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Passage of the 2018 Farm Bill in December of 2018 and passage of Senate File 599 in Iowa have paved the road to the legalization of growing hemp in Iowa. The permitting process is currently open in Iowa. The application deadline for the 2020 outdoor growing season is May 15, 2020.  Listed below are some definitions, questions and answers, and resources that can assist you with your plans to raise hemp as a crop.  

The Forecasting and Assessment of Cropping Systems (FACTS) project is up and running with accurate, recent data to inform decision making for a variety of industry professionals. FACTS is an ongoing project developed to forecast and evaluate in real-time soil-crop dynamics at a field and regional scale. It uses weather, soil and crop information combined with machine learning to provide industry professionals the information they need to maximize yield and minimize economic impacts.

This week has been the start of planting for many in Iowa. After the recent cold spell, conditions are favorable to start fieldwork back up again. It’s likely a significant portion of crop ground in Iowa will get planted this week, with the majority of the weather forecast being supportive of field activities.

A few things to keep in mind as your operation moves through the rest of the week:

While the cooler and snowy weather may have limited field activities last week, farmers are getting back to the fields across the state this week, with many getting started on planting. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach field agronomists share reports on what they are seeing and hearing in their respected regions across the state with field conditions and planting progress.

North Central Iowa

With quite a bit of grain getting put into storage last fall that was wetter than normal, this could lead to some potential issues with quality, handling, and safety issues this spring and summer.

Farmers in Iowa have been experimenting with very early soybean planting dates, from late March to mid-April. Based on reviews of the yield data, there is not a consistent yield benefit to planting early as opposed to planting the first week of May. But one benefit of very early planting is that it extends the planting window, allowing farmers to take advantage of ideal soil conditions in April.

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) population east of the Rocky Mountains has declined for many reasons, but loss of milkweed (Asclepias spp.), its’ larval host plant, in the U.S. Midwest, is a contributing factor. To help increase the monarch population, an estimated 1.6 billion stems of milkweed weed to be established in this part of the country.

By Madelynn Connell and Emily Heaton 

Many people in the Midwest have recently experienced the bitter-cold temperatures brought on by arctic air falling into the mid-latitudes. While these temperatures can make people rather uncomfortable, they are also potentially dangerous to miscanthus in the field.

Vulnerability of Young Miscanthus

March into early April has been warm enough and dry enough to the point that soil conditions are good for planting. The calendar date is a bit early; after all the crop insurance, replanting is April 11. Regardless, many are pondering if they should be planting corn already, and some maybe already have.

As nutrient and land management practices continue to change, more growers are considering strip-till. Advances in equipment technology, GPS, and application control systems have helped to overcome many challenges growers typically associate with strip-till. Combine this with the many environmental and nutrient application advantages strip-till can offer, and this may be the right time to consider strip-till in your operation.

Spring has sprung! Preparations for planting across the state are in full swing. Conditions over the last 30 days have been unseasonably warm across the Midwest with positive departures of anywhere from two to four degrees. Early March had a good stretch of dry conditions; the second half of the month experienced a more active storm track in which rainfall (and some snow) fell every few days. With the recent wetness, the last thirty days were also wetter-than-normal.

Whether you are thinking about trying strip-till or already using strip-till in your farming operation, the question of timing comes up—fall or spring? There are many factors that go into this decision, including availability of equipment and labor and weather and field conditions that change year to year. This question of fall or spring strip-tillage was the primary focus of a three-year study conducted from 2016 to 2018 at Iowa State University.

In 2019 Iowa had over 460,000 prevented plant acres. As we prepare for the 2020 growing season, one concern we sometimes hear about with prevented plant acres is fallow syndrome. Fallow syndrome happens when the populations of “good fungi” known as vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizae (VAM) are reduced due to the lack of actively growing roots. These “good fungi” help with nutrient cycling and plant nutrient uptake, particularly for phosphorus (P) in corn.

Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Tractor?

Determining the proper ballast and tire pressure for your tractor should be a key part of spring equipment maintenance. Proper ballast and tire pressure will maximize traction and tire life while minimizing fuel consumption and compaction.

Proper Ballasting

Wisconsin has been proudly known as America’s Dairyland for many years. However, recent data on dairy farms in the Driftless Region (Figure 1) are suggesting times are changing in the dairy industry for Western Wisconsin and surrounding states. According to the USDA NASS, the number of dairy farms in the Driftless Region with less than 100 head of cattle have been on the decline over the past 10-15 years. On the flip side, farms with 100+ head of cattle have been increasing [1].

This year let’s all toss out planting windows for corn. Farmers should be focused on when soil conditions are prime to plant. Soil temperatures need to be on the rise; 50^oF and rising. Planting 24-36 hours before a cold spell—regardless of how long—is putting your seed at risk of cold injury and reduced germination.

Extension specialists in Iowa and Minnesota are collaborating to provide a series of short, daily webinars for farmers, ag professionals, Extension personnel and other interested parties from April 6 to April 10. The theme is “Essential Row Crop Management" for spring 2020, with a focus on key topics to be addressed prior to the planting season.

The USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, along with the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) are once again sending out a national cover crop survey to farmers.

With the 2020 crop season approaching, ISU Extension has a tool available to help farmers, crop advisers and agronomists understand almost every machine display on the market, for everything from planting to harvest. The interactive monitor guide, available on the Extension website, offers step-by-step support for managing products, loading and executing variable rate prescription maps, setting up split planter configurations and exporting data.

With the recent alterations we've all had to make in our lives in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, many of your offseason field days, meetings and/or conventions have either been canceled or suspended indefinitely. This could have put a damper on your plans to receive crop management updates from industry members, leaving you in disarray about where to go to now for information and resources.