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Some farmers in northern Iowa have decisions to make on planting options

By

Paul Kassel

Farmers in northern Iowa have been making progress in catching up to the rest of the state when it comes to spring planting.

Iowa State University Extension field agronomist Paul Kassel, says the late arrival of spring weather is one of the reasons they’ve been behind. “Yeah, we are still blaming the snow from seven weeks ago or thereabouts. Stuff has just been really slow to dry out and we’ve had some rains…it’s kind of the northern two tiers of counties that are struggling. We are having some meetings this week to kind of address those issues,” Kassel says. Kassel says one of the things they are talking with farmers about is whether they should stick with corn or switch to planting beans.

He says sometimes the herbicides they put on are not good for beans, but there are some people who haven’t put anything on the fields yet and could switch to beans. Kassel estimates that one-third to one-half of the beans are still left to be planted, depending on the county. Kassel says there are some deadlines for crop insurance and other things that farmers need to factor into the decision on whether to plant corn or beans.

“The insurance coverage goes down starting on June one, so that’s one date. You just get less coverage,” Kassel says. “And then kind of an agronomic deadline we’re saying June 5th is kind of where the risk of lower yield on corn and high grain moisture at harvest really starts to favor a soybean crop just from an agronomic standpoint.” Kassel says the early spring snows were part of the problem — but he’s not sure why it has taken so long for the ground to be ready to plant.

“It seemed like just some of the fields were really slow to dry out. It’s still kind of a mystery why that was, so we are dealing with that,” according toe Kassel. “Parts of Emmett County had some really heavy rains and a week or so ago parts of Kossuth County — an area kind south of Algona — had some really heavy rains and people were just starting to get back in the field. And then we’ve had these scattered rains , anywhere from a one-tenth, two- tenths to inch-and-a-half. And a lot of times it’s the areas that need it the least and they are the ones that end up with the larger amounts.” While most of the area has been too wet to plant, not every farmer has had to sit and wait.

He says some of the fields with tiles were planted in late April and with the good weather they have really grown. Kassel says that can be the frustration of farming as one area of land might be too wet to work, and then you go a few miles and things are dry and looking good.

 

Five Republicans seek four-year term as state ag secretary

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This year’s Republican Primary voters are choosing among five candidates vying to be their party’s nominee for state ag secretary.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey resigned in March to take a job in the Trump Administration. Northey’s top deputy has been state ag secretary since then. His name is Mike Naig and he’s running to keep the job.

His Republican rivals are Ray Gaesser of Corning, former president of the Iowa and American Soybean Associations; Chad Ingels of Randalia, a former chair of the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission; Craig Lang of Brooklyn, former president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and Dan Zumbach, a state senator from Ryan.

Gene Lucht, public affairs editor for Iowa Farmer Today, says each of the five Republican candidates seeking a full, four-year term as state ag secretary have their own niche.

“Mike Naig, who’s the incumbent, but not really the incumbent because he hasn’t won an election and hasn’t been in that post very long,” Lucht says. “You’ve got Craig Lang with his Farm Bureau background. You’ve got Dan Zumbach with his legislative background. Ray Gasser kind of comes from the commodity group approach and Chad Ingels kind of has the farmer and water quality background.”

In a majority of states, governors appoint an agriculture commissioner or state secretary of agriculture. Iowa is among a dozen states in which voters choose the top agricultural official in state government. Lucht says the race isn’t as high-profile as other contests on the Iowa primary ballot.

“Five candidates and secretary of agriculture is kind of a weird election because you have a lot of people who go into the polls and they look at governor and they look at congress,” Lucht says, “and then get to those other statewide posts and they flip a coin.”

This race may not be decided Tuesday night either. That’s because a candidate must win at least 35 percent of the primary vote to win their party’s nomination or the party will assemble delegates for a nominating convention later in June.

In this race, that decision would be made June 16th by delegates at the Republican Party’s state convention.

“Predicting the race is just really challenging, I suspect they’re all running two races,” Lucht says. “They’re all running to try to get to 35 percent, but they’re also probably talking to those convention delegates quite often.”

There is one Democrat running for state ag secretary this year. Tim Gannon worked in the U.S.D.A. for U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor. Gannon has moved back to Iowa, lives in Des Moines and is part of a family farming operation near Mingo.

Northern Iowa catching up in planting after productive week

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Farmers who have lagged behind in planting made up a lot of ground in the last week.

The U.S.D.A. crop report says farmers in the northern third of the state were able to plant 20 percent of their projected corn acres last week. The northwest and north-central areas of the state had been way behind due to wet conditions. The report says the northern part of the state now has just 10 percent of the corn left to be planted. That compares to 96 percent of the corn that’s already in the ground statewide.

Seventy-seven percent of the corn has already emerged. Soybean planting statewide is now one week ahead of the five-year average at 81 percent — and 44 percent of the beans have emerged.

 

Iowa corn representatives host Asian Pacific rim trade team

By

Roger Zylstra

A trade team from nations in the Asian Pacific rim is in Iowa this week, visiting a pair of ethanol plants, touring farms, and a feed mill in Grinnell.

Iowa Corn Board Promotion Director Roger Zylstra is hosting the group of government and industry representatives on his farm near Lynnville. He says they’re mainly interested in dried distiller’s grains, or DDGs, a byproduct of making ethanol.

“We’ve got a big feed mill here that feeds all of our local pigs and they use quite a bit of DDGs through that place,” Zylstra says. “They’re going to visit that mill and they’re going to visit our farm and talk to us about how we incorporate the DDGs into the feed.”

He says this visit takes on high importance, given the recent trade tensions between the U.S. and China. Zylstra says it also gives Iowa growers a chance to reestablish good relations with the Asian Pacific nations.

“We’re going to be the reliable supplier and we’re going to try to get the governments on both sides to cooperate as much as we can,” he says. “We’re here to provide the DDGs, the corn, the soybeans, the pork, whatever they need.” Zylstra says it’s a thrill to host these visits.

“That’s what Iowa Corn and the U.S. Grains Council, we’ve worked for years and years to establish and build the markets and the relationships that we have and continue to put a lot of emphasis on that,” he says. The trade group is also scheduled to stop at the Iowa Corn office and Iowa State University in Ames.

(By Jerry Oster, WNAX, Yankton)

 

Good weather again helps farmers catch up with planting

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Iowa farmers spent a lot of time pulling planters last week.

With at least four days of good planting weather across the state, the U.S.D.A. says 86% of the corn has now been planted. That compares to 65% last week. Lots of beans were planted too, with 58% of the expected 10 million acres of soybeans now in the ground. That compares to the 33% planted last week.

Northwest and northcentral Iowa did a lot of catching up this past week, with 70% of the corn now planted, compared to 25 percent last week. Those areas still have less than one third of their projected soybeans planted.

 

Farm Bill fails in U.S. House, Grassley urges GOP to craft better bill

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Senator Chuck Grassley. (file photo)

A fight among House Republicans led to defeat of the Farm Bill when the legislation came up for a vote today.

Democrats had criticized the proposed Farm Bill because it includes a new work requirement for food stamp recipients who are in their 50s or the parents of school-aged children, but it was conservative Republicans in the U.S. House who defeated the bill for another reason. They were demanding an immediate vote on an immigration crack-down. Enough of them then cast a protest vote against the Farm Bill crafted by some of their fellow Republicans that the bill fell 15 votes short of passing.

The current Farm Bill expires September 30.

Senator Chuck Grassley is urging his fellow Republicans in the House to come up with “better” Farm Bill. Grassley, in a tweet, said the bill should deny federal farm subsidies to people who are not farmers and have merely invested in farmland.

Congressman Dave Loebsack, a Democrat from Iowa City, was the first member of Iowa’s delegation in the U.S. House to release a written statement after today’s vote.

“House Republicans today showed they care more about being partisan than passing a farm bill to support Iowa’s farmers and rural communities. In what has historically been done in a bipartisan manner with a rural-urban coalition, this farm bill has devolved into a partisan food fight,” Loebsack said.

Candidates for ag secretary discuss water quality issue in joint forum

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A water quality bill was the first piece of legislation Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law this year, but all six of the candidates running for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture say that bill’s just the first step in addressing the issue.

The Democrat and all five Republicans running to be state ag secretary appeared at a forum in Mason City last night. Republican Craig Lang of Brooklyn, former president of the Iowa Farm Bureau, said farmers need to prove to consumers that progress is being made.

“You have to realize that we’re only one administration away or one federal judge away from being regulated and forced to do something that doesn’t work for us as farmers,” Lang said. “So we need to get together as farmers, prove to the public that we are making meaningful improvements in the water.”

Republican Dan Zumbach of Ryan is a state senator and chairman of the Senate Ag Committee. He voted for the water quality bill, which maintains the state’s voluntary approach to improving water quality and provides new funding for farmers’ soil and water conservation efforts.

“If there’s anything I’ve learned as a farmer myself and watching my neighbors and growing up and learning from my parents, if you give someone the opportunity to do something and do it right, they will,” Zumbach said. “And so if we continue the educational process, we continue to offer incentives to do what’s right, people in agriculture will do it.”

Republican Mike Naig is Iowa’s current secretary of agriculture, appointed by the governor to the position after Bill Northey resigned for a job in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Naig said there’s been significant progress in the five years since the state’s voluntary “nutrient management strategy” was established and the new state funds will advance the process.

“We need to continue to develop demonstration projects that help us prove practices and prove the economics around practices,” Naig said, “and now with the new dollars…we need to target our efforts into some larger-scale implementation projects in specific watersheds and build water quality infrastructures.”

Republican Chad Ingels of Randalia is a former chair of the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission. He favors farmer-led efforts that focus on an entire watershed.

“Enabling them to have flexible incentives, and that may vary across the state, set their own priorities on which practices should be emphasized in those particular watersheds, because they know better what management works in their areas,” Ingels said.

Republican Ray Gaesser of Corning, former chairman and president of the American Soybean Association, said the state needs to help ensure farmers and landowners get technical assistance and data about which practices work best to reduce run-off.

“We need to continue to work with cities like Cedar Rapids and Dubuque and others to work upstream and help farmers install those practices that really don’t benefit them on the farm, but it does benefit the city,” Gaesser said, “like bioreactors and those kind of things.”

Tim Gannon, the only Democrat running for state ag secretary, lives in Des Moines and is part of a family farming operation near Mingo. Gannon worked in the U.S. Department of Agriculture when former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack led the agency and Gannon said other states are finding ways to get private sector investment in conservation projects.

“I think there are ways that we can measure what we’re doing both in terms of practices and in terms of proving those practices,” Gannon said, “so that we can then incentivize private investment. Then we’re not talking $4-to-5 billion that would have to all come from the state. We’re talking a much smaller amount of money.”

The candidates made their comments at a forum sponsored by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.

(Reporting by Bob Fisher, KRIB, Mason City)

Wet conditions keep parts of state way behind in planting

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Some Iowa farmers are making good planting progress, while others continue to be hampered by wet conditions.

The latest U.S.D.A. crop report shows corn planting has advanced from 40 to 65 percent complete in the last week. The soybean planting doubled from 11 percent to 22 percent. The report says northwest and northcentral Iowa continue to be plagued by wet conditions — with just 26 percent of the corn in the ground in north-central Iowa and only three percent of the soybeans.

While in the southeast part of the state the corn planting is close to being wrapped up, with 91 percent in the ground and the beans at 65 percent.

 

Activists press for national ban on ‘factory farms’

By

Bill Stowe.

A coalition of state and national groups are calling for a ban on so-called “factory farming” in the United States. Adam Mason of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement said large-scale livestock confinements have “decimated” family farms.

“Thinking back to the late ’70s, there were over 80,000 family farm operations raising livestock across this state. Today, we have 10,000 factory farms,” Mason said. “That ain’t right.”

Mason spoke at a midday news conference in Des Moines, as did Bill Stowe, CEO and general manager of the Des Moines Water Works, which is among the 100 largest water utilities in the country.

“At Des Moines Water Works, our mission is to provide safe, affordable, abundant drinking water for half a million Iowans,” Stowe said. “It’s a job that becomes increasingly difficult, unfortunately, because Iowa’s surface waters are filthy.”

The Raccoon River has pollution levels today that exceed federal standards, requiring additional and expensive treatment before it can be used as drinking water. Stowe said there’s “no question” what he calls “industrial farming” upstream is contributing to the pollution.

“With bacteria, with soils, with chemicals and a growing concern for us is blue green algae and cyanotoxins,” Stowe said.

Stowe and the others who spoke at the news conference would like city and county officials to have the authority to regulate farming operations. Stowe said corporate interests have ruined states like West Virginia and Iowa should take a different path.

“We are not going to find ourselves left in a bone pile, a remanent of a failed industrial system like coal mining, because industrial farming and dirty agriculture is heading us on that same path,” Stowe said.

A national group called “Food and Water Watch” has released a report critical of the impact “massive amounts of manure” from livestock operations are having on the environment.

A spokesman for the Iowa Pork Producers Association said any moratorium on the pork industry “would greatly stifle rural Iowa economic activity” and limit entry into farming for the next generation. The association’s spokesman says modern Iowa pig barns “are designed to contain all manure” and “protect water quality.” He also noted there already are more than 200 pages of state regulations for the pork industry.

Corn planting moves ahead, bean planting underway

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Farmers were able to take advantage of some good weather again last week.

Thunderstorms and rain did interrupt the planting at times according to the U.S.D.A. report — but farmers were still able to advance the corn planting to 40% complete. That compares to 17% last week and the state as a whole is now just three days behind the 5-year average.

Soybean planting got underway too, with the report showing 11% of the projected crop in the ground. That’s right at the 5-year average for this time of year.

North-Central Iowa is lagging behind right now with wet conditions there slowing things up so only 9% of the corn crop and no beans have been reported planted.