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PHOTO BY JENNIFER COYNE
Dennis Batcha rakes hay in a ditch July 13 south of Bowlus. Batcha farms near Holdingford.
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Sauk Rapids Herald | Saturday, July 18, 2020
exceed historic averages PHOTO SUBMITTED
A look out a pilot’s cockpit on an aerial applicator plane shows crop fields broken up by roadways, buffer strips and bodies of water. Aerial applicator is the preferred term for a profession long known as crop dusting.
Office in the sky Johnson has career in aerial application BY NATASHA BARBER | STAFF WRITER
BY JENNIFER COYNE STAFF WRITER
RICE – Russ and Terry Popp finished planting their corn crop around May 3 this year. In a typical year, they would have just started sowing the seeds. “We have a long way to go yet, and a lot can happen in the next 50 days,” Russ said. “But it has been good so far.” The brothers planted 260 acres of corn for silage and grain this spring for their 220-cow dairy farm near Rice. They also run 210 acres of alfalfa. This year’s field conditions have been favorable for many farmers in central Minnesota as crops were planted early, and the weather has helped propel plants through the growing season. Across the area, more than 80% of the corn crop is in good or excellent condition, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Data shows the last time the crops were fairing this
PHOTO BY JENNIFER COYNE
Terry Popp looks through his corn field July 13 at his farm near Rice. This year’s crop is ahead of schedule because of early planting and hot, dry weather that has propeled plants through the growing season.
well overall was in 2016. other season since the University One indication of a progressive of Minnesota Extension began growing season for corn is growing tracking the measurement in 1961. degree days. This year, GDD have GDD page 3B been consistently higher than any
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SAUK RAPIDS – When Logan Johnson graduated high school, he did not plan to take to the skies. But, after sitting in an office crunching numbers, Johnson traded in his job as an accountant for a seat in the cockpit of an airplane. “I thought accounting would be the safe route, and then I’d fly on the side for fun,” Johnson Logan Johnson said. “But I decided I couldn’t do it (an office job).” Johnson is an aerial applicator at West Central Ag-Air Inc. in Fergus Falls. Johnson page 2B
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from front The 28-year-old Sartell resident performs the duties of a profession more commonly known as crop dusting – an outdated term as most applicators now spread liquid pesticide rather than powder. He is one of approximately 2,700 agricultural pilots in the United States, according to the National Agricultural Aviation Association. Based on a 2019 NAAA survey, these pilots treat 127 million acres of cropland annually. Within the 50mile radius of the Fergus Falls Municipal Airport, Johnson and the owner of West Central Ag-Air, Ryan Lubben, spray fields of corn, soybeans, wheat and sugar beets. The combination of flight and agriculture was a natural fit for Johnson, who grew up on a crop farm about 20 miles north of Marshall. He was inspired by the profession at a young age. “I think I was in
fourth or fifth grade; I was really young, and I saw an airplane spraying my dad’s field,” Johnson said. Johnson pursued flight in high school, earning his private pilot’s license but put his dream on hold until 2014. Johnson traveled to Bainbridge, Georgia, to enroll at AG-Flight Pilot Training LLC. There, he earned a commercial pilot’s license as well as complex and high-performance aircraft endorsements, and trained in flying tailwheel, dual-propeller and biplane planes. In addition, he learned about GPS and field entries and departures. He was licensed in aerial agricultural application after passing his Federal Aviation Administration exams and took a job with West Central Ag-Air when he returned. Johnson, who works part time over the winter months, begins each applicator season in midMay and ends around midSeptember. “The first thing we do in Otter Tail County is spray trees around lakeshores for caterpillars
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Sprayer nozzles line a fixed wing on an aerial application plane. Nationwide, pilots treat 127 million acres of cropland annually by spraying liquid pesticides, according to a 2019 National Agricultural Aviation Association survey.
that eat the trees,” Johnson said. When crops emerge from the soil, Johnson’s work picks up. In wheat, corn and sugar beets, fungicide is applied. For soybean fields, insecticide is used to fend off aphids. With two planes operating at the company, business is steady. The applicators spray fields from 30 to 600 acres, with the average field size being 150 acres and taking about 45 minutes roundtrip from the hangar. “There are slow weeks which are 50-60 hours,” said Johnson, who stays at his family’s cabin during the growing season to avoid commuting from Benton County. … “I’d say long weeks are 90-100 hours.” Aerial application is subject to criticism regarding spray drift, soil and water contamination, and disease associated with pesticide use, but the industry is also highly-regulated. In addition to the FAA, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, United States Environmental Protection Agency and United States Food and Drug Administration monitor its actions, and each applicator must keep detailed records of each
work order for a minimum of five years. Johnson has had zero incidents in his sixyear career. “We’re always checking the wind direction and speed,” said Johnson, who flies an Ayres Thrush S2R-T with a turboprop engine. “We’re always checking temperature and dew point. If there is a temperature inversion (where cooler air is suspended above warm air), it has the tendency to suspend the chemical in the air if the droplets are small enough.” Temperature inversion can result in chemical drift, but aerial applicators – faced with consequences of fines, revoked licenses and even lawsuits – take precautions to avoid such incidents. “Airplanes have smokers on them,”
Johnson said. “It’s kind of like a mineral oil that is injected into the exhaust pipe. It creates a big puff of smoke. … You lay down smoke before you spray, and then you pull up and look back to give yourself an in-field look at how the application will behave. Wind direction and speed can vary a lot between small areas, so we have the smoker systems that we use.” The smoke is applied before application to ensure weather elements are optimal. Another precaution aerial applicators take is pattern testing. Johnson said a red dye is mixed with water and placed in the plane’s bulk tank. A string is suspended over the airport runway and the red water applied as if spraying a field. The string is analyzed, and spray nozzles are adjusted as needed to avoid overspray or to alter the size of dispersed microns. “If they (the microns) are too big, they’ll land kind of like a bubble and won’t disperse, but if they are too small, they’ll be more susceptible to suspension in the air which will move them off target easier,” Johnson said. On top of the manual tests, technology has increased the accuracy of site management. GPS systems within the planes allow for precision application; a screen inside the cockpit can show the pilot swath width, speed and how much chemical is being dispersed at any time. It also paints a literal picture of the work they do
so if the weather changes, pilots can come back to the field and tend to the portions they have missed. “It’s down to the nearest foot and very accurate,” Johnson said. “And, for going 150 mph, they keep up pretty well.” Despite the neverending variables that need to be monitored in aerial application – including watching for people, machinery, windmills, power lines and more – Johnson said, with time, the job becomes routine. “It’s kind of high stress but it’s fast-paced,” he said. “I feel like it works together to create a nice balance. Where you’re keeping track of a lot of stuff, but it goes so fast that it all just kind of rolls together.” The pilot agrees the job can be mentally taxing on days where he is working small fields in congested areas, but Johnson prefers his office in the sky over being grounded when his plane breaks down. And, he takes satisfaction in a day’s work. “The long hours, working hard and always doing something appealed to me,” Johnson said of his work. “If I slow down or I’m not super busy, I slack off and my mind wanders. So, if I’m going straightforward at something, it’s a lot easier for me.” While the job of this central Minnesotan may be exasperating at times, the work Johnson carries out continues to far outweigh the office desk he left behind.
PHOTO SUBMITTED
An Ayres Thrush S2R-T with a turbo prop engine awaits equipment. Logan Johnson, of Sartell, flew the plane from Florida in early May, and is using it this season as part of West Central Ag-Air’s team of aerial applicators after outfitting the aircraft with sprayer nozzles and aerial application gear.
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SAUK RAPIDS HERALD | SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2020 | Page 3B
BENTON AG Cumulative Growing Degree Days, St. Cloud, MN - Corn Updated July 12th 1400.0
1200.0
1000.0
800.0 APR 15 Cumulative GDD MAY 1 Cumulative GDD
600.0 MAY 15 Cumulative GDD
400.0
200.0
PEOPLE...PRODUCTS...KNOWLEDGE... 0.0
Calculated using weather data collected by the National Weather Service
GRAPH SUBMITTED
Growing degree days for St. Cloud are recorded based on three planting days for corn. University of Minnesota Extension educator Nathan Drewitz is tracking this year’s GDD for central Minnesota.
“GDD allows us to predict where crops will be at different times in the season,” Nathan Drewitz said. “We’re anywhere between 100-200 units ahead of schedule. That can be the difference between leaf stages and tasseling, and that’s what we’ve been seeing from last week to this week.” Drewitz is the agriculture production systems extension educator for Benton, Morrison and Stearns counties. GDD measures accumulated heat by taking into account minimum and maximum daily temperatures. To calculate GDD for corn, minimum and maximum daily temperatures are added together, divided by two and then that value has 50 subtracted from it. The minimum daily temperature can be no lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit for the equation and no greater than 86 degrees Fahrenheit for the maximum daily temperature value. “We use those cutoffs because anything below 50 degrees is just too cold for corn to grow, and likewise, corn really stops growing past 86 degrees; the additional heat doesn’t help,” Drewitz said. In the St. Cloud area, Drewitz has recorded GGD of more than 1,200 for corn planted April 15 and about 1,100 GGD for corn planted May 15. Extension’s official weather station, of Lamberton, noted a cumulative total from May 1 to July 13 of 1,232 GGD; 63 units more than the historic record between 1961 and 2019. “The biggest thing is that early maturity corn has really taken advantage of all those extra GGD,”
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Terry (left) and Russ Popp review data collected from their irrigator July 13 at their farm near Rice. The Popps run 260 acres of corn for silage and grain to feed their dairy cows.
“It has worked out really well for us.” The benefits of GDD will be evident as the growing season continues. Rather than harvesting in late fall, some fields might be able to start drying down earlier and farmers can get the crop off the field sooner, Drewitz said. “You have to have GGD for corn to develop,” he said. “Once you hit that 2,350 GDD range, that’s when you want to start thinking about harvest. More GDD shorten the growing season, which means not harvesting corn next spring.” Last year, the Popp brothers finished fall fieldwork in the spring. While all the crop was off the fields before winter, weather postponed tillage and baling corn stalks. “With the way things are going, we might be able to start silage around the first of September,” Terry said. “We’re quite a bit ahead of schedule right now, and we hope that continues so we can get done before winter.” With the summer’s hottest days ahead, a plentiful crop and early harvest are becoming ever more likely for farmers in central Minnesota.
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from front
Drewitz said. “Even corn planted later is still ahead of time because we were able to get in the ground this spring.” The Popps began planting April 26, nearly a week sooner than usual. “Typically, we don’t start until May 3 or later,” Russ said. “One year, we didn’t even feel like planting corn because it was so cold.” Terry agreed. “This year, we got in the fields early, and while we had to irrigate for a while in June, the heat and rain at the end of the month really helped,” he said. “The corn grew at least 2 feet in four days, and it’s already tasseling.” The Popps farm on sandy loam soil and have had to irrigate sporadically throughout the growing season to supplement the fields. In total, they have received a little over 5 inches of rainfall. “Before theses summer rains, we got 3 inches of that slush that came in the spring,” Terry said. But not all fields in the tricounty area are reaping the same benefits. “More GGD in a growing season usually means higher quality grain, higher test weights and more kernels,” Drewitz said. “In some places, GGD have nothing to do with what we’ve seen. Some areas are going to be driven by lack of rainfall, but then again, in Stearns and Morrison counties, there are places that have had a lot of rainfall and the crops still look really, really good.” The Popps will continue managing their fields with hopes of harvesting in early September. In the time being, they will finish fertilizing the corn crop. “We started spoon feeding nitrogen, so it’s the same amount of fertilizer as before just spread out,” Russ said.
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Page 6B | SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2020 | SAUK RAPIDS HERALD
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Rep. Emmer listens to agricultural concerns at Bauerly farm BY JAKOB KOUNKEL STAFF WRITER
SAUK RAPIDS – U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer met with agricultural industry figures at Benton County Commissioner Jake Bauerly’s farm July 10 in Sauk Rapids for a tour and open discussion into processes and policies. “We just want to give him a tour and show him what agriculture out here is all about,” said Bauerly before the event. Not long after introductions, the group offered gratitude to Emmer, whom they said supports the agricultural industry and understands the essential nature of their work. “This is, I think, the most important demographic in our country,” Emmer said. “If there is another stimulus, … it should be targeted at our farm families.” Many in the group,
PHOTO BY JAKOB KOUNKEL
U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer signals the importance of tamping down regulations that hurt agriculture in rural Minnesota July 10 at Benton County Commissioner Jake Bauerly’s farm in Sauk Rapids. Emmer answered questions from agricultural workers about policies and aid to farmers.
which featured a diverse range of age and profession within agriculture, voiced concern with how policies and regulations can interfere with their work. One of the foremost concerns was with the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic
Security Act, and more specifically, the additional $600 per week in unemployment insurance benefits included in the bill, which expires in late July. Emmer page 7B
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Despite not having tuned for more information. in-person meetings right The final event to be now, there will be virtual aware of is the online manure educational opportunities for composting workshop. This crop production this summer. workshop will focus on the There is a sequel of basics of composting raw the Essential Row Crop manure. Topics include: Management series. The site selection, temperature first part of this series took and moisture management, University of place this past March with spreader calibration, MN Extension the summer version taking economics and much more. place July 21 and July 23. by Nathan Drewitz The format will consist of This webinar series is a pre-recorded videos that will joint venture between the University of be posted Aug. 4, with the live follow-up Minnesota Extension and Iowa State online discussion from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. University Extension and Outreach. The Aug. 11. You will need to watch the videos webinars are 30 minutes in length that prior to attending the live discussion to includes a 10- to 15-minute presentation fully understand what is being discussed. followed by time for questions. All To pre-register, access the videos and presentations will be recorded and get the link for the live discussion made available at a later date. For more section, visit http://www.tinyurl.com/ information and to register for the manurecompostingworkshop.Prewebinar series, visit http://z.umn.edu/ register by Aug. 10, to receive all of the ERCM2020. links and videos for the workshop. – Tuesday, July 21, 1 p.m. Corn For all of these online events, if rootworm management you would like help with locating the – Thursday, July 23, 1 p.m. Soybean registration links or have questions, gall midge update let me know at 608-515-4414 or email Fridays on the Farm, a new series, ndrewitz@umn.edu. To receive future will virtually tour shops and fields to learn events and educational programming, more about how Minnesota farmers are including the links for registration working on soil health. These tours will by email, signup at http://z.umn.edu/ be every other Friday. The next event tricountysignup. In addition, if you would will be at 11 a.m. Friday, July 24, at a like to provide input for future extension farm in Todd County. There is no need programming in Stearns, Benton and to register. Simply follow the University Morrison counties, fill out the survey at of Minnesota Extension Cover Crops http://z.umn.edu/tricountycrops. page on Facebook and participate in the virtual events from the main page. There are more of these tours planned, so stay
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Emmer was encouraged to let the program expire without replacing it. Those in the group who employ workers told their federal representative that hiring workers right now is challenging when they have to compete with already existing state unemployment benefits plus an additional $600 per week from the federal government. Taking responsibility for his approval vote on
able to pool their health insurance coverage – a sentiment many in the group agreed with. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Emmer said.
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the CARES Act, Emmer said the bill included much needed relief for a struggling economy, but also said it included millions of taxpayer dollars on programs unrelated to the pandemic. He said the vote felt like a lose-lose, but also that he needed to vote in favor. Another concern shared centered on rural health care. Although Emmer believes the country is on the right track, he also said coverage is becoming less affordable for employers and individuals. He said companies in similar industries should be
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Page 8B | SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2020 | SAUK RAPIDS HERALD
HONORING 4-H
Mas
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Parents: Shawn and Angie Arnold, of Foley Age: 12 4-H club: Duelm Years in club: 8
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y on Parents: Tony and Corinne Lyon, of Clear Lake Age: 11 4-H club: Mayhew Lakers Years in club: 3
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Parents: Sam and Mandy Spiczka, of Sauk Rapids Age: 11 4-H club: Granite Clouds Years in club: 7
Tell us about your involvement in 4-H. I have shown pigs, cows Tell us about your involvement in 4-H. Dairy, swine, photography, Tell us about your involvement in 4-H. I have done fine arts, and sheep, as well as completed projects with rockets and quilting. quilting and woodworking. crafts, shop, photography, electrical, anemology, flower gardening, fruits and vegetables, wildlife biology, exploring the environment What is your favorite 4-H activity? I like working at the lunch What is your favorite 4-H activity? Dairy takes up most of my and global connections. stand at the Benton County Fair. It is fun serving people, and I take time. It is a family thing. My mom and all of my aunts and uncles have orders usually. I also like showing cows because they are fun to work shown dairy cattle. What is your favorite 4-H activity? Photography because I like with and train. seeing all of the pictures I make, but I also like getting better and Tell us about a memorable moment. When I won first place for learning more things about it. Tell us about a memorable moment. When I got second place junior dairy showmanship. I really wanted to win something so I knew showing my beef steer my first year in 4-H. He was all black, and I I could do it. The year before I got third or fourth, and I had told myself Tell us about a memorable moment. At the end of the day, after put a lot of effort into making him look nice and doing well in the I was going to do better. It felt really good. I entered all of my projects, I walked around looking at all the chamshow ring. pionship ribbons. It was really memorable and exciting because I Describe one of your favorite projects. My Brown Swiss cow, won seven championship ribbons. Describe one of your favorite projects. One of my favorite Raelee. We had a good bond and won junior dairy showmanship projects is pigs. You do not need to work with them as much because together. Describe one of your favorite projects. I made a guide to flowthey are stubborn, but I have a lot of fun when I am showing pigs. ers, which was a huge book identifying around 100 flowers. For the What have you learned during your time in 4-H? Nothing is project, I went outside and took pictures of all sorts of flowers and What have you learned during your time in 4-H? To work well going to ever be as perfect as I want it to, and it takes a lot of hard made an entry with information about the flower and included the with people. I have met a lot of people of all ages. How to get out and work to complete all of my projects. The most important thing for me picture. do fun things. I have also learned how to respect people. is to have fun. What have you learned during your time in 4-H? I have learned Who is your 4-H mentor, and what did you learn from them? Who is your 4-H mentor, and what did you learn from them? about the water cycle and did a big project on it. I have learned I look up to a lot of the older kids in the club. I have learned things My grandpa, Ken Bemboom, because most of the cows I show are his. about the proper cutting of flowers as well as practical skills like how from them on how they each do their projects and how to take that He teaches me everything I need to know. to work together as a team. and work it into my projects to make them better. Who is your 4-H mentor, and what did you learn from them? My mom. She helps me organize ideas and teaches me how to orgaThe 4-H motto: nize the information during the projects.
"To Make the Best Better."
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