56):
Iowa State’s probably the premier. At least for our resources, they’re fantastic. NDSU is right in our backyard, and I’m not saying they’re not. Just Iowa’s 50 years ahead.
Jason Gillard (23:07):
I know none of those are very concentrated here in the Upper Midwest, but the principles around drainage are transferable to wherever we are in the world.
Levi Otis (23:16):
Yep. South Dakota State, Purdue, and North Carolina State if you want to get down south.
Mike Howell (23:25):
Well, guys, I sure appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to come talk to us. I know I’ve sure learned a lot this morning. What’s your take home message or is there anything that we’ve left out that we need to cover before we…
Derrik Ellingson (23:34):
We’re going to talk one more thing. We talked about why we put tile in, but one of the main reasons we put tile in here is for saline soils. We didn’t talk much about saline soils. There’s a lot of saline soils that exist out on this geographical… All over. Lake Agassiz is full of saline soils. That is one of the huge benefits of installing that water management system is it gives an outlet for that salt, saline, that’s been built up over years to leach out. Now, in a perfect world, I tell guys, you could dump a couple inches of rain on top of it.
(24:02):
That’s a fast way to flush it out. But once you have that infrastructure in, it will clean up. Lots of studies been done. I know AGvice is a great source to go to. That’s a soil lab here in the Dakotas that has a lot of talk about it, and I know them. Sour spots exist all over and that buildup is starting to happen. I tell guys, is there regions that are getting more rain? Yes, but nobody’s really probably getting more rain. We’re just getting bigger rainfalls and bigger events and that’s really what we got to protect ourselves from.
Mike Howell (24:31):
That’s something that’s becoming more and more of an issue is those sandy spots in the fields. I used to never see that and I run into it more and more frequently these days even down in my part of the world where we usually get a lot of rain. Not the case this year, but most of the time we do get enough rain to flush those salts out.
Derrik Ellingson (24:46):
I mean, even going into California, we fortunate enough to have a tile plough in California doing a lot of work up in the Delta area up there by Stockton. But down in the southern end of California, I mean, it’s the main reason they’re putting them tile in is to flush out the salt because they’re irrigating with salty waters. There’s other benefits. There’s other things that people are doing with it.
(25:06):
It ain’t just because it’s too wet. It’s just really to protect their asset that they’ve planted and the orchards and the crops that are out there, especially the southern end growing the vegetables and the fresh produce down there.
Jason Gillard (25:17):
One thing I’d add to that is, and I just wanted to talk about how the stacking of best management practices. We talk about, especially in the Northern Plains here, talk about push for cover crops. Back to the planting when you need to plant, harvesting when you need to harvest, tile drainage is a huge benefit. Because if we’re going to make these practices work, we need to start incorporating multiples.
(25:40):
It’s not just a one shot fix. All Levi touched on it, just some of the pros, the cons. One of the cons is a nutrient issue with tile drainage water and Levi talked about how there’s solutions for these problems, talk about bioreactors, saturated buffers, constructed wetlands.
Derrik Ellingson (25:58):
Denitrifying wetlands.
Jason Gillard (26:00):
There’s great solutions for these issues. Can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater type thing, right?
Derrik Ellingson (26:06):
There’s one of my favorite quotes that exists out there. I mean, really at the end of the day, it allows the producer to work with the land, not against the land. If you can take these tools that we have available and find ways to make it fit in your budget, because that’s really what it boils down to, you can be the best steward of the land you possibly can. I think there ain’t a farmer out there that doesn’t want to do the best job they can possibly do.
Mike Howell (26:27):
Well, and that’s one thing we spend a lot of time talking about is making sure we take care of what we’ve been given and being able to pass it on to the next generation. We appreciate what y’all are doing to help these growers be more productive and manage what they’ve got. Guys, one thing that we talk a lot about on The Dirt is innovation. I understand that y’all are doing some things to be more innovative. I understand you may have an app coming out shortly. If you will, talk a little bit about that and some other things you may be doing.
Derrik Ellingson (26:56):
Yeah, we do, Mike. I’ll direct you guys to our website, www.ellingson.app, and you’ll be able to go on there and check it out and play around with it, but it’s kind of a all-in-one comprehensive tool that you’re going to have access to land ownership, who owns the land, all the soil data. We’re going to look underground, because it’s a water management tool and what we’re looking at, I talked a little bit about that sand, silt, clay. We’ve created our own TDI, tile drainage index, that is going to tell you if your farm could benefit from water management.
(27:26):
There are some of the key things that just come with the app, but then behind the scenes on that, it’s also going to be a data warehouse for you to store your tile maps and they’re going to be overlaid. We’ve already partnered with John Deere, and we’ve guys that are using the John Deere data yield mapping system. You can integrate all your data right in. A push of a button, your guys’ stuff can come right in. All your field boundaries, all your farms, how you’re naming them, all come in and they’re automatically saved.
(27:52):
And then you’re going to have the ability to start toggling through that and overlay your soil maps, your topography maps. We’ve also got a really cool topography tool that we’ve been able to build and start looking at your farm at the ground level and what’s going on and you’re going to start to see your trends, maybe the farms that you’ve invested in water management, you’re going to see how is that paying back to you? Should I be doing something different? Maybe my soils aren’t what the soil map thinks it is and says it is because that’s all just data people mapped a long time ago.
(28:24):
One of the last features, Mike, that we put in there is it’s kind of a communication tool to the farmers. I know one of the biggest problems on the farm today is labour and help. I know a lot of these growers throughout the entire nation are getting South Africans and immigrant workers to come up and work. You’re able to go in and pin notes on a field rock pile, don’t turn too sharp here. Just simple things like that of how you can communicate with them.
(28:50):
In our eyes, we hope that every tractor has an iPad and these guys are going to be able to navigate through it and use this tool day in and day out and it’s the tool that they want to live with.
Mike Howell (29:00):
Sounds like a great app and I’m assuming that that’ll work not only here in Fargo where you’re located, but if somebody in Greenville, Mississippi wanted to check it out, it would work down there as well.
Derrik Ellingson (29:09):
Absolutely, it would work down there. I encourage the Greenville, Mississippi people to get out there and play around with it. One of my favorites places down there in Greenville is Doe. I love Doe’s down there. That’s just a great steakhouse down there in Greenville to all your listeners.
Mike Howell (29:21):
That’s how we know somebody’s actually been to Greenville if you know about Doe’s. Any other comments before we wrap up?
Levi Otis (29:27):
Well, I would just like to give your listeners some data. If they’re going to Thanksgiving and telling their family that they’re going to start tiling, tiling is contentious. Again, it goes back to the word nitrate. We do have the solutions for those and just bioreactors, saturated buffers. I know Jason touched on all these, we’re building wetlands, denitrifying wetlands. Wetlands could be engineered. They’re man created to do anything if you’ve got a phosphorus issue, if you’ve got nitrate issue. 95 to 98% of the tile that we put in the ground is recycled plastic.
(30:00):
Even if you don’t believe in going green, please recycle your Tide bottles and water jugs because that goes into the plastic that we put in the ground. 660 million tonnes of recycled plastic went into the ground last year as drain tile, 660 million tonnes. Now think of an empty water jug, that’s two ounces. You do that math. We are doing great things for the environment. You’re growing larger plants, growing more with less.
(30:28):
Everybody at Thanksgiving cringes because you’re the farmer of the family and you’re going to be doing this. Email me at lotis@ellingsoncompanies.com and I’ll give you a whole list to have that family argument.
Mike Howell (30:39):
All right, sounds good. Guys, thanks a lot. Listeners, as you know, it’s now time that we’re going to move into our second segment where we talk about somebody famous in agriculture. Today, we’ve been talking about tile drains and increasing our yields and being more productive. Today, I wanted to talk about a man named Joseph Dart. Now, Mr. Dart lived from 1799 to 1879. He was an American businessman that was well-educated. And at the age of 17, he began an apprenticeship in a hat factory.
(31:12):
Now, three years later, he was actually managing a hat factory. And in 1821, he moved to Buffalo, New York and started his own trading store where he was selling hats, leather, and fur. Now, he remained in the trade until about the time of the panic of 1837. He actually sold his business just before the panic started. But as a result of that panic, we ended up in a recession at the time, and it was the collapse of the store. The store just wasn’t able to make it after that. But about the same time, Joseph Dart started looking into grain trading.
(31:44):
There at Buffalo at the time, there was a lot of grain being traded because of its location. It was located right on the eastern edge of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal had just been finished. A lot of the grain from the Midwest was being shipped across the Great Lakes to Buffalo and then moved out the Erie Canal so that it could be moved into other locations. Dart saw the need to have a more efficient way to handle the grain. All this grain at that time was being packed into barrels or sacks and everything had to be offloaded from the ships by hand.
(32:13):
In 1842, Mr. Dart conceived a machine powered grain elevator that was actually the first in America and it was known as Dart’s Elevator. He started this in Buffalo, New York, and within 15 years, there had been 10 other elevators put in, and that made Buffalo the largest grain shipping port in the world. By 1887, Buffalo had increased again, and it had 43 grain elevators and could offload 4 million bushels of grain per day. We want to thank Mr. Dart for his contributions to the grain handling industry, and we’ve got to be able to handle this.
(32:47):
It doesn’t matter how much grain we make, if we’re not able to effectively transport it, we’re not going to get what we need out of that. Listeners, we want to thank you for joining in today. If you have any questions about this or anything else that we talk about on the program, always want to remind you that you can look at nutrien-ekonomics, with a k, .com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
