More cold and more rain

Apr 222011
 

As the cold, wet weather continues it’s getting more people nervous about switching hybrids and changing plans. I’m not too worried about it right now for the Blank Slate. I have an early hybrid for the area, and I’m placing a majority of my fertilizer with the planter. If I can’t get the corn in, not many people will.

The only real challenge on the Blank Slate field with all the moisture we’ve been getting is the three lower areas in the field. They comprise about 10 acres total, so it’s no huge loss if they can’t be planted on time. Hopefully we get our drainage plan approved this year and are able to tile soon.

Stay positive and have a Happy Easter!

Darren

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What in the world is a refuge?

Apr 112011
 


Believe it or not, there are rules about how a farmer can plant his corn. These rules apply if you want to plant the latest corn hybrids that have patented biotech traits. The seed corn I intend to plant this year has a Bt trait for European corn borer control as well as a herbicide tolerance trait that allows me to spray Roundup over my crop without hurting it.

The agreement I sign when I buy the seed corn says that I will plant 20% of my acres to “refuge corn” in one of a few specific layouts. Refuge corn is seed corn that does not contain any Bt traits for insect control. It’s a safe place for insects to feed and reproduce. The concept is that if you don’t leave a few places where insects can breed, then the only bugs out there will be the ones that survived in Bt corn fields hence they will be resistant to the Bt traits.

I can plant the refuge corn in a field adjacent to my Bt corn field or I can use the refuge corn as part of my field. The way we do it is to plant the refuge corn on the end rows of the field. Here’s why. I can use insecticide in my refuge corn acres. It doesn’t make sense to me that I need to have a refuge area for the bugs, but I can kill all of them with insecticide and that’s okay. I feel a little like Ole in the Ole and Lena jokes because I can’t really follow the logic. By planting the refuge corn in an easy to identify area (like the end rows around the outside edge of the field) we can treat the field with inseciticide if we see bugs like European corn borers beginning to show up.

The reason I brought this up now is because there has been a major change in the industry today. The EPA is going to allow certain seed companies with specific biotech traits to put the refuge corn in the same bag as the biotech traited corn. I’ll explain.

Monsanto and Dow put their respective Bt traits together in a combination biotech trait package called SmartStax a couple years ago. By combining multiple Bt traits together in the same seed corn hybrid, the odds of an insect developing resistance to the trait is greatly reduced. One university entomologist I know said “the chance of a bug becoming resistant to one Bt trait is one in a million, and there are millions of bugs in many fields so it’s going to happen eventually. The chance of a bug becoming resistant to several Bt traits stacked in the same hybrid is more like one in a million millions.”

The other hope of the big seed companies like Monsanto and Dow is that they could mix the refuge corn right in the bag with the Bt corn so farmers would not have to worry about planting a separate refuge area. Today Monsanto and Dow both sent out press releases that the EPA approved their request for the “Refuge in a bag” concept. Both Monsanto and Dow will be marketing seed corn with 95% Bt traited corn and 5% refuge corn in each bag.

Farmer acceptance of the refuge in a bag idea will be very high. Much like the threat of the IRS auditing your tax filings, the thought of the EPA checking to see if you planted the proper amount of refuge acres in the right places is scary to many farmers. For seed dealers, it will also be a nice change. Currently a seed dealer likely carries the same seed corn variety with no traits, with one Bt trait, and with multiple Bt traits. The same variety is now in 3 piles in the warehouse. Now multiply that one hybrid three different ways by 30 hybrids that get used in an area and you can see the problem. With refuge in a bag, the seed dealer could simply stock the stacked trait product and have the refuge corn right in the same bag. It’s much easier.

I like to take the contrarian approach. Refuge in a bag is going to be good for the industry, but for me it’s not a big step forward. In fact, I kind of like the old way. I don’t really like the refuge concept to begin with, but if we’re going to have it I think I can manage it better than most. Most farmers are not treating their refuge acres with insecticide and are giving up yield to insects every year. Just ask farmers if they think they’ll get less yield, the same yield, or more yield when they compare their refuge acres versus their Bt traited acres with insect protection right in the bag. You’ll learn than most farmers think they’re taking a 10 or 15 bushel yield hit when they plant the refuge. On our farm, I’d say that the refuge corn treated with insecticide will yield on par with the rest of the field. That gives us a competitive advantage. Like most good things, though, it does take some extra work.

I love these types of discussions. What do you think about refuge in a bag?

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Tough competition

Apr 072011
 

When you ask any farmer about raising top yielding crops, chances are you’ll hear about the fertility that goes into feeding that crop. What gets left out in many cases is weed control. I’ll be talking about various annual weeds in the Blank Slate field as the season progresses. Today I want to focus on a tough perennial weed that is my number one concern going into 2011.

There are a number of names farmers call this weed that I can’t mention. I call it “Scouring Rush” and that seems to be the most common name for the weed. The reason farmers hate it so much is that it’s very difficult to kill. Normally scouring rush is worst on years where rainfall is plentiful. I have it on the Blank Slate in the lower ground, and my neighbors down hill from me have it just as bad. Scouring rush has rhizomes which are below ground runners. With the rhizomes, the weed patch grows and grows each year even if you burn off all the above ground portions of the plant.

The tough thing about scouring rush is that it really doesn’t have leaves or hairs or anything to stick herbicide to. Also the stems are erect, so any droplets that do land on the plant while spraying are likely to just run down the plant and end up on the ground. My favorite herbicides to control it are Gramoxone and Ignite. Both are non-selective herbicides, which mean they kill all weeds. Ignite is selective only in Liberty Link crops. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t able to get the hybrid I wanted for this farm with a Liberty Link trait (which allows the safe application of Ignite herbicide when the crop is emerged).

My hybrid is tolerant to Roundup, though, so that will be the first option. To have any chance of it working, you must spray a very concentrated (low water volume) application. This way if even a few droplets stick to the plant, you have quite a bit of herbicide there to do the job. Adding some sort of sticker to the solution is a good idea as well. IF, and that’s a big if, you actually got Roundup into the plant it would give you the best chance at completely killing the weed roots and all.

I’m planning that this will not work, so I’ll likely spray some Gramoxone or Ignite on the scouring rush sometime between now and planting time to try to knock out the scouring rush. These two products will just provide topgrowth control, so I’ll likely be at it for a few years to completely solve the problem.

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