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If this is actually a movie, I’d be interested in viewing it. But my guess is that the message relates to the current state of affairs with all the happenings around COVID-19, the main-stream media, and the political environment upon us. If you are like myself and many other folks I converse with, you may have found more serenity and wisdom by giving your attention elsewhere. Maybe a good book or two, an increase in family time, or some time dedicated to improving personal health/wellbeing has infiltrated more into your daily routine.
Now that most all of the crop inputs have been applied to
the corn, soybeans and spring wheat, we may find ourselves looking for wisdom
while thinking of adjustments and improvements for next year. Improving farm efficiencies in the field is
one thing, but strong farm businesses also look for ways to bolster their
operation behind the scenes… better benefit packages for their labor, analysis
improvement of their farm financials, and/or expanding their off-farm
investments to create broader diversity and risk. Whatever the goal, there are multiple ways to
achieve it.
If you are looking to improve some aspect of your operation,
Pioneer can help. We have several key
resources within the industry that can either provide the service directly, or
help you learn more broadly or specifically about a segment of the business. Please reach-out to me directly or contact
your local Pioneer sales agency for more insight.
Weather and
Corn Development
We
continue to have great conditions for the warm season crops to flourish. We’ll have moderate temperatures for the week
with small chances of precipitation. The
average temperatures will bring about 130-135 GDD’s for the week ahead.
The GDD accumulation map for our
region through the 26th of July has our corn crop in a very
favorable position as we finish-up pollination in most fields. With most locations around 100 to 200 GDD’s above
normal (1981-2010 for a 30-year average is normal for NDAWN), we are seeing
this season’s corn crop about a solid week ahead of average in general with regards
to maturity.
Last week may have not seemed wet
overall, but when looking across the entire seven days, we did pick-up
significant rainfall and along with the high humidity, we didn’t dry-out very
much. The corn is still consuming about 1/4
to 3/10th of an inch of water per day depending on heat, humidity
and sunshine. Hopefully, we can dry-out
some before the autumn precipitation events start.
I’ll count on your weather app
for the 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 (next week).
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/index.php
During this time frame the
forecast is to have greater chances of being above average for temperatures,
while the precipitation forecast is for equal chances to slightly above average
chances of being wetter than normal.
The NOAA group
also provides three month outlooks. If
we would like to get a bit of insight for the autumn harvest season of Sept-Oct-Nov
time frame, it can be seen here: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/seasonal.php?lead=2
This timeframe forecast
has been updated to reveal above average chances of higher temperatures, but
only equal chances of either above or below average precipitation.
The USDA estimates corn silking is occurring
across 82% of the US acreage, and at 56% for North Dakota. The prior 5-year average for corn silking
across the US is 75%, making the corn crop slightly ahead of schedule across
the nation. The corn crop condition
report states that 72% of acreage in the good to excellent category (up a tad
from last week’s 69%), and surprisingly the North Dakota crop rates at the same
level of the US crop – 72% in the good to excellent category (also up three points).
For soybeans, USDA predicts that 76% of the
acres are blooming, while 72% rate in the good to excellent category for crop
condition. North Dakota’s soybeans would
rate at 63% good to excellent and 71% are at least in the bloom stage.
Spring wheat has a 70% good to excellent
rating across the US for crop condition with N.Dakota’s spring wheat condition
rated below the national average at 64% good to excellent.
Overall, individual reports across the
country reveal a good to excellent crop coming in many/most locations. The US Drought Monitor for late July only has
some minor acreage of “Moderate Drought” throughout the major grain producing
regions.
What’s Happening in my Corn and Soybean Crops?
For
corn, I like the University of Purdue’s “Grain Fill Stages in Corn” guide. https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/grainfill.html
Regardless
of corn relative maturity, it’ll take the typical corn hybrid about 60 days
from the start of silking (R1) to physiological maturity (R6) or black
layer. If we have average heat units
moving forward, we should see fully mature corn of 30-35% moisture around
September 20th to 25th – a favorable and enjoyable spot
to be.
For
soybeans, there are many resources primarily highlighting the same insight on
the reproductive stages, so I’ll just provide the following Pioneer.com site: https://www.pioneer.com/us/agronomy/staging-soybean-growth.html
Soybeans are in a unique time currently as they are still putting on vegetative growth, flowering and starting pod formation. Moisture and temperature conditions look ideal, and I look for the soybean crop to continue to improve significantly over the next couple weeks.
Product
Spotlight – Redekop®
Redekop®
has an interesting development in the area of controlling weeds at harvest
time. Unfortunately, weed resistance to
herbicides continues to plague many farms and we realize that there are not
many viable weed control options at this stage of the season and through the
end of the year. Redekop®’s thought
process revolves around the fact that many of our resistant weeds will have the
next generation of seeds passing through a combine at the end of the
season. If we can capture or destroy
these weed seeds in the harvesting process, it can go a long way to reducing
weed seedbank numbers as well as decrease our reliance exclusively to herbicides
to impact future weed numbers.
Redekop®
has a couple options available for managing weed seed numbers. Their best option for our region would to
pulverize or crush the weed seed.
Redekop®’s team has designed and built a device that mounts under the
sieve on the combine to take the chaff fraction and basically grind it to dust
before distributing it back to the field.
This method eliminates any further seasonal management, while also
maximizing efficiency and flexibility of future field operations.
If
your operation is battling resistant weed populations today (like wild oats,
kochia, common ragweed, and/or waterhemp), or you would be interested in
staying ahead of the evolving weed pests, I would encourage you to view
Redekop®’s website and see how their products could impact your farm business and
prolong the viability of the herbicide resource.
https://redekopmfg.com/products/harvest-weed-seed-control/
https://www.fwi.co.uk/machinery/harvest-equipment/combines/agri...
GMO Approval Changes
from USDA
Back
in May, the USDA approved the “SECURE Rule” to minimize regulations around
Genetically Engineered (GE) technology and advances in the biotech realm. Supporters of USDA’s actions comment on the
fact that these regulations have not been significantly updated since the
science first entered the industry in the 1990’s. Opponents to the SECURE Rule, say that
biotechnology has fueled “super weeds” with herbicide resistance to significant
multiple modes of action.
My
response to those opponents would be the weeds would have continued to evolve
herbicide resistance despite glyphosate bio-tech. Maybe the spread of herbicide resistance
would have slowed, but by not approving GE crops back in the 1990’s, our weed
resistance scenario would not have been solved.
If we evaluate some of the countries that were slow to adopt GE
technology (i.e. Australia), we quickly realize they still have a growing
number of weed populations and species with resistance to glyphosate as well as
other herbicides.
Also,
now that we are at this point in history, novel new herbicide stacked GE crops
will help arm farm managers with broader tools to stay ahead of the
threat. With the painfully expensive, tedious,
and slow process of bringing new herbicide mode of actions to the market, we’ll
need GE herbicide stacked traits to maintain a handle on our resistant weeds.
Lastly,
the SECURE Rule will help aid technology like CRISPR a chance to improve nutritional
quality of food, as well as other key crop characteristics (i.e. drought
tolerance, disease tolerance, etc). So
at the end of the day, the ruling should provide more consistent food security
with everyone benefiting – the general public as food consumers, farm managers,
and the ag-industry businesses investing in GE technology.
http://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail---35362-e.htm
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/genomicresearch/genomeediting
Brazil with
record Ag Exports
With
everyone keeping a close eye on the US-China trade war, Brazil placed together
a record June 2020 ag export business with sales of US$10.2 bil. The growth over June ‘19 was 24.5%.
With
the large ‘20 Brazilian soybean crop of 122 MMT (or 4.47 bil bushels), it comes
as no surprise that over 50% (actually 53.4% or US$5.42 bil) of the Brazilian June ag-export
sales were soybeans. What was the
destination of all those soybeans? Well,
it should come as no surprise the FarmDoc article states that about 70% of them
went to China. Even with the large ‘20
crop of soybeans, Brazil continues to import a few soybeans from their
neighbors to help satisfy demand.
It’s
good to see soybean demand remain high. Hopefully,
we can continue to see some strengthening US foreign relations and a weaker US dollar that will continue to help US soybeans compete on the world stage. For comparison, the May ’20 US soybean export
value was US$702 mil. Using the above
figures, the May 2020 US soybean export value was only 13% of the June 2020
Brazil soybean export value.
Disappointing, but unfortunately that’s what the numbers reveal.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/741384/soybean-production-vol...
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2020/07/brazilian-agribusiness...
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/foreign-agricultural-trade...
Brazil
Facing Scrutiny over Illegal Deforestation
An interesting report came out of Science magazine about Brazil and their
agriculture production from illegally deforested lands. You wouldn’t think that there would be much
ramification for illegally deforesting land, but the EU is raising criticism as
they have a pending trade agreement with Mercusor (the South American trading
bloc of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay).
The trade agreement between the two bloc’s do contain environmental
protections and the EU is threatening not to ratify the pending agreement due
to Brazil’s lack of commitment to an environmental agenda.
The recently completed study estimates that only 2% of the rural
Brazilian farms accounted for 60% of the detected illegal deforestation. There is no mention on acreage that is
influenced, however the illegal deforestation accounted for 17% of meat and 20%
of the soybeans that were exported to the EU.
If these are the estimated volumes of export to the EU, I wonder how
much of Brazil’s soybeans exported to China came from illegally deforested
lands? Maybe this will funnel more EU
soybean purchases from the US.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6501/246
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2020/07/science-magazine-study...
Random
Agricultural Facts – US and Canada 2020 Plantings
We’ve all heard the term “corn is king” which comes from
maize dominating US farm acre production for decades. But, what is the “king” of crops in our neighboring
country to the north?
If you count spring wheat, winter wheat and durum wheat
together as “all-wheat”, that total acreage in Canada would add-up to 25.0 mil
acres. Spring wheat dominates the
“all-wheat” category with 17.9 mil acres, with durum a distant second at 5.7
mil acres. If we brake-up the wheat
category, canola would be king at 20.8 mil acres. After “all-wheat”, canola, and barley, soybeans
would come in at a distant fourth at 5.1 mil acres. If you are wondering about Canadian corn
acreage, it would arrive in 8th place (after field peas, lentils,
and oats) at 3.6 mil acres. All numbers
are based on 2020 Canadian June preliminary estimates for planting of principle
field crops.
It’s interesting to note that Canada has only 78.5 mil acres
of principle crops… heck, over the last several years, the US often plants more
total soybean acres than that!
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/.../t001c-eng.htm
For the USA in 2020, corn is king at 92.0 mil acres, soybeans
follow at 83.8 mil acres, and all-wheat (winter, spring and durum) at 44.25 mil
acres would round out the top three crops in terms of acres planted across the
US. But, are there any guesses to the
fourth most crop planted in the US?
For crops, cotton probably would qualify as 4th
at 12.1 mil acres forecasted for 2020 planting.
Alfalfa as hay would be in the discussion as well at 16.4 mil
acres. Other hay – which could include a
variety of forage crops – would account for 36.0 mil acres, making all hay at a
total acreage of 52.4 mil acres (more than all-wheat).
After hops (fifth at 7.5 mil acres) and sorghum (sixth at
5.6 mil acres), the remaining crops barely make-up 14 mil acres of US plantings
in 2020. For the beer lover, it’s
interesting to note that hops acreage is about 2.7 times the size of the barley
acres (7.5 mil vs 2.8 mil).
Principle crop acreage in the US accounts for 311.9 mil
acres in 2020; almost four times the Canadian principle crop acreage.
For a source on these US ag stats, or to review the June
2020 USDA plantings report, click on this link: https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/j098zb09z/vx022244t/8910kf38j/acrg0620.pdf
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