On Tuesday mornings in Centreville, farmers meet at a café to hear from agriculture specialists about how the beginning of the planting season will be.
Recently, Jeff Andresen, Michigan State University geography professor, state climatologist and Extension specialist, spoke on the weather outlook for the 2016 agriculture season. This week, Dean Baas, MSU Extension ag educator in St. Joseph County, spoke about cover crop termination.
Andresen spoke about how El Nino effected the winter and what that means for the upcoming growing season.
"It's important that we had an abnormally mild winter," said Andresen. "There is no buffering effect with the mild winter since everything is warmer. The farmers have been able to get into their fields sooner. This is typically seen with El Nino conditions."
With the El Nino conditions, Andresen predicts that the temperatures for spring will be normal to above normal.
"The key is what's going to happen to temperature," said Andresen. "We have just seen the temperatures come up for planting and they are going to stay up."
This winter, the precipitation was average to above average, and Andresen said this is good for the beginning of the growing season because the ground already has a water reserve from the winter.
"Irrigation is a big trend, and knowing about the water trends with the higher temperatures could mean that our water needs might be higher than usual for needing water this year," said Andresen.
He also spoke about the best way for farmers to use the weather forecasts and predictions.
"People can certainly use the short-term weather outlooks," said Andresen. "Get out a couple of weeks on the weather outlook and the accuracy drops."
Baas said that in coordination of the last weeks' weather outlook that the farmers have favorable conditions to terminating their cover crops in the next few weeks.
"It's that time of year where the farmers are looking to terminate cover crops if they do have the kind of cover crops that survived the winter," said Baas.
"Take caution in applying the termination chemicals," said Baas. "Use the best application practices, not early in the morning or when it is windy, and follow the label. You have to make sure that the herbicide being used to terminate the cover crop does not have a restriction of when you can plant your cash crop."
Cash crops usually cannot be planted for a couple of weeks after the cover crop has been terminated.
There is the option of tilling the cover crops under the soil. Baas recommends not allowing the spring cover crop to get larger than 12 inches before tilling.
"If cover crops get too mature, they will take up nitrogen and the farmer will have to compensate for that," said Baas.
Baas talked about how there was no special formula for deciding on what cover crops to use and whether to terminate them before winter or in the beginning of the growing season.
"A farmer may have one goal for a cover crop and there are a lot of choices for how to achieve it," said Baas. "Look beyond one reason and develop a plan with multiple goals to narrow down what the most beneficial cover crop will be."
Baas also talked about how the view of cover crops has changed from the number one benefit being soil erosion prevention to building soil health.
"Healthier soils are more productive soils," said Baas. "There is more potential for yield increase and less insect disease pressure."
This week, Rod Stevenson of Monsanto and Leslie Abbott of Dow AgroSciences spoke about upcoming herbicide tolerant crops at the Royal Café in Centreville.