It was a quiet week in central Iowa. A snowfront delivered 8″ of the white stuff after varying amounts of rain and sleet left a shimmering layer of ice on many of the roads. Those made travel a bit tricky for a day or two and guys with snow blowers or plows got the chance to try their equipment moving the white stuff. It was a wet snow, so drifting was not an issue nor were white out conditions. I-80 going east was treacherous, so caution was observed for a few days. As it moved into Illinois it arrived mostly as rain. Points to our west and down into TX, OK, NE and KS were welcoming any rain to help break their three year drought.
Sunday Night Celebration
What better way to improve relations between Cyclone and Hawkeye fan contingents than to have Brock Purdy and George Kittle star for the 49ers as they march towards the epic football game in a few weeks. From being the last player chosen in the draft to this prominent position in the sport has been unbelieveable in that he had the opportunity to be elevated to be the starting QB. Watching him the last four years showed us he was unflappable and could deliver. He just needed to put a bit more arch in his throws to avoid those pesky INTs. Kittle has been a ‘gamer and a wild man’ when he was needed. Who would have thought that two Iowa boys would play huge roles on the same team in a very tough and demanding sport?
Midwinter Activities
My Monday and Tuesday were spent attending and speaking at a planter and tillage workshop where the focus was on how in recent years the way planters and tillage equipment were set up one way was different each year. Outguess Nature each year and making the proper corrections without having built a wide breadth of experience is very difficult if one has not built a large data bank of information learned on different farms. Wednesday was sitting down with a few larger operators from the Dakotas and looking at and translating their soil test results. They have excessive Ca levels below 6″ which causes problems with nutrient release.
On Friday and Saturday the Practical Farmer Group held their annual convention. I went for a short while to listen and learn a few things. One person I wanted to listen to was one of the ISU Research Farm Managers who had made a presentation in front of the attendees at a sustainable Ag conference over in Madison, Wisconsin is 2018 or 2019. In his view the total reliance on hard fungicides may end up being counter productive as each year that system is selecting for resistant strains of most fungicides as their life cycles are very short. I have seen that happen. In one of our first trips down to Brazil, 2004 or 2005, we traveled to a town in NE Mato Grosso, Prima do Leste (point of the east in Portuguese) where the topography was such that it seemed to rain most afternoons between 2 and 3 pm. The clouds gathered, it got overcast and about a half inch of rain fell. This created the perfect environment for the spore moving thru the air landed on the soybean leaves to infect them. The only way to save the crop then ended up being to spray the field eleven to thirteen times to keep the plants alive.
In a perfect world for them, the best strategy would have had several more strategies or products to use to control fungal infections or to get the plants’ immune system strong enough to keep the spores from penetrating the leaves. Normally that is the role of high manganese levels. But it takes years to develop, test, register, manufacture, market and distribute a hard chemistry. That is why when I asked their top epidemiologist at EMBRAPA in Feb of 2017 what their next strategy was when the new strobe/triazole/SDHI mixes were less than 25% effective she just shrugged her shoulders. So if the observations by the Argentine INTA pathologists that the translucent spores are gradually forming pigment to stop the sterilizing sunlight, we will need to develop new strategies of disease control in the U.S.
Adios Antonio
Mentioning Argentina: Since our first trip to S America when we first met a bunch of their top scientists, one that had gotten his PhD under Don Huber at Purdue and did his Fullbright work at the Univ of Arkansas under John Rupe was Antonio Ivancovich. He spoke great English and was friendly and very knowledgeable. We exchanged a lot of emails as we helped each other keep track of what was going on in their country and their lives. Carol and I played host to him and quite a few S Americans when they visited Iowa with many studying at ISU. When we traveled to South America over a dozen times we usually spent time with him, his family, his business associates and friends. I learned a lot from him and his associates over the years. He lined up several trips for us when we visited the Andes, Chile and their very beyond colorful NW provinces of Tucaman, Salta and Jujuy, plus the mountainous grape growing province and city of Mendoza. It was on that trip where we entered into Chile for a few days to see Santiago, Vina del Mar and Valparaiso. Antonio enjoyed the Midwest and had a lot of acquaintances in Iowa including.many Iowa State researchers and graduates. One of his next door neighbors who works for Rhizobacter, a large Biological company, attended the Farm Progress Show. I sent a short note with him to pass onto Antonio and never heard back. Was something wrong? His wife sent a short note to tell us that Antonio had been in intensive care in a local hospital for three months and had passed away. So heaven just gained one very kind and smart plant scientist. Adios Antonio.
Precursor to the Power of Biology Conference
I was pulling out a few old stories and interviews and ran across a few that you may enjoy reading. They were published in the Seed World Magazine, a trade magazine. There were two dated in 2012 written after the interviews by columnist Gene Hagen.
Here is the first article: Hagen Seed World Interview Article #1
Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.