Silent Shade Planting Company June 2015 Volume 3, Issue 2

422 Old Silver City Rd.

P.O. Box 534

Belzoni, MS 39038

Phone: 662-247-1214

Fax: 662-247-1217

TF: 800-844-1213

Find us online! Silent Shade Planting Company

P.O. Box 534

Belzoni, MS 39038

Jeremy Jack

SSPC Snapshots—April-June 2015

Willard Jack Trucking—A Division of SSPC

#Morocco #ASA

#cropscouting #jragscouts

Peanuts

Soybeans

Rice

Fast Facts

Years in Operation: 30+

Number of Trucks: 9

Full-Time Drivers: 8

Products Hauled: Grains, Gravel, Dirt, Dry

and Liquid Fertilizer, Cotton Seed

Truck Dispatcher: Laura Lee Jack

Asst. Truck Dispatcher:

Cindy Hood

Many farms have a cou-ple of trucks sitting around for hauling grain, equipment and water. Semi-trucks have always been a necessary evil in agriculture to trans-

2015 Planting Pics

During June, Elizabeth and Stacie in-vited their women’s peer group to tour SSPC for their annual meeting. Mem-bers of their peer group include Jennifer James of H & J Farms in Arkansas, Pau-la Sudquist of Lubbers Farms in South Dakota, Kassi Rowland and Melissa Ger-ber of Tom Farms in Indiana, and Kasey Bryant of Bryant Ag Enterprises in Ohio.

Summer Peer Group Meetings

nine trucks with eight full-time drivers and hauls primarily grains, gravel, dirt, dry and liquid fertilizer and cotton seed. We also have over forty trailers—including vans, flat beds, big and little dumps, tankers, moving floors, hop-pers and equipment hauling trailers. Most of our truck drivers have over 15 years experience in the trucking indus-try with several employees clocking 10-30 years of service with WJT. In addi-tion, each of our drivers goes through an extensive background check and training process to ensure safety and DOT compliance. When you hire Willard Jack Trucking to service your hauling needs, you can expect to re-ceive top-notch service, as well as safe and timely delivery by each of our driv-ers. For more information about our ser-vices and pricing, you can call Laura Lee Jack, and if you see our trucks on the road, give us a honk and a wave!

port large quantities of fertilizer and crop protection products from suppliers to the farm and large amounts of commodities from the farm to the marketplace. In the early 1980s, Willard and Laura Lee Jack had a couple of trucks to ser-vice the farm during harvest. However, when hard times hit in the mid-80s, they realized that they could use some of these “spare” assets to generate income in a time that farming was a losing busi-ness. So, they decided to start a profes-sional, commercial trucking business with a mission of safely and efficiently provid-ing hauling services for local customers in the Mississippi delta in a timely manner and at competitive prices. The original mission is still true today. Willard Jack Trucking currently operates

Jeremy’s group toured Anderson Farms, a row crop and livestock farm in Minnesota, in mid-June. Members in-clude Grant Anderson of Anderson Farms in Minnesota, Andrew Miller of Andrew Miller Farms in Texas, Mike Brooks of Dusty Lane Farms in New Jer-sey, Mark Watchman of M & D Farms in Ohio, Gordon Millar of Red Hen Turf Farms in Indiana and Josh Lawrence of Gard Vinters in Washington.

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Dr. Trey Koger Senior Agronomist

The USSEC 2nd Poultry Roundtable in Morocco

During the second week of May, Willard and Laura Lee Jack were honored to attend the U.S. Soy-bean Export Council’s (USSEC) 2nd Poultry Roundtable for the Feed Industry in Casablanca, Mo-rocco. USSEC, which is a farmer owned, non-profit organization whose goal is to increase the value of and export demand for U.S. soy, held this council as a part of its Fis-cal Year 2015 promotion program in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) Region. Willard, member of the Board of Directors of the American Soybean Association, and Bob Metz, Board Director of the U.S. Soybean Board, spoke on behalf of U.S.

farmers to members of the confer-ence about their current farming practices of U.S. soybeans. Willard’s presentation focused on water conservation and farm sus-tainability practices, including computer designed water systems with timers, tailwater recovery, wireless moisture meters and con-servation tillage techniques. Other speakers at the summit included Ambassador Dwight Bush, the U.S. Ambassador in Morocco; Dr. Mian Riaz, USSEC consultant and director of Food Protein R&D Center at Texas A&M University; Craig Coon, US-SEC consultant and professor at the University of Arkansas; Brent Babb, USSEC Regional Director for Europe and MENA; and Khalid Benabdeljelil, a local Morocco consultant. Following the conference, Willard, Laura Lee and other con-ference attendees participated in field visits and meetings with cus-tomers in the Moroccan feed in-dustry markets.

Overall, Willard and Laura Lee’s trip to Morocco was an eye-opening experience. Willard was overwhelmed by how technologi-cally advanced the chicken feed facilities were in Morocco. The feed industry business leaders were very transparent in their de-sire to create a wholesome, quality chicken feed product and the mills in which they were creating this product were rapidly progressing. Willard also found it very gratifying and interesting to meet purchasers of U.S. soy products and learn more about their expectations and uses of the product. While Willard and Laura Lee’s intentions in at-tending this conference were to provide the North African feed in-dustry leaders an inside look into the American soybean farmer, they were also able to learn from the Moroccan industry leaders what buyers of the U.S. soy export market are looking for in U.S. soy-beans. See more pictures of Willard and Laura Lee’s trip to Morocco on our blog at www.silent-shade.com.

Our agronomy department is currently re-searching the best means to meet nitrogen demands for irri-gated corn

grown on silt loam soils. Nitrogen demands start off low when the plant is young but increase signifi-cantly when the plant reaches mid-season, only to sluff off towards plant maturity. Historically, we of-ten supplied most of the season long nitrogen to corn plant via a side-dress application of 32% Nsol solution early in the corn plants’ life (~V2 – V7). We now know this application was not an efficient means of supplying season-long nitrogen requirements to a corn plant. Soils going through wetting and drying cycles, as well as other factors, contribute to loss of nitro-gen in the soil profile due to pro-cesses such as leaching and deni-trification. Transitional phases of nitrogen converting back and forth between ammonium, nitrate, and ammonia states contribute to leaching and denitrification losses of nitrogen as well. To reduce nitrogen losses, we have altered our mechanism and timing of nitrogen application to help spread availability of nitrogen over a wider window during the growing season. Today, we spread our total season rate of nitrogen over three applications, rather than one large, early appli-cation. We are now providing some nitrogen at time of planting, a second application at side-dress supplies the majority of the season long nitrogen needs, and a third application just prior to corn tas-seling provides some nitrogen to help meet the plants’ needs during mid- to late- reproductive growth stages. Typically we apply approx-imately 250 to 275 lbs of nitrogen per acre in attempts to meet the

corn plants’ nitrogen needs. This rate is representative of provid-ing 1.25 to 1.33 lbs of nitrogen per bushel of corn. Another technique we are investigating to improve the overall utilization of our side-dress nitrogen application is to apply it variable rate based on our corn seeding rate. Historical-ly, we have applied a broadcast side-dress rate of 32% Nsol to all corn fields. Nitrogen rates with the side-dress application typically ranged in the 150 lbs of nitrogen per acre. We then fol-lowed with a variable rate appli-cation of urea just prior to tassle. Rate of the at-tassle urea appli-cation was based on NDVI im-agery of the measured the over-all “health” of the corn plant. Higher rates of urea were ap-plied to the less healthy or yel-low spots in fields. This year we have changed this strategy by applying the Nitrogen side-dress application variable rate and the at-tassle application was applied broadcast at 100 lbs urea/acre. In this trial, the application rate of the side-dress Nsol appli-cation was based on the corn seeding rate, which was based on yield history and overall yield

potential. Seeding rate was higher in higher yielding portions of fields and lower in field portions that his-torically have not yielded as well as other fields or portions of fields. Below are application maps for the side-dress Nsol application as well as corn seeding rate for the same field. The fundamental question is will this work? We are researching the aspects of this approach in several fields. The thought pro-cess is attempting to further im-prove nitrogen efficiency and utili-zation while improving productivity and hopefully profitability. We ap-plied higher rates of Nsol in higher yielding portions of fields in hopes of increasing corn yields in the more productive portions of fields. Hopefully by applying less Nsol in lower yielding portions of fields, we will improve profitability in these field portions by supplying less nitrogen where nitrogen rate is not likely the yield limiting factor. This project will hopefully help to improve our nitrogen utilization and productivity of our corn crop. If this works, we look forward to testing it on more acres next year. For more information about this project, check out our blog on www.silent-shade.com.

Wade Inc. Now Oldest John Deere Dealer in World

Silent Shade is proud to con-sider itself a partner of Wade Inc., our John Deere dealer headquar-tered in Greenwood, Mississippi. It was recently brought to our at-tention that Wade Inc. now stands as the oldest John Deere dealer in the world. Here is a quick history of Wade Inc.: Wade, Incorporated was founded in 1909 as Wade-Hobbs Hardware. In 1913, the name was changed to Wade Hardware and remained that until 1962, when it changed its name again to Wade, Incorporated.

Wade Hardware sold regular hardware items along with hoes, files, halters, cotton sacks and other things found in a country commissary. One of the other things sold by Wade Hardware was items made by the John Deere Plow Company. Those items included the full line of John Deere products such as mule and horse drawn farm equipment, wagons, plows, disk, planters and harvest equipment. In the late 1940s, the John Deere product line quickly became the dominant trade items for Wade Hardware. Over time, Wade Inc. has grown into a multi-generational family business. Today, Wade, Incorporated has 11 locations in

North Central Mississippi and is the oldest John Deere dealer in the world. To stay tuned about what is going on at Wade Incorporated, you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter, or visit their website www.wadeincorporated.com.

Pictured above: Jeremy Jack and Wade Litton,

General Manager of Wade Inc., met with Stacie

and Elizabeth’s peer group in June to discuss

the importance of farmer/dealer partnerships as

we navigate through tough economic times.

Meeting Nitrogen Demands in Irrigated Corn