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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No-till crop production has proven to be the best production system for conserving moisture. Leaving the previous crop’s residues on the soil surface and attached has improved water infiltration into the soil and reduced soil moisture evaporation. Numerous research projects have shown the moisture conservation that no-till crop production provides under irrigation. The University of Nebraska has conducted research at the North Platte research farm which has shown that leaving residues on the soil surface reduces soil moisture evaporation up t...
LINCOLN — Spring Affair, the Midwest’s largest gardening event, will be Saturday, April 27, at the Lancaster Event Center from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. More than 500 varieties of plants will be offered at the day-long plant sale, with educational talks, “talk-abouts” and garden vendors all under the same roof. “For This Place” is the theme of the 2013 event. UNL Extension Horticulture Specialist Kim Todd said the need for regionally appropriate planting influences both plant selection and the event’s educational offerings. “After a summer like 201...
Spring is here according to the calendar and the weather is starting to occasionally give us a nice day and then trend back towards winter. We haven’t been given a lot of reprieve from the drought conditions although there has been some snow with some moisture in it around a few areas of the Panhandle. Most of us are still pretty dry. According to my precipitation records we’ve received about 1.55 inches of moisture since last October. This is .97 of an inch below our normal of 2.52 inches for this time frame. I like to start tracking moi...
Last week I looked at some of the budgets Jessica Johnson, Ag Educator with the UNL Panhandle Resource and Extension Center, put together for winter wheat production on dry land acres for the Panhandle. Jessica’s budgets were for conventional winter wheat/summer fallow, winter wheat/chemical fallow, and winter wheat grown in a continuous no till crop rotation. These budgets indicate a yield of 28.01 bushels/acre is required to cover all costs associated with winter wheat production grown in a continuous no till crop rotation, 33.07 bushels/acre...
Jessica Johnson, University of Nebraska Extension Educator at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center has been busy this winter working on crop budgets. Jessica has developed budgets for dry land as well as irrigated crops using different crop production systems. For the dry land crops she developed budgets for winter wheat using conventional tillage, no-till summer fallow, and no-till continuous cropping systems. She also developed budgets for dry land corn, field peas, sunflowers, and proso millet. I would like to share some of these...
Sand Point Cattle Co, Lodgepole, has been recognized nationally by the American Angus Association for having one registered Angus bull and 9 registered Angus cows included in the Association’s 2013 Pathfinder Report. Only 1,992 of the more than 25,000 American Angus Association members are represented in this year’s report, according to Bill Bowman, chief operating officer and director of performance programs of the Association with headquarters in Saint Joseph, Mo. The Pathfinder Program identifies superior Angus cows based upon recorded per...
LINCOLN – “Hispanic and women farmers who believe they have faced discriminatory practices from the USDA must file a claim by March 25, 2013 in order to have a chance to receive a cash payment or loan forgiveness,” said Farm Service Agency Director Dan Steinkruger. The process offers a voluntary alternative to litigation for each Hispanic or female farmer and rancher who can provide that USDA denied their applications for loan or loan servicing assistance for discriminatory reasons for certain time periods between 1981 and 2000. Call cente...
I’m sitting in a hotel room in Pierre, S.D. waiting for the brakes to get fixed on our recently purchased semi-tractor. We have a full load of field pea seed sitting on the trailer in tote bags. Our situation has got me to thinking about everything involved in the process of providing a consistent and healthy food supply to our consumers. With more and more field pea acres being planted in our region, we decided getting all the seed from South Dakota to our region was going to require some real effort. We decided to take the challenge head o...
Over the past few articles I’ve written about how we developed a no-till cropping system for our farm. After a few years of using no till on our dry land acres, we adopted our irrigated acres to no till production practices. We found the same benefits on our irrigated acres as we did on our dry land acres, so it made sense to put our irrigated acres into no till crop production. After 20 years of no-till crop production I am very pleased that we adopted this practice on our farm. I really feel the no-till crop production practices kept us f...
Irrigators in southeast Deuel County will have fewer management requirements to abide by beginning in 2013, following a change approved by the South Platte NRD board of directors at its February meeting. The change results from lower nitrate/nitrogen levels found through the District’s monitoring program, which showed that for the third consecutive year, nitrate/nitrogen averaged below 8 parts-per-million (ppm) in the South Platte Valley Ground Water Quality Management Area. Those levels show marked improvement from the 1990s when the m...
Once we made the commitment to adopting a no till crop production system we needed to learn residue management with our equipment. We also had to determine a cropping rotation for our farm that would give us the best chance for success. Needless to say we had a few bumps along the way. We adapted our combine to manage the residue at harvest by adding chaff spreaders to evenly distribute the chaff coming out of the back of the combine. Eventually we also adapted a stripper head to better manage the amount of residue entering the combine and...
LINCOLN – Law enforcement officers could seize mistreated livestock with a veterinarian’s recommendation if an Agriculture Committee bill is passed. Rick Leonard, the committee’s research analyst, presented the bill (LB423) at a hearing Tuesday. Six people testified in support of the bill, and one testified against it. The committee also received a letter of support from the Humane Society of the United States. Under the bill, owners of mistreated livestock would also pay for any expense for that animal after seizure until the courts decid...
LINCOLN – A statewide consensus appears to be growing on the need to address water resource sustainability in Nebraska. During a Feb. 13 hearing of the Legislature’s Natural Resource Committee, representatives from a diverse array of interest groups testified in support of LB 517, a bill introduced by Sen. Tom Carlson of Holdrege. The bill would create a Water Sustainability Project Task Force charged with developing a priority list of water resource programs and projects in need of funding throughout the state. The task force would submit its...
I wanted to remind everyone to plan to attend the Panhandle No Till Partnership’s winter conference. The conference will be held on Feb. 20 and 21, 2013, at the Gering Civic Center in Gering. Call the Upper Niobrara Resources District at 308-432-6190 to register. Walk in registrations will be taken on the 20th beginning at 8:00 a.m. Preregistration is encouraged for meal planning, so please call ahead if possible. I think we have an excellent lineup of speakers for this year’s conference. The start of the program will focus on raising for...
Bridgeport – A team from Sidney High School will represent the Panhandle for the Nebraska Envirothon Contest at Chalco Hills in Omaha on May 4, 2013. The first place team comprised of, Nick Banaszak, Jessica Campbell, Brandon Christofferson, Jenny Myers and Jaide Wachtel earned the state berth on Tuesday, February 5, 2013. Fifty three students competed in the split regional contest. Schools represented included Sidney, Bayard, Gordon-Rushville, Minatare, Garden County and Banner County at two lo...
There was a gradual progression on our farm to adopting a no till cropping system. Our father passed on to us the value of conservation farming practices. He worked closely with University of Nebraska researchers and allowed them to do research on our farm studying stubble mulching practices and soil erosion on our farm. We continued down this path of trying to leave more residues in the field in our winter wheat/ summer fallow rotation. Cheatgrass was always a problem, and at the time the best way to control this problem weed was to plow,...
“The signup period for the 2013 Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program (DCP) and Average Crop Revenue Election Program (ACRE) will begin Tuesday Feb. 19, 2013,” announced Cheyenne County Farm Service Agency Executive Director, Brad Fraass. These programs were extended for 2013 by the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. The 2013 DCP/ACRE program provisions are unchanged from 2012, except that all eligible participants may choose to enroll in either DCP or ACRE for the 2013 crop year. Eligible farmers and landowners will receive direct pay...
Cheyenne County USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) Executive Director Brad Fraass, urges producers who want to purchase coverage through the Noninsurable Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) to do so before the sales closing date of Friday, March 15, 2013. “Purchasing NAP protection is an easy way for producers to practice risk management,” said Fraass. “2012 has proven that natural disasters can directly affect the profitability and recovery of agricultural operations,” he said. In order to meet eligibility requirements for NAP, crops must be...
I’ve been asked to speak at the No till On the Plains winter conference in Salina, Kansas again this year as well as the High Plains No Till winter conference in Burlington, Colorado. I’ve been asked to look back at over 20 years of no till crop production and discuss the evolution of my no till farming experience during this time. My sister Janet also gave me a memory stick for my computer for Christmas this year. Janet scanned all my parent’s photos and slides over the past 60 years on this memory stick. I’ve been looking at these photos...
Are you thinking about reducing the amount of tillage you do, but are not sure how to go about it? Would you like to spend less money on diesel fuel for farming? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you should join us for the ‘No-till and Cover/Alternative Crops’ workshop. The workshop will be February 15, at the Community Center in Haxtun, CO. The Center is on the north end of Haxtun on Hwy 59. Registration will begin at 9 a.m. The workshop will run from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Lunch (meat and Lent options) will be provided. The...
There a couple large regional no- till meetings coming up that I’d like to talk to you about. I think it is very important for a producer who is considering adopting or has adopted no-till farming practices to attend. These meetings bring in speakers from around the region, country, and world to talk about the latest updates and trends in no-till crop production. These meetings are an incredible place to network with other no-till producers. You will also gain a larger perspective on the possibilities of no-till crop production. These m...
The first business addressed by the South Platte Natural Resources District at its first meeting of 2013 was the administration of oaths of office to four board members re-elected in November. Directors taking their oaths were Bill Halligan, representing Subdistrict 1; Tim Maas, Subdistrict 3; Keith Rexroth, Subdistrict 5; and Larry Rutt, Subdistrict 7. The board also elected its leaders, choosing to retain Rexroth as board chair. Tom Biggs, representative for Subdistrict 6, remains vice-chair, and Paul Hutchison, Subdistrict 4, is secretary....
LINCOLN – The dry conditions that began in May and then escalated into a drought of historic proportions is the state’s top agriculture story of 2012, Nebraska Farm Bureau said in releasing its annual list of the Top 5 Nebraska Agriculture News Stories of the Year. “The drought has gripped Nebraska from border-to-border and every farmer and rancher in the state has been impacted in some form or fashion,” said Steve Nelson, Nebraska Farm Bureau president. “It was and is still clearly on the minds of our members as they look at the prospect...
The field pea meetings have all been scheduled and times and places have been finalized, so I wanted to pass this information on to growers around our region. These meetings will cover production of field peas and marketing of field peas. Field pea meetings this coming week are scheduled in Gering at the Farm and Ranch Museum on Wednesday, January 16, 2013 beginning at 1:00 p.m. On Thursday, January 17, 2013 there will be a field pea meeting in Albin, Wyoming. This meeting will be held at the Albin Community Center conference room beginning at...
Brad Fraass, County Executive Director of the Cheyenne County Farm Service Agency, recently reminded foreign investors who buy, sell, or hold a direct or indirect interest in agricultural lands in the United States that they are required under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act to report their holdings and transactions to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. The Secretary of Agriculture has delegated the responsibility for collecting this information to the Farm Service Agency. According to Fraass, foreign investors buying or...
