Farm4Profit Podcast

Specialty Crops: What Every Row Crop Farmer Can Learn

Episode Summary

Most farmers know corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton—but what about almonds, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, vineyards, cucurbits, or tobacco? In this episode of Farm4Profit, Corteva specialists explain how specialty crop producers manage weeds, insects, diseases, labor, water, and long-term investments while drawing surprising comparisons to traditional row crop farming. Whether you're raising almonds in California or corn in Iowa, the fundamentals of profitable farming are more alike than you might think.

Episode Notes

The discussion covers everything from almonds, vineyards, tomatoes, melons, cucurbits, tobacco, cotton, sweet potatoes, peanuts, peaches, apples, and leafy vegetables while comparing production practices to the corn and soybean systems familiar to much of the Farm4Profit audience.

Topics include:

• Specialty crop production across the United States
• California almonds, walnuts, pistachios, vineyards and vegetables
• North Carolina sweet potatoes, tobacco and cotton
• Why long-term planning matters in permanent crops
• Water management and irrigation challenges
• Labor costs versus traditional row crop production
• Weed management strategies and residual herbicides
• New Corteva herbicides including Hulk CA
• Managing nematodes with Celebro
• Disease and insect pressure in specialty crops
• How growers balance profitability with quality expectations
• Multi-generational family farms across specialty agriculture
• What all farmers can learn from one another

The conversation highlights that regardless of geography or crop, every producer faces weather risk, pest pressure, rising input costs, and the need to make timely management decisions.