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Cows in Virtual Reality Produce More Milk? Plus Trees That Grow Chairs! | Daily Farm Brief · Farm Tales Unplugged - Daily Farm Brief

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Farm Nation in Hello Truck City.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is FarmTales unplugged daily farm brief for Wednesday, October 14th.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Brought to you by World TradeX empowering farmers.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Rick Portonova.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, could tiny factories on corn roots help cut fertilizer bills?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Bear is joining the effort.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then a giant pumpkin, chairs growing in an orchard, and the markets.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, cows in virtual reality, seeds that sense rain, a corn planter pioneer, and a squirrel's fake hiding place.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you enjoy our show, give us a follow, a like, or a share.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: That would be fantastic.
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  SPEAKER_00: So grab your coffee, fire up whatever you're driving, and let's find out what was happening while you were busy actually working.
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  SPEAKER_00: First up, our lead news story.
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  SPEAKER_00: Imagine putting a tiny fertilizer factory on the roots of your corn.
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  SPEAKER_00: Switch engineers tiny organisms called microbes.
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  SPEAKER_00: First, they settle on plant roots.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then a genetic switch turns on production of nitrogen the plants can use.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think of getting the factory built before starting the production line.
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  SPEAKER_00: In controlled grow room tests, Switch says its microbes produce five times as much nitrogen as comparison microbes that were making it from the start.
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  SPEAKER_00: Field trials are underway across the Midwest.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fair brings experience in testing and developing agricultural products.
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  SPEAKER_00: The goal is to reduce the need for manufactured nitrogen fertilizer.
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  SPEAKER_00: Reliable results and savings on working farms still have to be demonstrated.
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  SPEAKER_00: But that's the possibility worth watching.
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  SPEAKER_00: Growing part of your fertilizer right where the crop needs it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine one pumpkin that weighs more than a ton and a half.
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  SPEAKER_00: On Saturday at Freerick's Farm, Rhode Island, Ron Wallace's pumpkin weighed 3,156 pounds.
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  SPEAKER_00: Official Guinness confirmation of a world record was still pending as of Monday.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wallace told the Associated Press that other contests offered potential prizes, reaching$75,000.
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  SPEAKER_00: He chose his local competition instead and took home$3,500.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wanted his hometown there when the number hit the scale.
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  SPEAKER_00: And from one seed, it ended up weighing more than some cars.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, picture an orchard full of chairs, some growing upside down.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Derbyshire, England, Gavin and Alice Monroe run full-grown.
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  SPEAKER_00: They train living trees into furniture.
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  SPEAKER_00: Young branches grow around frames.
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  SPEAKER_00: The couple grafts them together where the chair needs to connect, then lets the wood thicken.
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  SPEAKER_00: The chair takes shape while the roots are still in the ground.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gavin spent part of his childhood having operations to straighten his spine.
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  SPEAKER_00: Years later, he found himself shaping and grafting living wood.
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  SPEAKER_00: A chair can take six to nine years to grow, followed by another year of drying.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then comes the smoothing and polishing.
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  SPEAKER_00: For these two, harvest means carrying a chair out of the orchard.
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  SPEAKER_00: A quick market check.
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  SPEAKER_00: At Monday's close, corn and Chicago wheat edged higher.
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  SPEAKER_00: Soybeans slipped about four cents.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Northeast Nebraska farmer Michael Stanick told Brownfield he's raising his best soybeans ever from the mid-70s to more than 80 bushels an acre.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's his farm report and welcome news from the combine.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's a farm story that could fit in two categories: a high-tech moment combined with you don't hear that every day.
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  SPEAKER_00: A farmer put virtual reality goggles on his cows and said they gave him more milk.
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  SPEAKER_00: Back in 2022, Isaac Kokik was trying to manage rising feed costs on his farm in Askaray, Turkey.
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  SPEAKER_00: His family had farmed for three generations.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was ready to try something different.
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  SPEAKER_00: He already played classical music for the cattle.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then he fitted two cows with headsets, showing green pastures while they stood indoors.
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  SPEAKER_00: After about 10 days, he reported roughly a gallon and a third more milk per cow per day.
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  SPEAKER_00: That was his observation from a two-cow test.
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  SPEAKER_00: It would take a proper trial to establish whether the goggles caused the increase.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can't make this stuff up.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Kokik was encouraged enough to place another order.
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  SPEAKER_00: He ordered 10 more headsets.
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  SPEAKER_00: That has to be one funny sight when you walk in that barn.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll make sure it's on our blog graphic, which covers the show topics in much greater detail.
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  SPEAKER_00: And here's the actual high-tech moment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Can the sound of rain wake up a seed?
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  SPEAKER_00: MIT researchers found that in their experiments, it could.
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  SPEAKER_00: They put rice seeds in shallow water and created the sound and vibration of falling raindrops.
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  SPEAKER_00: The seeds sat far enough from the drops that the sound waves reached them without the drops landing on them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Across the experiments, the team tested about 8,000 seeds.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those exposed to rain sounds sprouted 30 to 40% faster than seeds kept in otherwise matching conditions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: The water was already there.
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  SPEAKER_00: The vibration made the difference.
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  SPEAKER_00: Researchers suspect those vibrations jostled tiny structures inside the seed that help it sense gravity.
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  SPEAKER_00: This was reported last April.
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  SPEAKER_00: The next question is whether that discovery could become useful on a working farm.
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  SPEAKER_00: One horse, one planter, and a farmer who believed it could save the labor of eight men.
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  SPEAKER_00: On October 14th, 1834, Maryland farmer Henry Blair received a patent for his corn planter.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pulled by a horse, it opened a row, dropped the corn, covered it, and smoothed the ground.
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  SPEAKER_00: All in one pass.
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  SPEAKER_00: He signed his patent with an X and became the second black American known to receive a U.S.
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  SPEAKER_00: patent.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, we always wind down by opening the old farmer's almanac.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, a little fall watching.
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  SPEAKER_00: Watch a squirrel bury something and you might think you spotted its winter pantry.
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  SPEAKER_00: You may have spotted an empty hole.
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  SPEAKER_00: Researchers studying eastern gray squirrels observed them covering empty spots as if they had hidden food.
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  SPEAKER_00: They did it more often when other squirrels were nearby.
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  SPEAKER_00: The researchers described it as a possible way to mislead thieves.
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  SPEAKER_00: The almanac reminds us that gray squirrels don't hibernate.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fall is their time to stock up.
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  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, your newly planted bulbs may become part of their shopping trip.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wire mesh can help protect those bulbs.
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  SPEAKER_00: The almanac also notes that squirrels generally avoid eating daffodil and ornamental alien bulbs.
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  SPEAKER_00: So take a minute to watch what's happening outside.
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  SPEAKER_00: That squirrel patting the ground smooth may have just stored a meal.
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  SPEAKER_00: The next squirrel that sneaks over may end up digging for nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot happening in a quiet October yard.
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  SPEAKER_00: We started with a new effort to make fertilizer on cornroot, then a giant pumpkin, an orchard growing chairs, and a quick market check.
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  SPEAKER_00: We visited cows in virtual reality, heard how seeds respond to rain, and met a corn planter pioneer.
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  SPEAKER_00: Finally, a squirrel hiding absolutely nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like more information about any of the topics we cover on our show, there's a matching blog for every episode we release.
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  SPEAKER_00: You'll find it on our website, farmtailsunplugged.com.
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  SPEAKER_00: To farm nation, have a safe and productive day.
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  SPEAKER_00: To Truck City, keep the shiny side up.
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  SPEAKER_00: The future of food starts with the people who grow it and depends on the people who move it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there you have it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's your FarmTales Unplugged daily farm brief for Wednesday, October 14th.
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  SPEAKER_00: Brought to you by World TradeX, empowering farmers.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Rick Portanova, and I'll see you Thursday morning.