Category Archives: Crops

Meet Chris Drake at Sandy Point Farms.

Posted on November 2, 2015 by laurab08

His operation, situated in Southampton County near the southeastern corner of Virginia, produces a number of integral crops for the region including cotton, peanuts, soybeans, and corn. In fact, according to the most recent census, Southampton County is ranked first in the state for cotton and peanut production, second for soybeans, and third for wheat.

Peanut harvest at Sandy Point Farms

When it comes to produce, Sandy Point also excels. While Chris’ father and brother work primarily on the row crop side of the farm, Chris is responsible for managing production of sweet corn and watermelons, neither of which are uncommon on farms around this region. “A lot of people don’t realize that we have a large commercial watermelon production industry,” says Chris. “Ag in Southeast Virginia is extremely diversified.”

Less common, on the other hand, are commercial pumpkin operations in Southeastern Virginia. Sandy Point Farms, with an impressive seventeen acres of pumpkins, stands as an exception. Chris got started with his first acre fourteen years ago. Today, he grows so many pumpkins that he focuses nearly all of his attention on the wholesale market. “Most others are around two or three acres and are selling retail,” he says of other operations in the region.

Though Chris has managed to build success with pumpkins, their relative rarity in large-scale production in Southampton County is not without reason. “One thing that’s helped Chris is developing a good market. Growing these crops can be a challenge, but you have to be able to sell and market the crop as well. That might be why most growers around here stick to traditional commodities,” says Austin Brown, the Virginia Cooperative Extension agent who serves Chris Drake and other farmers in the county. “I think Chris has been able to tap into the urban areas and capitalize on the demand from these large populations.”

Austin Brown, Southampton County Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Agent, visits with Chris Drake at Sandy Point Farms.

Austin, who earned an undergraduate degree at North Carolina State University and a master’s degree at Virginia Tech, worked alongside several crop researchers to gain experience in agronomy before he joined Extension. In his current role, he helps producers like the Drake family at Sandy Point who rely on dependable crop management information. When certain field problems arise, timely updates are critical so that growers can protect their crops. “That’s something I try to do to help Chris and all people growing watermelons and cucurbits,” says Austin. “We diagnosed downy mildew, and I called all the producers,” says Austin as he recalls wet, cloudy conditions favoring the development of this disease earlier this summer. “This year has been a mixed bag of weather. It was wet early and we saw some nutrient leaching, then it was like that spigot just turned off,” he says.

Those early wet conditions created special concerns for Chris and his pumpkin crop, as plants on the ground are prone to a number of diseases that can make the fruit unmarketable. “The two biggest challenges are disease control and marketing, in my opinion,” Chris says. He protects his crop throughout the growing season each year, but the threat of rain in late summer can push him to adjust his harvest date expectations. “Weather determines most of that. If it’s wet, we get them off the ground ASAP,” he says. Harvest itself is generally more labor-intensive than other pumpkin chores, often requiring a twelve to fifteen hour work day. In between, there are plenty of tasks and decisions to keep Chris up late and awake early. “A lot of times I’m up at four or five in the morning looking at market reports, deciding what to do for the day,” he remarks.

Prior to developing his current undertakings at Sandy Point Farm, Chris honed his agronomy background in school and at work. His undergraduate degree and master’s degree from Virginia Tech not only equipped him to be the most ardent Hokie fan for miles around, but also prepared him for his current career. When he is not taking care of his farm at home, he serves PhytoGen Cottonseed as a territory agronomist covering northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. He spends a considerable portion of his work running on-farm research plots and yield trials and presenting data at about fifty grower meetings each spring. In all, he is responsible for 250,000 acres of cotton through his job.

Chris and his family grow cotton on their farm.

Though all of the crops at Sandy Point Farms provide a diversified income stream, the pumpkins are a point of pride for Chris because they attest to an uncommon accomplishment for his growing region. When asked what he considers his greatest achievement, he says, “I started out with a half-acre in 2001 and now I’m up to seventeen acres. The quality of the pumpkins I’m producing in this area is competitive with the other growers from Southwest Virginia.” He believes the key to his success lies with marketing a top-notch product. One look at his trailer loads of perfectly orange, evenly-sized pumpkins with textbook stems is proof that know-how, dedication, and an eye for new marketing opportunities can be worth the effort to grow something a little unconventional.

Additional Resources for Readers:

Sandy Point Farms

Specialty Crop Profile: Pumpkins

Meet Ameva Farm.

Posted on June 13, 2015 by laurab08

Jimmy and Donna Kerr stand in their freestall barn where the milking herd lives. The barn is built for cow comfort: fans and sprinklers keep cows cool, and the cows can rest on sand bedding, socialize, or get up to eat as they please.

Jimmy and Donna Kerr run the Amelia County dairy operation today, but it was originally established several generations ago as a crop and tobacco farm. In 1948, Jimmy’s grandfather drove to Wisconsin and returned with thirteen registered Guernseys, the start of the first dairy herd at the operation. The herd soon moved across the road, where a milking facility and barns were constructed.

The dairy herd at Ameva Farm was founded with Guernseys, but today it consists of black-and-white Holsteins. Holsteins are a highly productive dairy breed and are used on most milking herds in the U.S.

Several decades after his grandfather set the foundation for the dairy farm and the herd eventually shifted in favor of Holsteins, Jimmy went to study at Virginia Tech and met his wife Donna in the Dairy Science program. After graduating in 1982 and returning to the farm to start a family, they helped their son Alex and their daughter Jamie develop a passion for showing dairy animals at a young age. Donna recounts the story of Jamie watching her big brother prepare calves for shows and earnestly anticipating her turn to be old enough to participate, only to fall off of a gate the day before the show. She was determined to have her turn in the show ring despite the setback. “She broke her arm, but the next day she was showing!” Donna and Jimmy remark. Both Jamie and Alex continued to raise and show cattle throughout their youth and remained active in the Virginia Junior Holstein Association for a number of years. Today, Alex helps manage the operation alongside his father.

Ameva Farm operates much like other family dairy farms in the state. The 200-head milking herd goes to the parlor twice each day, once at 3:30 in the morning and again at 2:00 in the afternoon. Farm employees Homer Neese and Lane Staten help Jimmy with milking. When they are not being milked, the cows live in a freestall barn where they can come and go from feed to sand bedding as they please. Keeping the cows content and comfortable requires someone willing to mix feed, bed up the barn, and scrape manure out of the aisles daily. “These cows are our livelihood,” Donna says, noting that cow welfare directly affects the farm’s bottom line. “If they are not in good health and well fed, we don’t make money.” To help with the chores, Jimmy and Donna enlist the help of assistant herdsman Chief Moore, Joel Linthicum and part-time help John Sloan and Tommy Glover. Chief’s wife Donna also helps feed calves. “It takes a village to raise a cow,” Donna jokes.

The calves on the farm require special care of their own. Like any newborns, they can become sick if they are stressed or malnourished, so they are fed four doses of colostrum in the first two days after birth to ensure good transfer of disease immunity from their dams. The calves are then fed a milk replacer which functions akin to baby formula to provide calves with the nutrition they need. Calves are kept in a special barn to protect them from contact with diseases, and as they grow older, they are put in a larger group to help them learn to socialize with a herd.

Calves at Ameva Farm receive special care after birth to ensure a good start. As they grow older, they learn to eat pelleted feed and hay.

Throughout their time in the calf barn, calves have access to a pelleted feed. As calves grow, they choose to consume more of this feed in preparation for weaning at seven weeks of age. Older calves become heifers—the teenagers of the cattle world—and when they approach maturity, they are bred and eventually enter the milking herd. Cows in the milking herd give birth to calves, produce milk for several months, and enjoy a “dry period” of rest before the next calf arrives.

Like most dairy farmers, the Kerrs grow much of their feed right on the farm including small grains and corn for silage and grain. They also grow brown midrib sudangrass which turns into an easily-digestible silage for the cows after it is chopped and stored. Jimmy uses modern soil conservation practices on his farm for his crop production program. “My grandfather was big into soil conservation. We carried those practices on,” he says. “Conservation is a big thing for us.” On Ameva, improved practices include contour strips and no-till farming to promote healthy soil. “You can’t buy topsoil at Wal-Mart,” Donna notes.

The Kerrs grow most of their feed right on the farm. Some of their crops are grown for silage and some are used for grain. Small grains grow in the fall through spring. Corn and sudgangrass grow during the spring and summer. Both can be chopped and ensiled at harvest time and fed to the milking herd.

Jimmy’s son Alex helps with the field work and crop management, which occurs year-round since small grains grow in the fall through spring and corn grows in the summer. And, of course, the cows need to be milked and fed year-round.

The Kerr family dedicates a considerable amount of each day to farm work. “We have 9-10 hour days, and that’s typical,” Donna says. “Milking cows is almost an 8-hour day, and that’s just milking.” Nonetheless, Jimmy and Donna place a high value on taking time to educate others about agriculture. Donna recounts one particular youth education program years ago that motivated her to take action. “My first question to the kids was, ‘Where does milk come from?’ I kept hearing, ‘The grocery store! The grocery store!’” she says. “I came home and said, ‘We have to do something!’ These are our future regulators and legislators.”

Agricultural education has been a keystone of the farm since the day the Kerrs first hosted schoolchildren on a field trip when their son Alex entered kindergarten. “We’ve had lots of different tour groups from boy scouts to school children,” Jimmy says. In recent years, schools like Spring Run Elementary have chosen to return annually. Donna notes that well over half of the U.S. population is three or more generations removed from farming, so naturally many children and adults have misunderstandings about how their food is produced. The tours and question-and-answer sessions seem to have made an impact over the years. “Sometimes there’s a lightbulb moment for them,” Jimmy says.

Cows are brought to the milking parlor twice each day. Each cow is milked for several minutes, and afterwards, she is able to return to the barn to eat, rest, or socialize. Meanwhile, the Kerrs and their employees clean and sanitize the parlor equipment after every milking.

Donna and Jimmy’s roles in the community have given them ample opportunities to share their farm with adults, too. They have given dairy tours to representatives of several government agencies. Donna also believes that the teachers who tour the farm with their classes can go home armed with knowledge to teach many more children about farming.

Not all students and adults have the opportunity to visit the operation in Amelia, but that does not deter Donna from sharing her message outside of the farm, especially to the state’s decision-makers. In her role as past President of Amelia County Farm Bureau and her time serving on the state Forestry and Natural Resources Committee, Donna has developed rapport with legislators and their aides who sometimes contact her to ask questions about agricultural issues raised by the public. “You never know who you can affect,” Donna says.

When they are not busy on the farm or performing agricultural outreach, Jimmy and Donna still find time to engage with industry groups. Donna is on the board of the Piedmont Soil and Water Conservation District and was an advisor to the Virginia Junior Holstein Association for too many years to count. Meanwhile, Jimmy is the president of Cooperative Milk Producers and was also involved with the Virginia Holstein Association.

Back at Ameva Farm, Jimmy and Donna want consumers to know that they raise a product that they believe in. Even though farm life is busy, they are happy to help others learn about their occupation. To instill confidence in the dairy industry as she tells her farm story, Donna relates that her family is committed to their own product. “We’re consumers too. I think people forget that perspective. We believe in dealing with our customers,” she says. To the Kerrs, producing a good product and sharing it with others is not simply a business—it is a lifelong passion.

Additional Resources for Readers:

Learn about Dairy Farming from Virginia Cooperative Extension

National Dairy Council

Virginia State Dairymen’s Association

Virginia Holstein Association

Meet a Virginia Cooperative Extension Soybean Test Plot

Posted on May 28, 2015 by laurab08

Cover photo credit-Lindy Tucker; above-Taylor Clarke

Instead of our usual narrative, this month we are sharing a video documenting our on-farm soybean test plots and explaining how we use these plots to generate decision-making tools for crop farmers in Virginia. As you will learn, developing test plots requires careful pre-planning and calculations, good management throughout the season, and special data collection at harvest time. This crop performance data becomes available to farmers each year, fueling agricultural progress and profitability. In the video, we explain the whole process from start to finish while tracking one of our plots which was planted in Southside Virginia in 2014. Click the play button to begin watching.

Want to learn more? Read our previous story here about Extension agent Taylor Clarke and his on-farm soybean plot.

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Photo credit (here and images below)-Lindy Tucker

Additional Resources for Readers:

2014 Virginia On-Farm Soybean Test Plots

Virginia Soybean Update

Virginia Soybean Board

Meet Featherstone Farm.

Posted on October 1, 2014 by laurab08

The Whittingtons are proud to carry on the family’s farming tradition which began nearly three centuries ago in Maryland and North Carolina. The family settled in Virginia in the 1920s when Juan Whittington’s grandfather bought the Amelia County farm. Juan and his wife Linda took responsibility over the operation in the 1970s, and today they live on the farm and manage the business alongside their son Colin and daughter-in-law Robyn.

In past decades Featherstone Farm housed hogs and livestock, but today it is primarily a grain crop and seed operation. A conventional grain farmer purchases seed each year to obtain the best varieties, produces summer crops like soybeans or small grains in winter, harvests them, and sells the harvest to a grain buyer.

Because Featherstone Farm is a seed business, their crops are processed in an on-farm facility through equipment that cleans plant residue and foreign material from each batch of harvested grain and removes any small or defective seeds that are not viable. Their cleaned seed is then bagged and available for sale to other farmers in the region. The seed varieties grown sold at Featherstone Farm represent the offerings of several companies that develop crop varieties each year with improved performance traits.

Although the Whittington seed business is rather unique compared to neighboring farms, the family still must grow and manage their crops in the same manner as other grain farmers in the region. Oats, barley, and wheat are planted in the fall and harvested in spring. The Whittingtons practice double-cropping, meaning that they plant soybeans immediately after the wheat harvest in order to make a crop during the summer.

In a “double-crop” system, soybeans are planted into the leftover plant residue from the preceding grain crop immediately after it is harvested.

Conservation is just as important to Featherstone Farm as good yields of high-quality seed. In fact, practices that preserve soil health and natural resources tend to favorably affect production. The Whittingtons follow a conservation plan that the Natural Resource Conservation Service developed for their farm. They also employ grass waterways, which prevent soil erosion.

Perhaps their greatest conservation achievement is keeping the land in continuous “no-till” for the past thirty years, or “never-till,” as Colin Whittington describes it. In a conventional tillage system, land is worked up before each crop in order to incorporate lime and fertilizer with the soil, prepare a fine seed bed for planting, and mechanically disrupt weeds. However, tillage can destroy soil structure and lead to erosion, moisture loss, and soil compaction. In a no-till system, the land is not plowed, chiseled, or disked. Instead, leftover plant residue is left on the surface of the field after each year’s harvest, and the seeds of the subsequent crop are drilled through the surface residue down into the soil with minimal disturbance to ground. Microorganisms decompose the plant materials lying on the soil’s surface. “Every single year you use continuous no-till, you are adding organic matter,” says Colin Whittington. Soils high in organic matter from plant residue hold water more effectively, support the growth of soil microorganisms, resist compaction, and resist erosion. Colin cautions growers to use care when working on land that has been converted to no-till systems. “One thing that’s big is not driving over land when it is wet. That causes compaction. If it’s wet, we don’t drive over the land,” he says. Although they may have to wait a bit longer than usual to complete chores after wet weather, the Whittingtons understand that the good soil structure they have built over the years is a benefit too valuable to lose.

No-till farming and variations of this system are widely accepted practices in Virginia, and farmers have a tradition of working with state and federal agencies like the Natural Resource Conservation Service to enact conservation plans and projects. “Farmers are doing the right things and have been for many years. These are not new practices for most,” says Colin.

Like any farmers, the Whittingtons spend most of their time managing their farm. However, they have invested years into promoting the future of the industry. Juan has served twenty-six years on the Virginia Soybean Board, which supports education, research, and marketing projects that improve profitability for soybean growers. Likewise, Colin Whittington has served nine years on the Virginia Soybean Association’s Board of Directors, where he advocates for the industry and facilitates opportunities to support growers. For example, the Virginia Soybean Board works jointly with Virginia Cooperative Extension and the Virginia Grain Producers Association to hold the annual educational Virginia Ag Expo.

The Whittingtons also play a role in bringing new knowledge to fellow growers during their work right on their farm in Amelia. They have partnered with specialists like Dr. David Holshouser from Virginia Tech to host on-farm research plots. In 2014, their soybeans were used as part of a fungicide study. In past years, they have hosted on-farm trials that were used to collect data for university variety selection publications. In fact, their work with Virginia Tech’s small grain breeding program has enabled them to develop and sell three exclusive wheat varieties. A portion of the sales of these varieties goes back into the university’s research program, which provides valuable data to growers across the state who rely on up-to-date information to make good business decisions.

Featherstone Farm, like many operations in Virginia, has seen incredible change over the last few decades, but the family has adapted by creating a niche, farming progressively, and embracing research-based management practices. Along the way, they have made it a priority to protect the resources on the land where they live and work. Agriculture may have its challenges, but the Whittington family is equipped to excel into the future and support fellow crop growers in Virginia along the way.

Additional Resources for Readers:

Featherstone Farm Seed and Facebook page

Natural Resource Conservation Service-Virginia

Virginia Soybean Board : information about Soybean Checkoff and the VA Soybean Association

Crop Publications from Virginia Cooperative Extension

Virginia Soybean Update blog

Meet the Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

Posted on September 1, 2014 by laurab08

More commonly abbreviated as “SPAREC” by those familiar with it, this center is one of Virginia Tech’s eleven experiment stations, or “ARECs,” scattered across the state. The stations were each established to perform research and outreach matching the needs of local agricultural industries.

Sorghum and sorghum-sudangrass hybrids are grown at the station for the livestock forage research program.

For the Southern Piedmont region of Virginia, tobacco remains a key agricultural product with deep historical significance, and forage production is a critical factor keeping cattle, goat, sheep, and horse operations in the area profitable. To serve the farmers growing these products, SPAREC, located in Blackstone in Nottoway County, provides support and cutting-edge information to farm producers. The station has also performed work in small fruit, field crop, and specialty crop production.

While many people in the eastern, central, and northern part of Virginia have never seen tobacco and the number of tobacco farms in the state has dwindled, it remains the 10th ranking agricultural commodity produced in the state just behind wheat, generating $109,000,000 in receipts annually. Much of the tobacco research at SPAREC centers on improving crop management, testing new materials and practices in the greenhouse and the field, and evaluating new varieties. However, the tobacco projects honing in on plant pathology, nematode management, plant breeding, conservation tillage, energy efficiency, and precision application technology have broad implications for other agricultural industries.

Dr. Charles Johnson, Dr. David Reed, and Dr. Carol Wilkinson each work in one of the unique tobacco research areas at SPAREC. For most of the trials performed at the station, tobacco plants are started in float trays in greenhouses and transplanted to test plots in the spring. The stage after transplanting is called “lay-by,” followed later by flowering when the plants grow tall. Tobacco plants produce pink flowers, but these are “topped,” or removed, so that the plant utilizes its resources on vegetative production. During ripening later in the summer, lower leaves of “flue-cured” tobacco varieties are harvested first, followed later by upper leaves. The leaves are packed in a curing barn and dried by circulating air. “Burley” and “dark-fired” tobacco varieties are harvested all at once; the stalk is cut at ground level, speared on a stick, and hung in a barn. Most Virginia tobacco grows in the counties along the south of the state, where soil characteristics, industry infrastructure, and growing conditions favor production.

Tobacco grows pink flowers, which are “topped” to promote vegetative growth.

Tobacco remains a primary crop at SPAREC, but forage research is an equally critical program at the station thanks to increased interest from farmers who want to mitigate high livestock production costs by improving forage quality and grazing efficiency. Dr. Chis Teutsch has spent years running trials, compiling variety data, creating forage publications, and speaking at Extension and industry events throughout his years working with legumes, Bermuda grass, crab grass, cool-season grasses, and warm-season annuals like brown mid-rid forage sorghums and sorghum-sudangrass hybrids.

Dr. Chris Teutsch manages a Bermuda grass research trial at the station.

To enhance the depth and breadth of the forage program, SPAREC saw the recent addition of a cattle-handling facility and installation of fencing and water troughs on new pasture ground. With the addition of Ruminant Livestock Specialist Dr. Brian Campbell in 2012, the station brought cattle onto the premises for forage utilization studies, grazing schools, demonstrations, cattle management workshops, and research. In fact, since outreach is an important part of the Extension forage work done at SPAREC, producers have numerous opportunities to come visit the station’s cattle facilities and forage plots including a field day each year in July and the many workshops held at the station throughout the year.

Outreach does not stop with forages. The tobacco specialists also organize a widely-attended annual field day in July and several production meetings for farmers in the winter. Thanks to its central location providing easy access for farmers in several surrounding counties, the station frequently hosts workshops put on by nearby county Extension agents covering topics from beef production to greenhouse management to grain crops.

The station is equipped with wagons to transport visitors during field days.

Farm staff have prepared a corn maze for the 2014 Family and Farm Day on September 13th.

Youth agricultural education has become a priority in recent years. Visitors to the annual SPAREC Family and Farm Day witness the station’s commitment to this task and long-standing partnerships with community organizations and agencies. The end result is dozens of hands-on activity stations for the hundreds of children and adults who attend the event to learn about agriculture. This year’s Family and Farm Day, set for September 13 from 9-2, will teach visiting children about soil health, conservation, farm life, livestock, vegetables, crops, insects, wildlife, safety, and farm equipment. SPAREC also hosts Ag Days for 3rd and 5th grade classes for two weeks each April. The Ag Day programs draw buses of students from public and private schools in each county surrounding the station. They continue to grow in attendance each year thanks to the real-life application and reinforcement of classroom lessons and standards of learning they offer.

Since its formal establishment in 1972, the Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center has been a force for changing, improving, and modernizing agriculture. The end result is a stronger local agricultural economy built by individuals empowered by the knowledge they have gained from the station’s research and outreach.

Additional Resources for Readers:

Southern Piedmont AREC website

Family and Farm Day flyer

Information about Virginia Tech’s ARECs across the state

Tobacco research, publications, and resources

Forage research, publications, and resources: here and here

Beef cattle publications and resources

Early colonial history of Virginia tobacco from the National Park Service

Meet Taylor Clarke’s Soybean Test Plot

Posted on December 5, 2013 by laurab08

Taylor Clarke hails from south Brunswick and serves Mecklenburg County as the agriculture Extension agent. Most of his work revolves around tobacco, crops, and cattle. Like many Extension agents across the state of Virginia, he also facilitates on-farm research that enables specialists to gauge performance of crops under varying treatments and conditions.

Field trials and test plots are responsible for a broad spectrum of scientific advances in agriculture in past decades and these tests help agriculturalists make new progress each year. New fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides can be compared and tested on crops for safety and efficacy. Variety trials performed each year measure the performance of new seed for yield, hardiness, disease resistance, and other traits that can help farmers improve their efficiency and profitability. The end results of these tests are unbiased research-based recommendations that farmers can use to guide planting and purchasing decisions each year.

Virginia Cooperative Extension’s crop specialists are primarily housed on-campus at Virginia Tech and Virginia State University or at one of eleven agricultural research and extension centers, commonly called “ARECs,” scattered across the state. These specialists perform research on the plots housed at the ARECs, but sometimes they also opt to take their research projects to outside farms. In some cases, what happens when an experiment is run at the research station plot is not consistent with what happens when it is run on a working farm. In other cases, the more plots that can be planted around the region, the better the data. For these reasons, specialists make on-farm work an integral part of their studies.

This is where county Extension agents like Taylor come in. They communicate regularly with specialists and researchers and foster ongoing face-to-face relationships with local farmers. As a result, Extension agents can locate producers willing to host an on-farm plot and then manage and collect project data from planting to harvest with the support of specialists. Agents in Southside Virginia like Taylor work frequently with the specialists housed at the Southern Piedmont AREC in Blackstone or the Tidewater AREC in Suffolk. Although most data on test plots is compiled at the end of the season and must undergo analysis, farmers benefit in the short-term from these test plots when they are used for Extension field days and demonstrations. Many producers enjoy having the hands-on opportunity to see crop varieties planted side-by-side or visually evaluate plants as they grow in disease resistance or disease treatment plots.

Taylor Clarke runs several tests plots each year, including a 2013 test on his farm evaluating performance of soybeans with and without treatment for soybean rust. Soybean rust, a challenging foliar fungal disease, entered the state in late summer this year and had the potential to hurt yields in field where beans had not reached the “R6” maturity stage. Bean seeds in plants that have reached this stage appear full-sized and are touching within the pod; once the plant reaches this point, infection with soybean rust will not cause significant yield loss. However, specialists worried that some double-crop beans and late-maturing beans had not yet reached R6 when soybean rust entered Virginia this year, so Taylor’s test plot was an effort to evaluate the potential impact of treating double-crop soybean beans that could undergo yield loss if the disease were left unchecked.

The field was planted and various sections were treated according to a predetermined experimental design. Because untreated soybean rust hurts yield in plants that have not reached R6 maturity, Taylor chose to use yield as a means to evaluate the performance of the treatments. To collect his data, Taylor used a combine to harvest each section of the plot individually. For every test section of the plot that was cut, the beans were unloaded into a weigh wagon. Each load was then weighed and evaluated for moisture content of the seeds and test weight of the seeds. Test weight measurements give the number of pounds of soybeans in a bushel. After each strip was cut, Taylor measured the length of the harvested strip in order to determine the square feet harvested. He can now use all of his data to determine parameters such as the predicted number of bushels per acre that each test section yielded.

Harvested beans are unloaded into a weigh wagon.

The wagon weighs each load from the combine.

Moisture levels are tested for each load of beans.

Lunenburg agent Lindy Tucker assists Taylor by measuring test weight on beans from each load.

Taylor measures the length of each harvested strip in the plot.

On-farm research plots are not the only thing keeping Virginia Cooperative Extension agents like Taylor busy on a day-to-day basis. Other duties include taking phone calls, visiting farmers daily to assist with troubleshooting and management decisions, teaching and facilitating workshops and educational activities, and providing information to meet the needs of agricultural producers, homeowners, and landowners. Nonetheless, test plots remain a vital part of Extension work because agents appreciate the value that on-farm research brings to agriculture and the role these projects serve in bringing credible, up-to-date information to the people who help grow the nation’s food.

Additional Resources for Readers:

Virginia Soybean Update Blog with Articles Listed by Topic

Virginia On-Farm Soybean Test Plots 2013

Meet David Smith’s grain sorghum.

Posted on October 24, 2013 by laurab08

David raises cattle on his farm in central Virginia, but this year, he also gave sorghum a shot.

Sorghum—or milo, as some call it—is a summer annual plant that was developed in the Upper Nile region of Sudan. It is quite versatile. Most varieties have been developed for grain harvest, while others are chopped for silage as an alternative to corn. Sorghum-sudangrass hybrids are becoming increasingly popular for hay and forage because they can be grown during the summer months when cool-season grasses like tall fescue hit a slump. Varieties that make up the “sweet” sorghums are valued for the juices that are extracted from the plants’ stalks and turned into sorghum syrup, a homestead specialty that has become rather rare. Furthermore, faculty at Virginia State University and other research centers are developing varieties of sorghum that are suitable for use in biofuel production.

Sorghum has been grown for grain in many states for a number of years, but many new producers in Virginia and North Carolina, including David, have recently decided to try it thanks to an increase in demand from livestock operations in the state. The rising costs of fuel, labor, and fertilizer in combination with past periods of drought have raised the cost of feeding corn on these operations. Managers are looking for alternate feeds that equal corn in nutritional content, so sorghum has become a good pick. Most grain sorghum produced in the U.S. is used as animal feed, but sorghum is growing increasingly popular as a gluten-free, high antioxidant food in the U.S. Many farmers favor sorghum because it is more drought-tolerant than corn. While corn and sorghum may both curl up during a dry year, sorghum can wait longer for moisture to return and will bounce back readily after a rain. Sorghum also adds flexibility and diversity to a crop rotation, resulting in easier disease and pest control.

Sorghum plants closely resemble corn during their early growth stages.

David was among many farmers in the state who faced some challenges during the early part of the growing season. Excessive rain washed nutrients out of the soil in high parts of fields, leaving seedlings with shallow roots temporarily deficient in phosphorus. Seedlings in low areas, especially in flat fields in eastern Virginia, faced the risk of drowning. The heavy, constant rains also created a good environment for pressure from seedling disease issues like damping off and root rot. Fortunately, David’s sorghum weathered the late spring and grew out nicely. The same is true for most of the growers across southside and central Virginia. In fact, the middle and late summer moisture was a boon for both corn and sorghum plants in later stages of development.

This sorghum has developed a head but the gain has not filled yet.

Grain sorghum looks like corn throughout its early growth stages, but rather than developing ears, it grows a head with small, rounded seeds that appear as pyramidal cluster. The grain must be harvested before it becomes dry enough to “shatter” or fall off prematurely before or during harvest. Ideally, it should be harvested between 17 and 20% moisture to prevent losses at harvest. However, grain at these moisture levels will spoil easily during storage, so the harvested grain must be dried so that it reaches a safe storage moisture level of 10-12%.

The grain shown here is well-developed and almost ready for harvest.

The future of sorghum in the state looks bright. Sorghum grain is not a complete replacement for corn and not all growers have the equipment to grow and dry it or access to an increasing market, but acreages in parts of the state near large buyers are expected to increase. This year, the drought-ready traits of the crop did not have an opportunity to shine. However, in view of the uncertainty of next year’s weather, many sorghum producers will be better equipped to withstand a dry year. Sorghum is not new to everyone, but thanks to new growers like David and expanding markets in and around the state, it is enjoying a resurgence and helping farmers mitigate risk and diversify their operations.

Additional Resources for Readers:

Sorghum Marketability

Sorghum Variety Data

United Sorghum Checkoff Program Mid Atlantic Production Handbook

Central Virginia Ag Spotlight

Connecting communities to agriculture

Category Archives: Crops

Meet Chris Drake at Sandy Point Farms.

Meet Ameva Farm.

Meet a Virginia Cooperative Extension Soybean Test Plot

Meet Featherstone Farm.

Meet the Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

Meet Taylor Clarke’s Soybean Test Plot

Meet David Smith’s grain sorghum.