For Release July 24, 2005

Agriculture Across America

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

This past week I have been in Buffalo, New York attending the National Association of County Agricultural Agents Professional Improvement Conference and Annual Meeting. This yearly gathering of agricultural extension professionals from all across the country is a great opportunity for us to find out what's the latest breaking news, the newest developments in agriculture and what is happening all across the country.

Well, guess what? It's hot and/or dry across a lot of the country. When we arrived in Buffalo they were having temperatures fifteen degrees above normal. The entire northeastern region was experiencing this hot and humid weather. It was nothing worse than what we often see here, but they just don't have the wind to help you at least feel better.

I had the opportunity to visit with an old college friend who is now a California Farm Advisor (county extension agent), in southeastern California. His region boarders Arizona and is dependent on irrigation to produce the extensive cotton, alfalfa and specialty crops of that region. He was a little disappointed to have been leaving to come to Buffalo when he did because he had some cotton stress research plots to spray with growth regulators to help the cotton plants deal with the heat stress. It had just hit 115 degrees that day and he would have liked to had been home spraying. Apparently the 107 and 109 degree readings before he left weren't hot enough for the stress they wanted to deal with!

We drove to Buffalo and went through the heart of the corn belt, up into southern Michigan and then across southern Ontario, returning across the center of Ohio. From central Missouri on, they are drier than we have been. While recent days have taken their toll, we are still in better shape, with the June rains, then most of the area we traveled through. Producers need to be watching the weather and markets as we move through August because there could be some good opportunities for forward pricing of fall crops.

The United Soybean Board had an excellent presentation on soybean rust. The Soybean Board is funded with soybean check-off money. The USB has been funneling a great deal of this producer generated fund back into the Asian Soybean Rust issue since 1995. The combined resources of the Soybean Board, USDA and state institutions represents one of the largest combined efforts to deal with a crop production problem in history.

Amazingly, many of the specialists aren't overly concerned about the situation. In the southern states, many fields are already being sprayed with fungicides once or twice a season for other leaf diseases. With a little tightening up of the schedule, through effective monitoring and integrated pest management practices, soybean rust losses can be easily minimized. And on the plus side, the recent weather has not been to the liking of soybean rust, but it also hasn't been to the liking of soybean production either!

Animal identification is an ongoing issue that we are going to be hearing a lot more about, especially given the second case of BSE in recent years. But the one thing that I always find fascinating, as I visit with my coworkers from Florida to Alaska, Maine to Hawaii, is that in spite of how different the agriculture is across this great country, the attitudes and the challenges that we and our producer clientele face are the same. Rising costs of production, lower commodity prices, urban sprawl and more, effect all producers across the country. And it is our differences that brings us together and makes us strong. It was a great learning opportunity, but it's good to be home!

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