Wow, oh wow. As the closing days of the winter season go by on the calendar we almost have to wonder what happened to our normal snowy and cold seasons we’ve been accustomed to. Except for the two big snowstorms which happened to be exactly the week before and the week of the caucuses held in Des Moines not much of the Midwest received much snow all winter. (Now digressing, meteorologists have recognized that the heaviest snow in the Midwest always fall 140 miles northwest of the center of the low-pressure front. Bingo, keep the crowds as small as possible. That is some pretty accurate steering). Dr Atkins is still predicting several cold air intrusions over the next few weeks, but for the most part the snow is gone and many of the indicators pointing to an early spring. The local Canadian geese have been staking out their nesting areas for several weeks. Like everyone else, we like the temps in the high 50s to low 70s, but also recognize that having trees bud out too early, as what happened in the 1940 when a late cold snap wiped out the many apple orchards where the trees already had their sap flowing. Previous to this cold snap Iowa was one of the top apple producing states.
I am going to start this column by informing readers about two individuals who made their mark as very important people in the Midwest and will be remembered as very smart, very dedicated specialists who left huge legacies by helping and educating huge swaths of people across the country. Other colleagues and myself benefitted greatly by learning from them.
The first person is Jerry Carlson from Cedar Falls, IA. He was born in SW Iowa, graduated from Iowa State with a degree in journalism. Jerry spent time in the military stationed on the east coast where he met and married his wife. He spent seven years writing for Farm Journal before returning to Iowa where he a business partner started ProFarmer and a Land Owner magazine. He served as a great writer and his articles were perfect, and always relayed the message of the person he had interviewed. He became a very devoted soil health guru. He was 87 and passed away a few weeks ago.
The next person was Dr Robert Kremer, a native of Missouri. He was the oldest son of a farm couple who had seven children. He majored in soil microbiology, after which after he was drafted was stationed in Maryland at a facility near Fredrick know as Fort Detrick. It served as an Army biological research facility. After several years there and getting married, he returned to Missouri to finish his Masters and PhD in Soil Microbiology. He worked in that field for years doing teaching, guiding many university students and conducting field research on the topics of weed control and the detrimental effects on soil health by the #1 herbicide. As a reward for his great work on that last topic he was persecuted by many top people within the University and the USDA. But he was brave enough to recognize exactly who he was working for, which were his fellow farmers in his state, the Midwest and globally, so he persevered in those tasks. He continued to work and do research after his retirement including several projects in northeast Iowa. I got to know him and had him present at our BRT conferences. He was always willing to visit and answer questions. He ended up being diagnosed with cancer and passed away earlier this month. His March 9th funeral mass was well attended by a wide range of people who recognized how important, yet how friendly and down to earth he was. His talks, articles, presentations and power points he authored were remarkable in scope and information contained. Russ, in his eulogy to his brother described Bob as a true soil health evangelist. Many in the Ag world will miss him and his presence.
Both Jerry and Robert were great individuals who helped may people and were strong in their faith, their convictions and their message. RIP.
Making Final Plans for Spring
After all the meetings and planning is done over the last several months it is time to finalize our cropping program. Soil health, carbon programs, planter updates, plant diseases discussion and the use of drones in Ag were common topics at meetings and conferences. A common question was how to sort thru the many (874 different ones as of Mid-December) microbial products. There is no short answer to that question. EPA recognized that most microbial products are quite safe and were quite different than hard chemistry. Thus, they did not require the many years and wide geographical testing of herbicides, fungicides and pharma are required. Because it is mostly smaller companies with smaller budges and staffs working to develop products, EPA created a division termed BioStimulants referring to live biologicals, hormonal extracts, scents or extracts which have biological origins and produce an effect on crops and anything else containing soft or natural sources. So, are they totally different? No, not when you realize that many and most pharma products are derived from bacteria, fungi, amphibians, shell fish, spiders and so on. The pharma industry often works by sending their ethno-entomology, botany or mycology research teams out into the deep oceans, jungles in Brazil or Costa Rica to look for candidates or sources from which they can isolate and extract new compounds.
Biological products vary dramatically, but to get the best results they need to be put into a heathy environment, stay warm or cool enough, have enough moisture to stay hydrated, have enough oxygen to live, provided with decent nutrition, be at the right pH and not be bombarded with damaging pesticides. In many cases biologicals are capable of producing good results but the customers are not educated or given insight on how or what they are buying need to be treated. In one instance a pair of top agronomists up in Wisconsin noted that a certain Chitosan product gave good results if it was applied to a field which had earned a high Haney score, no real harsh pesticides had been applied to recent seasons and UAN was the N source. If no guidelines are provided by the product source be sure to ask the merchant for such particulars.
A Recent Conference
A company new to Midwest growers by the name of Tidal Grow worked with Central Iowa Agronomy & Supply to hold a conference on March 4th and 5th. The crowd size was close to 100 and those that attended typically said it was the best they had ever attended. With Mark Dodd’s help and our networking sphere we had in-person or via zoom a dozen very knowledgeable people dispersing information on fertilizer efficiency, sap testing, the importance of having proper fungal to bacterial ratios, proper disease management using nutrition, using ocean-based products to boost fungal populations, steps needed to capture more atmospheric N and the roles of tissue and BeCrop testing.
One tip provided was that Martha Carlin, a speaker at our Dec 2022 and her research team from Colorado and U of Cal San Luiz Obispo, had commercialized their glyphosate and AMPA degrading biological mix. Until now there was no verified-by-testing a product which could perform this task. With its common and frequent use on many acres and the fact that research by Dr Kremer’s research suggested that residual amounts in the soil could quietly or dramatically affect follow crops action may be needed. It is not a benign product in the rhizosphere. There will be reports coming from Canada about large acreages of canola and lentils being hit hard by a phenomenon where when a higher grade of a phosphate fertilizer is applied foliarly to a crop, the residual herbicide desorbs from the clay portion and enters the liquid portion of the soil for uptake by the growing crop. Might a 90% yield loss attract a growers’ attention or finances. So how much of this herbicide may have been applied by manure applications to numerous fields over the last two decades. Soil testing for this herbicide can be done at RHI labs in Fairfield, IA. The yield responses seen from 2023 trials have looked very good enough that Corn and SB growers, vineyard operators, orchardists, fruit and veggie producers and then commercial and home gardeners should want to take note. Seed producers where multiple applications have been common in recent years may want to get educated on this topic. The Yield & Shield mix by itself provides noticeable yield increases all by itself, making an application even more valuable.
I will be trying to alert more people including agronomists and crop consultants, about this as they could then suggest a proper course of action.
What are Chitosan Products and Potential Uses
A term new to many people is chitosan. Different forms of it have been used for centuries. Noted most often is by the Chinese. Where the term comes from is when you step on a large bug or beetles and it crunches, the hard, crunchy material is called chitin’. The enzyme which dissolves chitin is ‘chitinase’. Nature in its infinite wisdom, allows most plants and many soil microbes to form chitinase, especially when processed shrimp shells are applied to them. Chitosan after application will dissolve: insect shells; egg cases; eggs and stylets or beaks of nematodes; and mycelial strands of parasitic fungi. In research articles it tells how the Chinese have been using it as plant vaccines as well as controlling many different insects for centuries. Since many different insects operate and navigate via high grades of radar they often vacate plants immediately as the sprayed plants emit signals right after getting a shot of chitosan. Research done at an insect lab in Florida detected scent detecting equipment in many insects’ olfactory systems include intricate loop antennae tuned to specific frequencies. The bugs are being alerted to chitosan having been applied. This can be seen with Japanese beetles
The four and maybe now eight state Gall Midge Research team headquartered at UNL and headed by Justin McMechan concluded that hard insecticides don’t last long enough to provide effective control of the gall midge. I recently met with a group of farmers from S Dakota who are now seeing Gall Midge affecting entire fields. A recent article in the Farm Bureau Spokesman told of an entomologist from Kansas State presenting his information about a long antennaed beetle (Dectes) which previously infected thick stalked or stemmed plants like giant ragweed, cocklebur or lambsquarter that has developed a taste for soybean stems. Crop scouts and SB producers may have to use sweep nets to make population counts when scouting fields. A seed or foliar application of a chitosan product is viewed as the best defense to use as it acts internally and offers a long residual. Two companies produce and market chitosan products in the Midwest. In alphabetic order they are Organisan of Georgia and Tidal Grow from Oregon. Both have sales team headed by guys named Mark.
In a research work at Mississippi State Univ conducted by Dr. Ernie Flint, the Chitosan product outperformed Telone, a hard nematicide sold by Dow. In spud and sugar beet country the chitosan products outperform established hard chemistries, cost much less and are safe to the applicators and soil microbes.
Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.