“Now, what problems are we having on offense?” - John Gigliardi
head football coach at halftime with his team up 35-0
Despite any given situation, there is always
room for improvement. Sometimes the
situation may look so bleak that improvement is the only option going forward
(commodity markets in July of 2020). However,
there are situations where things are going well and most would just hope to
maintain the momentum. Usually, it takes
a unique individual to take a good situation and continue to find ways to push
forward to make it even better.
Coach Gigliardi (pronounced Gil-ardi) was one
of those folks and a big reason why he is the winningest football coach in
college history (486 career wins). You
most likely have never heard of the guy as he coached at the Div. III
institution of St. John’s University in central Minnesota. Regardless of his team’s position during a
game, season, or off-season, John didn’t let-up on his focus to keep the program’s
football team at a consistent high level as well as provide the student athlete
a rewarding college experience.
Many large farms have been highly successful
over the past half-dozen seasons despite the depressed farm economy – they just
have a knack at finding ways to succeed no matter the circumstances. Now that the agriculture landscape is
changing again, new challenges will arise and I’m sure many of you will
continue to find ways to challenge your teams and maintain your status as top
farm operations in the region. Good
luck!
If you’d like to read more on coach John
Gigliardi, check out Boz Bostrom’s book on John’s life, “Legacy Unrivaled”: https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Unrivaled-Story-John-Gagliardi/dp/168134016X
Regional Weather
The above average conditions are
forecasted to continue again for the week, and we’ll even have some mornings
without freezing. It’s starting to be
very difficult to even find snow in the tree rows! Our next chance of significant precipitation
looks to be forming for the first part of next week.
Well, I couldn’t even get out a
soil temp chart for the region before a couple farm operations found a chance
to sow a quarter or two of spring wheat.
It’s not very often we get the chance to place some seed in the ground before
May (let alone before April), but taking a roll of the dice doesn’t intimidate
too many large successful farm managers.
This soil temperature chart (oFahrenheit)
comes from NDAWN at 9 am Monday, March 15th. As you can see, most locations are bordering on the
frost/freeze point in the top 1-2 foot of soil depth. There is some slightly warmer soil much
deeper. Fargo, Logan Center, Carrington,
Maddock, and Williston all have soil temperatures above 32.0F at all depths –
some locations, like Logan Center, just barely make the cut.
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 National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (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
For the fourth full week of March,
the forecast is towards significantly warmer than average potential for temperatures. Regarding the precipitation chances, they remain
below average for central and western North Dakota, and above average for
northwestern Minnesota.
The NOAA
organization also provides three month outlooks. If we would like to get a general forecast
for the key months to start the upcoming growing season (May-June-July), it can
be seen here:
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov.../long_range/seasonal.php?lead=3
This forecast
currently predicts significantly above average chances on the temperature potential,
along with equal chances for precipitation in northwestern Minnesota. For most of North Dakota, the precipitation
chances trend towards drier than average.
It continues to be a developing situation
that points our thoughts and actions towards conserving soil moisture.
Pre-emerge Herbicide Concerns in a Dry Spring
I’ve fielded a few questions over the last couple weeks on pre-emerge
herbicide use during a dry spring. The
farmer concerns are around the herbicide potentially volatilizing into the
atmosphere or not providing much control if it has sit on the soil surface for
numerous days to a couple weeks without a 0.5” to 1” rain for thorough
incorporation.
Fortunately, most herbicides break-down by microbial activity and/or
complex chemical reactions in moist soil (hydrolysis). Therefore, these herbicides will remain
stable on the soil surface in concentration for prolonged periods. Yes, not all herbicides fall into this
category and a couple do break down by sunlight and UV wavelengths. However, we
typically apply these herbicides with immediate soil incorporation – Eptam® and
Far-go® primarily come to mind. The
yellow herbicides of Sonalan®, Prowl®, and Treflan® also degrade by UV light
and work best with soil incorporation. Metolachlor
(Dual®/EverpreX®) has recently been found to have some breakdown by sunlight as
well – however, other similar herbicides in this class of chemistry are not
affected.
Unfortunately, if conditions do remain dry and only minimal small
rains of say 0.15” or less do occur, then usually the herbicide does not become
fully activated. However, the weeds have
enough moisture to germinate and become established. The good news is that unless the weeds get
large (over ½” to ¾” tall) most good pre-herbicides will “reach-back” to
provide control once that incorporating rain is received (Valor™, Zidua™,
Sharpen, and sulfentrazone products).
Once the incorporating rain is received, a good activation period will
ensue to prevent new weed seedlings from emerging.
https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/.../fate-of-soil-applied-herbicides-05-26-16
A 2016/’17 study by NDSU found that when
incorporating rain was delayed 7 days after per-herbicide application, the
pre-herbicide products of Fierce® (flumioxazin (Valor®) + pyroxasulfone
(Zidua®)) and Spartan® (sulfrentrazone) maintained very strong weed kill
performance. Meanwhile, metribuzin
(Sencor®) did degrade slightly in performance with a 7 day wait for
incorporation. Unfortunately, these were
the only three herbicides tested in the trial.
https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/drought/crops/soybean-pre-herbicide-activation
Corn Herbicide Options from Corteva™
Having an early weed control mindset for our
crops this season should help maintain a jump on the weeds and conserve
moisture. It seems like the weeds always
seem tougher to kill post-emerge under dry conditions when they get some size. In the corn, more and more operations are
finding the early V-1 to V-3 crop growth stage is about perfect for applying a
robust herbicide mix to control emerged weeds as well as adding some residual
control. For Corteva™ based options in
our region, a couple ideas come to mind.
·
Keystone LA® NXT + WideMatch® – this herbicide mix is gaining popularity has it has minimal crop rotation restrictions. Actechlor, atrazine, copyralid (Stinger®) and fluroxypyr (Starane®) are all in this mix. If you add some glyphosate we’ll have at least a couple active ingredients targeting most weed species. At an application rate for Keystone of 1.8 qts/ac, it equates to only 3/8 lb. of atrazine, providing adequate crop rotation flexibility. Keystone label: https://...agrian-cg-fs1-production/pdfs/Keystone_LA_NXT1d_Label.pdf
·
Resicore® - this product fits more of our corn-soybean-wheat farm operations, but is a robust pre-mix that does an outstanding job of controlling all of our tough broadleaf weeds plus provide that critical residual control. Resicore® contains acetochlor, mesiotrione, and copyralid. Add some glyphosate and atrazine, and you have another great tank-mix combination of at least two to three active ingredients working together to control most weed species. It’s the mesiotrione that gives us a crop rotation restriction of 18 months to sugarbeets, potatoes and dry edible beans. Check the atrazine load as well. Resicore® label: https://...agrian-cg-fs1-production/pdfs/Resicore1u_Label.pdf
·
Resolve Q® - If you are unwilling to apply HPPD
inhibitors (like mesiotrione (Calisto®)) you most likely will struggle to
control volunteer canola in your corn crop. Therefore, Resolve Q® is a fantastic option to
add to your tank-mix in the post-emerge application. Resolve Q® has a 20” or seven collar crop growth
stage application restriction, but works best on volunteer canola less than 4-5”
in height. Resolve Q is a pre-mix of
rimsulfuron (Basis®) and thifensulfuron (a component of Affinity®). https://...agrian-cg-fs1-production/pdfs/...Resolve_Q_Label.pdf
Corn Fertility Management
Even though you may be hitting strong yield
levels in your corn production, is there room for improvement? Earlier this winter, I had the pleasure of
listening to one of our Pioneer managers down in the Texas panhandle (high
dessert plains region) assisting his growers with top production practices. If you’ve never experienced the area, they
are significant into irrigated corn and alfalfa to support the large cattle
feedlot operations in the region. The elevation
is 5-6000 feet in general with only about 10” of average annual
precipitation. Soils are fairly sandy
with very low water holding capacity, thus the need to irrigate over 20” per summer
for 98-107 RM corn hybrids.
Anyway, a few things from his presentation
really stuck with me and some ideas we may look to implement in the Northern
Plains. First, was the emphasis on
getting away from broadcast spreading dry fertilizer. With our region’s high clay content and high
pH soils (above 7.8 in many areas), having our fertilizer become plant
available can be a challenge. The
primary method to over-come the obstacle is the banding of fertilizer in the
fall or pre-plant in the spring. This doesn’t
have to be too complex with special equipment – no reason the air-seeder couldn’t
perform some fertilizer only applications in the autumn.
If we evaluate an acre-furrow-slice (AFS) –
that is a slice of soil covering one acre to a depth of 6” – it will generally
weigh around 2.0 mil pounds. A broadcast
application of a dry blend (N-P-K-S-Zn) at 400 lbs/ac which is incorporated to
a depth of 3”, results somewhere in the realm of 100 to 200 ppm concentration
of fertilizer in the top half of the AFS.
On the flip side, banding can create zones of fertilizer concentration
significantly much larger and thus less available for soil tie-up, making more
fertilizer obtainable for plant uptake.
Another benefit from an in-season application
would be to gain on the nitrogen use efficiency. Often, the combination of banding fertilizer
applications – pre-plant along with starter fertilizer use and at least one
application side-dress, the nitrogen efficiency can be improved to 0.8 to 0.9
lbs N/bu corn produced. If only a
pre-plant broadcast application is applied, the recommendation moves to 1.2 to
1.3 lbs N/bu of Yield Goal. I know our
soils can hold more moisture and thus more nitrogen than the dessert high
plains region, but I would bet we could improve both yields and nitrogen use
efficiency in our region if we invested in a method to apply nitrogen to our
corn crop at least once during the season and in combination with banding other
fertilizer applications.
At the end of the day, nitrogen is just one
component of the season’s corn fertility needs.
Don’t forget about the other elements like sulfur – typical corn production
in our area needs 12-20 lbs/ac sulfur.
Product Spotlight: Instinct® NXTGEN
To continue with the topic of
fertilizer management, not all farm operations have the time, manpower, and/or
capital to apply nitrogen in two or more different applications to the crop. Therefore, maybe there is an alternative solution
to where we can improve our efficiency with our nitrogen dollars and still
obtain top production goals.
In corn, split applications of nitrogen
most often reveal a positive response and are viewed as an “ideal” nitrogen
management program as a corn producer can modify the plan as needed on the
fly. If the spring has been wet and thus
the potential high for nitrogen leaching or denitrification, then we may want
to add more nitrogen than originally planned.
Conversely, if a fairly dry spring and the outlook for below average
yields, then we may adjust downward on the nitrogen rate.
In more heavy clay loam soils, our nitrogen applications are more protected from leaching due to the clay slowing the water infiltration movement through the soil profile. However, under very wet saturated conditions nitrogen loss occurs to denitrification. Optinyte® technology keeps the nitrogen stable under both leaching and denitrification scenarios.
If you have history of detecting nitrogen deficiency late season in corn, or you find yourself significantly above 1.1 lb of nitrogen planned per bushel of crop production goal, then nitrogen inhibitors should be considered and tested on the farm.
https://...agrian-cg-fs1-production/pdfs/Instinct_II_Label1i.pdf
NDSU has a nice publication on the
topic from 2017 with a comprehensive evaluation of current products on the
market. https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/publications/crops/nitrogen-extenders-and-additives-for-field-crops
Product Spotlight (2): P9193AM
The last product in our series of new Pioneer corn genetics for the spring in our region is P9193AM. It’s another strong agronomic hybrid with above average trait characteristic scores for drought, stress emergence, brittle-snap, late season standability, and Goss’s Wilt. It’s medium for plant height at 91 RM (relative maturity). Yield potential is solid as our IMPACT data reveals a bit more horsepower than other industry hybrids in the 90 RM zone – including P9188AM. If this P9193AM can demonstrate as much consistency as P9188AM, we’ll have another strong hybrid in the 90 RM segment.
For a quick review, Pioneer rates their
products on a 1-9 scale with 9 being the best/strongest/tallest. Average characteristic performance scores are
typically 4’s and 5’s; below average is 3, and above average strength would
rate 6 to 7. It is fairly rare to see an
advanced product with a trait score of 8, but it does happen. Most all products that would rate below a 3
on any given single agronomic score would not make it through the process to
become a commercially available product.
There are enough units of this hybrid to be
included in Pioneer’s PKP strip trial plots for the upcoming season, plus have
some additional supply for large side-x-side comparisons against competitive
hybrids. If you’d be interested in
having a strip trial or comparison trail on your farm, please reach-out to
myself and/or your local Pioneer agent and we’ll put a plan in place.
Random
Agricultural Facts – Daylight Savings Time History
Most all states in the US implement
Daylight Saving Time (DST), but can you name the two that don’t? If Hawaii was the first state that came to
mind that would be correct as they are our country’s southernmost state and
therefore daily sunlight hours do not vary as much throughout the year compared
to locations with more northern latitudes.
Arizona (most locations) would be the other state as they feel an energy
savings is more consistent during the spring and summer months without the
added extra hour of evening daylight.
The fact of cooler temps earlier in the evening and throughout a longer
stretch of the nighttime sleep hours should justify the state legislature’s
actions.
Most of the US territories also do not
observe DST: Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, and the
Northern Marina Islands – also due to their daylight hours being fairly
consistent over the course of a 12-month period. Any potential advantages of DST in these
locations would be very minimal. With
today’s amenities imbedded in our culture, one would think DST’s impact in
saving energy is fairly minimal.
Across the globe, DST is primarily
implemented in North American and Europe.
It’s interesting to note that countries such as Iceland, Kazakhstan,
Mongolia, and Russia no longer implement DST, despite their northern
latitudinal location.
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/usa
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/statistics.html
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