Air February 28, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Boy, talk about a mixed blessing, February is turning into one wet month! There is still time, barely, to plan to go to the Soybean and Sunflower production seminar in Clay Center tomorrow. It runs from 9:45 to 3 p.m. But you need to call my office today to reserve a meal. And then next Tuesday, the 6th of March, we have the Controlling Crop Production Costs for Increased Profitability. We’ll start with a soup supper at 5:30 and the meeting will get rolling a little after 6. On the schedule we’ve got Brad Lubben, Kevin Dhuyvetter and Terry Kastens, all Ag Econ specialists at K-State. They are going to cover subjects like energy price outlook and cost considerations, management inputs and returns to management and cropping patterns, crop rotations and impact on profitability. They tell me they are going to try to keep this pretty free wheeling and go whatever direction the questions take them. Some of you have seen these fellows in action, and trust me, even though they are economists, you WON’T be bored. It will be interesting and helpful! Please do call by March 5th to reserve a bowl of soup!

Even though we’re still a couple months away from soybean planting I want to get everyone thinking about their soybean seed quality. Hopefully there wasn’t very much seed saved back for this year’s crop, because quite frankly, the quality of most of the soybean crop was poor! Irrigated beans were okay, but most dryland beans in this area were BAD news. If you did save seed back, get it tested and insist on a stress test as well. Secondly, this is probably going to be a good year to use seed treatments. If it continues to be damp we could see a lot of seedling diseases. If you plant beans before May 15th, use a fungicide seed treatment regardless. If it is after May 15th you may be able to back off on the fungicide seed treatment IF the soil temperatures have warmed up and you have high quality seed. There is a little concern about seed treatments in conjunction with innoculants. I’m a firm believer in using innoculants every year, even where you’ve recently had soybean, and we’ve got Geary County research to prove that. But, if you have a fungicide seed treatment, put your innoculant on just before planting, and if see sits in the planter box overnight, re-innoculate the next morning before you resume planting.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

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