Cropping Challenges 2011 Meeting Series

Dan Folske
Extension Agent

Cropping Challenges 2011 Meeting Series

A series of “Cropping Challenges 2011” meetings have been scheduled for Dec 6-10 across northwest North Dakota. This meeting series is being conducted by the NDSU Extension Service and the meeting in this area will be held at the Burke County Courthouse Community Room on December 8, 2010 at 1:30p.m.  There is never a shortage of issues facing agriculture and producers are currently facing a number of challenges.  The “Cropping Challenges’” meeting series is designed to cover a variety of agronomic, management, and market issues that will be of a concern to producers in 2011 growing season.

Jeremy Pederson or Greg Endres, NDSU Extension Area Agronomists, will cover the topic of “Do All Crop Inputs Pay?”  There has been a multitude of new crop input products that has come onto the market over the past few years. In many cases these products are being promoted to improve crop health and/or enhance yields, but do they all have merit?  With more profitable returns in the past few years, producers have been willing to invest more in the crop to push the yield envelope, so this trend will likely continue.  This session will help producers in evaluating these types of products to identify those which are proven and generally provide a positive return, those which may be of more questionable merit, and those which have not been shown to provide a significant difference and are simply an added cost.  

Dan Waldstein, NDSU Extension Area Crop Protection Specialist, or LoAyne Voigt, Extension Agent/Renville County will talk about timing later season pesticide applications with the proper growth stages.  Most producers are fairly comfortable staging the various crops at earlier growth stages for management decisions, but what about staging crops at the more advance growth stages like flowering and heading?  Later season pesticide applications during these advanced growth stages have become much more common along with pre-harvest herbicide applications for weed control and crop desiccation.  This session will address how to identify these more advanced crop stages for management decisions and proper pesticide applications.

Dan Folske, Extension Agent/Burke County will discuss how amendments by the EPA to the rules under the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) program may affect farm operators in North Dakota.  The goal of the SPCC program is to prevent oil spills into waters of the United States and a key element of this program calls for farmers and other facilities to have an oil spill prevention plan, called an SPCC Plan.  This session will provide producers with a basic overview of the SPCC program to help them in determining if they need a plan, what to include in the plan and what may be required to implement the plan.

Tim Semler, Extension Agent/Bottineau County, will talk about soil health, cover crops, and relay cropping.  Semler’s presentation will provide an introduction on how cover crops benefit soil health, choices of cover crops, and a quick summary of how relay cropping is working at the Carrington Research Extension Center.  He will also demonstrate a cover crop chart and computer program developed at the North Great Plains Research Laboratory at Mandan.

The seminar will conclude with a presentation on “Crop Outlook: Can We Expect a 2007-08 Price Rally?” from Frayne Olson, NDSU Extension Marketing Specialist.  Grain markets are currently showing strength based on concerns of 2010 production and the apparent need for several major crops to buy acres in 2011.  Will these factors be enough to trigger a price explosion similar to 2007-2008 as many producers hope?  Olson will address some of the highlights of the current corn and soybean outlook as they are significant factors in the market.  He will then discuss in more detail what the current market outlook will be for wheat and other crops that impact our area in North Dakota.  If time allows, he will also discuss a few considerations on loan rates, LDP’s and posted county prices that may impact the cropping decisions of wheat and durum producers. 

Cropping Challenges 2011 meetings will also be held at the following locations: December 6 at 9:00 am at the KC Hall in Drake; Dec 6 at 1:30 pm in the Rugby Ottertail Building; Dec 7 at 1:30 pm at the Bottineau County District Courtroom and at the Watford County Courthouse; December 8 at 9:00 am at Dakota Theatre in Crosby; December 8 at 1:30 pm at the Burke County Courthouse in Bowbells and the Williams County Courthouse in Williston; December 9 at 1:30 pm at the North Central Research Extension Center in Minot; and December 10 at 9:00 am at the Newtown Civic Center.

The Cropping Challenges meetings are open to the public at no charge.  For more information on the Bowbells meeting, contact the Burke County Extension office at 377-2927 or e-mail dan.folske@ndsu.edu.  For information on any of the other meetings, contact the county Extension office for the particular location.