Advanced Crop Advisers Workshop in January 2024

Jan 12, 2024

The Advanced Crop Advisers Workshop is scheduled on January 24-25 at the Fargo Holiday Inn. “This workshop is designed to provide in-depth discussion on selected topics to help agricultural professionals enhance their crop production recommendations for farmers,” says Greg Endres, NDSU Extension cropping systems specialist and workshop co-chair.

Registration begins at 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 24 with the program scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Educational sessions include:

How World Affairs and Weather Affect Grain Prices in the Northern Plains
Can Stress Tolerance in Corn and Soybean Keep Yields Moving Up?
The AI Crop Adviser
Making Cents of Soil Health
Asymbiotic N-fixing Organisms – Natural Populations and Commercial Products: What You Should Know and What Questions to Ask

To close the first day program, participants can enjoy a social while discussing the past season’s crop production challenges and successes.

Registration and breakfast will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 25 and educational sessions are scheduled from 8 a.m. to noon. Topics include:

Historical View of Corn and Soybean Production – What About the Future?
Making Cents of Soil Health
Identification and Management of New and Emerging Diseases of Corn, Soybean and Canola
Soybean’s Pest-a-palooza in 2023: Strategies for Managing Multiple Pests Simultaneously
Asymbiotic N-fixing Organisms – Natural Populations and Commercial Products: What You Should Know and What Questions to Ask
Is Biology Winning the Battle Against Soybean Phytophthora Root and Stem Rot?
Avoiding Train Wrecks: Monitoring and Managing Corn Rootworms

Source : ndsu.edu

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.