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Join Jedd Agnew and Billy Streich From the Field this week as they discuss growing degree units and the evaluation of stand counts.

As always, make sure to contact your local agronomist with any questions you may have. Stay safe!

Hello, I’m Billy Streich with ALCIVIA out of Whitewater and I’m Jedd Agnew ALCIVIA out of Genoa City.

Today we’re going to go over some stand evaluations and how to take a proper stand count the first thing we want to talk about is growing degree units. So, a growing degree unit is taking your high temp of the day maxing out at 87 degrees and the low temp of the day the lowest being the low of 50.

So, you’ll take those two temps add them together, divide it by two, and then minus 50 to get how many growing degree units you got for the day. So, for germination you’re looking at you’re, you’re going to need around 50 to 80 growing degree units. V1 you’ll need anywhere from 100 to 125. V2 you’re looking at 150 to 200, and v3 you’re looking at around 300 to 350. V3 they call the ugly stage due to the corn coming off from living on that seed to now living off its nodule root so it might get a little ugly looking, but that’s your early emergence.

Now, I’m going to send it over to Billy strike to do some stand evaluation.

All right in this field here we have a 20-inch row spacing in this corn field and a good way to help determine our plant population here early in the season is doing a stand count. So, in this 20-inch row spacing corn we got the tape measure laid out here and what we got after counting the stands here on both sides of the tape measure we have a 32-plant count so we’re at 32, 000 for a plant population. And the grower was planting at 34, 000 so we did have two plants here that didn’t make it due to either just early season stress or maybe the planter skipped.

Then we can take this tape measure and be able to evaluate our stand counts from the planting we did this spring, and we can use this as a tool to make good decisions for the rest of the growing season.

If you would like to have a stand evaluation in your field be in touch with your local ALCIVIA agronomist and we can go from there.

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With the delays provided by Mother Nature this year, almost all Wisconsin farmers are anxious to get going with fieldwork and planting. The good news – if you’re working with ALCIVIA – your supplies are ready to go. That’s the word from Greg Springer, ALCIVIA Agronomy Sales Technician. Springer says ALCIVIA was very forward thinking and aggressive in 2021 to make sure tough to find products like herbicides were procured well in advance.

Blaine’s farm and fleet is a proud sponsor of 4-h. Their commitment to helping young people develop positive life skills through experienced base learning provides roughly 350 trophies and 180 ribbons and rosettes to local 4-H clubs each year. Learn more about 4-H activities at 4-h.org.

Time again for our ALCIVIA co-op talk, remember it is a company that covers the state of Wisconsin committed to getting farmers started on the right foot. You can always find out more, from cash grain bids right on down to who you can connect with on the local scene, go to ALCIVIA.com.

My guest today is Greg Springer he is the agronomy sales technician, he’s located down in southeast Wisconsin, but he’s keeping a bead and eye on all of the inputs that farmers are going to be looking for real quick here in the growing season of 2022.

I know Greg, you know everybody feeling the pressure to get going. One thing I think a lot of growers are also wondering, how are supplies looking? Let’s start off first off with those pre-emerge chemicals that we are going to rely on where we can.

Depending on how long it takes us to get into those fields how are some of your chemistries looking this year Greg as far as availability across all of your territories?

Oh, chemistry for the most part especially on free emergence is sitting really well with a lot of that doubt in the countryside for guys that are doing their own application and we have a lot in-house on the three side of things.  Then I know everyone’s big thing is was the roundup last fall and you know some of the chemistry stuff kind of is getting kind of tight we just have to be really fluid with the situation, be in touch with your provider on, hey, what can we get, do we have an issue with something can we switch to something? We’ve been pretty good about being able to do that so far this year. And then the other thing is with the way the roundup situation was that we placed a lot of premix products like a Halex GT or Acuron GT on a lot of farms already.

So, if we do get in a bind, whether it’s we get caught by rain and can’t get the pre on the corn, a lot of those Halex and Acuron products we can’t just move the rates around in one pass early post on that and we’ve had a lot of good luck with that.

Then on the bean side of things, same thing might get caught you know who knows, the windows look like they’re going to be pretty small this year. And brought a lot of older chemistry in that well it doesn’t quite work like it used to when it was being used as a one-pass system on beans but allows us to go in very early post-emerge on those beans and just get us a little bit residual to open up our window for our second pass which and be relatively cost effective.

Yeah, right that’s something else you’ve got to keep in mind, now the other good thing that you were pointing out Greg, and sometimes people forget you guys have been layering in supplies since basically last fall. You may not see it when you walk into the warehouse at your location, but you guys have that inventory stashed at multiple locations across the state don’t you?

 Yes, yes I was just on the phone this morning and we’re looking for a little bit of COC oil to get done and well we’re going to probably have to run up to Evansville to get it, but hey they got a pile of it sitting there. So, if we’re selling our favorite.

Yep good, good you know the other thing that a lot of people might be a little nervous about it’s been making the news nitrogen availability. Greg, you know we’re trying to manage that very valuable resource as best we can, because it’s so cotton picking expensive then there was some conversation about the rail lines backing off on volume. You still feel pretty good as far as ALCIVIA’s position in that?

Yeah, we took a very I’d say, a large and strong position last fall actually last summer on nitrogen whether it was urea or 32 and I think we’re sitting really good on it at the moment. I know we’re full and I know the big tank up in Evansville’s full. You know a lot of our buildings are full of urea so, no matter what kind of source of nitrogen you use I know we’re sitting extremely well at the moment.

A lot of just where our geo location is here with the south branches pulling a lot of product off the Illinois river or out of Dubuque when it comes to nitrogen, and then the guys up north in Durand, they’re going to be pulling off the Mississippi the north there. It gives us a lot of options we don’t really have to rely on rail as much when it comes to nitrogen.

I do know some of my colleagues that work in other parts of the country that you know that’s how they get a lot of their 32 endurance in season, but we do a lot of trucking, so the biggest problem is making sure we have truck drivers. Which luckily here in the last week or two we’ve been doing the H2A program for the last couple years and our South Africans are very hard workers have started showing up. So, I think we’re trucking shortage trucker shortage is going to start getting a little less short, but we’re always looking for drivers.

Yep, absolutely I understand that well good news for anybody that’s working with ALCIVIA then this spring it sounds like the supplies are there waiting for the weather to cooperate, and like Greg said even feeling pretty good about their transportation situation all the way around.

That’s Greg springer he’s the agronomy sales technician with ALCIVIA, he is located in southwest, southeast Wisconsin but, again as he said it’s a coordinated map across the state with all the ALCIVIA locations working together to provide you what you need when you need it.

As always, you want to get connected go to alcivia.com and that’s your ALCIVIA co-op update. There are so many options these days for planting gardens and flowers in your yard from annuals perennials and pollinators to vegetables herbs and more Blaine’s farm and fleet is your one-stop shop for all your spring seeds and planting needs.

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Join Dylan Nelson and Bill Weisensel From the Field as they discuss weed control and management of herbicide resistance.

As always, make sure to contact your local agronomist with any questions you may have. Stay safe!

Hey everyone, this is Dylan Nelson here with Bill Wisensel out of Evansville. We’re here today to talk about managing herbicide resistance, which is a big problem in the Wisconsin area with soybean and corn growers both. So, we’re going to talk about some tips today to manage it. The first tip is just general weed identification, knowing what you’re going after is definitely key in what you’re putting in that tank to go out and kill weeds. The second would be how many modes of action you’re mixing in that tank. We’d really like to have at least two modes of action going after weeds but three would even be even better. The third would be spraying your herbicides at the labeled rates so not cutting any rates or trying to get away with less modes of action at a lower rate. Now I’ll pass it on to Bill and he’ll cover a few more tips here for us.

Another key factor to weed control is preventing weeds from beginning at all by using good pre-emerge chemistry and wearing in the residual chemistry with your post application too to control those late emerging weeds that come in July and August. Especially the water hemp that can come so late. The other key point is to make sure you are controlling those late escapes and keeping the seed bank down and just having less seed out there to be problems in the future.

Thanks Bill, if you guys have any other questions about this feel free to reach out to your local ALCIVIA agronomist and talk more about it.

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This episode of ALCIVIA Co-op Talk with Pam Jahnke and Bob Bosold discusses the importance of environmental safety to ALCIVIA with Environmental and Regulatory Specialist Tom Overby.

Time again this morning for a very important conversation on our ALCIVIA cooperative talk program. We’ve talked with sales, we’ve talked energy, we’ve talked grain, agronomy all kinds of things. Today an area that a lot of people probably don’t realize is part of the cooperative: environmental and regulatory specialists.

Tom Overby is with us and Tom this is not something you can pull somebody off the street to do, you’ve got a background in understanding our land, the environment, and keeping it safe, clean, and healthy right?

Yes, I’ve got 30-plus years working in the agronomy department for co-ops and so I do have you know pretty good background.

Let’s talk about the environmental side of things. What does that mean being the environmental specialist? What falls under that purview?

Well, anything that deals with the environment, you got the land, you got water, you got the air, you know we’ve got the regulations and whatnot that we have with federal and state agencies that we have to abide by. But then we have land that if we’re going to repurpose it we have to test it, make sure there’s no contamination. If there is, we have to remediate and remove contaminated soil and replace it with clean soil.

So, you’re kind of like well a middleman if somebody is going to do what you just suggested, repurpose that land or whatever, they can get you in there and help make sure that we can go forward legally under the environmental laws of this country and the state.

Correct, correct, and you know we all want to be good stewards of land that we live on so we have to abide by the rules and meet or exceed them.

How busy are you in that area? Most of our farmers are such good stewards of the land but you know accidents can happen

Yes, yes if there’s any type of spills that happen, which you know they are going to happen at some point, they have to deal with those, and you’ll get the cleanups and help coordinate with our environmental consultants and the regulatory agencies that gap and DNR you know they all get involved with it, so it gets to be a coordinated effort.

Tom Overby is with us, the environmental and regulatory specialist with ALCIVIA cooperative on our ALCIVIA cooperative talk program. Regulations, a term that no farmer likes we, just have too many regulations you know, that as well as I do in a farmer’s mind.

But, thus far as a regulatory specialist, does that mean you can kind of act as a middle man for the farmers that have to make some changes on their land and they’ve got to go through all kinds of regulatory procedures be it CAFO’s or nr51 and all those sorts of things.

Yeah, we can help them out with that, you know we’re not you know the the specialist or the expert on it but we can help you find somebody to get your questions answered you know. We’re familiar with the rules and regulations and know how to comply with those and we’re here to assist and that means of course we’ve got to have documents signed sealed and delivered.

Can you walk them through that and get them to the right people be it yourself or whoever to make sure these documents are filled out to the satisfaction of the higher powers so to speak?

Yes, yes, we can help out any way that we can assist them because you know if it is not documented it didn’t happen.

You’re in the Hammond office in western Wisconsin, as far as your area, environmental and regulatory for ALCIVIA cooperative do we have specialists located throughout the ALCIVIA network?

Well, the environmental and regulatory specialists, I cover all the territories both north and south so I cover from Luck down to Racine, and we have a couple of facilities in Illinois as well so I cover quite a territory.

He puts on some miles, but he knows what he’s doing and that’s Tom Overby who is the environmental and regulatory specialist at ALCIVIA so, if you have some challenges, concerns in those areas Tom is the man to contact and is headquartered at the Hammond facility with ALCIVIA cooperative.

This morning was with Tom on our ALCIVIA cooperative talk program.

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