Rain Is Always A Good Thing For Crops Right?

I am often asked this question by non farm people, especially meteorologists.  You often hear the saying from traders, "Rain Makes Grain."  However, this isn't exactly true. . .  

It is true that crops need water to survive and produce grain, but depending on when, how, or how much it rains we can damage crops.  Early season moisture like we have had this year will and did drown out crops, prevented us from planting, and led to increase disease pressure in our fields.  The fact that it continued to rain during the early parts of the season also led to a phenomenon I call "lazy roots."  As young plants grow, if there is plenty of nutrients and water in the top parts of the soil they will not put roots deep as they typically would.  This in turn leads to problems when we get dry in that top few inches of soil.  Plants need water to uptake nutrients, so when the soil moisture content falls the plants cannot take in nutrients and then they will become nutrient deficient also increasing the drought effect. 

Phosphorus and Sulfur Deficiency from wet soil

A wet spring can also hurt us by moving our negatively charged nutrients like phosphate, nitrate, and sulfate through the negatively charged soil making it more difficult to keep them in the top 2' of soil where plants can use them.  We do use products that help keep nitrogen in the more stabil form ammonium which can bind to the negatively charged soil, but you have to put them on before you know how wet the spring will be. 

Potassium Deficiency from shallow roots

 In legume plants like alfalfa and soybeans that make their own nitrogen, wet weather can hamper their growth imensly.  For these plants to get nitrogen they have to form a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria we call rhizobia.  This bacteria takes the nitrogen that makes up nearly 80% of our air and breaks it down into a form that the plant can use.  If soil conditions are too wet there is no air getting to the bacteria to make nitrogen thus making these plants show nitrogen deficiency.

Nodules on alfalfa plants that house rhizobia bacteria

Ok, so if we have a dry spring that's even worse right?  Not really, in 2012 we had the driest start to a spring in 30 years and still ended up with near normal yields in most of my territory.  Part of this is due to a crop saving rain in the end of July, but the main reason we were saved was the water holding properties of our heavy clay soils.  We can handle dry spells early in the season, but at tassel in corn or podfill in soybeans if we don't get rain it can be a very bad thing.

Don't get me wrong, more often than not rain is a good thing.  It's funny how quickly though we can go from not wanting anymore to needing more, this year it took 3 weeks.  So the next time you are complaining about the weather, just imagine if your livelihood relied on it. . .

 Luke Bryan - Rain is a Good Thing

 

Top 10 Preventable Corn Planting Mistakes

With corn there is little error when it comes to planting time.  Any one of these mistakes can cause 5-20 bushel losses on their own and often we see a combination of 3 or 4 in a given field.  I realize the sense of urgency when it is time, but taking time to think through decisions and come up with a plan is critical. 

#10 Working Too Far Ahead of Planter

During planting time we often see ground getting worked up 2-3 days ahead of planting to stay on schedule and focus on other tasks, but this can dry out ground in advance of the planter reducing germination or delaying germination.  You should try to be within 24 hours of the planter.

#9 Trash in the Seed Trench

We are finding more and more that a single coulter is not sufficient to clear heavy trash and it will often pinch residue into the seed trench resulting in seed being place on residue.  Running floating row cleaners where they are running about 50% of the time and just brushing the surface ahead of the row unit is the best setting.

#8 Plowing With Row Cleaners

Setting row cleaners to the point they are constantly running will create a trench water can collect in and will put your seed in soil 1-2" deeper than your intended layer which may be 5 degrees colder. 

#7 Down Force

You fill up your planter with 24 bags of corn, fertilizer, and maybe insecticide and set your down pressure; what happens when all of this is half gone?  You have too little down pressure, and the opposite happens if you set it when the planter is half full.  Updates like the Precision Planting Air Force system have helped this area.

#6 Planting Depth

I often hear that "we put it in shallow so it will come out of the ground faster," and that is something you should never do.  Variations in soil temperature decrease the deeper you go, so that 1.25" planting depth has a harder time coping with a night time low in the 30's compared to 2" deep.

#5 Planting Ahead of a Cold Rain

It's frequently talked about that planting less than 36 hours ahead of a cold rain will harm emergence and lead to more problems than it’s worth.  I know tucking the planter in the shed with good weather seems like a bad idea, but that first water the seed imbibes is critical to its emergence.

#4 Planting Before 50 Degree Soil Temperatures

So the soils at 48 degrees and the air is 60 degrees, but the next 3 days it will fall back to the 40's for a high; this is a scenario we had last year.  Good current weather doesn't mean the soil is up to temperature and if it doesn't improve that seed is sitting there waiting.  The only time I would recommend planting at less than 50 is if you were around 48 and the next 10 days looked warmer than normal and it was late in the planting season.

#3 Planting When it's Too Wet

We get into this discussion with growers when we talk about closing wheels and seed firmers, "what about if the mud sticks to my seed firmers?"  If it's sticking to seed firmers or you are concerned about build up on the gauge wheels it's too wet to plant.  I've seen more poor stands from planting when the conditions are too wet than anything else. 

#2 Hybrid Placement - Maturity Planting

A common problem we run into is when people just take seed and start planting based solely on maturity; late goes in first, etc.  You run a greater risk of yield loss by placing seed in zones it doesn't do well in than  by planting 102 day corn versus a 100 day corn.  Drydown doesn't do anything to hurt your yield; it's just an added cost later on.  I'd rather have a point or two wetter and 20 more bushels of corn any day. 

#1 Not Checking Behind the Planter

I have a customer who religiously checks behind the planter as many as 10 times per field depending on size.  He worries about being "different" but he always notices mistakes before anyone else because of this.  I have the other side of the spectrum, "it worked last year, why worry."  Catching planting mistakes early can mean a lot of yield in the end, and that's the reason we have gone to the 20/20 monitor the last couple years.  Getting a 3-5 second average isn't cutting it anymore.  You can't see what you are doing, so why not have something showing what you are doing. 

How Do I Determine If A Product Works?

Beleive it or not, crop consultants like us get just as many sales calls on us as you get on your farm.  How do we determine what will be right for our customers and what do we look for to make sure it's reputable?

We use the solutions approach to agronomy, meaning that we are more interested in solving a problem and getting to higher yields by better management than we are in selling you more stuff to get to higher yields.  You will hardly ever hear me say that if you use product X you will get 3-5 bushels more yield per acre.  We look to see if a product solves a problem that we have, or helps us with a management aspect like Nitrogen leaching.  An important thing to think about before looking at a product to solve a problem, is that the root of your problem may be management related.  If product Y makes a nutrient more available and will potentially increase yields in a deficient environment, you may be better served solving the nutrient defieciency instead of adding a product to take away more of it.

When we are looking at a new product what I need is a reasonable scientific explanation of how the product works.  I want to see a process on what the product does to work.    Just saying "it's pretty scientific" isn't enough for me and shouldn't be for anyone (it happens more often than it should). 

The next thing I want is university data, and I want the entire trial they are using data from.  Just because they were in the trial and one of the plots showed positive yield responses doesn't mean that it wasn't an outlier.  It's very often that a questionable product will state that in this university trial we had a 7 bushel yield response, but what they don't show is that the other 3 trials were not statistically significant. 

I also want to know if the results are repeatable.  Can I take this into a lab setting and consistently get the same results?  Produtcts like Agrotain are great examples.  If you haven't you should take Urea and put it in a jar with soil and then put some in another jar, but coat this urea with Agrotain.  The ammonia that comes off the untreated is immense and a very good "real" display of the product working. 

After all of this is met, we typically will take any new product to some field trials and try it ourselves on a few acres for a year.  I realize this may be a little bit methodical, but it has helped us keep from jumping on bandwagons and using products that are later proven to not work (see Nutrisphere N and Dr. David Franzen's research http://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/soils/pdfs/sf1581.pdf). 

10 Crop Management Practices You'll See in the Next 5 Years

With technology and better data management, agriculture is constantly updating management practices we use.  While some things come and go, (see Soybean Rust) others stick like Nitrogen management and stabilization.  In the next 5 years these are the top 10 topics you will see and potentially use on your farm.

#10 Biologicals

Whether it's humic acid, symbiotic fungi and bacteria, or any number of "natural" items, it's quickly becoming a hot topic in most ag circles the last couple years.  Even with all the hype lately it is hard to make trials repeatable and that is a major cause behind taking a cautious approach with these products.  Hopefully, 5 years from now we will know more about which products work and what situations they work in.

#9 Residual Herbicides

If you are dealing with weed resistance this is a reality for you, for others it is on the cusp of being a bigger deal.  With no new modes of action coming out since mesotrione, Callisto, protecting the ones we have now is quickly becoming a best management practice everyone should use. 

#8 Tillage

No-till has been the buzz word the last few years, in the next 5 it may be moving more towards a conservation tillage approach.  We are noticing that working ground and varying depth with reduced compaction tools like deep tillage as opposed to disks or tools with sweeps, has shown a benefit in corn.  While no-till still has it's place, we have seen a steady rise in tillage.

#7 Soybean Traits

While soybeans had the first trait, corn has traditionally been the leader in traits.  In the next few years the introduction of new herbicide traits and in the future traits for disease and insects are in the pipeline.

#6 Hybrid Placement

The days of planting Dekalb XL45 or Pioneer 33-94 on every acre have been long gone, and we are quickly moving towards placing hybrids field by field and in future we may have the ability to plant two hybrids with one planter in different yield zones in a field by changing on the go.  I know of one planter that has the ability to do this, it's coming faster than you think.

#5 Nematode Management

Soybean Cyst Nematode started it all a few years ago, and now we are discovering more nematodes that are damaging crops and learning more about the levels that can lead to yield loss.  New products are coming out to combat this problem as I type.

#4 RNAi - RNA interference

Everyone knows about DNA, but the field that involves it's helpers is growing.  RNA takes your DNA code and uses it to code for the proteins everything uses to function.  The possibilities with RNAi are great, imagine spraying some over your glyphosate resistant weeds and having them die from glyphosate.  The next generation Monsanto rootworm trait involves RNAi, and is slated for a 2018 release.

#3 Nitrogen Management 

I read today that Ohio passed a new law basically stating fertilizer as a pollutant and it needs to be managed as one.  Managing Nitrogen and other fertilizers needs to be done now to prevent this from becoming a reality for all of us.  Split applying, adding stabilizers, and calculating use based on previous yield history is going to be a huge thing going forward.

#2 Variable Rate Planting

Using hybrids we place in a field is one thing, another is putting them at the right population based on what yield zone they are in.  We are scratching the surface of what we can do with this technology now.

#1 Sulfur

We started noticing this as a deficiency in 2006 in Northern Indiana.  Now, most tissue samples for corn or alfalfa come back with a sulfur deficiency.  After the Clean Air Act passed and we started cleaning emissions your source of this beneficial nutrient left.  Luckily, most crops only need 10-30# of sulfur a year.  Any fertilizer plan from now on should include sulfur in some form.  The sulfate form is the preferable one, if not you will be fertilizing for the following year.

How soon after tillage do you plant?

With a large amount of tillage following the dry and warm winter of 2011-2012 and dry summer in 2012 that lead to compaction issues, we will likely see a large amount of spring tillage in 2013.  An often overlooked area of yield loss can come from working ground well ahead of the planter, especially on a dry year.  In 2012, we had several farms where tillage was completed 2-5 days ahead of planting resulting in yield losses from 10-20 bushels and reduced populations from poor germination and emergence.  In one particular instance, a customer worked a field a day ahead of planting, quit planting half way through the field and came back the next night to finish planting.  In this field the extra day of drying on the worked ground lead to a 15 bushel yield loss.  It's not hard to fathom how this can happen when 1,000 ears/plants can equal a 7 bushel loss. 

While we are focusing a lot of time on planting depth and proper closing of the seed trench, time also has to be spent working on timing of tillage in relation to planting.  The time you spend before that seed is put in the ground ultimately determines it's yield potential.

Residuals in Beans, Not Just For No-Tillers

In our neck of the woods in SE Wisconsin, we don't have Roundup resistant weeds yet.  We have a few populations in our area that I would say have tolerance to traditional levels of in crop applications of glyphosate.  Reistance and tolerance are two totally different things, resistance means no rate of glyphosate will bring down the weed, tolerance can mean that no labeled in crop application will bring down the weed.  When a 44oz rate of branded Roundup won't bring down 12" giant ragweed it's a major cause for concern.  A lot of people see a yellow giant ragweed plant and think it's dead, but we are noticing a lot of these plants are only having the main growing point killed and are refocusing their growth to their axillary buds, or secondary growing points resulting in bushes not tall plants.  For us, residuals in corn has been a no brainer and in soybeans it's an afterthought.  For the last 17 years we have been using Roundup post in soybeans with good to excellent control, but those years are coming to a close.  With every year we use only one mode of action and spray weeds once as late as possible to get by with one pass we are selecting for weeds that will develop tolerance to Roundup.  Tank mixing with glyphosate is an option, but the reason we loved glyphosate is that those older herbicides weren't the greatest control in the first place.  Many were ALS herbicides that quickly developed resistance.  In soybeans, your best option for good control of weeds is to see little to no weeds coming up in the first place, hence residual herbicides.  I realize when you work the ground ahead of the drill it takes care of the initial flush of weeds, but they will grow back just as fast as your soybeans. 

I wouldn't say that Roundup is a tool that we have lost, we haven't yet in our area.  It's a tool that we need to manage, take a step back and re-evaluate how we are using it.  I have seen fields back home in Indiana with tolerant and resistant marestail, and now they are getting palmer amaranth from using only glyphosate at cut rates to kill weeds.  That's a mess we don't need or want here. 

Bridging Newsletters

A few weeks ago I thought about starting a blog to have somewhere to put topics I can't find room for on my newsletters.  Believe it or not, about 3-5 topics don't make the cut every two weeks.  I will continue my twitter posting with links and pictures, along with up to date agronomy postings.  Its pretty hard to put a good explanation for anything I post with only 140 characters hence the blog.