2016 Corn Belt Crop Tour: Nebraska

Jul 05, 2016

Sixth state in a 12-state tour

By Andrea Gal
Managing Editor, Integrated Media
Farms.com

The Farms.com Risk Management team toured Nebraska on July 1 as the fifth annual U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour continues across the American Midwest.

2016 Corn Belt Crop Tour

Moe Agostino, Farms.com Risk Management chief commodity strategist, explained that the state received “too much” rain in May, which “delayed some of the planting … by one or two weeks.”

Noah Jacobson, a farmer from Hickman, Nebraska, said the moisture affected planting – particularly of soybeans. “You could plant maybe 75 per cent of a farm and then you’d have to come back in and spot stuff in. That’s been pretty much the normal thing around here the last two years.”

Other farmers put “some steel to their ground to try to dry it out,” according to Jacobson.

More recently, however, conditions are turning dry. Jacobson’s farm only received “1.5 (inches) of rain in the last five weeks – and that was in one event.” And his area had “19-plus days of over 90 degree (temperatures), which is the third-highest record of 90-degree days for southeast Nebraska.”

Much of the corn is a week or two from tasseling. A few fields are further along, with the plants “creating some small ears,” according to Agostino. In terms of the soybeans, they “still have a long way to go before pod fill.”

Agostino ranked the Nebraska crops at 6.5 or 7 out of 10. “There is still a lot of potential,” he said.

Be sure to check back daily as more videos from the tour are posted. The next stop on the tour is South Dakota.

Use the hashtag #cornbelt16 to follow the tour on social media.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.