waaaay east central Colorado | Phil, if this parade is what it takes to bring rain, don't stop ;) We could both use it...
Your post is very well said and it helps me realize some of the points that I missed. Of course Hula is putting on more fertility than a 220 b/a guy. NONE of these products are designed to replace basic, well-understood agronomic principles. It still takes x pounds of N/bushel, x pounds of phos, etc., but what we are saying is an extension of the same idea. I'm sure that we're all familiar with the stave theory, or law of minimum, or whatever you care to call it, where if you are low in nutrient "x", it doesn't matter how much "y" is available.
The thinking behind a lot of this stuff is, "if we are low in something that we can fix, we should fix it." These guys are very big into overall soil health, so they see one of the major issues most of us face being soil microbiological activity or lack thereof. So one of the first products they introduced was a product that has 80 different strands of critters in it, kind of a shotgun approach that will work in most all circumstances to help address this issue. Many of the other products that are offered follow the same line of thinking, we can offer broad-spectrum products that will work in the majority this or that situation. Personally, I like this method of broad-brush fixing, because that means I don't hafta be as smart to fix something ;) If you don't have this issue or that issue on your farm, fantastic!
Your last sentence is very cogent, and not wrong in the slightest. However, it insinuates that guys don't pay attention to details until they have enough skin in the game to matter. So now that we have so much riding on this deal, I guess we should do this and this too, and any increase goes to product X when it's really process Y that should get the credit. I understand that argument, and you're not wrong, but that is NOT the case for David Hula. Guys like David Hula are smart enough to measure inputs and to be able to account for increases or decreases. I got to meet with David for a few days, and got to walk some of his farm. David runs checks EVERY year for everything but the Pentilex seed treatment, he believes that it works every time, so he doesn't even mess with checking it anymore. With that said, he had a field where he had a full treatment versus the seed treatment only, and saw a 70 bushel difference. Take that for what its worth, I'm just an internet poster with an agenda, but it's exactly what David told me and I don't think you could make him lie if you held a gun to his head. |
Dave Hula world corn yeild record
