Time to plant?

[billonthefarm]

It's time to get this stuff in the ground, everything is ready and we should be finishing up now and not just starting. It's not really dry enough, the air temp this morning was 32 and the soil temp was 40, they are calling for rain starting thursday afternoon and going past saturday. On the flip side, it is as dry as it has been all spring, a few other guys are starting to run, and we are going to get a couple of warm days and the clock is starting to tick. I am just going to have to decided and not look back. The joys of farming.


bill

 

[JMS MN]

I started farming in 1972. First day of field work was May 10. Earliest since then was April 4. Typical was April 20-30. I write it in the farm account book each year. Not to worry- we"ve seen earlier, and later. Stuff grows. We cannot control the weather. We can control "being ready when it is time to roll". Tractors and machines serviced, etc. That"s our job. Beyond that, it"s up to our Maker!

 

[Dan-IA]

Triple Stack? My insurance agent told me to document,document,document if I was gonna do triple stack. Apparently Syngenta is doing spot inspections and checking to make sure you really are planting the buffer strips so you don't wipe out the corn borers. Agent said he didn't want to insure me if I did it.

 

[IaGary]

Don't know about syngenta spot checking but the insurance companies may since they are giving the discount. So you are right the buffer strips better be in place correctly.

Gary

 

[jose bagge]

What's "Triple Stack"?

 

[IaGary]

That means the corn has 3 traits bred into in biogenetically. Root worm resistance, Corn bore resistance and the roundup ready gene.

Gary

 

[Keith in NW MO]

Don't you guys mean refuge acres not buffer strips?

 

[jose bagge]

...and the danger of that is? Why is it an insurance issue? Thanks- I'm a horse guy but i want to learn

 

[IaGary]

It is not a danger to use triple stack. It is proven to increase yields using triple stack.

So crop insurance is cheaper per acre if you certify that you are using triple stack cause the insurance has less risk of a loss.

But the bug people are afraid we will eliminate all the bugs so refuge acres are to be planted to save the bugs.

Refuge acres are corn that is just plain corn that has no BT corn bore or RT root worm corn genes in it. Refuge is to be 20% of your total acres by law. There are rules about the location and configuration of the refuge acres and this is what they will check for.

It ain't just dump the seed and go plant anymore.

Gary

 

[IaGary]

Yup.

Gary

 

[IaGary]

Here we go.

 

[nw_bearcat]

Insurance companies are checking...they're going to make sure that if you said you planted a triple that there's a triple out there. Otherwise you got a deal on seed, got a deal on insurance, and still may have a claim vs. the triple.

With the refuge, its not that we don't want to kill all the bugs...completely anyway. Refuge is about overall risk management. In every reproducing pest population, we see a few individuals that become resistant to XXXX pesticide. We've seen it with ALS herbicides, a few cases with RU, etc. With YG corn, we don't want the corn borer, or crw to become resistant to the BT gene. If we all planted 100% BT corn, there would be alot of selection pressure against the susceptable bugs. Only those resistant would survive, and only the strongest of those resistant would thrive. If we plant a refuge, we'll always have a susceptable pool of breeding insects to dilute that resistant population out, and we'll continue to have consistent control of these pests. The refuge is there to preserve the effectivness of the trait, and ensure that it has a long life.

This is the same principle that we should apply to many other aspects of our production systems. With cattle ear-tags, I suggest swapping modes of action of the insecticide every year or two. This doesn't mean changing brands, but changing active ingredients regardless of brand. With HT crops, we should look into swapping modes of action, Glyphosate vs. Liberty, and using secondary controls, such as a pre down early followed by RR or Liberty.

When dealing with nature, there are alot of systems in place for plants and animals to survive in the harshest enviroments. In production agriculture, we attempt to manage nature by creating harsh enviroments for some creatures/plants and encouraging the growth of others. To do this we must consider our every action to ensure that we are applying a best practices approach to our farming systems.

that got a little longer than i first anticipated i'd be surprised if anyone makes it to this point in the message. Back to the original topic though, I disced a little of the wife's garden plots-she raises cut flowers, and we've got 1/4-1/2Acre devoted to flowers. I hope to get some manure spread now that its a little smoother, but won't get done...there's still water standing in a couple plots. I saw marks in the gravel road where someone was going down the road w/ a field cultivator w/a harrow, so there's a little work being done here in the Iowa City/CR, IA area, but not much yet.

 

[philcaseinWPA]

I"m going to try some BT sweet corn this year. There are no plans from any of the companies to produce RU ready sweet corn. With the BT sweetcorn you have to sign an agreement to destroy (chop or preferably disc) the fodder within 2 weeks after harvest to help prevent worm resistance to BT. I"m planning to plant this for my late season harvest when worm pressure is the greatest. The recommendations for spraying late in the year for worms are every 1 to 3 days. Hope the BT gene helps.
Phil

 

[nw_bearcat]

Yeah with the pest resistance management thing, there's even discussion now about volunteer corn. With more acres being planted to BT corn, the volunteers may or may not be expressing the BT gene at levels high enough to kill the pests, only small doses. Small doses over time leads to resistance, so the thinking is we need to put more effort into controlling those stray plants in the next year's crop.

 

[Mike (WA)]

Don't know if its the same with grain corn, but when I worked for PCA about 30 years ago, I remember one year we had a real nice stretch of weather in late March, I think, and a significant amount of corn silage got planted. It came up, then weather turned cold and wet for pretty much all of April, and the rest of the corn got planted in about mid-May, which is normal around here. The early stuff was about 2 inches high, turned a sickly yellow-ish green, and just sat there. By harvest time, there wasn't a nickel's worth of difference between the March and May planted corn, yield wise. It apparently doesn't pay to jump the gun.