Cropping specialist sees problem with $12 wheat

By Larry Dreiling

While $12 wheat is a nice thing, a high-priced crop brings agronomic problems, according to Dr. Drew Lyon, dryland cropping systems specialist at the University of Nebraska's Panhandle Research and Extension Center at Scottsbluff.

Lyon spoke during the Sidney, Neb., stop of the fifth annual Small Grain Solutions tour.

"While there are good things that come with high-priced wheat, there might be a problem with the concept from an agronomic perspective," Lyon said.

With the assistance of research by UNL agricultural economist Paul Burgerner, Lyon described returns to producers in reduced tillage wheat-fallow rotations as far outpacing returns generated by adding other crops, such as corn, sunflowers and grain sorghum into a rotation with wheat.

"What pops out at you is how good wheat fallow looks. When I came to Scottsbluff in 1990, there was little other than wheat-fallow around. I have been trying since then to get farmers to intensify and diversify their cropping systems."

Crop rotations work

Lyon noted the work of Dr. David Baltsenberger, a former Scottsbluff center colleague, who did research on a number of crops, including amaranth, proso millet, safflowers, and different kinds of forages as alternatives to wheat-fallow.

"We have quite a few people in this area growing proso millet, corn and sunflowers, but with these high prices, a lot of people are thinking they need more wheat in their program and are considering going back to wheat-fallow," Lyon said.

"You know that's a horrible thing to do agronomically. As an agronomist, I can understand why you do it. Just don't do it three years in a row. In that third year it can get awful. You get diseases and weeds and all kinds of problems."

When Lyon arrived at Scottsbluff, he said he saw problem weeds, like jointed goat grass, downy brome and volunteer rye.

"All three are annual grasses and all grow very well in a wheat-fallow system. Over the next few years we looked at ways to address these problems. We performed an eight-year study of various rotations," Lyon said. "Basically by taking winter wheat out of the rotation for two years, we didn't completely eradicate downy brome but we got it to very low levels. The same thing happened with feral rye.

"Just by adding one summer crop to our rotations, we can get out of that cycle."

As this research was going on in the 1990s, two things happened that assisted in the research to show it to be profitable: Freedom to Farm provisions of the 1995 farm bill and it rained.

"It helped those summer crops work out," Lyon said.

Another pest working its way across Nebraska is the wheat stem sawfly, unless producer act with heavier tillage to destroy the stalks where the harbor in winter. Wheat curl mites also are very active in some fields.

"The more wheat you plant on last year's wheat ground, you're going to have more problems than the wheat stem sawfly. Whenever you can, destroy the stalks," Lyon said. "Also, in the last few years, we've had a lot of tan spot. It's one of a whole list of residue-borne diseases.

The list includes septoria leaf blotch, septoria leaf and glume blotch, take-all, chephalosporium stripe, root and crown rot and seeding blights.

"All of these do well when you turn a lot of wheat residue."

Lyon suggests a series of management practices on wheat to prevent residue-borne diseases. This series is headlined by crop rotation.

"You want to seed your wheat following a non-host crop," Lyon said. "You don't want to be seeding wheat that has had wheat on it recently. You want at least two years between wheat crops. That's where wheat-fallow and especially wheat-wheat gets to be an issue."

He also suggests planting resistant, locally adapted cultivars, adjust seeding dates to prevent wheat streak mosaic, control weeds better, bury crop residues and apply fungicides.

"Farmers in this part of the country aren't used to using fungicides," Lyon said. "Generally you don't see to many of them but you will see more use of them as we leave more residue. In areas where there are light soils, where there is a lot of stubble mulching and no-tilling, we can always find some diseases because of the residue they carry over in wheat-fallow rotations."

Lyon added that conservation tillage mixed with rotations work well, especially in the last few years where drought has affected cropland on the High Plains.

"The drought we've recently experienced is actually longer and drier than the Dust Bowl era," Lyon said. "I don't see as much of it as we used to because we are leaving more crop residue. One way to control diseases and weeds is to till, but the result is you see more soil blowing and I don't think we want to go back to that."

Instead, Lyon suggests moving toward a more intensified cropping system utilizing conservation tillage.

"The benefits of conservation tillage are many," Lyon said. "Even though we have a fair system of fallow, we still lose a fair bit of moisture if we don't use conservation tillage. It can be up to 60 percent of stored moisture."

The best thing producers can do, Lyon says, is to always have a working crop that uses the water in the soil.

"In a fallow system, you can actually lose more water in a year's time than you store it in some cases. Why not use that stored water to grow a crop and still store a little moisture," Lyon said. "Evidence shows that by growing just one summer crop you can get a nice bump in yields on wheat and a nice bump of biomass."

Lyon thinks the benefits of an intensified cropping system includes increases in annualized grain yield that mean increased net incomes. Such a system improves the physical and chemical properties of the soil, increased weed and disease control, and increased water use efficiency. It reduces the risk of total crop failure.

"You can do a lot of good things for your soil and increase your yields through intensive cropping," Lyon said. "It's a tough sell, though, when you got wheat at $12."

Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117 or by e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com.

4/9/08
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Date: 4/17/08

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