June 1, 2020 Edition

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work!”

Thomas Edison – American inventor

One of the many reasons I love working with the Pioneer team and large farm operations is for their ability to see opportunity and formulate a plan to capitalize.  Needless to say, there remains plenty of business opportunities in the world to try and harness – it’s just having enough capital and confidence in the labor force to go out there and tackle them!

Weather and Corn Development

It looks like another warm week ahead for the Far Northern Plains with a chance of rain on the weekend.  If temps hold close to the forecast over the week, we should hit around 130 GDD’s over the 7-day span.  After emergence, the corn crop will develop with a new leaf every 80-85 GDD’s (corn Growing Degree Day’s) from emergence to V10, or roughly a gain of three leaf stages per 2-week period with 80F plus daily high temperatures for the month of June.  https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn... /VStagePrediction.html

I’ll estimate most of the corn in the region was planted around May 15^th.  Therefore, I’ll provide NDAWN corn GDD maps starting at that point moving forward for the growing season.  As you can see, the Red River Valley has been consistent with heat all the way up to the Canadian border.  It’s interesting to note that the first two weeks of May provided very little corn heat (GDD) units (first map is GDD accumulations from May 15 to May 31; second map is May 1 to May 31).

I’ll count on your weather app for a best guidance through the 7-8 day forecast, but looking beyond that, I’ve found this site from NOAA to be fairly reliable for a general 8-14 day outlook.  https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/...  

During this time frame, basically next week, the forecast is to have slightly greater chances of being below average for temperatures, while the precipitation forecast is for slightly greater chances of being above average precipitation.  Therefore, push hard this week to get as much seeding and spraying accomplished as possible, and then we could probably use a break with a bit of rain.

Since we had a late start to the majority of our corn and soybean planting this spring, it is worthy of continuing to take a look at the Sept-Oct-Nov time frame for a long range 3-month outlook to try and see how the harvest season my look.  This timeframe forecast from NOAA reveals equal chances for both above and below average precipitation, but for temperatures, there is a significantly greater chance that we should experience warmer than average conditions.  Overall, an optimistic outlook for the autumn. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/.../predictions/long_range/seasonal...


Planting Progress in the US
Nationwide, the planting progress for corn and soybeans continues at a very strong pace.  Currently, the USDA reports the nation at about 93% planted for corn (89% is the 5-yr average), and 78% of the planted corn has emerged (similar to the 5-yr average of 73%).  For soybeans, 75% of the intended acres have been planted (68% is the 5-yr average), while 52% of the soybeans have emerged (44% is the 5-yr average). 

For crop condition, the corn crop has 75% of the acres in the good to excellent category, while the soybeans rate at 70% good to excellent.

The USDA says spring wheat is 91% sown with the 5-yr average of 96%, but the crop is looking good with an 80% crop condition report in the good or excellent category.

For the state of North Dakota, it is reporting 75% corn, 51% soybeans, 85% spring wheat, 40% sunflowers, and 99% sugarbeets for completion of planting percentages as of Sunday, May 31st. Canola is not reported.

From this point forward, I’d estimate that most of the remaining planting will be sunflowers and soybeans, with a bit of spring wheat and canola yet to be planted.

USDA’s Crop Progress reports can be found at this site:  https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/8336h188j

Post-emerge Weed Strategies

We’ve had near ideal conditions for crop and weed growth over the past two and a half weeks.  One of my long-time mentors had the saying during this time of year… “happy weeds die very well”.  This was to highlight if the weeds were very content with more than adequate heat, sunshine, fertility and water, they were very adapting to uptake anything and everything including the herbicide mix, and thus a great kill rate.

Often through the stage of post-emerge weed application season, we endure several factors to keep weeds and crops stressed: too much water, not enough sunshine, too much wind, cold nights, etc.).  Loading up the tank with full rates of adjuvants and herbicides to make sure the stressed weeds have better uptake of the pesticide mix is often a good strategy.  However, we sometimes forget those high rates also must be metabolized by the crop. 

Unless the weather changes significantly, we should have very good uptake and performance with our post-emerge spray programs this season (excluding potential herbicide resistant populations).  Unfortunately, tank-mixes with high adjuvant load can be more difficult for the crop to metabolize and result in increased crop response.

At the end of the day, please stay in touch with your agronomist and/or retail crop protection provider to ensure that appropriate rates of adjuvants and herbicide mixes are ideal for the targeted weed species and weed size.  This will most likely be a spring where we can adjust the rates downward and still maintain maximum weed uptake while also improving crop safety.  Good luck!  https://extension.psu.edu/spray-adjuvants

Corteva® Announces Changes Regarding US Seed Brands for 2021Corteva Agri-Sciences® is introducing Brevant™ seeds in the U.S. for sale exclusively through retail.  Brevant™ has been an international seed brand over the past couple seasons and is now moving to be represented in the USA as well starting in 2021.

Brevant™ branded seed products will be available in the Northern Plains, Midwest and Eastern Corn Belt regions through retail exclusively in the US.  You may remember the Mycogen™ brand originally had this designation within Corteva®, but after a couple seasons there remained some unclear positioning as a few independent individual Mycogen™ seed dealers remained.  In the end, a clean picture of a Corteva® seed brand needed to represent retail and the conclusion was to dissolve the Mycogen™ brand and re-focus in the market segment with Brevant™.  As previously announced Corteva® will continue to serve U.S. farmers through various regional “farmer-dealer” seed brands in the U.S. (such as Dairyland® in the Northern Plains).  Pioneer® will remain the company’s flagship seed brand and available through high touch/high service seed agencies.  Corteva® is committed to ensuring a smooth transition, and will honor program, product, and service obligations for existing seed orders and the 2020 growing season.  Prior Mycogen™ employees and seed dealers will be provided opportunities with the Corteva® business.

Industry research outlines that in the U.S. market, approximately 1/3 of seed is purchased through the retail sector, 1/3 is purchased through a “farmer-dealer” service, and 1/3 is purchased through independent professional seed agencies.  For the N.Dakota and NW Minnesota geography, I’d suspect the seed purchase through retail would supersede seed purchases through the other two segments.  This move by Corteva® clearly defines three brands to target each purchasing segment of farm managers.

“Crop Life” had an interesting article on the move to Brevant™ from Corteva® for the retail seed sector.  The article makes an interesting comment on the fact that seed sales revenue at the retail level has not been as significant as most had predicted 10-15 years ago.  Sales of seed in the retail sector have only increased from 9% to 16% of overall ag-retail revenue since the early 2000’s.  To read the full “Crop Life” article:  https://www.croplife.com/crop-inputs/seed-biotech/corteva-brevant...

http://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail---35217-e.htm

Product Spotlight – FeXapan™The month of June is upon us and a great time to emphasize the need for all dicamba formulations to be applied over the next 20 (Minnesota) or 30 days (North Dakota) in RR2Xtend® soybeans.  Corteva’s® branded dicamba formulation for over-the-top application in soybeans is named “FeXapan™” and contains the VaporGrip™ technology to reduce volatilization and assist greatly in keeping the dicamba on target. 

The other dicamba products on the market for over-the-top approved formulations for use in Xtend® soybeans include: ExtendiMax™ by Bayer (Germany), Engenia™ by BASF (Germany) and Tavium™ by Syngenta (China).  Fexapan™ (USA), XtendiMax™, and Tavium™ all have dicamba with the VaporGrip™ technology.  Tavium® distinguishes itself in this list with the addition of metolachlor (Dual™, Cinch™, EverpreX™, etc.) in the jug as a pre-mix for longer residual control.  BASF’s Engenia™ is a heavier salt formulation of dicamba and thus has lower use rates compared to the VaporGrip® products.

NDSU Crop and Pest Report – Soybean Cyst Nematode

The NDSU Crop and Pest report is a great resource for agronomic insight impacting our region.  They distribute a weekly report via e-mail and subscriptions can be found here as desired: https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/cpr/subscribe-to-crop-pest-report-pdf-version

Towards the end of May, they had a great article on Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN) presence in North Dakota as well as data on the SCN resistance to the very common PI 88788 soybean variety genetic package to help farm producers fight against SCN.  As you can see from the chart below, most SCN populations at the field level are able to sexually reproduce on soybean varieties with the PI 88788 SCN genetic resistance package.  The states of Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Tennessee all have the vast majority of their SCN field populations showing the ability to reproduce under PI 88788 presence, making the soybean seed trait virtually worthless in those areas.

Although North Dakota was not sampled for the reproduction research, the good news is that South Dakota is only reporting a 25% level of reproduction and I would assume northwestern Minnesota would be holding down Minnesota’s results of 64%. 

Unfortunately at this stage, most seed companies are still providing commercially available varieties with the PI 88788 genetics wide-spread within their current seed offerings.  It is estimated that 80-90% of commercially available soybean varieties with SCN resistance are with the PI88788 genetic package.  The alternative soybean cyst genetic package of “Peking” is present in the maturity zone of Group 00 and Group 0 for our region, but with only a very few select varieties today.  There are alternative soybean cyst genetic packages being developed in most soybean breeding programs, and these genetic packages to fight SCN will become commercially available in soybean varieties in the near future (2-5 years). https://crops.iastate.edu/cropnews/20-scn-infested-fields-200-buac...

Also, the EPA is considering the proposal to register a Cry14Ab-1 Bt protein in soybeans with activity against SCN.  Currently, there is a 15-day comment period underway with comments due into the EPA by June 5^th.  https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-proposes-action-protect-soybeans-major-agricultural-pest

For the North Dakota and northwest Minnesota area, unless a location is very heavy into a consistent soybean rotation, farm managers and agronomists should be able to stay ahead of the SCN pest.  Over the next decade a combination of tools will become more available: Peking genetics, other genetic packages currently being bred into germplasm, and Genetically Engineered (GE) Bt traits.  As usual, it’ll be interesting to see how the technology progresses with potential “stacked” traits to fight our Number 1 yield robbing pest in US soybean production.

Random Agricultural Facts – Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l History

Believe it or not, it was 94 years ago this May that Pioneer Hi-Bred started marketing and selling agricultural seed products in the central Iowa area.  Most everyone knows that Pioneer Hi-Bred got its business start by selling corn genetics in the heart of the Midwest (Iowa) back in the 1920’s.  But does anyone know the second crop Henry A. Wallace brought to market in the seed business under the “Pioneer®” brand??

It would be easy to guess soybeans, but that answer would be wrong!  Actually, grain sorghum was the second hybrid crop Pioneer® added to its product line-up to address customer needs where moisture was limited for corn production.  The sorghum breeding program was established in the mid-1950s.  From then on, the target market continued to grow, and commercial sorghum operations began in 1962 with the first bags of Pioneer grain sorghum being sold in the state of Texas.

So, how about the soybeans?  You’ll be glad to know that soybeans were the third crop Pioneer Hi-Bred brought to market.  The year?  It was 1973 that Pioneer began selling commercial soybeans in the US.

https://www.pioneer.com/home/site/about/business/who-we-are/our-heritage/