Drones and the Future of Farming

Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., the world’s largest corn processor, received regulatory approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones that will locate and assess crop damage.
Using drones will help expedite the processing of crop-insurance claims, the Chicago-based company said in a statement Wednesday.“We are on track to have this technology in the air for our customers next year,” Greg Mills, president of ADM’s Crop Risk Services unit, which offers insurance, said in the statement.
Drones are one of the latest tools in precision agriculture, in which data is collected by satellites and sensors and analyzed to maximize farm yields.
While the FAA bans commercial drone use, it has granted exemptions to operators who track crop yields, monitor oil and gas facilities, and inspect power lines and smokestacks. To get an exemption, companies must certify that their drones will be operated by licensed pilots and that a second person observe the flights.

Looking for High Yield Soybeans

For the first time, Walter Godwin will plant soybeans under irrigation -- which isn’t a typical practice for a Georgia farmer to do -- because getting a higher soybean yield is his best bet for solid cash flow in 2015.

During an interview with South East Farm Press Godwin pointed out his choice of soybeans to lead the way on his farm is unusual considering he farms in Mitchell and Grady counties in Georgia, one of the largest peanut-producing regions in the country. His particular pocket of land has heavy soils, though, which are good for making a good peanut crop but not good for digging and harvesting the peanuts. The soil hangs on to the pods too tight.

For Godwin, 2015 is the year to go for higher-yielding soybeans. Cotton prices threaten barely to stay in the 60-cent-per-pound range; contracts for peanuts, due to a market glut, have been low to nonexistent, and, besides, he can’t get the yields in the wagons needed to make peanuts cash flow anyway. Corn and wheat prices are down.

Pretty enough

So that leaves soybean at around $9 to $9.50 per bushel, the most-attractive option; not pretty, but pretty enough for him and his best option for finance in 2015. But he needs the yields from the soybeans to make it work.

He’s hoping to average as near to 75 bushels per acre as he can get with his 500 acres of soybeans. He plans 300 of those acres under to be under irrigation, and the pivots where being put in as he attended the Feb. 5 Georgia/Florida Soybean/Small Grain Expo.

Godwin is the current president of the Georgia/Florida Soybean Association, so he is no stranger to soybeans, but his beans have always been dryland. And he has done well at times with dryland, averaging 50 bushels or better per acre in some fields.

Drought conditions and 100-deree weather hit his part of Georgia in June and July of last year, right at soybean blooming time, and dropped Godwin’s earlier planted soybean yields to the 10- to 15-bushel range.

He’ll plant about four different soybean varieties, going in the ground starting mid-April and work them in through May. The varieties will be full-season determinates but he is going to try again an indeterminate variety, which put on the pods last year but didn’t make because of the drought. But under irrigation, he thinks the indeterminate will produce what he needs.

Obtainable yields

He will take care of the beans to secure the yields, he said, which means he will spend to apply N through the irrigation systems as needed and keep insect and disease pressure down with spray trips across the field. But it inputs will be as minimal as possible without sacrificing yield potential.

Many growers balk at spending much money on a soybean crop. They get 40 bushels per acre or so and they’re happy. That’s fine. But by doing a few things differently like Godwin -- and nothing really too flashy or spending much more -- they can hit 60- or 70-bushel averages and be profitable.

When prices for soybeans reached $15 per bushel and higher a few years back, Southeast growers looked closer at getting more bushels out of their beans, said Jared Whitaker, University of Georgia Extension agronomist, and some growers started seeing soybeans in a different light, a crop worth investing in for higher profits.

“When we’re talking about $5 (per bushel) beans, I can see not wanting to put much if anything in the crop. I get that. But when we were talking higher prices and even now with close to $10 soybeans, like where we are right now, we’re still talking being profitable with higher yields,” Whitaker said.

Wheat Yield Contest

Agriculture.com noticed a new wheat yield contest will help identify the nation's top wheat growers, drive innovation and urge experimentation with new production technologies, the National Wheat Foundation (NWF) announced during the Commodity Classic in Phoenix, Arizona Feb. 26. 

Yield contest participants will compete by wheat class (there are six different classes), by dryland or irrigated practices, and by state and region to ensure the competition is between peers. Contest parameters include class, geography, quality and yield. The contest rules are still being developed and will be announced prior to the entry date, according to NWF.

The NWF is launching the National Wheat Yield Contest in conjunction with BASF, says Dusty Tallman, wheat grower from Brandon Colorado and NWF chairman.  

“We appreciate the generous support of our primary industry partner, BASF, to assist in the creation of this program. We are looking forward to this contest increasing grower productivity, helping build a stronger U.S. wheat industry and increasing knowledge transfer between growers,” Tallman says. 

The contest will ensure that U.S. wheat producers continue to provide an ample supply of high-quality wheat to its domestic and foreign customers. 

BASF has partnered with the NWF to help growers maximize inputs to get the most of every acre, said Neil Bentley, Director of Marketing, BASF. “Initiatives such as the National Wheat Yield Contest give growers an opportunity to work with innovations that help them break yield barriers, and allows farmers to grow and learn from one another.”

Save Billions of Gallons of Water

Farmers who use polytubing for irrigation often don’t get the most efficient use of their water resources, says Chris DeClerk, irrigation specialist with Delta Plastics, Little Rock, Ark., who spoke at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Agricultural Consultants Association which was covered by Delta Farm Press.

For more information, watch the video here.

Farm Bill Deadline Nears

Deadlines are nearing for decisions farmers need to make to comply with provisions of the new farm legislation, Keith Coble reminded peanut producers at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Peanut Growers Association in a recent interview with Delta Farm Press.

“You have until Feb. 27 to update yield history and/or reallocate base acres,” he said. “You have until March 31 to make a one-time choice between ARC (Agricultural Risk Coverage) and PLC (Price Loss Coverage) for crop years 2014 through 2018. From mid-April through summer 2015, you can sign contracts for 2014 and 2015 crop years.”

Coble, who is Giles Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics at Mississippi State University, served as chief economist for the minority staff of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee during the 2013/14 farm bill debate.

He notes that help is available to producers from MSU’s Agricultural Economics Department in the form of spreadsheets that can be used in making the calculations (http://bit.ly/1tW5dLl). “You can plug in your own circumstances and figure out how it will work for you.”

Coble says also  that the Mississippi Farm Service Agency has been “very cooperative in providing knowledgeable people to go to meetings and bring farmers up to speed on these provisions.” And he and other Mississippi Extension specialists have been on the meetings trail for the past few months.

Among the things farmers need to keep in mind about the new legislation, he says:

• “You can’t build base. If you have 200 acres of base on a farm serial number for a particular set of crops, when you get done you’re still going to have 200 acres of base. You can’t build it, but you can reallocate it.

• “Yield updating is probably one of the big no-brainers. Because of past programs and the inability to update base yields, we have a lot of farmers who have relatively low base yields. You now have the opportunity to take 90 percent of the 2008-2012 average, and in a lot of instances that will be a higher number. I would suggest you take a look at that.”

• PLC program: “The peanut industry and rice industry wanted a traditional price-triggered program however a price-triggered program was created for all program commodities. The corn reference price is $3.70, and the Congressional Budget Office said that would cost almost nothing — now look where corn prices are.”

In terms of ARC versus PLC, Coble says, “for rice and peanut farmers most analyses suggest PLC. I’d think really hard before I chose ARC on either of these crops. But for beans, corn, and wheat, it depends on what you think the price path is.

Decisions on ARC/PLC

Beans still look pretty favorable toward ARC; for corn, it’s more of a toss-up with an slight edge to ARC in most cases. In Mississippi, we have some counties that have a pretty good history with ARC, and others that don’t, so look at your own county.”

Farmers also need to keep in mind, he says, that “you can be in the PLC program and SCO (Supplemental Coverage Option), but if you’re in the ARC program you can’t purchase SCO insurance.

“The two versions of the ARC program are a shallow loss revenue program. The county-triggered program is commodity specific and pays on 85 percent of base acres. The area-triggered program is paid on 65 percent of base acres, and it is going to lump your farm serial numbers together and it’s going to be across all your commodities.”

While the farm level ARC program was designed for wheat farmers in Montana, Coble says, “I could envision a few cases in Mississippi where someone has one farm serial number and is only growing one crop. This is a scenario where individual ARC might work.”

It’s also important to understand, he says, that with ARC, “rather than a fixed legislative target, it uses an olympic average on yield and price. Take the last five years, drop the high and the low, and average the other three.

We were at pretty high commodity price levels when this bill was written; now we’re at lower price levels for several crops. What we’re going to see is that ARC will likely ride these price levels down.  We’ve got a lot of upward-trending yields, so it’s going to move in the opposite direction.”

SCO is very similar to ARC, he notes. “It’s a shallow loss insurance product, delivered by RMA (Risk Management Agency), with a premium subsidy of 65 percent of the total. The top coverage level is 86 percent, the same as ARC. For these products, RMA is moving toward using their own data rather than NASS county data for these yield series. It will be interesting to see how it works.

“You may purchase either STAX (Stacked Income Protection Plan) or SCO on cotton. STAX is just for cotton and is very similar to SCO, but has a higher premium subsidy — an 80 percent subsidy and a 90 percent guarantee. I think a lot of cotton producers will prefer STAX to SCO.”

Crop insurance coverage levels in Mississippi “have been going up fairly rapidly,” Coble says. “I thought we were catching up with the Midwest, but I was wrong. They’ve been moving to higher coverage (75 percent to 85 percent) and the primary reason for it is enterprise units — growers have gone to enterprise units in order to get higher coverage.

Switching for more benefit

The higher percentage the subsidy, the more benefit you get. That’s why I think we’ve got a lot of people switching from basic units to enterprise units. However, with enterprise units, you’re going to have some offsetting losses. If you’ve got a low yield field with a yield loss, and another field that doesn’t, they’ll be averaged together.

With SCO, Coble says, “You’re topping off an individual coverage policy with an area trigger policy. In the past, you were never able to buy two insurance policies on the same acre — now you can. They’re intended to cover layers of loss. You can have two policies insuring the same acre.

“The ARC program, an FSA-delivered program, is doing much the same thing as SCO, but it’s not tied to the crop insurance choice you make. So, you can buy a coverage level that doesn’t match up to ARC, or you can buy a coverage level that laps over into the ARC range.”

As decision times near, Coble says, “I would suggest you ask your crop insurance agent five questions:

1.    Can you give me a quote for enterprise units and trend adjusted yields?

2.    Will you show me the premium for different coverage levels?

3.    What about topping off individual coverage with SCO?

4.    Will you give me a quote for separate coverage levels by practice?

5.    What about the APH (Actual Production History) yield exclusion?”

And he cautions, “There is a lot of bad information out there. Be very careful about using information from the Midwest to make decisions here in the South.

Questions growers “need to be asking” about the ARC/PLC issue, Coble says:

1.    How much do you want to protect yourself from risk or increase government payments? “Are you trying to protect yourself from risk, or are you trying to get the most money from the government?”

2.    How much do you value having a price floor under the price of a crop? “If you sleep better at night when you’ve got a $3.70 floor under your corn, then take the PLC program, even though ARC might pay you more money. We don’t know what these programs are going to pay you in 2018. It’s just a guess.”

3.    How much are you willing to depend on individual crop insurance for risk protection?

4.    How much are you willing to depend on area-triggered crop insurance for risk protection? “Remember that area-triggered programs may not trigger when your farm has a loss. It’s not about whether your average yield is higher or lower — it’s about whether the county yield is low when your yield is low.”

5.    How much are you going to worry about relatively small commodity program payments versus controlling cost?

Some “easy calls” for producers, Coble says, will be conversion of cotton base to generic base and yield updates. He notes that farm level ARC “may not be a good fit” for diversified producers, and says STAX will likely be preferred over SCO for cotton unless crop insurance coverage is low.

Among important things to remember: “Area-triggered programs may not trigger when you have a loss. Title 1 programs are on base acres, not planted acres. And, compared to direct payments which are paid every year, ARC, PLC, and SCO are expected to pay less than 50 percent of the time.”

Farming Near an Urban Enviroment

Adversity comes in many different forms for our nation’s farmers. From unpredictable weather patterns and fluctuating commodity prices to seemingly ever-increasing input costs and pest complexes that can keep even the most seasoned consultant guessing at times, adversity seems to be a word synonymous with farming.

For one Mississippian who farms just south of the Tennessee/Mississippi state line where Olive Branch (Desoto County) meets the southern boundary of Memphis (Shelby County), In a recent interview with Delta Farm Press, Wes Hoggard, owner of Hoggard Farms (and Stateline Turf and Tractor, a John Deere dealership), has to keep his eyes on farm land replete with a very specific kind of adversity with which more and more farmers are having to deal — urban encroachment.

From 1990 to 2000, the population of Olive Branch exploded from around 3,000, to over 21,000. From 1990 to 2010, Olive Branch was the fastest growing city in the United States with an astounding growth rate of 838 percent. Mississippi Highway 302 (known by most in the area as Goodman Road) is a major transportation corridor running thru Olive Branch, with its most western point ending in Walls, and the most eastern point terminating just west of Mount Pleasant.

Urban Movement

Hoggard has been farming in this area for over 20 years — long before urban encroachment veered its multi-faceted commercial head. “I’ve been lucky in one respect when it comes to proximity to warehouses, semi-trucks and subdivisions…,” he says, “…because the fields that I farm are, for the most part, linked together with suitable access roads which greatly reduces the number of times I have to move my equipment.”

But Hoggard not only has to deal with changing pest complexes each year, he also has to deal with what he calls “an encroachment complex.” It’s easy to understand his “personally-coined” term as we both turn our heads toward the highway, where a steady stream of cars, trucks and school bus traffic screams by at 65 mph — while we sit in his John Deere 9670 Bullet Rotor Combine just 50 feet from the east-bound shoulder of the four-lane highway.

The fields Hoggard has been farming in this area vary in their relationship to traffic density. “Some fields are still tucked away from most urbanization but some, especially in the last five years, have become neighbors to more and more warehouses, subdivisions and commercial real estate developments,” he adds.

When it comes to making applications on whatever crop he’s currently producing, his only option is a ground rig sprayer. “Ag pilots won’t even consider flying in this area due to the number of roof tops (single unit family dwellings), but even with a ground rig — if there’s a slight breeze, I have to delay spraying, especially if the wind is blowing toward someone’s backyard,” Hoggard says.

And he can’t even think about burning off a wheat field. “That gets people, and the local fire department, way too anxious,” as he shakes his head, pointing to a subdivision that rests adjacent to a set of massive power lines — both of which are juxtaposed along one of the larger fields he’s currently farming.

“Not knowing what land will (or will not) be available to me each year also makes it impossible to forward contract any of the crops I produce,” he adds.

Making it Work

Hoggard is a 30-year veteran producer who grows soybeans, wheat, corn and milo on fields that range in size from 5 to 120 acres. Any given year, Hoggard may farm anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 acres of land on which he rarely drops down a plow thanks to advice from his long-time friend, John Bradley.

“Dr. Bradley and I have been friends for a long time, and his advice has helped me be successful at no-till farming for as long as I can remember. It saves me time and labor, but the number one thing it’s done for me is, it has preserved so much land from erosion,” says Hoggard.

Hoggard took over some pasture ground and thought it would require tilling before he could put down a seed, but Bradley told him to let the land lay out over the winter. “The winter freeze and subsequent thawing would mellow the soil that was very compacted from years of cattle grazing. Dr. Bradley was correct, it worked,” Hoggard says.

Hoggard also has more than his share of unwanted activity on the land he farms. “I've got great neighbors, and I don’t hear much out of them, but every so often I’ll have a four-wheel drive truck or someone on a four-wheeler come on the land and see how much damage they can do — all in the name of having fun,” he says.

Hoggard also finds an occasional trespasser who thinks just because it is farmland, it’s ok to hunt on it. “The local game warden is a friend of mine. I keep his number handy, but I really don’t have to call him too often,” he adds.

There’s no shortage of wildlife on the land he farms, despite the constant activity from local businesses, warehouses and planes taking off from Olive Branch Airport (which was named the busiest Fixed Based Operation in the United States in 2012). “It’s absolutely amazing…,” he says, referring to the number of deer, turkey and other wildlife. “You would think this urbanization would push them further out. But it’s nothing to see a herd of 15 or more deer on one of the field access roads right next to the highway early in the morning or late in the day.”

Hoggard Farms is pretty much a one-man operation. “I do the majority of the farming myself while my son, John, holds down our John Deere dealership. When I do need help, he, along with my other son, Ben, are both quick to lend a hand,” says Hoggard.

He also has a daughter, Rachel, who is a school teacher (but when Hoggard calls, she gladly comes to the farm and drives the grain cart). “I’m also lucky enough to have a good friend who is an independent businessman and has a very flexible schedule. He just likes driving a combine — so I let him,” says Hoggard.

Looking Ahead

It should come as no surprise that with increased urbanization encroaching on more and more farming operations, Extension Service personnel across the country are receiving higher numbers of phone calls complaining about things like oversized equipment on roads or highways and smells with which the general public are just not familiar.

Desoto County Extension Agent Dan Haire, a 20-year row-crop veteran, moved into the area three years ago. “With the population growing as fast as it is, I find myself working mostly with homeowners rather than farmers,” says Haire. “It’s something I've had to do not out of choice, but out of necessity, to help keep local farmers in the good graces of their neighbors who just don’t know about or understand farming.”

With constant encroachment by numerous warehousing businesses, schools, shopping centers and subdivisions, it’s very likely more of the land around Hoggard’s fields will be sold for commercial development. “It’s disheartening to see beautiful country land turned into a concrete jungle,” he laments.

Hoggard doesn't exactly know what lies ahead for his operation — as far as what land will be available in the next year or two — but he sees the tell-tale signs offering more and more land for sale. He’s hoping to find more farmable land in more remote, less urbanized locations in the near future.

Food Police Strike Again!

Hembree Brandon from Delta Farm Press recently wrote an article about the issues with food and dietary issues in America.

We all chuckle at the Chick-fil-A TV commercials in which cows stare balefully at hamburger-consuming humans and wear crudely-lettered signs saying “Eat Mor Chikin.”

And we snicker at the anti-animal agriculture folks who lambaste cows as culprits in global warming because of the methane they produce from belching/flatulence (anywhere from 25 gallons to 50-plus gallons per cow per day they contend).

For years, they've advocated less meat in our diets (even “meatless Mondays”) and more plant-based foods, such as beans, lentils, nuts, and grains (and one wonders, doesn't this kind of diet swap animal gases for human gases?).

There’s little doubt millions of Americans, and particularly we southerners, eat too much of less-than-healthy foods — one has only to check the stats on obesity and all the ills that engenders, chief among them diabetes, which has become rampant in many areas of the country.

The alarming trend of obesity in school age kids, along with high blood pressure and pre-diabetes, has led to the banishment of snack/soft drink machines in many school systems and the USDA has decreed that schools should serve healthier, more nutritious foods in their meal programs.

Now, though, the food police are reported taking a new tack on forthcoming guidelines. A draft proposal to the USDA by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, is said to recommend diets lower in meat-based foods and higher in plant-based foods as not only better for humans — but healthier for the environment.

Wait just a minute, say ag organizations, it’s one thing to advocate for healthier diets, but adding an environmental component goes too far. A cattleman’s organization terms it “absurd,” and members of Congress from agricultural states are jumping into the fray — in the massive $1.1 trillion government spending bill approved last month, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was enjoined to include only nutrition/dietary recommendations, not “extraneous factors” in the final guidelines.

Current USDA dietary “food pyramid” guidelines — which are updated every five years — suggest that people should eat lean meats, but reports are that the advisory panel has considered whether that language should be continued. The panel’s December draft recommendations noted that a healthy diet should include fewer red meats and processed meats than currently consumed by Americans.

In its work over the past year, the panel is reported to have debated the possibility of including sustainability as a dietary goal with “lesser environmental impact.”

North American Meat Institute President and CEO Barry Carpenter, says the change, “made behind closed doors during a lunch break” isn't ‘rooted in science” and doesn't “ make good public policy.”  He terms the action “arbitrary and capricious” and says the committee “fails to recognize the nutritional value lean meat offers and is ignoring the scientific evidence supporting its inclusion in the American diet.”