The Proper Care and Cleaning of Sprayers

The sprayers of today are far different from those early ones. They have plenty of diesel horsepower, booms 90 feet wide, air conditioned cabs and more computer power than the Apollo astronauts had when they landed on the moon. I spent many days on some of those old sprayers. I was sitting close to a hot engine catching plenty of hot air, dust and spray drift.

But I also learned that the single most important factor was cleanliness. Especially the inside of the spray system. The most important 30 minutes of the day was at the end of the day when the spray tips and all the strainers were taken out and cleaned. Then the tanks were rinsed and entire spray system was flushed.

Back then the only spray cleaner we had was household ammonia. And when used at the right concentrations, it is still a good choice today. However, many companies sell even better cleaners. Just don’t go cheap and use lower than the recommended rate. Be sure you circulate and spray the cleaning solution long enough for optimum cleaning.

Then, if you like, drain the system.

Others have found that if they circulate the cleaning system and then shut the system down, leaving the cleaning system in the sprayer they get even better cleaning. This helps neutralize spray residues inside the tank and the plumbing system. The next time the sprayer is used, just drain the cleaning solution and fill up.

Either way, be you sure to pull the strainers and clean them. A plugged strainer in the middle of a 100 acre field, without a shade tree in sight, is not a pretty situation.

But regardless of how you clean and which cleaner you choose, just do it. It is a whole lot easier to keep a sprayer clean than it is to clean one up.

I would have enjoyed the air-conditioned cab.

--Tom Crumby

Arkansas Advisory: true armyworms turning up in wheat

True armyworms are turning up in Arkansas wheat in some areas, and there's always the risk that they will move into adjoining crops, like rice. Gus Lorenz, Extension Entomologist, urged growers and their crop advisers to scout closely and to remember that these worms tend to congregate in hiding places, like under dirt clods, in mid day.

Curt Johnson, a crop consultant in southeast Arkansas, said that worms were apparently hitting wheat on one of his grower's farms. Johnson, who isn't checking the grower's wheat but is working other crops, said the farmer asked why birds were clipping the heads on wheat. "The birds are looking for the worms that are clipping the heads," Johnson replied.

We'll have more about this in AgFax: Southern Grain later in the week.

CLICK HERE to hear our interview with Gus Lorenz regarding the advisory.

-- Owen Taylor

You can't believe everything you hear on the radio

If you're not familiar with the concept of 16th Section land, these tracts were set aside for funding local schools as townships were surveyed and established west of the Appalachian Mountains. Most states sold these sections to build the early schools.

But in Mississippi, the state held onto the land and empowered local counties to rent out the acreage for farming or other purposes. Portions of several cities in the state are actually built on this land, and people take out long-term leases for the lots on which they've built homes and businesses.

Most of this land, though, is in some kind of agricultural production, and keen competition often develops when 16th Section leases come up for bidding and renewal.

Which brings us to this story that happened years ago in a Delta county...

The school board, as was the procedure, rented some awfully productive farm land for five years at a time to the highest bidder. And, of course, the bids were sealed. All this happened before the coming of cell phones, back when people relied on "private line" radios that weren't really all that private. Some businesses shared frequencies, plus plenty of folks had scanners and snooped in on radio conversations.

As it would happen, some of the nosy folk also were farmers.

This fellow had been renting a section of school land and did not welcome the idea of losing those profitable acres. But it was not a question of would the rent go up. How much it would go up was the question. So, the man and his son cooked up the deal.

They would engage in conversation over their radios as to the bid they were submitting and their agreed dollar amount, knowing full well those scanners would be running. And then the dirty deed was done.

Over their radios the father urgently asked his son, "Are you sure you have the correct bid number?" His son replied, "Yes sir, we are bidding $30.25 per acre for five years.

Well, the next morning at 9 a.m. the sealed bids were opened. A whole bunch of them were in the range of $30.00 to $34.50. The gentleman's bid of $35.05 was the last one to be opened that morning. There was a bunch of shocked and sick bidders. I don't know what ever happened to those scanners.

It is much the same today. You can't put a whole lot of faith in what you hear on the radio. Especially when the topic is politics or weather. It looks like rain here.

(PS: For more on 16th Section land, click here.)

--Tom Crumby

Alabama's New Precision Ag Portal

Alabama's Cooperative Extension Service has launched a new precision ag (PA) web site that carries PA news, technology overviews, updates on current projects, event announcements, equipment manuals and Extension publications and presentations.

The URL: www.alabamaprecisionagonline.com

Late Corn or Make a Change

So the story goes, back when corn was raised to feed the mules, the elderly farmer was leaving the bank of a Central MS Delta town. A young fellow apporached him and asked, "Sir, you always make a good corn crop. When is the best time to plant corn"? The old fellow replied, "March". To which the young man further inquired, "Well, when is the second best time to plant corn?" The gentleman again said calmly, "March". So with just a hint of frustration, the young fellow pressed on, "Well, what if you can't get your corn planted in March?" The old fellow calmly replied, "Wait until next March".

The modern corn varieties of today are certainly more adapted to the summer weather conditions of the Mid-South. And cotton and soybeans are certainly well adapted to July and August weather conditions. Maybe you can find the old gentleman and get his advice. Otherwise, visit with your local agchemical company reps or your Extension agent.

I'm glad that is a decision I do not have to make.

--Tom Crumby

I, Robot: Picking Tomatoes In The Automated Greenhouse

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) robotics lab has been developing robots that pick tomatoes in a computer-controlled greenhouse and tend to other agronomic functions.

It doesn't sound like the research is headed toward any kind of immediate commercial applications, but the work does underscore some of the challenges that await anyone trying to program robots to harvest individual items. Such work is underway, though, at universities in at least 2 states, Florida and California. One goal: an orange-picking machine.

The MIT approach was interesting in how cheaply researchers and grad students could build a working model: something less than $900. The platform was an iRobot Roomba, the little circular vacuum cleaner that actually does a good job of tidying up the kitchen.

Here's a link to more info on the MIT project.

-- Owen Taylor

Overwintering soybean rust and the big question

Don Hershman, University of Kentucky plant pathologist, addresses the question:

Will the fact that Asian soybean rust (ASR) overwintered in several Southern states make any difference in how the disease moves in 2009?

Hershman, quoted at length in an article distributed by UK this week, looks at all the factors and arrives at the only plausible answer:

Who knows?

Those aren't his exact words, just a quick summation.

This isn't to deride Hershman, a respected plant pathologist. The article does illustrate that people have generally quit guessing about what will finally happen with ASR, if anything much at all. It does have potential to cause destructive crop loss, as witnessed in South America and other places where it's run rampant. One veteran plant pathologist, Billy Moore of Mississippi, said almost from the beginning that maybe 2 years out of 10 could turn into a bad year for ASR.

Why haven't we had one of those years yet? Theories vary, having to do with weather movement, regional droughts, cropping patterns, heavy spraying in Dixie for other diseases and maybe the influence of fairies. (Okay, I made up that last one.)

Botton line: it's never emerged as the expected threat here. Certainly, preventive ASR treatments were needed and were made in recent years, mainly in the lower South. But nothing like the widescale applications once predicted. Chemical companies started betting 5 years ago that nearly every acre of beans in the U.S. would have to be sprayed at least once with a fungicide. The idea was that this Godzilla-like force would push up the Mississippi Valley and bully its way into all those states that start with the letter "I". Factories geared up to turn out fungicides. Web sites sprang to life with all manner of predictive models and chatter. Vast amounts of forestry resources were channeled into the production of paper to carry all the promotional pieces that touted one fungicide over another.

And the demand, so far, has not come to pass. ASR continues to show up too late to matter. It's a factor in areas where an alligator can spend the winter, but not much north of there.

Still, there are plenty of reasons to spray fungicides on soybeans.

The air teems with spores that can reduce yields. On a localized basis, plenty of farmers have lost small fortunes to common pathogens that, compared to ASR, have caused more net damage but need better press agents. The decisions to treat these maladies are typically made on a field-by-field basis without benefit of early-warning systems. Eventually, we'll be to that point with ASR, too.

Hershman's observations are worth reading. He's not saying to let your guard down, nor is he telling anybody to panic.

Like other top plant pathologists dealing with ASR (or the lack of it), I figure that he's learning as he goes. Maybe there will be new lessons this year.

Who knows?

-- Owen Taylor

With the right contest, barley suddenly looks interesting

Osage Bio Energy is promoting a yield contest for barley, a crop it hopes to turn into ethanol once its first plant goes on line next spring in Hopewell, Virginia. States covered in the contest include Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Grand prize in the Barley Bin Builder competition is a flex-fuel pickup.

On its web site, the company says barley offers several advantages as a bio-fuel source, including the fact that its ethanol plants would not have to rely on imported Midwestern corn for a feed source.

See the web site for more details on the contest.

-- Owen Taylor

How cold was it? The corn knows.

Erick Larson, Mississippi Extension Grain Specialist, points out in his Grain Crops Update newsletter this week that growing DD-50 (GDD-50) accumulation since March 1 have run 30% below the norm at the Stoneville weather state. That goes a long way toward explaining a lot of the poor stands and sickly corn across the state.

"Corn germination and growth generally cease at temperatures of 50 degrees F or lower," he noted in a section on slow germination and crop development this spring. "Cold periods combined with (soil moisture) saturation have contributed to considerable corn stand failure associated with early plantings this season. Weather records throughout the south Delta show two separate 5- to 6-day periods with virtually zero GDD 50s immediately preceding and subsequent to March 5‐10, when considerable corn acreage was planted."

Rain and cold delayed corn planting in north Mississippi to the point that some growers are just now able to start.

In Tennessee the weather also has put corn planting on hold, and the remaining corn to be planted is mostly in bottoms, according to Chris Main, the state's Extension wheat and cotton specialist.

"It will take a while for that soil to dry up, and after next week nobody needs to be planting corn in Tennessee," he said. "Soybean prices could pull some of that land into beans, but I think a lot of the soybean ground is already dedicated, so some of the last fields meant for corn might go to cotton."

Main says the state's cotton acreage could run 310,000 to 320,000 acres this year, compared to 380,000 last year. But depending on how much of the late corn is finally planted, the final figure might approach 330,000, he said. "I don't see it going above 345,000," he added.

-- Owen Taylor

More cotton in at least one area

Ernie Flint, Extension Area Agronomist in central Mississippi, expects maybe a small increase in cotton acreage in his counties this year. Ernie covers mainly the hills but also has some Delta land in his territory.

"Cotton acreage will increase a little in some localities; but overall I expect that we will only see a slight increase from last year," he wrote in this month's central Mississippi Field Crops Newsletter. "All things considered, that’s good news since at one time we thought we might see another big drop below last year’s 360K acres in Mississippi. A drop could still be in the cards; but at the moment I believe we may see a little gain over last year as the result of lower prices for corn and soybeans, lower wheat acreage, and high basis charges for grains."

To read Ernie's full report, click here.

-- Owen Taylor

Rice seed treatments: Icon alternatives still mostly caught in regulatory limbo

Extension workers in rice states continue to scramble for a replacement for Icon, a rice seed treatment pulled from the market a couple of years ago after environmental concerns came to light. The product was extremely effective for the control of lespediza worms (aka grape colaspis), and its loss was sorely felt by producers in areas -- like the Grand Prairie of Arkansas -- where the pest can cause significant stand and yield loss in some fields.

At least 3 new products are in the wings, and some states have had better luck in gaining some form of registration than others.

In a report in the current issue of Arkansas Rice, "obtaining registration of these products by the
EPA is a process that has been slow and rocky," says Gus Lorenz, the state's Extension IPM Coordinator.

Lorenz details progress on trying to gain more rice seed treatment options for the state and gives an overview on the 3 products on the table.

Click here to download the report.

-- Owen Taylor

Buzz: More on late corn planting.

As we reported in Monday's AgFax: Southern Grain, much of the South is way, way behind on corn planting. That's also the buzz on our favorite ag forum, the non-commercial New Ag Talk.

Here's a link to the on-going thread.

The question remains: how much more of this corn ground will be planted, and how much will slip into cotton, beans or something else?

Any comments?

-- Owen Taylor

The News Isn't All Bad - Read the Summary

The news these days is hard to listen to, hard to read and most days it's hard to stomach. But there is one thing you need to read, and it's all about you.

You may have noticed that we posted the 30 page report The 2008/2009 World Economic Crisis - What it Means for Agriculture yesterday. Did I hear you snoring?

So, who has time to read the whole 30 pages? We're not sure, and that's why today we posted the authors' 3 page summary in our news section Summary: What the 2008/09 Economic Crisis Means for Agriculture

We even broke the summary up into easily digestible topics. And, who knows you might find time to sit down and read the whole thing -- and stay awake. Remember, if I had said 3 pages at the beginning instead of 30 then you would have thought that was too much, right?

And, yes, to answer your question, the summary does note a few positive points:

• The projected decline in farm income in 2009 is not expected to have much effect on national agricultural land values.
• ...producers will benefit from lower input costs implied by reduced energy and fuel prices. This report projects that in 2009, the fuel and energy-related input costs faced by U.S. farmers could decline by 30 percent, returning costs to the levels of 2006.
• Macroeconomic forecasters, such as Global Insight and EIU, predict that the U.S. and world economies should stabilize in 2010 and then resume growth in 2011 near the relatively high rates of the early 2000s.
• ...reference analysis projects that by 2013, U.S. net farm income could rise to $83 billion, though agricultural exports are projected to be only $93 billion, largely unchanged from the projected 2009 value of $96 billion because of the higher value of the dollar.
• Economic growth would partially reverse the effects of the crisis and thereby help producers of corn and other biofuel feedstock crops.
• Second possible scenario - the weaker dollar relative to the reference case will strengthen U.S. farmers’ competitiveness on world markets. With a weaker dollar, projected net farm income will increase by 19 percent to $106 billion in 2013 and to $118 billion in 2017, while agricultural exports will rise to $120 billion in 2013 and $134 billion in 2017.

Thanks for reading.
Debra