NAM-07-30-2021

AG Mag Central Iowa

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Even when Iowa was at its driest, farmers knew growing season had a few

KERNELS OF HOPE

ETHANOL UPDATE: Renewable fuels power Iowa into future; misconceptions addressed, answered

A NEW CHALLENGE: Hemp considered a challenge in Iowa as its newest cash crop LET IT RAIN: Dry start, mid-summer rains leave farmers optimistic

A

PUBLICATION • SUMMER 2021

AG Mag

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AG Mag Publisher Dan Goetz

Index PAGE 5 — Dry start, mid-summer rains leave farmers optimistic

Advertising Director Carrie Vander Weerdt Managing Editor Jamee A. Pierson Magazine Editor & Page Design Jamee A. Pierson Reporters & Photographers Christopher Braunschweig, Sarah Schull, Jason O’Day and John Van Nostrand Cover Illustration Jamee A. Pierson Published by News Publishing Co. 200 First Ave. East Newton, IA 50208 641-792-3121

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Index PAGE 8 — Advancements in corn hybrids helps farmers rest easier when water is in short supply

PAGE 11 — The challenge of hemp in Iowa

Clearing up PAGE 12 — misconceptions about renewable fuels

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Dry start, mid-summer rains leave farmers optimistic

By Jamee A. Pierson Central Iowa Ag Mag Every season, farmers face unpredictable circumstances throughout the planting, growing and harvest along with raising livestock. Last year, a pandemic and derecho brought unforeseen challenges while the past few months have gone from extra dry to stable, leaving area farmers optimistic moving into the harvest season.

“My outlook is optimistic, the grain prices have surged higher this winter due to short inventories,” area farmer Eric Siebrecht said. “It is giving farmers the opportunity to sell old crop and new crop grain at profitable levels and livestock prices have also increased.”

Like a lot of farmers in the area, Siebrecht had crops go down during the derecho last August. Dealing with that aftermath, even during the next planting season, will be one step in his process for this year.

“We had some corn that went down from the derecho last year,” Siebrecht said. “We weren’t able to get the corn combined very well and there is plenty left on the ground which we will have to see how much it grows in the beans this year, it may require more sprayer passes to keep it controlled.”

During the winter, additional snow falls helped replenish the soil moisture, which was helpful since during the late spring and early summer, rain was hard to come by. Thankfully, at the end of June

rain showers made an appearance, relieving some worries as the growing seasons pushed on.

“At this point crops are doing very well in this area. We went through some very stressful weather the first couple weeks of June and crops were struggling, but luckily we had some cool nights that helped us out tremendously getting through those three weeks of hot dry weather,” local farmer Jeremy Terpstra said. “Since then, we’ve picked up some much needed and timely rainfall and everything looks a lot better” Livestock also had to deal with the frigid weather felt during the winter.

Timing is everything and Siebrecht had calving start during the cold blast the area felt in February.

“It took more time to make sure everyone was OK and had plenty of bedding,” Siebrecht said.

The dry weather affected not only the crops but also the pasture used by the cattle for food.

“The corn was rolling up in the heat before the rains came,” Siebrecht said.

“If we would have missed the rains the crop would have been in trouble. Everything benefited greatly from the rains. If it would haven’t rained, I would have had to start haying the cows in the pasture because the grass was going dormant.”

Besides precipitation, other weather can effect crops in unexpected ways.

Wind can not only be destructive, like in the case of the derecho, but it also can make getting needed work done a little

harder.

“Mother nature hasn’t made spraying easy this year,” Siebrecht said. “We have had issues with the sprayer which didn’t allow us to spray on some days when it was fit to spray which put us behind and forced us to spray in less than ideal conditions. There were many days that the wind was just too strong to spray.”

As growing moves to harvest, the farmers are still keeping their eyes on the skies. More rain, especially in August for soybeans, is needed to keep the crops progressing as planned.

“The outlook for the rest of the season will be very timely rainfalls. Everything is looking good in this area right now after the recent rains but we will be going through some critical times in the next couple weeks as the corn begins to tassel and pollination begins. August will be very crucial as well as beans will need moisture once they start setting and filling out pods and also getting grain fill on the corn,” Terpstra said. “I’m hoping for a great harvest this fall and that everything goes smoothly for everyone.”

As always, new challenges could move farmers in different directions at any time. Adapting and finding the right solutions is all apart of keeping the crops and livestock growing.

“Farming is always a gamble. Each season provides its own challenges,” Jasper County farmer Dirk Van Wyk said.

“The key is to stay flexible and adapt to the situation.”

AG Mag

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6 Summer 2021

Farm families can grow in the future with Take Root

By John Van Nostrand Central Iowa Ag Mag Farm families are known to do all they can to make sure there will be a crop to harvest, or livestock to send to market, months into the future.

If those families want to keep the farm in the family years, or maybe decades, in to the future, it’s never to early to start that plan according to Iowa Farm Bureau Farm Business Development Manager Amanda Van Steenwyk.

Over two nights she provides the Take Van Steenwyk Root course to farm families who are planning the future of the farm. Over the evenings, farm family members are given tools and tips to create a successful transition of the operation within the family.

“The first night is on communications and having those conversations with the family so there is an understanding of what it is,” she said.

In her six years of work on the program, the sessions are dominated by what she called the “senior” genera-

tion, or the actual owner, or owners, of the farm.

“Every once in a while the junior generation, known as the kids, show up.”

Those family conversations are key.

“Set some goals. Understand what you want to happen with your farm.

Get with that next generation. See where they see themselves. Are they involved or not? Who are the nonfarm heirs and their expectations? It’s about family meetings, intense conversations. Try to really get everything on the table,” she said.

One reason the first session emphasizes communication is the diversity of farm operations and farm families.

“One of the biggest struggles is there is no farm, no family that are completely the same,” she said.

Van Steenwyk said she knows of some farm families that do have some expectations before the younger generation can become part of the operation.

“Families may have sons and daughters out of high school. They know if they want to farm, they have to create or have a place to generate more income to come back to the farm. ‘There is a place for you at this farm. We will help support you, but

you need to come back and say this is what I want to do to help advance the farm,’” she said.

Another situation is when there are family members who are not involved in the farm operation but may expect something in return from the farm during a transition of owners.

“That farm heir has stayed 20 or 30 years and has helped developed the farm, maybe more than mom and dad has, that needs to be communicated.

Having those conversations prior to death of the owner is important. How are they viewed at the end of their days? Do non-farm heirs get to say anything? That depends on the family. But they have to understand why mom and dad said and continue to be a family and there may be unpleasant thoughts toward that farm heir. We encourage everybody to get involved in the conversation.”

Van Steenwyk said making progress in the transition plan can be challenged when those conversations don’t happen.

“When we don’t have conversations, that’s when the horror stories come into play. They have siblings who only see dollar signs. That’s when

Cont. 15 AG Mag

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Even when Iowa was at its driest, farmers knew growing season had a few

KERNELS OF HOPE

By Christopher Braunschweig Central Iowa Ag Mag Although many cornfields were dry this past spring, farmers were confident their crops would find the moisture they needed to survive. Iowa soils are known to be rich in nutrients, but that alone isn’t enough to sustain the lifecycle of the state’s most revered crop.

They need water. Thanks to the advancements in corn hybrids, the farmers not only enjoy higher yields but also rest easy knowing their crops’ roots grow deep.

When water isn’t plentiful, the corns’ roots search it out.

David Ertl, technology commercialization manager of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, said that’s one reason corn hybrids continue to get better. In 2012, Iowa experienced a tough drought. According to a report by state climatologist Harry Hillaker of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, temperatures reached as high as 107 degrees in July 2012.

However, crops weren’t nearly as affected, compared to the North American drought of 1988.

“The Iowa corn and soybean crops fared much better than most analysts expected in 2012,” Hillaker’s report said. “Preliminary data suggest that Iowa’s corn yield averaged about 20 percent less than the prior four-year average compared to a 33 percent decline in 1988. Similarly the statewide average soybean yield in 2012 was 10 percent less than the most recent four-year average compared to a 20 percent decline in 1988.”

So what changed? Hillaker’s report says improved ge-

8 Summer 2021

netics and the increased use of conservation tillage as possible factors explaining the relatively better yield in 2012 versus the yields of 1988. Ertl said 2012 crops yielded much more than anyone could have predicted. Even a group at Iowa State University that uses a crop growth model — which factors in weather conditions to calculate crop yields — couldn’t predict the 2012 outcome.

“They all underestimated what the yield would be during that drought,” Ertl said. “They concluded that their models did not factor in that the roots were going as deep as they did to pull water out deeper in the soil profile … Water is key for yields, along with nutrients. But I think a lot of the reasons Iowa is consistently a higher producing corn state is we got this great soil which has a lot of water storage capacity, and you got these roots that go down and ‘mine’ that water.”

Yields have continued to increase. Currently, Ertl said the state averages are approaching 200 bushels per acre. When he started working research plots as a corn breeder for Pioneer, getting 200 bushels per acre was pretty rare. And now it’s almost the state average.

The genetics potential is tremendous, he said, especially when combined with the precision agriculture practices farmers are using to extract the crop.

“The techniques they’re using, the increased plant populations, reduced tillage — there’s a number of things that are coming together to continue to drive productivity,” Ertl said, noting that corn hybrids and these other practices are reducing variability to make yields greater or more consistent. “As we make hybrids

that are more durable and resilient, they’re able to pump out the yield regardless of the soil and the weather — to some degree.”

Today’s corn hybrids, Ertl added, are a lot more resilient to challenges than you used to be. Farmers could practically really mistreat them and they’d still yield 200 bushels per acre, Ertl joked. The potential of corn hybrids grows every year. Ertl said yield graphs were flat until the 1930s, then all of a sudden the graph shoots up to a 45-degree angle. And that’s largely because of hybrids. Before that there were open-pollinated varieties, but no genetic gain, Ertl said.

As agronomists started to develop these hybrids, the yields have been steady and linear. Ertl said in the past 10 years that line graph is ticking up a bit, indicating the state and country is making greater progress. Of course, Ertl suggested other factors could be at play — such as better weed control, insect control, root worm protection — but they ultimately still benefit the hybrid crops and strengthen yield stability.

Hybrids will certainly pay dividends for farmers this year, whose fields were starved of rain this past spring. The summer has certainly had more thunderstorm showers, which have helped. But during those dry spells, Ertl said much of the corn he’s seen have not appeared visibly stressed. The leaves weren’t rolling like they would if they were water stressed. It’s incredible to Ertl how little water the corn hybrids need to continue to thrive.

“Obviously, you need water to produce a crop, but you don’t need a lot,” Ertl said. “There’s water stored in the soil as I mentioned, and if you get an inch or two here and there it can get through these periods. Now we’re going to keep getting the water because we don’t have a lot of reserves anymore. We’re going to need these thunderstorms to come through and dump an inch or two at a time through August to get us there.

I’m not really nervous.

“Even as a corn breeder it still amazes me how resilient these plants are. Corn is an amazing crop.”

AG Mag

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Hemp considered a challenge in Iowa as its newest cash crop

By Sarah Scull Central Iowa Ag Mag After Iowa’s first year of legalizing the growth of hemp, licensing is down in 2021, just over 40 percent from last year.

“This is a result of some of the people last year said, ‘Holy cow, this is a ton of work,’ or ‘I didn’t make any money,’” Iowa hemp administrator and state entomologist with the Iowa Department of Agriculture Robin Pruisner said.

In 2020, 86 licenses were issued for 731 acres of hemp. In 2021, those numbers decreased to 51 licenses to grow across 270 acres.

Those who participated in growing Iowa’s newest cash cropped faced a number of challenges. The first was simply learning how to go about it.

“It’s a brand new crop,” Pruisner said. “It hasn’t been legal for decades upon decades to grow. The resources that exist are super aged. If you want to look back at the 1930s or ’40s, that’s not a great way. We’ve made a lot of major advancements in agriculture and hemp has just been left in the dust.”

Due to the lack of resources available to hemp producers, they often have to look out of state. However, it’s not as helpful to Iowa growers as it may seem.

“How someone does something in Oregon or Kentucky may not translate well to our environment here,” said Pruisner. “If they’ve been developing genetics in Colorado or Oregon, which is completely different kind of characteristics out there and they bring those varieties to Iowa, they may not perform like they did back at home.”

Pruisner said growing hemp is extremely labor intensive, as well.

“There was a ton of garden-level, not traditional, farmers and I think the manual labor part of it was mind blowing to them,” she said.

Hemp is planted manually and is grown without the use of herbicide, with weed control also done by hand.

“I kept trying to tell people this is a lot like a tomato garden,” Pruisner said. “How much work would it take to grow tomatoes on five acres? That would be five football fields if you’re going to rototill it for weed control and you’re going to look at every plant every day to make sure you don’t have any male plant characteristics coming on. Just a lot of ground to cover. I think a lot of people thought, ‘I’ve had a garden in my backyard before. It’s not that bad,’ but then they do it on a larger scale and they realize it is just a ton of work.”

Cont. 15

AG Mag

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Renewable fuels power

By Jason O’Day Central Iowa Ag Mag Iowa is the top producer of corn and ethanol in America. It is a close second to Illinois in soybean production.

Mostly derived from corn grain starch, ethanol is distilled into a clear and colorless alcohol. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, more than 98 percent of American gasoline contains some quantity. E-10 (10 percent ethanol, 90 percent gasoline) is the most common blend.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported ethanol can corrode engines in older cars, as well as gas station storage tanks and pumps. Cassidy Walter, communications director for the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said these are overblown misconceptions.

“Every engine on the road today, and every engine since the early 1980s, has been made to use ethanol blended fuel,” Walter said.

She said cars manufactured after 2001 can use E-15, and those made before 2001 can use E-10. Flex-fuel vehicles can use E-85 or mid-level blends like E-30.

“It’s actually good for your engine. There’s a lot of engine benefits. Ethanol is higher in octane. That’s one of the biggest reasons that it’s put into fuel is that it boosts the octane. Essentially fuel needs octane, and the gasoline that is sent up the pipeline does not have enough octane in it to sufficiently fuel vehicles,” Walter said, explaining the oil industry adds chemicals called aromatics to boost octane levels. “So it’s benzine, toluene, xylene. Those ar12 Summer 2021

omatics are very toxic and very bad for your health. So the more ethanol your fuel has in it, the better it is for our environment and for human health because ethanol is a clean burning fuel that reduces those tailpipe emissions.”

At the national level, Rep. Cindy Axne also said she would like to see increased federal support for E-15.

“It’s critical that we expand the availability of E-15 to support our rural communities and decarbonize our transportation sector,” Axne said, adding that she’s been pushing legislation to address this issue. “I’ve been hard at work on this and have introduced two pieces of legislation: the Renewable Fuel Infrastructure Investment and Market Expansion Act and the Low Carbon Biofuel Credit Act which will create a 5-cent tax credit for each gallon of E-15 blended or sold and 10-cents for blends greater.

Both these pieces of legislation are bicameral and bipartisan and will provide significant investments in the expansion of E-15.”

Senator Joni Ernst also said she’s pushing to further support biofuels producers and boost access to E-15.

Ernst said she was disappointed with a recent decision in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down an EPA rule granting E-15 the same volatility waiver that has applied to E-10 blends for decades.

“I was extremely disappointed with the recent court decision that attempts to undo the rule I helped put in place allowing access to the higher biofuel blend year-round,” Ernst said. “I will continue pushing my colleagues and the new administration to support E-15 by expanding access

Iowa into the future to it, including the infrastructure needed.”

IRFA Executive Director Monte Shaw was also disappointed by the decision.

“There is no scientific or environmentally sound reason to erect arbitrary barriers to the sale of E-15 in the summer months, which has lower combined evaporative and tailpipe emission than either E-0 or E-10,” Shaw said.

“Today’s decision really turned this section of the Clean Air Act on its head.”

Axne, who is on the House Agriculture Committee, said she wants to see continued support for Iowa agriculture in the farm bill which is due for renewal in 2023.

“I look forward to working on the next farm bill in 2023 and continuing to support assistance for beginning farmers, expanding the conservation title and creating more efficient disaster relief programs,” she said. “I also want to see the expansion of processing capacity, giving farmers more options and opportunities and reducing bottlenecks.”

Ken Colombini, communications director for the Renewable Fuels Organization (the aforementioned group is a state level group), said when the entire production process and all inputs are considered ethanol is more environmentally friendly than electric cars.

“There’s a very heavy focus in certain circles on electric cars.

And as great as they are, so much of the electricity still comes from fossil fuels. The way that ethanol is being produced now and it’s going to be in the very near future, it’s going to be near net zero human greenhouse gas emissions,” Colombini said. “So I thought it was really kind of a smart choice between gasoline and electric vehicles. When you consider the whole

lifecycle of both ethanol production and the electricity generation needed for electric vehicles.”

The Biden Administration scaled back a program under the Trump Administration that granted waivers to small refineries from a 2007 law that mandated increased levels of ethanol in the gasoline supply. Small refineries claimed mandates were unrealistic.

The law empowered the Environmental Protection Agency with assigning refiners and importers annual quotas for how much ethanol they must blend into gasoline. The businesses get tradable credits called renewable identification numbers (RINs) for every gallon of renewable fuel.

Those that don’t meet their quotas must buy RINs from third parties.

A recent Supreme Court decision ruled in favor of the refiners and made it easier to obtain the waivers.

Colombini said the label “small refiners” can be misleading, as many of them are operated by large corporations.

“They’ve had the opportunity to blend ethanol and to put in the infrastructure themselves so they can put in ethanol going back 15 years to the Renewable Fuel Standard. They’ve chosen not to blend ethanol but to put themselves in a situation where they need to purchase compliance credits called RINs. They’ve not done so, even holding off on buying RINs. There was like a two year time period where RINs were very inexpensive and they chose not to purchase them then so they were kind of holding off, hoping that something would happen,” he said.

“The other issue is if they do purchase those, they would earn that back when they sell their fuel to the next retailer down the line. So they will make that money back.”

AG Mag

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Cont. 11 Another challenge was keeping the THC — the chemical responsible for most of marijuana’s psychological effects — within a legal range for hemp production.

“We did have to destroy about 200 acres because it exceeded the THC content,” Pruisner said.

The 200 acres that were mandated to be destroyed equated to 16 fields, which Pruisner said ranged from tiny plots to 40 acre fields.

Because of the meticulous growing practices, 10 licensees did not even plant in 2020. State officials also received 12 requests to have fields voluntarily destructed.

“Maybe the seed didn’t germinate or maybe the weeds got ahead of them and they just said, ‘I’m throwing in the towel on this one,’” Pruisner said.

For those that were successful growing, processing and selling their crops proved to be another challenge.

“If you look at the repeat growers, or the overall market trends right now, there is a huge supply of hemp on hand, so prices are not great,” Pruisner said.

It is estimated that in 2019, American hemp producers grew approximately 550 percent more hemp than in 2018.

“It just exploded, but you didn’t see that same rise in consumer demand or processing capacity,” Pruisner said.

“So processors were in the driver’s seat, buying the highest quality for the lowest price.”

For Iowa hemp growers, there isn’t a co-op down the road to sell to like there are for its typical grain crop.

“If you can’t sell your crop and make money, it’s really hard to val-

Cont. 7 horror stories come into play. It’s easy to do scare tactics. There are sorts of things that could go wrong, especially the lack of communication. Some have said, ‘I wish I would have had this conversation 15 years ago.’”

The second Take Root session is involving others with knowledge about

idate ‘Why the heck did I do this?’”

Prisoner said.

Despite the lack of co-ops, processing plants are starting to appear in Iowa.

“There are a couple of facilities operating on a very small basis,” Pruisner said. “I know one processing facility where they are only doing 25 pounds a week of extraction.”

This is problematic as most growers are trying to grow hundreds of pounds regularly throughout the growing season. Because of this, Pruisner said some growers have gone through a process with the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals

to process the hemp themselves and sell as a home-based business.

Pruisner said the lack of processing plants in Iowa comes down to money and compared it to the “Chicken and the Egg” metaphor.

“We have this brand new crop, and we know you can do a lot of things with it, but can you do profitable things with it?” Pruisner asked. “We know we can grow it now. The next question is how much does it cost to process it and sell it? Is there a consumer demand out there that’s willing to pay whatever that price is and how often are they willing to buy it to establish that market?”

legal rights, taxes and finance. Van Steenwyk said Farm Bureau has working relationships with attorneys, tax preparers and a family mediator, who is a third party, non-related person.

The course is typically two nights, each session lasting about three hours.

At least a week separates each session.

Farm Bureau attempts to schedule Take Root evenings based on feedback

from its regional managers across the state talking to farm families. The sessions are typically scheduled during times of the year when farm operations may not be as time consuming, like winter months or after planting season.

Farm Bureau members can take the sessions for free. Fees may be applied to non Farm Bureau members.

AG Mag

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