When Kirk Antici graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in managerial finance, he headed straight back home to the family farm his father had been operating even before Kirk was born. Kirk’s father, Charles, grew cotton on nearly every acre.

Kirk’s mom and dad inherited his grandfather’s land and the size of Antici Farms doubled overnight,” says Kirk Antici, who farmed with his father, Charles, for two years before Charles’ wife, Georgia (Kirk’s mother), laid down the law.

Kirk was fresh out of college, feeling 10 feet tall, and brimming with confidence — maybe a little too much confidence. “Dad and I started butting heads out of the gate,” says Antici. “Mom finally told us one or the other had to find something else to do. Dad had been working this farm for decades, and I wasn’t about to come in and try to take over — so I left.”

With nothing tying the young Antici down, he had a friend in Denver and that was all it took to make up his mind. “Denver is a fun place, maybe a little too fun, but selling life insurance and cold calling just wasn’t my thing, and I could hear the farm calling me home.”

Kirk worked for Jimmy Sanders, Inc., for a year while Charles worked to get his son integrated back into the operation. The father and son had a long talk. Concessions and agreements were made by Kirk and his father. “I told him I would work, listen, and learn,” says Kirk, as he turned his head toward his father’s truck that was parked on the turn row. “He agreed to work with me as my teacher, and not strictly as his son. It made a big difference — and more importantly, Mom was happy.”

With the father and son team finally in a good spot, their attention turned to farming.

What a year

Tractors were rolling across Antici Farms ground the third full week of March — the first time since February. “We’re getting things rowed up, knifing in fertilizer (32 percent nitrogen), and dealing with a few guidance system issues, but it’s good to be smelling fresh dirt,” says Kirk Antici. “I just hope we have another year like 2018. I’d be happy if we do.”

Last year was not without a few problems though. More than one of their fields has a history of yield-robbing root knot nematodes. Kirk was not around when Temik was the choice for nematode control. “Many things played into the loss of Temik,” says Antici. “From new varieties and lawsuits, to environmental accusations, I’ve heard the stories from Dad and others.”

New heat-tolerant corn varieties started hitting the market, which eventually gave Delta farmers a rotation option that seemed to notch down nematode populations. “Dad even planted some of the new corn varieties in 2007, but we know the fields where we’ll have problems with the parasitic pests,” says Antci. “Some years were worse than others, and even from the road you could see the non-uniformity across the cotton field. It looks like a wave rolling across the top of the crop.”

The soil-borne pathogens really reared their heads in 2017, but the generic Temik (aldicarb) did not receive a label in Mississippi until 2018, and many farmers had taken their Temik boxes and drives off their planters.

Antici hammered out a question to other growers via social media asking what they were using to control root knot nematodes. One grower responded he had control success with Velum Total. Antici called his dealer and requested every bit of information he could get. Kirk did his homework because he knew his father would need to be sold on the product based on sound information.

“Dad has always been a stickler for details, so I read everything I could about it, talked to others who had used it, and then asked for a quote,” adds Antici. “It was a little expensive, but the benefits far outweighed the cost of the product and the cost of having to retrofit both of my planters with a Temik (aldicarb) box and an electric drive to dispense it down the row.”

The Anticis managed to reduce the overall input by variable rate application of Velum Total according to soil type instead of a straight rate across all of the targeted fields. Their entomologist, Andy Graves, has been working with the Antcis for over a decade, and through imagery maps, wrote a variable-rate prescription that dropped the application cost significantly.

“We eliminated all of the soil type areas in their fields that I knew were not going to have a nematode problem,” says Graves. “We applied it on silt loam and sandy soils and by-passed the heavy clay soils.”

To illustrate the differences in soils around their operation, the Anticis aptly named one field “The North Sand and the South Heavy.”

“Our Precision Planters were already plumbed up and hose-ready to spray a preplant herbicide, so modifications were minimal, which allowed us to easily roll into an in-furrow system called Totally Tubular. It was just a matter of switching out product, which was relatively easy,” adds Antici.

Cotton and a few soybeans

Cotton will once again be the cash crop on Antici Farms this year. When Kirk was asked by a seed salesman how much Bollgard III he expected to plant, he simply shook his head. Antici is well aware of the latest state variety trial yield results on Bollgard III varieties, and he also remembers the success he had in 2017 and 2018 with DP 1646 B2XF.

“I’ll be riding that horse one more year before I jump on another,” says Antici. “I can’t give up 200 pounds of yield an acre to avoid one costly spray application. That 200 pounds of yield far outweighs it.”

Antici will drop about 500 acres of soybeans in the ground this year. In years past, after much discussion, the father-son team decided to compromise on their soybean program. The elder Antici preferred the LibertyLink system, but Kirk wanted to go with Roundup Ready. “We’ve experimented with LibertyLink, Roundup Ready, and dicamba soybean varieties over the years,” says Kirk Antici. “We wanted to keep the pigweeds at bay, so now we’re planting dicamba soybean varieties.”

Charles Antici is a cotton man at heart and prefers to leave the soybean-related decisions to Kirk. “I can put out four shots of a residual for less than what I can get from an equivalent application of residuals and still stay pretty clean,” adds Antici. “Dad has a lot of farming knowledge in his head, but he knows I want to bring the operation into the next generation of farming technology. Sometimes he gets frustrated, but that’s understandable, I guess.”

Once Charles Antici was driving his pickup past one of their fields where a tractor sat idle. “Why isn’t that tractor moving?” he asked Kirk over the radio. “We’re waiting for the guidance system to reboot,” said Kirk. “Tell him to hold the steering wheel and get to work!”

Kirk knows it does not make sense to be paying a lot of money for a guidance system and not benefiting from it. “The time you save by forging ahead without the system, you’ll lose on the back end,” says Kirk. “Dad’s patience is sometimes taxed when these systems go south, but thankfully I have the patience it takes to work through any problems so we can realize savings the increased efficiency brings to the table.”

When asked what personal traits of his father Kirk hopes to assimilate in his farming life, a strong work ethic and attention to detail were his answers. “It sure isn’t his patience,” says Kirk with a short laugh.

At 35 years-old, with wife, Gabby, and sons, Sawyer, nine, and Liam, one, Kirk Antici needs all the patience he can muster as the 2019 farming season, with all the uncertainties it could bring, begins.