Air August 21, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. A reminder of the 2 Farm Service Agency Meetings on the 22nd of August, this Thursday. There will be one at the 4-H/Sr Citizen Building starting at 1 pm and the other will be that evening at 7 pm at the Humboldt Community Center. FSA staff will be on hand to discuss base & yield provisions as well as the direct and counter-cyclical payment methods for the 2002 farm bill. Attend as if the future of your farm depends on it!

You will probably be hearing about a new soybean insect pest in the near future. The soybean aphid is a very small yellow aphid with long black cornicles, or tail pipes. It is a native insect of the orient and has been showing up more regularly west of the Mississippi in recent years. IT is the only aphid that will build up big colonies on soybeans. This late in the season it is doubtful that the aphid will cause much economic damage. In fact we don’t really have good treatment threshold information yet for soybean aphids. In other areas of the country, the biggest loss has been from feeding damage at the first blossom stages. These aphids are susceptible to all the other aphid feeding insects we have such as ladybugs and lacewings. Perhaps as big of a concern about the feeding damage of the soybean aphid itself is the fact that these aphids can carry many viral diseases which may cause more damage than the feeding damage. For this year, keep your eye out for small colonies of yellow aphids only in the soybeans and call me if you see them. Hopefully this pest will be like the Russian Wheat aphid and be more of a novelty than a crop production threat, but please be alert to the potential problem.

I’ve noticed a lot of volunteer wheat coming with the recent rains. I know that we always say to keep this volunteer wheat destroyed ahead of wheat planting. BUT I also know that that volunteer looks awfully good as emergency forage. There is probably a greatly reduced risk and unless the volunteer is immediately southwest of a field you or your neighbor is going to plant for wheat, I’d be inclined to leave it and graze it as soon as it gets big enough!

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

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