Air January 16, 2002

Thank you Mark, good morning everyone. A quick reminder of some upcoming meetings - tomorrow afternoon in Clay Center, the 4 state beef conference. Registration starts at 3:30, program at 4. I just talked to the host county agent and he will still take registrations today. Registration fee is $25 and that includes a good beef dinner and a proceedings booklet. If you want to go, give me a call at the Extension Office, 238-4161. Clay county is also having a Grazing management workshop on Tuesday the 22nd - they can take registration up until this Friday. Call me if you are interested.

Yes, it is warm and dry. We haven’t had any significant rainfall since mid October and for the past 2 ½ months we are running a good 7 degrees above normal. And that trend doesn’t seem to be showing any immediate turn around. What does this mean for crops and pastures? It all depends on how soon we get some precipitation. Cooler weather right now is a plus. It slows down how fast waht remaining moisture leaves the soil in it’s variety of ways. Wheat that is very lush and large is at the highest risk right now. It used up a lot of soil moisture in the fall and probably has very little left in reserve. Soil moisture conditions were not that great going into fall to begin with. Unless you have some irrigated wheat ground, there isn’t much you can do except a rain dance or a prayer. How about crops yet to plant? You can never assume much other than normal conditions. At this time, I would carry on with normal spring crop plans. There is a lot of indication that the El Nino weather pattern may be cranking back up which usually translates into an increase in rainfall for Kansas. I guess we’ll see. How about pastures? Do we burn this year? How should we stock our pastures? All good questions with limited answers. Assume poor soil moisture conditions at this time. IF we don’t get good rains between now and pasture burning time in late April, I would not burn and I would back off on stocking rates. We still have pastures recovering from the heat and drought of 2000 and we don’t want to set them right back so let’s take it easy. Remember, our rule of thumb on burning is that you need a reason, you need enough growth for good fuel and you need a full soil moisture profile. Since we’re short on the latter right now - let’s just put burning plans on hold for now!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2002.

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