100-Dollar-Ideas
Indigo Ag, Inc., is launching an on-farm storage program for U.S. farmers to enable identity preservation of corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat and rice.
Understanding the latest definition of no-till and the reasons to stay with it offer potential benefits to your management plan and can affect your bottom line as well.
When you think about crop production in the U.S., the big three are corn, soybeans and wheat—in that order. One crop that garners only a modest number of acres but might be worth taking a look at for your farm is canola. “In the U.S., the ratio of supply versus demand of canola oil is about 1:4, which presents a huge opportunity for U.S. producers to grow more canola,” according the U.S. Canola Association. There are a number of reasons for that. Among them, according to the USDA, is that canola oil for cooking ranks behind only soybean oil and palm oil. In addition, canola meal is the second-most used feed meal with livestock, behind only soybean meal. In the past 40 years, canola has gone from being the sixth-largest oil crop to the second largest globally. Even so, U.S. farmers—at 17 million acres in 2017—produce only a small portion of the global crop. North Dakota farmers produce 83% of the total crop, according to Margaret Smith with the agricultural marketing resource center at Iowa State University.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announces the appointments of five members to serve on the United Sorghum Checkoff Program board of directors. Members will serve three-year terms.
UPDATED Friday AM: Hurricane Harvey was upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane this morning. The National Weather Service expects the area of impact to be “uninhabitable for weeks or months.”
Declining stocks and higher prices may bring cotton back to the South.
Manage potential soybean risks with a systems approach
A well-planned program results in more bushels, less fertilizer and reduced loss
The value of zone management goes beyond cutting input costs; it also allows farmers to effectively focus inputs and attention. If you don’t have background information on a field, then grid-based management does the job, says Brad Beutke, who helps with the Farm Journal Test Plots and farms near Clinton, Ill. “But if you have yield history, calibrated yields maps, soil surveys, elevation maps or aerial imagery, for example, then it’s worth the effort to take advantage of the data.” Instead of trying to randomize out variability with a super-imposed grid, zone management uses historical data and experience to pave a path. Regardless of where you are on the technology adoption curve, zone management is beneficial.
Corn hybrids move in and out of the marketplace at a faster rate of speed than ever today. The revolving door means farmers have less time to evaluate and pick the seed best-suited for their fields.