Bat Disease

I saw this article in the Ohio Farmer and haven't met anyone who had heard about it so I thought I would share it here.

Bat Disease Could Be Expensive
As white nose disease runs its course western counties of Ohio face potential losses of $23 million per county per year from increased insect damage.

Ohio farmers could suffer more than $740 million a year on a in agricultural losses, and possibly as much as $1.7 billion, if the new deadly disease called white-nose syndrome wipes out the state's bats, according to a recent study in the journal Science.

Especially hard hit, the study said, would be the rich farming counties in the state's west and northwest, such as Darke, Wood, Mercer and Putnam, where typical losses could range from $18 million to $23 million per county per year.

"Simply put, bats eat a lot of insects -- insects that bother us around our homes, and insects that can damage crops and forests," says Marne Titchenell, Ohio State University Extension wildlife specialist, who was not part of the study, but gives bat conservation workshops around the state and studied southern Ohio bat populations in graduate school.

"It's logical to assume we'll lose a significant amount of the pest-control services that bats provide us as the disease spreads through Ohio and potentially the Midwest," Titchenell says.

The numbers, from an article called "Economic Importance of Bats in Agriculture" in the current issue of Science, are estimates based on crop acreage, the number of crop pests eaten by bats, the damage to crops that their feeding prevents, and the need, as a result, for farmers to spend less on pesticides.

Wildlife officials confirmed the first case of white-nose syndrome in bats in Ohio in late March. It's fatal to at least 90% of the bats in infected caves and sometimes as many as 100%. Human health isn't at risk.

Caused by a newly identified fungus, Geomyces destructans, white-nose syndrome -- so named for the white fuzzy growth it causes on bats' muzzles -- was first detected in New York state in 2006, has spread to at least 16 states and three Canadian provinces in eastern North America, and has killed more than 1 million bats.

Ohio's first case was in Wayne National Forest, in the same part of the state where Titchenell did her graduate research, in the Zaleski and Richland Furnace state forests.

In all, the Science study said Ohio's agricultural losses to white-nose syndrome could range from $120 million in years with a low rate of insect pest survival -- meaning there would be fewer pests to cause problems -- to $740 million at a standard pest survival rate to $1.7 billion at a high rate.

But Titchenell cautions that the figures are only estimates, extrapolated as they were from cotton-dominated farmlands in Texas.

"This is the first study I know of to report (bats' agricultural) values by state and county," she said. "But until there's a similar study that extrapolates corn and soybean figures" -- corn and soybeans being Ohio's top two crops -- "we won't know for sure."

The total value of bats to U.S. agriculture -- and the potential loss from white-nose syndrome -- ranges from a low of $3.7 billion to a high of $53 billion a year, according to the study.

I know many people could care less but I sure hope we don't lose our bats.

Ed

Why We Have Lost So Much Soybean Yield Potential

I had really hoped to have our soybeans planted by now. Our potential yields have been lost and keep slipping every day.

All joking aside, the soggy saga continues and it has gotten past the critical
point for area farmers. We have not dodged the “rain bullet" and still can't get
in the field.

The decisions of what to do first will be quite varied. Do we just concentrate on getting corn planted and wait on soybeans? Do we try to do both at the same time to
cover more acres? Do we consider switching away from corn altogether(especially if we are still really wet into nextweek)?

The last couple of weeks we have thought about corn planting and burndown programs.
So, what about soybeans? What can we do to help the yield potential in a crazy year such as this?

Agronomists agreethe obvious potential of any soybean crop production system can be greatly enhanced by planting as early as possible. That never happened this year in the eastern corn belt.

There are three key reasons why we want to plant soybeans early. First, you want your soybean crop to collect as much of the seasonally available solar radiation as
possible, simply because plants require the energy of sunlight to convert carbon
dioxide into carbohydrates,protein, and lipids (oils).We don’t want to waste sunlight but we haven't had much this year.

The ultimate goal is for our soybean canopy to be green to the eye by the 4th of July, like we had last year. Also keep in mind that day length increases from
the equal day/equal night cycle of the spring equinoxto the longest day/shortest
night cycle of the summer solstice. A soybean crop, when planted in late April
or early May, is likely to close its canopy within a week or so after the summer
solstice. Later planted soybean crops will be deprived of the opportunityto collect as many hours of sunlight compared to earlier planted crops, and thus will invariably have less yield potential.

Secondly, you want to have your soybean crop transpire a greater fraction of the seasonally available water, simply because there is a linear relationship
between the amount of total water transpired by the crop and final crop yield.

The seasonally available water includes off season rainfall that was stored as soil water prior to planting, plus all of the in-season rainfall. In order for plants to
acquire carbon dioxide to produce plant and seed organic dry matter, the pores in the leaves (known as stomata) must open, allowing water inside the leaf to escape. In effect, plants must exchange water for carbon dioxide. As a general rule, the soybean exchange ratio translates into about one acre-inch of water (27,154 gallons)being required for every three bushels of seed producedper acre.

Crop water use includes water lost via evaporation directly from the soil, as well as water lost as transpiration from the leaves. Crop water use efficiency can be improved by reducing evaporative water loss as this means more water
will be available for transpirational water loss.

Early planting helps in this regard, because:

• The cooler soil and air temperatures prevailing in
late April or early May are much less conducive to soil water evaporation than
the temperatures in lateMay and early June.

• The canopy closes earlier in the season, which reduces the interception of solar radiation by the soil surface, thereby lessening the heating of
soil surface that drives soil water evaporation.

• The higher humidity that often prevails in a closed (versus open) soybean canopy minimizesthe degree of evaporativesoil water loss.

Finally, you want tohave your soybean crop produce as many plant stem nodes as possible, simply because plant nodes are where the plant produces its flowers, then
pods, and ultimately seeds within those pods.

The rates of soybean germination and emergence are temperature sensitive, so these processes are slower in cooler soil temperatures that prevail during early plantings.
However, once soybean plants reach the V1 stage, (temperature sensitivity is much less, given that a new node is produced on the main plant stem about once every 3.7 days), until node accrual ceases at the R5 stage, when seed enlargement begins in the
uppermost stem nodes.

The node accrual rate between V1 and R5 is not impacted much by the calendar
date of planting. What is impacted by planting date is the calendar date when V1 occurs. This is quite important, given that the V1 date establishes the earliest date that linear node accrual can start.

Moving the planting date earlier typically results in an earlier V1 date. Later planted soybeans simply do not have the opportunity to catch up to the soybean node development of earlier planted soybeans.

Thus, earlier soybean planting can increase crop yield potential by allowing plants to generate more stem nodes. It also induces the beginning flower (R1) stage to occur
nearer the date of the summer solstice.

So, what kind of yield advantage does a producer gain by planting soybeans early? In Nebraska, research reported in the Agronomy Journal demonstrated that for each day
that soybean planting was delayed after May 1, the yield penalty per day was as much as 5/8 (0.63) bu/ac in a “great” soybean year (like 2004), and still a substantive 1/4 (0.25) bu/ac in a “not so great” soybean year (like 2003).

Multiplying these yield penalties by the current soybean price provides a clear indication of the importance of planting date in terms of optimizing the net profit potential in a soybean production system. The yield penalties accruing from delaying soybean planting beyond early May in Nebraska have also been documented in other states (Wisconsin, Indiana and Iowa).

The yield reward arising from early planting should not be used as a reason to plant seed into seedbeds that are too wet to plant. Other than trying to plant early, exercise good judgment relative to the other seed planting practices.

I thought this would explain why we will have less soybean yield potential this year and be helpful to farmers and our non farming consumers.

Ed Winkle

Indians No-Tilled 500 Years Ago

Our friend Fred Shaw, Shawnee Nation Storyteller has told us much about the past of this land before the white man settled here. They used innovative practices to feed themselves. Relics abound on this farm and this area which was good for hunting and growing corn.

There is not too much no-tilling going on around here yet as it is cool and damp once more. It is amazing how we farm today with machines like others before us farmed by hand with very crude tools.

FARGO, N.D. – As the adoption of sustainable agriculture practices become more commonplace today in American agriculture, some of those methods now being adopted are similar to those practiced four centuries ago by the Iroquois nation in what is now New York.

That became apparent during a presentation by Jane Mt. Pleasant, an associate professor in the Horticulture Department at Cornell University and also director of the American Indian Program at the school.

Mt. Pleasant spoke at the recent Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Winter Conference in Fargo, with her speech focusing on indigenous agriculture and its links to contemporary agricultural sustainability. She used her expertise in Iroquois agriculture to support that contention.

According to Mt. Pleasant, records dating as far back as 1687 for areas in the Iroquois nation, which was located in the area which is now New York State, indicated some very high yields for crops grown by the Indian group.

These yields, according to Mt. Pleasant, were actually higher than the results being experienced by European farmers growing wheat and other small grains at the time. In fact, she termed the wheat yields in Europe as “miserable” with a kernel of wheat seed often yielding only 10 kernels at harvest time. These conditions didn’t start improving until the European farmer started to include forage crops in their planting rotation.

Despite that, the farming industry in the U.S. was actually patterned after the system developed in Europe, which included using the plow and teams of animals to till the soil. Lacking the draft animals and plows, the Iroquois actually used a basic no-till system, once the trees in the forest area were cleared and the planting mounds established.

Though many hail the moldboard plow as the tool that helped agriculture the most, Mt. Pleasant isn’t convinced. In fact, she contends the plow caused more problems than it solved.

“If you keep plowing soils continuously there is no attempt to increase soil organic matter and they eventually reach a pretty stable level of about two percent,” she said. “As a result, very little nitrogen is added to the soil. We now know that plowing is the single, largest threat to soil organic matter to everyone involved in agriculture.

“Soils with less than two percent organic matter, not only suffer from low fertility rates, but also many other problems such as soil structure, its ability to hold water and increased erosion factors.”

However, during this time of scarce wheat and other small grain crops in Europe, the Iroquois nation, making use of no-till agricultural methods were raising good crops of maize (corn) as was documented on several occasions in journals kept by various individuals.

In the 1600s, when Britain and France were fighting over the control of what is now the northeastern part of the U.S., the English made a pact with the Iroquois to supply their troops with food, and the French were constantly sending scouting parties south from present day Canada to destroy those food supplies.

On one such expedition, which was headed by Denonville, a French businessman headquartered in Canada, his patrol reported destroying over 1.5 million bushels of corn in his nine-day sweep through Iroguois ag production area, according to Mt. Pleasant.

“It was an incredible amount of corn,” she noted, “and Denonville spent a good amount of his time destroying as much of it as he could.”

Almost a hundred years later, John Sullivan, a general with George Washington, had the assignment of going into Seneca (the Iroquois ag region) and destroying their agriculture ability, since they were still supplying the British with food. Several soldiers in that campaign wrote in their diaries of the agriculture they encountered while conducting their “slash and burn campaign.” Those diary entries told of fields of over a mile in length and exceeding 200 acres in size, covered with heavy crops of corn, squash and pumpkin, with top corn yields in excess of 75 bushels per acre.

“What explains this level of productivity,” she asked, “particularly when the wheat farmers of Europe were not experiencing good yields?

“First, the Iroquois were farming fertile soils, but they maintained high levels of soil organic matter because they weren’t plowing,” she said. “They were also lucky that they were working with maize, which is uniquely suited to no-till conditions and they were also fortunate that maize is usually more productive than wheat.”

After clearing forested areas, the Iroquois formed mounds of earth about three feet across with hand tools and then planted in those mounds. These areas were kept weed free by pulling the weeds. When they came back the next year, according to Mt. Pleasant, they reshaped those same mounds and planted in them again.

This type of farming is starting to take hold in the farming community today as we see an increase of cover crops and less tillage, which is resulting in healthier soils and improved production. All things our forefathers in agriculture learned several centuries ago under different cultures in different parts of the world.

Liam

Liam got to visit us yesterday from Cleveland. We had a blast.

His darned old allergies were acting up before he got here and his poor little eyes were almost swollen shut when he left. Like me he hates weeds and pollens so we sprayed and pulled and chopped weeds. You wouldn't think a five year old would hate weeds as much as I do but he does.

He drove the 1755 pedal tractor plenty and we got into the big tractors and shot some basketball in the shop. Of course his favorite thing is the pillow fight in the extra bedroom and the dust mites and feather down probably was not good on either one of our allergy problems.

We had a hamburger and french fries for supper and some snow pea pods and vegetables until a broccoli suddenly attacked me from his plate. He had never done that before so that got a warning from grandma. We get a little crazy when we get together.

Of course we had to wash it down with berry juice and milk and some more berries on top of that for dessert.

He sure is a fun guy, reminds me so much of my dad and I it isn't funny. He told his other grandpa he was going to be a farmer. I think he will be able to do whatever he wants. He sure had grown since the picture.

Grandma got to play with grandson Tyler today in Columbus. That little guy will be able to do whatever he wants, to. He is all boy and has a vocabulary for a two year old you wouldn't believe. He is very hands on, too.

Grandkids are so special and we have a passle full. One is smarter than the other, never saw such a bunch.

What a great bunch of kids they are.

Ed

Trips

LuAnn and I have been talking about what we would like to do for our tenth anniversary. I found this and feel really blessed we have been able to see almost all of this.

Now with the price of gas, we are trying to pinch our pennies a little more. It's going to be like that here on out with our age and the economy.

There is hope gas might come down a little since many experts feel like $4 per gallon is the barrier where people really reduce driving as stocks of fuel have skyrockted since gas hit the magic 4 button.

Yesterday gas was $4.09 here, diesel was still still $4.19 and E-85 was $3.49 per gallon. I bought some of all of it for our various engines.

Ten years ago we bought our first pickup camper and headed to Iowa on the way to Yellowstone. That's when we found our first big National Parks like Yellowstone and visited where Custer had his Last Stand. Oh, those were the days and only ten years ago! It's went by in a blink.

We've made several trips west since then and saw all those National Parks on the link. I still have the maps displayed in my office where we visited, that color brochure they hand you when you enter that National Park.

Farming comes first though and our anniversary looks like it will come during prime farming time in this late spring 5 weeks from now.

A friend planted his big corn test plot yesterday near Clarksville not too far from here so we are getting close to planting though they are still calling for big thunderstorms.

People who know we farm are starting to notice the unplanted fields and are asking questions. I figure we have lost a quarter of our yield potential already this year and probably more. The cereal grains, corn and soybeans aren't going to yield like we hoped they would as we have already lost weeks of growing weather that aren't usually made up at the end of the year.

Who knows, it's a long way to fall but it will come fast just like those ten years.

Like this picture from a year ago we can plan the event but we can't plan the outcome.

Ed

Good Morning!

It still looks like rain this morning and it's almost the middle of May. We have had 11-12 inches in this area since April first and there has been no drying weather.

Farmers have got to be antsy by now. They are even looking at crop insurance options in case they can't plant on time. Our May first planting completion date washed down the river in April. It will be at least two more weeks before much happens if this pattern does shift and it shows no signs of shifting.

I always said you can pick your date but you can't pick the weather that day. That was never truer than this year.

I see another farmer posted whether he should inoculate his soybeans this year. It's been 16 years since that all changed but some never got the message. In 1995 the first new strains of rhizobia bacteria were introduced that don't carry over in the soil but compete for a place to live on the soybean root with whatever rhizobia is already in that soil.

It's made me an extra bushel of soybeans every year since and often 3-4 and sometimes 8-10 bushels. Inoculation is one of the best investments out there but some farmers never got the message.

I admit it's a small piece of the puzzle this year with the problem of just planting period without worrying about the little things but the little things do add up. As wet and cold as this soil is I sure would want every advantage for the new crop I can give it.

The Internet has lost it's zest for me since I have been off it the last month and my computer is acting up again. I will probably have to have cousin Brian out again to look at it. Something has changed in the settings. I couldn't open a power point this week and I am locked out of Facebook. No loss there but I do like to see my families pictures on it.

Arthritis has been really kicking it's heels this week too, must be great weather for it. Spring allergies haven't been too bad so I am thankful for that.

Now if we could just get the yard mowed...

Ed

Grandparents Day

Two of the grand daughters invited us to grandparents day Friday and Monday. Friday was a fiasco. Poor mommy had the third automobile breakdown in one week. Grandma saved the day but missed grandparents day.

Yesterday turned out better. So many grandparents showed up they had to unload more chairs in the auditorium. Everyone had a tasty donut and milk or juice or coffee. I even got to sit across my township trustee, a farmer I never see in that situation, sitting with his grandson.

We met a very nice lady who sat beside us who drove two and a half hours for grandparents day. It turned out her husband is well driller and I just had my second well quit pumping. With the years of no use of the wells I imagine silt plugged the bottom or a sand lense and now neither well will pump.

You can't get hold of my well driller, he never returns calls and I had called him for years when we first moved here. She said "Tom loves to talk and would be happy to help you with your problem." I am calling Tom today.

They marched us up stairs single file Indian style to her second grade classroom. Her teacher had them sing a grandparents song to the tune of Take Me Out To The Ballgame. They really sang well. The teacher used a powerpoint on one of those new electronic chalk boards.

Her cursive writing and spelling is really coming along! I think we still printed in second grade! We felt sorry for the little children with no grandparents so we made a big deal over them too and asked them about their paper. Two liked to camp, one like to fish and one liked to show pigs.

It felt good to be in the building that the school board built when I was on the board ten to twenty years ago. I remember hiring the principal and her teacher years ago and they both are doing a great job. You are the first people I told this too as yesterday was all about the children.

The Ohio FFA had a great convention in Columbus last weekend too. Fayetteville took lots of honors like eighth in the state in General Livestock Judging, one of my favorites. There are 360 FFA Chapters in Ohio. The team is composed of sophomore and juniors so I hope they can do even better the next two years.

It reminded me of when I taught at Blanchester where we visited yesterday and my team went to the top of the General Livestock Judging Contest and again when my three kids and our grand daughter's dad was on the team. Now he is assistant principle of the high school after teaching ag where I did for many years.

Our friend Drew Hastings was one of the speakers to the group of 6,000 people. Drew is the Republican candidate for Mayor of Hillsboro this fall.

Yesterday was a really good day, just like a year ago when we visited the Elementary School for the same reason. That group of kids have grown and learned so much in just one year.

I even got to mow some grass yesterday and got a lot of chores done on top of the special day.

Hope you had a special day, too.

Ed