Time for Plan B

May 102011
 

Well, rain spoiled my plans once again. Seems to be the theme for the 2011 season to this point. We got about 0.85″ of rain, which is enough to saturate the soils in the two main valleys of the field. It’s just not worth turning around a whole bunch of times while trying to get 80% of the field planted. If that doesn’t sound too bad to you, consider that we’d have to run over a good share of what we planted the first time trying to fill in the unplanted strips later. No thanks. We’ll just wait and hope for better weather.

Our planter is running on some well-drained soybean ground today and for the rest of the week. Perhaps the middle of next week we’ll get back to corn planting. We have 3 fields of corn to plant and the Blank Slate is number 1 on the list.

For some reason I can’t get the picture to upload on Blogger, so you’ll have to visit https://twitter.com/darrenhefty to take a look.

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Planting on Saturday?

May 052011
 

The current plan is to plant the Blank Slate field on Saturday. Conditions are fit on 90% of the field today. Hopefully the rest comes around in time. If not, we’ll plant around it and come back later.

Seeing too many guys rush into planting ground that’s too wet and sticky underneath. Watch out for sidewall compaction!  It’s just not worth doing that. Your crop suffers all year.

Hope to have another update and some pictures soon.

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Year 2 on the Blank Slate

May 022011
 

This is my 5 year old son, Carson, playing with a neighbor dog. I like the picture because it symbalizes the fun we have on the farm working with animals and plants as well. A special thank you goes to the Responsible Nutrient Management Foundation for posting my blogs at www.rnmf.org. If you haven’t heard of this group or visited their website, I encourage you to check it out. The website is fairly new, so come back again throughout the spring as it becomes populated with even more useful tools and resources.

On May 3rd, 2010 we planted the first crop under our control on the field I’m affectionately calling the Blank Slate. My how fast a year goes! Since we have new readers today, I’ll explain that the Blank Slate is a 60 acre farm my wife and I bought that had been cash rented as long as anyone could remember. Consequently, the field had been mined and the nutrient levels were very low. The two more important things that had been lost, though, were the organic matter in the soil and the topsoil from the hills. My goal with this field is to build it back up and to protect the soil from further erosion with every decision I make on this farm for the rest of my farming career.

Here’s what the field looked like immediately after harvest. We used a chopping head on one of the two combines running in the field which left the stalks looking all the same as you can see here. It also chopped up the residue into 6 inch chunks that laid nicely over the winter protecting my soil from wind and water erosion. Those 6 inch pieces are easy to move with our strip tillage tool we normally use to place fertilizer. In this particular field it was used simply to open up a path through all the residue for us to plant into.

Here’s a picture of what things looked like this spring. Pretty much the same as last fall.

We’re working on other fields now but hope to be planting this field by Saturday if the soil conditions are fit. We’ll be applying the fertilizer and crop protection products then too. Hope you have a great week as well!

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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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