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Nulls keep Master Agronomist title in family line
By Jennifer M. Latzke
In the cotton business, folks often use a play on words explain that knowing how to raise a successful crop is all about one's "jeans."
In the case of the Null family of southeastern Oklahoma, good agronomic practices and a thriving diversified farm are attributed more to their hard work and knowledge. But, good "jean-etics" plays an important role too.
Master agronomists
Larry Null, and his sons Tom and Scott Null, raise cotton, seed wheat, cattle and a host of other crops on their family's farm just south of the city limits of Hobart, Okla. Recently, Larry was named Oklahoma State University's 2005 Master Agronomist by the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, an honor he shares with his father.
"The Master Agronomist award was quite an honor and it meant a tremendous amount to me because my dad received the award in 1956 and I received mine almost 50 years later," Larry said.
According to OSU, the Master Agronomist award recognizes Oklahoma producers who actively participate in agronomic education programs and contribute valuable public service through their efforts in soil conservation, range management or crop production.
The Nulls have a long partnership with OSU Cooperative Extension Service. Not only are all three Nulls graduates of the OSU in agricultural economics, but the family also offers land for use by the university in test plot research for Wheat and cotton and they also provide seed for sorghum and Wheat trials.
"We provide the land and labor for the test plots and they provide seed," Tom said, in regards to their work with cotton researchers. "And then, either they or we will harvest the crop and we get all the data back from them." The test data helps the Nulls make production decisions and the university benefits from the donation of time and land.
"The OSU Cooperative Extension Service is constantly having meetings on timely and important information and they help us keep up with what's going on in agriculture," Larry said.
"We like to see the data because it's an unbiased opinion on some of the new varieties and chemicals on the market," Tom said. The data they receive includes the yield and quality grades of cotton varieties, as well as the effectiveness of herbicides and insecticides on species that are in their area, and the effectiveness of defoliants and plant growth regulators.
Learning from cooperation
One of the results of working with researchers on various studies was that the Nulls switched from conventional tillage to conservation tillage about six years ago.
Tired of wind erosion hurting their fragile cotton seedlings, the Nulls switched to a completely no-till system. While this could pose a problem for their certified and registered seed Wheat business, a rotation of cotton and summer fallow can clean up the land enough to ensure their Wheat seed purity.
"We'll cut our Wheat about the first of June and leave the stubble at about six inches tall," Tom said. "We'll fallow that ground until the next year and meanwhile spray it with Roundup to keep it clean of weeds until we plant the next spring. We'll plant straight into that stubble." The process has eliminated the need for a rotary hoe and a cultivator on the Null farm, in addition to the conservation of precious water resources.
Before they switched to no-till, a rain would stop cotton seedlings by forming a light crust on the soil. A packing rain, Tom said, would damage the crop. Now that the family plants straight into the Wheat straw, the rain and wind doesn't do as much damage to the cotton seedlings. In the past three years, the Nulls have found the yield of their cotton to improve every year, and Tom attributes this to the fact that they try to stay off of the crop land with heavy equipment, in order to decrease soil compaction. Rather than overworking the ground to control weeds, the Nulls now just go across the field a couple of times before planting in the spring with a sprayer and a light tractor applying insecticides and herbicides. The Nulls have a planter they converted to no-till and it doesn't disturb very much soil in order to plant the seed in the ground, Larry added.
They'll spray the cotton crop a few more times while it's growing with insecticide or Roundup and then strip the cotton themselves. Tom added that by not plowing the field six or seven times in the spring, they are not stirring up any weed seeds in the soil, causing them to germinate.
The Nulls farm is all dryland acreage, although there are some irrigation pivots scattered amongst their neighbors in the area. This, along with their use of no-till, makes their farming operation more efficient. Without the expenses of fuel, equipment repair, irrigation and labor, they can pass the economic and environmental savings on to their crops.
"We conserve a lot of moisture with that cover crop of stubble," Scott said. Tom added that in addition to soil testing for nutritional needs of the crop, they also take samples to check the subsoil moisture at six and 18 inches deep. They've seen that the moisture they conserve with no-till is being saved in the soil for future crops.
"We have to have that subsoil moisture to get through the hottest parts of our summers," Scott said.
Advancements in varieties
With the new cotton varieties that use various weed and insect resistance biotechnologies, cotton is resurging as a profitable cash crop in Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and even on into Kansas, Larry said. Additionally, cotton is seeing a resurgence in the Oklahoma region due to the decreasing numbers of boll weevils and boll worms through eradication programs, he added.
"Cotton has changed, and seed is probably the biggest item," Larry said. "Now we have stacked gene varieties, RoundupReady and Bt cotton. Years ago, boll weevils and boll worms were big problems in Oklahoma. Production in some areas of eastern Oklahoma and Texas just shut down completely. They couldn't afford to raise cotton with the expenses." Now, cotton is going great guns again, he added.
The Nulls have always produced cotton, though, and see it as an essential part of their diversified farm, in addition to their sorghum and forage acreage and their herd of Angus cattle. The family will plant on average 500 acres a year to stripper cotton varieties. They get their cottonseed through one of their local gins.
"Varieties change so much that there really isn't one cotton of choice," Tom said. "Yield and quality are both factors we consider." Quality also varies according to the moisture the crop receives. This past summer, the Nulls' cotton had few days where the temperatures reached the required heat units level, and there were a few rains. They harvested about 600 to 700 pounds per acre, or about a bale and a quarter cotton.
The Nulls market their cotton through the Plains Cotton Cooperative Association's pool. "We turn the marketing over to the pros who are doing it day in and day out," Tom said. "They're always looking out for the best price and in larger lots they can easily sell to mills."
"The pool's track record shows that on average the price they can get the farmer is higher than what he can get marketing his own cotton," Scott said. Bonuses for quality and no storage fees for any cotton that's in the marketing pool are also advantages.
The next generation of Nulls, Tom and Scott, is doing its level best to uphold the "jean-etic" heritage of master agronomists. The Nulls are one of the top ten Wheat seed producers in Oklahoma, besides being AgriPro seed Wheat dealers. And, they're passing on the lessons they've learned about farming to their children.
And, maybe in the future another generation of Nulls will be able to attribute their farming success to their great "jeans."
Jennifer M. Latzke can be reached by phone at 620-227-1807, or by e-mail at jlatzke@hpj.com.
Date: 2/23/06
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