“You can’t stop
me! You’re a rookie, you don’t know
anything.” – Larry Bird to his opponent Clyde Drexler
On this particular night of NBA action
in early December of 1983, Larry Bird led his team with 41 points, 14 rebounds,
and 7 assists in a 115-106 home win over the Portland Trailblazers. Larry Bird was just starting his fifth year
of NBA action at the time and at only a few days shy of his 27th
birthday, he had the confidence and ability to dominate any basketball game he
desired. On the other hand, Drexler was
only five weeks into his rookie campaign, and came off the bench to garner 14
minutes of playing time with a stat line of 4 points, 1 rebound, 1 steal, 3
fouls, and 2 turnovers while mostly assigned to guarding Bird. The prior season, Drexler was a brash member
of the nation’s second place collegiate team with the Univ. of Houston “Phi Slama
Jama” Cougars.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198312020BOS.html
After the Celtics game Drexler was
amazed at the physical talent and confidence Bird demonstrated in leading his
team to the win. Thankfully in the
Trailblazer’s case, Drexler was humble enough to realize his weaknesses and
strove to continually improve his game.
Drexler went on to a Hall of Fame career and a place on the “50 Greatest
Players at 50” roster in 1997.
The early growing pains of any rookie
in any business can be very similar.
Hopefully, if you have given the opportunity to a new employee on your
team for the season, you will also have some great veterans available to lead
and guide them in their journey within the farm business. Your patience and guidance along with some
great teammates will set the stage for them to become valuable contributors in
the short and long-term ahead. Good
luck!
Regional Weather
Well, it was good to see some
rain give us a bit of relief last week.
As has been the trend for most of the moisture coming into North Dakota
over the past several months, the southeast part of the state received the most
significant portions. Hopefully, the
trend continues and the rain cumulations hit more significantly to the north
and west within the state.
Soil temperatures continue to
build, but they will obviously slow down this week with the cooler temps and
some precipitation. The soil
temperature chart (oFahrenheit) comes from NDAWN at 6 pm Monday,
April 12th. As
you can see, many locations have soil temps building into the 40F range with
Bottineau clearly the coolest spot within the northern half of the state. Only the Grand Forks, Adams, Langdon, and
Bottineau locations are without at least one 40F soil temp reading at the
various depths (Pekin is close with only the 8” depth a hair over 40F temp).
After this week of cooler and wetter weather, my guess is many operations will be willing to plant corn and sugar beets as well as sow spring wheat at a heavier consistency.
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 third full week of April,
the forecast is towards remaining on the cooler than average conditions for
temps. Regarding the precipitation
chances, they trend to slightly below average for our region.
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/products/predictions/long...lead=2
This forecast
currently predicts above average chances on the temperature potential, along with
equal chances for precipitation across the region. It continues to be a developing situation
that points our thoughts and actions towards conserving as much soil moisture
as possible to start the season.
Farming
Safety
As we look to get into the fields more consistently in the coming
days to weeks, here are a few simple reminders.
Often, just providing the opportunity for conversation with your
employee team can go a long way to having positive dialogue and preventing
future accidents and/or bodily injury.
- Always actuate and check hazard/indicator lights on farm
machinery before getting on the road.
Many of today’s motorists do not understand
the limitations of tractors, trucks, combines, etc. and utilizing hazard
lights will make other motorists increase their awareness
- Ensure your equipment is safety compliant with your
state’s specific agriculture road travel requirements. The state of North Dakota’s Ag
Transportation Handbook can be viewed here: https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/farmsafety/tractor-and-road-safety/nd-agriculture-transportation-handbook
- Avoid
traveling down roads at sunset and sunrise.
The low angle of the sun can easily cause temporary vision difficulties by both equipment operators and oncoming motorists. Often, these hours can have temperature inversions where the dust hangs in the air and aids in visibility challenges - If
you have kids on the farm, always know where they are.
We’ve heard too many tragic stories about small children. It only takes a minute or two to stop the machinery and ensure safety - Wear personal
protective equipment (PPE) equipment around hazardous materials.
Remember that many of today’s advanced seed treatments contain insecticides and fungicides. Handling treated seed is very similar to handling pesticide jugs for the sprayer. Even dust from moving seed can be a hazard (inhalation). Safety equipment required for handling seed treatment is listed on MSDS sheets, and like all other pesticides should be posted in common areas for viewing by farm workers - Allow
time for rest. Accidents happen during peak
seasons as we try to accomplish more with less. Taking the time for adequate rest allows
for better decision making by everyone on the team.
Soil Amendments
Well, you know things are
heating-up in the agriculture world when we start seeing a plethora of different
type of “fertilizer saving”, or “soil health” type products. As more and more tools become available for
better research and better discovery of biological products, the trend isn’t
going to slow down anytime soon. One
question to propose is if the product has been EPA tested with an approved
label. This quickly narrows the
discussion and the volume of products to include in on-farm testing.
If you are looking for products in
this realm, I’ll mention Corteva’s® Instinct NXTGEN® nitrogen stabilizer for
use with urea and/or liquid nitrogen. Label
Weather Outlook – 2021 Season
DTN conducted a webinar at the end of
March outlining the expectations across the country for the spring and summer
growing season. Currently, there are weakening
La Nina conditions which lead to prediction forecasts of average for
precipitation for our region in both the spring and summer months. Temperature forecasts are also neutral (to
slightly above average) for the growing season.
Across the US, dryness and drought is
expected to expand in the western 40% of US, while wetter conditions will be
the trend in the eastern third of the country.
Coming out of a LaNina winter, the 2021
growing season should trend towards the analogue years of 2018, 2011, 2008,
and/or 2001 – over the past 20 years.
I heard Daryl Ritchison (NDSU meteorologist)
last week at an event up by Langdon and he provided a similar outlook for the
season. The only addition Daryl had was
he did not expect an early September autumn frost like we seen during
2020. With more of an extended growing
season in the autumn, we should see GDD’s trend higher across the state in 2021
versus the prior year.
Corn Planting Depth Study
If you had a choice of depth for every
single planted kernel of corn across the farm, what would you choose? As long as you’re somewhere between 1.25” and
2.5” you’ll be fairly safe. For folks
who like shallower depths, the argument is shallower placed kernels will
receive additional heat units during the day (soils at 1.25” deep will gain
more thermal energy during the day than soil at deeper depths), and thus
seedlings will emerge more quickly.
However, don’t shallower soils also cool the most at night? Farm operators who like deeper depths tend to
like the more consistent moisture and slightly more consistent soil
temperatures.
We all know it’s not how quick or how
slow a field of corn emerges that is the most crucial, but more in how uniform
the plants emerge. NDSU had some date
form 2013 –’14 on the topic that revealed a 35-40% yield hit from plants that
were delayed in emergence by 5-17 days).
Most of today’s top corn producers would have the goal of getting the
cropped fully emerged (once emergence starts) inside of 24-48 hours.
Pioneer conducted some research on this
exact topic in a 3-year study (2017-2019) in west central Ohio. The results are summarized in the following table. These results indicate that we should lean
towards the deeper side when planting corn, as we shoot for quicker progress
through the emergence window. The column
of T50 would be the time (days or GDDs) elapsed from planting to 50%
of the plants emerged. The term “T10-T90”
would account for the days or GDDs elapsed for corn to progress from 10%
emerged to 90% emerged.
As you can see, the time from 10% emerged to 90% emerged actually decreased as planting depth increased from 1” to 2”, and in the high organic matter (om) soils, the time decreased again as planting depth moved from 2” to 3”. Usually low om soils get earlier planting dates because they are drier and warm-up more quickly than higher om soils. Thankfully, these soils stimulate quicker and more uniform corn crop emergence as well. No wonder those NCGA national winners like to increase the corn production intensity on their sandy irrigated fields!
https://www.pioneer.com...Corn-Planting-Depth-Soil-Temperature... https://www.ag.ndsu.edu...evaluating-emergence-uniformity...06-04-15
Product Spotlight: P03T87E
Pioneer’s new 03 RM variety with Enlist® herbicide tolerance is named P03T87E. This variety’s strength will be yield for the maturity zone as it performs about equal on yield to P03A26X and Asgrow’s AG03X7 variety – two industry leaders in the early Group 0 RM zone. The genetics for P03T87E rate above average for field emergence and canopy width, but only average at best for tolerance to iron deficiency and white mold. The phytophthora root-rot scores are good with a field tolerance level of 5 and the 1c gene - the Lumisena™ fungicide seed treatment will enhance the phytop protection as well.
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 still a few units
available of this soybean variety and other new Enlist® soybean genetics. Please reach-out to myself and/or your local
Pioneer agent if you’d be interested in trying a field or two.
Random Agricultural Facts – Wettest US
Places
Since we are starting to see some relief of our current
short-term drought, I pondered where our country’s wettest areas may reside. The Pacific Northwest (PNW) in the lower 48
states is by far the rainiest area with many locations receiving over 100” per
annum. The PNW location with the most
annual rainfall is Aberdeen Reservoir, WA (located west of Puget Sound and the
city of Seattle – only 30-40 miles off the Pacific coast).
The US city with the highest rainfall would be New Orleans
at 62.7” annually.
If you look to the US’s 49th and 50th states, locations in both Hawaii and Alaska easily top the PNW for annual rainfall. In Alaska, the Baranof Island is the wettest area with the small village of Little Port Walter receiving over 237” of annual precipitation. For Hawaii, Mount Waialeale on the island of Kauai and Big Bog on Maui receive about 400” of rain annually making them both one of the wettest places on the planet.
https://www.escape.com.au/escape-travel/the-top-10-wettest-places...
https://www.tripsavvy.com/wettest-places-in-the-usa-4135027
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