“You guys don’t
have anything to worry about. DJ’s going
to bring the ball down, Chief is going to set a pick and I’m just going to
roll-out over there to make a jumper.
You’ll get to go home early!” – Larry Bird
This edition of Larry comes from the waning
moments of Game 4 of the 1985 NBA Finals at the Forum in Los Angeles. The game was tied with 19 seconds remaining
in the 4th quarter, and the Celtics with possession after a
time-out. In his own unique style, Larry
Bird tells everyone the play, and adds a little funny twist at the end about
going home early. It brings some humor
to the situation as it’s the road team who always prefers to avoid
overtime as they often are a little weary due to the travel (especially cross-country
in this case), and thus do not like the extra minutes of game time.
Anyway, the first 2/3rds of the
play unfolds just as Larry describes, but Magic Johnson decides to run over and
double team Bird. Larry sees the double
team coming, waits for Magic to fully commit, then passes the ball back to a
wide-open Dennis Johnson. DJ shoots the
jumper as time expires and the Celtics win the game (107-105). The win evened the championship series at two
games apiece for the Celtics, but they eventually lost the series 4-2, ending
their rein as champions from the prior year.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198506050LAL.html
Just like in the game of basketball, many
farm managers have to modify the plan on the fly due to changing
circumstances. Sometimes a field is too
dry (or wet), sometimes the weeds are too big, sometimes a crop has trouble
emerging and you need more insight, etc., but whatever the case may be, the
best players usually find a teammate or partner to help them prosper through
the situation and find the winning strategy.
Regional Weather
The week looks to have high
temperatures fluctuating between the low 80’s to mid-50’s and some frost concerns
for Wednesday through Friday mornings. For
the corn GDD calculation, the minimum base temperature in the calculation is
50F, so we’ll still see about 7-8 GDD’s per day or 50-55 GDD’s for the week if
the forecasted high temperatures hold true.
Obviously, we had some nice precipitation
events over the past 4-5 days to help maintain and manager our crops. A few locations had too much water (Jamestown,
ND and Stephen, MN) and there remains some areas still looking for a bit more
rain (southeast ND and to the east into Minnesota, north central ND in the Bottineau
to Mohall area, and from Williston south along the ND/MT border).
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 first week of June, the
forecast for our region looks to have slightly greater potential for above
average temperatures and below average precipitation. Now that most areas have rain, bring on the
GDD’s!
The
NOAA organization also provides three month outlooks. If we would like to get a general feel for the
upcoming winter season (Dec-Jan-Feb), it can be seen here:
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/...long_range/seasonal.php?lead=7
This
forecast currently predicts average temperatures with an “EC” or “equal chances”
report, and average to slightly above average
precipitation potential (especially western and southern North Dakota). With last winter being below average on the snow
fall, it would be nice to experience some snow volumes again. Like Daryl Ritchison says, “abnormal weather
is the norm.”
Corn Crop Development
With the mid-point of corn planting as May 5th
for the region, the following GDD map below shows growing degree day
accumulation for the 2021 season to date. If your operation planted corn around the 25th
of April, you can add about 60-70 GDDs to these totals for your first planted
fields.
With corn needing roughly 125 GDD from planting
to emergence, and about 80-85 GDD for the development of each early leaf stage,
we should be able to see V1-V2 corn in most fields currently. My observations so far indicated good
survivability of corn seedlings on those early planted fields. Many corn fields did not receive a pre-emerge
herbicide application, and we’ll need to accomplish that task as soon as fields
are ready for equipment.
This site from Perdue University describes
corn development based on GDD’s as the crop progresses through the vegetative
stages. https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/.../VStagePrediction.html
USDA Crop Progress Report
With the vast majority of corn,
soybeans and wheat planted in North Dakota and northwest Minnesota, I’ll no
longer summarize the Monday afternoon “planting progress” weekly report from
USDA.
If you’d like to see the USDA’s
agricultural reports, they can be viewed at this site: https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/8336h188j
I-40 Shutdown in Memphis
Inspectors have found a large crack in a
steel beam on an interstate bridge crossing the Mississippi River in Memphis,
TN. Not only is the bridge shut-down to
automobiles since mid-May, but river traffic is also halted until repairs are
made. Numerous vessels and a couple hundred
barges sit waiting.
A local retired economist with the Univ. of
Memphis states there will be significant delays in goods and services across
the country due to the interstate and river shutdown. The bridge is not expected to be repaired for
“several months”.
Much of this region’s bulk dry fertilizer is
supplied from the Twin Cities and the Twin Cities are supplied by the
Mississippi River barges. We’ll see what
develops, but it’s not difficult to see that product supply will be a concern
and fertilizer prices will increase due to supply logistics.
https://wreg.com/news/i-40-bridge-shutdown-could-be-a-disaster... https://landline.media/i-40-bridge...closed-for-several-months/
India Investigating Corruption with Fertilizer Markets
Speaking of fertilizer, AgNews reports that
authorities in the country of India are investigating two managing directors of
domestic companies who lead an effort in importing agriculture fertilizer. The allegation is that the individuals
secured commissions from overseas suppliers for the return favor of inflating
prices for crop nutrient products. The
two companies in question are Indian Farmers Fertilizer Co-operative and Indian
Potash Ltd.
Supposedly, fertilizer from these two
companies is bought with import contracts on behalf of Indian buyers. The two individuals in question would
artificially inflate the prices and then receive kick-backs from the selling
parties. http://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail---39188.htm
This brings us to the run-up in fertilizer
prices this late winter and spring in the US.
I, like most of you have been told that fertilizer is a commodity and
its price is reflected with the price of oil/energy. Well, that begs the question… how can
fertilizer prices of 2021 jump-up in the range of 50-75% when the price of a
barrel of oil only climbed 20-30%?
Something doesn’t quite correlate, and maybe there needs to be
investigations in other locations around the world besides just India. If there is potential corruption in one spot,
there is probably reason to investigate and ask questions on a broader scale.
China Orders Additional Corn; Argentina Farmers Unhappy
Last week, Bloomberg reported that China has
secured about 33% of the expected export volume of US corn for the 2021/22
season. USDA expects China to import
about 26 mil MT (or 1 bil bushes) over the coming 12 month USDA trade year,
which starts on September 1st.
In the May WASDE report from the USDA,
2021/22 projected export volume out of the US is 2.45 bil bushels, making
China’s commitment to date a little over 800 mil bushels of US corn. May’s WASDE report also has China forecasted
to import 1,800 mil bushels of corn over this time frame (record high).
Twelve months ago, all we heard were reports
of record world supplies that would easily take 2-3 years minimum to work
through even with below average weather to dampen production. We didn’t get the adverse weather, but now we
sit with much tighter ending stocks.
Meanwhile, in Argentina, farmers are upset
with their federal governments 30-day suspension of beef exports and are
planning their own nine-day strike to protest the suspension. Supposedly, inflation in Argentina is near
50% (12-month rate), and the government feels that halting beef exports will
help curb the inflation rate on food costs.
https://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/wasde0521.pdf
Corn Stand Evaluations
As we’re out evaluating our corn fields for
weeds, it’s a great time for stand assessment.
I’ll include a couple sources – the Pioneer article addressing yield
impacts due to doubles, skips, and variability of kernel spacing, and the
Purdue University on the effect of delayed or uneven emergence. With the prolonged cooler soil conditions in
late April and early May combined with some dry soil in areas, we may not have
the most uniform emergence. The following
charts contain the key data.
https://www.pioneer.com/us/agronomy/corn_planting_outcome... https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/nch/nch-36.html
Canola
Agronomy
NDSU Langdon notes that flea beetle activity
starts in canola when air temperatures move above 60F. The striped flea beetle is quicker to emerge
by about two weeks over the crucifer flea beetle, and this is important since
today’s common insecticide seed treatments (IST) have very little activity
against the striped variant. It doesn’t
take much flea beetle activity to hit the treatment threshold of 20-25% --
especially when the traditional IST has been losing its efficacy.
https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/cpr/entomology/canola-flea-beetles-emerging-05-20-21
While we are out scouting flea beetle
activity in the canola, it’s a good time to evaluate plant stand
establishment. Most canola researchers
and agronomist would agree with BASF’s NDSU’s, and Pioneer’s data of somewhere between 5-10 plants/ft2 as the ideal plant density to achieve maximum yields (NDSU has stated 6-8
plants/ft2 which is close to BASF’s 5-7 plants/ft2, and Pioneer has research suggesting 6-10 plants/ft2). Everyone’s recommendations are in the same
ballpark, therefore if we go with 5-8 plants/ft2 as the target, here
are the following average counts needed for common row spacings:
·
22” row spacing; 9-14 plants/ft of row
·
15” row spacing; 6-10 plants/ft of row
·
12” row spacing; 5-8 plants/ft of row
·
10” row spacing; 4-7 plants/ft of row
·
7.5” row spacing; 3-5 plants/ft of row
Tanis Sirski from Pioneer® in western
Manitoba has an excellent YouTube post on evaluating canola stands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib2ipcDS5oQ
Supply Logistic Concerns
Back when the pandemic started, it was
consumers looking ahead and conducting purchases for the future. Now, it’s the companies that supply the consumers
that are trying to stock-up on goods in order to ensure products to sell their
customers in the coming 6 to 12 to 18 months.
If some of the country’s and world’s well-resourced companies are executing this task, what’s to say it’s not a good tactic for our farms? I know supplies are getting more and more expensive for our businesses, but it may be a wise move to begin the process for purchasing inputs for the 2022 cropping season. If you can take possession and store these products for future use, you will create some added comfort while looking ahead. How many automobile manufacturers would have liked to have had the foresight of ordering tens of thousands of more computer chips for their automobile plants last year?
This following Farm Policy News article out
of the Univ. of Illinois is a good read with several additional links highlighting
the concerns.
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2021/05/supply-chain-bottlenecks...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/business/auto-semiconductors-general-motors-mercedes.html
Chinese Company to Build Glyphosate Plant
A Chinese company named Xingfa Group has
announced plans to build a 50k ton glyphosate plant. The plant will be completed in June of 2022
and thus the product will not be available until the 2023 cropping season. This same Chinese group is also investing in
separate plants for both organic-silicon and caustic soda. This should help our long-term pesticide
needs, but who knows how the political trade tensions will fare between now and
then.
http://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail---39190.htm
Random Agricultural Facts
According to 2-3 year-old data, it
is estimated that Americans spend about 10% of their disposable income on food
each year – it’s roughly a 50-50 split between food purchased for consumption
at home versus food eaten away from home.
About 25% of food Americans bring
home each month is discarded. While 40%
of all food grown and produced in the US is never consumed (includes exports).
After accounting for input costs,
farmers and ranchers receive about 8 cents out of every dollar spent on
food. To try and increase the take home
value of farm produce, about 8% of US farms market foods locally through direct
to consumer or intermediate sales.
Farming accounts for only
approximately 1% of the US GDP (gross domestic product).
The above figures come from
American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture – Food and Farm Facts book
(2019 edition): https://www.fb.org/newsroom/fast-facts
htps://stacker.com/stories/3554/50-fascinating-facts-about-farming-america
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