Posts in category Forages

Did you notice the title: “forage” program, not field crops? That is deliberate, because this article concerns the use of field crops harvested as forage …

Following are questions I receive this time of year with answers that will hopefully be light on the blarney.

As summer starts winding down you should have a fairly good idea of forage inventories. Any supplies of corn silage should be approaching their annual minimums.

Trying to grow crops without knowing the soil pH or fertility levels of each crop field is like driving a car with a broken speedometer: Sooner or later you’re going to get in trouble.

It’s probably too late to do anything about any problems you may find with your forage, but knowing what happened – and why – is essential in trying to prevent the same things from happening again.

It was in 1999 that professors at Cornell University sounded the alarm: Research had found that monarch butterfly larvae eating pollen from Bt corn hybrids were injured or killed by the pollen.

It’s estimated that worldwide production of foodstuffs must increase by an average of 1.75 percent between now and about 2050, when global population is expected to peak at just under 10 billion.

Farmers have greatly increased the quality of alfalfa fed to their livestock, but primarily through management changes.

For farmers, the first signs of spring mean ultimately getting back on their fields to spread manure, fertilize grasses and plant crops. Following are some suggestions as farmers begin another year of crop production.

One of the big field crop stories this past fall was the reported inability of a genetically modified trait, Cry1F, to adequately control western bean …