Cotton

EPA Opens Public Comment Period On Draft Fungicide Strategy

Mon, 04 May 2026 22:17:01 GMT

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is offering the U.S. public an opportunity to help shape the future of agricultural safety, unveiling a draft Fungicide Strategy designed to balance the needs of American farmers with the protection of the nation’s most vulnerable wildlife.

The proposal marks a significant step in the agency’s effort to meet its dual mandates under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). By creating a more efficient and transparent framework for pesticide registration, the EPA says it aims to “safeguard more than 1,000 federally endangered and threatened species” while ensuring growers maintain the tools necessary to protect the nation’s food supply.

A New Framework for Modern Farming

The draft strategy focuses on conventional agricultural fungicides across the lower 48 states — an area covering approximately 41 million treated acres annually. Rather than a one-size-fits-all mandate, the proposal introduces a three-step framework:

Identify Impacts: Assessing potential population-level effects on listed species.
Mitigation Planning: Pinpointing specific measures to reduce those risks.
Targeted Application: Determining exactly where these protections are most needed based on where endangered and threatened species live and how fungicides move through the environment.

The agency emphasizes that while this strategy guides future regulatory actions, it does not impose immediate requirements. Instead, the strategy serves as a roadmap for upcoming registration reviews, with the EPA promising public input on every specific action before it is finalized.

Balancing Innovation and Conservation

Saying that it recognizes farmers are the backbone of the U.S. economy, the EPA’s draft includes several updates to provide greater flexibility. Notably, the plan expands options for reducing spray drift buffer distances and introduces new mitigation tools, such as the use of “guar gum” as a spray adjuvant.

"[American farmers] need a diverse toolbox of innovative agricultural technologies to manage crop disease, prevent resistance, and produce the affordable, nutritious food that feeds our country,” the EPA says, in a press release. “The draft Fungicide Strategy is designed to ensure those innovative tools remain available and that they are used in ways that protect the environment and endangered species.

How to Get Involved

In a push for transparency, the EPA has opened a 60-day public comment period to gather feedback from scientists, conservationists, Tribal partners and the agricultural community.

Public Comment: Stakeholders can review the strategy and submit formal feedback via (Docket: EPA-HQ-OPP-2026-2973) through June 29, 2026.
Informational Webinar: The agency will host a public webinar on May 20, 2026, at 2 p.m. ET to walk through the proposal and answer questions. Register here .

The EPA expects to review all public input and finalize the Fungicide Strategy by November 2026.

Hurricane Helene: One Year Later

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 21:41:24 GMT

Chris White is 46 years old. For more than half of that time, he’s been a blueberry farmer in his hometown of Baxley, Ga. He’s seen a lot, both as a farmer and also as a resident in southeast Georgia, an area of the country that’s not quite hurricane ground zero but that can certainly find itself adjacent to the many tropical storms and hurricanes that make landfall each year.

But he’d never seen anything like what happened to his community the night of Sept. 26, 2024.

Located in the southeastern part of the state, Baxley was one of the many towns that took a direct hit from Hurricane Helene. Overnight, the hurricane pummeled the area with 100-plus mph wind gusts and rainfall that triggered flooding, resulting in 37 deaths in the state.

When White and his fellow farmers awoke the next morning, they were unprepared for what they saw.

One of the farms that makes up Appling Blueberry Farms had sat ripe with mature blueberry bushes just the day before. Now, it was decimated – the entire blueberry canopy flattened to the ground. Surrounded by debris, he recalls having to walk 3 miles on foot to get to his equipment shed.

“I drove the tractor back here to the field and when I pulled to the road and saw it, I just turned around and didn’t come back for six days,” White says.

“Just imagine the entire thing on the ground. “It was devastating,” he adds.

Down the road in the neighboring city of Alma, Randy Miller spent the morning with the same ache in his gut. Looking out on his family’s timber operation, Miller saw his 1,400 acres of timberland in shambles.

“We lost 300 acres of timber in the 30 to 40-year range,” he says.

Miller thought of his timber acres largely as his 401k — a savings he could grow to maturity and then harvest as a security blanket for retirement.

“I’m 64 years old, and that was basically my lifetime’s marketable timber that was gone,” he says.

Randy Miller had invested time and energy in growing a pinewood plantation that he hoped to market at maturity. Hurricane Helene’s 100-plus mph winds decimated 300 acres of his trees.

(Randy Miller)

The Clean-Up

While White remained in denial about his crop’s demise, Miller didn’t have the time. Even felled timber has a window where harvest remains possible, but time is critical. He started calling his timber cutting contacts, but he was already behind. Other landowners had called before him.

“It took months before they could get to us,” Miller says.

“Before the Hurricane, we sold 60 acres of timber worth roughly $4,000 per acre,” he says. “After it, we picked up 150 acres and got a check for $47,000.

“Some people got nothing, so we were lucky that we’d gotten $4 a ton for ours, which is basically nothing,” he adds.

In Baxley, White finally started ripping out his destroyed blueberry bushes. In order to plant more, he had to start from scratch and rebuild the field infrastructure, such as bark mounds and drip lines.

But then he couldn’t find plants.

“We called all over the U.S. to find plants,” he recalls. “We had plants come from Oregon and Florida. We really had to struggle to get them.”

Appling Blueberry Farms planted the last of its replacement bushes in February, which means that the new crop could not yield fruit this year. Grower Chris White will be able to harvest berries from the farm in the 2026 growing year.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement)

White’s last new plant went into the ground in February. He says he’s not sure that any of that quick rebuild would have been possible without emergency assistance from USDA.

“The FSA Tree Assistance Program (TAP) was a very big blessing to put them back,” he says. “They paid an amount for the soil preparation and then so much per plant for the replant.

“It definitely wasn’t something that would bring you debt-free on it, but it was something that wouldn’t put you in a real financial bind,” he adds.

Planning for the Future

The devastation left in Helene’s wake wasn’t just plant loss for many farmers. The rushing water from torrential rain combined with the hurricane-force winds blew critical topsoil, sending it into nearby fields, ditches and roadways.

Part of the recovery for growers like White was moving and replacing dirt.

“We hauled in about 60 dump truck loads of dirt and put the soil back where it had eroded,” he recalls.

He wasn’t the only one. Neal Boatright, a fourth-generation farmer who grows more than 6,000 acres of cotton, peanuts and blueberries at scale, also had to get to work relocating soil on his farm. He noticed a difference in erosion in his no-till acreage and the areas where he harvest-tills crops such as peanuts.

“We brought it back from the lower side of the fields and put back and leveled and tried to fix it,” he says. “We have conventional tillage areas that wash worse.”

Growers such as White, Miller and Boatright have seen the weather changing around them. While they say they’d never seen a hurricane or tropical storm hit their region with such devastation as Helene did, they aren’t sure it is going to be the last one.

Their rebuilding plans are a combination of put-back and pre-planning for mitigation of future potential weather catastrophes.

In his rebuild, White worked to secure grants that would allow him to experiment with cover crops in between his blueberry rows. The farm that was lost totally last year now has a diverse cover crop mixture locking his soil in place.

Appling Blueberry Farms uses a diverse mixture of cover crops in between blueberry rows to protect soil from erosion. After the first year, grower Chris White says he sees a reduction in nematode and weed pressure due to the cover crop.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement)

At one point in the growing season, his cover crop mixture stood 6 feet tall, towering above his blueberry bushes. In addition to protecting the soil, White says the cover crop is yielding other benefits as well.

“It dries the middle out a lot quicker because you have so much sucking the rain and that helps a bunch,” he says. “Because we planted several different plants, our nematode pressure has been way down and the weed pressure too.

“We’ll keep a cover crop here twice a year now, one in the summer and one in the winter,” he adds.

Boatright has been cover cropping his land and sees the benefits in preventing erosion as well as building organic matter in the soil.

“It not only saves erosion by that cover crop growing, it helps retain some nutrients for the next year, builds up organic matter and helps with suppressing weed pressure,” he says. “All that added together makes a good cover crop worthwhile.”

Lasting Impact

While growers and landowners have spent this past year cleaning up and putting their land and assets back together, many worry that the devastation of Hurricane Helen may have generational impact.

Kevin Eason didn’t have to destroy many of his blueberry plants, but even though they survived, the yields this year seem to be suffering.

“What we’ve come to realize is some fields that we didn’t think were damaged, production was down significantly,” he says. “What’s going to happen a year from now, two years from now, three years from now?

“What are going to be the lingering effects of what happened with the Hurricane?”

As he drives down the road on his land and in his community, Boatright can still see areas that harken back to the immediate aftermath of the storm a year ago.

“There was probably more wind damage from that one storm than all the wind damage I’ve ever seen in my whole life added together in this area,” he says. “This was devastating to the timber industry and will have years of effects.”

Miller is keenly aware of the generational impact that his timber losses will have for his family.

“It’s just a sickening feeling because you have totally lost your hearts, not just in the pocketbook,” he says. “I have a kid, and he has two kids that are coming up, and we want to turn it over to them in good shape.

“It’s not a one-year quick fix.

“This is going to take years,” he says. “Probably five years from now, we’ll still be able to ride through and see where this Hurricane hit us.”

The Secret Life of Farmland Marbles

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 21:15:49 GMT

Childhood secrets are hiding in the dirt.

Months after crops are harvested and fields stripped to bare brown, the slanted rays of morning or evening sunlight fire large circular patterns of crushed glass spread across farmland. Glitter sprinkled over soil, the shining glass graveyards at field edges are the stubborn remains of sharecropper and tenant farmer sites once dotting even the most remote Southern farmland. The shotgun houses and clapboard shacks are gone, but a child’s toy waits patiently, lingering in the rows. Time, tillage and rainfall reveal the sharecropper’s last testament: forgotten clusters of magnificent clay, agate and glass marbles.

Click on the video below to go on a marble hunt with Chris Bennett.

Walking Rows

On a clear day in early May, Bernie Wright is walking rows, eyes down and head moving gently back and forth. A single inch of rain has parked Wright’s cotton planters, but it hasn’t kept him out of the fields.

There’s something special about the marbles in these fields and I love finding them,” he says. “They meant a lot to somebody long ago and maybe that’s why I enjoy looking.”

Wright, 57, is searching at mid-day and doesn’t need sun on the horizon to fire glass and serve as a site map, because he already knows where the old homes stood. Most of the tenant houses were torn down in the 1960s and Wright, farm manager at Longino Planting Co., in Jonestown, Miss., remembers the locations from childhood.

Before the advent of heavy machinery capable of servicing thousands of acres, the flat vista of Mississippi Delta farmland was heavily pocked with houses lining turn rows and county roads. The tenant system required on-site workers and the accompanying logistics translated to a range of housing layouts, from an isolated handful of dwellings on a back road to scores of homes concentrated around a commissary and schoolhouse. Necessity dictated tenants live and work at the same location.

“People have forgotten how many houses used to cover farm ground,” Wright says. “Sharecroppers had to live on their parcel of land.”

The old house sites are a slurry of glass shards, stoneware chips, bricks, buttons, coal, mangled cutlery, cork-top bottlenecks, and much more – the detritus of a farming day long since passed. Yet, in stark contrast to the other crushed remains, time has been kind to the marble spheres. Small enough to evade tillage tools, tough enough to withstand compaction, and colorful enough to draw the human eye, marbles have endured the age of mechanization.

When a marble rests just below the soil line, rain and wind start an umbrella action, and the smooth spherical marble surface sheds dirt particles, leaving the rounded top naked to a searching gaze. With a bit of luck and time, a marble exposed in a raised bed and cleaned of debris may follow the grade and roll down into a furrow, as if just dropped from a child’s hand into a row. More often, only a sliver of body shows in the dirt and offers one chance to claim a marble before weather, crops or machinery cover it again.

Marble Whisperer

(Farm Journal)

Katie and Chris Kale. © Chris Bennett

After church on a spring Sunday, Chris Kale eases along a turn row with wife, Cindy, and a truckload of grandkids, looking for house sites. A 2” rain fell four days prior and Kale knows the ground is ripe for marble hunting. He spots a slightly raised hump just off the turn row and sees glass scattered across soil a shade darker than the surrounding field. In seconds, the family spills out of the truck and the hunt is on.

The Kales spread out 3’ to 4’ apart and methodically canvass a roughly 100’-by-100’ section to compensate for tillage spread of houses that were often originally 40’-by-40’. Equipment and land leveling push marbles across all points in a given field, but the vast majority remain in proximity to home sites.

“It’s all about family, the hunt and history,” Kale says.

“There’s history laying at your feet and all you have to do is pick it up,” Cindy echoes. “Chris can’t drive by a field without looking for shining glass. If he sees something, he’ll either go look or get the grandkids and go back later.”

Kale, co-owner of Farmers Supply in Marvell, Ark., hunted arrowheads as a boy and began taking his own children on marble searches in the late 1980s. The weekly treasure hunts turned into a family constitutional, and at 58, Kale isn’t slowing down. Simply, he is a marble whisperer and has honed his skills with a focus on location, timing, possibility, quality, quantity and blind luck.

“I’ll pick up a marble that might be untouched by human hands for 100 years,” he says. “What child lost it? What was the child’s name? It was part of someone’s life and I respect that.”

Great Equalizer

(Farm Journal)

Bernie Wright looking for marbles. © Chris Bennett

Most sites around Marvell date from the late 1800s to the 1960s, Kale estimates. Families typically had four to eight kids, and despite poverty, marbles were the sole luxury afforded to children. A subsistence sharecropper, unable to buy any other toy for his kids, could still afford to purchase marbles. Even today, find a beautiful agate with a distinct pattern, and chances are the same house site is hiding many more similar specimens – direct evidence of a quantity bag or box purchase at a general store or commissary.

Marbles were part and parcel of youth, the single most ubiquitous item of childhood. Poor or poorer, marbles were the great equalizer. The treble of affordability, quantity and durability explains the overwhelming numbers of marbles found today on farmland. Kale estimates a sharecropper child might have owned 20 marbles at a given time. However, when a single house site spits up 75 or even 100 marbles, questions mount as to why and how.

“I can’t believe kids lost as many as we’ve found on some sites. In fact, I think these marbles were sacred in a way to children,” Kale says. “There was more going on than kids losing marbles. Lost during play, thrown away by momma, or left behind when a family moved, all of these are parts of the puzzle.”

The evidence in the ground doesn’t necessarily match conventional logic at some house sites, especially those which don’t produce marbles. Kale cites a tenant house he remembers from childhood, a home to multiple children and a particular hub of activity. He’s scoured the knoll for years and found coins, buttons, and porcelain, but not a single marble.

“That house had dozens of children spread across several generations and hasn’t yielded even one marble,” Kale says. “It’s frustrating, but I guess some questions stay buried.”

Marble Memories

Beyond the telltale glass scattered across home sites, Kale paints a rough mental picture of typical marble locations. Concentrations correspond with play zones, the actual spots where kids gathered, drew circles in the dirt, and shot for keeps. The zones share one overriding trait: shade from the Delta sun. Either under a porch, against the north or east side of a house, or beneath a tree, a game of marbles was shot in the shade. Find a play zone and it’s likely to be a marble honey hole.

(Farm Journal)

Willie Rucker showing off marbles he’s found. © Chris Bennett

“It’s telltale when I find 10 marbles in a single tight spot,” Kale says. “That’s a location where kids were playing and marbles surface there year after year.”

To the uninitiated, Curtis Storey, 57, is walking across his east Arkansas ground, checking a polypipe irrigation line, but in reality, he’s also hunting marbles.

“I love finding marbles on my land; absolutely love it,” he says. “There’s history in a marble and you can feel it.”

Storey farms 4,800 acres in Phillips County, Ark., and whether checking polypipe or measuring seed depth, he’s also looking for color.

“My family has worked this land for years, and yet these marbles pop out of my fields in amazing shape,” he says. “Pieces of glass light up on the ground, especially in the morning or evening, and draw you in to look. It never gets old, even when I find just one little marble.”

As a young boy, Storey rode atop a metal seat on the back of a four-row planter while his father, Ronald, cultivated cotton. When Storey saw a gleam in the dirt, he would whistle for Ronald to stop, and then jump down to collect the marble. If the engine noise was too loud for whistling, Storey tossed a dirt clod at Ronald to halt the machinery.

“I’d see color shining and be gone to get that marble,” he says. “My daddy would start hollering, ‘We’ve got cotton to plant, son. You’re stopping me for marbles again?’”

Storey’s catbird perch was as dangerous as it was fruitful. On a windy, dusty day in 1964, five-year-old Storey and Ronald were planting soybeans on a John Deere 3010 with a single front tire. No cab, no fenders. An old, non-hydraulic marker swung around the front of the tractor as Storey stood on the left side of the back axle to avoid the dirt and held tight to the seat.

(Farm Journal)

Rut or lurch, Storey was thrown off the axle while the tractor rumbled along in fifth gear, falling forward into the dirt. The tire rose above Storey, a cleat striking him in the head and pushing his face deep into the ground, packing the inside of his eyelids and nostrils with soil. With a fraction of a second to spare, Ronald smashed the clutch and backed up before Storey was crushed. Cradled in Ronald’s arms, Storey was sure he’d died: “I asked my daddy if I was dead. Five year olds don’t think about death, but it was all black from the dirt under my eyelids and I couldn’t see. Anyhow, I should have been dead.”

Racing across the field, Ronald placed Storey in his truck cab, scalded road for the doctor’s office, and slung four buckets of soybeans across the highway. After a lengthy cleaning, a bald spot where the hair peeled up his forehead, a concussion, and a lick of salve, Storey survived by a matter of millimeters.

“The Lord decided it wasn’t my time,” he says. “To this day, I don’t look at old metal planter seats without thinking about my daddy, that accident and marbles. They all tie together. Someone else’s marbles represent farm memories of my own childhood.”

Forgotten Tales

Kale has never counted his farm marbles, but he keeps the collection in a variety of candy jars as proof of his prowess. Thousands of marbles of all sizes, colors and patterns fill the jars, separated by an occasional arrowhead, button or porcelain doll part. His massive marble trove is all the more remarkable considering it was built one specimen at a time: spot, kneel, and pry the past from the ground.

He can’t fully explain the primal pull that perpetually draws him into the fields to find another marble.

“Farmland is kind of like a museum and it’s even more enjoyable with age due to my family,” Kale says. “Every single find is exciting because it carries a physical connection to a different time, place and people.”

Come spring, Kale will hit the rows again with his family, searching for one more marble hidden in the dirt. Change is the great constant in farming, yet although the sharecroppers are gone and the houses torn down, the marbles remain, waiting patiently to tell a buried tale.

“Find a marble that hasn’t seen daylight in 75 years, pick it up and rub the grit off,” Kale adds. “You’ll almost hear it speak.”

Click on the photo to see more images of farmland marbles.

© Chris Bennett

Devastating Drought: Texas Farmers Say 2021 Drought Already Rivals 2011

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 14:01:26 GMT

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor shows from North Dakota to Texas, all the way west to California, the most severe levels of drought didn’t ease across the U.S. this past week.

While 62% of the country is seeing some level of dryness, a 2-point improvement in a week, the most extreme level of drought grew, now covering more than 9% of the country.

(Farm Journal)

Texas Extremes

All levels of drought are painted across the Texas U.S. Drought monitor. Only 8% of the state is drought-free, with 8.5% in the exceptional drought category. Around one-quarter of the state is seeing extreme drought conditions.

West Texas farmers are preparing themselves for a possible devastating impact to the 2021 crop.

“We’re extremely dry,” says Blake Fennell, a farmer in Earth, Texas. “I would say we’re giving 2011 a run for its money, but we’re probably drier than 2011 at this point.”

2011 is a year that sticks in many farmers minds in the West Texas and Texas Panhandle area. That’s when consecutive days of 100-degree temperatures, with no rainfall, meant pivots couldn’t even make it a full circle without crops shriveling up. And the dryland crop was nil.

Too Dry to Plant

The West Texas farmer says his area hasn’t’ seen significant rain fall in nearly two years.

“We’ve still got to give that crop every chance we think we can get, but at the same time, we also can’t waste a lot of money on a crop that we don’t think we’re going to have going into it,” he says.

(Farm Journal)

Cotton Crop Worries

From monitoring inputs closely, to parked planters just waiting on Mother Nature to possibly produce moisture to even get the crop out of the ground, it’s a battle that farmers in the area say will be fought all year.

“If we don’t get any significant rainfall within the next two, three or four weeks, it’s going to have a very significant impact on the cotton crop in West Texas,” Fennell says . “A 1"or 1.5" rainfall event is not going to cure the problems we’re facing today.”

Fennell says the expectations for the West Texas cotton crop are also grim.

“Abandonment looks like it’s going to be pretty high this year, just for the simple fact that there is no ground moisture to get this crop emerged,” he says.

Killing the Input Beast

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:03:33 GMT

The gospel of high yields at all costs has a new apostate. In 2012, Johnny Hunter pumped massive amounts of water onto his crops, but could only watch as extended drought drained yield from his fields. Cost of production demanded 230-250 bu. corn, 70-80 bu. soybeans and 3-bale cotton. When those levels weren’t achieved, particularly with the worst corn harvest of his career, financial trouble followed. He steadied his nerve, pulled the handbrake on his operation, and began a manic search for a soil solution.

Hunter was victim to agriculture’s version of the death of a thousand cuts through endless rounds of $5 treatments. A switch to a no till cover crop system tailored to his Essex, Mo., ground changed his entire management dynamic and provided a booster shot to weed control, irrigation efficiency and overall soil health.

YouTube Yearning

When the last tractor was shut down and harvest dust settled on a dismal 2012, Hunter was frustrated and playing against time. Despite pumping the most water of his career across a high tillage and big input system, another poor year in 2013 would place his operation in dire financial straits.

“One year and all the money I’d made was negated,” he says. “You can farm like that and make a living, but you can’t stub your toe or suffer a hiccup because you’ve spent so much money. It’s a fragile, uneasy spot and a lot of farmers are in it.”

Heavy tillage was the default practice on Hunter’s southeast Missouri operation, peppered with blanket fertilizer across all acres. Almost invariably, at least one treatment of some sort was sprayed weekly – an inordinate amount of money to increase yield.

“I was killing myself with $5 and $7 treatments to bring bushel increases,” Hunter says. “Yes, in some instances that’s exactly what happened, but we just kept bleeding profit.”

He typically doctored 2,450 acres of farmland with the intensive management of a man possessed: increased fertilization rates, tissue sampling, and micronutrient applications were only a portion of an ever growing regimen. The knee-jerk solution to go from red to black? Buy more metal in the form of a 20’ disk ripper and tear ground to shreds to increase water infiltration.

In December, while hunting online for the right machinery, Hunter clicked a tillage radish advertisement. In turn, the radish link led to a series of YouTube cover crop videos. He was hooked and hardly left his house for a week, consuming soil health videos and chasing more cover crop links. The penny dropped and Hunter knew he was on the trail of a turnaround.

In the mix of cover crop videos and literature, a particular name kept surfacing: National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) conservation agronomist Ray Archuleta. Hunter emailed Archuleta on a Saturday night; Archuleta called Hunter on Sunday morning. Hunter’s journey to soil health had begun.

“Johnny was trying to find a better way to survive,” Archuleta recalls. “ Cover crops are merely a tool, not the goal. The goal is simple: Copy nature and increase soil function to cut back on input dependency. Understanding what’s going on in the soil system and how to use cover crops is the key.”

“Ray patiently explained how a cover crop system would benefit my overall efficiency,” Hunter says. “Sure, I was scared and felt like I was walking out on a high-dive board, but I was more scared of keeping on with the same practices and going out of business. Another bad year and I was knocked out.”

Hunter’s cover crop scheme is a fluid mix, and he rarely repeats the exact recipe of cereal rye, annual rye, black oats, hairy vetch, crimson clover, red clover, and Austrian winter peas. He doesn’t kill covers early in the year and believes a loose 75% of benefits are derived in spring. Erosion benefits come in winter, but Hunter wants a living root as soil warms. Before corn and soybeans, he terminates covers 48 hours ahead of the planter.

“The last thing I need to do is kill covers in February,” Hunter notes. “I like a healthy balance of good biomass to put carbon in my soil, and having a good place to plant my cash crop.”

Most of Hunter’s farmland is precision graded and divided into 40- to 80-acre fields, with soils ranging from sandy to Sharkey clay gumbo. Cover crops serve as a sponge and can factor heavily in the delicate dance between early planting and rutted up ground. A big April rain on buckshot is stressful and can destroy a planting schedule, but cover crops wick away a significant amount of excess moisture and preserve precious time during early spring.

Termination occurs 48 to 72 hours before planting. When soil temperatures reach close to 60 F at midday, Hunter chemically terminates with Gramoxone (or a combination of Roundup and Sharpen) and may carry the mix with liquid fertilizer. The next day he leaves the field idle as chemicals translocate, and sends in planters with mounted rollers the following day.

“Getting a cover crop terminated and laid flat on the soil surface, and then planted into as quickly as possible provides the best results,” Hunter says. “I want the cover lying flat on the soil surface so it provides benefits fast: weed suppression, moisture retention, and soil health.”

Cash Back

Palmer amaranth loves sunlight, but can’t handle thick layers of cereal rye. Through 2012, resistant Palmer pressure caused Hunter’s herbicide bill to balloon, yet after a single year of cover crops in 2013, the reduction in pigweed was remarkable. When Hunter gets a cover laid down and no tills through the mat, he says the result is the best residual herbicide money can buy. The covers impede germination by crowding out weed seeds and blocking sunlight, but cereal rye and tillage radishes also produce natural allelopathic chemicals to hinder broadleaf weed seed.

Through a no till, cover crop system, Hunter is taking bites out of the herbicide monster . Blanket pre-emerge spraying is no longer a necessity. Contingent on the cover type, a stout layer of biomass won’t even allow pre-emerge chemicals to reach the soil. However, on gar holes, skips, and odd spots, Hunter still applies pre-emerge to avoid weed problem areas. Overall, by eliminating a chain of spray trips, he’s gained substantial herbicide cost savings.

“My goal is to continue dropping weed pressure to get away from weed chopping and high herbicide bills. These are the kind of savings that make us profitable,” Hunter says.

Fertilizer and soil nutrients remain in the soil far better with Hunter’s cover system, with generally clear water leaving the bottom of fields, instead of a mocha slurry. Irrigation was an initial worry for Hunter, but slicing through the mat with a furrow tool carved a clean water path. Most of his acreage is furrow irrigated with polypipe, and the covers slow down water flow to increase irrigation efficiency, according to Hunter. Essentially, it means increased soaking time for crops and more moisture contained by residue.

“No more turning on wells and never turning them off,” Hunter says. “Irrigation is another area to save money.”

Weening Inputs

During the brutal 2012 drought, producer Peter Rost, New Madrid, Mo., watched corn burn even under irrigation. As he saw soil health benefits blossom on Hunter’s ground, Rost took note and began implementing cover crops in 2014. Hunter and Rost are among a handful of growers using a cover crop system in adjoining Stoddard and New Madrid counties. In 2016, Rost had 50% of his 3,500 acres in cover crops, but plans to boost coverage to 95% in 2017.

“This is not a sprint and I can’t suddenly cut out fertilizer applications and spraying,” Rost says. “However, I’m getting weened off intensive irrigation, heavy nutrients and non-stop spray passes.”

Rost is already seeing returns through a reduction of input costs from a heavy cover mat to choke weeds and thick biomass to increase irrigation infiltration and ensure water doesn’t slide down a hard middle.

“I’m planting a lot of hairy vetch and clover, and I’m looking forward to curbing back my nutrient applications by year four or five,” he says.

Catching Sun

The principles of soil health don’t rest on cover crops, Archuleta advocates. His aim isn’t to guide a producer toward cover crops; it’s to understand soil health context and biomimicry. Cover crops are merely a tool to put the soil system in motion and withstand drought, hold more water and cycle nutrients more efficiently. Harvesting corn and soybeans from a field and leaving it bare is a loss for the soil and ultimately a profit loss for the producer through energy and nutrient leaks, Archuleta emphasizes.

He believes the most effective way to make money on a farm is to capture solar energy.

“Is your farm running on ancient sunlight or new sunlight? Ancient sunlight is diesel, gasoline, pesticides, and chemical inputs. New sunlight farmers use cover crops to capture sunlight which pumps carbon into the soil ecosystem which significantly reduces those inputs,” Archuleta says.

And how do the numbers stack up? On average, producers following the soil health system have reaped astounding savings, according to Archuleta .

“I’ve already watched farmers reduce nitrogen needs by 50%, fuel consumption by 75%, and herbicide use by 75%,” he says. “I’ve seen some operations entirely eliminate fungicides and insecticides.”

Never Till

In farming reality, weather and ruts dictate certain management necessities, but with 75% of his acreage in no till, Hunter’s goal is to continue minimizing tillage.

“I don’t care if you’re in Michigan, Mississippi or Missouri; tillage is detrimental to soil health. In a perfect world, my ground would be in never till. That’s the ideology I chase, but I also understand the nature of the beast.”

And what does Hunter advise other producers considering cover crop implementation? Education, research, and small steps.

“Educate yourself away from fear by looking at a ton of available resources,” he says. “Field days, soil health alliances, and NRCS professionals are waiting. It may sound silly at first, but YouTube is a treasure trove.”

As a third-generation producer, Hunter, 35, jumped to 5,400 acres in 2016: cotton , field corn, popcorn, soybeans, rice and pumpkins. Admittedly, he was once scared to make changes, but profitability and the future of his operation forced his hand: “Lots of people say they want to change, but the reality is otherwise. Everybody wants different results, but few are willing to change their business.”

California Drought Transforms Markets as Growers See Dry Future

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:00:21 GMT

For more than 70 years, Fred Starrh’s family was among the most prominent cotton growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Then shifting global markets and rising water prices told him that wouldn’t work anymore.

So he replaced most of the cotton plants on his farm near Shafter, 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and planted almonds, which make more money per acre and are increasingly popular with consumers in Asia.

“You can’t pay $1,000 an acre-foot to grow cotton,” said Starrh, 85, crouching to inspect a drip irrigator gently gurgling under an almond tree.

Such crop switching is one sign of a sweeping transformation going on in California--the nation’s biggest agricultural state by value--driven by a three-year drought that climate scientists say is a glimpse of a drier future. The result will affect everything from the price of milk in China to the source of cherries eaten by Americans. It has already inflamed competition for water between farmers and homeowners.

Growers have adapted to the record-low rainfall by installing high-technology irrigation systems, watering with treated municipal wastewater and even recycling waste from the processing of pomegranates to feed dairy cows. Some are taking land out of production altogether, bulldozing withered orange trees and leaving hundreds of thousands of acres unplanted.

“There will be some definite changes, probably structural changes, to the entire industry” as drought persists, said American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman. “Farmers have made changes. They’ve shifted. This is what farmers do.”

Commodity Crops

In the long term, California will probably move away from commodity crops produced in bulk elsewhere to high-value products that make more money for the water used, said Richard Howitt, a farm economist at the University of California at Davis. The state still has advantages in almonds, pistachios and wine grapes, and its location means it will always be well- situated to export what can be profitably grown.

That may mean less farmland in production as growers abandon corn and cotton because of the high cost of water. Corn acreage in California has dropped 34 percent from last year, and wheat is down 53 percent, according to the USDA.

Cotton planting, Fred Starrh’s one-time mainstay, has fallen 60 percent over the decade, while almonds are up by more than half.

On its own, California would be the world’s ninth-largest agricultural economy, according to a University of California at Davis study. Shifts in its production reverberate globally, said Dan Sumner, another agricultural economist at the school.

‘Big Deal’

“It’s a really big deal,” Sumner said. “Some crops simply grow better here than anyplace else, and our location gives us access to markets you don’t have elsewhere.”

The success of California agriculture was built in large part on advances in irrigation that allowed the state to expand beyond wheat, which flourishes in dry climates. It’s now the U.S.’s top dairy producer and grows half the country’s fruits, vegetables and nuts.

“Water has allowed us to grow more valuable crops,” Sumner said. “Now, we have fruits and vegetables and North Dakota grows our wheat. Without irrigation, we’d be North Dakota.”

An estimated 82 percent of California is experiencing extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Agriculture has been hard hit as it consumes about four-fifths of the water that isn’t set aside for environmental preservation. Some farmers are paying as much as 10 times more for water than what it cost before the drought.

Farmers Adapt

Another dry year in 2015 is a strong possibility, according to a study by the University of California at Davis released last month. The same study pegs drought-related farm losses at $1.5 billion, with 17,100 jobs lost statewide.

Groups such as the California Citrus Mutual and California Farm Bureau Federation have been calling for bigger allocations from the state’s watersheds for agriculture, asking the state to add storage capacity and ease environmental regulations that set aside water to preserve endangered species.

That puts the farmers on a collision course with environmentalists and urban advocates who say some choices -- such as a switch to almonds -- could worsen the scarcity.

Almond Crop

California grows four-fifths of the world’s almonds, much of it for overseas markets. That has pushed the price up to more than $3 a pound, a record that has encouraged farmers to divert water from other crops.

Almonds use enough water to supply 75 percent of the state’s population, according to Carolee Krieger, president and executive director of the California Water Impact Network, which supports bigger supplies for cities. Much of the crop is exported, meaning it isn’t even feeding Californians, she said.

“Farmers should be profitable, but it can’t come at the expense of urban water ratepayers,” she said.

The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation, which supplies water to a third of the state’s irrigated farmland, cut off California water distribution to some areas, while leaving others with 75 percent or less of their normal allocation.

Shawn Stevenson, who grows 1,200 acres of orange and olive trees outside Fresno, is in a zero-allocation area.

Bulldozed Branches

Unable to obtain affordable water for his trees, he hired a bulldozer to uproot about 400 acres of orange trees. He called his farm the “canary in the coal mine” for California agriculture, part of the 500,000 acres being abandoned this year, according to the University of California at Davis.

“We’re going to deliver 25 percent of our volume this year,” Stevenson said over the crunch of bulldozed branches. “That impacts the packing house, the people who sell the fruit, the people that we buy pesticides and fertilizers from.

‘‘If this persists in the next year, the devastation we will see here and across the state will be biblical.’’

Faced with chronic dryness, farmers have been figuring out ways to adapt. Starrh’s drip-irrigation system was pioneered in Israel and is now widely employed across California, cutting water use by supplying plants with smaller, targeted amounts.

‘‘Farmers have done a remarkable job, scrambling around to get every piece of water they can,’’ Sumner, the University of California economist, said. ‘‘They’ve taken water out of rice, out of alfalfa and moved it into onions and carrots and kept the trees and vines alive.’’

Pepper Plants

Will Terry grows peppers and strawberries in Ventura County, a region 60 miles west of Los Angeles that produces about $700 million of the fruit annually. The farm he runs with his father now uses about two-thirds of the water it used 20 years ago.

‘‘People will try to grow the same things, but they’ll have to change how they do it,’’ said Terry as workers draped string across fields with which to hold up pepper plants.

Brad Scott, a dairy producer near Riverside in the Los Angeles suburbs, supplies his farm with treated municipal wastewater. The chlorine makes his ranch smell a bit like a swimming pool, but it has allowed his property to disconnect from the city water supply.

The disruption is worthwhile: Dairy prices reached an all- time high of $24.31 per hundred pound in April as export demand pushed dry-milk shipments to a record.

Spraying Animals

The drought has put special pressure on ranchers raising livestock, drying out pasture land and making it more costly to cool the herd by spraying the animals with water.

Brian Medeiros, a 26-year-old dairyman near Hanford, about 30 miles south of Fresno, is replacing the fields of corn and wheat he grows to feed his cows with sorghum and triticale, a heartier wheat and rye hybrid better suited for drought.

Medeiros drives past a shed containing almond hulls and distillers’ dried grains--the byproduct of ethanol and brewery production -- and citrus pulp, all of which he buys from nearby vendors to feed his cows. Leftover pomegranate has been a herd mainstay, though less so as the consumer craze for antioxidants has faded, reducing the number of suppliers.

He’s also working with an engineer to create a cow-motion sensor. The system, deployed in his animal stalls, would change how animals are sprayed with water to keep them cool, ensuring that water only sprays while a cow is present.

‘‘You have to look at everything,” Medeiros said between conversations in Spanish with his father, who founded the farm, on his cell phone.

Fewer Cherries

A warmer climate is forcing Cindy Lashbrook to phase out cherries on the organic farm where she also grows walnuts, blueberries and other fruits and tree nuts near Merced, about 100 miles southeast of San Francisco.

Her cherries require 1,000 hours of temperatures under 45 degrees (7 degrees Celsius) between November and February, an amount her farm hasn’t seen for several years. “We don’t get the fog like we used to.”

Howitt, of the University of California, said the drought means the state’s farmers will have to permanently reduce water usage.

“California needs to rebalance its agricultural portfolio in response to this drought,” Howitt said. “You will see more fallowing of land. We have to reduce our water footprint.”

That means drip-fed trees for Starrh, a cotton-grower since when his family arrived on 30 acres in 1936 who now focuses on nuts.

And solar panels.

The Starrhs are leasing 480 acres to a sustainable-energy company on land that may never be watered again.

“It was good land for production,” he said. “But reality dictates.”

Cotton Gets $80 Million Injection for Research and Promotion

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:00:13 GMT

At its recent board of directors meeting in Dallas, Cotton Incorporated proposed a bold move for its 2015 budget, calling for funding of $80 million for research and promotion, despite an expected decrease in total collections. Chairman Gary Ross, an importer from Yardley, Pa., says the Cotton Board is drawing from its reserves to maintain funding at this level.

“We need the power of one,” he says. “It is a critical time for the Cotton Research and Promotion Program. Cotton demand is not where we need it to be, and there is no quick or easy path that guarantees a quick turnaround. Now, more than ever, we need our boards to question, reflect and encourage each other to find better ideas and better solutions than we had yesterday.”

Ross hopes honest discussion can create an environment where members of Cotton Incorporated and the Cotton Board feel comfortable discussing both positive and not-so-positive returns.

“Sometimes, home run hitters strike out,” he says. “We need our team to go to the plate and swing as hard as they can – to swing for the fences. Our industry cannot afford to take a pitch or walk.”

The two boards plan to meet in August to finalize the 2015 budget before the Cotton Board sends its recommendation for budget approval to the Secretary of Agriculture.

Subsurface Water Systems Boost Yields

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:58:35 GMT

Subsurface water systems can boost yields, carry nutrients

Nebraska farmer Don Anthony started using subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) in 2006 on sections of his 1,200-acre corn and soybean farm in the Central Platte Valley. He began with a parcel of flat land that had a power line running diagonally through it.

Anthony had always used a centerpivot system, but a 1997 federal agreement affecting his state requires field corners untouched by pivots to be watered as well. Failing to irrigate those areas would result in the loss of their irrigated status, meaning they could never be irrigated again.

Since 2005, Anthony has added 250 to 300 acres of SDI, which delivers water to crop roots through a series of pipes and nozzles normally buried 10" to 14" below the surface. This year, one 80-acre section of corn—irrigated with 15" of water throughout the course of the growing season—yielded 188 bu. per acre.

“My experience in the past seven years with the pivot here versus drip across the road is that I’ll put on about twothirds to threefourths the amount of water with drip as I do with pivot and get the same yield,” Anthony says.

He’s not alone. The subsurface irrigation method, first adopted in the U.S. for vegetables, fruits and nuts, is supplementing and even replacing center-pivot systems for field crops. Representatives of three of the top SDI businesses—Netafim, the Toro Company and John Deere—say the system is attractive to farmers worldwide because of its potential to save water, boost yields and reduce fertilizer runoff.

Netafim is the world’s largest manufacturer of microirrigation equipment, including subsurface drip components. Michael Dowgert, Netafim USA communications director, attributes the increased interest in subsurface irrigation to GPS development.

“Now you are able to find the dripper lines,” Dowgert says. Subsurface irrigation has been in use since the 1970s, but its use with GPS started in the late 1990s.

Cotton tops the list of U.S. field crops most often used with subsurface. In the West Texas area, Dowgert says, close to half a million acres receive belowground irrigation. Corn ranks second, and SDI is being explored in states such as Nebraska, around the Ogallala Aquifer, where water scarcity is a key concern.

Just a few years ago, Netafim installed about 400 acres of subsurface systems in alfalfa, Dowgert says. This year, the company expects to install more than 4,000 acres for alfalfa alone.

While alfalfa often is flood-irrigated, using subsurface can remove stress on the plant and result in “fairly significant yield increases,” Dowgert says. Farmers can even irrigate the crop while harvesting it.

Interest grows. Hubert Frerich opened Eco-Drip Irrigation in Garden City, Texas, in the early 1980s after successfully irrigating his watermelon and cotton crops with a subsurface system. No high-producing wells existed in the area, so limited access to water made subsurface an efficient alternative, says Craig Hoelscher, who now co-owns the company along with three of Frerich’s children.

“It helps make every drop count,” notes Hoelscher, who adds that the system is also used to spoon-feed crops with fertilizer. Eco-Drip has installed as many subsurface acres in the past 10 years as it did in its first 20, totaling 200,000 acres. The company is getting more questions about subsurface systems and seeing a small pickup in demand across the central U.S.

Some farmers are still using systems that were installed more than 25 years ago, Hoelscher says. In 2009, he notes, researchers at Kansas State University found that emitters in a 20-year-old subsurface system were providing more than 90% of the water flow they originally offered. Fewer than 2% of Eco-Drip’s subsurface systems stop working, he says, and those that do often fail because of poor maintenance.

Technological advances will only make it easier to install and maintain subsurface systems.

“Right now it’s simple, but it’s going to get even more simple,” says Nir Aloni, chief agronomist for John Deere Water. He says adoption of SDI worldwide depends on four factors: climate, crop type, capital availability and equipment.

Farmers in northwest China, for example, have quickly adopted SDI for their corn and cotton crops, as it fits very well with their crop rotation and climate. Meanwhile, farmers in Southeast Asia might install drip tape that lasts for just a year in order to capitalize on water conservation benefits, and then install a longer-lasting system when money is available.

Farmers often purchase SDI equipment for 40-, 80- or 160-acre blocks or irregularly shaped fields, says Inge Bisconer, technical marketing and sales manager for the Toro Company’s microirrigation business. The company offers an extensive line of products, including microirrigation emission devices, pipelines, valves, controllers and filters for use in surface and subsurface crop applications.

Toro has developed computer design assist software, known as AquaFlow 3.0, that allows farmers to build a virtual drip system to maximize water use and optimize maintenance. An online tool called Payback Wizard from Toro allows farmers to plug in five pieces of information to determine how long it will take for them to pay for their subsurface system.

How it works. To install the system, a toolbar fitted with coils of drip tape is mounted on a tractor, which places the tape below-ground using shanks. The tape contains emitters that release water. Single rows of drip tape can be as long as a mile, Bisconer says, but are typically a quarter- or half-mile long. The tape can remain functional underground for up to 20 years.

Trenches are dug to accommodate larger pipes, which are connected to the mainline. The mainline, in turn, is hooked up to the filter and pump station. After the parts are connected, the system is flushed and pressure-tested before the trenches are filled and pipes are buried.

Water used in subsurface systems generally flows from a reservoir or well, Bisconer says. It is then pumped through filters that clean the liquid so the laterals don’t get clogged. Fertilizers might also be injected, along with chemicals that help maintain pipes.

This sand media filter system in Nebraska connects to an SDI system. Other components can include valves that control water flow to a specific field section.

Factors to consider. Subsurface irrigation isn’t for every acre. Square fields, for example, might be better served with a center-pivot system paired with SDI at the corners. Farmers in states with ample rainfall might not see the economic benefits realized by those in more arid states.

Cost should also be considered. Installing a drip-line system generally costs about $1,400 per acre, Netafim’s Dowgert says. That’s roughly twice the cost of installing a center-pivot system.

Gophers pose a major problem to subsurface systems. Infestations can reduce alfalfa yields up to 50%, Dowgert says, and fields already populated by gophers are not ideal candidates for SDI. In the event that the creatures create problems after subsurface is installed, farmers can try using a product such as Netafim’s Protect-T, a rodent repellent that is piped through the drip system.

Maintenance is a mixed bag. While winterization is required after harvest to flush pipes and reduce buildup from hard water, experts say a variety of automation options lets farmers control how much time they spend turning valves by hand.

Anthony, the Nebraska farmer, thinks SDI will help him maintain a healthy standard of living: The 62-yearold says he’s getting to the point where his body can’t handle the intensive labor required for the alternatives such as flood irrigation.

“This is one of the things that will probably extend my farming career,” Anthony says.

You can e-mail Nate Birt at nbirt@farmjournal.com .

For more information about subsurface drip irrigation and the products mentioned, visit www.FarmJournal.com/subsurface_irrigation

Analysis: Details of 2009-Crop Disaster Aid Set by USDA

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 20:54:50 GMT

Those waiting for disaster assistance promised by the Obama administration for 2009 crop losses at least have a definitive answer from USDA, but it falls far short of what has been talked about in recent weeks and months.

USDA will deliver up to $550 million in aid to producers of 2009 crops of rice, upland cotton, sweet potatoes and soybeans -- no other crops are cited in documents from USDA that were released this week by Senate Ag Committee Chair Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). And that dollar amount is not what Lincoln had sought -- her original request was for around $2 billion and her last legislative attempt was for a $1.5 billion package. The aid will be made to those growers who are in a county designated a primary disaster county due to high precipitation or moisture conditions in 2009. That translates in to 1,000 counties in 26 states.

While welcoming the aid, Lincoln said she was disappointed that the plan didn’t cover more. I am disappointed the Administration did not develop a program that was closer to my original legislation which provided adequate assistance to all crops, from all regions of the country,” Lincoln said. “Despite these hurdles, I was able to use my influence as Chairman to provide relief to farm families. In Arkansas, this program will ensure nearly 90% of all acres are eligible to receive assistance if they experienced a weather-related disaster. It will also help hundreds of poultry growers and fish farmers who are suffering due to circumstances beyond their control.”

According to USDA, producers who certify to at least a 5% loss in 2009 will receive a payment based on a pre-determined payment rate multiplied by the actual planted (or prevented planted) acres that they have on file with FSA. Further, FSA will work up regulations to implement this program that applies average adjusted gross income eligibility requirements and payment limitations consistent with other disaster programs. Payment rates per acre for eligible producers: Long Grain Rice:$31.93 Medium/Short Grain Rice $52.46 Soybeans $15.62 Sweet Potatoes $155.41 Upland Cotton $17.70 Besides the crop aid, the program will also provide up to $60 million in the form of a grant to states where poultry producers lost a contract due to the bankruptcy of an integrator in December of 2008. Poultry producers must have lost their contract with the bankrupt integrator between May 1, 2008, and July 1, 2010, and been unable to enter into a subsequent contract. A grant will be made to all States with impacted producers to help cover the needs of these producers. In addition, the package will included up to $20 million (also in the form of a grant to states) for farm-raised aquaculture producers who experienced high feed costs in 2009. That aid will be allocated to states on a pro-rata basis, based on total benefits earned by all eligible 2008 aquaculture producers in each state under the 2008 AGP, authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. USDA said for both the aquaculture and poultry aid, average adjusted gross income and payment limitations consistent with other disaster programs will apply.

While Lincoln expressed disappointment at the aid package, others were more pointed in their reactions to the matter. House Ag Committee ranking Republican Frank Lucas (Okla.) said, “This disaster program clearly picks winners and losers with little justification. Rahm Emanuel and his Chicago-style politics have obviously overridden any common sense, legal precedent, or fiscal restraint at the Agriculture Department.” The justification for this to be limited to flood or excessive rain declarations and to certain commodities amounts to rewarding farmers who happen to live in certain states and grow certain commodities.” In addition, Lucas called for hearings to determine on the precedent this aid plan sets.

And Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group was even more pointed, labeling it nothing more than a political help thrown to Sen. Lincoln. “They really ought to report this expenditure to the Federal Election Commission,” Cook stated.

But USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack denied any political favors were being done with the aid. He told reporters when announcing the aid that it was in the works “well before any conversation that may have taken place between [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel and any member of Congress.”

The reason, Vilsack said, was to address concerns about the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE) -- the disaster aid package included in the 2008 Farm Bill -- that had been expressed by growers in the Southeast United States. “The folks, particularly in the Southeast, felt that program (SURE) would not be particularly responsive to the needs of their producers,” Vilsack said.