William Chestnutt

Today vs March 21 Little tangent here. Scared dogs don’t make puppies… I’ve been farming my whole life. In 2011 I lost my dad to cancer and the family looked at me to put out the crop. My dad made decisions. He was a leader. When I became responsible to seed, fertilize, spray, etc… 3,000 acres I knew I had 1 talent from when I was a kid. I have a memory like no other. I can tell you what hybrid I plant, pop, rate, day the last 14 years because I am engaged. When everyone was telling me exactly how to do things. I was more curious of what happens when I change a variable here or there. What was the elasticity of that decision or management. In weather forecasting they have a similar system that I was somewhat inspired by called ensemble forecasts where they change variables slightly and see how weather systems behave differently as time progresses. I could lean on my memory. I was bored AF quite honestly to do the same thing over and over again. What happens to corn if you skip a row or 2 or plant it thin or thick? Beans…can you broadcast them? Can you plant wheat with a shit tank? Can you run it over? When it’s 4” tall… what about 6” what about 13” Could you rotationally graze inside a cash crop and empower edge effect elasticity and fertilize simultaneously? It would drive some people crazy as they would wonder if you should plant 160,000 or 176000 beans per acre? What’s the difference…nothing. What’s the difference between 20” corn and 2040” corn? Full season likes the latter….early yields best crowded. Fuck around and Find out isn’t just some tic tok deal. It’s how you don’t become a scared dog. It calms your nerves as most people freak out about things that don’t really matter. Because they never had the balls to try anything else than what their dad did. I always felt like I needed to learn why and how things worked if I was ever going to become a better farmer. What matters are the derivatives, the 1st principles. There is a lot more we can do in production agriculture. It’s not all about winning the yield contest. Sometimes it’s about learning what you don’t need. That creates freedom.