This Week in Ag #38

October 31, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

When you’re carving your Halloween pumpkins this week, be sure to thank a bee. That’s because pumpkins are not self-pollinating plants. Unlike cotton and soybeans, where pollen produced within a flower fertilizes the ovary of the same flower on the same plant, pumpkins have specific male and female flowers across their vines. So they need bees to carry pollen between the flowers. Pumpkin growers will rent bee colonies during the growing season to ensure better pollination and higher yields. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #37

October 24, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

One of the greatest inventions in history is the combine. The concept of threshing and separating grain in one operation revolutionized our food system, as well as redefined our labor force. Consider that in the mid-1800s, 90% of the US workforce was involved in some aspect of farming. Now it’s under 2%. To think my grandfather harvested corn by hand and threw the ears in a wagon! He used the pull-behind model in the 1940s to harvest small grains (that’s him, Fred Nichols, combining oats on our family farm). My mother still talks about dad wearing a Jesse James style mask while operating their first self-propelled combine without a cab. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #36

October 17, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

#Harvest23 is in full swing. You probably have a sense of what farmers are currently doing. But what are farmers currently thinking about? Well, at this time of the year… A LOT!

Harvest logistics. Just as they do for planting, farmers prepare detailed plans for harvest. The two are carefully intertwined. Crop selection, varietal selection, field location and planting dates play a huge role in the “picking order” of what fields are harvested when. Field conditions also play a big role. Fields notorious for having wet holes could be moved up or down the picking order, based on current and expected weather conditions. You’ll want to get those fields out of the way if it’s currently dry, or delay them if they are currently wet. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #35

October 10, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Last week I was a guest on the TopSoil Webinar series hosted by Mitchell Hora of Continuum Ag (you can check it out here). I mentioned how western growers seem further along in their regenerative agriculture journey. That’s largely driven by regional attitudes and the food companies, who have pledged to sell products grown using regen ag practices. This has motivated growers of crops such as potatoes, onions, apples, and blueberries to hasten their adoption. But in the Heartland, where commodity crops fill the landscape, these growers have lacked many of the market-driven economic incentives. Until now. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #34

October 3, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Earl Butz, one of the most famous and popular US Secretaries of Agriculture, once told me that a key competitive advantage for US farmers in the global marketplace is our built-in natural infrastructure. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #33

September 26, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

In commodity crop production, we talk a lot about bushels per acre. Because that’s how farmers get paid. But what exactly does bushels per acre mean? A bushel is the unit of measure we use in the USA (other parts of the world use tons or metric tons) to calculate yield, verify shipments and set pricing standards for crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, canola, rice and sorghum. There’s a good chance your grandparents had a bushel basket laying around their house, garage, or barn. If you were to fill that basket to the brim with corn, you’d have one bushel’s worth. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #32

September 19, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Everyone remembers where they were on September 11, 2001. One of my most vivid memories was the week after. I was farming with my dad at the time. He had just started cutting soybeans in a field owned by my wife’s family, situated next to Interstate 74 in western Illinois. I was driving to the field to meet him and take a load into the elevator, but I couldn’t help but hear a steady cadence of horns blasting from the cars and trucks traveling along the adjacent interstate. Then I noticed several hands waving at him, from those passersby. As I drove closer to the combine, I felt goosebumps, then a sense of pride rushed over me. Instantly, I knew what all the fuss was about. Dad had affixed an American flag to the grain platform of our combine. And a brisk autumn wind waved Old Glory across the scenic backdrop of the family farm. This was truly a vision of Americana. At the perfect time. Today, you see a fair number of farmers displaying the Stars & Stripes on their equipment, which always brings a smile to my face and a memory to my heart. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #31

September 12, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

#Harvest23 is here! If all goes well, I should be harvesting my corn plot this week. The beginning of fall brings excitement and optimism to the farm. But this year, those feelings appear tempered. Farmer sentiment dropped 8 points last month  (according to the Purdue Ag Economy Barometer) as producers shared a dimming view of happenings on their own farms as well as the ag economy. [Read more…]

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This Week in Ag #30

September 5, 2023 by

By Fred Nichols
Chief Marketing Officer,
Huma®, Inc.

Labor Day signals the end of summer and ushers in the frolics of fall: football, pumpkin spice, UGG boots (well, maybe not in Arizona), hoodies, weenie roasts, and of course, harvest. When do farmers start harvest?

For commodity crops, this is largely dependent upon the crop, the variety, geography, and the size of the farmer. And just like with planting, much strategy and detailed planning is involved. The driving factor for grain is moisture content. To store or sell grain, it must be dried to a set level. For corn, the kernels must contain no more than 15% moisture; soybeans are 13%, wheat is 13.5%. If the grain tests above these levels, you must either wait for Mother Nature to dry it down in the field or use artificial driers. [Read more…]

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Reniform Nematodes: A Hidden Menace in Modern Agriculture

August 30, 2023 by

By Mojtaba Zaifnejad, Ph.D.
Sr. Director of Field Research and Technical Services,
Huma, Inc.

In my previous article on nematodes, I described the general topic of nonparasitic and parasitic nematodes. In this segment the focus will be on a specific plant parasitic nematode – Reniform nematodes (Rotylenchulus reniformis). We will delve into the intriguing world of reniform nematodes, exploring their feeding behavior, impact on crops, and effective management strategies. [Read more…]

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