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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.
(00:38)
Well, hello again, everyone, and welcome back to The Dirt. Going to do things a little bit different this morning. I’ve got Dr. Cristie Preston, senior agronomist with Nutrien, back with us this morning. You met Cristie a couple of weeks ago, but we’re going to kick things around a little bit today and talk about what’s going on in our respective geographies. Cristie is based in Kansas and I’m based in South Mississippi, and things are a little different in each one of our areas, so we’re going to talk about what’s going on, and then move into some double crop soybean situations for growers that may be interested in double crops soybeans this year. So Cristie, welcome back to The Dirt.
Dr. Cristie Preston (01:12):
Thanks for having me back, Mike.
Mike Howell (01:14):
So how is everything going in Kansas?
Dr. Cristie Preston (01:16):
I live in the southeast corner, pretty much right on the Oklahoma border, and harvest is in full swing.
Mike Howell (01:23):
How are yields looking? I’ve been hearing some horror stories all winter about the drought area out there. Are yields as bad as they were thinking they were going to be?
Dr. Cristie Preston (01:32):
Yes, and it’s really sad. The state of Kansas, we actually live on the side that gets rain, and here locally, within Cherokee County, we should see very good yields, 60, 80 bushel winter wheat, and that’s pretty good for this area. Other parts of Kansas haven’t been as lucky catching rains, and yields have been dramatically reduced due to that reason. We’re looking at 45% of the land that’s currently in wheat production within the entire US that is under some type of drought, and that’s going to significantly reduce wheat yields this year.
Mike Howell (02:10):
Yeah, I’m seeing the same thing around here. We were dry in a lot of areas that were growing wheat, and yields were off a little bit, not off to the extent that it is in the Midwest, but the southeast yields were off a little bit this year in most places. Dr. Preston, what about corn? Is corn planting finished? Are they still trying to get a little more corn in the ground?
Dr. Cristie Preston (02:30):
We finished up corn planting a couple of weeks ago and here locally, corn’s at least V7, V8, pretty much everybody’s finished with their top dress applications for corn, and they’ve moved on to wheat harvest. And now, hopefully ,there are some soybeans being put in.
Mike Howell (02:48):
We’re a little ahead and that’s to be expected. It took us forever to get the corn crop planted here in the south, it just kept raining and kept raining and staying cold, and we did not get as much corn planted in the south as we were hoping to, but thank goodness we’ve finally got what we got planted and it’s looking really good. We went through a couple of week period, it didn’t get any rain, and some guys were starting to think about triggering some irrigation, even before the crop started tasseling, but I think we were able to avoid irrigating that early In most situations. We started catching some rains and the corn’s looking really good right now.
(03:21)
Most of the corn is already starting to tassel. Some of it is a little beyond that stage. My concern with our corn crop right now is the weather forecast for the next 10 days, I think eight of the next 10 days. The forecast is to be over 100 degree daytime temperatures, and nighttime temperatures are still going to be in the upper 70s to the low 80s, and when this corn’s pollinating, that’s not really a good situation to be in, we try to avoid that. But hopefully, we can get some showers and cool things off a little bit during that time, but it’s not looking really good right now.
Dr. Cristie Preston (03:51):
Same for us. I looked at the 10-day forecast and I don’t think that there’s a drop of rain out there right now. And we caught rains early on, so we were in a similar situation, where we caught rains early on and corn planting was delayed. There were guys working up to that last insurance date of June 6th, and we caught some rain soon after that, but the 10-day forecast does not look good for us. But it’s not as bad as in your situation where you’re already tasseling and trying to pollinate, so hopefully we’ll catch some rains before we get to that growth stage.
Mike Howell (04:28):
Right, yeah. Y’all are still a couple of weeks away from that, probably. Dr. Preston, is there any cotton? I know you’re in southern Kansas, and at one time, Kansas was trying to grow a little cotton.
Dr. Cristie Preston (04:37):
Not here in the eastern part of the state too much, it’s more in the western part. I grew up learning that cotton uses half as much water as corn does, and so where I am, we get enough precipitation that we can still grow other crops, but there’s more and more being planted in the western part of the state.
Mike Howell (04:55):
Well, where I am, cotton used to be king, and 25 years ago, we made the switch to corn, and it’s getting tough for cotton to come back, but we did have more acres of cotton being planted this year. Part of that was because we weren’t able to get all the corn planted that we wanted to, and part of it is price of cotton these days, our growers are getting excited about cotton again. But cotton is off to a really good start in my part of the world. A lot of this cotton is five or six leaf now, it’s starting to square and really take off. A lot of growers are getting their top dress nitrogen applications put on it and gearing up for a good season in the cotton world this year, so things are looking good.
(05:29)
And the other big crop is soybeans. We start planting soybeans, some guys will start as early as mid-March down here, and try to plant those the same time as corn a lot of time. And then, we can carry that all the way through the month of May, and some will even get planted in June. We do have a little bit of double crop soybeans, not a whole lot in my part of the world, but a few, and moisture is always the driving factor on that. Are we going to get enough rainfall to get that crop emerged, get it going, and then mature it out later in the year? In your area, the double crop situation’s a little different, and they do have a little more double crop soybeans up that way. Is that still going to be the case this year?
Dr. Cristie Preston (06:05):
Yes, but there is some concern with wheat harvest being so delayed, here locally, we didn’t hit high temperatures, except within the past week. You would drive down the road and look in the fields and you were still seeing green, and just in the last seven to 10 days, everything’s really started drying down and the head tipping over. Farmers are going to be running full speed ahead with trying to harvest as quick as they can. But you’ll drive by a field and you’ll see them harvesting, you’ll see them spreading fertilizer, and then probably in some cases, you’re going to see the soybean planter going right behind them. They’re going to try to get soybeans in as quick as possible.
(06:43)
It’s actually interesting. Double crop soybeans in this area, since we do have the adequate moisture, they can yield just as much as full season beans that are planted a little bit later, and to me, that’s astounding. But it’s great for being able to have two crops in one year. And we’re not so much as trying to plant soybeans at the same time as corn, we’re trying to get the corn to finish before the heat gets too bad, but we want the soybeans to be a little during the heat and maybe finish out in early fall. And so, hopefully we’ll catch some rains. But since there is no precipitation in the next 10 days, that’s a cause for concern for the soybeans that are going into the ground, and they might not be going into moisture, and might not see any for a while. So hopefully, we’ll catch some rains.
Mike Howell (07:31):
Right, sounds like moisture’s a key in that part of the world as well. Dr. Preston, you touched on it there a little bit, you said that the combines were rolling and had the fertilizer spreaders right behind them. Let’s dive in and talk a little bit about fertility in some of these double crop situations. What do growers need to focus on and what’s going to be limiting after a wheat crop?
Dr. Cristie Preston (07:50):
That’s a great question, and I’d say the biggest thing, we need to make sure farmers understand that if they’re going to get high yields, like we’re expected to see here in Cherokee County, we need to make sure that we’re calculating those removal rates, to make sure that there’s enough nutrients left for that soybean crop that should yield relatively well as well. So one bushel of wheat will use roughly 0.6 pounds of phosphorus and 0.3 pounds of K. That’s not necessarily what’s going to be removed, but not necessarily what’s taken up and required by the plant to make that bushel, which the uptake rates are closer to 0.7 pounds of phosphorus and 1.5 pounds of K per bushel. And I realize we’re on a podcast, so if you want to play around with those numbers for uptake in removal, you can check out the eKonomics nutrient removal calculator on our website and play around with those numbers, just get a general idea of what’s being removed.
(08:52)
But the take home message is, a high percentage of the phosphorus that’s taken up in that wheat crop is going to be removed. That means it’s leaving the system, we need to make sure that there’s enough phosphorus out there for that next crop. At the same time, that wheat crop is also taking up a lot of K, or potassium, but as we know about potassium, it’s not incorporated into organic matter. And so, as the wheat crop begins to senesce, or to mature, it’s going to begin to release potassium back into the soil. And so, it will be available, you don’t have to wait for that organic matter to break up, but just realize that you are still removing potassium.
(09:36)
And just a tidbit, soybeans use or take up one pound of phosphorus per bushel and 2.3 pounds of potassium per bushel that’s produced. So that means, however many bushels soybeans that I’m looking to produce, I need 2.3 pounds of potassium to produce that one bushel, and that’s a high amount. And in drought conditions like these, where we might see potassium tied up in the soil, it may not be available, or just because there’s not enough moisture, potassium deficiency might show up in your soybean crop.
Mike Howell (10:10):
That’s a good point, Dr. Preston. We’ve got to have that moisture to get that potassium in the solution and get the plants to take it up. So that leads to another question. If the potassium has to be in that soil solution to be taken up, we’re trying to catch a rain here and catch a rain there, can that soybean plant take up all the potassium it needs at one time if it’s all available, or does it have to feed on that potassium a little bit along during this growing season? Are we going to have to have it all available up front so the plant can take it up when it needs it, or is there a possibility of that plant taking it up later on if we’re a little late getting that potassium out?
Dr. Cristie Preston (10:45):
Yes, plants can actually take up potassium in a luxury consumption. So if there are lots of potassium available at one time, the plant can take it up. But it’s always a good idea to make sure that the plant has the potassium it needs whenever it’s going to be needing it the most within the plant.
Mike Howell (11:04):
That sounds great. That can lead to another podcast that we’ve got planned down the road, taking tissue samples mid-season, and seeing what those levels are and see if we need to make any adjustments to our fertility program midseason. Dr. Preston, we’re talking about soybeans here, and most people don’t think about nitrogen in a soybean system. This isn’t something we talked about prior to this podcast and planning for this, so I may be throwing you a curveball here. But here in the south, we have a lot of trouble with crop residue, we have to get that crop residue broken down with corn and wheat, but that process for those microorganisms to break that down is going to require nitrogen as well. So we typically don’t want to put a lot of nitrogen on soybeans, except in certain situations. But are you aware of any research in these double crop systems where a little bit of nitrogen fertilizer may help break down that residue and have a little extra nitrogen available for the soybean plants?
Dr. Cristie Preston (11:56):
Well, not necessarily in a double crop situation, but that’s a good question, I’ll do some research and see if I can find out. But it does bring some research to mind where we are pushing soybean yields higher and higher, we’re going to get 60, 80 bushel, the soil and the Rhizobia relationship is not going to be enough nitrogen to produce that many soybean bushel. And so, here in Kansas and most of the Midwest, if you are pushing your yields that high, we do see nitrogen supplemental applications as soon around when the plant enters the reproductive phases, so around R1 to R3, to make sure that the protein content in that grain is adequate enough.
Mike Howell (12:43):
Dr. Preston, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about double crop soybeans, and we have a little bit of that here in the south, but one thing we do have here in the south that many areas don’t have, and I’m talking to folks right here on the Gulf Coast, it doesn’t go very far north, but we can double crop some cotton, in certain situations. We can get this wheat off in late May and still have time to get a cotton crop planted, and that’s really not a bad thing because that cotton, this far south, can hang on, and it’s not opened up when these hurricanes tend to blow in and give us some bad weather in the fall. It’s late enough that it’s still inside that bowl and will open after the threat of the hurricanes is over, so we have a good bit of double crop cotton in the Gulf Coast areas. And they have these same concerns. We have to make sure that we’ve got the P and the K available for them and make sure we manage those systems properly.
(13:30)
Dr. Preston, you mentioned our website where they can look at these nutrient removal and nutrient uptake rates for different crops. That website is www.nutrient-eKonomics.com, and I want to encourage our listeners to go visit that site and look at the nutrient removal calculators. It can open your eyes to what these crops are actually taking up and what they actually need to reproduce and set us a good crop. Dr. Preston, we’re also looking at a lot of high fertility prices this year, and we’ve talked about that several times in previous episodes. And growers may be wanting to skip on some of these double crop situations and not put out the nutrients that they require, hoping that there’ll be enough reserve in the soil to get them through, and we’ve talked about some of the risk of doing that.
(14:13)
Dr. Preston, thanks a lot for joining us today. We really appreciate your insight and updates on the crops in your part of the world. Growers, thanks again for joining us this week. I hope you enjoyed our podcast. I want to invite everyone to join us next week when we have Dr. Carl Wyatt, director of agronomy with Nutrien. Dr. Wyatt will be talking about the current drought situation, and things we can do to manage this crop and get through these drought situations. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
