Along with Iowa’s more traditional crops, two species of cucumber vines are having a bumper year. It’s not an edible kind of cucumber, but a pest that can choke out all sorts of plants, including young stands of trees. Iowa State University agronomy professor Bob Hartzler says the cucumber culprits are the wild and the burr varieties.

“There is more of it this year,” Hartzler says. “Both species start relatively late compared to some of our other weeds. In many years, when it turns dry in the summer, because of the late start, they can’t compete with the already-established vegetation. This year, with moisture throughout the growing season, it’s allowed them to thrive.” It’s especially noticeable in the trees this year.

Hartzler says the light green vines will grow up to 30 feet long and coil around anything they touch. He advises against using chemicals to control the weeds. “They grow in areas where it’s hard to use herbicides, simply because if they are growing up on a tree, there’s not a selective chemical that will kill the cucumber species without damaging the tree,” Hartzler says. “When you have a big problem, usually it’s a relatively small number of plants.”

Because they’re an annual, he says if you clip them off at the base, they aren’t going to regrow from that root. The seeds falling from the plant will likely grow again next year, so he says it’s best to pull the seedlings as soon as possible in the spring. Hartzler says they’re very aggressive and they’re native to Iowa so they’re not considered invasive, but he says they can be a nuisance.

(Radio Iowa)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Corn and soybean crops are in good condition but the challenge for farmers is getting the crops harvested before the weather turns cold.  Late planting caused the crops to mature later than normal. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says in its weekly update Monday that 60 percent of the corn crop is mature, well behind the five-year average of 70 percent. Soybeans are two percentage points behind the average.

Just 2 percent of the Iowa corn crop is harvested far less than the 15 percent average. About 3 percent of soybeans are out of the fields, behind the 17 percent average. Nationally, 12 percent of corn is out of the fields half the average at this point in time. Ten percent of soybeans are harvested, seven points behind the average.

Most Iowa farmers haven’t started the harvest yet but already it’s clear there will be problems with moving the grain. U-S Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx says rail cars will be in short supply and he doesn’t foresee any solution coming down the tracks. “Our surface transportation board, along with our rail companies, and along with us in Washington, we’re going to have to figure out a way to create more capacity so that commodities can move,” Foxx says. Farmers need rail cars to move their crops, but many rail cars are being diverted to haul oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and Montana.

“It’s an issue we have to deal with,” Foxx says. “The Surface Transportation Board has primary responsibility for it but clearly with the proliferation of the movement of crude oil by rail, it increases competition for precious rail space.” Foxx says there’s no easy fix to the looming rail car shortage. “Even if Congress funded us tomorrow, it would still take some time to get track on the ground and things going,” Foxx says. “It’s not going to be a short-term solution but again, the Surface Transportation Board has primary responsibility for trying to work out the issues that have to do with commodities moving.”

Many blame the rail car shortage on the delay on building the Keystone X-L oil pipeline across Nebraska. That pipeline could carry the Bakken oil, freeing up thousands of rail cars to move crops.

(Radio Iowa)

It now costs Iowa grocery stores and other businesses more to accept payments through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Merchants now have to pay for their own equipment and processing services whenever SNAP cards are used. Kevin Concannon, the U-S-D-A’s Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services and a former Iowan, says the change was designed to prevent the illegal use of the program.

Concannon says, “We found that in some locations where a manual machine was used to record the expenditure on the SNAP benefit, there was a higher rate of fraud or trafficking.” About 421-thousand Iowans now receive SNAP benefits, or about 13-percent of the population. Concannon says the goal is to make the use of those benefits more secure.

“There are now 257,000 locations across the United States where one can use or spend your SNAP benefits,” Concannon says. “The requirement will be now that all of those outlets will be required to use electronic benefit capacity.” Iowans who make part of their living at the 230 farmers markets across the state will be glad to hear that there are a few exceptions to the rule.

“Those exceptions are basically farmers markets because it recognizes the nature of a farmers market is often on a vacant lot or in a rural area,” Concannon says. “It’s part of our effort to really reach out and support local agriculture and to encourage people to purchase healthier foods.” Other exceptions include military commissaries, direct marketing farmers and non-profit food cooperatives. Concannon is the former director of the Iowa Department of Human Services.

(Radio Iowa)

w/ Kate Olson

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An invasive plant that’s referred to as “the vine that ate the south” is spreading north and some experts are forecasting it’ll reach Iowa within a decade. Kudzu has been a problem in the southern U.S. for decades. Doctor Lewis Ziska, with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, says one theory for kudzu’s spread northward is climate change. “One of the things that has kept kudzu in check in the past has basically been cold winters. And as the winters warm, kudzu is essentially migrating northward and so you’re seeing it in locations where it hasn’t been seen in the past,” Ziska says. Kudzu was planted in the south in the 1920s and 30s to control soil erosion, which it does quite well. But otherwise, it’s mostly useless and damaging.

“It basically eliminates all of the other species. There’s only going to be kudzu,” Ziska says. “Kudzu is also a host for soybean rust. Kudzu is a sort of a super weed, if you will, one that we need to really keep an eye on and one that we need to come up with new ways to try and detect and of course to try and manage and that’s really, truly difficult.” The climbing plant with purple flowers can grow almost a foot a day under proper conditions. Ziska says it you find kudzu, you should physically remove it or consider getting a goat.

“Goats love kudzu. And if you can get the goats to basically attack the kudzu, keep eating the kudzu, eventually the kudzu can be controlled,” Ziska says. Studies have shown kudzu can be turned into a biofuel and used in medicines. Bob Hartlzer, a weed scientist with Iowa State University Extension, says there was a report of kudzu being found in southeast Iowa, but it was never confirmed. Most reports show kudzu has reached two of Iowa’s neighboring states, with the plant climbing into southern Missouri and Illinois.

(Radio Iowa)

Cass County: Corn $3.12, Beans $10.40
Adair County: Corn $3.09, Beans $10.43
Adams County: Corn $3.09, Beans $10.39
Audubon County: Corn $3.11, Beans $10.42
East Pottawattamie County: Corn $3.15, Beans $10.40
Guthrie County: Corn $3.14, Beans $10.44
Montgomery County: Corn $3.14, Beans $10.42
Shelby County: Corn $3.15, Beans $10.40
Oats $3.13 (always the same in all counties)

An official with the Humane Society of the United States is responding to recent criticism that the animal rights organization is “anti-agriculture.” Joe Maxwell, the vice president for outreach with the H-S-U-S, says they have many thousands of members in Iowa and across the region. “The Humane Society of the United States is not trying to eliminate animal agriculture,” Maxwell says. “It does believe there are certain corporate industrialized ag policies and practices that are just inhumane.”

Maxwell specifically makes reference to tight quarters for laying hens and small gestation crates for sows. A spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association calls the Humane Society of the United States an “extremist activist group” that is “against livestock producers and cattle producers.” Other critics of the H-S-U-S have blasted it for having an alleged goal of ending all livestock operations. Maxwell says, “They try to take one piece of information and twist it to make it a negative and ignore the full truth and facts of who HSUS is and how we operate and what we’re for.”

He insists the organization isn’t against farmers, but it is against agricultural practices which treat animals cruelly. Maxwell farms in Missouri and is a former lieutenant governor in Missouri. He says people in Iowa and elsewhere need to know there are distortions of the truth and flat-out lies being told about the Humane Society of the United States.  “It’s unfortunate but we are working hard every day for them know who we are, to get out into the countryside with our ag council members and have a dialogue with the farmers and ranchers,” he says.

The Humane Society of the United States has tangled with Iowa farming operations in recent years, including in 2012, threatening to sue 28 swine operations in Iowa over what it said were inhumane conditions. The National Pork Producers Council accuses what they refer to as “radical animal rights groups” of having the “goal of ending food-animal production in the U.S.”

After negative messages were made about the Nebraska State Fair last month, that state’s Governor Dave Heineman said: “The Humane Society of the United States is anti-agriculture and they’re out to destroy thousands of job opportunities for young people in this state.” A recent Purdue University study found many consumers get their view of farming from the H-S-U-S or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA.

(Radio Iowa)

The U-S-D-A has awarded new grants to universities and organizations in Iowa and 30 other states that are working to develop new conservation methods. U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack: “Farmers want to know how to deal with the variations of weather that they’re beginning to see — the more intense storms, the longer droughts, the occasional flood or the tornado that’s very destructive,” Vilsack said. “These are the kind of programs that will help us learn a little bit more about that.” Vilsack made the announcement this past week at a farm near the Quad Cities, in Rock Island County, Illinois.

“Conservation has this extraordinary opportunity not only to preserve the soil which is critically important to this farming operation and every farming operation, but also to preserve the quality of the water and the quantity of the water available,” Vilsack said. The U-S-D-A awarded nearly 16 million dollars from the Conservation Innovation Grant program this week. Vilsack says half of those grants will focus on soil health.

“It’s a way of preserving this great topsoil that we’ve been blessed to have in the Midwest and also preserving and conserving our scarce water resources so that we continue to have not just an abundance of water, but the ability of that water to provide additional economic opportunity in the form of tourism,” Vilsack says.

One of the grants is going to the National Corn Growers Assocaition, to find new ways to increase productivity and increase farmer participation in conservation efforts. Since it started several years ago, the Conservation Innovation Grant program has handed out 126-million dollars to finance more than 300 research project. Two of the grants handed out this week will be used to experiment with cover crops in Iowa to improve soil health.

(Radio Iowa)

w/ Max Dirks

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