- [Announcer] Montana Ag Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(bright music) - You're watching Montana Ag Live originating tonight from the studios at KUSM on the very vibrant campus of Montana State University and coming to you over a year of Montana Public Television System.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of Plant Pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

As usual, this program is based on the questions that you provide.

So the more questions, the more curiosity you have, the better this program becomes because we have a panel here that can answer those questions.

And for that matter, if you have any comments, please don't hesitate to get 'em in.

We do screen 'em, I'll tell you that.

So be careful.

But overall, honestly, we do value your comments.

Tonight's program, we're gonna step out and look at number one industry from the agricultural side, the plant side, and that's wheat production here in the state and we're gonna learn a lot more about it.

But before we go there, let me introduce tonight's panel.

Far in my left, Uta McKelvy.

Uta is an extension plant pathologist and she is knowledgeable in wheat, potatoes, whatever that funny looking plant is down there.

We'll get to that in a little bit.

If you have questions about diseases, whether it's in home garden settings, in crops, whatever.

Good chance to get a master this evening.

Special guest tonight, Boyd Heilig.

Boyd is from Moore, Montana, and he is the president of the Montana Grain Growers Association.

So we're gonna learn a lot about wheat production, grain production in the state and what the association does for the growers in this state as we move through this program.

Jason Cook, Jason is a plant breeder and Jason is very knowledgeable on some of the new varieties that are coming into the state.

Also, some of the old ones, some of the potential of these varieties.

So if you have variety of questions and I know a lot of producers around the state are curious about which varieties that they should be growing.

Good chance to ask those questions this evening.

And we drug this guy down from Havre.

Darrin Boss is the associate director of the Ag Experiment Station.

He is also a superintendent up at Havre.

He is also very knowledgeable grain production, but by trade and training, he is an animal scientist.

Answering the phones tonight, we have Nancy Blake, Nancy's here quite a bit.

I thank her for being here.

And Judge Bruce Loble.

Judge is the retired chief water court judge for the state and he's a Ag Live guru.

He likes to come and watch and laugh at us, so he'll take your questions this evening.

Boyd, thank you for coming in.

Tell us about the Grain Growers Association.

- Well, it's a privilege to be here, Jack.

I'm the current president of Montana Grain Growers Association.

We're a grassroots organization.

We have about a thousand members, about 2/3 farmer members.

And the other third are associate members, businesses, ag retailers.

And we're 60 some years old and we're growing as we speak.

- You know, we have a lot of great associations in the state.

The stock growers, well growers, grain growers, I'm missing some, I even know we have a grape growers association because that was pointed out many years ago that I kind of neglected them.

But these associations do a lot of good work for the state and especially for those producers that belong to those associations.

And I'm gonna show you a photo later on that we took a couple of weeks ago on a tour that I was at.

I wanna ask you, do you work with the Farm Bill?

I mean, I know a lot of the associations have a lot of input to the Farm Bill.

And our Farm Bill is what, about two years late now?

- Yep.

- So number one, are we gonna get one?

- Well, that's a great question.

We've been working on it as a association for two years now.

Expired last week, the 2018 farm bill expired and we've been to DC three or four times in the last two years and just advocating for all of our producers here in the state.

And that's why they're members is so we could go to these, to Helena and DC and advocate for our growers.

And sometimes it feels like a stalemate, but I think we talked to Senator John Bozeman last week on a Zoom and he's the ranking Senate Ag Committee chairman.

And he thinks there's hope for it by the end of the calendar year, and in a lame duck session, he's also optimistic that there might be a another ad hoc disaster just for the current farm crisis right now.

So it was good to talk to him.

Very, very knowledgeable.

- So do you see any big changes that might affect either grain growers in the state or stock growers with the new farm bill as you think it might come forward?

- That's a good question because there was a farm bill flying about three weeks ago and all the farm commodity groups came into DC at one week and they made a lot of ruckus and people took notice.

We're just not sitting back and waiting.

We're getting it out there that how important it is and they need to get their job done.

- I agree.

Darren, you got anything to throw in there for that?

- I've got a quick question for Boyd.

What programs, seeing how it's expired between now and January 1, are any programs that we're gonna lose or impacts to Montana producers that you know about with the ending?

- After the first of the year, the first one would go with be the dairy program and then it would trickle down from there.

And the good thing is crop insurance is covered, it's mandatory farm.

And so I think we don't want it to go that far and I think there is a chance to get it done in the lame duck session.

- Did I hear that there's no more CRP enrollments while this expired, is that correct?

- Correct, after the first year, it's a trickle down, by May or June that could happen.

- I don't like that idea.

I like the CRP.

I think it was a great program for the state.

- They wouldn't take it away, there'd just be no new membership, - No new members.

Yeah, that's what I understand.

Before we go any farther, Uta has kind of a bouquet down there and last week or maybe two weeks ago, I kind of lose track of time now that I'm retired.

We had a question about ergot and barley and somebody that used to work at MSU, Pat Hensley, brought that in for Uta.

So you wanna explain that a little bit and show growers and the viewers what ergot is and we'll tell people a little bit more about it too.

- Yeah, gladly.

So this is, wait what Jack, you're retired.

When did that happen?

(everyone laughing) So this is my second favorite kind of bouquet after fresh flowers, husband take notice, this is a bouquet of diseased plants.

Here we have ergot.

So ergot is actually one of those diseases that's pretty easy to identify.

So what happens is it's a fungal disease and it affects the flowers of the grain and basically replaces the grain with this ergot sclerotia that you can see poking out here.

They come in all sorts and all sizes, but they tend to stick out and you know, are pretty obvious.

So what happens is that this is how the fungus survives between seasons.

So these sclerotia during harvest or even before then will fall onto the ground.

And they can survive on a soil surface for about a year.

And so in the spring under moist and relatively cool conditions, this will germinate and release spores, which then will infect the flowers again.

And that's how the disease continues.

So the way to control ergot, which was a question during two weeks ago when that call came in was, so crop rotation is a really great way because these sclerotia don't live for a really long time.

So growing some non hose crops, post crops, brassica, something like that would help.

And then doing a plowing where we buried these sclerotia about four inches below in the ground will prevent them from germinating.

Really what we need to look out for is the grasses around our field edges because grasses can get this disease too and it can spread from there into the field.

So mowing before the grasses along the field edges flower can help managing the disease as well.

- For people that aren't aware of it, ergot is very toxic to humans and also to livestock because it induces abortion in pregnant cattle.

On that note, triticale, and number one, we've talked about triticale many, many times in this program.

Jason, what is triticale?

- So triticale is a hybridization So many years ago, people discovered like rye and wheat have different genomes and you could actually cross them together to make kind of this hybrid form of a type of plant.

And they found that it produced more forage, it was really tall and animals liked it for feed.

So triticale has been around for a number of decades now and it's still grown in Montana and other states for its forage productivity.

- So my question is, knowing that rye, and you can address this too, is very susceptible to ergot.

What about triticale?

Is that open pollinated?

Explain, do you think they would?

- Yeah, so I mean I've definitely seen ergot in triticale just like we've seen it in wheat.

I don't think it's quite as severe in triticale as it is in rye, which tends to be the most susceptible plant at least I've seen for a crop that I've seen for ergot.

But yeah, it's definitely is susceptible and if you want to use it for feed, then yeah you'll have to be cautious and watch for it for sure on your field.

- Okay.

- And I think we don't see it because it's quite often hayed for forage before it gets the heading.

And so we really don't have a good test of how prevalent it could be in Montana anyways.

- Thank you.

Question that came in this week to my email, which is correct if people want to email me.

And by the way, the phone, we've got an open phone line, so if you have questions, the phone number's on the screen, call it in and you'll get it answered this evening if it's at all possible.

Question from Deborah up in Columbia Falls and she sends in a question quite often and thank you Deborah because we appreciate it.

It says, could you ask someone to explain the concept of custom combining, Boyd, I'm gonna go to you with this.

Why don't the farmers just buy or lease a combine and harvest their own crops at their own speed and when it needs to be done?

- That's a good question 'cause we have a lot of grain grower members that are up in the triangle and they have so many acres that they couldn't get over it with their machines.

So they hire custom cutters to come in and get it done in a timely fashion.

Smaller growers, like a lot of us, we own one or two of our own machines and maybe lease one to get it done.

But that is the most important thing is to get it off the field before the rain or the hail or any kind of peril comes in.

- I'm gonna jump in and ask what's a medium sized, say John Deere or Massey Ferguson new combine cost in today's market?

I think people might be surprised.

- Yeah, it's pretty staggering, Jack.

I think a John Deere new X9 combine with the header is about a million dollars.

- Deborah, that's why a lot of farmers are not buying them and they're custom cutting.

What is that cost of custom cutting now?

- Between 40 and $50 an acre.

It depends how many acres and how many miles you are from the bins or the elevator.

- And does the yield difference make it any-- - Yeah, it goes up per bushel.

- Okay, so there's a base cost and then additional cost on a per bushel basis.

- Correct.

- Okay.

On that note, I have a question that came in from Conrad and I'm gonna throw this one to, I guess I'll throw it to Jason.

It says dry land wheat yields seem to have increased a lot more than spring wheat and spring wheat not as much so.

Any reason why that might be?

- So it would be like winter wheat versus spring wheat?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Yeah, so I think it would mostly has to do with the environment.

So winter wheat's grown or planted in the fall.

It has time to, you know, produce tillers, which is part of the, you know, producing yield and then it goes over winters and then comes out of dormancy early spring when generally you tend to have more moisture and you have more or cooler temperatures, and so it gets the earlier start the spring wheat does and then, so as the plant grows, a lot of times, they heads out and say late May, early June, depending on when you planted it.

And so winter we can escape those really hot dry temperatures we often get in Montana going in, you know, starting in July and through August, spring wheat 'cause you have to plant it April, maybe May, depending where you're in the state.

It gets a later start, and therefore it's going to be more likely that it's gonna experience some of that severe heat and drought that we often see in the state.

So yeah, the environment is just limiting the potential of spring wheat production versus winter wheat.

- I'll make a comment and I'll go to Boyd and he can tell us because he's a producer and he's smarter than the rest of us.

But anyway, when I first moved out here in 79, so that gives you a clue that I'm not a youngster anymore.

A 35 bushel winter wheat yield used to be considered pretty good.

- Yeah.

- In today's world, and based on varieties, better varieties and stuff, what is considered a good winter wheat yield in today's environment?

- That's a good point 'cause I started farming when I was younger, 1983, which wasn't too far.

Past that, bur it was 35 to 40 bushels was a great crop.

And now if you hit the year right and with these new varieties you could hit 80, 90 bushel.

And I think the highline hit some of those numbers this year.

- And maybe if I could put on my associate director hat, this is why it's so important that we have the commodity and the checkoff programs supporting these unbiased variety trials and these breeding programs in Montana because we're linear increases in yields every year.

And so by having these, you know, where Jason's breeding crops that are gonna be productive and we're seeing that increase by having that research funding and it's really important.

People don't realize how important it's to have that funding.

- So on that note, I know the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee and the grain growers support people like you.

You want get into that a little bit, both you guys.

How important are new varieties to the ag community?

- I'll just talk, we share the same office with the Wheat & Barley Committee in Great Falls.

And so we've been together for quite some time and so they help us advocate for the Montana Grain Growers or for the wheat producers here in the state and the barley producers.

But we work hand in hand and then we work hand in hand with the university, the breeding system because to get those higher yields, you have to have the quality to go with it.

And that's what these guys do.

- And they do a pretty good job.

I have to say our plant breeding group here in MSU has always been topnotch, and that's been as long as I've been around here, which is a long time.

- And it's impressive that both winter wheat and spring wheat, the most grown varieties are MSU varieties.

- And I like that too.

So Pat Hensley just called here and corrected us and this is good because we're talking about triticale, that's triticale that he brought in.

So to answer your question, triticale definitely gets hurt and you would not want to harvest that for grain and feed it to pregnant livestock.

Not at all.

Question.

This person from Hamilton wants to know why the ag sector has to rely so much on government support.

I don't think we do as much as we used to, but do you wanna jump on that a little bit?

- That was kind of a stereotype long time ago, but our biggest government subsidy is through crop insurance.

And the way that works, it's part of the Farm Bill and the reason that it's so important to us is to keep year to year, you know, your farm going.

I mean, you can't be out borrowing a million dollars and not have a return guaranteed somehow.

- Managed risk.

- And yes, you gotta manage the risk.

And the best part about it's the farmer pays their share of, of that crop insurance, it's usually 60/40, but without it, we'd have a hard time making it.

- I agree with you entirely.

And there's no longer some of these supports for, you know, a base price for wheat like there used to be.

So most of that's historically gone as far as I know.

- And another thing they're trying to do is subsidize the insurance part of it so they don't have to have all these ad hoc disaster bills.

Just put it into the books and then it's there, and we don't need to, you know, ask for handouts.

- Thank you.

And while I've got this up, this person from Bigfork would like to know why it's taken two years to get a Farm Bill through, what's been the real hangup?

And hey, this is an open mic.

Quit laughing.

You guys want, I don't know if we're gonna have an answer to that.

- I can touch on that.

I've learned a lot about it in the past two years.

The biggest hangup is the farm bill.

You got your commodity part of it and you got the nutrition part of it, the SNAP program.

And so it's all under one umbrella, but nobody wants to give up their part of it.

And so if you try to cut the SNAP program, you're gonna get a lot of backlash from the city folks.

But on the commodity side, we're asking for a little more, you know, just some enhancements.

But the price tag is just too much right now.

And so they're kind of kicking the can down the road.

- And they're known to do that.

I shouldn't say that, but it's true.

So, okay, we're gonna switch over a little bit to a couple questions that we've had in the past and a lot of people have been digging potatoes.

I go through where they were all from, but a lot of people have kind of a, what they call scabby looking.

So I asked you to bring in some potatoes that had what we call potato scab.

So you want to show that and tell us a little bit about why it occurs and what you do for it?

It's all yours.

- Well once again, yes.

So this is an example of a scabby potato.

I mean the name is pretty descriptive.

So this is a common scab.

There's another form of scab which we really don't wanna see on potatoes.

Common scab is caused by a bacterial pathogen that lives in the soils pretty widespread.

So it's not uncommon to get common scab.

So it's really variety.

Certain varieties are just more susceptible to it than others.

So if this was your home garden and that's the potato you harvested, if you wanna grow potatoes there again, which I would not recommend to do that right next year, grow peas or some other crop.

But certainly no root crops like carrots or turnips.

Next year when you come back to potatoes, just select a variety that's a little bit more resistant and we can, you can work with your, I guess check the varieties they would usually list if they're resistant or more tolerant to commons scab.

So watering while the tubers forms also is important to prevent scabs.

So make sure that you water adequately and consistently during the tuber formation period is really important.

And then definitely don't replant potatoes that look like that 'cause that's how the pathogen just keeps staying in the soil.

Also the scab pathogen thrives in alkaline soils.

So I guess a good start would be to do a soil test potentially and figure out where the pH is in your garden soil.

And if it's a little bit higher, you could put some treatments in there to get it lower or certainly avoid using certain fertilizers that would keep the pH going higher, which would favor the disease development more.

- You can eat those potatoes though.

- Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you for asking that.

So it doesn't look pretty, but it doesn't really impact edibility so you could peel 'em and eat them.

- Our seed potato industry in Montana does not have a big scab problem because they rotate every four or five years.

Speaking of rotation, you're a winter wheat, spring wheat, barley producer, how do you rotate on your farm?

- Well during my dad's generation, he's gone now, but it used to be winter wheat, spring wheat and follow.

But things have changed the last couple years.

I put malt barley in and then this past year I put canola in for the first time and I was just telling Jason how well the winter wheat looks this fall on that canola stubble.

It's just beautiful.

- Plus your three inches of rain that you had just recently.

- Yeah, that might out a little.

- But compared to the winter wheat on spring wheat though, it's a big difference.

- Yeah, no, I agree.

And on pea ground or you know, a lot, that's where the alternate crops.

- And that's where Montana's on board, every year we see more and more pulse crops, more canola, different rotations, but we're not losing our winter wheat and spring wheat acres.

They're pretty constant and just different varieties.

But I think that's what makes Montana successful is the rotations.

- And our growing season produces some of the best grain that you can buy any place in the world.

Our environment definitely helps too.

This is an interesting question from Bozeman.

The caller is asking if anyone grows farro, F-A-R-R-O in Montana?

- I don't know.

- You don't know?

- I don't know that question.

- Well what is farro?

First of all.

- I've never heard it.

- I think it's some kind of a strange grain, isn't it?

- I thought it was related to dill.

- It may be.

So homework time, we'll find out and next week we'll let you know exactly what's going on.

Caller from Bozeman for Jason, they want to know if plant breeders can engineer grain to be more healthy.

- Yeah, so there's actually been a fair amount of work where people have identified genes for improving.

Say some people are looking at increasing carotinoids in wheat grain.

So for more vitamins there's like some purple grain out there.

So antioxidants and that kind of thing.

And then also, yeah, increasing protein content and things like that so that there's a higher protein value in the grain.

So yeah, people are working on also looking at different types of starch.

So there's some starch that are more easily digested than others.

The ones that aren't as easily digested, you know, it's like essentially serve as like fiber and you also don't have a high of a caloric content in that.

So those are some other traits people are looking at in improving the wheat to improve the nutritional value.

- You know, it's interesting what plant breeders can do.

We had Mike Giroux, who is our Durham breeder and quality control guru at MSU and he's developed Durham variety that is hard to overcook.

And there's some restaurants in this state that out of, take that under confinement because there's nothing worse than mushy pasta.

But you have a yield loss when you utilize that genome.

So it's not gonna probably become as popular, but those are things that breeders can do.

- So that's the thing we constantly deal with in developing new varieties is like if you increase one trait to improve one trait, you might have a little bit of a setback in another one.

So it's just this huge balancing act that we have to do across all the traits that are important for Montana producers to eventually release a variety that you'll get small increments.

That's why you don't get these huge increments like we would like to have, but 'cause oftentimes there's a drawback, you know, so we can really increase yield a lot more, but then you lose quality along the way.

So we have to balance all of those different traits developing these varieties.

- And it's a real testament to our industry, whether it be grain growers, wheat and barley committee and our breeders, they're maintaining high quality wheats.

They could be chasing yields, but that's not Montana's claim to fame, we grow high quality wheat, we want blending wheat and they've never missed it.

And they've stayed with that mantra.

- And that's why our export market out of Montana is really very good.

On that note, interesting question from Big Sandy.

This person wants to know just what does the president of the Montana Grain Growers do?

- Well, I was sworn in back in December of 23 and it's been a whirlwind of a year.

We have our quarterly meetings, I run those meetings and then we go to state legislature, it'll be in 25, we'll be going to that.

Klayton Lohr will be our next president.

And so that's his task is to get all that done.

And we have a new director of policy, Kara Berkland, she's doing a fantastic job.

So I would say as president I just fill in and do stuff like this.

- Which is fun, right?

- It's great to be a spokesman because I'm very passionate about agriculture here in Montana.

We rely heavily on the extension service and the college of ag and experiment stations.

One time, a long time ago, Russian weed aphids infested the state and everybody was at the research centers wondering what we could do and they saved us.

- And that's, we've talked about Russian weed aphids, it was a serious pest probably 20 years ago now.

And it developed some varieties, but we don't hear about Russian weed aphid anymore.

So I have no clue what's happened to it.

Comment and thank you for the comment.

Farro is triticum dicoccum, which is emmer wheat.

So we don't have to do our homework on that one.

Somebody did it for us out there.

Probably.

So you know on a homeowners situation from Helena, this caller says her peony plants developed a white powdery growth of the leaves and leaves are dying out.

What's wrong?

I wouldn't worry about it this time.

- Well I would say it's fall.

That's probably part of that.

And then the white powdery stuff sounds like powdery mildew, which is a common thing we see.

I have it on my peonies too.

Thrives in moist conditions and with, you know, cooler temperatures and you know, we have more dew now.

It seems like a logical occurrence.

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it.

I don't think it's worth applying anything for that matter.

- Okay, thank you.

Facebook question that just came in.

And by the way you can email us questions, Facebook, we take 'em any which way we can get 'em.

Does the ag experiment station and/or the Montana Grain Growers work with the Land Institute to experiment with the development of perennial grains, Kernza, perennial wheat grass for production in Montana?

- Yeah, I can take a whack from the experiment station command.

- Well are you gonna pinch hit or just?

- No actually, we have been contacted and we've been doing some research on Kernza, specifically at our Northwestern Ag research center up in, up near Kalispell, outside of Creston.

And it was done simply there to be a start because it's one of our high moisture areas.

This is a crop that's a perennial wheat that has had some successes in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Well, a logical place was to try it where there's a little bit more rainfall.

And Dr. Jessica Torrien, if you're interested, who would be a great contact, who would let you know how that was working.

- Okay.

You know, we talked about various associations in the state and I know the Grain Growers have tours.

I happened to be on a tour about two weeks ago with the stock growers and it was called Raising the Stakes Tour.

It's an environmental stewardship tour to illustrate how well the ranching community is doing and making life better for both animals and livestock.

So it is a great tour.

This is over at the Groggins Endicott Ranch over at Ennis.

It was a great tour and I want to thank the stock growers for inviting me but also for the great job they do.

And you guys have grain growers tours around the state.

You wanna mention what some of your tours are like?

- We've had two listening sessions this year, we call it The Grains of Wisdom Tour.

- Okay.

- We just had one in Lewistown a couple weeks ago.

The first one we had was up in Rudyard.

The one in Rudyard was well attended.

The one in Lewistown wasn't so much because of the timing of everybody was in, in their tractor drilling.

But anyway, we're gonna continue that work.

And then just wanna make a plug for our annual conventions in Great Falls December 3rd through the 5th.

- It's a great convention, I've been there many times.

You guys have been, they even let you in?

- They do.

- Okay, well.

From Thompson Falls, they say over here on the west side we keep hearing about value added products.

What are the Grain Growers and the College of Ag doing to add value to commodities?

That's a good question.

- Well I'll take a first stab at that Jack.

And actually we're really, really excited.

I jokingly say that one of the most things we buy in Montana in agriculture is tires 'cause we put tires under everything.

Everything we ship somewhere, we ship it to Boyd was mentioning earlier, he took his canola to Soto or somewhere over that way he trucked it to there, they're trucking it outta state.

So we're putting tires under everything.

So the goal of an initiative that we have at the College of Ag and Montana Ag Experiment Station is the value added initiative that's supported by our Board of Regents.

And we're hoping we can get it through the governor's budget and into the legislative session to put two full-time faculty on at the College of Ag that would focus on value added products.

And this is a way to develop products that are fractionated peas or fractionated oil seeds that were taking the high end products off, separate 'em out and specifically moving those to markets and then moving the other stuff and byproducts through the cattle industry, whatever, without having to ship the whole grain.

- I like the idea.

- I just have an example.

We have a director on our board down at Three Forks that raises his own flour, grounds his own flour.

But he said the biggest hurdle in that is the packaging and the labeling.

He can't put on there that it's non-allergenic or such.

So he's having trouble there.

But his product is well known.

- And long term years ago, Wheat Montana did that.

And they added value.

There's a lot of small producers around the state that have done value added.

In fact, one that you may remember, we used to make biscuits out of alfalfa out of Mile City.

I don't think that business is going anymore.

And that those alfalfa biscuits were shipped to Japan.

And so there's a lot of potential and a lot of different crops around the state and also the pulse crops, you know, even grain growers.

How do you perceive the introduction of so many pulse crops in the state?

Do you work with the pulse growers closely as well as the grain growers?

- Yeah, and more and more every year.

The conversation's getting louder that we should join together and we have for our convention, we've had the Pulse Growers, Pacific Northwest Pulse Growers Association and the Northern Pulse Growers join us and it's turned out really well.

A little more every year.

And we're all in the same battle.

We're all farmers, that's what it comes down to.

We don't like to just say we grow one crop or another.

We're farmers.

- There's a question and it's a good question.

2024 was a tough year for farmers producers because of low commodity prices.

How did Montana fare based on your experience with the Grain Growers?

- Well, from just the temperature of the room last week we had our meeting and we go around the room for our director reports and it was a good year but with the low cost of what we get, it's taken us down, losing equity in our farms.

And so I just did my renewal for my operating loan and they're in black and white inputs, were up 10% and revenue is down 25 to 30%.

- That hurts.

- And that's projection.

- So grain growers I know and commodity producers that they project into the future.

Any thought where grain prices might be a year or two from now.

And honestly folks, the price of grain does not really affect your food prices whatsoever.

So any thought of where the grain prices might be going?

- I've been asked that before and I try to keep it pretty simple, but all I can say is in the last week, wheat has rallied 50 cents.

So there's been some opportunities to get above $6 for the first time in six months.

So if people take advantage of that and get the advancements, they should take it.

- It's a pretty good protein premium?

- Yes.

- Protein premium is the highest it's been for quite some time.

- So you mentioned that there's a lot of people that are not producers that may not know what a protein premium is.

Your turn.

- Jason.

- So it's like a base level for protein in wheat.

And so if you drop below that base level, you'll get docked or your price is lowered.

But if you go higher, if there's a premium on that, you actually get additional money for every like what quarter percent?

Every quarter percent higher you go maybe up to 15% or so, in spring wheat anyway.

And so you get additional money for that extra protein that you have in your grain.

- Why is that important Jason?

- It's for end use quality.

So yeah, so being able to, you need to have good protein quantity in your grain to make, you know, a good loaf of bread.

And a lot of times that higher protein wheat will get blended off with lower protein wheat to meet the requirements of the bakers that are using it.

- And it's night and day Jack when they do the cereal quality lab and they're baked and blows the bread, the low protein wheats here, the medium protein wheat and you get some really high quality, it's night and day on our quality to wheat.

- I can attest to that because they used to, the baking lab on campus used to give out their baking samples at the end of the day and my kids called it work bread and the big loaves were always much preferred than the flat loafs.

Now they quit doing that, I have no clue why.

And I've never asked but it was just fun.

- If you ever see a loaf of bread with holes in it, that's from low falling numbers.

Those falling numbers too.

- Yeah, we're learning a lot tonight.

So am I.

What's a falling number and what's that mean?

- Yeah, so basically it's the quality of the starch of the grain.

So in spring wheat, we want to have falling numbers of like 331 and higher.

If you're below that number you'll get docked for like, I dunno how much it is now, but you'll get docked in your price if you go below that.

And I don't know, there's a little bit of wiggle room there, but as far as the effects of quality.

But if you have lower falling numbers then yeah you don't have the quality starch for making a good loaf of bread.

So yeah.

So they have demand pretty high falling numbers from Montana producers to get that, you know, the higher, higher price.

- We got to go to Portland a couple years ago to the wheat marketing center and that they're experts on all this milling and baking and they show you how the difference is.

- It's pretty dramatic.

- Protein and falling numbers.

- It's an industry and they may think that the farmers just grow this stuff and they make product out of it.

There's a lot more to it than that.

- So basically what happens if you're falling number drops down, it's because you have enzymes activated and they're starting to, you know, start to germination process part of that process using the starch to create energy to produce a plant.

We don't want that to happen.

- That sounds like biochemistry and I didn't pass biochemistry.

- To get into some of the details, that's what's going on.

- Okay, switch gears a little bit and I want to go back, quick one to Uta.

Missoula is asking if she puts peeling from scabby potatoes in her compost pile and then puts the compost in the garden, will her potatoes get scab?

- Great question.

So I think compost, if you do it properly, it should break down the plant tissue and eliminate the pathogen.

But the key is really to compost properly, which is hard to do in Montana.

I know Dave Bombar is the expert on that.

So if it was my garden I would just throw it in the trash just to avoid the problem.

The problem of the disease.

- If I can talk about composting, we did a huge composting project at Northern Ag Research Center and it's not difficult but it's very important you get your carbon to nitrogen ratios and your moisture, and in Montana the moisture usually drives it on large scales because even in the winters, we're sucking moisture out everything 'cause it's so dry in Montana if it's summer or not.

So those are three things.

There's really good guides out there that would help people have one get through this, this outstanding thing.

But carbon, nitrogen and moisture really important.

- That sounds more like biochemistry too.

- Welcome to the club.

- I've gotta sit here and play dumb, which isn't hard, by the way.

Okay, this is an interesting question from Florence.

So the caller asked, I'll throw this to Boyd, is the old wheat allotment program still going?

- No.

The closest thing we have to that is the Base Acre program in the farm bill, they still go by that today, we haven't been able to update our base acres in over 20 years.

And so that's one of the priorities that we had going into the farm bill push is to get our base acres updated because there's a lot of wheat acre base that isn't producing wheat anymore.

So the cost of that is very, very expensive.

And so that's why the legislatures won't even wanna bring it up.

But we are still pushing for that.

- Okay, thank you and thanks to the caller or the person out of Florence for asking that question.

This person from Big Timber would like to know more about MSU Celebrate Ag Week.

Do you want to get in on that?

- Yeah, it'd be great.

Just a few years ago, we've started initiating Celebrate Ag on campus and it's always been a tradition.

A year ago, we had a student of ours that just graduated and says, you know, I really love Celebrate AG Week, I'm a big producer and he said, but I can't tell there's Celebrate Ag on campus.

We know there's a football game, we have a couple tailgates he said.

And so we've reinvented Celebrate Ag and Celebrate Ag is gonna occur November 4th through November 9th with the football game and there's gonna be Celebrate Ag activities all through campus throughout that entire week.

The econ conference is gonna be happening on Friday the 8th.

We're gonna have tractors and equipment all over campus and I would love to just invite everybody back 'cause this is the Aggies homecoming, Celebrate Ag, November eight, nine.

- And I've been the last couple, two or three years going to their breakfast and you learn a lot about what's going on in agriculture from the dean and also from the president of university.

It's a fun day.

It really is a fun week.

And some of the seminars and conferences are worth taking.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, we've had a lot of comments about faro now.

So as you would expect, a billing scholar says that faro and I misspelled it the first time.

It's F-A-R-O is a nation grain that is very healthy and can be purchased in many grocery stores.

- And ironically if you go back age, we're a few, we're a little older, Jack, but remember Gil Stadnik actually had an amber breeding program at Montana State University.

So we are familiar with it.

I just didn't recognize that that where we were.

So we have worked with that in the past.

- We have and you're right, interesting caller or question from a caller from Bigfork, he says that with Montana's historical short season, might global warming become an advantage for Montana Ag, especially grain producers.

And I'm gonna let you two, you're not allowed on this one.

- No, it's definitely something we're watching closely.

So one of the big questions is like if you know continue warming trends, would that make more of the state, you know make it more of the state a better production winter wheat production region than the spring wheat production region.

So is that gonna push spring wheat further north maybe mostly into Canada.

So those are some interesting things we're watching looking for trends and things like that.

'Cause it seems like more and more people like are trying winter weed out in the northeastern part, which is traditionally spring wheat country.

So that's one thing.

But then the other part of it is like, and maybe we don't really know is like so how hot is it gonna get in those the key July, August growing times are we gonna have earlier planting dates so we could try to avoid some of that heat, you know, get the seeds in the ground earlier?

So it might change, you know, when we plant and all those different variables too.

So potentially yes, it could be beneficial and it maybe could bring in some other crop or allow us to grow some other crops than we have before.

But the big question is moisture I think.

Is like how much moisture do we get?

- The interesting thing, and Jane Mangold presented this to me over the last 120 years, the average moisture in the state of Montana is 18.85 inches at all locations.

That has not changed over 120 years.

So moisture has maintained a steady flow.

Temperature has increased at 2/10 of a degree every decade for the last 120 years.

Has warmer temperatures affected you as a producer?

- Well this summer of 2024 it sure did because July through August 15th it was over 90 most of the time.

And that's pretty rare.

And we have yet to have a frost in Moore, Montana.

So it's just, it's changing.

I can see it.

- Yeah there's no doubt about it.

Luther Talbert, who was our spring lead breeder for a long time does study at Moccasin and I told Luther one time that he was a dinosaur because spring wheat was going to disappear 'cause of global warming.

I was wrong.

In Moccasin, the average temperature in March since 1950 is up seven degrees.

The average July temperature is up only two degrees.

We're planting spring wheat two to three weeks earlier than we used to.

So we adapt.

And agriculture is an adaptive science.

- Yeah if we can plant earlier and try to escape some of that later, later season heat.

- What I've noticed Jack over the last couple years is just how much corn is being taken for grain.

- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

- It's always been taken for silage but it's never been taken.

It's amazing.

- So that's where another crop could come in.

- And you don't have to go far out of this building to find grain corn here in the Gallatin Valley, which in 1979 when I got here, you were damn lucky to harvest sweet corn.

- Jack, I know you told me I wasn't allowed to answer this, but there's a lot of good research happening at Montana State looking at this and some examples is some of our researchers look at how snowpack is being impacted and how fast some of the snowpack is coming off.

And I think that's as impactful to Montana as anything 'cause you know as well as I do the rivers and the spring recharge and that is, so we're doing, we're trying to address some of those questions and just wanna make sure we understand that we're really working on that at Montana State.

- So on that note, last week we had the president of the University of Montana and he talked about the snowpack studies.

Is MSU working with the University of Montana on the snowpack studies at all?

- You know, I can't answer that.

I just know that Eric Sproles and a few people in Land resource Environmental Sciences are doing a pretty neat project on how fast that's coming off.

- Sounds good.

We're gonna switch crops here a little bit.

This person from Bozeman has noticed that he has a lot of black spots on the lower part of his alfalfa plants, especially his third cutting, which has been irrigated quite a bit.

He's losing these leaves.

Any idea what's going on?

- Well it sounds like a leaf spot disease.

There are actually quite a few that cause brown spots, so I'd have to see a sample to figure out which specific disease we're looking at.

But I think overall for the, in terms of management, doesn't matter 'cause they're very similar.

So it's probably a fungal disease driven by moisture coming from the residue, which is why we have the lower leaves looking worse and defoliating.

So really the best thing to do is next year in the spring, start scouting early and if you see those leaf spots occurring, try and harvest or cut your crop earlier than you normally would just to maintain yield.

Because what those leaf spot diseases do is with the defoliation you have lower yields and lower quality.

And so just cutting earlier to cut before the defoliation occurred really helps with the yield.

It's also having the advantage of removing the leaves that would fall to the ground and then produce more disease later on.

Remove them from the field, fungicides can help, but more often than not, they're not economical so it's probably not worth it.

- Okay, thank you.

Boyd, this person wants to know how can they join the Grain Growers Association and you'll welcome a lot of people.

- Right.

I'd welcome anybody to get on the internet and go to www.mgga.org or you can call the office in Great Falls.

Our staff in Great Falls is very, in the last year has really come to life again, things are going really well.

Like Allison Bergeron, our EVP, she said we got the right people on the bus and we're doing good things.

- You know, I always say there's always gonna be one trick question and here it comes.

And this is a person from Billings and he would like to know what the Grain Grower's position is on GMO wheat.

- [Boyd] That's a very good question.

- It is a good question.

- Because we have to take that to our National Association of Wheat Growers and there's a fine line between GMO and in our markets overseas, some of them markets are totally against it, but there's been some enhancements where it's not totally GMO, they go in and they alter and they just passed where you can have a drought tolerant gene.

And so that's a game changer.

They can put that in into Montana and hopefully we can work with it 'cause in our lower freeze-tip areas, it'd be great fit.

- You wanna add anything Jason?

- Yeah, so adding on to, so recently there's this trait called HB4, which is a gene that comes out of a sunflower and it was transformed into wheat and they found that this gene provides yeah, increased yields under drought stress conditions in the lines that they've tested it in so far.

So for us, what we would wanna do, actually our tech transfer team at MSU is working on working with the company, see if we can get the trade into our building and then what we would do is work with the integrate into our varieties and then tested in our genetic backgrounds and our environments.

Right now the data I've seen that where it's been tested is in a variety out of the UK, Scotland actually.

And so it's a facultative variety.

We've grew it here once, looked terrible.

So we definitely want to get outta that plant, put it into our plants that are adapted and then then see how, how this trait performs in our environment.

- So, sorry, one thing to add onto that, our resolution says Montana Grain Growers, that we are for it, but we'd like to see the industry find something for the volunteer because yeah, if we couldn't spray out our volunteer, that'd be a big problem.

- That's a very good point and and that's true.

Speaking of spraying out volunteers and so forth, a question came in from Stevensville and this caller has heard that some wheat farmers spray glyphosate near harvest, have all the plants ready for harvest.

Is that true?

Is it, I haven't seen that but?

- Yeah, some people do a burn down of using Roundup to burn down their grain to get it to, you know, if you have some uneven maturity going on in your field.

So yeah, it does happen.

People do use that technique.

I think it's more prevalent in Canada, but I think some people do use it.

- In the wheat industry it's a very frowned upon.

We've been told we can't even have the trace of glyphosate in our product.

- Well and you know, in today's world, grain that's grown on your farm that you may sell to General Mills as identity preserved and if that makes a box of Cheerios then they find something in it, they can go back to you directly to find out where that came from.

- It's getting to that point, yes.

- Yeah, it's very, very complicated anymore.

We're getting down a little bit on time, but there's a couple other interesting questions that have come in.

I wanna throw this one to Darrin, he deserves it.

Hamilton caller is asking if wildfire smoke affects crop production.

I mean you could run that test because we have enough smoke every year anymore.

- I can't imagine it doesn't, but let me shift the gears.

I know there's been research on livestock and impacting on those just like in humans.

So I'll let the plant guy sit into my left address the physiology of a plant and what could happen with the smoke.

- So I actually was in the Midwest for a conference in July or something and it was talking to a friend of mine who's a breeder with a Pioneer and yeah, they did studies and talked about like last year they had a lot of smoke in the Midwest and yeah, because the smoke blocks light or you know, reduces the amount of light getting into the canopy, it does reduce yielding corn.

And so I wouldn't be surprised it does same thing in wheat as well.

So yeah, so the question is yes.

It can affect productivity.

- We're down a minute and a half, I'm gonna ask, Boyd is there anything that grain growers would really like MSU or consumers to support or anything that you have coming down the line that you think is really important?

- Well, Montana Grain Growers was instrumental in the endowed chair position.

And so we're in the search for a new scientist for that position and we're gonna work with Darrin and his crew to get that accomplished and sawfly is the number one concern for our growers.

It costs Montana growers $66 million in lost revenue.

And so it's been around for quite some time, most of my career and we're still fighting it.

So we're trying to find a solution to that.

- Have we made inroads with varieties on the sawfly?

- Yeah, I mean if you could compare the older varieties that you know had the solid stem trait, the yields were quite low.

So our yields have definitely come up with that trait, but we still have issues with variability and the expression of the trait.

So you got a pretty good line but sometimes they'll still get cut unfortunately.

- Working on sawfly, no doubt about that.

- It's top priority for us.

- Okay.

Yep.

Folks, we're coming down to the end again.

I'd like to thank the panelists, especially Boyd, for coming down for more.

I don't know if I'd want to come down to Bozeman if I lived in Moore.

I like that area, where you don't know where it is, It's just east of Eddie's Corner.

- It was my pleasure.

- Next week, Pat Barkey with the Director Bureau of Business Economic Research will be here.

Join us.

Thank you for watching.

Goodnight.

- [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit Montanapbs.org/aglive.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Montana Ag Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery & Landscaping, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

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