Air May 29, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. I know that there are producers trying to get some hay put up, and others who would like to get some beans and sorghum planted, but I have a hard time complaining about the rain just yet. And one good thing about this rainy weather, it does help reduce the chinch bug and grasshopper numbers. I am seeing a lot of yellow flag leaves in the wheat. This is classic barley yellow dwarf. Barley yellow dwarf is a disease carried by aphids. When we had that extended warm weather last fall, and given the extreme growth of some of the fields, it is no surprise that they symptoms aren’t worse than they are. There isn’t a lot of resistance out there in the varieties available. Planting after the hessian fly free date helps. We do know that using Gaucho treated seed will also reduce the amount of Barley Yellow Dwarf we see because the seed treatment kills most of the fall aphids. But it is sometimes hard to justify the added expense of the Gaucho seed treatment. I have seen a couple of fields in Geary County that are getting hit fairly hard with Wheat Streak mosaic virus. Many producers think of wheat streak mosaic as a western Kansas problem, but we get it here too and it can be costly. Which just points out why it is important to destroy volunteer wheat well before fall wheat planting.

With a new farm bill now in place we are going to have to look at a lot of changes, possibly for some producers. The administrative details are still being worked out, and looking at the potential possibilities may remind some producers of trying to order a meal at a Chinese restaurant. Each producer is going to have to spend some time pushing the pencil and asking questions. You’ll need to look at current bases and yields and then whether you want to stick with those or change. There are going to be some advantages to planting more milo and fewer soybeans under the current farm bill for many producers, yet this is just the opposite of what many of you have been doing in recent years. That makes decisions even harder. All the USDA agencies are hoping to get some informational meetings together and I will certainly keep you aware of these in the coming weeks and months. A quick reminder along these lines, acreage reporting deadline for wheat, oats and barley is this Friday. If you haven’t reported your acreage, or aren’t sure if you did, you’d better call and check, better safe than sorry!

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

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