Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
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I want to start by thanking everyone for their well wishes following my knee replacement surgery. Everything went well with the surgery and I’m now going through the physical therapy getting a full range of motion back in the knee. I have always thought living in rural western Nebraska is a great place to be where everyone is surrounded by friends, family, and neighbors who are truly concerned for the well-being of one another. Judging from the view from my couch looking out the window and my trips to the doctor’s office and therapy, we hav...
Dr. Dwayne Beck from the Dakota Lakes Research farm near Pierre, S.D. will be presenting at the upcoming PNTP Winter Conference, Feb. 23-24, 2015, at the Gering Civic Center. He often begins to engage his audiences by asking the producers in attendance where they want their farms to be in 60 years or 600 years. He wants the producers to look to the future and start making decisions now to start building their operations to match their vision. Dr. Beck also points out that with today’s modern approach to crop production our ecosystem is l...
Our way of life in agriculture across the breadbasket of America is being threatened by special interest groups who disagree with how we conduct our business. These special interest groups disagree with how we produce the food which feeds the world. Our image as stewards of the land and livestock is being tainted and it’s important we start telling our side of the story. These special interest groups are well organized and well funded. Their sole intention is to dictate policy so the food we produce conforms to their standards. These groups do...
The United Nations estimates that the world population has now surpassed 7.3 billion humans living on our planet. It took 123 years, from 1804 to 1927, to go from a population of 1 billion to 2 billion people on our planet. The United Nations estimates it will take only 10 years from now to add another billion people and reach 8,000,000,000 people in world population. World population will grow an average of 78 million people per year. That is a rather amazing and sobering statistic. The strain on our planet’s resources to cloth, feed, and supp...
One of the best visualizations I’ve heard for managing your soil moisture and the precipitation you receive is to compare your soil’s moisture holding capacity to a bucket. The size of your bucket depends on the soil texture, organic matter content and soil structure. With good surface residues, you can get the precipitation you receive to infiltrate the soil and start filling the bucket. If you have good soil structure you can get the moisture to the bottom of the bucket, and if you have good organic matter content your soil will act as a spo...
Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking to Ron Bolze’s students at Chadron State College. Bolze invited me to speak to his farm and ranch management class. I really enjoyed getting back in the classroom to visit with tomorrow’s leaders in agriculture. The students were very interested in my topic of conservation agriculture and how we can work towards adopting conservation agricultural systems to produce food, fiber and fuel. I really think the next generation is more focused on their environment and see the long-term benefits of adopting con...
Last week I introduced you to Rattan Lal, director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University. Lal published an article on his concepts for developing a conservation agricultural system for our farms and ranches. His concepts involve adapting five steps towards a complex conservation agricultural system which concentrates on improving the soil’s health as we move into the future of production agriculture across our nation. Last week we looked at the first three steps in adopting this system. The first of these s...
During my conversation with Dr. Dwayne Beck a few weeks ago, Dwayne told me he had a couple of articles he wanted to email me to read about a systems approach to conservation agriculture. I really like the sound of conservation agriculture a lot better than I like no-till. No-till began as a simple way to lower labor, machinery and fuel costs to produce crops. These were the reasons we looked to convert from conventional tillage winter wheat/summer fallow on our farm to no-till. We started much the same as many producers and simply replaced...
I had a nice visit with Dwayne Beck the other day. Many of you are familiar with Beck as he has been a pioneer in no-till crop production in the High Plains. He manages the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, S.D., and will be celebrating their 25th year of operation at this farm in September. Beck has spoken at numerous no-till field days and winter conferences around the region including our own Panhandle No-till Partnership’s winter conference. You’ll be happy to know that he has again agreed to speak at our PNTP winter conference aga...
Field pea production on our farm this year proved to be interesting, much like all the other crops we’re growing. With all the abundant moisture you would hope this would equate to bumper yields. Other growing factors such as hail, cold spring temperatures, late snow storms, late freezes, and disease made growing the field pea crop a challenge. On our farm the field pea yields ranged from 0-70 bushels per acre depending on circumstances. I have heard of some very good yields this year around the Panhandle. I heard of dry land field peas m...
My knee replacement surgery has been put on hold. I developed a bacterial lung infection prior to surgery. My doctor put me on antibiotics for a period of five days that lowered my white blood cell count, but not to normal levels. I then took another 10 days of antibiotics and I’m scheduled to go back in for more tests soon to see if I’m healthy enough for surgery. It turned out to be a blessing that my surgery was postponed as my son Jacob, who works on the farm with us, was diagnosed with pneumonia. There appears to be an unusually high incid...
During the Panhandle No-till Partnership’s field days, practices on irrigated acres were discussed. The farms we visited have been using the standard irrigated no-till crop rotation of winter wheat, corn, dry edible beans and back to winter wheat. Some of the producers are now including field peas as part of their crop rotation. On our farm, we have moved to a winter wheat (followed by a forage crop), dry edible bean, corn, field pea crop rotation. We feel this rotation will be a better agronomical rotation for the crops we grow. We think t...
One of our visits during the Panhandle No-till Partnerships field days included a morning tour of the High Plains Ag Lab located near Gurley. Cody Creech and Karla Jenkins took the time out of their busy schedules to show our group the exciting research they are conducting at the University of Nebraska research farm. I really appreciate all the hard work Creech and Jenkins do to help agricultural producers in our region. I also want to thank them again for taking our group for a tour of the research farm. I found the yellow field pea variety...
I would like to thank everyone involved in making last week’s Panhandle No-till Partnership’s field days a success. I would like to especially thank Mark Betson, Mark and Pat Ernest, Bob Gifford and Jack Revelle for hosting these field days on their farms. I also want to thank the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research and Extension Center, and specifically Dr. Cody Creech and Dr. Karla Jenkins, for hosting our tour group at the UNL High Plains Ag Lab. I’m always amazed when I drive around the Panhandle of Nebraska at the diverse landscape w...
3st Century Equipment has announced its support for 4-H County Fair Livestock Programs across the 43 counties in our operating area. Individual donations will be presented to county extension offices in this month – including Cheyenne – to be used at the discretion of the council and advisors in livestock facilities, livestock programs, or wherever they see a need. "21st Century Equipment has a business presence in Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado," said CEO Owen Palm. "As such, we have a tre...
I recently attended No Till on the Plain’s Whirlwind field day at Steve Tucker’s farm near Venango, Neb. These are educational field days on all aspects of continuous no till crop production. I was invited to speak on crop rotations on dry land acres in our semi-arid region and I also spoke about water conservation on our irrigated continuous no till production acres. No till crop production has allowed producers in our area to continuous crop with the extra moisture stored in the soil on our dry land acres. On our irrigated acres we have bee...
The Panhandle No-till Partnership will host a series of field days Tuesday through Friday this week. These field days will focus on continuous no-till crop production practices on dry land and irrigated acres and integrating livestock into a no till cropping and forage production system. The field days will be an educational showing of how no-till crop and forage production can improve soil health and conserve groundwater. We’ll also tour the UNL High Plains Ag Lab to meet and greet Cody Creech, UNL Panhandle and Extension Center dry land cropp...
This past week I spent a morning with Dr. Bob Harveson, University of Nebraska Panhandle Research and Extension Center plant pathologist, touring field pea fields in the Alliance area. Harveson and I were looking for diseases in field peas. He is concentrating on diseases in field peas this year to see what concerns may develop for field pea producers in our area. So far the only disease that has shown up in field pea production in our area is blight. I have spoken with numerous field pea producers this spring about this disease in field peas....
I’ve had several no-till producers around the Panhandle comment on how well their fields have taken in the record-setting moisture we received during the month of May. On our farm, we recorded 10.3 inches of precipitation during the month of May. I have talked to other producers in our neighborhood who recorded up to 1.5 inches more than we did on our farm. According to my moisture totals, we received roughly 13.1 inches of precipitation in April and May. Considering our yearly precipitation average is 15.2 inches that is a lot of moisture f...
Cheyenne County USDA Farm Service Agency Executive Director Brad Fraass, announced that county committee election nominations begin June 15. Farmers, ranchers and landowners are encouraged to nominate farmer and rancher candidates to serve on their local FSA county committee by the Aug. 3 deadline. Elected county committee members serve a three-year term and are responsible for making decisions on FSA disaster, conservation, commodity, and price support programs, as well as other important federal farm program issues. “County committee members...
I’m sitting here at my desk watching the rain change over to snow in late May. They’re calling for more snow overnight. It has already rained and snowed 5.2 inches of precipitation on our farm this month. The corn we planted three weeks ago has barely sprouted and laying in cold wet soil. I have no idea when we are going to get a break to plant the rest of our corn. Looks like it will be later than I’ve ever planted corn before. From what I understand the sugar beet farmers are very concerned about their crop as well. Needless to say produ...
Last week, I discussed how we approach fertilizing our winter wheat crop following field peas in our winter wheat, corn, field pea and then back to winter wheat crop rotation on our continuous no-till dry land acres. We have been using this rotation for the past nine years on our farm and we’re starting to see some long term effects from this rotation. One observation is cheat grass working its way into a few fields within this rotation. Cheat grass has always been a problem in winter wheat production in our region. Throughout my farming c...
At its monthly meeting, the South Platte Natural Resources District board of directors received an analysis review of the Western Water Use Management Model, commissioned to aid in determining the effects of actions on aquifers within the District. The review was the second seen by the directors, who saw initial modeling results at a special meeting at the end of April. At that time, board members asked hydrogeologist Thad Kuntz, who developed the model, to run more specific information than that initially presented. At the May board meeting...
The Nebraska Wheat Board will hold its annual budget meeting Thursday, May 28, 2015 at Monsanto’s Water Utilization Learning Center. The center is located at 76268 NE-47, Gothenburg, Neb. 69138 The meeting will begin at 7:30 a.m. CST and adjourn at 5:30 p.m. It will include a second reading of funding proposals for the upcoming fiscal year 2015-2016, and the annual budget for fiscal year 2015-2016 will be set. Reports from NWB board members, contractor reports, and a list of upcoming events and travel will also be discussed. An executive s...
The Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation will participate in a 24-hour fundraiser on Thursday, May 28 to help support its programs and efforts that build awareness and understanding of agriculture through education and leadership development. Some of the programs dollars raised will support include: • Nebraska Agriculture in the Classroom: A program that connects teachers with trusted resources to teach students about agriculture, connecting students to their source of food, fiber and fuel; • Ag Promotion and Education programs: Inspiring people to...
