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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2020
THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH
FALL HARVEST
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THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2020
Technology bridges years for producers
By GEORGE HAWS For The North Platte Telegraph From the seat of the com- bine, a story unfolds. Instantaneous yield data is displayed on a monitor, grain pours into the machine’s hop- per, and farmers watch, while making mental note of what they will do the same, or dif- ferently, next year. Planning for the 2021 season is underway. Farmer Jeff Huffman said his operation uses two mon- itors: a John Deere that came with the combine and a YieldSense, by Precision Planting. While machinery rolls, he said, they are “com- paring those two back and forth.” Huffman farms with his fa- ther-in-law, Dale Wahlgren, operating as Island Farms LLC, in the Maxwell area and to the southwest of the village. Their major crops are corn and soybeans. “We’re pretty sure yields are going to be good” overall, this year, Huffman said. There was plenty of warm weather to keep the crop growing and fill- ing out ears and pods, and they were able to irrigate to make up for shortages in precipita- tion. “Over the winter ... we’re re- ally (going to be) diving into” the data. For example, “That whole field averaged ‘X’ bush- els and we thought it was going to average such and such. Was it water, fertility, hybrid,” or something else? Producers should base de- cisions for next year on three year’s worth of yield, input and other data, said Joe Luck, associate professor of biolog- ical systems engineering at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. Island Farms LLC has re- cords from 10 years back. Every year is different. In contrast to this year, “Last year there wasn’t enough sunlight” for optimal yields, Huffman said. “However, trends are often apparent. If the same problem areas show up from year to year, it’s proba- Yield production maximized by modern equipment
Photo courtesy of Jeff Huffman
Stewart Carsten, employee at Island Farms LLC, watches monitors in a combine as he harvests a field of soybeans.
Local fertilizer dealers use modern technology to offer precision application services, too. That includes coupling grid soil sampling — sampling small areas in a pattern across a field — with variable rate fer- tilizer application. All of that has made it possi- ble for farmers to really get a handle on the crop at a smaller level than ever before since the days of walking behind a horse — even while their farm oper- ations have become larger and larger. In the process, yield map- ping, going on now, is creating a bridge between this year and next, in a continuous cycle of crop production.
make notations about partic- ular areas of the field, while “on the go” in the seat of a combine. That is not always easy to do, but at least make some written notes as soon as possible when the combine is parked. Global positioning system technology is available on all kinds of farm machinery and sometimes people aren’t aware of the capabilities of their own equipment, Luck said. “We did a study with a guy in Kentucky,” with a spray ap- plicator, Luck said of a prior operation of his. “The guy had two years of pesticide data” saved on his equipment, “and he didn’t even know it.”
on some very sandy areas — planting corn at 22,000 seeds per acre instead of 30,000, and applying 100 pounds of nitro- gen instead of 180. That saves a lot of money on acres that do not have the yield potential anyway. Having continuously record- ed yield information is critical to fine tuning production, said Luck, and the data should be protected. He referred to one situa- tion where a “combine needed service” and in the process of doing the maintenance, they “wiped the monitor clean.” Luck recommends taking advantage of features such as the ability to “drop a pin” and
bly a soil fertility issue.” He and Wahlgren take a number of approaches, mak- ing selective applications of manure, compost, different starter fertilizer treatments, etc. They will use this and prior years’ yield data, cost comparisons and other observations to determine ap- propriate changes for 2021. Luck said the important considerations are efficien- cy and maximizing profits. Sometimes that means boost- ing yields, and other times it means adjusting where the in- put dollar is spent. Huffman said they re- sponded to their own data by deciding to limit inputs
Local corn and soybeans headed around the globe
Area producers will sell to feedlots, ethanol plants, and Mexico, China
all demand for ethanol in Nebraska, he said, is “still not where it needs to be.” Speaking of plants that had not resumed normal operation, Christensen said, “If you kick them on [suddenly], there could be a glut” of ethanol on the market. That could reduce prices that ethanol producers can get for their prod- uct and are willing to pay for corn. “It’s a diffi- cult situation” and “I’m scared,” he said. “We need to get more Nebraska people to use more E15” gasoline, Christensen said. E15 is also called “unlead- ed 88,” due to its octane rating. Gasoline con- taining 10% ethanol has an octane rating of 87. “Nebraska hasn’t bought into E15 like they should.” That by itself could pro- vide a boost to the local economy, Christensen said.
were “abnormally dry” and the rest of the state was in moderate to ex- ceptional (worse than “extreme”) drought. Local feedlot demand for corn is similar to other years, said Steve Scholz, owner and oper- ator of Lincoln County Feed Yard LLC, be- tween North Platte and Stapleton. The ethanol market, which took a big hit ear- ly this year, is coming back but remains ques- tionable. The pandemic had drastically reduced fuel consumption and de- mand for ethanol in the United States and else- where. “We’re basically (back to) running at capac- ity,” now, said Mark Christensen, a grain buy- er for Nebraska Corn Processing LLC, an eth- anol plant in Cambridge. Other plants are expect- ed to resume normal operation soon. However, the over-
livery. They also take a large portion of the crop to area grain elevators either for storage or im- mediate sales. Before this year’s har- vest began, Ag Valley Coop had already ne- gotiated contracts for trainloads of corn bound for domestic and final in- ternational destinations. They were also trucking what remained in their bins from last year’s har- vest to ethanol plants and feed yards in Nebraska and Colorado. Thooft said he expect- ed the Colorado demand for Nebraska corn to con- tinue, even with that state’s own harvest un- derway. That is because the Colorado crop is down substantially due to drought. This has been a dry year in Nebraska, but es- pecially dry in Colorado. According to the United States Drought Monitor, two small pockets of northeast Colorado
“Brazil feeds China until we have our crop available,” but “in February they’ll have a new crop” so will again present strong compe- tition for the U.S., said Thooft. According to statis- ta.com, China is typically the largest in- ternational purchaser of U.S. soybeans, followed by Mexico. The larg- est buyer of U.S. corn is Mexico, followed by Japan. Mexico is a very im- portant trading partner for U.S. crop products, Thooft said, and that has not changed this year. Area farmers sell and deliver grain directly to feedlots and ethanol plants, and store grain on the farm for later de-
pork producers need the grain as they rebuild herds that were deci- mated by African swine fever, especially last year. That bodes well for Nebraska producers. Hopefully there will not be a major rebound of the incurable, fatal disease, which would set things back again. However, the window of greatest op- portunity for sales to China is small, Thooft said. Brazil is a major competitor for U.S. crop producers, but because they are in the Southern Hemisphere, their sea- sons alternate with ours.
By GEORGE HAWS For The North Platte Telegraph
Destinations for this year’s corn and soy- bean harvest are similar to recent years with a couple of notable excep- tions. While the market for grain at area feed- lots is near normal, the demand for corn at eth- anol plants remains unpredictable. On the plus side, China is in the market for more soy- beans and corn than the last couple of years. Fran Thooft, grain originator for Ag Valley Cooperative based in Edison, said Chinese
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THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH FALL HARVEST Drone pesticide application taking off SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2020
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Though widespread use may be far off, technique has advantages
At least 60,000 to 70,000 drones are being used world- wide to apply pesticides, he said. They can reach areas of fields that ground applicators can’t reach and “airplanes and helicopters might have a hard time getting in.” Their comput-
But he added that drones’ pesticide tanks can’t car- ry more than about 5 gallons, a small fraction of the Air Tractor’s 500-gallon size. “This is not the type of appli- cation to which we’re looking to replace an airplane,” he said. Finally, drones weigh about 40 pounds without batter- ies but can only run up to 15 minutes while loaded. An Air Tractor has a working range of about 620 miles. That difference “really lim- its us in scaling this thing up to something that really could be useful for row crops,” Kruger said. “We’re really not going to go much farther than the line of sight, even if we were allowed to.” Both pesticide applicators and government regulators still have much information to gather to make good decisions and set legal policies, Kruger said. They need to know more, for
example, about the effects of the drones’ flight speeds and height on how pesticides are distributed once released over a field. “Every different drone is going to be set up differently — different nozzles, different booms, different number of ro- tors, application speeds, boom heights,” Kruger said. “There’s a lot of different combinations that we really don’t under- stand what those interactions are.” He presented information to help farmers who currently or might use drones set them for the most complete and uniform coverage. Even so, “it’s difficult to get a uniform pattern,” increasing the chances for crops to devel- op pesticide resistance or to be damaged where pesticides land where they’re not sup- posed to, he said. To watch Kruger’s Aug. 27 presentation online, visit me- diahub.unl.edu/media/14298.
site late-August workshops due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using drones to apply pesti- cides “is not necessarily a new concept, but it’s a concept that is slowly starting to take off in the U.S.,” Kruger said. Farmers using drones must have both a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration op- erator’s license and a special FAA permit to use them to ap- ply pesticides, Kruger said. The North Platte exten- sion center has two pesticide drones with somewhat differ- ent features so they can study how they do their jobs and do them better. “Every one of these drones seems to be a little bit different in terms of their function, as to what they do and how they work,” Kruger said.
By TODD VON KAMPEN todd.vonkampen@nptelegraph.com It’s going to take some time before drones can be used on any large scale to ap- ply pesticides to farm fields, a University of Nebraska- Lincoln agronomy professor says. “This is a very imprecise science compared to what a ground or an aerial (pesticide) application might be,” said Greg Kruger, pesticide appli- cation technology specialist at UNL’s West Central Research and Extension Center in North Platte. He spoke live to registered participants in the Aug. 27 “Virtual Water and Crops Field Day,” which took the place of the center’s annual on-
er applications are also “fully autonomous,” he said, mean- ing the operator mainly has to change the bat- teries and let the drone apply the pesticides under “pre-scripted
Greg Kruger
flight plans.” Whereas an Air Tractor 502 crop duster plane passes over farm fields of 120-160 mph, Kruger said, drones apply pes- ticides while flying roughly about 9-18 mph, Kruger said. “We’re talking about speeds that are much more similar to ground applications,” he said.
Moving forward amid pandemic
Report shows 1st COVID-19 effects on economy
this year. A report by the Nebraska Farm Bureau in June esti- mated that losses might reach $3.7 billion. The potential losses for corn and soybean pro- ducers were estimated at $1.17 billion, and $971 million for beef produc- ers. Those numbers have been offset somewhat by pandemic-related financial assistance — the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, the Paycheck Protection Program and the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program. Wellman said Nebraska producers have received nearly $711 million through CFAP. The beef sec- tor has received $387 million, and corn is the second-highest commodity with $234 million. Sign-up for the sec- ond round of the CFAP program began earli- er this month and will run through Dec. 11. Wellman said that the state also offered livestock stabilization grants of $12,000, and it is anticipated the pro- gram will exceed the $100 million that was targeted. Wellman said Nebraska producers are harvesting more than 20 million acres and have delivered “millions of head of cat- tle, hogs and poultry to the market for consum- ers” as well. “Agriculture is still going,” Wellman said. “The farmers and ranchers are working hard to get through this. Nebraska needs agriculture as a state and we all need them individually to supply our food, fuel and fi- ber.”
By TIM JOHNSON tim.johnson@ nptelegraph.com Nebraska farmers and producers had en- dured a number of economic hardships over the past decade and received anoth- er blow this year with COVID-19. The pandemic af- fected the ethanol industry, with a re- duction in travel, and the food supply as restaurants tempo- rarily closed and meatpacking plants slowed production to deal with employee health challenges. The situation has improved since late spring and early sum- mer, but livestock and commodity pric- es are still below pre-COVID-19 levels. “I am certainly not saying that we are back to where we were, but the industry has made adjustments,” said Steve Wellman, the director of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, during a telephone interview earlier this week. “We would like to see high- er prices for all of the commodities for the producers across the board. We’re tracking back toward the posi- tive. “The federal govern- ment has worked on five international trade deals the past couple of years. We’re solidly into (the first phase) of one of the China deals and have seen some really strong purchas- es (in China). I think that has helped with the bounce-back in the prices for corn and soy- beans.” There have been few positives for the state’s agriculture industry
By JOB VIGIL jvigil@nptelegraph.com
On Wednesday, the Platte Institute and the Nebraska Farm Bureau released a joint policy brief examining the eco- nomic disruptions from COVID-19 on Nebraska’s agriculture sector. Authored by Platte Institute Policy Director Sarah Curry and Nebraska Farm Bureau senior economist Jay Rempe, the brief not only examines the complica- tions for the agriculture economy caused by the pandemic but also the im- portance of Nebraska’s agriculture, business, education and elect- ed leaders working strategically to ensure Nebraska’s agriculture sector is on the proper path for growth in a post- COVID-19 world. “Nebraska’s crop and livestock producers have been on a roller-coaster ride over the past decade regarding farm income,” Curry said. “The agri- culture economy was already on the down- side and weakened when COVID-19 hit.” The report details the first COVID-19 blow in mid-March with the shutdown of the hospi- tality, restaurant and institutional food service sector. Almost overnight, demand for food in these sectors — which account- ed for 54% of the food consumed pre-COVID-19 — went missing. Supply chains were ill- equipped to deal with the shutdown, leaving agri- culture producers with diminished markets. Stay-at-home orders furthered the difficul- ties as less travel meant less fuel consumed, lead- ing to the idling and slowdown of ethanol pro- duction. “The immediate im- pact was that corn producers lost a key etha- nol market and livestock producers lost a key feed source in ethanol by- products,” Rempe said. “The chaos in supply chains, the destruction of demand and general uncertainty caused com- modity prices to spiral downward.” The second punch came in April with the disruptions of meat pro- cessing facilities due to employee health concerns. Between shutdowns, reduced op- erations and slower speeds, the processing fa- cilities were operating at 60% to 70% of capacity at one point.
Joan von Kampen / The North Platte Telegraph One of the first sectors of the agriculture economy to take a hit in the COVID-19 pandemic was the corn market for ethanol plants, a new report from the Platte Institute and the Nebraska Farm Bureau says.
by looking at “how do we plan for something like this in the future?” The report, “Disruptions from COVID-19 on Nebraska’s Agriculture,” is avail- able at platteinstitute.org and at nefb.org.
“The upside of all of this in what Sarah talk- ed about is the COVID crisis identified some of the weaknesses in our system,” Rempe said, “where maybe we can take a look at this and get some good out of it”
Livestock pric- es plunged. Analysis released in June by Nebraska Farm Bureau suggested Nebraska’s ag- riculture economy could face nearly $3.7 billion in losses in 2020 due to COVID-19 if economic conditions did not im- prove. “Agriculture was among the hardest hit sectors of our econ- omy and as a result was among the sectors eligible for federal assis- tance,” Curry said. “The report takes a closer look at the programs and en- gagement of agriculture in the federal assistance programs through the passage of the CARES Act.” Curry said estimates suggest as much as 35% to 50% of the state’s net farm income this year could come from fed- eral assistance due to COVID-19.
C4 FALL HARVEST Horsch pioneers in no-till country THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2020
German man helping to lead technological advances
the farm, mused Horsch. He gave the example of a visit to a farm about 30 miles from the HORSCH headquarters. “Three sons had built and were operating a ro- botic seeder and I went to take a look,” he said. “The father just stood there and watched while the sons worked on the seeder. He noted he knew nothing about robot- ics but knew that this is what his sons loved and they were making it work. This generation of kids is trained to run robots. This is the next level of change in farm- ing. “We are not going to eliminate people, we will need to get young kids who are already digi- talized. They are already trained. This is a way to get a young operator in- trigued. Give them the tools and they will come back to the farm.” The quantum leap in ag production will come as the movement toward more healthy eating con- tinues. “We eat so much pro- cessed food,” Horsch said. “This comes from us farmers in the last 50 years doing our job. We have allowed even the poorest of the poor in our Western societies to eat what they want. If we would slightly change our diets, we would dra- matically change our health. The answer is al- ready out there. If we don’t watch what is out there (the various food movements), we’ll be run over by it. “If I was a corn and soybean rotation farmer, I would start looking at slightly altering my rota- tion.” The answer, according to Horsch, is to come up with something that falls in between going totally organic but isn’t totally
By BARB BIERMAN BATIE Midwest Messenger A forward think- er since he was 21, Michael Horsch told the West Central Nebraska Research and Extension Center’s vir- tual Water and Crops Field Day that the world is about to experience a quantum leap in ag pro- duction change. One of four sons in a Bavarian Mennonite family, Horsch left his German agricultur- al college after one year to come to the United States. With all of his brothers wanting to farm, he knew he had to find a way to purchase his own farm, so he spent two years learning the ropes of American agri- culture. While he was gone, his father and uncle be- gan researching and discussing the concepts of minimum and no-till farming for their rocky Bavarian soil. “We had this vision of farming where we should not till our soils anymore,” Horsch said. “But that was very con- troversial back in the early 1980s because if you did not plow your ground, you were a bad farmer.” Upon his return to Germany from the United States, he asked his father if he could build a no-till seeder. He got permission and his elders assured him that if it didn’t work, they’d make it work. Horsch’s first develop- ment was a maize seed drill that rolled out in 1981. The Horsch fam- ily exhibited at their first agriculture show in Munich in 1982 and the rest, as they say, is histo- ry. “Seeders were the pri- mary piece of equipment we worked on,” he said. “Now we are all over the world with 250 deal- erships in Eastern and Western Europe, North America and South America. We also special- ize in tillage equipment and sprayers.” He was finally able to purchase a farm in 1990. Today, the family has 18,000 acres attached to their HORSCH Machinen GmBH, with anoth- er 50,000-60,000 acres farmed by the family. “Since we are still farmers, a lot of tech- nology ends up in our equipment,” he said. Robotics and preci- sion ag are two areas where they are constant- ly learning and tweaking things to make better equipment for their cus- tomers. “We are part of a benchmarking group with members operations ranging in size from 2,000 to 20,000 acres,” Horsch said. “Most members’ farms are in Germany and some are in the Czech Republic. “For 70 years we get together once a year for what I call our ‘come to Jesus meeting.’ We open the books to each other and share our best practices. We have consultants, about 30 farmers per consul- tant, and through this we are able to make im- provements that keep us profitable.” Through this group, they discovered the least profitable were the most digitalized. Some preci- sion is good, Horsch said, but too much data can distract a farmer from the basics. “Farm manager farms aren’t nearly as profit- able as those with family members,” he noted. Robotics is what will bring the next genera- tion of farm kids back to
Midwest Messenger photo by Barb Bierman Batie Horsch sales associate Christian Wolf discusses one of the company’s latest drills at the 2019 Agritechnica show in Hannover, Germany.
future needs. At the end of the day, I care about my customers, but at the end of the day I also talk about things they don’t want to hear so they can plan for another day.”
traffic approach, which is controlling the num- ber of trips through the fields. “Hopefully, we will find a better way of farm- ing to match society’s
said. “Long-term the idea is to get out of the corn-soybean rat race and put in a few more crops, using both organic and conventional farm- ing with a controlled
conventional farming. “Come up with a ro- tation that cuts back on chemicals — I’m not say- ing go organic — just rotate and work toward eliminating that emo- tional side of using herbicides,” he said. Horsch is calling the happy medium “hy- brid farming,” or to use another buzzword, “re- generated farming.” He is developing a demon- stration farm near Bloomington, Illinois, as a way of introducing the concept to the Corn Belt. “When we bring in all the things I discussed, diet and crop rotation, we will be sustainable,” he said. Unfortunately, the coronavirus has tak- en a lot of momentum out of their plans for Bloomington, he said, as he’s been unable to visit the farm this year. “So far we are im- plementing an organic farming piece there, starting with alfalfa in the rotation,” Horsch
Midwest Messenger photo by Barb Bierman Batie Horsch began with a maize seed drill, which was released in 1981, and expanded over the years to include tillage equipment and sprayers.
Midwest Messenger photo by Barb Bierman Batie The Horsch company’s specialty is seed drills, of which it had several on display at the 2019 Agritechnica show in Hannover, Germany.
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