OMAHA (DTN) — Bitterly cold conditions and some rain and snow during the next six days will stall harvest and cause much stress to livestock in the Great Plains region. Overnight temperatures during the weekend into the beginning of next week could fall into the single digits Fahrenheit in northern areas of the Plains.

STORM CROSSING PLAINS

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), the storm crossing the Plains will produce snow from the Northern Rockies to the Upper Great Lakes. Up to 6 inches of snow could fall over parts of the Upper Mississippi Valley.

“The winter weather will produce hazardous driving conditions with slippery roads and increased stopping distance along with other hazards,” the NWS Short-Range Forecast Discussion stated Thursday.

A strong area of high pressure will build over the Plains, and this high will stream cold continental Canadian air into the Plains with high temperatures reaching 10 to 30 degrees F below average.

ROCKVILLE, Md. (DTN) — EPA released a flurry of interim registration decisions for 13 pyrethroid insecticides and one herbicide, paraquat, on Thursday morning.

The decisions remain interim and not finalized, as the agency still has additional assessments to conduct, but they are a major step toward establishing the chemicals’ continued use in the U.S.

Both decisions list some new use restrictions and requirements, summarized below.

PARAQUAT

Paraquat is a Group 22 herbicide sold under brand names like Gramaxone, Firestorm and Parazone. Its use has increased steadily in the U.S. since 2013, with the growth of herbicide resistance in weed populations. Applications rose from under 5 million pounds a year to as high as 12 million pounds per year in 2017, with most growth concentrated in soybeans, cotton, orchards and pasture.

Paraquat has been the target of lawsuits and controversy in the past, given its high toxicity, its role in poisoning accidents and research suggesting it might be linked to Parkinson’s disease.

In this Equipment Roundup, DTN looks at how robots performing row-crop field operations won a Chicago Innovation Award, a new report identifies initiatives to help farmers have a stronger relationship with equipment manufacturers, and Deere introduces three new snowblowers.

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RISE OF THE ROBOTS

Sabanto Inc. has been named a winner in the 19th annual Chicago Innovation Awards program. The Chicago Innovation Awards recognize innovative new products or services.

This Innovation Award cites Sabanto as a cutting-edge farming-as-a-service company performing row-crop field operations using small, cost-effective, autonomous machines. Sabanto has deployed intelligent robots throughout the Midwest in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana.

“In this year of a global pandemic, innovation is needed now more than ever,” said Tom Kuczmarski, co-founder with Chicago journalist Dan Miller of the awards. This year’s winners are solving big problems in agriculture, healthcare, community and workforce development, education and finance, among others, he added.

DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) — Chances are you get a blood pressure reading with each doctor visit. If that number is higher than it should be, steps are taken to keep the problem in check.

The same is true of soybean cyst nematode (SCN). A simple test can tell you if nematodes are present and if management measures are working. Yet each year farmers ignore SCN warning signs — even though testing is free or subsidized in many states.

“Successful management of SCN starts by knowing your numbers,” according to University of Missouri Plant Pathologist Kaitlyn Bissonnette. “In Missouri, I recommend growers get an SCN egg count every three years.” Harvest is a preferred time to test for the pest.

The SCN Coalition has a new video series titled “Let’s Talk Todes” that explains why soil testing is the foundation for managing SCN https://www.thescncoalition.com/….

Testing is particularly important this year as dry conditions can cause SCN populations to reproduce quickly and increase populations densities.

OMAHA (DTN) — When talking about his climate plan, former Vice President Joe Biden almost always turns at some point to agriculture, farmers and his plan that would expand the Conservation Stewardship Program.

In his ABC town hall Oct. 15, Biden pointed to using technology to get to net-zero emissions for energy, but then turned his attention to agriculture. “I’ve laid out a plan where we allow significantly more land to be put in conservation, plant deep-rooted plants, which absorb carbon from the air and, in fact, pay farmers to do it,” Biden said.

He added that poultry and cattle manure can be pelletized and the methane removed “to use it as fertilizer and make a lot of money doing it.”

The Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is one of USDA’s working lands programs, meant to provide incentives for farmers to apply additional conservation practices on crop land and pasture. Farmers sign five-year contracts and traditionally have been able to re-enroll to extend the contract.

David Hula listens to his ears. The Charles City, Virginia, farmer and corn yield world-record holder said taking time to really know a hybrid pays off in bushels.

The Pioneer 1197YHR variety that produced Hula’s 2019 National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) National Corn Yield Contest win of 616 bushels per acre wasn’t the newest hybrid in the seed catalog. It debuted in 2014 and was fully commercialized in 2015.

“There are still farmers who ask me for the secret formula or magic mixture they can dump in the sprayer to increase yields. There is no silver bullet,” he said.

Putting hybrids in many different growing environments under a variety of management schemes so they reveal their secrets is the secret, Hula insisted.

BEHIND THE EARS

For his winning entry, Hula chose to plant the YHR trait package for aboveground pests because he doesn’t mind planting a separate 5% refuge. “That way I know every seed in the remainder of the field is covered with the traits I need,” he said.

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. (DTN) — In an often shrewdly efficient business, the math of ranching doesn’t always add up at 9,000 feet of elevation. The land is expensive, and the seasons are, as Travis Snowden puts it, “June, July and winter.”

Until you add in one major X factor.

“It’s sentiment,” said Snowden, 32 years old, who ranches with his wife, Sarajane, 29, in southern Routt County, Colorado. “We both have family roots here. It’s hard to explain, but you ride through the mountains, you see the aspens, you ride up on a bunch of elk, feel the quaking trees, see the fall colors. Yeah, it’s a hard area to ranch, but it’s a pretty easy area to fall in love with.”

The Snowdens run 450 cow-calf pairs and 150 yearlings in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, 25 miles south of one major ski resort town, Steamboat Springs, and 70 miles north of another, Vail.

DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) — Nothing works up an appetite like working outdoors, and nothing is quite like harvest time to celebrate the food the surrounds us.

Deanne Frieders believes in good food and lives by the theory that “cooking is love made visible.” When she married into a Waterman, Illinois, farm family, one of her first jobs was to carry that love of cooking to the field to sustain the work crews.

She quickly learned that the need for hearty meals also often required that the dishes hold for long periods of time before the crew consumed them. Equipment breakdowns and an untold number of unforeseen events make field dining much different than showing up for a restaurant reservation. Often the meal needs to be able to be eaten on the go.

After doing her own “field testing,” Frieders started to concoct some satisfying tips to making the field or the tailgate her table.

OMAHA (DTN) — The COVID-19 economic shutdown that led to disruptions in the food supply chain may have hit hardest those Americans who already have challenges finding their next meals.

In particular, many Americans face poverty, lack of grocery stores and transportation.

On Friday, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 150 countries and food-security champions celebrated World Food Day to focus on actions to reduce chronic hunger and malnutrition.

USDA’s data for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), lags by several months, but in April the number of people on SNAP jumped by about 5.8 million from March to 42.99 million people.

Joni Holifield, founder and president of HeartSmiles in Baltimore, Maryland, said some of the underserved youth she works with are concerned about whether they will eat in any given day, let alone whether they can access healthy foods.

“Yes, COVID has made things even more challenging,” she said during a Bipartisan Policy Center virtual panel this week on food insecurity.

ANKENY, Iowa (DTN) — Nitrogen fertilizer application restrictions on crop ground went into effect in certain areas of Minnesota on Sept. 1.

The Groundwater Protection Rule prohibits farmers from applying most forms of commercial nitrogen fertilizer in the fall and on frozen ground in areas groundwater is deemed vulnerable to contamination. The rule aims to minimize potential sources of nitrate pollution in drinking water and protect public health.

For complete rule details and to see a map of affected areas, go to www.mda.state.mn.us/nfr.

Harold Wolle, who grows corn and soybeans in south-central Minnesota near Madelia, said most farmers didn’t embrace the law, but accept it. Producers, farm organizations and the state worked together to come up with a workable rule that doesn’t curtail food production and protects the environment, according to Wolfe, who is the Minnesota Corn Growers Association District 2 director.

“We are certainly cognizant of the effects nitrogen can have on groundwater,” said Wolle.

On a cold, snowy November day last year, Steve Wallpe watched one of Rogo Ag’s SmartCore autonomous robots scoot around his fields taking and bagging soil samples.

Two things instantly came to mind, recalls the Fowler, Indiana, farmer. He’s glad it wasn’t him pulling cores while shivering, and a robot with plenty of power to bore into hard soil at a consistent depth was doing the job.

“When a person starts out at 8 a.m. pulling samples by hand, they are gung ho,” Wallpe said. “By 5 p.m., they’re tired and not paying as close attention to make sure the probe goes down as deep as it’s supposed to that can give inaccurate test results.

“This takes the human element out of it,” he continued. “Robots take the variability out of sampling and give me a better result at the end to put on the right amount of fertilizer.”

Wallpe’s local Helena dealer hired Rogo Ag, a soil-sampling business headquartered in Wolcott, Indiana, for the first time to take soil samples on his farm.

OMAHA (DTN) — A start-up company developing a heavy-duty truck engine able to run on straight ethanol has reached a milestone in a series of tests performed to validate its technology.

ClearFlame Engine Technologies reported in a news release on Wednesday it matched the torque and power of a commercial diesel engine using ethanol in place of diesel.

The company said the technology delivered 500 horsepower and more than 2,500 foot-pounds of torque, “while eliminating the need for additional aftertreatment such as selective catalytic reduction or diesel particulate filter systems.”

ClearFlame said it achieved the latest results on a Cummins X15, a 500-horsepower, 15-liter heavy-duty engine using the company’s high-temperature stochiometric combustion process.

The process leverages higher temperatures to achieve diesel-style combustion of any decarbonized fuel.

ClearFlame Engines CEO B.J. Johnson told ethanol industry representatives at the National Ethanol Conference in Houston in February 2020 the technology has the potential to create a large market for ethanol.

OMAHA (DTN) — It’s been a busy day in federal courts for JBS SA, its Brazilian owners and its poultry subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride, as the meatpacking conglomerate was ordered to pay a combined $393 million in fines in two separate federal court cases.

In the first case, out of the U.S. District Court for Eastern New York, in Brooklyn, J&F Investimentos SA, the major owners of JBS SA and Pilgrim’s Pride, pleaded guilty to violating federal bribery laws — under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — by bribing officials at Brazilian state-owned banks, and agreed to pay a fine of $256 million. According to the U.S. attorney for the federal court in Brooklyn, J&F Investimentos used certain employees and connections “to pay millions in bribes to Brazilian government officials, through, among other means, bank accounts based in New York.”

J&F Investimentos is 100% owned by Joesley and Wesley Batista, brothers who also admitted in Brazilian courts to bribing as many as 1,800 officials to receive $1.3 billion in loans from Brazilian-government banks and pensions.

OMAHA (DTN) — The U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska has stayed proceedings in a lawsuit alleging ethanol market manipulation by Archer Daniels Midland, pending a motion to change venue in the case.

Omaha-based Green Plains Inc. filed a class-action lawsuit in the court in July alleging ADM conducted a scheme to illegally depress the ethanol cash spot market.

Green Plains attorneys filed a brief on Tuesday opposing a change of venue from the Nebraska court to a district court in Illinois where ADM is headquartered.

There are two other similar lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, one by Midwest Renewable Energy and another by Swiss company AOT Holdings. Both cases allege ethanol market manipulation by ADM.

In a brief arguing against a change of venue, attorneys said Green Plains is the only plaintiff to experience damage to its physical ethanol sales.

OMAHA (DTN) — Rattan Lal, a soil scientist from Ohio State University and the 2020 Word Food Prize laureate, makes his case that agriculture globally must take better care of its most valuable resource to not only produce more, healthier food in the future, but also help remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Lal spoke in a livestreamed speech Monday evening to agricultural leaders at Iowa State University as the World Food Prize kicked off its weeklong International Borlaug Dialogue, which is a virtual event this year. The World Food Prize was created to recognize the work of global food and agricultural scientists to honor the legacy of 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug.

With Lal’s work based on rehabilitating soil health, several discussions this week with the Borlaug Dialogue center on themes of sequestering carbon in the soil and stopping soil degradation globally.

“I sincerely believe world peace is in jeopardy with soil degradation.

Jim Ruen, Progressive Farmer Contributing Editor

John Verell III is a corn-yield champion, but pushing seeding rates is not part of his winning strategy on his farm, near Jackson, Tennessee.

In 2019, a yield of 320.8 bushels per acre (bpa) earned him first place in Tennessee for no-till, nonirrigated corn in the National Corn Growers Association National Corn Yield Contest. Pioneer P1197YHR, with a harvest count of 34,000 stalks per acre, gave him his winning entry. His seeding rate was 34,600 per acre.

Verell earned that honor, in part, by following the seed company’s recommended seed rate for optimum economic return. He tends to stick to recommended rates on all his 4,200 acres.

“I always thought you could push yields with higher populations, but I have since realized there are usually other limiting factors,” Verell explained. “The biggest thing is the right hybrid in the right place with limited fertilizer at planting, sidedress and then spoon-feed throughout the season based on weekly tissue sampling.”

ANKENY, Iowa (DTN) — The world will lose about 250 million crop production acres by 2050, according to estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The possibility of losing the equivalent of roughly two-thirds of the cultivated land in the United States is alarming, said Jerry Hatfield. But the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, Iowa, believes it can be prevented.

Hatfield said urbanization and soil degradation, from excessive tillage and other farming practices, are largely to blame for lost farm and ranch lands. People worldwide need to protect farm and ranch lands to feed a growing population, he said.

If society doesn’t do a better job making land-use decisions and taking care of the soil, Hatfield is afraid hunger and food insecurity will be much more prevalent in 30 years when the world’s population is expected to top 9 billion.

ROCKVILLE, Md. (DTN) — After several years of low corn rootworm populations, the “billion-dollar bug” is catching eyes again in the Corn Belt.

Populations of both western and northern corn rootworm are rebounding after a mild winter and favorable egg hatch conditions this year, and they’re bringing some bad habits along: growing Bt resistance.

Corteva Agriscience recently confirmed their second report of western corn rootworm resistance to Cry34/35Ab1, the Herculex RW trait that is the underpinning of most pyramided rootworm hybrids, this summer. The trait is usually offered in pyramids that cross many brand platforms, with names such as SmartStax, QROME, Intrasect Xtreme, AcreMax Xtreme and Agrisure 3122.

With resistance already established against the other three rootworm Bt traits, growers in intensive corn-growing regions may need to be more innovative than ever when it comes to managing this pest, entomologists told DTN.

Here are four big takeaways for the 2021 season.

OMAHA (DTN) — California rancher Megan Brown moved home to work on her parents’ cattle ranch. The pay is low, which helps to keep the ranch in her family, and Brown started raising heritage hogs to boost her income.

Health insurance is tricky, but Brown qualifies for Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. She’s frustrated because Medi-Cal hasn’t paid for mental-health therapy, and as a rancher in the middle of multiple years of wildfires, Brown said raising livestock in California’s increasingly volatile weather is stressful.

“Agriculture is such a weird animal in that some years you make money and some years you don’t,” Brown said. “That really makes it hard to deal with insurance unless they offer some kind of blanket insurance where everyone gets the same coverage. If I had to start paying for a plan that was probably what I needed, it would take most of my income, and that would suck because I like to eat.”

Being called narrow-minded when it comes to corn production is a compliment to a University of Illinois crop scientist and a pair of Hoosier farmers.

Randy Bales and his son, Brad, of Lewisville, Indiana, used to plant corn in 30-inch rows like most farmers nationwide. They switched to 20-inch rows in 2017 after seeing results from several years of research on the production method from plant physiologist Fred Below and his University of Illinois agronomy students.

From 2013 to 2018, the university’s studies show 20-inch corn in an enhanced management system, as Below refers to it, averaged 264 bushels per acre (bpa). The system includes 44,000 plants per acre, banded MicroEssentials SZ (granular fertilizer consisting of nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and zinc) from Mosaic, 240 pounds of total nitrogen per acre split applied pre-plant and in-season and a foliar fungicide treatment. Narrow rows and enhanced management yielded 51 bpa better than corn planted in 30-inch rows at 32,000 plants per acre, no fungicide, 180 pounds of nitrogen applied pre-plant and phosphorus and potassium applications based on soil tests.