C4-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, July 13, 2002 COLUMBUS, Ohio What Ohioans think of rural develop ment, farmland preservation, the environment, food safety and animal welfare will help shape public policy throughout the state for years to come. That’s why a team of re searchers at Ohio State Univer sity is sending surveys to 8,000 Ohioans, asking about their per- COLUMBUS, Ohio Efforts to save Ohio’s farmland would be most effective if they focused on areas between 20 miles and 40 miles from major metropoli tan areas, say Ohio State Uni versity researchers. Jason Reece, data manager and geographical information systems analyst for an Ohio State University project examin ing trends in Ohio’s townships, said he hopes newly gathered data will help communities plan for future growth. “ J ust as a matter of the state’s physical geography, most of Ohio’s agricultural land is situ ated within 50 miles of its major metropolitan areas,” Reece said. “That’s also where a lot of our population is growing it’s not Strategy Needed To Maximize Soybean Yields WEST BEND, Wis. Pro ducers still have several options available to maximize soybean yields this year, even with de layed plantings, explains Hunt Wiley, director of research tor Dairvland Seed Co. “Producers need to focus on the idea of max imizing the number of nodes per acre, and use strategies to in crease the number of nodes.” The number of nodes a plant produces, not the maturity, helps determine yield. Soybean nodes are areas on the stem where leaves, branches, flowers and pods develop. A typical soy bean plant has about 22 nodes, if all goes well "The more nodes a plant develops, the higher the yield potential,” Wiley savs. “So, a producer’s goal should be to maximize the numbei of nodes per acre to recapture lost yield potential due to delayed planting.” Several strategics can help maximize the number of nodes per acre, Wiley says. "Stay with the latest maturing variety that is reasonable for your latitude,” he says. “Later maturing varie ties produce more nodes before flowering in induced, compared to an early season variety.” Another strategy is to increase seeding rates to get as many plants per acre as your soil type and fertility level will tolerate. “Soybeans planted later in the Researchers Surveying Ohioans On Agricultural Issues ceptions on those issues. Surveys are being sent to resi dents in both metropolitan and rural areas beginning May 25. One goal of the study is to assess differences among rural and urban Ohioans concerning food and agricultural issues. “We expect that people in urban areas value different as pects of the rural landscape than Ohio Project Targets Areas To Preserve Farmland just at the edge of urban areas.” Reece worked with Elena Irwin, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural, En vironmental and Development Economics, to study land use in Ohio for a report, “Land Cover in Ohio’s Townships: An Analy sis of Township Land Cover and Population Change.” For it, Reece gathered satellite image data from the early 1990 s to determine what land in Ohio is agricultural, forested or urban ized. The researchers focused on land within a 50-mile radius of seven metropolitan areas: Cleve land/Akron, Cincinnati, Colum bus, Toledo, Dayton and Fort Wavne, Ind. land that blan kets much of the state’s agricul- year are typically shorter and produce fewer nodes,” Wiley says. “More plants mean more stems and branches, which allows for more node sites.” Variety selection can also maximize nodes per acre. “Vari eties with more height, more branching tendency and more aggressive vegetative growth will help produce more nodes per acre,” Wiley says. Producers thinking about switching from corn to soybeans should be careful to address any disease concerns, specifically Soybean Cyst Nematode, in their Helds, Wiley says. At the Otterbein research sta tion, Wiley often is planting soy bean varieties of different maturities late into the season. And in many cases, the later ma turing varieties yield the best. “A couple of years ago, we planted six varieties ranging from group 0 to mid 4 on July 4,” Wiley recalls. “All set seed, all finished the season, and the latest maturity variety yielded the best. It was the tallest and had the most nodes per acre.” Wiley stresses that managing for the number of nodes per acre will help maximize soybean yields.” And that’s done the best by staying with the longest season variety planted at the highest reasonable population,” he says. rural residents,” said Jeff Sharp, rural sociologist and one of the study’s principal investigators. Participants’ backgrounds what sort of area they grew up in, if their parents or grand parents were farmers, and how often they travel to rural areas for recreational or social reasons also may affect their views, he said. tural land. Most of the land outside those 50-mile circles is in southeast Ohio, which is hilly, heavily forested and not suitable for most agricultural produc tion, Reece said. Then, the researchers looked at population trends outside cities and villages that is, township population trends from 1990 to 2000. “We found that over 80 per cent of the total township popu lation growth that occurred between 1990 and 2000 took place within 40 miles of the While some other states, such as lowa and Nebraska, conduct similar surveys on an annual or biannual basis, this is the first such survey to be conducted in Ohio. About 1,000 surveys will be sent to residents living in the nonmetropolitan and metropoli tan fringe areas of each of Ohio State University Extension’s five regional districts. An additional major urban centers. That land also happens to be heavily agri cultural,” he said. Property owners and com munities in Ohio can work to gether to preserve farmland with the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Ohio’s Agricul tural Easement Purchase Pro gram, which allows the state and local governments to pay land owners for agricultural ease ments. The idea is to make it worthwhile for farmers to pro tect productive farmland from development. 3,000 surveys will be sent to resi dents of metropolitan core coun ties, such as Franklin, Hamilton and Cuyahoga, he said. The results could go a long way in helping state and com munity leaders make decisions on rural development and agri cultural policy, he said. They also might help shape future re search, education and outreach agendas of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmen tal Sciences at Ohio State. The survey is funded by the college’s academic, research and Extension budgets. The re searchers involved also are con tributing funds from their own research budgets, Sharp said. Involved in the study are Sharp, Mark Tucker, Sherrie Whaley, all assistant professors in the Department of Human and Community Resource De velopment; Linda Lobao and Bill Flinn, professors in the same department; and Greg Davis, community development district specialist and Jerry Thomas, district director, both with Ohio State University Extension’s Northwest District office in Findlay. Graduate students Molly Bean and Holly Kendall are assisting in the project. The research team hopes to begin releasing results of the survey in September, Sharp said. To see a copy of the survey and learn more about the project, see the project’s Website at http://aede.ag.ohio-state.edu/ programs/exurbs/faesur vey.html.
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