The February 2012 Ag PhD Newsletter has been released. Click the thumbnails below to view PDFs of the Eastern and Western Editions of the newsletter. Individual articles are also posted to our site.

Eastern Edition (Adobe PDF)

Western Edition (Adobe PDF)

There may be a tile shortage again in 2012, but we have made several arrangements so YOU shouldn’t have to worry as long as you plan ahead and order early.

I was having a conversation with a large tile manufacturer several months ago about tile supply, and of course, I was complaining about how some of the farmers we work with weren’t getting product.  They asked the question about how much more tile I thought could be installed over the next few years.  Obviously, I don’t know…no one does.  It depends so much on the weather, commodity prices, and much more.  However, I did make the prediction that over the next 12 months, in our region alone (ND, SD, MN, & IA), there would be more than 1000 farmer tile plows sold!  This is in addition to the 500 (my estimate) sold in the region over the prior 12 months.

Well, you put 1500 more plows in the ground, and we’re probably looking at A LOT more tile going in the ground than ever before.  Plus, every tile contractor I know has increased their business, often by adding more commercial tile plows.

I finished with my quick statement, and all the tile manufacturer could say was, “Wow, we’re not planning for that kind of increase.”  As soon as I heard that, as a farmer, I knew we were in trouble.  This fall, one of the frustrations many farmers discussed with me was how the custom tilers appeared to get all the tile they wanted, yet farmers struggled to get ANY tile.

Here’s where and why we decided to get involved.  Darren and I have gone about securing a large supply of tile for farmers to access.  You’ll find the price to be slightly less expensive IF you are willing to prepay and take delivery early.  Please give us a call or send us an e-mail if you would like more information.
The main thing I would stress, regardless of where you buy your tile, is to TAKE IT EARLY!  Right now, you can have all the tile you want for 2012.  However, if you wait until you’re running your tile plow in June, August, or October, there most likely will once again be a tile shortage.

• We’ll have many large plot displays featuring the latest seed and ag chemical technologies in corn, soybeans, wheat, and a handful of other crops.  Brian and Darren will be going through these plots to give you their take on what is and is not working on farms across the country.
• Live tiling demonstration with several tile plows
• Live lift station demonstration with a lift station tank and pump connected to tile lines
• Case IH Ride & Drive complete with tractors and tillage equipment on several acres
• New technology displays and demonstrations from companies like Raven, FarmLogic, Outback, TJ Technologies and many more
• There will also be optional educational sessions including a Tile Design Class with Brian Hefty, Drainage Law featuring one of the top ag drainage lawyers in the region, Estate Planning with a financial expert, Soil Mapping with a software technology company, and Tile Guidance System Updates with Intellislope, AGPS, and Trimble.
• As always, we’ll have entertainment for your kids including inflatables, balloons, games, and even a little farm safety information for kids.
• Lunch, supper, snacks, and drinks will also be served throughout the day.

There will be discount lodging available at several hotels…just check www.agphd.com for options or give us a call for more details.

Over the next few months in our newsletter, we’ll give you more information about the Field Day, and you can always check out www.agphd.com to learn more.

We’ll also have a variety of other entertainment there for you, including RFD-TV with their display trailer and personnel from the network; we expect to have a NASCAR car and possibly a NASCAR driver; and you’ll see several sports and political personalities, as well as a few famous farmers there, too.  We want this day to be fun, entertaining and educational for you.  Don’t miss it!

“It was dry last fall, so my cheatgrass didn’t emerge.  I didn’t spray anything then because I didn’t see any cheat.  Now, I’m worried that I may have cheatgrass coming up this spring in my wheat.  What’s the best thing I can use?”  This was a question we had recently, so I thought I would share our response with you.

First of all, as I’m sure you are aware, cheatgrass or downy brome is much more easily controlled by applying a residual herbicide in the fall.  At that time, Maverick, Olympus, and PowerFlex are the most popular products.  Maverick has the most residual.  PowerFlex has the least carryover and shortest rotational restrictions to most crops.

In the spring, downy brome is usually more difficult to control.  However, if it popped up very late in the fall or really early this year, it probably won’t be as big as normal by the time you spray.  In the spring, PowerFlex can be used in winter wheat (it is NOT labeled for spring wheat), but there are other popular options.  GoldSky contains some PowerFlex (along with Starane and another broadleaf killer), but most importantly, it has about 3 times the safener that PowerFlex contains, which is why it can be used on spring wheat when PowerFlex can’t.

Rimfire, Rimfire Max, and Olympus Flex all contain low rates of Olympus, but we still worry about rotational restrictions and carryover, so be careful.

In terms of the normal foxtail/wild oat products like Axial, Discover, and Puma, they’re not good on cheat, but Everest 2.0 is.  Now that Everest 2.0 has been released, containing more crop safener than the old formulation, we find many farmers are using that product due to reduced leaf burn, good soil residual, and suppression on cheatgrass.

Here’s the other thing I’m always concerned about – antagonism.  If you mix grass and broadleaf herbicides in the same tank, it’s probable that your grass control will be reduced.  Either the products have a negative chemical interaction or the broadleaf herbicide burns the grass enough to prevent good uptake or translocation of the grass killer, leading to decreased performance.  What I’m saying is if you want the very best grass control, spray your grass product first and follow a week later with the broadleaf herbicide.  If you only have a few weeds in the field, tankmixing is fine, but if your field is loaded with weeds, consider this option to get the best bang for your buck.

Again, if your cheatgrass didn’t show up last fall, you should have fewer problems than normal stopping it this spring, but don’t take it for granted.  Cheatgrass is always hard to stop in the spring, but at least there are options.

As farmers, we are under attack right now from many non-farmers who are concerned that we may be polluting our land and water.  Our best and only real solution to this is to reduce the few problems we’ve got.

First of all, as Americans, we have the safest and most abundant food supply in the world.  That’s thanks to you, the American farmer.  Same thing for our water supply..it’s safe, it’s abundant, and overall we’re doing a good job keeping it that way.

However, we have one major issue when it comes to water quality – nitrate.  Last summer, Darren and I toured a few farms in Denmark.  Did you know that the Danish farmers are limited on how much nitrogen they can use on their farms?  It’s true, and it’s now adversely affecting their yield.  In addition to that, Danish farmers are required to turn in an extensive and complete report each year to the government about EVERYTHING they plan to do on the farm, from tillage to which crops they’ll plant to their herbicide and fertilizer plan and a whole lot more.  We have a copy of a 25-page report that a 400-acre farm had to turn in prior to being allowed to do anything on their farm in 2011.

If we’re not careful, we’re going to end up in the same position as the Danish farmers, so here’s what I’m asking you to do today – test your soil for cation exchange capacity (CEC).  What CEC tells you is the holding capacity of your soil.  What we commonly use it for is to determine approximately how much nitrogen a soil can hold.

For example, if you have a CEC of 15, multiply that number times 10 to get 150.  That means your soil can roughly hold 150 pounds of nitrogen at any one time.  So if you want to apply 200 pounds of nitrogen, you can certainly do it legally right now, but where do you think that excess N will go?  Chances are it will leach, meaning you lost nitrogen and wasted money, but even worse, there will likely be nitrate that ends up in someone’s water.

The drinking water standard for nitrate is 10 parts per million, so some nitrate in water doesn’t hurt humans, but higher levels are a problem, and that’s what we’re concerned about.  Here are my 4 requests for you:

1. Know your cation exchange capacity in every single field.  It’s cheap and easy to test, and it doesn’t change much from year to year, so testing even once every 4 or 5 years is more than sufficient.
2. Don’t overapply your nitrogen in any form, including manure.  If your soil can only hold 150 pounds of nitrogen, subtract the amount that your soil already contains and only apply the difference.
3. If your crop needs more nitrogen, split-apply it.  Put some on at sidedress, foliar, or some other way once your crop has used some of the early-applied N.
4. Use a nitrogen stabilizer like Nutrisphere-N.  Our studies have shown that nitrogen stabilizers help prevent loss and keep N in the ammonium (more stable) form longer.  However, nitrogen stabilizers are not miracle products.  If your soil can only hold 150 pounds of N, just because you add a nitrogen stabilizer doesn’t mean you can now apply 300 pounds of N safely.

In Denmark, it doesn’t matter now if a farmer wants to use a nitrogen stabilizer or split-apply nitrogen or use any other method to reduce nitrate in the water.  It’s too late.  The law is in place, and a farmer simply cannot use more nitrogen.  The same thing will happen here UNLESS we’re proactive, so please, BE PROACTIVE!

It’s amazing the things I hear in side discussions at our winter workshops.  Here’s one example I heard when I was in Idaho in January.  A grower told me, “I’ve gained a ton of yield the last 2 years following your advice to spray insecticide and fungicide on my wheat, but I don’t want to tell anyone else.  This is my competitive advantage.”

Maybe it’s just me, but that sounded a little bit selfish.  It also made me smile and laugh.  The word is getting out about the yield increases wheat farmers are seeing spraying insecticide and fungicide in-crop.  If you think about what you’re actually doing – controlling most of the bugs and diseases that could damage your crop – it makes a lot of sense.  Here’s what to look for and how to know when and if this could be right for your farm.

Diseases

1. Prevention is key.  If you are seeing a disease in your field, you’ve given up yield and your fungicide won’t work very well.  In my opinion, scouting is nearly worthless for diseases.  Make the decision early in the growing season (or now) if you’re going to treat, and spray early before diseases set in.
2. Rotation is also key.  Crop rotation is helpful, but don’t forget about rotating the fungicides you use.  If you use a strobilurin fungicide like Headline, Quadris, or Evito for your first application of fungicide, switch to either a combo product like TwinLine, Quilt, or Stratego or use a triazole fungicide like Orius (tebuconazole – a.k.a. Folicur) or Bumper (propiconazole – a.k.a. Tilt) for the next application.
3. Limited protection is reality.  Since none of the fungicides move very well or last very long in the plant, you can really only protect the plant tissue that you apply the fungicide on.  For example, if you spray at flag leaf, you’re only protecting the plant from the flag leaf and down, and that’s only if you get great spray coverage and actually apply fungicide on each and every leaf.  You can’t protect the head from scab if you’re spraying before the head has emerged.  For this reason, multiple applications throughout the year are needed.

Insects

1. Diversity – While there may not be enough of one certain species of harmful bugs in your wheat to justify treating with insecticide, there likely are multiple species at lower levels.  Take a sweep net or even a ball cap to the field and sweep it through the crop a few times before making any insecticide application.  If there are a good number of harmful bugs, spray.  If there are no bugs, do not spray insecticide.
2. Combination application – The reason we see the best results applying fungicides and insecticides at the same time is much like the reason you wash and bandage cuts on your skin.  Any open wound created by an insect leaves your wheat vulnerable to an infection.  Stopping the bugs and protecting the wounds at the same time has shown a great ROI (Return on Investment) for those who have been doing it.

Timing

We recommend considering a fungicide/insecticide application at three critical times during the season.

1. Herbicide timing – Early-season protection is critical to set the table for high yield potential.
2. Flag Leaf – Of all the times to protect your crop from bugs and diseases, this may be the most important.
3. Heading – While there are better options available, a full rate of Orius (fungicide for stripe rust and head scab protection) plus a full rate of a pyrethroid insecticide will likely cost about $2 per acre each.  That’s much less than the value of a single bushel of wheat.  For that price, why take a chance leaving your crop unprotected?

There’s always a little confusion when there is change, but here’s one that makes a lot of sense to me.  Bayer is changing the name of Ignite herbicide back to Liberty.  Since there are quite a few questions around this change and what that will mean in terms of the formulation they’ll use, the price point, and how it will impact the economics of LibertyLink crops, I’ll give you the details about Liberty for this spring.

If you remember back in the late 1990’s when LibertyLink corn and Liberty herbicide first hit the market, the grower satisfaction with Liberty’s performance was pretty good.  Where we saw issues with herbicide performance, it came down to spray coverage and the rate guys were using.  Cut-rates were common because growers were paying $15 to $20 back then for Liberty.  Fortunately, the prices have come way down since then.

Back in December of 2008, I remember when Ignite herbicide was launched and we were discussing it on Ag PhD (show #558 on YouTube if you’re curious).  What used to be the 32 ounce rate of the old Liberty was now equal to the 22 ounce rate of Ignite, and while Bayer used to push 20 to 24 ounces of the old Liberty (a cut-rate to save money), now they could sell 22 ounces of Ignite and have way more weed-killing punch for about the same money.  That rate still works well on many weed species, especially when weeds are less than 3 inches tall.

This year Bayer is going back to the name Liberty for their herbicide.  They are sticking with the more concentrated formulation, though.  To reflect the changing weed dynamics, in LibertyLink soybeans the best recommendation is to use a pre-emerge herbicide and follow up with 29 ounces of Liberty on your first post-emerge application.  If you need a second application, the recommendation will be to run with 36 ounces since there will likely be bigger and very actively growing weeds at that time.

When the switch to the Liberty name was announced, Bayer also took a pretty healthy price increase.  The exact reasons for this may not be known, but two rumors likely have quite a bit of truth in them.  The first one was that the burndown market in Roundup-resistant weed areas like the Mid-South has been ramping up the demand for Liberty so much that Bayer feared they’d run out of Liberty for the LibertyLink crops.  As a result, they increased the price and are also increasing their rebate for LibertyLink crops (now up to $4/unit on qualifying LibertyLink soybean purchases, for example).  The other rumor is that other companies selling Liberty-tolerant crops but do not pay tech fees to Bayer were starting to gain market share, and by having a higher price on Liberty and a rebate on LibertyLink crops from Bayer, an artificial price gap is created in Bayer’s favor.  Either way, if you’re looking at planting LibertyLink crops this spring, be aware that Ignite will now be called Liberty and there will be substantial rebates available for LibertyLink crops.  Just make sure to use the right spray tips (flat fans), volume of spray solution (typically 15 gallons of water per acre), and herbicide rate of Liberty and you’ll have great success this year.

How would you react if you learned that you spent $500,000 on fertilizer on your farm this year, yet only $300,000 of it actually got used by your crops this year?

In 2006, we were digging some root pits in July on our farm for a field day we were hosting.  We were digging down about 5 feet in the ground to show things like compaction, root growth, soil type changes and more.  One thing we weren’t planning to find, but did, was dry fertilizer granules (MAP and potash) left from the previous fall when we had strip-tilled.  With strip-till, we place P & K down about 10 inches in the soil.  We like that because our top 6” of soil have lots of fertility already, so it’s a way to build up our subsoil where we often find lots of roots.

If you remember 2006, it was an abnormally dry year, at least up until about August 1.  We simply didn’t get enough moisture down to 10” deep to break down the MAP or potash.  Obviously, we had poor uptake, at least that season, of the P & K we had applied.

Another issue we often see is even with moisture, certain dry fertilizers simply don’t break down very well.  Potash, for example, is basically a rock.  How quickly does rock break down?

A third problem is when other nutrients in the soil can “tie-up” applied fertilizer.  For example, phosphorus can easily bind with excess calcium in the soil to form calcium phosphate.  Calcium phosphate is insoluble in water and won’t get absorbed by plants.

Another common issue is when soil is overloaded with one nutrient and another nutrient can’t get in.  There are lots of different situations when this can happen, but a common one is where a soil has excess phosphorus.  Even if you apply some zinc, that zinc may not get into the plant if zinc and phosphorus aren’t “in balance” in your soil.  The reverse could be true, as well, if your soil had excessive zinc.  That would prevent at least some of your phosphorus from getting into the plant.

On our farm, we’ve done a long-term study on several fields, applying only what we expect our crop to remove (grain only) in strip-till (or a band of any sort) vs. applying 50% more P & K in broadcast.  After doing this for over 10 years, we’ve gained no yield where we have applied 50% more P & K each year.  What that tells me is all the university studies that show better uptake and fertilizer efficiency when fertilizer is banded are correct.  One of the reasons that may be is that roots can only explore a certain percentage of soil.  If your fertilizer is placed where roots will grow, you’ve got a better chance for uptake.

I ran through all those examples so you could see how difficult it may be for your fertilizer to get into your crop.  If you own the ground and have 20 years to extract your fertilizer, this isn’t as big a deal…other than higher short-term fertilizer costs.  If you may only farm a piece of land for a year or two, this is a much bigger concern.  If you want the best fertilizer uptake and efficiency possible, here are my top 7 suggestions:

1. Band your fertilizer.  This will place it where your crop is more likely to recover it this year, and having a concentrated band reduces tie-up.
2. Try to get your soil pH in the 6.3 to 7.3 range.  In high or low pH soils, tie-up is increased.
3. Use at least some liquid fertilizer.  Liquid fertilizer is available more quickly than dry fertilizer.
4. Try some Avail to help prevent P tie-up.  Try a nitrogen stabilizer to reduce N loss.
5. Try to keep your soil’s fertility in balance.  Don’t overload your soil with any 1 nutrient.  Get some complete soil testing done and let us know if you need help interpreting the data.
6. Pray for rain.  Sufficient soil moisture will allow your fertilizer to be in soil solution and have better uptake.
7. Do everything else needed to raise a great crop.  For example, if you don’t control your seed and seedling diseases, your crop won’t bring in as many nutrients.  If your farm has poor drainage, your crop’s roots will die off and not bring fertilizer in.  If insects are allowed to feed on your crop, it won’t use as much fertilizer, etc.

You are probably investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, each year on fertilizer.  Why not get more of that into your crop this year instead of potentially some year in the future?

• Des Moines, IA Agronomy & Tiling Clinic at Iowa Events Center – Tuesday, February 14 – 9:30 am – 3:30 pm
• Mesa, AZ at Mesa Convention Center – Friday, February 17 – 9:30 am – 2:00 pm
• *Bismarck, ND at Doublewood Inn – Tuesday, February 21 – Noon – 4:00 pm
• *Minot, ND at Grand International – Wednesday, February 22 – 9:30 am – 2:00 pm
• *Devils Lake, ND at Spirit Lake Casino – Thursday, February 23 – 9:30 am – 2:00 pm
• *Fargo, ND at the Holiday Inn – Friday, February 24 – 9:30 am – 2:00 pm
• Sidney, MT at Sidney Country Club – Wednesday, March 07 – Noon – 4:00 pm
• Great Falls, MT at the Hilton Garden Inn – Thursday, March 08 – 9:00 am – 1:30 pm

*Immediately following these workshops, Swenson Investments & Commodities will be presenting a short question & answer session on Estate Planning & Commodity Trading.  We invite you to attend that if you’re interested in learning more about those topics.

Other Speaking Appearances for Brian & Darren

• Valley City, ND at the North Dakota Winter Show Event Center
  Tuesday, March 6 – 10 am to 1 pm – ND Winter Show – Brian Hefty will be talking about tiling and other agronomy topics
• Nashville, TN at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center
  Thursday, March 1 – 7 am to 8 am – Commodity Classic – Brian & Darren will talk on “Doubling Your Yields in 20 Years or Less”