The Christmas season will be here before we know it and the first round of meetings and conferences will be in the books. Most dealers, retailers and companies know that farmers are in the decision and buying mode to take advantage of early discounts and to lock in a few bags on the different seed company’s hot new varieties before they are all reserved. In sales training this is referred to as impending doom, and you don’t want to be left out or left in the dust. Seed companies also know that 90 to 95% of early reservations become solid sales. It’s not much different than dumping feed into the bunk or trough and the firstest gets the mostest.
The Christmas season in much of the Midwest signifies the beginning of the really cold weather which can be challenging for travel, keeping up with livestock needs, and doing repairs needed when machinery or equipment doesn’t want to work as it should due the extreme cold. So far conditions in late October and early November were more challenging than have those of Mid-November until now. Here is wishing everybody a season where you can take a breather and enjoy the school or church plays or other activities connected to the main religious holy days and holidays.
Carol and I sponsored and held a multiple family gathering at a larger B&B just south of Ames. We had people from Denver, St Louis, Chicago and Minnesota attend the three-day event. It was fun to see all the new additions to the clan that were added in the last two years by birth or marriage. It took devoted planning to feed and organize the 34 in the group. Kudos to Carol for her organizing skills.
Meetings and Events
In the last three weeks there was the large ISU crops conference which was held in the eastern Des Moines metro area. There were the inhouse extension people plus speakers from KS, IL, and a few other states. We heard that the chance of having a white Christmas was less that 50/50. Maybe even less than 20%. Remembering how much of the Midwest was shut down due to the arctic air which hung around for about ten days most of us will welcome the lack of snowfall and blizzards. At some point getting some snow cover can help keep frozen water line to a minimum.
In several sessions the topics centered about the expected disease pressure and how the lack of rain and dews minimized the incidence and severity of fungal infections in both corn and soybeans. Now a moisture film is needed on the leaves to allow the fungal spores to germinate and successfully penetrate the leaf surfaces and invade the inner tissue of the targeted plants. Wet plants with mineral deficiencies and any overtly genetic susceptibilities become perfect fodder and targets for soil dwelling or airborne spores from endemic diseases or any that move in from southern locales.
Climatologist and director of the Midwest Climate Center, Dennis Todey, showed the state map as to what the moisture deficits in each section amounted to. When asked how much rain he hoped would come after the ground thawed out, he said that he would like to see 8 to 10” in multiple slow showers. We did not need to get 3 to 5” of hard rain to melt the deep snow pack before the ice melted in the rivers and lakes in western Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota as happened in 2018. Dennis did mention the drought cycle predicted for many years which was expected to occur in 2025. He said that maintaining any sort of ground cover to insulate the ground during the warmest summer months would be vital to maintaining cooler soil temps to support microbial activities in the top 6 to 12 inches of soil.
My take on it is that drought has been with us since mid-2020. The corn and bean crops have fared well in spite of below normal rainfall. Not getting lucky enough to receive those scattered showers at critical times for each crop could be very damaging to yields. We saw during the 2023 summer that the second heat wave really sapped the plants and shrunk seed size on both crops.
Every row crop farmer may benefit by developing an eight or ten step plan to boost the ability of the varieties they plan to plant in 2024. Some of these steps will be cultural, some will involve variety characteristics such as rooting depth, some will involve minerals such as increasing zinc levels, minimizing tillage trips so as to minimize early season evaporation and infiltration. Encouraging moisture infiltration and using mycorrhizal fungi to expand each plants’ root systems have been successful the past four years. Now there is one mineral that can be applied foliarly to increase water use efficiency by 36% while also decreasing the effects of salts in the soil. Increasing zinc levels through foliars applied to the plants or increasing soil zinc levels are important. The presence of one trait was found to decrease zinc levels by 47%. It is too bad that more plot work was forbidden on this topic. Such knowledge would be valuable.
Other Conference Learnings
The Big Soil Health Event was held two weeks ago in Cedar Falls. The number of companies displaying their wares or biological products had increased a lot in the past year. A few of them were worth mentioning. One new product was ‘Sound’. It was developed by two top notch Texas A&M biochemists with one of them having moved into a position at Oxford University.
The ‘Sound’ product is applied to any growing crop and has been shown to increase nutrient availability, hopefully to increase crop yields. I was puzzled at first, then remembered what I had learned from Jill Clapperton and Bob Kremer, the #1 and #2 top microbiologists in N America. Their research discovered that plants communicate with the microbes living on or in their roots. The plants release miniscule amounts of elicitor compounds promising the microbes that they will provide sugar to them if they will solubilize solid minerals and deliver them to the roots. Detecting these micro amounts requires very sensitive equipment. My speculation is that the researchers identified and begun synthesizing these compounds. Will their idea work and will it provide an acceptable ROI? I will have to communicate with Jill and Robert to get their opinions. It is somewhat like jumping from the early Wright Brothers flying contraptions straight to the F-18 jet aircraft.
There were several presentations at the conference where nutrient availabilities were discussed. The BeCrop soil test was also developed as a means to go beyond what normal soil test provides where a chemical test of pH, CEC, and base saturation along with the mineral content which could eventually enter the plant. The BeCrop analysis incorporates the Haney test along with several active carbon tests to predict the percent of each mineral expected to be available to the plant. The analytical report provides a fungal to bacteria ratio. Most soils have been found to have a ratio greatly favoring bacteria over fungi. Having ratios of 1:30 to 1:50 would actually be better than ratios that are often seen.
Currently there are a number of companies which sell products which include a significant percent of fungal species. When you try sort thru the 870 different commercialized biological products you should ask this qualifying question of the technical or sales reps: “Is it going to take a few seasons to sort through those which have produced a positive ROI 80% of the time, or can you expect to see a positive response 50% of the time?”. Another qualifier may be “What are the Haney scores for each of your fields? What is the past history of pesticides used or what sorts of fertilizers have been used recently?”
Elaine Ingham taught lots of classes on maximizing the amount of nitrogen that could be fixed by microbes. She always preached that you had to have a sufficient number of carnivores eating the bacteria. It was their manure which contain the N fixed in the desired stabile organic form. One N-fixing product from BTI is sold as containing 280 species and may reduce purchased N by 75%. Hologanix mentions having over 800 specific strains in their freshly brewed microbe mix which includes a high % of fungal products.
A common desire of the meeting attendees could be categorized as having a desire to be in the regenerative farmer group have the desire to build soil health. They also want to minimize their purchased inputs while maintaining or increasing yields. Those growers also seek to raise healthy crops which stayed green until late that needed few, if any, synthetic products to maintain good plant health. They have learned that good mineral nutrition trumps any other approach.
I am like many of you in that I am trying to visit with many companies to learn more about the microbial products they have researched and have commercialized. I have a good grasp of who has learned the most about product lines and have given good results across several years. There are products which contain single species while others contain multiple species. One product that a colleague used this summer, Holganix Bio 800, contained over 800 different species and his results were extremely good in spite of being limited with only 8” of rain all season. The BTI company of Dallas includes about 80 N fixers and over 150 P and K solubilizers.
There are also going to be final products which contain no living microbes, but instead contain one or more exudiates (elicitor product or compound) which stimulates plants or roots in a manner considered beneficial. Might we see one which short circuits a pathway in the plant to boost production or promote greater nitrogen efficiency and reduces needed N rates by 50%.
Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.