Well, y'all not letting me ease into this episode.

You hit me with a haymaker right from the get go.

I'm Matt Griggs.

I grow cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat here in Tennessee.

Let's answer your questions from the internet.

This is Farming Support.

Okay, first question.

How do you get your straight, regular lines in your fields?

Seems to me that farmers take some pretty serious pride in having perfectly straight rows in their fields.

Well, I'd like to say it's all due to operator ability.

Unfortunately, I would be lying to you.

Most of our modern tractors that we use now have what we call autosteer.

The onboard computer is the one that's actually doing the steering of the tractor as we're going through the field.

I tell you what, let's actually go to the field and I will show you how this works.

Autosteer is possible because of the GPS systems that we have on this tractor.

When we get to the field, we'll set what we call a guidance line.

To get a straight row, we set what we call an AB line.

That means that we will put the tractor in the position that we want.

On the computer, we will go to the other end of the field and we will mark a B point.

And then the computer will draw a perfectly straight line between the A point and the B point, hit our autosteer button, and the tractor takes over and will actually steer to the line.

And then that line will then be repeated across the field.

And that's how farmers get their perfectly straight lines in the field.

This next one is from the Homestead subreddit.

What are your must-have tools equipment on the farm?

For one thing, we need a tractor to pull the various implements that we need to raise crops, whether it be a planter, a plow, a sprayer to apply pesticides.

We need a harvest machine to be able to harvest the crop.

A combine or a combine harvester can actually harvest multiple different crops, but all of them are going to be grain.

If you're growing other types of crops, you're probably going to need a specific type of harvester just for that crop.

If you're a grain farmer and you want to be able to take a maximum advantage of the commodity market and sell your crops at the highest prices, you might need a system of grain bins in order to store that crop.

You're probably going to need several equipment sheds to store your equipment under because this equipment is hundreds and thousands of dollars and you don't want it sitting outside in the weather during the times that you're not going to use it.

This question comes from PastGain1700.

How do you keep track of what you're growing, how much you're growing, and when to harvest?

Use any tools, apps, spreadsheets, farm software to help manage costs, sales, or inventory.

There's a multitude of different tools that we use.

Just about every time that we make a trip across the field, the tractors or harvester or sprayer that we're using has an onboard computer that is logging what we're actually doing.

This is a map of one of our fertilizer applications.

The red parts of the field indicate where we were applying more fertilizer, whereas the green parts are where we were applying less fertilizer, and all of this is based upon the soil test that we pull every two and a half acres across the farm, showing the different levels of fertility.

We're then able to vary the amount of fertilizer we're applying.

This map right here was produced by my combine last year whenever we were harvesting corn.

It represents the varying yields as we go across the field.

Around the edges of the fields, most of that is red because that's a lower yielding area of the field, mainly due to the competition of trees surrounding the field, competing for nutrients and blocking sunlight.

This map represents all the different soil types.

Just because you see dirt out there doesn't mean that all dirt is created equally.

Some soils may be well-drained, some may be poorly drained, some may be highly erodible, some might have greater natural fertility.

So as you can see, there's a lot of different technology that we can use and what ties all of this together is usually a software program that we'll have on our computer that we store all this data on that we can then go in and analyze all this data to determine what we need to do for the next year.

Live City Pajams asks, WTF is a bushel and a peck?

I don't know what a peck is either myself, but I do know what a bushel is.

A bushel is a unit of volume that's used to measure dry goods.

It's equal to about 9.3 US gallons.

That's a liquid measurement.

I'm selling a dry measurement.

So a bushel of corn is equal to 56 pounds of actual corn, 60 pounds of soybeans, 60 pounds of wheat.

Currently corn is $4.60 for a bushel.

Soybeans is $10.50.

Wheat is $5.50 for a bushel of wheat.

Wesley Rudin asks, how crazy are the GPS systems in the tractors?

Well, Wesley, they're pretty crazy.

They're also crazy expensive.

The GPS systems on your phone, you know, they're probably only really accurate to within 10 to 20 feet.

Now when we're in the field, we need a lot greater accuracy.

Some of the systems on these tractors can be accurate to within one inch of where you actually are on this earth.

Now this one inch accuracy is possible through the use of RTK on our systems or real-time kinematics using base stations located across an area.

There's a lot of interference between our satellite receiver and the satellites in outer space.

These base stations help correct for that error to let us know within an inch of where exactly we are in the field.

Why do farmers need to be accurate down to the closest inch?

Well, that's because GPS controls a lot more than just actually steering the tractor.

A lot of times part of our equipment is passing over a section of the field that has already been planted.

So we have the ability to shut off row by row as we're going through the field, as we get into an area that's already been planting.

So we're not over applying seed and we're also not spending extra money on inputs that we don't actually need.

There are currently tractors being developed that don't even have a cab, don't even have a place for an operator to sit on and will be operated completely autonomously.

This question is from the subreddit, no stupid questions.

Why does farming have such a high death rate as a job in the USA?

Yes, farming can be extremely dangerous.

We're operating heavy machinery.

We're working with chemicals.

We can be working in extreme heat.

And then not only that, we're dealing with an extremely stressful career and some of us can be facing financial ruins.

I've almost been killed several times on my job.

Just a few years ago,

I was actually ejected through the windshield of my combine harvester as I was going down the road at about 22 miles an hour.

The combine harvester came within about five feet of rolling over me and crushing me.

I came this close to actually losing my life that day and that actually happened because I was in a hurry and I had taken some safety shortcuts that day.

How do you become a farmer?

Like, is there just an application for it or do you just start digging?

If you're row crop farming, the one thing you most definitely need is land.

And unless you already own a lot of land, you have to go convince other landowners to allow you to farm their land and show them that you can make a profit for them because they're just not gonna let you farm it for free.

The way I got into farming is that I was actually born into it.

I'm a fifth generation farmer.

That means that there were four previous generations of Grigs that farmed this ground before I had the opportunity to do it.

Simon Hancock asks, how much profit do you think farmers make?

I can't speak to how much farmers make, but I can tell you how much we made over the last few years.

In 2023, we had a gross income of $1.83 million on our farm.

Now of that gross, $72,000 of that was profit.

That doesn't necessarily mean that $72,000 goes in my pocket and me and my wife can go take a nice fancy vacation.

The vast majority of that $72,000 remained in the business to invest in the next year, whether it's purchasing seed, chemicals, and fertilizer for the next year or making needed investments in equipment.

In 2024, our gross income dropped to $1.65 million.

And of that, there was no profit.

In fact, we actually wound up losing $300,000 worth of profit and that was even after the government subsidies that we received.

Now, why do we have such a decrease in gross revenue last year?

Well, right here is an ear of corn that we harvested last year.

That's not a very impressive ear of corn.

Our yields were devastated by long extreme drought and we had lower yields across the board.

Even though we had depressed commodity prices and lower yields, our input costs, the cost we pay for our seeds, our fertilizer, our chemicals were actually up due to inflation.

Now looking at 2025, we're still dealing with what's projected to be lower commodity prices and relatively high input prices.

But if we can return to more of a normal year, if we avoid the drought, we're set to gross hopefully $1.51 million and through extreme cost-cutting measures that we've taken this winter, hopefully at the end of the year, we will net about $36,000 worth of profit.

Gadgie Olash, why do farmers always need subsidies?

Subsidies are necessary because farming is extremely, extremely expensive, but it's also very necessary for the survival of society.

We can't control the prices that we receive for our commodities.

We also can't control the weather.

In my opinion, the American taxpayer actually gets a return on its investment because farming subsidies actually ensure that there is a very bountiful, cheap supply of food in the store.

See, subsidies keep a lot of farmers in business.

You keep farmers in business, well, there's more competition.

There's more competition to produce more and more so that you can remain in business.

An abundant food supply leads to a cheaper food supply.

Now there's a wide array of subsidies that can be paid to farmers, like the crop insurance that we purchase to help ensure that we don't go out of business when we experience a loss.

The crop insurance premium is subsidized by the federal government.

If we experience a disaster year, you know, there might be a disaster payment.

In the event of a disaster, it's very unlikely that any subsidy money will cover our losses for that year.

At Joe the second asks, what's the purpose of this dried out corn that's going to be harvested?

Like, what do they do with it?

Well, Joe, there's a whole lot of different uses for that corn.

The vast majority of corns you see growing out in the fields is what we call field corn or dent corn.

It's not the type that you eat off the cob, but the field corn that we grow is used for so many other purposes.

10% of the gas that you put in your car actually came from corn.

It's called ethanol.

Do you happen to like Mexican food?

It's used in tortilla shells and many other ingredients.

Do you like cornbread?

It's in there also.

One of the biggest uses for corn is high fructose corn syrup.

A sweetener that's used in many of the products you can buy in your grocery store, especially soft drinks.

Benchytoons asks, how big of an issue is soil erosion and what can we do about it?

Is there anywhere it's particularly bad?

Soil erosion is a huge problem.

We have erosion caused by water running across the land and removing soil particles, but there's also wind erosion.

One of the worst examples of wind erosion was actually the Dust Bowl of the 1930s when the Midwest was impacted by severe, severe drought.

Now the Midwest was natively a grasslands and the grass helped anchor the soil and hold it into place.

However, when you plowed the soil, it destroyed all of those native grasses and loosened the soil up.

And then when drought came in in the 1930s, it was a very susceptible to wind erosion because the Midwest gets a lot of high winds.

And when you have a bunch of loose, dry soil particles on the surface, the wind can pick it up and sweep it away.

But here in the hills of Tennessee, erosion is a huge concern because we have hillsides funneling water into certain locations that can easily wash away the soil.

Now farming has come a long way from the Dust Bowls of the 1930s.

We now have the technology called no-till.

That means that we're planting and maintaining our crops without ever plowing the soil.

If we're not disturbing the soil, the soil has a whole lot less chance of being eroded away.

It is our goal to have a living plant growing on our ground 12 months out of the year.

That means that the raindrops that are falling are not actually impacting the soil and dislodging soil particles.

It's hitting the plant material first and then being diffused down to the soil.

The roots actually help to hold the soil together, really minimizing the impact of erosion.

We will actually harvest only about four to five months out of the year.

That leaves seven to eight months that we don't have a crop that we're gonna harvest growing.

And we fill that void by planting what we call a cover crop.

Any plant or a mixture of different types of plants that we actually seed into the ground to grow and anchor the soil and protect it against erosion for the fall and winter months until we get ready to plant our next cash crop.

Hoot McNewt asks,

I wonder how farmers keep pests, diseases, and unwanted critters away from their crops.

There are pesticides that we use to kill insects or to prevent disease.

However, there's other ways other than using chemicals to minimize damage to your fields.

And a lot of these are referred to as cultural practices.

For example, to help minimize disease in our field, we try to rotate our crops every year.

We might plant corn this year and in the following year, we'll plant cotton.

And in the following year, we'll plant soybeans.

And what we're doing is we're breaking the disease cycle because a lot of these diseases will only attack one specific crop.

In our area, deer is a big problem, but they favor certain types of crop, especially soybeans.