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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podcast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource, I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research, use, and issues, helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
(00:40):
Well, hello again everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. We’ve got a familiar face with us again today. We’ve got Lyle Cowell joining us back in the studio. Lyle, welcome back. If you will, remind everybody who you are and what you’re doing.
Lyle Cowell (00:52):
You bet, Mike. It’s really good to be back on the podcast. I enjoy listening to it, and I’m joining you and learning a little bit about the agriculture, where you’re at. What do I do? I’m the Canadian agronomist with Nutrien serving the NPKS fertilizers, the agronomy sustainability of those products up here in Canada.
Mike Howell (01:09):
Lyle, we’re recording this about the 1st of June, but how is everything getting off to a start up there in Canada with the crops? Here in the US, we’ve had kind of a wide planting window. We had a lot of wet areas and it took them a while to get in and we’ve had some places like my house that really needed a rain. We got pretty dry and had to dust in some crops around here, but so far everything seems to be adjusting well and everything’s looking really good for the most part. How’d things get kicked off in your part of the world?
Lyle Cowell (01:35):
The weather dries everything when you’re dryland agriculture, and things just completely changed around here really right across Western Canada and Eastern Canada. We went from great concerns for drought with very little snow through the winter and a dry early spring, very early snow melt, and spring rains have really turned the corner for us wall-to-wall. I would say across Western Canada we have good soil moisture. Eastern Canada is actually needing to dry out a little bit. They’ve had a very warm, wet spring and finally starting to dry out, and right now things are very, very good. It’s been a bit of a cool spring and a very drawn-out seeding season. We started in April and probably going to finish in June now, so it’s been a long stretch of seeding.
Mike Howell (02:19):
Yes, it has. Lyle, what we wanted to really get in and dive into today is forage production. You had written a newsletter and I saw that was posted on our eKonomics website talking about nutrient management and forage production, and I kind of took a look at that and said, “This would be a great thing to talk about and maybe we can contrast a little bit about how things are different in terms of forage production in your part of the world and where I live here in the southeast part of the United States.” Here in the Southeast, we have two main types of summer forages. We have bermudagrass and we have bahiagrass. Both of those are pretty dominant in the landscape. When we get into the winter, we have a lot of growers that’ll plant ryegrass to carry the cattle through the winter and even bail a lot of that for hay, but what’s the situation in Canada? Do you have different species of grass or what happens in your part of the world?
Lyle Cowell (03:06):
It’s a really wide range, certainly dominated by alfalfa and bromegrass and mixes of alfalfa and bromegrass, but depending on the geography and the soil there’s probably 20 different species that are used quite commonly for forages in Western Canada. It depends on the use as well of course, whether it’s being used for hay or grazing, and then some of the specialty mixes to address some of the soil issues. A wide range of species, for example, being used to try combat salinity. We often have to consider what level of tolerance to salinity these grasses have, so a really wide range, and of course in Western Canada we always have to consider winter hardiness. These forages have to be able to settle down and survive over some very, very cold weather through the wintertime.
Mike Howell (03:54):
Lyle, when I think about forages we don’t have a lot of legumes in our mix. We have some clover from time to time, some people have clovers in there, but usually when I’m thinking about forage production in my part of the world, I kind of break it into two categories. We’ve got the high-end producers that really manage things well and try to get a lot of good, high-quality forage off of that, whether they’re going to graze that or make it into hay and feed it at a later time, and then we have those that just take what they get. They’ll may put one application of nitrogen on it in the year and when prices get really low, they’ll put out a little P and K, very rarely take a soil sample, and they just kind of take what they get. Is it the same way in Canada or do y’all manage your forages differently?
Lyle Cowell (04:36):
I think we’ll find that’s one thing that we have a diversity in climate, diversity in species, but I think one thing we probably have in common is the low level of management for a lot of the acres of forages. There are some that are very intensively managed, like you said, and those will primarily be those under irrigation. There’s a significant amount especially of alfalfa under irrigation. Then the dairy producers tend to be fairly intense as far as managing their forage acre depending on the region, I guess, but beyond that a lot of forages are planted, grazed or hayed, but otherwise fairly forgotten on the farm, not very intensively managed whatsoever.
Mike Howell (05:14):
Lyle, there’s one other major difference and we need to touch on this a little bit. Here in the Southeast, we try to get three to four cuttings of hay a year if we’re trying to cut this and manage it for hay, and that dictates a lot of our fertility practices as well, how many times we’re going to be taking a hay cutting off of that. I’m willing to bet that y’all can’t get four hay cuttings a year in Canada.
Lyle Cowell (05:33):
We sure don’t. Most of the hay will have one cut. Once in a while, especially alfalfa may get two cuts. Anything with grass species in it is rarely more than one cut. When you think about it, soon we’ll be in June. The grass is really just starting to get to a point where you can graze it now, so we won’t be cutting hay until early July and into August, and then we also have to… Because winter is coming all the time, we have to let it regrow to reestablish its top growth and root system just to survive winter.
Mike Howell (06:03):
Yeah. See, we’ve already had one hay cutting. Most people have had one hay cutting and knocking on the door that second hay cutting if we’ve had enough rainfall. We’ll be taking a second cutting off here in the next week or 10 days. I guess that’s going to lead into our nutrient management, and anytime we talk about nutrient management we want to talk about the four R’s. Lyle, before we get started on nutrients and what these forages are going to need, remind our listeners about the four R’s and why they’re so important
Lyle Cowell (06:29):
Yeah. We often forget about them when it comes to forages and we talk about it all the time with annual crops, but four R’s are pretty simple concepts, best management practices really for fertilizer management. It’s just simply choosing the right products and using those products at the right rates and applying those products in the right place and at the right time. It gets a little bit tricky with forages with them being perennial species to sort out some of those four R’s, but we do have to think about it to make the best use of the fertilizer
Mike Howell (06:58):
Lyle, let’s talk a little bit about each one of these four R’s. I guess let’s try to knock them out the easiest one first. You mentioned the right place. The way I think about this, we’re in a pasture situation and we’re going to need to get this fertilizer spread evenly across the entire pasture. We just need to make sure we keep it in the pasture and don’t get it into some off-target areas, whether that be a ditch bank or a creek or something like that. Any other thoughts on the right place?
Lyle Cowell (07:23):
Yeah. It’s another point when we’re establishing forages. We should probably think about right place because we could ban some of the fertilizer at the time of seeding or before seeding. After that, it’s really right place is going to be broadcasting the fertilizer. There’s a few different options on broadcasting it, but in the end we have to just surface apply it and try to do that at the right time when it comes to the four R’s.
Mike Howell (07:46):
Okay. Well, you led into the next R and the right time. What do you think is the right time to be making fertilizer applications in forages?
Lyle Cowell (07:53):
Well, it depends on the nutrient, I guess.
Mike Howell (07:55):
That’s a great agronomy answer. It depends.
Lyle Cowell (07:58):
It depends, it depends. With nitrogen especially, it tends to be the nutrient that we spend the most money on on grass species. Right time will depend on the species a little bit. In Western Canada, sometimes we will broadcast nitrogen in the fall even though there’s no crop growth occurring on the forages just to get some of that nitrogen absorption into the root system and get things growing very quickly in the spring. Beyond that, right time often relies in dryland agriculture on having some rainfall to move that nitrogen into the root system, so there becomes a lot of guessing on what right time will be. We’re trying to stimulate maximum top growth with also trying to reduce the risk of losses of that nitrogen, so it’s a bit of a balance to try hit both of those goals.
Mike Howell (08:45):
Lyle, that’s exactly right. It’s hard to manage that nitrogen sometimes. In my part of the world, we’re going to make three to four nitrogen applications every year. Most people want to split that up and put out a nitrogen application as soon as they take a hay cutting off, so you’ll put one out at green up and then every time you remove a hay cutting you’ll put another application of nitrogen out and make sure that next cutting gets off to a good start. Now, there has been a little deviation from that in recent years with the polymer-coated fertilizers like ESN. We have found that we can put out a little more nitrogen and cut back the number of applications. Here on my farm, I’m putting out two applications of ESN every year. Time is of the essence. I don’t have time to come out and make four applications a year, so I’m able to time those two applications and get it out and I can watch that nitrogen feed those plants all through the year and know it’s there and know it’s working. That is another option that we have found viable here in my part of the world.
Lyle Cowell (09:41):
That’s a really good point, Mike. ESN affords that ability to… Takes away some of the guessing on the weather too. It allows us to time it so that we can hit maximum plant growth and reduce the risk of losses. It does help address both of those issues.
Mike Howell (09:57):
Farming isn’t farming without questions, and now there’s a place to go for answers. At eKonomics, an entire team of agronomists is waiting and ready to help for free. No question is too big or too small. Visit nutrien-eKonomics.com and submit your question with the Ask an Agronomist feature.
(10:19):
Lyle, you just touched on something there, the weather. I guess we need to put the weather in as part of the time. If you read any of your Extension publications, in my part of the world it says to make a nitrogen application when the weather is predicted to give you a quarter of an inch of rainfall within the next two to four days. In my part of the world, we’ll have a 20 to 30% chance of rain every day and whether we get it or not, that’s a different story, but you can see it clouding up and run, jump on the fertilizer spreader and spread a pasture and watch the clouds dissipate as you’re making that application. It’s really hard to predict the weather. A lot of guys, if they’re applying nitrogen, especially urea or UAN solutions, we recommend you put a stabilizer with that, a urease inhibitor to make sure we don’t have these volatilization losses.
Lyle Cowell (11:04):
Yeah. You just have to do everything you can, like you say. We probably have a lower risk gaseous loss than you would in your region, but nevertheless it’s always there. Fertilizer is expensive, so we have to make sure that we do the best we can with it. Nitrogen is the big expense with grasses. I was going to ask you, Mike, we don’t see a lot of other nutrients applied to forages in… Well, in Western Canada. In Eastern Canada, probably a higher level of management, especially with the dairy regions, but when it comes to phosphorus or potassium do you see a significant amount of fertilizer management with forages?
Mike Howell (11:39):
Most people are just making maintenance applications with P and K. When the prices come down, there’ll be a run on P and K. They’ll make sure they try to get those levels back up. When the prices are up, they tend to shy away from putting those applications out at all. Most of those applications are going to go out in the early spring, and as far as timing the only deviation from that is if we have some real sandy soils, a lot of people will try to split that potassium application up because we can lose some of that. Some people will make two potassium applications during the year, but most of the time we’re putting those out in the spring.
Lyle Cowell (12:12):
That’s interesting. I asked that too thinking of a couple of things. One, especially in Western Canada, a lot of our forages, we don’t manage the nutrients very well and also a lot of our forages are planted on soil that tends to be nutrient deficient. It tends to be on the marginal land, so we’re not managing nutrients where they’re sometimes most needed and sometimes we sort out that we should apply potassium when it’s too late or sulfur or phosphorus when it’s too late, when the crop is actually in some cases actually dying because of nutrient deficiency.
Mike Howell (12:45):
Yeah. Lyle, most of our highly fertile, highly productive soils have always been in row crops. That’s where the money is. We can make more money, cotton, corn, soybeans, things like that, our high-value crops, but here recently that’s changed a little bit. We’ve had the shortage of hay and I’m seeing rolls of hay in my part of the world. I don’t know if people are buying them for this price, but I’ve seen price tags of $120 a roll on there and everybody’s trying to get all the hay they can get. That’s about double what hay cost three or four years ago, so when we start looking at that kind of income on the hay, people are going to have to start paying more attention to the fertility and making sure they get the fertility right to meet the needs of these crops.
Lyle Cowell (13:22):
That’s so true. When you think about it, when you take some of the highest managed farmland in Western Canada and Eastern Canada, which is the irrigated acre, then we start to put hay on them sometimes growing alfalfa because it can be highly profitable. It’s a bit ironic that the most highly managed, highly profitable acre is hay and yet we don’t manage the dryland acre very well. What you said is true too. We run out of hay, especially in Western Canada, year after year and there’s two simple solutions to it. One, there’s a lot of marginal land, especially the saline land, should be in forages, and second of all is excellent research to show that if we manage the forage acre better and increased production if it’s a pasture land and reduces the stress on the grass and on the movement of cattle, just a little bit of fertilizer management can go a long ways, whether that forage is in pasture or in hay.
Mike Howell (14:16):
Yeah. Lyle, I’ve seen… With very minimal applications of nitrogen, I’ve looked at some data that shows you can double your forage production with as little as 50 to 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre for the course of the season. Let’s hold the rate discussion and let’s go ahead and talk a little bit about source before we get into rates too deeply. In my part of the world, people don’t usually spend a lot of time looking at a source for P and K. They get whatever the retailer has to offer, and I really can’t argue with that. Whatever you can get the best deal on at the time, I don’t have a problem with the source when I’m looking at forages for P and K. What about in your part of the world? Any differences in sources?
Lyle Cowell (14:53):
Same thing here. My potassium in Western Canada, across Canada is potash. Nearly all the phosphorus will be from monoammonium phosphate 11-52. The animal people do have a good source of phosphorus with manure application if it’s well managed, but when it comes to P and K that’s pretty much the management choices on product.
Mike Howell (15:13):
Yeah. Nitrogen is a totally different animal. Most of our forage producers, if they could get their hands on ammonium nitrate at a decent price they would put ammonium nitrate on everything. That’s just not the case anymore. If we can find it, it’s usually the most expensive source in my part of the world, and probably all of the nitrogen we’re getting on forages these days is going to be in the form of urea or UAN solutions that’ll be either 28 or 32% solutions. Those all have their problems that we’ve talked about before in terms of volatilization and losing that nitrogen, so we need to make sure we’re doing something to protect that nitrogen. We don’t really worry too much about denitrification in the forage systems. We don’t have that problem. We do in row crops in certain places, but typically don’t think about that as being a nitrogen loss in forages. What about in your part of the world?
Lyle Cowell (16:03):
Same thing, Mike. When it comes to product, urea’s not ideal but it’s the most common nitrogen fertilizer that we apply for nitrogen source. There’s some UAN used, but we simply don’t use as much UAN in general as some regions. Tends to come down to urea and trying to time it before rainfall or low-risk conditions. That’s where trying to mitigate those losses using ESN or urease inhibitor can help out a little bit. In the end, those are pretty much the choices that we have. Like you say, ammonium nitrate, we just don’t have access to it anymore for forages and that’s just the way it has to be.
Mike Howell (16:39):
Lyle, let’s move in and talk a little bit about rate. What kind of rates of these different nutrients are you looking at in your part of the world there in Western Canada?
Lyle Cowell (16:48):
Never enough, Mike. Never enough. The average rate was very close to zero for grasses because, honestly, they’re very rarely fertilized. Ideally, they should be managed at nitrogen rates similar to other annual crops. We should be looking at rates of 100 or 120 pounds of nitrogen per acre to really even come close to establishing the peak yield for forages. They have greater nitrogen demand than any crop that we grow in Western Canada, well over crops like canola or wheat, but the average rate is much, much lower. I always give the analogy, Mike, probably the biggest forage acre in North America’s probably people with front yards and we have no hesitation to put 100 pounds of it on our lawn or our golf course, but we just don’t get those rates on forage acres.
Mike Howell (17:36):
That’s right, Lyle. I work in the fertilizer industry and I refuse to fertilize my lawn. We did a podcast about fertilizing your lawn and everybody likes to have that good, green lawn, but I hate mowing the grass. I move the fence out as close to the house as I can and let the cows take care of that. In our system down here, I’ve already mentioned we have bermudagrass or bahiagrass for our summer forages predominantly. It depends on which species you have. Bahiagrass, it’s going to take 100, 150, sometimes you can put as much as 200 pounds of nitrogen on that and get good quality bahiagrass.
(18:08):
If you’re looking at good quality bermudagrass, a lot of times we’re going to need to get that nitrogen rate up close to 300 pounds per acre, especially if we’re taking that three to four cuttings off and trying to get good, high-quality hay. It’s just going to take a lot of nitrogen to get those protein levels up, but we’re looking at on bermudagrass we can get 10 to 12 tons of hay production a year off of that, so you start getting that kind of yields, you’re going to have to feed that crop. Bahiagrass, we’re only looking at three to six tons on some of the best bahiagrass, so there is a difference in the two species and I’m sure other listeners in other parts of the country will have differences as well. What I like to tell people, Lyle, is make sure you take a good soil sample before you get started, at least do that every two to three years, and look at your local Extension guidelines, your university recommendations and see what they’re recommending as well. That’s going to be a good way to get local information on what you need as far as nutrients on those forage acres.
Lyle Cowell (19:03):
Yeah. For sure. The cattle people listening in from my region, they’re probably saying, “Come on, say something about alfalfa and nitrogen fixation.” That is something that we should consider where we can is for my region to establish some granule legume forages. That makes a big difference, and even if it’s in a blend with some other grasses it really helps us out in nitrogen supply. The other side of it, though, is that we also have to remember that alfalfa really has a big demand for phosphorus and potassium and if we don’t look after those, then nitrogen fixation isn’t going to work out very well for us.
Mike Howell (19:37):
That’s right, Lyle. How many pounds of P and K are you going to need for alfalfa and then for some of your grass crops?
Lyle Cowell (19:43):
A typical alfalfa crop if it’s deficient to potassium is going to require very high rates. For example, you take a alfalfa crop, we don’t have the yields that you have, Mike, say two dry tons of alfalfa. We’re cutting it for hay, we’re going to remove 100 pounds an acre because we’re taking the whole plant off. In our corner of the world where we’re used to just harvesting seed, where seed removes very little potassium, then we are looking at rates of 10 or 15 or 20 pounds of potassium, but when you harvest hay you take the whole thing and most potassium remains in the stems and the leaves and the straw of a crop, so potassium rates if it’s deficient have to be really high.
(20:23):
That alfalfa crop is also going to remove a lot of phosphorus, probably in the range of 10 to 15 pounds per ton of hay, and that is what leads to in most cases the decline of alfalfa in our corner of the world. We grow alfalfa, we apply no phosphorus or potassium or other nutrients, but in particular phosphorus. After four or five years, it becomes severely phosphorous deficient and the alfalfa dies and it costs a lot to reestablish it. We really have to think about that. Yes, legumes provide nitrogen in the rotation in a forage rotation or in a forage blend, but nitrogen alone isn’t going to grow a crop. You need to address all those nutrients.
Mike Howell (21:04):
Right, and they need to be out there in the right balance.
Lyle Cowell (21:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Howell (21:08):
Lyle, you started mentioning how much P and K you needed, and I was looking at some stuff here, some recommendations from the University of Georgia, and ironically they are very similar to what you just mentioned. For a six-ton bermudagrass hay yield, they’re saying that they’re going to take off 84 pounds of phosphate, so that’s right in line with what you were saying, 15 pounds in the alfalfa. For that same six-ton bermudagrass for potash, it needs a lot of potash. That’s going to be about 250 pounds of potash, very similar to what you were talking about. Lyle, what about sulfur? That’s something that I’m seeing more and more down here in my part of the world. We’re just not getting any sulfur on these forages. We talk about nitrogen, and one of my recommendations, and it has been for about 10 years, at least one of your nitrogen applications needs to be with ammonium sulfate to get that sulfur out there. I started recommending that because that was the cheapest and easiest way to get sulfur out. We do have some more options now to get sulfur out there, but we need to pay attention to sulfur nutrition in our part of the world. We’re not going to get the protein that we need just by putting out nitrogen. We’ve got to have the sulfur in that package as well.
Lyle Cowell (22:15):
Yeah. I was going to ask you, Mike, do you predominantly use ammonium sulfate, a sulfate source or does elemental sulfur actually work in your region for forages?
Mike Howell (22:23):
We can use elemental sulfur and now what everybody’s calling the micronized sulfur. We have a MAP product with MST, micronized sulfur technology. Those work really well, but pre-roll elemental sulfur, if you put it out and give it time… We’re warm enough down here it’ll start breaking down and can feed the crop. Don’t expect full benefit out of it the first year, but in these forage systems they’re going to be there for a while so maybe put a blend of ammonium sulfate with some elemental sulfur to cover the needs for this year and then start picking up the benefits of that elemental sulfur in subsequent years.
Lyle Cowell (22:56):
Right, right. For conventional elemental sulfur, you have huge advantage in weather that we don’t have. The conventional elemental sulfur in our conditions, very short season, often dry, this takes a long time to oxidize. I haven’t done work just yet with micronized sulfur with forages, but, like you say, it probably will have some advantage over conventional sulfur. In the end, we tend to use ammonium sulfate primarily with forages and, again, we tend to forget about it too often. We use a lot of sulfur especially in Western Canada because of our dependency on canola, which uses a lot of sulfur, so we’re just used to applying a lot of sulfur, but then we run into a four or five year rotation of a forage crop, and, again, we sometimes forget that that forage crop might become sulfur deficient, so we do have to keep an eye on that. There is balance, and I should mention that a significant number of our acres of forage crops are on land that is saline, and in those conditions our salts are sulfate dominated and you don’t need to apply sulfur. The question on sulfur for us ism “Where is it growing? Is it on a sulfur-responsive soil or not?” At least half of the sulfur deficiencies I’ve seen over the years have been in alfalfa. It often becomes sulfur deficient.
Mike Howell (24:09):
Right.
(24:10):
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(24:29):
Lyle, there was one other thing that I had on my list of notes here that I wanted to talk about today, and we probably should have talked about this first because all this we’ve talked about as far as nutrient management really doesn’t matter if we don’t have our pH right, and that’s something I see way too much. These guys don’t pay attention to the pH and they call me wanting to know why their grass isn’t growing, and I ask what the pH is and they don’t know. If we pull a soil sample and check, a lot of times we’re going to be looking at pHs in the upper fours, maybe up to a 5.5 on some of the better ones. We really need to pay attention to that pH and get it up close to six. 6.3 would probably be even better, but in our part of the world we have a lot of low pH soils and that’s going to prevent these plants from taking up a lot of these nutrients to grow these high yields that we really want to see in this.
Lyle Cowell (25:19):
Yeah. We rarely see a pH under six and more often well over six, especially on a lot of the forage land that tends to be on high pH soil, so it tends not to be an issue. Now, there is one case that we have to keep an eye out, and that is some of our acidic soils in particular Northern Saskatchewan and stretching across into Northern Alberta, which do have some significant acres of acidic soil. It’s been well shown that nitrogen fixation by forage legumes is very inefficient at low pH. There’s excellent research dating back into the 1960s that’s demonstrated that liming is often required on some of these soils to stimulate nitrogen fixation for those legumes because without successful nitrogen fixation for forage legume, the forage legume just is terribly unsuccessful. That is our case. It’s so interesting talking to you, Mike, about your conditions, just completely different soils and management conditions that we have to think about. We almost never lime our soils here, very rarely need it, and so interesting to hear your management system.
Mike Howell (26:22):
Yeah, we have a lot of people that very rarely lime their soils here but they desperately need to. Lyle, I think we’ve covered a lot today and really got some good information out about nutrient management and forages and how much that could mean and difference in production in these forages if people will start managing these a little more carefully. I heard somebody tell me one time, he was talking at a Cattlemen’s Association meeting and he said, “I want to challenge all of you cattlemen out here to quit being cattle producers. Start being forage producers and manage your forage and it’ll automatically make you a better cattleman.” There’s a lot to be said to that. If we manage these forages, that’s going to be more feed for these cattle, a higher quality feed for these cattle, and they’ll just do a lot better on it. Lyle, was there anything else you think we needed to add to this before we wrap it up?
Lyle Cowell (27:08):
Oh man, Mike, we could talk about forages all day long. We’ve barely started. It’s such a complicated topic because we’re talking about… When we talk about corn or canola, we might talk about different varieties. When it comes to forages, we have to talk about different species and it’s a complicated topic. It’s reasonably well understood what we need to do, we just need to do more of that. The best thing that a farmer can do, a rancher can do, dairy person can do is apply nutrients to their forage stand that they might be deficient. Sometimes just a strip of fertilizer across the field might be your best soil test you can have to see what sort of response you might gain and just start to understand the combination of yields of forages on your land and the soil that you have. It’s always a tough question when someone phones me to ask, “What do you think I should put on my forages?” That’s one of the hardest questions. It is a very much “it depends” question, very much an agronomic answer.
Mike Howell (28:04):
Well, Lyle, we appreciate you visiting with us today. I think it was a great episode and a lot of useful information. Listeners, we’re glad you’re tuning in today. We hope you’ve enjoyed this. If you need more information, as always visit our website. That’s nutrien-eKonomics.com, and if you’ll go to that website we have a forage fertility manual on there, got a lot of great information about forage production and goes a lot deeper than we did today on this podcast. I want to encourage everybody to stick around for segment two here in just a few minutes.
(28:34):
Listeners, I hope you enjoyed the first segment of today’s show. If you did, please take a minute and give us a rating on your favorite podcast channel or app and give us some feedback as well. We want to hear from you to help make the show even better, and don’t keep it to yourself. Please share these episodes with coworkers, family, friends, anyone you think may benefit from the information we’re sharing here. Don’t forget to visit our website, nutrient-eKonomics.com, to help find the latest crop nutrition news and research information as well as market updates, a growing degree day calculator, a nutrient use calculator, a rainfall tracker, and much, much more. It’s all at nutrient-eKonomics.com. Most episodes of The Dirt are now available for CCA credits. Visit our website and click on the agronomics tab to find these CCA credit opportunities. If you have a question, you can ask one of our agronomy team members. Simply ask your question and one of us will get back with you. Thanks for listening. Now segment two of The Dirt.
(29:43):
Listeners, welcome back to segment two. We’re glad you’re tuning in again for this segment as we continue our tour around North America looking at different research farms. Today we’re going to be traveling to Tennessee, the University of Tennessee. To help us talk about a research farm there, we’ve got Dr. Scott Stewart. Scott, welcome to The Dirt.
Dr. Scott Stewart (30:00):
Glad to be here.
Mike Howell (30:01):
Scott, if you will, before we get into it too far introduce yourself a little bit and tell our listeners what you do.
Dr. Scott Stewart (30:07):
Well, I’m the director at the West Tennessee Ag Research and Education Center in Jackson, Tennessee, and I’ve been in this role for about three and a half years. I’ve been at the station for 22 years because prior to that, I was the Extension entomologist located here, and of course you know, Mike, I had some history at Mississippi State University. I was there for seven years. We’re one of 10 ag research centers located across Tennessee, one of three in West Tennessee, and I’m one of those center directors.
Mike Howell (30:35):
Scott, that seems like forever ago that you were in Mississippi. Actually, on my research committee when I was working on my masters and we worked together at a research farm here in South Mississippi, the one I actually grew up on, we did a lot of work there for a couple of summers. Scott, glad to have you on. If you will, tell us about your research center and some of the history of that center there.
Dr. Scott Stewart (30:55):
Yeah, I’d be glad to. Again, I mentioned we’re one of 10 ag research centers in Tennessee. We are the oldest outside of Knoxville. Of course main campus is in Knoxville, but this center was established in 1907. We’re currently about 650 acres. That’s changed a little bit, grown over the years from when it was initially started, and we’re a little bit unique. Our system’s a little different than Mississippi State’s system, for example. We’re the only center that houses faculty. We have currently I think nine faculty located here. Those faculty are not under my direct supervision. They report to their department, although I allocate resources that we have for their disposal, provide technical support staff to help them do their research, and we also do research for faculty located on campus as well.
(31:43):
We have about 200, 220 acres actually of cropland. That’s all we have out of that 650 acres. We have a bottomland hardwood forest. If you go back in the history of time, things have changed. There used to be a dairy here. Well, there’s hardly any dairy in Tennessee and most of it’s located that’s left in East Tennessee, so the dairy herd’s been gone for a long time. We used to have a lot of… That bottom field that’s now wooded area was grazing ground and silage corn. Right now our primary focus is row crop research and education. We do some forestry research and education, and we’re also home to the UT Gardens. There’s actually three gardens that are part of the state botanical gardens. Those three gardens comprise the state botanical gardens, and Jackson’s one of those. We have a very, very pretty campus, if you’ve ever been here, we have some really… A nice facility. In fact, sometimes my fellow center directors take exception, but this is kind of a flagship center. It’s a showpiece center certainly for this part of the state.
Mike Howell (32:41):
Scott, I have been there several times. It’s been a few years since I’ve been there, but I will agree that is a beautiful campus there and place I like to go visit. Encourage all of our listeners if you’re ever in the area, stop by and give them a visit. Great place to visit and a great place to learn some stuff while you’re there. Scott, talk about some of the significant contributions that’s came off of that farm over the history.
Dr. Scott Stewart (33:02):
Well, it’s a long history too. I guess the first thing I’ll say is I think a lot of the contributions of ag research in general, it’s a slow build upon kind of approach and I think probably our biggest impact is not recognized because it’s so slow. It occurred over years and years and years and it accumulates. I always challenge folks to try to think about where they would be without this ag research in the last hundred years that has occurred. If you look at Tennessee in particular, we’re kind of known as one of the leaders in no-till agricultural production. In fact, the center located about 30 miles to the north is the Milan Ag Research and Education Center, and they’re famous for the Milan No-Till Field Day. A lot of the initial work to understand, utilize no-till production started there and done by the researchers that were located here. We work very closely with that ag research center in particular.
(33:52):
I think the first thing you think about with West Tennessee is no-till production, and our hand was forced in that. I probably don’t really even fully appreciate the history. If you go to the Ag Museum at the Milan Center, you’ll understand what erosion was like before no-till production in West Tennessee. Most of our soils are highly, highly erodible, we have rolling hills, we’re losing tons of topsoil every year, and when you change that system it’s not just about not tilling anymore. It’s understanding fertility, weed management, what changes in insect control, plant pathology. We have all those experts located here and, again, that builds upon each other. I had to learn a lot of that, Mike, because I came from Mississippi State and there was no-till there for sure, but a lot of the work was done in conventional ground and really sinking my teeth into no-till production was a little bit of a learning curve for me.
Mike Howell (34:41):
Yeah, there’s definitely some differences there. I’ve heard a lot about the Milan station over the course of my career. I’ve never had the opportunity to get up there, but one of these days I want to get up there for that field day. I’m going to put you on the spot here, Scott. Do you happen to know the date of that Milan field day for this year?
Dr. Scott Stewart (34:55):
Well, I think it may be the 25th of July. Let’s see, on Thursday, July 25th. Yeah.
Mike Howell (35:03):
Thursday, July 25th. I hear that’s always a great field day, a lot of people show up for that one, and highly encourage our listeners if you’re in the area that day stop by and have a visit. Guarantee you’ll learn some stuff there.
Dr. Scott Stewart (35:14):
It’s a great event.
Mike Howell (35:15):
Scott, what all types of research are going on there at the farm? We know it’s been there for a long time and you talked about some of the different disciplines, but what’s happening there today?
Dr. Scott Stewart (35:23):
Well, we’re planting. Man, it’s been a really wet spring and we’ve had a hard time finding windows to plant. A lot of our cotton acres I think throughout the state are really suffering. We’ll manage to get ours in because we’re small and got a lot of people, but everybody’s running and gunning right now. If you talk about research, I think again a lot of it’s block and tackle stuff and I don’t think we need to overlook that. That’s things like variety breeding, variety testing programs. Year in, year out, growers identify variety testing programs and variety development is some of their number one benefits from the research that we do here and really I think throughout the South we’re always evaluating new technologies. A lot of that technology is not necessarily developed by us. Some of it is, but you talk about some of the new GMO cotton technologies like ThryvOn, somebody has to evaluate that, determine how it fits, how you manage insects differently. ThryvOn for your listeners is a GMO technology that controls thrips and tarnished plant bug. It’s pretty unique among the BT technologies.
(36:22):
Dr. Steckel who’s our weed scientist, Larry Steckel, he’s one of the best in the country, he’s got a neat thing going on now where they’re evaluating this see and spray technology, essentially a computerized tractor that identifies weeds in the field and spot sprays them. It’s pretty neat technology, so we’ve got some high-end stuff. We’re doing drone research. We’ve got some very low-end stuff where we’re just evaluating things continually. I mentioned varieties, fertility. Big thing right now is cover crops. It’s not really a new thing. We have plots on the station that have been in cover crops for 45 years, but there’s new interest in it. That changes the system quite a bit. When you have a cover crop in there, it’s kind of like going from conventional till to no-till. You have to learn how to farm it. You have to learn which pests are more impacted or less impacted by those different tillage operations. We’re doing a lot of that. Of course, we’re always trying to do things in a climate-friendly way. The new terminology is climate-smart agriculture, precision irrigation, developing varieties. We have a physiologist, Dr. Avat Shekoofa, who does a lot of work trying to identify varieties that are more efficient at water use, can tolerate drought. So some basic stuff there, but very practical stuff, precision irrigation. The list really goes on and on.
Mike Howell (37:35):
Well, Scott, earlier we mentioned a lot of the changes that have taken place during the history of the research farm, and we know that agriculture is changing. Every day we hear about some new technology and things are done in a different way. We also know that we’re losing a lot of farmland these days to urban sprawl and other things and it’s hard to replace that, but how is this research farm going to be prepared for the changes that are coming in the next 50 years? What do you have to do to keep up with the times of agriculture?
Dr. Scott Stewart (38:00):
Boy, great question and great time. First of all, Tennessee last few years has led or been second in the country at the percentage of farmland lost to urban sprawl. We’re really suffering from that around the Memphis area and the Nashville area. One of our challenges in ag is we’ve got to produce more on less land to feed a growing population, and so that’s a pretty major challenge. It did give me a chance to plug some of the advancements in our infrastructure that we’ve had in the last couple of years and are going to continue for the next couple of years. We’re fortunate enough to get some funding for the ag research centers that are spread throughout Tennessee, a total of about $50 million to update our equipment, to update our infrastructure so that we can bring our 1960s facilities back into the right decade.
(38:48):
That really helps. You got to have high-quality people, but you also need good equipment and good facilities to do that research. I think we’re well-positioned with that. We’re getting more and more focused on the things we need to be focused on. I think a lot of the block and tackle stuff, it’s always going to need to be done, but with the way the technology’s growing… What do they say? It doubles every 10 years. Some people will tell you it’s every five years. You need to be able to do that, but then also keep up and it’s a challenge, but we’ll manage to do it. But again, I wanted to plug some of the new equipment, some of the new facilities we’re getting that are going to help our scientists do the research, at least in Tennessee.
Mike Howell (39:23):
Scott, we really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to visit with us today and do this research spotlight with the University of Tennessee. Listeners, thanks for tuning in this week. As always, if you need more information on anything we’ve talked about today, you can visit our website. That’s nutrien-eKonomics.com.com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
