Successful Farming Radio

Farmers, ranchers and scientists will be working together to come up with farm-level practices to address climate change and chip away at greenhouse gas emissions. Allison Thomson is the Ag Mission program director for the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. Her goal is to make agriculture net-negative for greenhouse gas emissions. Thomson says for the science to be meaningful it has to involve the farmers and ranchers who use that information. "We'll involve them not just as study subjects but involve them in the beginning on helping to design the research. Understanding from the start, what are their questions? We know a lot of these climate smart practices are not new ideas, things like cover crops or reducing tillage," says Thomson. "And farmers are aware that these strategies can be helpful. So, the challenge is really understanding from the farmers at the beginning what is the barrier to doing that? There are a lot of different things that could limit the farmer or rancher's ability to take up some of these practices." Ag data is fragmented and kind of all-over the place so they will be creating an “integration hub” website to connect farmers with scientists. She says the goal is to organize all that informational data. "We are intending to invest in developing an infrastructure for that that all of the scientists, all of the Extensions, all of the tool developers can use to accelerate their efforts and be able to really dig in and understand what is known, and use that to inform their tool development, which will be what's used directly by the farmers," she explains. "So, think of it as instead of creating a new boat that everybody has to use, we want to lift all the boats that are already there, and help farmers get the information through the channels they already get their information from." Thomson says they hope to have the infrastructure ready to go in a couple of years.

The perfect soil pH for growing field crops ranges between 6.2 and 6.8. If you get much above 7.3, the soil pH is considered high. This causes a reduction in nutrient availability and makes plants more sensitivity to certain herbicides - either the chemicals work too well, or not at all. Robert Hoeft is an emeritus professor of soil fertility at the University of Illinois. He says particularly in soybeans, the two nutrients that are affected the most by high pH are iron and manganese. "Both of them have very similar symptoms. They both have what we call “interveinal chlorosis”. The veins stay green, in between the veins they get chlorotic or yellowed. With iron, the chlorotic area often times will go to a white, and the leaves will just look like they're bleaching out," says Hoeft. "On manganese instead of getting white, they tend to get a rusty appearance." He says if you're east of the Mississippi river, you're likely to have a manganese deficiency. West of the river, it's usually iron that's lacking. It isn't practical to correct a high pH problem in the soil itself, so foliar sprays are needed. "If it's manganese deficiency you can spray them, they'll green up," he says. "If it's iron deficiency, it's more difficult to correct the problem with a foliar spray. With iron, you're better off selecting the varieties that are more resistant to the problem." Hoeft says don't spray the entire field, just spray the affected areas. If other parts of the field aren't showing symptoms, it's not a problem.

Your neighbor could be buying more land every year to farm, but bigger doesn't always mean better. Greg Ibendahl is an associate professor of ag economics at Kansas State University. He and another researcher reviewed 10-years of data from the Kansas Farm Management Association to develop a ranking of several hundred farms based on their economic performance and how much they grew over those ten years. He says instead of just looking at the overall farm income, they looked at net farm income per-acre. They also considered investment in machinery, machinery operation and maintenance costs, and the allocation of acres to given crops. A key in this study - the higher your debt level was, the lower you tended to rank. "So, our overall conclusion from this was that if you're a farmer, it's probably better to concentrate on keeping your debt level down as opposed to making sure you get real big and then just expand for the sake of expansion because you can make a go of it as a smaller size farm," advises Ibendahl. He says bigger farms may be more efficient because they have the ability to buy inputs at lower prices and may have better marketing opportunities. But there are strategies for smaller operations too. "You can do that through maybe buying inputs with your neighbors as one possibility, or maybe using futures markets possibly to help with the marketing side, and certainly renting equipment or custom harvesting operations is a way to kind of get around some of the economies you would see from buying bigger equipment. So, there are a lot of strategies. If you're a 500-acre farm you can make a go of it with that size," he says. "Again, I think to me, the debt level is probably more important than anything than what the farm size actually is."

If you see excess water pooling in a field where it shouldn't be, a tile may not be draining to its full capacity. It doesn't happen often, but the roots of cover crops, corn, and even trees along a fence line can get inside the tiles and clog them up. Eileen Kladivko is an agronomy professor at Purdue University. She says they've had more reports of the problem lately, and the most common “tiles” these days are plastic perforated drain tubes. "Within the plastic tile, there are different kinds of openings. I mean, some of them are holes, some of them are slits, some of them are very tiny, narrow slits," says Kladivko. "And those are usually designed for different types of soils so that you don't get soil particles in there. But, we are just kind of wondering whether there might be some of those that would be more prone for roots to enter than others." Kladivko says another cause could be dead roots washing down the pipe and accumulating in lateral junctions that fit inside the main drain with internal quick couplers. Over time, you've got a log-jam-style clog. "One possible solution is to not use those quick couplers, but to use the external couplers, so you don't have anything in there that would tend to catch roots or anything else," she says. Kladivko says they need more reports from farmers to help researchers determine why plant roots are getting into tile lines, and specifically how to prevent it. If yours have been clogged by roots, she'd like to hear from you.

Corn growers should be out scouting their fields for corn rootworm. Newly hatched larvae feed primarily on root hairs and outer root tissue. As larvae grow and their food requirements increase, they burrow into the roots to feed. This interferes with water and nutrient uptake, makes the plant unstable, and cuts down on yield. Anthony Ohmes is an Extension agronomy specialist at the University of Missouri. He says one of the signs of rootworm activity is root tips that appear brown, tunneled into, and chewed back to the base of the plant. "One root average per plant pruned back to 1.5 inches of a stalk, or an entire node of roots destroyed. Somewhere in that range is where economic loss is going to be potentially possible," says Ohmes. "One of the things you'd see is that root pruning, and then the next obvious symptom would be if there's a wind occurring after excessive root pruning, you'll get some plants that lay over, then you'll get this goose-necking where the plant's trying to upright itself again." Scouting doesn't end with the larvae. In late July and August, the adult beetles will show up on the corn plant. "The beetles feed on silks, they're typically not an economic threat because we've already got pollination occurred, and so silk pruning's not a big deal at that time frame," he says. "But, if we get an average of about one beetle per plant in that time frame, then that would probably be enough because the beetles just fall back to the ground and deposit the eggs." The first management strategy is rotating out of corn. If you have continuous corn, the only option is to use Bt or insecticide treatments.

Data and technology are mainstream in production agriculture, but some related industries are still playing catch-up. One of those is crop insurance. Mike Day is the former business head for Rural Community Insurance Services. He says there could be many advantages for farmers who allow precision ag data that's generated from their machines to help customize their policies for crop coverage. It won't necessarily lower their premiums, but reporting with electronic data would be a lot easier by saving time and reducing paperwork. "To populate acreage reports, to tabulate harvested production, and really kind of work the insurance policy from end-to-end from planting to harvest," says Day. "So, it's a slow uptake but I think there's more and more interest now and ways to make it simpler for the farmer to get the data they need to get a policy established, and if need be, work through a claim." Young farmers are apt to be tech-savvy, but this is still a relatively new idea in the insurance world. Day says more and more companies are jumping in and he predicts using electronic data will be mainstream in a few years. "Part of it I think is education and training on how to use it, and that part is having systems that a company can utilize to take that data, clean up the data, use it to populate policy, and issue coverage," he says. "But it's on-going, it's hard work to really get to where we would like it to be, but we're making progress." As insurance innovations continue, real-time data will help fine-tune crop insurance products and coverage.

Hail storms are common in many areas of the country and crop damage ranges from moderate to a total loss. The impact of hail on plant tissue depends on the size of the hailstones, duration of the storm, and the growth stage of the plants. Mark Licht is an Extension cropping systems specialist at Iowa State University. He says hail storms are an emotional event and you will be tempted to run out to your fields and assess the damage right after it happens. But his advice is to wait. "We don't truly know how the plant's going to recover until we start seeing that plant recover," says Licht. "And so, waiting 5-10 days is really quite beneficial because then we truly see how much loss there is, how that plant's going to recover, if we've lost the growing point, things like that." When you do go out, Licht says the first thing he recommends is to identify the worst affected areas, the least affected areas, and do a stand assessment. "How many plants do we have out there, how many viable plants do we have out there? And that really is quite useful because it starts to tell us what is our yield potential with the current stand that we have, at the current level of defoliation," he says. "When we do those stand assessments, it's identifying how much leaf area we lost and in the case of soybeans, how many nodes did we lose, did we lose that apical meristem or not?" At this point you will need to calculate the profitability of the existing stand versus the costs of replanting. As we get further into the growing season, the risk of yield loss after replanting is much higher due to late maturity and fall frost.

A common topic of debate among farmers is when to cut hay. Should you do it in the morning or afternoon? When you look at plant physiology, forages create carbohydrates during the daylight hours through photosynthesis. It's at a higher rate than the plant needs for growth and maintenance during the day so sugar content is generally higher at dusk. However, the difference in sugar content between late evening and early morning is minor. Dennis Hancock is a state Extension forage specialist at the University of Georgia. He says your climate is the key factor in timing when to cut hay. "Because if you are able to cut without any risk of rain, then the best time to cut would be in the evening," says Hancock. "Particularly in an arid climate where even overnight, even though the temperatures are not as high, the relative humidity is low, and so the moisture gradient pulls moisture out of the crop even overnight." In humid parts of the country where rain is more frequent, Hancock recommends cutting hay in the morning. But he says the weather trumps any strategy for time-of-day cutting because the greatest risk to hay curing and forage quality is rain damage. "You wake up one morning and the weather forecast has three days of good drying conditions and 30%-40% chance in day 4 or 5, it's better to go ahead and take full advantage of those three days that you know you've got really good drying conditions," he says. "The weatherman has pretty good skill at predicting days 1-3, but after about day 3 or so, their skill goes down."

A well that's been inundated with floodwater could end up with debris, bacteria, and other contaminants in your drinking water. It has to be cleaned out and tested before it's safe for humans and animals to use. Because wells are complicated, you'll need to get ahold of a licensed water well contractor to do any servicing of a flooded well. Michael Schnieders is a hydro-geologist with Water Systems Engineering in Ottawa, Kansas. He says one of the first steps is to purge the well. "The necessary time required to pump the well is dependent on the well size and design, the aquifer and the flood water depth and quality. As few as three-hours, and as many as 24-hours may be needed," he says. "It's recommended you purge the well until visual turbidity is gone. Visual turbidity is the means of evaluating a sample visually against an opaque background for signs of contamination or sediment." Take the well pump apart to clean it separately. Then, remove any sediment or debris that has collected in the lowest extension of the well. Schnieders says the chemicals used for disinfection should be approved for potable water and selected based on suspected contaminants and the materials used in the well's construction. "Key steps in the process include using the correct dosage, targeting the entire well system with an adequate treatment volume, adjusting the pH if you live in a hard water or alkaline water area, and allowing sufficient contact time for the solution," he says. All associated piping and pumping equipment should also be disinfected with the solution. Before you take even a sip of water from the well, have it tested for total coliform bacteria.

Solving problems with your farming operation and noting where you can make improvements is a whole lot easier when you can retrieve data from a precision ag product. You want a system that ensures every pass across the field is documented and integrated into the equipment. You don't have to think about it, it just happens without a lot of fuss and effort. Kyle Plattner is the senior product manager for mobile and monitoring at John Deere. He says to have your goals in mind when choosing a platform, but you can't foresee everything you're going to want to do with the data. "I think that there is all sorts of analysis and things that we're able to extract value out of data that you find out long after you've been collecting it. And so, I think even before you identify all the goals you could possibly have with collecting data, step one is to just make sure you're getting it," says Plattner. "And that just starts with choosing the right player, the right platform." The learning curve when adopting a digital strategy can be steep for farmers. Do your research and start with the tools you're comfortable with. It can be as simple as your phone. "Everybody uses apps, so it's a low barrier of entry. That's a great place to get started with your data. Make sure you have a platform that is available right on the mobile phone that you carry around every day," he says. "And generally, it'll grow with you. As you become more comfortable with more advanced tools, the opportunity is there to go deeper and deeper and sit down at a desktop and do a really in-depth analysis. So, I would say the platforms will continue to grow and mature, and as you continue to grow more comfortable, you can go deeper with the tool sets that are made available." Once you've chosen a platform to invest in, make sure it will work with your existing equipment for data compatibility and file formats.