A new year has arrived and we can now view 2023 in the rear-view mirror. I will have to see any references as to when Kevin ____? who was a coworker with Cargill Seeds at the time turned to me in the hall during a meeting break and informed me that he promised the Farm News editor that I was going to take his place and send in a column on a weekly basis. I said “What, and are they really expecting me to do that? And what exactly am I supposed to write about? He said anything you like pertaining to crop production and agronomy. So somewhere in that 1997 thru 1999 era I became a most unlikely columnist. I am sitting down at 8:45 to an empty screen and going to try to write a column that may be full of information and considered worth reading, or maybe not. Just remember I have written 25 years’ worth of columns free gratis. If you tell them they should fire me, they never hired me. The worst they could do is not pay me. I will try to deliver the goods.
I usually make a few comments about the weather and sports. In our house we root for the Twins and any other Non-Yankee team. In college football it is Brock Purdy’s alma mater. And in NFL football it is the 49ers, Chiefs and I still remain loyal to the Vikes. After the Bowl games, we review those we taped and view those we deem worth watching. It is quicker to speed view them with no breaks or commercials so we can watch any of them in 80 minutes. My sole wish was granted and Bama got beat. Georgia had one heck of a team as evidence by their ability to score 35 points in one quarter of play.
Weather wise, the forecasters are predicting a semi-major snow storm this week, at least in 2024 terms. I just moved our Bobcat into town to avoid having to shovel any snow. Thinking about moving snow brings back memories. Growing up in extreme northern Iowa I well remember the winter of 1968/1969 when we attended one day of high school in January with all other days that month cancelled on account of snow storms or the roads not being cleared. In dead seriousness a few of our family members helped dig our grandparent out at their farm east of Stacyville. Their snow drifts were so deep we were able to walk up them right onto the roof of their three-story house. When the roads got blown open we had to look up 5 or 6 feet above our windows on the bus to see the tops of the snowbanks. Remember that Thinsulate had not been developed yet and skid loaders had not been invented or sold in the Midwest. It did not seem like the good old days, but we survived. There was also the unannounced surprise blizzard in Feb of 1979 where we and two other couples got stranded in near zero-degree temps, zero visibility and howling winds blocked by huge snowbanks with two of the three cars running out of gas through the long night. We got lucky and at first daylight could make out a livestock barn that was at least warm.
Meeting and Conference Time
A lot of the major Ag conferences have been held already, from the Farm Broadcasters, to the Big Soil Health Event in Cedar Falls, the EcoAg in KY and the Major ICM Extension Meeting in Altoona. Locally Agronomy Rx has their winter conference on Tuesday of this week. Then over the next 1 and 1/2 months there will be the Commodity Classic, The Iowa Power Show, the Louisville Farm Show and so on. The last mentioned one and the AgraTechnica held in Hamburg are supposed to be tops. I have been to a few of the big ones like the AgroExpos in Brazil and Argentina. Those are summer shows for them, but are held during our winter, so we got to see both Ag displays as well as all sorts of livestock at the same event and site.
As a side note I had the chance to meet and visit with a grad student from Brazil by the last name of Freitas. On one of our long trips thought Brazil and Argentina we had a guide and interpreter by that last name so I asked her if by chance she was related to Helder Freitas? She said no, as it was a very common name. She grew up on a farm and her family raised a verity of crops. She said that she had just spoken to her father who told her the first crop, which was soybeans had been destroyed by the heat and drought. He had worked those down and was going to proceed with planting the safrina corn crop, even with no moisture in the ground since he had already made all the decisions for his second crop and purchased all the inputs. Just like here in the states and often in the states to our west, farmers have to have a high level of optimism and hope the rains will fall in time to start or maintain the needs of their crops.
I had mentioned that Dennis Todey, director of the Midwest Climate Center, talked at the ICM Conference. He took questions from the audience. The first two dealt with the chance of having a White Christmas. He said the chance of having a White one was 20% at best. To me having a Christmas with temps in the high 50s was great. Then there were a few questions regarding Elwynn’s prediction of an extremely dry 2025. He said that 150 years-worth of tree rings data was tough to argue with. Now this fall and turning into Midwinter the current drought monitoring has much of NE, Central and Western Iowa still running way behind on soil moisture. It would sure be nice to find out if spring rains would add six inches of moisture to the soil profile that would give us a chance on achieving trend line yields. In spite of all the clamoring about surprising decent crop yields in much of the Midwest, there were major amounts of acres where yields tumbled by 25 to 50 Bu/A or more. Not everyone has deep, black, high OM soils. And we can’t always expect cooler temps with surprising rains at pollination time.
A New Way of Thinking
The biggest change in Ag which began among a high % of farmers five years ago and among the trail blazing soil microbiologists like Jill Clapperton of the Univ of Lethbridge, Canada, Bob Kremer of the Univ of Missouri, Elaine Ingham and others maybe fifteen years ago. What changed is the working knowledge that the only thing that converted the minerals that already exited in the soil or were being applied in the solid form were the many microbes that were in the ground producing organic acids which converted those solid materials into the liquid form that the plants could take in through three processes and use to grow, develop and form grain which we could then harvest. The Academic and Industry fertility specialists were oblivious as to how plants were really functioning and obtaining the minerals they needed to grow and be productive. In today’s fast paced movement towards using more biology to try to free up more of the minerals already in the ground there are new discoveries constantly being made. One newer combination of soil analyses that is now used to gauge the percentage of those minerals in the soil that are plant available is the BeCrop test, as developed by two soil and microbe specialists, Lance Gunderson and Al Toops. If you have not learned anything about this analysis it may be important to your farms’ profitability to develop a working knowledge of this test. The main tenant of the test is that a high percentage of commercialized microbial mixes contain a high percentage of bacteria, while the fungal percentage is quite low. That segment is crucial to residue degradation, formation of organic matter and so on. Each BeCrop report tells what your ratio is. The report also estimates the percent availability of each mineral and gives guidance on what corrective action should be taken.
The supposed great ground-breaking soil chemists at the time were doing the work to fill in the boxes in the periodic table of the elements. Until then those boxes were empty. The actual table was delivered by maybe the top chemist of the 1800s, Russian Dimitri Medleveev, who had the final version pf the atomic table delivered to him in a dream. The most prominent chemist who developed the field of organic chemistry was Baron Justis von Liebig of Darmstadt, Germany. He came from a long line of pharmacists. He is credited with creating the Law of the Minimum Theory jump started the science of nutrition.
Nefarious Activity in Europe Again
Klaus Schwab of his WEF and his depopulation agenda minions are at it again. The legislature in Spain recently passed a law that no fertilizers applied to crops are allowed to build mineral levels in the soil. Farmers can only apply foliar nutrition that is used immediately and completely by the plant. Now that really seems back aswards and non-sensical. That is somewhat similar to current rules in California where growers are not allowed to apply any minerals which have not been proven to be deficient in the field. In order to help growers to meet that new requirement one very knowledgeable chemist/microbiologist has developed a line of super Nano fertilizers called Technafert in Spain. They are the materials quickest to be absorbed and incorporated into the plants and its cells. I visited with the developer for a few hours last week and learned who has used it with a few growers this past season to test its efficacy.
A Quick Note on Tar Spot
A top biochemist out in Utah developed a new mineral and microbial exudate product which we expected to be highly effective in stimulating the plants immune system enough to keep Tar Spot away. His track record with the huge potato growers in ID and UT is impeccable. We had a few select corn growers in Iowa apply it to their corn and the results were as good as expected – 100% healthy plants using a safe, curative, systemic product with a 2.5 to 3.0-month residual, and is less expensive than most rival products. It is not damaging to soil biology either. One cooperator had his fields flown by the Tarannus Drone company each week to place a disease evaluation score on the drone applied fields. The scores all summer showed zero disease each week. Now most leaf disease did not reach high levels due to lack of dew on the leaves, but it did become consequential in about 6 central Iowa counties. Performance in a hot spot area in Wisc using the base product was excellent in 2022. TarGard is custom made in one facility by one team. It requires two to three months to purchase the raw ingredients, brew the final mix and then transport to IA. Early orders will get their product.
Good Nematodes
Two or three years ago I reported on a Cornell Univ nematologist who had identified a specie of soil dwelling nematodes that loved a diet of rootworm larvae. The plan was to test their value by applying a liquid mix containing a huge population of then to fields where every other tactic to control rootworms had failed. Elson Shields did just that to control a problematic weevil in alfalfa fields in upper New York. Once the field was treated the nematodes persisted for years. The success continued in fields in Texas. His son Keegan has taken the mantel from his father and has commercialized these persistent nematodes. He is looking for other corn farmers who are looking for an answer to a serious CRW problem.
We will post the articles about this program on our website and provide contact information as to cost, method of application and so on. He is offering a discount on fields of a certain size to get the ball rolling. One seed dealer in NW Iowa has already been treating customers fields and early results look very good. The cost may sound high, but considering its level of efficacy and residual length of activity it could be a bargain. It is already organic approved. The Iowa Soybean board supplied funding for the ISU CRW researchers to do a multi-year study on the Persistent Entomophageous Predacious Nematodes to validate their use. That is one long mouthful, but a correct and accurate term.
Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.