More for Your Money in the Tank with Aaron Esser

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Episode transcription:

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Drew Lyon: Hello, welcome to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. I’m your host, Drew Lyon, and I want to thank you for joining me as we explore the world of small grains production and research at Washington State University. In each episode, I speak with researchers from WSU and the USDA-ARS to provide you with insights into the latest research on wheat and barley production.

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My guest today is Aaron Esser. Aaron is with WSU Extension in Lincoln and Adams counties, where he has worked for 26 years. His Extension program is focused on integrated weed control and soil health. In addition to his role in the traditional Extension program, Aaron has served as chair of the WSU Wilke Farm Management Committee for the past 12 years. The WSU Wilke Research and Extension Farm, a 340-acre facility located on the eastern edge of Davenport, Washington, is situated in the intermediate rainfall zone.

Hello, Aaron.

Aaron Esser: Hello, Drew.

Drew Lyon: So, I think last year some time we talked about your research project you were working on focused on fungicide application at herbicide timing and I’m just curious as to where you are with that project and if you have any updates for us on it.

Aaron Esser: Yeah, Drew, thanks for the question. But, before I answer it, I really want to talk briefly about the farm economy and a little bit about how it impacts my position in Extension. As you mentioned, I do work on the WSU Wilke Research and Extension Farm, and this facility not only hosts multiple research projects, but the farm itself is one big experiment/demonstration.

We keep a strong record of agronomic practices as well as economic returns. And when I look at the economic returns, in 2024, it was the third lowest we’ve had in the last 10 years. And in fact, it was 28% less than our ten-year average, so that’s kind of one of the things impacting the farm economy.

Note we have had worse years: 2015 and 2017 on the farm. So, it wasn’t the worst year. But what makes this moment in time a little bit different is we’re actually coming off one of our better years in 2022. And when I look at the last three years, our return over cost—and granted my costs are different from what farmers have, but I think it’s very much relevant to what would take place on an average farm. But when I look at our return on our costs in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and then what happened in 2024, we are 49% below the 3-year average. So, I mean, we’ve seen a sharp decline pretty quickly in our overall return on cost.

Okay. Now back to your original question on fungicides, you know, and what can we do about it. I’ve had a project focused on fungicide application at herbicide timing, a large study over five years, seven site years–that just [means] a couple of years we had it in two different locations on the farm. We have three treatments. We applied water, just straight up water. Second treatment was a fungicide and we used an azoxystrobin plus a propiconazole, about a $15 an acre fungicide. And then our third treatment was a product called Pixie Dust, a potassium silicate product.

I’m not getting into the details of these, but over the duration of the study, we used a variety called Resilience for three of those site years, Piranha CL+ for two of the site years. We used Sockeye and Kraken AX for a year each as well. And I will mention that cultivar selection does matter.

Long story short, the water check averaged 88.171 bushel per acre. Fungicide over the ground also averaged 88.171 bushel per acre and Pixie Dust averaged 88.8 bushel. No significant difference whatsoever. No variation among the years or cultivars. Whether we had high yields, the year we had 111 bushel an acre, no difference. The year we harvested 62 bushel an acre, no difference. So, that’s just one of the things that’s, you know, we can look at as far as the cost structure. There was no evidence of plant health with this timing of fungicide.

Let’s talk about the economics. This did not provide cheap insurance. That’s one of the justifications for applying fungicides. Zero return on the investment. And farmers often try to marginalize this cost. Don’t marginalize the cost.

And then we get into the weed situation and the herbicides. What’s the most expensive thing a farmer will put in his tank? The grassy weed control. It’s the most expensive one. And then you want to throw a cheap fungicide in over the top of it.

You guys—the weed scientists–everyone says that adding that to the tank may potentially antagonize those grassy weed herbicides, so why are you taking the most expensive thing, throwing something cheap in, and potentially antagonizing and reducing its efficacy? That doesn’t make sense to me in a couple different ways: common sense and economic sense.

I have yet to read a label that says add fungicide to improve the efficacy of herbicide X. When applying herbicides, I’d rather you spend the money, instead of fungicides, use a better surfactant. Use the highest labeled rate, add more water, improve your coverage, spend the money that way and do a better job with that herbicide application.

And when you look at stripe rust this year for 2025, the forecast is really low. And when you look at variety and variety selection, 19 of the 25 most popular planted varieties in Washington state right now, Drew, are resistant or marginally resistant to stripe rust. So, we have good genetics out there. We can trust those numbers.

Drew Lyon: Okay. And do you think that’s part of the reason maybe you didn’t see any difference with the fungicides? Because you had resistant or moderately resistant varieties or [were they just] not bad stripe rust years?

Aaron Esser: I think you’re seeing a combination. When I looked at the varieties, Resilience is–I did not anticipate seeing anything with Resilience. Great disease package. Piranha doesn’t have quite as strong a disease package. I didn’t see anything with that. Kraken was another variety that doesn’t have the strongest disease package, but I didn’t see any results with those either.

And years and stuff play into it. And I’m not saying never do it, but understand what you have planted in your field and what the forecasts and stuff are looking like before. Just don’t make a blind decision to throw the fungicide in the tank, is my point.

Drew Lyon: Okay. It’s a prophylactic approach of just throwing it in because it’s cheap and it’s easy insurance, which is, like you said, a big seller.

Aaron Esser: Yes. I can give you all the acronyms, you know, the cheap insurance, free ride. I can give you all that.

Drew Lyon: Okay. Good points. So, I know your program also has been working on nutrient management in wheat. Can you provide us an update on your projects in that area?

Aaron Esser: Yeah. Once again, we’re getting back to the baseline for this work [which] is the economics and the bottom line. Soil fertility is often the largest cost on the farm. It’s the biggest driver of yield on the farm and is one of the single largest–if not the largest–has the largest impact on your bottom line. If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

My program is focused on providing tools to help farmers manage it. On the Small Grains website, there’s two of them: the Wheat Nitrogen Application Calculator and the Post-harvest Nitrogen Efficiency Calculator are two tools that farmers can use to help improve their nutrient management. Farmers can often tell you how many pounds of nutrients they apply: do I put on 70 pounds of nitrogen, 30 pounds of phosphorus per acre, and everything else. I also want them to be able to tell me how many pounds they remove from that field when that truck leaves the field.

Just for instance, on average, an example, I’m going to say a legal semi load hauling, I’m going to say, 1,100 bushels of soft white wheat with 10% protein when it leaves the field, it’s actually removing 1,250 pounds of nitrogen, 350 pounds of phosphorus, 290 pounds of potassium, 85 pounds of sulfur, 80 pounds of chloride, 70 pounds of magnesium, 1 pound of zinc, and 0.05 pounds of boron. So, that’s one of the things I want farmers to keep track of, you know, kind of the old checkbook method. You know, what your balance is. You know how much you applied. You know how much you removed. And then, you know what your new balance should be.

If that doesn’t work, it’s not balancing. You should start asking yourself why. Ask your agronomist why. Just like if your bank account doesn’t balance, you ask the banker why. Same thing here. Fertilizer is absolute money.

By tracking it along with your nitrogen-uptake efficiency–that’s one of the calculators–and if you just know your soil test nitrogen, your applied nitrogen, your yield, and your protein, you can calculate nitrogen-use efficiency. And that is a number you can use then to make further decisions on what you need to do with your nutrient management program.

I often get asked, you know, do I need to invest in precision application equipment? Am I using the right prescription map? Do I need to do split applications? Or, what about those nitrogen stabilizers? You know, all those questions, if you’re not tracking it, if you don’t know what your nitrogen-uptake efficiency is, how do you know what to do to improve it? And what are you measuring against? So, that’s one of the things I want farmers to keep track of is nitrogen-uptake efficiency. And then, what are steps we can then take to further improve our efficacy with our nutrient management program.

Drew Lyon: So, what should a farmer be shooting for in that efficiency value?

Aaron Esser: It’s actually interesting. Nitrogen-uptake efficiency of 50% or greater is a positive. It’s your single largest expense, but if you get 50% efficiency out of it, you’re doing pretty good. So, I encourage farmers to have goals instead of, you know, the coffee shop talk, “Well, I got 60 bushel. I got 70 bushel.” I want it to be on bragging about what their nitrogen uptake efficiency numbers are. I know that’s kind of an ag nerd statement but that’s what I want to see the conversations go to.

Drew Lyon: [Laughter] Okay. And like you say it’s a big expense and you want to be as efficient with it as you possibly can, so it makes sense to try to really hone in on that number and try and improve it over time.

Aaron Esser: And it scares me when we get in these economic situations. Farmers have a tendency to cut the cost. But if it is a detriment to yield, you can go backwards quicker. So, that’s one of the things I really like people to keep track of it for.

Drew Lyon: Okay. And, earlier you mentioned one of your biggest expenses on the farm is your herbicide and weed control, so I was wondering if you could spend just a couple minutes talking about your work in weed management.

Aaron Esser: Yeah, that one is number two. [For] some farmers, it actually has been flip flopping a little bit lately.

Drew Lyon: Okay.

Aaron Esser: And I’m going to say that that’s not going to get any easier either. As you’ve heard me–if you’ve ever listened to one of my 37 presentations I’ve given in the last 2 years on integrated weed management, in my opinion, weed control and herbicide-resistant weeds are the greatest threat farmers face today.

What does this mean? It means simply weed control moving forward is not going to be as easy as what it has been. It means it’s not going to be–it’s going to be more expensive moving forward and it will require more intense management than what we’ve seen in the past. And those aren’t always good things, especially in today’s economy.

This is probably a newsflash to everyone. Okay, it’s not. But farmers are creatures of habit. They often start spraying, seeding, and harvesting the same fields every year. They end spraying, seeding, harvesting the same fields every year. Farmers today have bigger equipment, the bigger sprayers, the bigger spray trailers, and they’re now getting their chemicals in 275-gallon totes instead of 2 and a half gallon containers. And they cover many acres very efficiently these days. Okay?

I’m not saying that’s wrong or we need to change that, but I want them to take a specific look at the Johnson Hollow Farm, the Peterson place, you know, not the whole farm, but those specific farms, the worst farms. Okay? What are you going to do different? On a piece of paper, write down what your worst weeds are on that farm. On that same piece of paper, write down what were the last four crops you’ve had on the farm. Because what you’ve done in the past is why you have what you have. It’s not the neighbors or anything else. It’s your problem and you created it. What are you going to do for the next four crops? What’s one thing you can do differently, Drew?

What’s a second thing a farmer could do differently on that field or on that farm? And what’s a third thing you can do differently? I’m not asking you to change the whole farm or the whole profile, but that one specific field or that one specific farm, what are you going to do differently? Because sometimes it can feel overwhelming, but if you can break it down and work on that one field. You know, are you using residual herbicides? What group of herbicides have you been previously using and which ones are you going to use moving forward?

I’m just going to end here with a little bit of an example. In our country, we raise a lot of winter wheat fallow and downy brome is an issue. If we have seen an increase in downy brome pressure on the Peterson place–and I’m using tillage, I’m in a tillage-based summer fallow system–I would consider using a fall Valor application, spring RoundUp, and then delaying my tillage operations as late as I can, changing it up.

If I’m in a no-till situation, I might use a little bit of tillage in the fall to help push that seed bank, and then come in and apply my RoundUp and maybe some Anthem Flex at that time in the spring of the year. And then when I get ready to seed my wheat, I want that farm to be seeded first. If I’m not traditionally using heavy starter fertilizers or anything, I’m going to put starter fertilizer on that. I’m going to seed that field first, because your best herbicide is a good competitive crop.

And I bet you in this example, the Peterson place with downy brome, it’s never been the first field you seed. I bet you it’s always towards the end. And if you can bump it up and change it a little bit, not big, but making two or three little changes, I think in the long run can have a big difference.

Drew Lyon: You have that–you know, as a weed scientist myself, I can’t agree with you more. It’s a real problem. I often tell growers that for the last two generations we’ve been cursed by having great herbicides and we’ve kind of fallen back on just using that. And I think, as you say, going forward, it’s going to require some changes in how we do things.

Aaron Esser: Yeah. It’s interesting. I work with these multi-generational farm families and it’s been fun watching–I call them the kids now–coming back to farm. They don’t know any different. It’s always been the Group 2, the Mavericks, the Olympus, Ospreys. You’ve always had those. They’ve always worked. Now they have to talk to dad about what happened before those. What did you guys do? And we have those conversations, but if you can marginalize it to the one farm instead of trying to fix the whole farm, I think it can really help to take big steps.

When you get the Peterson place fixed, then move on to the Johnson Hollow Farm. And I’m going to say the home place, although the home place is normally the better one.

I guess I want to conclude a little bit, Drew, with wishing everyone all of the best of luck as we move forward into 2025. Hope the rains remain timely, the disease stays away, and everything goes as planned.

Drew Lyon: It’s going to be a tough year, I think. But it’s an unknown, right? We go into it hopeful and hope everything works out.

Aaron, thanks for sharing some of your work there at the Wilke Farm. You do some really interesting stuff and thanks for the discussion on the economics and how that’s looking today.

Aaron Esser: All right. Thanks again, Drew.

Drew Lyon:

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Thanks for joining us and listening to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. If you like what you hear don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you have questions or topics you’d like to hear on future episodes, please email me at drew.lyon — that’s lyon@wsu.edu — (drew.lyon@wsu.edu). You can find us online at smallgrains.wsu.edu and on Facebook and Twitter [X] @WSUSmallGrains. The WSU Wheat Beat podcast is a production of CAHNRS Communications and the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.

I’m Drew Lyon, we’ll see you next time.

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and does not imply Washington State University’s endorsement.