P«g> 18—Com Talk, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 7, 1998 WINTER MEETINGS BRING NEW IDEAS Winter crop meetings can be more than just an exercise to get pesticide credits and my experience this year suggests that you can often come away with some beneficial ideas. I get to attend more meetings than the average person and often end up being on the prog ram, but that doesn’t mean I don’t learn a few things along the way. This year I picked up a num ber of good ideas. I thought I’d share a few of those ideas in this column. One issue that I encountered was (xi using com for grazing. You may recall the article pub lished in the last Com Talk on the demonstrati cxi conducted in Berks County last year. One concern I have had with the grazing com idea is how can we reduce the costs of establishing the com so that the feed produc tion cost is comparable to other warm season annual grasses? At the recent PASA (Pen nsylvania Association for Sus tainable Agriculture) confer ence I attended a session con ducted by Bradford County dairy fanner Kim Seeley. They too had a good experience with using com as a grazing crop. They planted com into a 3-acre sacrifice paddock in their rota tional grazing scheme where the cows had tom up the exist ing sod and manured the ground well in early spring. Then Kim came in and worked up the field and planted com. He cultivated this piece to con trol weeds. He didn’t get com plete weed control but the cows cleaned up the weeds with the com when the field was grazed. They ended up grazing the field in August and early September with the milking herd for 41 days. They used no heibicide, fer tilizer, or insecticide and a long-season com hybrid for their area. This was the same time when com silage was very expensive and grass was shoit around the state. They figured their out-of-pocket costs to pro duce aton of dry matter were $9 per ton. In mid-September, just as the cows were finishing up the field, they broadcasted rye in the stubble and ended up with a decent cover crop as well. Another issue brought to my attention at one meeting was that of apomixis. You may ask what is apomixis and what does it have to do with me? Well, according to an article in The Economist recently, a group of American and Russian ENNSYLVANIA MASTER GROWERS ASSOCIATION Between The Rows Dr. Greg Roth Penn State Agronomy Associate Professor researchers received a patent for an apomiclic com plant. Apomictic plants reproduce asexually unlike most plants, which produce sexually. Having aptomictic com could, in the long run, do away with the costly process of hybrid seed production and simplify the breeding program. The end results could be cheaper and better hybrids. On the other hand it might also be possible to save seed from apomictic com and replant your own seed, which has some pros and cons associated with it It is still unknown what the potential of these plants are but scientists are studying the genetics of the apomixis to see if it can be incorporated into modem and productive com lines. Another interesting session I attended this winter was also at the PASA conference. There the topic was organic grain pro duction and marketing. According to one Midwest grain analyst, overseas con cerns over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is strength ening the market for organical ly produced soybeans and com, since this is one way foreign buyers can assure themselves that no GMOs are in their grain. He also suggested that pre miums on organic grain would depend on the supply and with a greater supply, premiums would decrease. On the production side, Rodale agronomist Jeff Moyer and John Hall from the Michael Helds Institute in Wisconsin both discussed how they have been using a com-soybean wheat/clover rotation to pro duce organic grain. They are generally using tillage and cul tivation or rotary hoeing for weed control, no insecticides, and manure and legume N cre dits to help meet or supplement their nutrient requirements. John Hall noted that one of the challenges of this rotation has been a buildup of weed seeds from annual grasses that germi nate in the wheat stubble. At the Fields Institute they developed a “chera lite” approach which relies on herbicides to control these weeds or to occasionally apply rescue treatment to the com or beans where a weed problem comes through the mechanical control. I encountered another inter esting phenomenon at some of our extension meetings this winter. That was the attitude of various grain merchants to spe cialty com, especially the high oil com. Whereas in the past the grain industry has generally been reluctant to support this idea because of the need for separation and testing, now it seems as if the idea is gaining support These were just a few of the interesting ideas I encountered that come to mind. I was also able to visit with many com growers around the state and renew our friendships and com pare notes on the season. So for me, the winter meetings were much more than just a way to receive pesticide credits and I hope they were that way for you as well.
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