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Green Acres Guy

Posted 4/16/2024 18:49 (#10709183)
Subject: Rain, oats, rye, milling

Latimer, Iowa (north central)

We had a nice rain of about an inch here today. Should do the oats, rye, and planted corn alot of good. Its pleasant out now, 68 degrees and sunny. Most guys started planting corn here, with some just getting a good start and some done. There is a number of soybeans in as well from larger operations. I did about 3/4 of my corn so far. Some of our rye looks very good and I am thinking I will try relay cropping a quarter with beans as a test plot to see how it goes. Oats planted about a month ago are up and looking like a very nice stand, I have a field along I-35 at milepost 167 on the west side if anyone drives by throughout the year. Will include pics of some of the cover crop rye with different planting dates and methods. All was done at 48 lbs per acre. What have you guys seen for growth on different planting dates and when are you planning to terminate? We have been dry, there are a few county tile mains trickling but not much flow.

We are moving along with our oat mill project, wrapping up our farmer investor drive on 4/20. Green Acres Milling will be in south central MN, finalizing state incentives and capital stack currently, right along the interstate. I plan to mill 2-2.5 million bushels of oats annually from 20,000 acres at startup into food grade products such as groats, flakes, steel-cut, and flour. The mill is going to be owned by a group of farmers and myself and will help move investors further down the value chain with premium products and QR level traceability at scale. We have buyer commitments for the majority of our final products which is great as hoping to start production in fall 2025. The differentiated, domestically sourced product is in very high demand and our slip-form has room to double production in existing shell. Farmer investors/production partners will be able to capture a significantly higher price on their oats to a point they cash flow much better than corn and soybeans. Its a big project and taken a great deal of work from a great number of teams to put together, terrible timing with planting season but things just take time to develop. Adding a third crop to our rotations with a solid market will open the door to better profitability, sustainability, resilient and viable farms in the future. Its also more fun to spread out our planting and harvesting windows over a longer time period.

1st pic: Oats along I-35, west side, mile 167, planted March 13th, 1.25 M seeds per acre, Reins variety, no-tilled into bean stubble, 2200 gallon hog manure Oct 30th with coulter injector,
2nd pic: Close up of oat stand
3rd: Farm formerly had a railroad track through it and the tree was along it. Little knoll is poor soil so we left the tree. Makes for good pictures.
4th: Sunset over oats and a fellow agtalkers bins
5th: rye aerially seeded on Aug 25th. Very poor establishment
6th: rye drilled on 7.5's with a Deere 1890 on Sept 28th
7th: rye drilled on Sept 28th
8th: Rye drilled on oct. 22nd
9th: rye drilled on Nov 10th
10: Corn planted on 4/13. No-tilled with no trash wipers or coulters with a Case 2160. 2.5 ton chicken litter, 1 ton cattle manure compost per acre, Epleys, non-gmo corn, sprayed with 3.8 pt harness xtra.
11: One of many flow diagrams I have been working on developing.