December 12, 2003: Web update

Computer program offers producers more information for management decisions

"For multiple reasons, the seed needs of all farmers are not being completely met by the large, commercial seed companies," he said. "These farmers may have an interest in breeding their own varieties, but most lack the training to do this effectively."

Farmers do not have to be committed to breeding their own varieties to benefit from participation in this program.

"Maybe a farmer is on the fence on this issue or simply wants to learn more about breeding, and that's okay," Russell said. "Our feeling is that knowledge is power, and we're trying to provide knowledge to farmers."

Participants will attend a one-day classroom workshop in March 2004 and will be guided through a two-year, hands-on breeding training program. They will learn the practice and theory of corn breeding and field testing through classroom, field and computer learning. Program leaders include Russell, Kent Eskridge, NU statistician, Donald Lee, NU geneticist, and Leah Sandall, University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student. Other leaders include Paul Rohrbaugh, executive director of the Nebraska Sustainable Ag Society, and Kendall Lamkey, corn breeder at Iowa State University.

Presentations will include an overview of soybean rust biology; identification and detection methods; past and current research; breeding for resistance; assessing the risks of soybean rust introduction with trade; natural pathways for disease spread (wind, hurricanes, land bridges); fungicide update and registration outlook; farmer experiences; and an overiew of the National Plant Diagnostic Network and its role in battling soybean rust.

This year's drought creates opportunities for farmers in these counties to defer income from livestock sales to next year, she said. This means if farmers had to sell last year's and this year's cattle crops in 2003, they can defer partial income to the 2004 tax year. This situation only is due to drought conditions and applies to cattle that couldn't be fed or were sold due to drought.

"With high cattle prices, producers have extra incentive for selling now instead of holding until later this year or into January," she said.

Producers should visit with a tax advisor since it can be complicated to calculate how much income can be deferred to next year, Barrett said.

"Even if you didn't make any money this year, it's important to do tax planning. It's more important now than in a high income year," she said.

Producers who show a loss in farm income could miss opportunities to offset that loss with next year's income to obtain a zero balance, Barrett said. This will minimize self-employment taxes. It's important to manage tax brackets to pay the lowest amount of tax during the life of the business. Farmers also may be concerned about taxes on conservation reserve program acres. For active producers, CRP is treated as regular income, which is subject to self-employment tax, instead of rental income, Barrett said.

Active farmers earn self-employed income, which is subject to self-employment taxes. However, retired farmers can use CRP income to replace rental income, which is not subject to these taxes, Barrett said.

"It's taxable income for both farmers, but the addition is the self-employment taxes, which are significant," she said.

It is important to minimize self-employment taxes like Social Security and Medicare since they amount to about 15% of farmers' income. Farmers and ranchers may want to refer to the 2003 Farmers' Tax Guides for more information. To request a guide, contact Gary Nickels at the IANR Publications Warehouse at (402) 472-9713 or e-mail gnickels1@unl.edu.

In a small watershed near Treynor, Iowa, hydrologist Mike Burkart (left) and farmer Bill Vorthman draw water from a 30-foot-deep sampling well to test for herbicides and nitrate. (USDA photo by Keith Weller)

This shows that water carrying nitrate can take decades to flow through a watershed's soil subsurface to a stream and should be studied for longer periods, according to the scientists, who work in the lab's Agricultural Land and Watershed Management Research Unit.

In the original study, conducted on a 74-acre field in western Iowa, fertilizer was applied to soil at three times the normal rate. The resulting soil nitrate concentration was tracked for the next decade. In 1996, Tomer and Burkart were preparing to monitor groundwater for a new experiment when they detected the nitrate 60 feet deep in the soil. They confirmed that the nitrate originated from the old experiment by examining groundwater flow rates and ages, and by comparing the concentration's depth with stream flow records.

Leaching of nitrate from agricultural fertilizers has been linked to concerns such as drinking-water quality and hypoxia, a condition in which water bodies contain low oxygen amounts. Farmers are being encouraged to use nitrogen more efficiently, but resulting environmental improvements have been difficult to document using studies lasting just two to four years, according to Tomer. In summary, he adds, application of a conservation practice within a watershed may take several decades to fully effect improvements in groundwater quality.

The results of this study were published in the November/December issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality, published by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and the Soil Science Society of America. ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.

Luis Pons
USDA ARS Writer

Monday, January 12 at the Red Willow County Fair Board Community Building in McCook;

Tuesday, January 13 at the Auditorium in Hardy;

Wednesday, January 14 at the Buffalo County Extension Building at the fairgrounds in Kearney; and

Thursday, January 15 at the City Auditorium in Milligan.

The noon meal will feature the traditional sorghum pancake feed with all the fixings. Agribusiness representatives will have exhibits to showcase new products and production/management information. Registration at the door is $5, however, members of the Nebraska Grain Sorghum Producers Association will be admitted free.

Application has been made for continuing education credits. Last year's program provided 2.5 CEUs.

Producers wanting more information are encouraged to contact their local Cooperative Extension Educator or the NeGSPA office at 402-471-3552 or email: sorghum@email.state.ne.us.

Nitrates can accumulate to potentially toxic levels in many forages, especially annual grasses as well as in some weeds like pigweed. Wheat and oat hay, sudax and cane, millets, and even corn and milo stubble rolled up as hay can contain high nitrate levels, especially if they were drought stressed.

This is one situation where an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. Never assume the hay is safe. Always collect samples, especially from what might be the most hazardous feed, and it analyzed for nitrates. Adjust your feeding regimen according to the test results. For example, save some lower nitrate hayfor feeding right after storms when big meals increase toxicity hazards.

Cost is $25 for adults for both days or $15 for one day. Cost is $15 for youth for both days. If there is space remaining, registration will be available at the door for $35 for adults for both days or $20 for one day and $25 for youth for both days or $15 for one day. For more information or to register, contact a local Cooperative Extension office or Anderson at 472-6411.

Horsin' Around 2004 is sponsored by Cooperative Extension in NU's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

IANR News Release

Some producers have reported that their cows appear to prefer grazing conventional corn stalk fields compared to Bt corn stalks. This might be expected when insect activity causes a little more corn grain to be available in conventional fields than from Bt corn fields. In carefully controlled university comparisons, though, cattle have shown no preference for either Bt or conventional corn stalks.

Still, if you have a choice between Bt corn stalks and other types of corn, it probably is smarter to choose the conventional stalks. Not because conventional stalks are better or safer, though, but because they are more likely to have extra grain on the ground.

Designing the best possible conservation buffers

Agricultural Research Service scientists in Tifton, Georgia, and scientists at the University of Georgia have conducted studies that examine several scenarios that farmers encounter. Ecologist Richard Lowrance, of the ARS Southeast Watershed Research Unit, and engineer George Vellidis, of the University of Georgia, recently conducted a nine-year study to determine whether restored conservation buffer zones in wetlands next to agricultural fields can reduce the amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen that reach streams that eventually lead to larger surface waters like lakes and rivers. They have found a restored three-zone conservation buffer to be quite effective in removing excess nutrients from water that runs off agricultural fields that have manure applied as a fertilizer.

Buffers, it seems, may well offer assistance to the agricultural community in improving water and soil quality. "Riparian buffer zones are areas of vegetation that act like sponges that take up water and nutrients from the soil," explains Lowrance. "Buffer zones also help reduce soil erosion along downward slopes that is due to rain events or irrigation and can cause surface runoff."

Long-term conservation buffer research

The buffer system used in the long-term study has three zones. "Zone 3 is a grassy edge that sits next to the field, zone 2 is a managed forest buffer that is situated farther from the field, and zone 1 is a permanent forest along the stream," says Lowrance. To obtain a baseline of runoff amount and content without riparian buffers, before planting, researchers monitored both nutrient levels put on the field as well as nutrient levels leaving the field. In the permanent forest, they planted tulip poplars, green ash, and swamp black gum; then they let native plant species establish among the trees over time. The scientists allowed natural succession to produce the final mix of plants.

For the next nine years, they monitored amounts of water and concentrations of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) in water entering and leaving the riparian wetland. The streamflow concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus leaving the conservation wetland buffer were about one-half and one-quarter, respectively, of the incoming concentrations in surface runoff from adjacent fields.

Even though nine years may seem like a long time for a scientific study, it is a relatively short time compared to a forest's lifespan. "This is a young forest at nine years old. It would take about 40 years to produce a mature forest," says Lowrance.

Generally, young forests have higher nutrient uptake rates because the plants within them are growing more, while mature forests have prepared the way to create forest soils through leaf litter and shallow roots, which increase biomass on the forest floor. All these factors are keys to reducing the movement of nutrients to surface waters.

"It's important to understand how buffers can be used to help reduce nutrient transport to streams, because of the potential for high loading of nutrients from manure application sites," says Vellidis. "These studies showed that the restored riparian wetland buffer retained or removed at least 60% of the nitrogen and 65% of the phosphorus that entered from the adjacent manure application site. This is the first time that a study of a restored riparian buffer has shown that the retention of phosphorus was as high or higher than nitrogen retention."

This was originally published in Agricultural Research, a publication of the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

Lexington, December 16

Grand Island, December 17

Norfolk, December 18

Ainsworth, December 19

The contact for the Farm Mediation program at the Nebraska Department of Agriculture is Marian Beethe (402-471-6890) or marianjb@agr.state.ne.us

Fall mowing before herbicide application may improve weed control

On two study sites in eastern Oregon, Carpinelli tested a new piece of equipment that mows and applies herbicide in a single pass. Carpinelli used the herbicides picloram, at a rate of one quart per acre, and clopyralid, at a rate of one pint per acre. These herbicides don't kill rangeland grasses, but can provide months of control of weed foliage and roots. By mowing immediately before applying herbicide, more of the herbicide goes on the intended target, the soil surface. Rains carry the herbicide into the root zone, where it is taken up by plant roots the following spring to prevent future weeds.

Since this method is more effective at getting the herbicide to the target weed, in the long run the fall mow-and-spray combination should reduce weed control costs because less chemical would be used. Farmers don't typically mow their weeds, but expenses associated with this additional activity should be offset by the reduction in the amount of chemicals needed and improved weed control.

USDA Agricultural Research Service News Release

With technician Elizabeth Krietemeyer's help, Shogren prepared dough formulations of various ratios of defatted soy flour, whole and white-wheat flour. They added different amounts of ascorbic acid, sugar, salt, milk, water and vegetable shortening to the doughs and active dry yeast to leaven them. After baking the bread, they analyzed the taste and texture, observing that the yeast, extra sugar and ascorbic acid significantly reduced the soy's beany aftertaste. The three ingredients also enabled Shogren to produce loaves containing 30-40% soy flour and 112-127 grams of protein, compared to 65 grams for all-wheat bread.

Trained panelists at Kansas State University's Sensory Analysis Center who evaluated the breads found them comparable to all-wheat bread. Although the soy-based breads were slightly more dense, health-conscious consumers aren't likely to find the texture much different than multi-grain and other specialty breads, notes Shogren. He and ARS co-authors Craig Carriere and Abdellatif Mohamed recently published the results in the Journal of Food Science.

Besides grocery store shelves, the soy/wheat bread could prove especially welcome at local food assistance programs. Costing about 50 cents a loaf, the bread meets recommended daily values of protein, fat and carbohydrates, according to Shogren. Plus, it is high in total dietary fiber and heart-healthy compounds such as isoflavones. The soy/wheat bread is easily prepared with standard bread-making equipment.

USDA Agricultural Research Service News Release

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