A great line-up of speakers will be presenting at our “Show Me the Money” field day. Come see the 400 Bu/A corn on low fertility land. You won’t want to miss this cutting edge information and the opportunity to get your questions answered.
Here is a sneak peak of some of the test plot photos.
This meeting is designed to provide the latest field crop production information to consultants and farmers. Speakers will share their 2019 recommendations and give an overview of the successes that they have seen in the last few growing production seasons. This will help prepare growers to remain profitable in the 2019 growing season. These experts have been able to trial products and select products that offer high ROIs and better plant health.
The main focus of the conference will be on:
Soil health
Plant health
Micronutrients
Nitrogen management and nutrient efficiency
You’ll be able to network with top growers, scientists, agronomists, and product specialists. You’ll receive practical information and will be able to get your questions answered by the experts.
The top 12 reasons you won’t want to miss this field day:
- Learn how we produced big yields in 2018 and learn how to apply this knowledge in years going forward.
- Learn which newer products were in trials and on track to produce the highest ROIs.
- Learn what steps and products can improve soil health and increase your Haney and PLFA score.
- Learn how good soil health correlates to good plant health.
- Learn how and when you should sample your fields for the Haney analysis.
- Learn what products to use and how much it will cost and how long it might take to build the desired test levels for high yields.
- Learn about humates, what they do and why they are legitimate.
- Learn about N stabilizers to minimize N runoff, stop leaching, and protect late season plant health.
- Learn the facts and the benefits of using Silica fertilizers on plants, Greensnap and drought tolerance, stronger stalks, and increased yields.
- Learn about the bacterial disease complex affecting corn since 2009.
- Learn the role of endophytes.
- Learn about a new product to eliminate heat stress in plants.
AGENDA:
9:30 am – 9:40 am: Jim Jordahl – Clean water goals and programs
9:40 am – 10:05 am: Ken Wacha – The National Laboratory for Agriculture & the Environment (USDA-ARS)
10:05 am – 10:35 am: Mitchell Hora – Soil health consulting & how to turn your fields around
10:35 am – 11:00 am : Bob Wagner/John Hughes – Biodyne, new products, observations & results
11:00 am – 11:30 am: Dave Schwartz/Mike Zwingman – Overview of Verdesian, polymer use, and the farm’s purpose
11:30 am – Noon: Dr. Dave Sasseville – Importance of micro-nutrient nutrition to plant yield and health
Noon – 12:40 pm: Lunch
12:40 pm – 1:20 pm: Dr. Rusty Rodriguez – BioEnsure – Endophytes, heat and drought stress managment
1:20 pm – 1:40 pm: Howard Vlieger – Demo of new product for weed control
1:40 pm – 2:10 pm: John Kelly – Redox – Silica value, stress relief in plants
2:10 pm – 2:40 pm: Tom Wood – O2YS – Insect/fungal disease control plus osmotic regulation
2:40 pm – 3:10 pm: Ken Hamilton/Dr. Salam Awada – BioEmpruv – the thought process behind its development, evaluation & application tips
3:10 pm – 3:30 pm: Bob Streit – Putting it all together
3:30 pm – 3:45 pm: Q&A session
3:45 pm: Farm tours
SPEAKER BIOS:
Jim Jordahl
Jim Jordahl is the Director of Programs and Operations for the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance (IAWA). He helps farmers and environmental experts implement conservation practices and innovations that have a positive impact on water quality. Jim brings more than 30 years of experience working in farming operations, soil science, engineering and environmental science, and project management to IAWA. He coordinates water quality efforts of key partners and plans and manages projects and proposals for IAWA. Jim received his B.S. in Farm Operations and M.S. in Agronomy (Soil Management) from Iowa State University.
Ken Wacha
Ken Wacha is a postdoctoral research associate at the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment (USDA-ARS) in Ames, Ia. He completed his PhD studies in the Hydraulics and Water Resources Program in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa, focusing on the interaction of soil-water-nutrients within ag-systems, specifically looking the impacts that runoff/erosion processes have on organic stocks in intensely managed fields. Currently, he is investigating how various levels of management impact the formation and breakdown of soil aggregates under raindrop impact and how cover crops can improve soil biology and microclimatic conditions.
Mitchell Hora
Mitchell Hora is a Washington County Iowa farmer and the owner of Continuum Ag. Continuum Ag is a consulting and data management company working with farmers, consultants, and ag businesses, around the world, to economically and logistically quantify and improve soil health. While graduating from Iowa State in May 2017, with degrees in Ag Systems Technology and Agronomy, Mitchell and his team collected over 1,000 Haney Soil Health tests in 2017. 2018 work includes product testing with global companies, providing lab analysis from: Haney’s ARS lab, Brookside Labs, Ward Labs, Trace Genomics, and more, plus evaluating management practices with farmers across the Midwest. Constant updates can be found on Continuum Ag’s social media or YouTube.
Bob Wagner
Bob Wagner worked in crop protection, sales and marketing with Dow Dupont for 30 years. He is founder and owner of Wagner Consulting since 1985. Bob is currently a regional manager and consultant for Biodyne USA.
Dave Schwartz
Dave Schwartz has been in Agr-Business for 38 years and has worked at all levels of Production Ag from Retail to Basic Manufacturers to Distribution and has been fortunate to have been involved in the evolution of the modern day high yield technologies that he most enjoys in his current job as Executive Vice President of Sales for Verdesian Life Sciences for the 12 Midwest corn belt states. His major hobby is farming his farm and the family’s farms near Guthrie Center where he gets to put into practice all the techniques and technologies that he has learned and is very passionate about improving Soil Health and Water Quality on his own farm and be able to share his learnings with other growers who have those same goals. Dave is the Vice President of the Iowa Agricultural Water Alliance Business Council and also the Vice President of the Fluid Fertilizer Foundation which he enjoys learning ways to help growers and retailers seek more efficient ways to be sustainable and profitable. His talk today is all about that how farming sustainably can also be more profitable.
Dr. Dave Sasseville
Dr. Sasseville holds a Ph.D. degree in Horticulture from the University of Missouri with specialization in plant nutrition with emphasis on the relationship of pesticides and microbiology. He was State Extension Specialist with Missouri University Outreach and Extension for 25 years, where he worked with growers on nutrition and pesticide issues. His emphasis was using soil testing and plant analysis to include all plant nutrients to improve crop yields and quality. He is co-author of Plant Analysis Handbook III (2014), which is used worldwide as the standard plant nutritional tissue testing reference. Dr. Sasseville has served as a crop production consultant in over 30 other countries. In 2005, after retiring from the university, he founded AgriGuardian ™ , a company that develops and markets specialty agricultural inputs that were not available to growers, such as AgriGuardian ™ Moly and AgriGuardian ™ MicroMix, AgriGuardian ™ Nutra-Boost ® . These products are used on both agronomic and horticulture crops, and are marketed throughout the United States, Canada and internationally.
Dr. Rusty Rodriguez
Rusty Rodriguez obtained a PhD in Microbial Physiology from Oregon State University in 1983 followed by postdoctoral work (Cornell University) in plant pathology before overseeing research programs on plant-microbe symbiosis in academic (University of California) and government (USFWS, NBS, USGS) institutions. Currently, he holds an affiliate faculty position in Biology at the University of Washington. His research programs allowed he and his colleagues to discover that plants in nature do not adapt themselves to abiotic stresses such as drought, temperature or salinity. Instead, plants establish symbiotic associations with microscopic fungi that confer abiotic stress tolerance. This remarkable observation was the basis for developing a new seed treatment technology (BioEnsure) to mitigate impacts of climate change in agriculture by generating climate-resilient crops. In 2012, he joined Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies (AST) to commercialize symbiotic technologies for addressing real world problems and work toward a sustainable future. AST is dedicated to ensuring food security by generating climate resilient crops for both large and small land holding farmers around the globe. AST is using BioEnsure in developing and emerging countries to empower: females by training them to be seed treaters, farmers by increasing crop yields & animal fodder, and families by increasing food security & agricultural revenues. Dr. Rodriguez’s TED talk – ‘Unlocking the power of symbiosis in a warming world’ can be found HERE.
Howard Vlieger
Howard Vlieger is a third generation family farmer who has been a “student of the soil,” studying why and how the soil works as it does, since 1989. Howard lives on the family farm where he was born and raised in northwest Iowa, and assists his son with the work on their diverse family farm. Since 1992 Howard has been a crop and livestock nutrition adviser. He founded three companies to help family farmers reduce their dependency on chemical- based farming and transition to biological and/or organic crop production methods. Howard has been privileged to work with crop and livestock family farming operations all over the US and Canada. Howard also works with scientists and researchers around the world investigating problems caused by GMOs and the chemicals used in growing them and developing effective solutions, based on the latest science, to solve the real-life problems farmers are experiencing because of the GMO crops and glyphosate herbicides. Howard is a co-author and the primary coordinator of a first of its kind scientific study: the feeding of Non-GMO grain and GMO grain to pigs for their lifetime as a meat animal. Howard is an internationally recognized educator and speaker on the topic of GMOs. Howard serves on the board of directors for the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA) and the Council for Healthy Food Systems (CHFS). Howard serves on the advisory board for GMO Free USA.
John Kelly
John currently lives in Salt Lake City Utah where he enjoys proximity to the airport, hiking and mountain biking trails, ski slopes, mountains, and lakes. He is an avid pilot and flies frequently on business. His favorite pastime is spending time with his family. He received his B.A. in Spanish and B.S. in Agricultural Economics from BYU. John is certified as both an advisor and sustainability specialist with the American Society of Agronomy. He has worked for Redox for 23 years. He feels fortunate to work with excellent people on a wide variety of turf and cropping conditions both in the U.S. and various international countries.
Tom Wood
Tom Wood grew up on a potato, cereal grain, and alfalfa farm in Eastern Idaho, with both irrigated and dryland acres. Tom has built several ag related small businesses over the years, including a custom haying operation, and with his brother Matt, a custom application business, and a farm retail business focusing on biological and alternative inputs, while still managing his own farm. Tom is always looking for “alternative” methods, systems, and products to help lower inputs and increase profitability on his own operation. After experimenting with the O2YS and Organisan line of chitosan products on his own farm, the products were added to the retail business portfolio, and one thing led to another, and Tom is now the Western Territory Manager for O2YS Corp, and Organisan Corp.
Ken Hamilton
President / Owner Bio Minerals Technologies, Inc. is a biological and mineral based company focusing its work on restoring soil microflora into the proper groups, rations and balances for soil to become healthy and functional again.
BMT works directly with farmers as consultants for soil restoration which includes biology and cover crops, crop nutrient plans, to increase yields and quality. We have farms in Canada, all the Western states, most Midwestern states, into the South and East coast that we supply products and technologies to. BMT has a distribution chain of dealers in the US, Mexico and South America. BMT Is a Research and Development company in many aspects trying to continuously come up with new and better methods for farmers to improve their operations, yields and income to better steward their lands, livestock and produce food capable of sustaining life.
Dr. Salam Awada
Dr. Salam Awada is the founder and president of Agscitech Inc., based in Lewiston, Utah. Dr. Awada brings over thirty years of experience in the fields of plant nutrition, soil fertility and salinity, and biological fermentation to the agriculture and turf industry. Dr. Awada is a graduate of Utah State University with a Ph.D. in Soil and Water Chemistry with emphasis on the interaction of nutrients and heavy metals with calcium carbonate and calcareous soils. His Master’s degree research focused on the amelioration effects of calcium amendments on plants growth under salt stress.
Dr. Awada holds worldwide patents on the use of biological surfactants and metabolites for disease prevention and control and for their use to solubilize, complex and chelate minerals and nutrients essential for the growth of plants and microorganisms.
Bob Streit
Bob is an agronomist, plant scientist, crop consultant, international speaker and expert in educating audiences and individuals on the correlation between healthy soils and the production of healthy food, as it relates to good human health. His college education at Iowa State University was in Plant Pathology, Pest Management, and Agronomy. Bob has over 40 years of experience in crop consulting, farm management, research, technology and product development.
Bob is co-owner of Central Iowa Agronomy & Supply and President of Central Iowa Agronomics. He is actively involved in projects in soil remediation, making biological assessments of growing environments, developing systems to clean up food and water supplies, and doing test trials of products. Since 2003 he has traveled throughout much of South America, working with the top scientists and growers on their specific problems in crop production. Bob contributes articles to several magazines and writes a weekly column for an Iowa based Ag newspaper. He has been internationally interviewed and has appeared in several movies dealing with soil, plant, and human health.
Lunch: Lunch will be provided. Please bring your lawn chairs.
Tours: Be sure and stick around for the tours of the different fields.
Registration: Free but you must RSVP to guarantee seating and lunch. This will help us have an accurate count and food supply for lunch.
RSVP: Please RSVP to reserve your seat to Carol Streit at 515-231-6710 or info@centraliowaag.com.
CCA CEUs: Will be applied for.