Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
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I want to start off by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year! A few weeks ago Stateline Producers awarded me the Joe Franks Memorial Achievement Award. Stateline Producers gave me a very nice plaque which I have hanging on the wall next to my desk. I’m looking at this award as I’m writing this article. I’m also spending a little time at my desk just reflecting back on my efforts in agriculture and our rural way of life over the years. Unfortunately I didn’t know Joe Franks. I suspect Mr. Franks was just li...
I’ve joined the “social media” and now have a facebook page. After some encouragement from members of a younger generation who find social networking to be an integral part of their lives, I have taken my first step into this rather fascinating means of communication. I do see where this type of interaction may prove to be a very good means of communicating with producers and educators on the benefits of no till crop production. I’m also a little nervous about having a page that is open to anyone who has access to a smart phone or computer. Any...
The good news is that the temperature only dropped to 16 below zero last night and the weathermen are predicting a slow warm up for this week. It’s been quite some time since we have endured a prolonged cold spell like this one. By the time you read this I hope the temperatures are at least back to what will feel like a balmy normal winter temperature for our area. We did receive about a foot of snow here in the Alliance area. Fortunately the wind hasn’t moved the snow around too much and hopefully the snow will settle down and crust before the...
Back in October when we were getting started combining our dry land corn crop I visited with a neighbor about the value of wheat residues and residue height in dry land corn production. My neighbor thought he should purchase a stripper head for combining his winter wheat crop to leave more standing residue. The year before he had combined his dry land wheat with a conventional head and had baled the straw for his cattle. He then planted his dry land corn into the wheat residue left in the field. Right beside his dry land corn field was a field...
With pheasant hunting season in full swing I thought I would look at some opportunities for recreation in our area. I know we have a recreational opportunity in our region for attracting pheasant and deer hunters to our area on a much larger scale than what is currently available. If you provide a good hunting environment for these hunters there is a real opportunity for increasing farm income and benefiting the businesses in our communities. There are many hunters along the Front Range of Colorado and surrounding areas that are willing to pay...
We finally were able to start combining our irrigated corn yesterday afternoon as the moisture in the corn dropped to below 16 percent which was welcome news. Overnight it snowed about 4 inches, so we’re back in a holding pattern again. This has been a familiar pattern this fall planting and harvesting season. I was visiting with a good friend of mine who was comparing his sugar beet harvest to the crab fishermen on the television show “Deadliest Catch.” He felt his sugar beet harvest was similar to the fishermen pulling up empty pots with...
The weather in our region is always full of surprises and this spring has certainly been a dramatic turnaround from the drought conditions we were experiencing. These extremes in temperature and moisture from year to year really present a challenge for our agricultural producers in this region. This spring has been the complete opposite of what we experienced last year. I have visited with producers the last couple of days from around the Panhandle and the moisture received from this last storm have varied from only .35 of an inch in the...
The “Brown Revolution” is a term given to the emphasis that is now being placed on improving the soil’s health on the farms and ranches across our country. Agriculture went through the “Green Revolution” years ago which helped shape modern day agriculture. During the “Green Revolution” commercial fertilizers were developed and crop varieties were developed through plant breeding to site-specific growing regions. Herbicides to control specific weeds were developed. These technologies continue today and are the reasons we have seen improved yiel...
It’s sure been an ugly April and that is exactly what we needed. The majority of us have experienced several days of snow, wintery mix, spring showers, and back to blowing snow. April has been above normal in precipitation and it couldn’t have come at a better time. With this moisture has come an optimism that the drought may be easing and we’ll have a chance at producing good crops and hay this growing season. All we need now is for Mother Nature not to forget about us and give us “normal” precipitation the rest of the growing season. O...
Thankfully we finally received a blanket of wet snow across our growing region. There is also more snow in the forecast which should help us to recover from the prolonged drought we’ve experienced since last growing season. This welcome moisture will begin to add to our soil moisture profile for the upcoming growing season. The past couple of weeks I’ve shown that no-till crop production on our irrigated acres has many benefits. Economic analysis of no-till crop production has shown no-till to be the least costly production system. No-till cro...
Jessica Johnson, UNL agricultural educator at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center located in Scottsbluff has compiled budgets for the majority of the irrigated crops commonly grown here in our region. I’d like to take a look at these budgets that compare strip till, conventional tillage, and no-till crop production systems. Jessica’s budgets assume equal use of irrigation in producing these crops. When you compare these budgets you also need to factor in that the no-till crop production system actually requires less irrigation to pro...
No-till crop production has proven to be the best production system for conserving moisture. Leaving the previous crop’s residues on the soil surface and attached has improved water infiltration into the soil and reduced soil moisture evaporation. Numerous research projects have shown the moisture conservation that no-till crop production provides under irrigation. The University of Nebraska has conducted research at the North Platte research farm which has shown that leaving residues on the soil surface reduces soil moisture evaporation up t...
Spring is here according to the calendar and the weather is starting to occasionally give us a nice day and then trend back towards winter. We haven’t been given a lot of reprieve from the drought conditions although there has been some snow with some moisture in it around a few areas of the Panhandle. Most of us are still pretty dry. According to my precipitation records we’ve received about 1.55 inches of moisture since last October. This is .97 of an inch below our normal of 2.52 inches for this time frame. I like to start tracking moi...
Last week I looked at some of the budgets Jessica Johnson, Ag Educator with the UNL Panhandle Resource and Extension Center, put together for winter wheat production on dry land acres for the Panhandle. Jessica’s budgets were for conventional winter wheat/summer fallow, winter wheat/chemical fallow, and winter wheat grown in a continuous no till crop rotation. These budgets indicate a yield of 28.01 bushels/acre is required to cover all costs associated with winter wheat production grown in a continuous no till crop rotation, 33.07 bushels/acre...
Jessica Johnson, University of Nebraska Extension Educator at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center has been busy this winter working on crop budgets. Jessica has developed budgets for dry land as well as irrigated crops using different crop production systems. For the dry land crops she developed budgets for winter wheat using conventional tillage, no-till summer fallow, and no-till continuous cropping systems. She also developed budgets for dry land corn, field peas, sunflowers, and proso millet. I would like to share some of these...
I’m sitting in a hotel room in Pierre, S.D. waiting for the brakes to get fixed on our recently purchased semi-tractor. We have a full load of field pea seed sitting on the trailer in tote bags. Our situation has got me to thinking about everything involved in the process of providing a consistent and healthy food supply to our consumers. With more and more field pea acres being planted in our region, we decided getting all the seed from South Dakota to our region was going to require some real effort. We decided to take the challenge head o...
Over the past few articles I’ve written about how we developed a no-till cropping system for our farm. After a few years of using no till on our dry land acres, we adopted our irrigated acres to no till production practices. We found the same benefits on our irrigated acres as we did on our dry land acres, so it made sense to put our irrigated acres into no till crop production. After 20 years of no-till crop production I am very pleased that we adopted this practice on our farm. I really feel the no-till crop production practices kept us f...
Once we made the commitment to adopting a no till crop production system we needed to learn residue management with our equipment. We also had to determine a cropping rotation for our farm that would give us the best chance for success. Needless to say we had a few bumps along the way. We adapted our combine to manage the residue at harvest by adding chaff spreaders to evenly distribute the chaff coming out of the back of the combine. Eventually we also adapted a stripper head to better manage the amount of residue entering the combine and...
I wanted to remind everyone to plan to attend the Panhandle No Till Partnership’s winter conference. The conference will be held on Feb. 20 and 21, 2013, at the Gering Civic Center in Gering. Call the Upper Niobrara Resources District at 308-432-6190 to register. Walk in registrations will be taken on the 20th beginning at 8:00 a.m. Preregistration is encouraged for meal planning, so please call ahead if possible. I think we have an excellent lineup of speakers for this year’s conference. The start of the program will focus on raising for...
There was a gradual progression on our farm to adopting a no till cropping system. Our father passed on to us the value of conservation farming practices. He worked closely with University of Nebraska researchers and allowed them to do research on our farm studying stubble mulching practices and soil erosion on our farm. We continued down this path of trying to leave more residues in the field in our winter wheat/ summer fallow rotation. Cheatgrass was always a problem, and at the time the best way to control this problem weed was to plow,...
I’ve been asked to speak at the No till On the Plains winter conference in Salina, Kansas again this year as well as the High Plains No Till winter conference in Burlington, Colorado. I’ve been asked to look back at over 20 years of no till crop production and discuss the evolution of my no till farming experience during this time. My sister Janet also gave me a memory stick for my computer for Christmas this year. Janet scanned all my parent’s photos and slides over the past 60 years on this memory stick. I’ve been looking at these photos...
There a couple large regional no- till meetings coming up that I’d like to talk to you about. I think it is very important for a producer who is considering adopting or has adopted no-till farming practices to attend. These meetings bring in speakers from around the region, country, and world to talk about the latest updates and trends in no-till crop production. These meetings are an incredible place to network with other no-till producers. You will also gain a larger perspective on the possibilities of no-till crop production. These m...
The field pea meetings have all been scheduled and times and places have been finalized, so I wanted to pass this information on to growers around our region. These meetings will cover production of field peas and marketing of field peas. Field pea meetings this coming week are scheduled in Gering at the Farm and Ranch Museum on Wednesday, January 16, 2013 beginning at 1:00 p.m. On Thursday, January 17, 2013 there will be a field pea meeting in Albin, Wyoming. This meeting will be held at the Albin Community Center conference room beginning at...
There are several educational meetings scheduled for January and February, 2013 that producers in our area should plan to attend. I’ve been going to no till crop production meetings for over 20 years and I have always felt that attending as many of these meetings as possible has always been time well spent. These educational meetings are a great way to meet and visit with other producers about their no till crop production practices. These meetings always include speakers that cover a variety of topics on soil health, economics, crop p...
As 2012 winds down I thought a little reflecting back would be a good thing to do. Sometimes it helps to look back on your successes that you were a part of over the past year and take a hard look at your failures to keep you humble and to continue the never ending learning process. Continuing education is important in every business and agriculture is no exception. I feel it is very important to be flexible in your decision making and embrace the changes that are inevitable. Mother Nature really threw agriculture a nasty curve this past year....
