Andy's Angle

This might be a record - I'm going to talk about agronomics rather than politics for two weeks in a row ... I promise a return to your regularly scheduled punditry next week.

I wanted to spend some time discussing Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) this week because I saw a LOT of it last week on the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour. In fields from Western Indiana to Northern Iowa, this potentially yield-robbing disease appeared in everything from pockets of affected plants to entire fields impacted by SDS. Agronomists tell us that now is a critical time to scout soybean fields for Sudden Death Syndrome.

According to Ohio State University soybean experts Anne Dorrance and Pat Lipps, SDS is a fungal disease of the Fusarium variety. "Symptoms of SDS begin as small, bright, pale green to yellow circular spots on the leaves," the researchers point out. "As the disease progresses, brown to tan areas surrounded by chlorotic tissue develop in between the veins. More importantly, soybean plants with SDS also have substantial amounts of root decay and discoloration of roots and crown." When scouting fields for the disease last week, I observed varying stages of disease development, from early display of those symptomatic circular lesions, to fields where significant acreage displayed the characteristic brown tint of more developed SDS.

So what causes this disease? The fungus lives in the soil, meaning once a field is infected, a producer will be managing the disease for quite some time. Dorrance and Lipps tell us that some growing seasons will present higher levels of SDS thanks to Mother Nature. "Some of the factors that favor disease development include high soil moisture during the vegetative growth period and unseasonably cool temperatures prior to or during flowering and pod set." Gee, do those conditions sound familiar to anyone this year?

Agronomy Research Scientist Jim Trybom at Pioneer Hi-Bred International says SDS is a fairly troublesome disease often ranked second only to soybean cyst nematode (SCN) in causing decreased yields and economic loss.

"Because SDS is more weather-related, its impact and reach can vary year to year and area to area," says Jean Liu, Pioneer research scientist, soybean pathology. "This year in April, many areas had warm conditions, then two or three weeks of cooler weather in May. Growers who planted soybeans shortly before or during the period of cool, moist conditions (i.e., from late April to mid-May) need to pay attention, because SDS fungus can infect roots as early as seedling emergence. Early infection would aggregate the problem and cause greater yield reduction compared to late infection."

If you've observed SDS in your field, there isn't a lot you can do about it ... this growing season. The importance of scouting for SDS now is in doing effective preventative maintenance next growing season. "Growers must clearly understand the extent of infection in each of their fields to effectively manage SDS," Pioneer's Trybom says. "If SDS is identified, growers need to maintain the field history and select varieties with higher tolerance to SDS in the future. Variety selection and good field drainage are some of the best tools available to counter most disease threats."

In addition, Trybom recommends growers focus on planting the most problematic fields last, managing Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN), improving field drainage, reducing compaction, evaluating tillage systems and reducing other stresses on the crop. The Ohio State researchers agree, listing resistant variety selection as the top management tool for SDS. They also recommend examining your crop rotation practices, considering a rotation that only puts soybeans in an affected field once every three years.

SDS isn't the end of the soybean production world. Some seasons, like this one, it will be worse than others.

Companies like Pioneer and Monsanto are diligently developing more traits to help farmers manage the disease, and seed companies across the country offer more resistant varieties each season. Scout your fields early and often, and good luck this harvest.

For the last eight years, I've spent a week each August as a scout on the ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour. My first year, I was pressed into service by the National Association of Farm Broadcasting as a stringer reporting on each day's Tour findings. From that first Tour, I requested the assignment annually; the Tour is something of a "working vacation" for me. This week I'm once again out walking corn and soybean fields across the Cornbelt.

The Crop Tour isn't the only Tour of its kind, but it is certainly the largest and the most well known. Farmers take part in a wheat quality Tour in the plains earlier in the year, and I'm aware of smaller regional Tours in various states looking at the condition and progress of area crops. What makes the ProFarmer Tour unique, however, is its scope and its longevity. For the better part of two decades, crop scouts have walked the fields of the seven states that make up the overwhelming majority of corn and soybean production in the U.S.

The modern Tour traces back to much smaller affairs in the late 1980s. Today's effort includes two legs, one departing from Columbus, Ohio, and a western edition embarking from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The two groups of scouts meet in Austin, Minnesota, covering Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska along the way. Scouts travel routes that form a spider web configuration across the geography, with a group of three-four scouts taking each of roughly a dozen different routes from one state to the next. Along the way, they're stopping to scout fields roughly every 15-20 miles.

At each field stop along the way, scouts will gather data from adjacent corn and soybean fields, examining factors that will determine the corn yield and the productive potential of the soybeans. For corn, this means we're counting the number of ears in a 60-foot section of row, measuring the grain length of three of those ears, as well as the girth in kernel rows of that ear, and multiplying those numbers together in a "rough and dirty" yield calculation. We'll also gather information about the moisture content of the soil and relative health of the plants in the field.

For soybeans, we're not able to calculate a yield, per se, perhaps one of the most difficult things to explain to folks who've not taken the Tour themselves. With wide variability in maturity between fields, it's extremely difficult to determine a responsible yield calculation on soybeans in the third week of August. What we do measure is the number of pods per square yard, a figure that will give us some concept year over year of how that field might perform given an adequate finish to the growing season.

While the Tour won't be complete until after these lines go to press, I have a few observations that bear sharing. First, the corn crop is better than last year. In Ohio in particular, farmers got the crop in the ground earlier than last year, and the stands are by and large excellent. While there are definite and obvious pockets where corn was planted later, and then suffered from dry/hot weather through the pollination period, this crop appears to be much stronger than the 2009 edition.

Secondly, plant population matters. When I first went on the Tour, farmers were very interested in the size of the ears. Big, long ears, eight inches or better, were highly valued over the number of ears in a row. With eight years of scouting under my belt, I can tell you that 120 six-inch ears in 60' of row will yield a LOT more corn than 85 eight-inch ears in the same row. The more good ears you have in a field, the more corn you can harvest.

Finally, while the soybean crop is much healthier than last year, there's still along way to go before the crop is in the bin. We've walked fields this week still in full bloom. Those plants can still set more pods, meaning more beans. Without a good rain in the next week, however, those beans may not make any additional seeds, meaning fewer bushels.

Our Ohio Tour average, for example, indicated a 5.3 percent reduction in pods per yard from 2009, though I would say that's mostly due to differences in maturity over last year.

I highly recommend attending this Tour, or one like it. The opportunity to examine a dozen different fields over a four-day period is extremely enlightening. Likewise, the camaraderie with the three-dozen scouts who take the week to walk those fields is hard to discount.

I'm a Tour veteran, and proud of it. You can follow my Tour updates at Twitter.com/AndyVance, or on my blog at AndyVance.com.

I'm working late from my hotel room in Fishers, Indiana, our first stop on the ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour. Day 1 took our band of merry men and maidens from Columbus to this suburb of Indianapolis via a dozen or so different routes across Western Ohio and Eastern Indiana. Along the way, scouts sampled corn and soybean fields every 15-20 miles, for a total of just under 90 different data points in Ohio alone.

The weather this year is perfect for the Crop Tour. The dews weren't as heavy, they burned off fairly quickly, the humidity wasn't as oppressive in the middle of the day, and by and large a scout didn't necessarily have to break a sweat to get the job done. This is my kind of Tour weather! For our group, which travelled due North from Columbus through Morrow, Crawford, Richland and Huron counties, then due West through Seneca, Wyandot, Hancock, Allen, and Van Wert counties, we saw some of the best corn in the state.

The crop is fairly well advanced, though as most of us already knew, there are basically two different crops to evaluate: the one planted in roughly the third week of April, and the one planted sometime after Mothers' Day. The early corn is by and large better than 200 bushels if it was managed anywhere near good. Folks who kept weed pressures at a minimum, which nearly all did, had no trouble getting North of 180-190 bushels per acre. In the one field we surveyed sub-150, pressures from Giant Ragweed (Glyphosate Resistant?) were significant, and I would presume to be a contributing factor. In the one field we sampled in Van Wert county at 155bu/ac, dryness was a key factor, as was early wetness. Late planting followed by dry weather is a recipe for crop stress.

The ProFarmer average for Ohio on 89 samples is 165.60 bu/ac, up 3.6% over last year's Tour average of 159.73, and well above the three year average Tour yield of 150.93.

Soybeans, on the other hand, were mostly later planted, and still very much growing and setting pods. The first samples we counted, from Morrow to Huron counties, were fairly mature, and set pods in the 1,200-1,500 pods/square yard range. As we turned West, however, the beans in many parts were still blooming, and had set perhaps 400-800 pods per yard. These beans were very, very healthy, and with the right amount of precipitation, should put on some additional pods and have great yield potential. If the remainder of the season is dry, however, all bets are off.

Several readers of my ongoing Tour coverage asked questions about soybean yield and corn kernel depth. I tackled these issues in a video on my Facebook page. My page also features pictures from the day's events for your viewing enjoyment. We'll have my day's interviews on BuckeyeAg.com first thing in the morning, and I'll have more from Bloomington, Illinois tomorrow night.

My thanks once again this year to Pioneer Hi-Bred International for sponsoring ABN Radio's coverage of the ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour. Feel free to send me your questions, and stay tuned to all the above listed sources for the latest in how the crop looks across the Eastern Corn Belt!

The 2010 ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour is officially underway!

I'm covering my seventh or eighth Tour this year, and I'm thrilled. This is my "working" vacation every summer, where I get away from the office and the ABN County Fair and Festival Tour Powered by Propane (and this year away from school, too!), and get to play crop scout for a week. The gist of the Tour is that 38 Crop Scouts on the Eastern leg spend the week crisscrossing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota scouting corn and soybean fields. Meanwhile, our counterparts on the Western leg are covering South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota doing the same thing.

What are we looking for? Along with the general condition of the fields and the crop, we're specifically counting the number of soybean pods in a square yard, and performing a "rough and dirty" yield calculation on the corn fields. I'll be "live Tweeting" the Tour again this year, and uploading pictures and video on the ABN Facebook page. Additionally, we'll have exclusive audio on demand at ABNRadio.com featuring farmers, commodity brokers/traders, and other folks serving as Crop Scouts this week.

Finally, I'll offer some commentary each night right here on my blog. Between all those sources, you'll be as close to the Crop Tour as you can possibly get without actually getting in the truck and taking the trip. Which, by the way, I heartily recommend. As one of the "veterans" on Tour, I can tell you that this is one of the most enjoyable things I get to do all year long.

My first Crop Tour was during my tenure as Farm Director at WRFD-AM in Columbus. The National Association of Farm Broadcasting asked me to be the official NAFB representative on the Tour that year, and I've been touring ever since. For a kid who spent more time in the pasture than in between rows of field crops, it was a great opportunity to learn a lot more about corn and soybean production from great farmers all across the Cornbelt. Perhaps that social interaction, as much as anything, is one of the hallmarks of the Tour, and a key reason why I come back.

We have a large number of "rookies" on the Tour this year, but at least 18 of the Scouts on the Eastern leg this year are vets like me, and guys I keep in touch with through the social media universe. I'll share some of their stories throughout the week, and you'll get to hear their commentary in our exclusive audio coverage.

My thanks once again this year to Pioneer Hi-Bred International for sponsoring ABN Radio's coverage of the ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour. Feel free to send me your questions, and stay tuned to all the above listed sources for the latest in how the crop looks across the Eastern Corn Belt!

I realize I'm writing this a few days post facto, but it's been a busy week, so indulge me. Lindsay and I were once again privileged to host the Ohio State Fair Sale of Champions. This marks the fourth year we've anchored the live television broadcast in partnership with the Ohio News Network. For us, this is the most important event of the year. As kids who grew up in 4-H and FFA, showing livestock is a key part of what shaped us into passionate advocates for Ohio agriculture. Most importantly, we value the work and dedication these students put into their projects, and in turn, the money they raise through the Sale of Champions for the Youth Reserve Program.

The Youth Reserve is one of the most impressive youth development programs in agriculture. Since its creation in the late '90s, the program has served to reward junior exhibitors who participate in the Ohio State Fair. Funds for the program come from the dollars received over a cap that is placed on the amount an exhibitor can receive from the Sale of Champions. The funds from the program are distributed among carcass contests, scholarships, the outstanding market exhibitor program, the outstanding breeding exhibitor program, showmanship, skillathons, 4-H and FFA. The Youth Reserve Program has awarded 20,000 youth exhibitors more than $1.5 million since its inception.

This year, the Sale was historic. Breaking six of eight records, shattering several of them in fact, and setting the highest Sale gross in Ohio State Fair history, it was a night we'll all remember for a long time.

For me, I'll also remember it as the night agribusiness really stepped to the plate. We welcomed several new buyers into the Sale this year, and welcomed home a few buyers from yesteryear, too. The Sale is known for the staunch support of perennial buyers like Kroger, Meijer, Charlie Cox, the Vivona Family, and my good friend Steve Rauch. These buyers have each supported the sale for at least a decade, along with several of their business partners like Park Farms or the Union Stock Yards.

In addition to those stalwarts, a trio of agribusiness firms made their presence known in a big way. JD Equipment, Elgin Service Center, and S&S Volvo/GMC purchased the Grand Champion Steer for $65,000. The highlight of the sale, the Grand Champion Steer has traditionally been the domain of heavyweights like Kroger and Rauch. This year, these three firms partnered to support Ohio agriculture, and tell the story of the farm kids who make this state special. JD, with stores in London, Lancaster, Marion, Washington Court House, Wilmington, and Easton (Columbus), made their Sale of Champions debut a few years back, but really made a splash by partnering with two new buyers.

Elgin Service Center, makers of the K Building and dealers in top shelf grain handling and storage equipment, had already decided they were taking part in the Sale this year long before the Fair started. S&S, selling trucks to several farms and agribusinesses in Northwestern Ohio, joined the group to congratulate their mutual customer the Heintz family. It always excites me when agricultural businesses get involved in the Sale of Champions, and especially when they take a run at the Champion Steer.

Likewise, we were once again thrilled to chat with Eileen Kale of Kale Marketing in Richwood. The Sale lost a key supporter, and more importantly we all lost a close friend, with the passing of Eileen's husband DeLyn this year. The Kale Family, including nephew Troy who is a major driving force in the family business, are one of my favorites at the Sale. In addition to the work they do at the Sale of Champions, Kale Marketing support numerous county fair sales as well. Eileen carried on the Kale legacy this year, and I'm especially excited that she's still pulling DeLyn's tractor on the OSTPA/NTPA circuits.

Along with making new friends, we welcomed back an old friend. Bob Evans Farms joined the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation to purchase the Reserve Grand Champion Market Barrow. Bob Evans himself is one of the "Founding Fathers" of the Sale. He, along with legends like Governor Jim Rhoades, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas, and livestock auctioneer Merlin Woodruff brought the sale from a simple idea to being one of the most famous livestock sales in the world. Absent from the festivities for several years, Farm Bureau leveraged a growing partnership with the restaurant chain and food company to get the Bob Evans name back in the ring. It was truly special, especially considering that Bob Evans purchased 20 out of 23 Champion Barrows at the Ohio State Fair from 1957- 1984. The company donated the meat from the barrow to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank.

Here's the full recap:

The results of the 2010 Sale of Champions are as follows:

Grand Champion Market Beef
Exhibited by: Danielle Heintz, Auglaize County
Purchased by: S & S Volvo and GMC Trucks of Lima, OH; J.D. Equipment; Elgin Service Center
Price: $65,000
Cap: $21,000

Reserve Grand Champion Market Beef*
Exhibited by: Andy Sloan, Richland County
Purchased by: Steve R. Rauch Excavating and Demolition
Price: $30,000
Cap: $10,000

Grand Champion Market Barrow
Exhibited by: Haley Clinker, Defiance County
Purchased by: Meijer, Inc.
Price: $42,000
Cap: $9,000

Reserve Grand Champion Market Barrow*
Exhibited by: Alec Bremek, Logan County
Purchased by: Bob Evans Farms; Ohio Farm Bureau
Price: $27,000
Cap: $6,000

Grand Champion Market Lamb*
Exhibited by: Rachael Overs, Logan County
Purchased by: The Kroger Company
Price: $45,000
Cap: $9,000

Reserve Grand Champion Market Lamb*
Exhibited by: Madison Banbury, Knox County
Purchased by: Kale Marketing; Huffman's Market; Burkhart Farm Center; Ohio Racing Industry; Direct Feeds
Price: $22,000
Cap: $6,000

Grand Champion Meat Chickens*
Exhibited by: Tyler Gray, Union County
Purchased by: The Kroger Company; Park Farms
Price: $27,000
Cap: $5,000

Reserve Grand Champion Meat Chickens*
Exhibited by: Garrett Shafer, Miami County
Purchased by: Concessions by Cox; Amusements of America; Event Marketing Strategies; Brian Shenkman
Price: $14,500
Cap: $3,000

2010 total sale: $272,500
2010 amount earned for Youth Reserve Program: $203,500

*indicates new record

Records broken include:
Reserve Grand Champion Market Beef, previous record was $27,000 set in 2009 by the Kroger Company; Reserve Grand Champion Market Barrow, previous record was $26,000 set in 2008 by Meijer, Inc.; Grand Champion Market Lamb, previous record was $30,000 set in 2001 by the Kroger Company; Reserve Grand Champion Market Lamb, previous record was $17,500 set in 2006 by Kale Marketing, Burkhart Farm Center and J.D. Equipment; Grand Champion Meat Chickens, previous record was $18,000 set in 2001 by the Kroger Company; Reserve Grand Champion Meat Chickens, previous record was $11,500 set in 2008 by Kale Marketing and Burkhart Farm Center.

It was a great night. We'll have DVD's of the live television broadcast available for purchase on the website next week.