Ag Report : Washington County Ag Report July 22, 2003

Washington County Ag Report
July 22, 2003

Contributors are Sandy Buxton, Colleen Converse, Aaron Gabriel, and Laura McDermott. If you would like to be removed from the mailing list or know of someone that should receive it, please let us know.

"You can never find yourself until you face the truth." -- Pearl Bailey

Announcements
FIELD CROP SCOUTING, COME EARN A PESTICIDE RECERTIFICATION CREDIT BY SCOUTING WITH ME FOR ONE HOUR:
Tuesday, July 29, 10 am @ Big Green Farm, Hanks Rd., Salem.
Tuesday, August 5, 10 am @ Gettyvue Farm, Rte 31, Hebron

Wed., July 30. 1-4 PM McEnroe Organics: A Full Service Farm. Millerton, NY (Dutchess County). 100 acres of vegetables, flowers, berries and apples, 120 acres each of pasture, grain, and hay, free-range chickens, rotationally grazed cattle, sheep and pigs. Fourteen greenhouses produce organic seedlings for wholesale and retail, bedding plants, and greenhouse tomatoes. 40,000 tons of compost for wholesale and retail. Contact RFFP at 518-271-0744 for more info.

July 31, 2003 - Dairy Tour 2003 -Marketing - has been canceled due to low sign-up.Tuesday,

August 12, 9:30am-5pm- Organic Crops and Soils Field Day, Geneva NY. $25 contact Maxine Welcome at 607-255-5439. www.neon.cornell.edu

Wednesday, Aug. 13, 1-3 PM Rotational Grazier Breeding Success. Saunders Dairy; Greenwich - 200 acres of pasture and cropland and 120 milk cows and calves. Contact RFFP at 518-271-0744 for more info

Thursday, August 14, 7:30 pm - Outsourcing Feed and Fieldwork - Adam Liddle farm, Tripp Rd, Argyle. Discussion about dairies which buy all their feed and hire out fieldwork operations. How do you successfully develop these business relationships? Can a small dairy really be profitable without raising their own feed? Are there opportunities to sell excess feed from your dairy or to become a custom operator? Light refreshments. Call Aaron for more information and to give us a head count. 800-548-0881.

Thursday, August 21, 2003, Farm Renewable Energy Day -9:30-noon Greenfleece Project - wool washing facility demonstration that meets organic standards. In Schodack, NY, for more info call CCE Rennselaer Co. at 272-4210.

Thursday, August 21, 2003, Farm Renewable Energy Day -1:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Feasible Farm Digestion Project at Swartz's in Schodack, NY, for more info call CCE @ 272-4210.

Reimbursement for Organic Certification : Under NY's Organic Certification Reimbursement Program, eligible producers and handlers can be reimbursed 75 percent, up to a maximum of $500 of their organic certification or renewal costs, so long as the certification or renewal is effective during the period of November 21, 2002 through September 30, 2003. Contact New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets at 1-800-554-4501 or at 518-457-2195 for more info. Applications for reimbursement must be submitted September 30, 2003.
http://www.agmkt.state.ny.us/AP/agservices/OrganicApp.pdf

Weather Data - 2003 and average of 1999 - 2002

Midwest Commodity Prices - from the Wall Street Journal
Corn per bushel $2.1/bu
Cotton Seed Meal per ton $140/ton
Soybean per bushel 5.68/bu
Corn Gluten Feed 58/ton
Hominy Feed per ton 40/ton
Wheat, soft white 3.67/bu
48% Soybean meal per ton 184/ton
Tallow per pound .175/lb
These prices are provided only to show where the general market trends are moving and to help you determine appropriate ration ingredients. Local prices will vary due to shipping, processing, and discounts.

FARM BUSINESS MANAGEMENT: From Mark Stephenson, Dairy Economist at Cornell University - Well folks, I¹ve got some good news and some bad news: The good news is that milk prices are on a significant rebound right now. The bad news is that many farms will experience an oddity in their July milk check (the one they receive around August 16 or 17) that we have never seen before and it will look like one more penalty after months of low prices.

Multiple component pricing (MCP) was new to the Northeast with the federal order reforms of 2000. Prior to the reforms, several other federal orders had implemented different versions of MCP. Occasionally, those regions had experienced what has been referred to as a ³price inversion² which results in a negative value for the producer price differential (PPD). The federal order reforms tried to minimize those occurrences by pricing class I skim values from the higher of class III or class IV skim values. This fix has been effective but negative PPDs still remained a technical possibility. It will happen with the July milk checks.

The federal order pool is a pool of dollars collected from class I, II, III and IV processors who contribute differently into the pool. All producers are paid component values out of the pool based on the class III price formulas even though their milk may not have gone to a class III
plant. There is usually money left over in the pool that is distributed to producers on a per hundredweight basis. That payment is called the PPD. You can see from any federal order pool price announcement that the uniform price minus the class III price is exactly equal to the PPD.

Obviously, if the class III price is greater than the uniform price, the PPD will be negative. Producers may wonder why they are being penalized for the volume of milk they are shipping--the answer is that they are not. It is just an artifact of our pricing formulas.

Class I milk is advanced priced. The July price for fluid milk processors was announced on June 20th and was calculated from butter, nonfat dry milk, cheese and whey prices during the first two weeks of June. The class III price for July will be announced on August 1st and will be based on the butter, cheese and whey prices for the month of July. Cheese prices for the first two weeks of June had averaged about $1.14 per pound but have risen to more than $1.50 per pound in July. That means that class III prices will be greater than the uniform, or average price.

The negative PPD is not a penalty--it is just the calculation that is needed to balance the pool. It should be viewed as a good thing by producers because it can only happen when milk prices are rising rapidly. When milk prices are falling rapidly, PPDs will be much larger than usual. We will see some substantial price improvement through the fall months. Give me a negative PPD anyday!

CROPS
Alfalfa: Second cutting is mostly complete. Some alfalfa waiting for its second harvest is at about 50% NDF (according to the alfalfa stick). The rain has softened the soil. Spreading manure on alfalfa in soft soil can damage plant crowns. Also, spreading should be done before any regrowth begins (a day or two after harvest). This prevents yield loss from damaged growing points that are mashed by machinery wheels. Potato Leafhopper are still here. These thunderstorms will slow them down, but you should still be checking new seedings and new regrowth, especially if there is a chance that PLH will move in from surrounding fields that are being harvested.

Field Corn: In May or so, someone was telling me that the meteorologists were forecasting a severe summer drought. These July rains are great. Some corn is beginning to tassle. Will your corn mature in time for harvest? To add to my comments of two weeks ago, not only is temperature a factor in corn maturity, but also daylength. Plants can sense that days are getting shorter and that winter is coming. This causes them to get a bit frantic and they go from the vegetative stage to the reproductive stage (tassling, silking) a little bit early (even though they may not have had as many growing degree days as they would like). We pulled up two plants today and did find one corn rootworm larva. It was probably half grown, a couple of weeks from becoming an adult.

Grasses: Try to make the most of 2n and 3rd cuttings of grass. Apply 50 lbs on nitrogen after harvest and before a rain. One farmer called me to report that he also has seen orchardgrass yields and quality reduced by disease. He thought that the intensively managed fields (early cut and fertilized after harvest) had more disease than the less intensively managed fields. Please call me with your observations of orchardgrass. By my guesstimations, half of our 10,000 acres of alfalfa has orchard grass planted with it; and 1/3 of our 30,0000 acres of grass hay is orchardgrass; which gives us 15,000 acres of orchardgrass in Washington County. If 10% or 1500 acres has a 30% yield loss from the disease, that is $45,000 total loss. That may not be huge for our entire county, but we need to know if the problem is increasing. So, please give me a call.

Pasture: For parasites to survive on pasture they need moist conditions. So, the rain is great because it keeps pastures growing, but the internal cattle parasites also survive better as well. My guess is that there will be more parasite pressure on grazing livestock this summer if the moist weather continues. Just be sure that you are worming your cattle correctly. Do the proper follow up treatments. Be sure that you understand how your worming product works and if you are using it correctly.

Vegetables: Note on Drip Irrigation Under Plastic: Soils under black plastic can become very dry in a short period of time under hot, dry conditions and with mature plants. With the common drip tape used in vegetable production (a flow rate of 0.45 gpm per 100ft ft), mature crops under hot summer conditions should be irrigated 14 to 21 hours per week. This is equivalent to 2-3 hours per day. Loamy sand to sandy loam soils such as on Long Island hold 1.0 to 1.5 inches of water per foot of soil. More frequent irrigations at 2 to 4 hour intervals, rather than once a week irrigations over several hours, are more effective on (these types of soils). (LI Fruit and Vegetable Update)

Edited from John Mishanec's Vegetable Pest Status Update 7/18/03

Sweet Corn
While we are catching some low numbers of ECB, generally trap catch numbers are very low throughout the region. Look out for storms from the south that might carry the migratory insects our way. They are catching very low numbers of corn ear worm (CEW) in both Penn and Long Island. This means we will probably start catching them here in eastern NY pretty soon. The last few years, we have been getting CEW early but so far we have not found any in our traps. When we start catching CEW, we will let you know. Most growers are harvesting their earliest corn. Ears are small but prices still high because there is so little local corn available. Later plantings of sweet corn are maturing quickly which means there will be gaps in production.

Earlier, the very hot weather was speeding tassel and ECB was not sticking around on the tassel very long. Now, the cooler weather is a benefit for controlling european corn borer. ECB does not like hot conditions. They stick around in the tassel longer when conditions are cooler and are easier to control with tassel sprays than when it is very hot. With very hot conditions, the ECB bore into the stems and drop down on the ears quickly. If you are over the 15% threshold in a field, the absolute best time to spray is when the flag leaf pulls away from the tassel and the tassels are starting to spread apart but still vertical. Apply your first spray when 40% of the field shows tassel. Wait 4 to 6 days and then come in to spray the field when the rest of it comes into tassel.

We are finding ECB field infestation very uneven. Some locations have very high pest levels on the corn while others are low. The only thing you can do is your best. And the best way to control worms in your corn is to time your spray correctly to have the most impact.

Crucifers
Check your fields for worms. Check at least 5 locations and 5 plants at each location. Look on the undersides of the leaves for larvae feeding. Record a simple presence or absence of larvae on a plant to get a percentage. Diamond back larvae are pupating now. Imported cabbage worm is out in many fields and is doing a fair amount of damage. Thresholds for pre heading cabbage and pre flowering broccoli is 30%. Once you have a flower or a head the size of a softball, the threshold drops to 5%. Bt's still do a good job controlling these pests. Soft insecticides like Avaunt, Bts and Spintor also allow beneficial insects to proliferate, which may provide you with additional control. Aphid populations can stay low when soft products are used in the field. Scout your fields and apply a control if over threshold.

Vine crops
From Dan Gilrein, CCE Squash bugs on pumpkins and squash are sometimes a problem here starting around this time. The grayish or brown insects feed under leaves and on stems and can cause leaves to turn brown and vines to die, more quickly under hot, dry conditions. Small plants are especially susceptible and it is also critical to inspect plants around early flowering. Squash and pumpkins are preferred but they will feed on other cucurbits. Look for the metallic bronze eggs between veins under leaves and any signs of wilting. The adults or nymphs might be visible on soil or around plants. One threshold used is 1 to 1.5 egg masses per plant in squash. Use Asana, Capture, Pounce/Ambush or Sevin as soon as eggs start to hatch. Azadirachtin materials (Azatin, Ecozin, Aza-Direct) can be used when small nymphs are present. Use of Metasystox-R for aphid control also helps reduce squash bug populations.

Potatoes
Walking through, there are still fields with lots of potato beetle. Now is the time to get those beetles. A grower from Vermont reports he has had very good results using Entrust (the organic formulation of Spintor/ spinosad) for first time on CPB. "It's very effective". It is a broader spectrum killer than BT.
Potato leaf hoppers PLF are pretty much in every field I've looked at. If you have more than one variety, you will notice they are selective for the variety they like. In some varieties, you can scare up a mess of leaf hoppers when you walk through the field. In other varieties, it is hard to find them. Inspect your fields. Leaf hopper can do serious yield damage without being very visible. Once you start to see the tips turning black, you already have some loss.

Tomatoes and Peppers
Blossom end rot is being reported on tomato fruit. Maintain uniform soil moisture conditions to reduce the risk on both tomatoes and peppers. The physiological disorder, characterized by a large, leathery brown or black spot on the bottom of the fruit, is caused by a calcium deficiency. Lack of calcium in the soil, due to a low pH, or excessive amounts of magnesium or potassium in relation to calcium, may increase the risk. Even if soils contain enough calcium, however, it won't be picked up by the plant if soils are dry. Fruit set on the second cluster of tomatoes may be rough and catfaced because of the cool weather back in late May and early June when the flowers were developing. Varieties vary in susceptibility. Early varieties and fields immediately adjacent to where tomatoes or potatoes grew last year are at higher risk. If bacterial diseases are present be sure plants are covered with copper plus mancozeb (tomatoes) or maneb (peppers) before rain occurs.

Peppers are gaining stature, putting out new blossoms, and beginning to develop fruit. Scout fields now for aphids and bacterial leaf spot. Aphids fly into peppers in June and July. The most common species is green peach aphid, which is light green, yellow green, or pink, with no distinctive marks. Wingless females feed on the underside of leaves, and give birth to tiny nymphs which look just like them. Most of the time, predators such as ladybeetles, lacewings, and aphid parasites keep aphid numbers under control in peppers. Avoiding unnecessary insecticide sprays will help reduce aphid problems later in the season. Aphids may build up after broad-spectrum insecticides are used, especially synthetic pyrethroids. In field studies comparing aphid numbers in permethrin-treated peppers vs. untreated or Bt-treated, we have found that the permethrin-treated plots developed high numbers of aphids and sooty mold on leaves and fruit. From John Gibbons, CCE

Pesticides : MEASURING SMALL AMOUNTS FOR SPRAYS. From Umass Vegetable Notes Newsletter- New products tend to be used in far smaller quantities per acre than the pesticides that were develop 15 or 20 years ago. Growers who are using spinosad for the first time ­ mainly organic growers who now have Entrust available-may not have used a material with such a low rate per acre. For example, Bt products tend to be applied in quarts or half-pounds per acre, compared to 2 oz (dry) or 3 oz (liquid.) required for this product. When measuring the tiny amounts needed for small plantings over several hundred square feet, it can be difficult to measure accurately. This is especially true with a solid that is measured in grams or tenths of grams such as Entrust. We have made some weight measurements to assist growers in making conversions into a measure that is easy to use: teaspoons. These conversions are specifically for Entrust 80WP. Liquids may be easier to measure in small quantities, if you have access to a small measuring device such as a syringe that measures ml or tenths of ounces. I have found such devices at the local drug store in the children's medicine department. The following table is provided for informational purposes. No endorsement is implied.

Entrust Spray Rate Conversions*

** All spoon measures loosely filled (not packed) and shaved even (not heaped)
* All area rates based on 2 oz./acre

Attached Table:

Penn State Crop Removal Estimates for Potassium and Phosphorus

Sincerely,

Aaron D. Gabriel
Extension Resource Educator
Crops and Soils