More Goss

Our good poster friend John Hall in Arkansas posted about his corn that is sick.  I am sure he wonders what that cause is and how he can prevent and cure that problem.

  It is the kind of sick corn we have talked about here the last 3 years or so.  You can't tell from a picture but it help explains the story.  I sent the post to our friend Dr. Huber, Professor Emeritus, Purdue University.  He said "At this distance it looks like 'classic' Goss' wilt at this stage of growth/environmental conditions. It only gets worse. Check with Elisa test (Bob Streit or Amie Bandy), or U. Nebraska Lincoln Plant diagnostic lab. If Goss' confirmed, take remedial action as soon as possible since this is a systemic bacterial disease."

In my experience, it does only get worse.  If those plants aren't already, they will start leaking plant milk and it all goes down from there.  It can't ever heal itself.  There are some curatives that include citric acid but prevention is the best goal as all diseases are.

They are far enough ahead of us in Arkansas that their corn is in the proper stage to see these results.  I will be looking for similar lesions and problems in Ohio corn and neighboring states  I watched out for Stewart's Bacterial Wilt for years as I saw corn highly affected by it but now it is these black lesions on the stalk that start leaking white sap and salting out the plant juices right down the stalk.  I sure think this problem was part of the 125 bu national yield last year and I am very concerned about it this year.

There isn't a doggone thing I can do about it but keep learning about how to keep a non GMO seed clean, how to find it and plant it and how to nurture it once it's in the ground.  That's all we can do.  If I have to spray a curative, which I will, the horse is already out of the barn.

Oh, I wish we didn't have these problems to deal with but we do.  If USDA thinks there are really that many acres of corn this year and it is going to yield blank bushels like their report says, I really wonder what they are smoking up there.

That report is no where close to reality in my mind but I do really hope they are closer to being right than I am.

My corn was sick five years ago but I didn't know what I was looking at.

Ed Winkle

The First GMO Was Tobacco

A friend on Crop Talk mentioned the first GMO was done with tobacco as the host plant.  I had forgotten that and had to look it up.

"The first genetically modified plant was produced in 1982, using an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant.[13] The first field trials of genetically engineered plants occurred in France and the USA in 1986, when tobacco plants were engineered to be resistant to herbicides.[14] In 1987, Plant Genetic Systems (Ghent, Belgium), founded by Marc Van Montagu and Jeff Schell, was the first company to develop genetically engineered (tobacco) plants with insect tolerance by expressing genes encoding for insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).[15] The People’s Republic of China was the first country to allow commercialized transgenic plants, introducing a virus-resistant tobacco in 1992.[16]

The first genetically modified crop approved for sale in the U.S., in 1994, was the FlavrSavr tomato, which had a longer shelf life.[17] In 1994, the European Union approved tobacco engineered to be resistant to the herbicide bromoxynil, making it the first commercially genetically engineered crop marketed in Europe.[18] In 1995, Bt Potato was approved safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, making it the first pesticide producing crop to be approved in the USA.[19] The following transgenic crops also received marketing approval in the US in 1995: canola with modified oil composition (Calgene),

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn/maize (Ciba-Geigy), cotton resistant to the herbicide bromoxynil (Calgene), Bt cotton (Monsanto), soybeans resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (Monsanto), virus-resistant squash (Asgrow), and additional delayed ripening tomatoes (DNAP, Zeneca/Peto, and Monsanto).[14] As of mid-1996, a total of 35 approvals had been granted to commercially grow 8 transgenic crops and one flower crop of carnations, with 8 different traits in 6 countries plus the EU.[14] In 2000, with the production of golden rice, scientists genetically modified food to increase its nutrient value for the first time.."

GMO vs non GMO keeps coming up in farmer conversations as the events fail or have problems or people start questioning the science.  Another reader sums it up well:  "think it is the keep your head in the sand and it will go away syndrome, Ed. Too many don’t want to believe the reports like you have shown me with high levels of Formaldehyde in it after using RU.

Not only that if they believe it then they will be forced to do something about it and quite frankly RU made farmers out of people who have no clue about it. Some here will still spray 4 or 5 times with RU so long as Monsanto throws in something extra like generic select for the “escapes” I believe it is affecting our food. I think all GMO is. It just a quick and easy way to overcome short comings instead of learning proper agronomy and respecting plant breeding.

There are too many physical changes happening to plants and animals to explain it any other way. Is RU the sole cause? I doubt it but it is a serious contributor just because of how much is used. And I think it stacks itself for each GMO event you add to the mix. [ I don’t think that is what they were meaning when they came up with the term stacked traits]."

What do you think?

Why do you farm, anyway?

Ed Winkle

Corn Fungicides May Not Pay

As farmers work to increase the productivity of their fields, a study found that fungicides may not pay.  "Unless a corn crop is at risk of developing fungal diseases, a Purdue University study shows that farmers would be smart to skip fungicide treatments that promise increased yields.


Kiersten Wise, an assistant professor of botany and plant pathology, said fungicides used in fields where conditions were optimal for fungal diseases improved yields and paid for themselves. In fields where fungal diseases are unlikely to develop, however, applying a fungicide is likely a waste of money.

"About five years ago, we never used fungicides in hybrid corn. Then there was this push to use fungicides for yield enhancement, even without disease problems," said Wise, who collaborated on findings that were published as an American Phytopathological Society feature article in the journal Phytopathology. "We found that you would have to get a substantial yield increase for a fungicide treatment to pay for itself. We didn't see that yield increase on a consistent basis, and it wasn't predictable."

I worked on a project for BASF when Headline fungicide came out and we found fields that yielded up to 45 bushels more with Headline fungicide.  A neighbor had those same results in a nearby field in 2011 but that is not the norm.

A fungcide does kill the flora and fauna of the soil and many of those are beneficial organisms in a healthy soil.  Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy livestock and healthy humans is our goal.  Farmers that use calcium nitrate beside the row have healthier crops.  I saw that in Keith's 250 bu corn last summer right beside 50 bushel dead corn.

Do you use a fungicide?  I don't and I don't plan to.  I am striving for a better balanced soil and a better fertility balanced crop.  High calcium lime is a key component to that for me here in Ohio.  I spread several hundred tons of it this spring and my crop looks good.  Tissue testing is revealing what I am deficient in so I can add the nutrients they need.

We tend to over nitrate our crops in America and underfeed everything else.

Every nutrient in balance is a key.

Ed Winkle

Growing Older

As I was lying around, pondering the problems of the world, I realized that at my age I don't really give a rat's ass anymore.  This summarizes how I felt lately!

.. If walking is good for your health, the postman would be immortal.

.. A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water, but is still fat.

.. A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years, while  .. A tortoise doesn't run and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for 150 years. And you tell me to exercise?? I don't think so, but I know I better.

Just grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to remember the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Now that I'm older here's what I've discovered:

1. I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

2. My wild oats are mostly enjoyed with prunes or raisin bran.

3. I finally got my head together, and now my body is falling apart.

4. It was a whole lot easier to get older, than to get wiser.

5. Some days, you're the top dog; some days you're the hydrant.

6. I wish the buck really did stop here; I sure could use a few of them.

7. Kids in the back seat cause accidents.

8. Accidents in the back seat cause kids.

9. It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere.

10. The world only beats a path to your door when you're in the bathroom.

11. If God wanted me to touch my toes, he'd have put them on my knees.

12. When I'm finally holding all the right cards, everyone wants to play chess.

13. It's not hard to meet expenses . . . they're everywhere.

14. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

15. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter . . .I go somewhere to get something, and then wonder what I'm "here after".

I needed to "lighten the load" today and this was my way of doing it.

Got any good ones to add to my list?

Ed Winkle

Goodbye 806

This thread caught my eye this morning.

"There is also a rake hooked to it and a mx170 with a Nw Holland br7060 baler down the hill from it. Roads are all closed and cant even get to them to move them. I'm guessing with the 2 inches weve gotten in the last hour that they are under again."

I can see why he would think goodbye 806 International Harvester.  That is the tractor I pulled 40 years ago with a P pump, big injectors and a Schwitzer 3LM turbocharger.  That tractor would compete and out pull about any tractor at the time. 

I remember we were pulling it in the 13,500 lb class around 1975 in the town I would become ag teacher.  We had weights piled all over that poor little 806, it looked like a toad.  I think I pulled in High First and when I hit the spin out tracks, the front end lifted up higher than your head and the tractor walked right past all of those holes.  325 hp was considerable in those days.

I remember the disgruntled looks from the Case and John Deere drivers there who managed big farms with their equipment in that area.  No, I remember outright cursing.  My friend and I had won every farm class that day.  We had it dialed in perfect!  We picked up a case of Schloening Little Kings on the way home.  Do you know how drunk you can get on ale?

The poster is from SW Wisconsin and they had a big rain come upon them too quickly in a flooding area.  I guess they shouldn't have parked the machinery there before the storm.

I remember when  a flood caught dad in a similar situation and he barely got his Super 77 Oliver out of a flooding field.  This picture reminds me of the 60's when I was a teen.  Weather forecasting was not so great then and I wonder if it is any better now.

We had a thunderstorm overnight again but I don't think it rained much.  My Spatial Rainfall Consulting report should be coming any minute.

I want to cut wheat and plant soybeans.  That will have to wait another day or two.
Ed

Goss's Wilt?

"On Tuesday, June 18, samples were taken from corn fields in Madison Parish that had both classical leaf symptoms and disease spread pattern of Goss’s wilt in the corn hybrid DK 6694. Unless I have skipped something in the literature and assuming a positive identification of the bacterium, this is the first report of Goss’s wilt in Louisiana.


Why here and why now?  "Suspected Goss’s wilt in corn in Madison Parish Louisiana in June 2013.

During the 2011 corn growing season, there were reports of Goss’s wilt in northeast Louisiana. But upon further investigation, the symptoms were identified as fertilizer burn, herbicide burn and drought symptoms that were widespread that year."  Was the symptoms correctly identified?

This year, the approximately 50-foot-diameter circles of symptomatic plants were found by a local aerial applicator who flew over the field in question"

Why here and why now?  Could it be trait insertion?  Has the molecular pathway for nutrient flow been disrupted?  Is xylem and phloem not working properly?  These are the questions I would ask.

I have reported pink leaves on corn before it dies prematurely coast to coast for three years or so now.  It's in my county and just about everywhere I scout corn.  I have even found it on my own pictures of my own crop and other men's crops years earlier.

After watching the spring of 2013 evolve and seeing the problems of the past show up in different fashion, I am convinced we have a problem with our corn crop.

I have my suspicions but I am afraid we will have to endure a few more or a whole lot more crop crashes before we wake up and really investigate the symptoms and link them to real problems.

What do you think?

Ed Winkle

Crop Scouting Tour to the Northeast

We left our farm bright and early Friday morning for a 1200 mile crop tour to NY state.  The best crops we saw were right here in southwest Ohio, perhaps one of the garden spots of the nation this year.

The earliest corn is chest high in Fayette and Clinton County.  As you drive north, it gets smaller and smaller with more denitrification and drowned out spots.  The soft red winter wheat all looks good and some is almost ripe but the farther north you get the greener it is as you would expect.  Soybeans are not out of the ground to the second trifolitate, the farther south the better.

We scouted fields in Genessee and Niagra County New York and only half the crop is planted.  Only the driest fields got planted and they have drowned out spots with yellow corn.  We didn't see many soybeans in Pennsylvania or New York this year like we have in the past.  It is too late to plant many of those vacant fields we saw but I am sure some will be planted on a huge risk.  It all depends on the year.

We are getting ready to harvest my soft red winter wheat here on the farm and immediately plant it to double crop soybeans.  We will put the head on tomorrow and adjust the combine and take a swipe each day and go to our local buyers and see what they think of it.  Whoever says here is the price and we agree to it we will deliver to.

The price has been floating under $7.  We could have sold it all for $9.89 last fall but we only took a little.  The last time I did that was 2011 and we had to have others help us fill our contracts.  That is a very risky proposition and I don't like to depend on others for my needs.  I should be self sufficient.  This time I should have sold more than I could raise and helped others with a good price but I didn't know that when I planted this crop.

Posts about wheat have been many this winter and spring and now summer on Crop Talk.  There might have been a few more acres of wheat planted here in the east this past fall and farmers have been sharing information about it before it was planted.

We had a very good trip for our 12th wedding anniversary.  I have a great partner to share my love of family and farming with.  We are very blessed.

Ed Winkle