Air April 20, 2005

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone. We really sent the smoke up into the sky over the past week. And thank goodness we finally got some good weather to do so. Late last Thursday afternoon I visited the National Weather Service's web site and looked at the radar loop. You could see the smoke moving from southeast to northwest on the radar. It wasn't just Geary County, it was the entire northern Flint Hills that was being burned!

I want to do a little follow up on last weeks soybean rust comment. There has been a little discussion about on rented ground who should pay for the fungicide if we need to treat for soybean rust. Obviously if the rental agreement is cash rent there is no question, or if it is crop shares arrangement where the operator pays all chemical costs. But the reality is that most rental arrangements are share expenses, shared receipts and they are oral agreements without a lot of specific stipulation. The rule of thumb is that if an input increases yield, the expense should be shared. Therefore, if a fungicide treatment is needed it should be shared. It's really no different than an insecticide treatment to protect a crop from insect attack. If we need the treatment to save the crop, the tenant and the landlord should share the cost according to the share agreement that they have.

Alfalfa weevil have gotten very active in the past week. Some spraying has already occurred and there are fields that definitely need to be treated. If you have not been out in your alfalfa fields yet, get out and start walking. Get down and look at the tips of the stems. Sometimes you can knock the tips into your cupped hand and a weevil larvae will fall right out. Other times you can already see the damage as soon as you start looking. If you can see those whitecaps or lacey plant look from the road, at 50 mph, then you're already in trouble and you HAVE lost yield. I suggest you tip the spray crew a little extra to move your name up the list. Once the field has been sprayed, don't think you're out of the woods. It is early enough that a second treatment may not be out of the question. An early cut isn't always the best answer, so let's monitor the second stage of this first cutting really carefully over the next 14 to 21 days!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2005.

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