Fertilized World

"N. Nitrogen. Atomic number seven. Unnoticed, untasted, it nevertheless fills our stomachs. It is the engine of agriculture, the key to plenty in our crowded, hungry world.

Without this independent-minded element, disinclined to associate with other gases, the machinery of photosynthesis cannot function—no protein can form, and no plant can grow. Corn, wheat, and rice, the fast-growing crops on which humanity depends for survival, are among the most nitrogen hungry of all plants. They demand more, in fact, than nature alone can provide.

Enter modern chemistry. Giant factories capture inert nitrogen gas from the vast stores in our atmosphere and force it into a chemical union with the hydrogen in natural gas, creating the reactive compounds that plants crave. That nitrogen fertilizer—more than a hundred million tons applied worldwide every year—fuels bountiful harvests. Without it, human civilization in its current form could not exist. Our planet’s soil simply could not grow enough food to provide all seven billion of us our accustomed diet. In fact, almost half of the nitrogen found in our bodies’ muscle and organ tissue started out in a fertilizer factory.

Yet this modern miracle exacts a price. Runaway nitrogen is suffocating wildlife in lakes and estuaries, contaminating groundwater, and even warming the globe’s climate. As a hungry world looks ahead to billions more mouths needing nitrogen-rich protein, how much clean water and air will survive our demand for fertile fields?"

This is what our National Geographic friends are reading.  What do you think?  The lakes in Ohio have been in the news as the new fertilizer standards are discussed and adapted.  It is a slow process to change our ways.

The SAP test I saw from Holland at Farm to Plate confirmed to me what I've been seeing and that is we generally over nitrate crops and don't feed enough of the other 16 required elements for growing plants.

I have made a concerted effort to balance my soil fertility.  I have grown 200 bushel corn on 120 units of nitrogen.  That is excellent but my friends have done it with 80 units.  My cover crop friends have been able to accomplish that with no purchased nitrogen.

Ammonia nitrate is now blamed for the explosion in West, Texas.  What ignited it?  We need ammonia nitrate to grow food but accidents and algae will keep it high priced and remotely available.

Can we support this population without a 'fertilized world?"

Ed

I-74 Crop Planting Tour

I made a run to Stockton, Iowa to make sure the hybrids I plant get tested the way Keith farms.  I want to see how my picks perform in his environment.  His method of farming will reveal the potential and flaws of any hybrid or soybean variety in his locale.  That gives me something to shoot for.

I have never seen fields look so homogenous, so unplanted the entire route of Interstate 74 in the month of May in my life.  I felt like none of my typing on here has made much impact.  I saw no cover crops, only some fields from Mother Nature.  Most fields in the 500 mile stretch have been tilled last fall or this spring or both.  They remain unplanted.  That 12% planting report sure doesn't reflect that stretch of highway.

The untouched corn stalk fields will go to notill soybeans most likely but I don't know what percentage they are.  I would guess 20% but it could be higher, not over 40% I am sure.

I was kind of disgusted with American Agriculture.  Maybe everyone else likes it looking all the same but look where the yield trends lie, down for corn and soybeans.  I think we are missing all of those good little farmers that really took care of their land.  Who owns all the land by Interstate?  It looks like the government does!

When you farm 5,000 or 10,000 or who knows how many acres, how can you really take care of it?  I guess someone can but I just didn't see it.  It looked all alike, just like you would call factory farming or farming for the landlord.  I didn't see any specialization or special care.  I saw a lot of erosion and the soil not covered.

I did see a lot of farm machinery on the Interstate, loaded on trucks.  You can tell the agricultural economy has been strong by the amount of new machinery being hauled.  It was a massive amount, maybe half the trucks most of the way.

My trip looked just about like the trip to Bowling Green Sunday.  America's 2013 seed sits in the bag.

Ed Winkle

Lilly Of The Valley

LuAnn bought a packet of bulbs last August when we visited Minnesota last August.  It turned out most of them were Lilly Of the Valley but we did get 30 good tulips out of the 100 bulbs.  Albert Lea Seed House is where we bought them in Albert Lea, Minnesota.  That is really good farming country but I wouldn't trade them weather.

Thanks to this Lilly our front flower bed to the north is green.  It's been the first thing we have found to thrive in this bed, it must be perfect conditions.

I am busy today and tomorrow and will report back later.

Thanks,

Ed

Crop Planting Tour

We made a little run up to Bowling Green, Ohio today for the first time in a long time.  We went up via I-75 and we came back on US 68.  We saw some dust clouds and a few farmers in the field on a Sunday but not near what I think there will be this week.

We saw every kind of field imaginable, fall tilled to spring tilled to no-tilled to strip tilled.  Most had weeds, some had been burned down, but a lot had been tilled last fall or this spring or both.  We saw Mother Nature's cover crops to them being burned down to man's cover crops and those being burned downed.  My overall opinion is that most farmers think it is still too cool and too damp to work ground or plant it, even though it is May 5.

We did get to visit with Scott Apple near Portage, Ohio.  I saw his new water tower inside his barn and most of his equipment.  He is structuring and reversing osmosis for water for sprays.  He is an innovator with his broadcast soybean seeder that sits on the front of his Cat track tractor and gets covered with a soil finisher.  It was dark in his barn and I didn't even try to get any pictures but maybe I can link some here.

We talked about these new ideas of handling spray water, chemicals and fertilizers.  Lots of these ideas can be found on the FHR Farms website.  We have both seen good results and now more farmers want to learn what we are doing.

He and I are planting Dr. Richard Cooper's Apex soybeans that Dr. Cooper bred 40 years ago.  Dr. Cooper called us both up this week to give us his opinion how to handle them.  Scott and I agreed they didn't know how to feed them then and now thanks to Keith and FHR Farms and others we make that semi-dwarf bean a whole different bean.

You have seen this picture before.  I keep showing it over and over again.  It is worth staring at.  It's the reason I drove 3 hours to Scott's house today.  We have got to share this message with each other.

I had to kill 2 hours with the Mrs. since she was good enough to come along with me at a nice antique mall and shops at Findlay.  Someone made a Heritage Collection Shops out of an old farmstead right along I-75.  They did a really good job.

That's about it for today, it was a good day.  I hope yours was also.

Ed Winkle

Flying Pigs

Cincinnati is known for its statues of flying pigs that decorate the city.  This is in honor of its world title as Porkopolis in the 1800's after Buffalo New York lost the title it probably didn't want in the first place.  These cities fed the world as barrels of salt pork were shipped by boat and train as far as they could go.

I call most the roads around here old hog paths as the hogs were driven to the many processing points in Cincinnati.  The state road in front of our farm was called the Cincinnati-Chillicothe Pike when Cincinnati was the largest city. Chillicothe was the state capital because it was settled early off the Ohio River and was closer to the center of the population of the new state(1803).

Tomorrow is the Flying Pig Marathon which has blossomed to a record 40,000 runners.  That's larger than local county seats combined.  Daughter Shannon will be running and has for years now.  There is a lot of good history in our local city and it's good to see the family represented in it.

Farmers will be running around like flying pigs when this weather straightens up.  Many have a few acres planted but the cooler, damper conditions are keeping most of the seed in the bag.  I bet the bags will be empty in a couple of weeks if conditions improve.

Only a few fields still look like this one from  my friend Hay Hud in Lebanon.  More fields have been burned down each day as farmers prepare to plant their corn and soybeans.  Cover crops have really done well across the midwest and it's time to get them killed for planting.

Crop rotation is just about like flying pigs.  It doesn't happen.  I was asked my opinions of how to handle the huge weed resistance problem we have because of our mono-culture of cropping.  They were mentioned in this American Society of Agronomy article.

I can't believe this year is approaching half gone so quickly!  It's been a good year here so far but each year has its challenges.  I wonder what this years will be?

Ed

Crop Scouting Drones

"In the not-so-distant future, farmers wanting to scout fields for diseases and pests, spot spray for weeds or obtain 3-D maps of their farm ground will be turning to tiny autonomous helicopters or planes to do the job."

No-Till Farmer just released an interesting article on the future of drones or small aircraft flying over our fields.  Technology is available now to take about every image of crops known to man and even spray or seed cover crops!

I got a tiny bit interested last summer when Donald Effren from North Carolina called me to see if I would be interested in one.  I've not taken the time to pursue this venture or adventure in this point in my career but a sharp person could make a living of flying these ultra light ultra small aircraft over farmers fields to help them do the chore of scouting and even seed or spray.

In any new technology, the cost of doing it, that is the labor and investment and training must provide results worth that investment.  Human field scouts get a dollar to several dollars per acre to walk fields, report what they find and make recommendations.  The information is as valuable as the knowledge of the scout and the amount of potential damage avoided.

"In the future, UAVs could detect, monitor and forecast the spread of fungus-like organisms like Phytophthora or Fusarium that put crops at risk. Since 2008, several researchers and students at Virginia Tech University have been deploying UAVs for “aerobiological sampling” at the university’s 3,200-acre Kentland Farm near Blacksburg, Va."

This is just one small example what these craft could do for farmers.  The potential is huge.  The advantage I see is quickly obtained information from a personal fly over a field I can't see from ground level as a scout.

Do you see one of these craft flying your fields in the future?

Ed

Itching To Go

Now that we've been properly pruned even before we started, I see farmers are itching to go.  I saw one planter in the field between here and Chillicothe where the old Cincinnati Chillicothe Pike or State Route 28 and US 50 meet.  It looked too wet to be in there from my view but he was in there.

By now the seed is here, the inoculants have been delivered and the tractor and planter are all tuned up to go like my friend near Decatur, Illinois is in today's picture.  I've seen Paul come a long way in his few years of farming that rich Illinois soil.  If you ask him, he might say only the price is rich!  We've shared soil tests and debates on how to address them.  I think he's done a really good job.

I remember when I yelled at the group down deep in the soil pit beside his house a few years ago.  He called me the Corn Whisperer until he heard me yell like I was talking to a bunch of school kids.  I have to laugh about it now.  I quickly became the "Corn Yeller."

In the audience was some guys who probably forgot more than I ever learned, Jeff Martin and company to be exact.  Jeff and son Doug run a sweet operation not far from Paul's near Mt. Pulaski, Illinois.  If I didn't need to be here, I would love to be there today.  I bet there is action a going.

Top farmers study all year for today.  That day when the sun is bright and the air is warm and the soil is drying out.  Whether they no-till or tear up the whole earth, they are ready to go.

I did notice the farther I drove east the browner the ground was.  They have sprayed more burn down than we have around here.  Everything looks ready to plant and if the green is now brown, you know they are prepared to save soil moisture later on with no-till or strip-till..

That's just one advantage of no-till.  It saves "soil, oil and toil."  It sure does and that means more profit in the farmer's pocketbook to do a whole bunch of things.

If you think no-till is impossible on any farm, just record the PBS movie, "The Panama Canal."  I sure would have like to have been there when engineer John Stevens told Teddy Roosevelt they had to build the canal above sea level!  We got to cruise through it a couple of years ago and it truly is a masterpiece.

Your no-till neighbor is working on one right now.

Ed Winkle