- [Announcer] "Montana AG Live" is made possible by: The Montana Department of Agriculture.

(uptempo guitar music) MSU Extension.

The MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture.

The Montana Wheat & Barley Committee.

Cashman Nursery & Landscaping.

The Gallatin Gardeners Club.

And the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(uptempo guitar music continues) - You are watching "Montana Ag Live," originating today from the studios of KUSM, on the very exciting and dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology, happy to be your host this evening.

Most of you have watched this program in the past, you know how it works.

You provide the questions, we provide the answers.

Now, when I say, "Questions," I do accept comments if they're halfway decent.

If they're really negative, you probably won't hear them, but if they're positive, we'll try to get them on the screen.

The phone number will be on your screen shortly.

You know, if you provide the questions, you're not the only one that's probably interested in it.

And I've said before, if this program did not have your questions, it'd be more boring than it already is, so get your questions in and we'll attempt to answer them tonight.

Have an interesting program tonight and I'll tell you a little bit more about it after we introduce tonight's panel.

Way to my left, Eric Belasco.

Eric is our economist here, Department Head, MSU, but very knowledgeable about a lot of agricultural commodities.

If you have questions, where we're heading, what's behind, what's going on, tonight would be a good chance to ask that question, and Eric will answer it.

One of our special guests tonight is Tahnee Szymanski.

How'd I do?

- Szymanski, but you did good.

- [Jack] Okay, I normally really butcher names, but.

- That's all right.

It's easy to butcher.

(laughs) - She is a state veterinarian with Montana's Department of Livestock, and she runs a very distinct program here in the state.

And part of tonight's conversation is about that program and another program that I'll introduce in a moment.

But we have a whole new fancy building on campus that houses three different entities.

We're gonna talk a little bit about that tonight.

Ian Foley!

Ian is with the Montana Department of Ag.

He's administrator there.

Actually, he got his degree here in entomology.

We won't force him to answer any entomology questions tonight, but he'll tell us a little bit about the analytical lab that a lot of people haven't heard about, but it provides a real service to producers here in the state of Montana.

Abi Saeed.

Abi is a horticulturist.

Any questions about plants tonight, call them in, we'll get them on.

It's a nice cool evening so probably a lot of viewers this evening.

I know a lot of you have questions about what to do with your plants going into fall.

Good chance to ask them this evening.

Answering the phone tonight is an old standby, Nancy Blake and Sherry Klasse.

The number isn't up yet, but as soon as it comes up, start phoning in those questions and we'll get to them.

Tahnee, tell us a little bit about the new building but also what you do as a state veterinarian.

- Sure!

So the new diagnostic lab.

Well, so the new state combined labs, I guess is what it's called here on campus, contains three different entities in it.

One is with the veterinary diagnostic lab, or Montana Veterinary Diagnostic Lab.

That lab serves livestock, pets, wildlife here in the state.

Veterinarians, producers can submit tissues or samples to help understand, you know, what disease process is going on in those animals.

So we're very proud of that lab, especially proud of the new facility.

I think it plays a really important role for livestock producers here in the state.

It serves a public health role, and it also does some work in regards to food safety here in the state, so a lot of different roles that it plays.

As far as the state veterinarian, the diagnostic lab is one component of my work.

We also have a state meat inspection program.

We have a dairy and egg program in the state, and then kind of the traditional animal health sector that deals with regulating animal disease here in the state of Montana.

- You're pretty busy.

The analytical lab?

Ian, tell us a little about the analytical lab.

And I'll tell you a story after you give us a little bit of brief history.

- Sure!

So within the Department of Agriculture, the Ag sciences division is a regulatory group and so our mission really is to protect human health and the environment, and then also provide some level of consumer protection.

So within our regulatory programs, we use the analytical lab to test our pesticide programs, animal feed, fertilizers, and then our newest program that we've added is testing hemp for THC.

- [Jack] Okay!

You also do some water testing, don't ya?

- We do some water testing, for sure.

So we have a state-wide groundwater monitoring program.

So we have 32 wells state-wide where we test groundwater for any ag chemicals, that's pesticides, and we also test for nitrates.

- [Jack] Okay, now are we finding some contamination in groundwater?

- Ah, we, you know, with the detection levels in parts per billion, you know, we always do have some detections, but we have not had detections above EPA Human Health standards in several years.

- Okay.

I have to go back when I was gainfully employed.

Been quite a few years ago.

(panelists laugh) But back then, we introduced a new class of herbicide called the SU, Sulfonylurea, herbicides, and the companies introduced them to a lot of testing for plant-back restrictions because peas and lentils were very sensitive.

And so, you may have 18 months, 24 months, before you could go back to peas and lentils.

And people, the farmers in the state, practiced that.

But what we found is some of those SU products would bind at about 24 to 36 inches, and when the pea roots got down there, even though it was two or three years later, they'd have damage.

It was the analytical lab here on campus that did the testing of that soil.

So they provide a big benefit for the state, there's no doubt about it.

We'll get back to you guys in a little bit.

I have a couple questions that came in.

Ah, this one person says they watched the program last week, he found out that cattle prices, calf prices, went down after the introduction or reduction of tariffs and the introduction of a lot of foreign meat.

Those cattle prices still down, he would like to know.

Or have they bounced back up?

Calves, in particular.

- Yeah!

So the price, I'm assuming, went down after the, you know, 300,00 metric ton announcement of imports.

Which, more imports would have an impact on prices.

It would.

More imports are gonna drive prices down.

Although the amount of it was small enough to where it's probably not going to have a huge impact.

And if you're looking at in Montana, where really a lot of the beef that would be coming in is more kind of going to the, you know, the hamburger fast food chains, which isn't necessarily our niche in a lot of Montana ranches.

So, you know, I think my guess is the investor behavior was immediately to think, "Oh, prices are gonna fall."

But then I think once the markets kind of settled, you know, prices kind of came back.

Prices are still, you know, strong in the cattle market, so they've recovered a bit from that.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Tahnee, interesting question.

This person from Bozeman wants to do, or wants to know if the majority of your disease testing is for livestock or for companion animals.

- If you look by volume, it's certainly livestock, but that's, I think, just because of the sheer number that we have here in the state.

But the lab is able to do testing for any species, so we do see a lot of submissions for small animal species as well.

- So I'm not really up-to-date on a lot of this, but I do know that there's some private labs like IDEXX and Antech that do a lot of companion animal testing.

Are they more geared up to do that then, say, a vet diagnostic lab at a university?

- Um, I would say, generally speaking, no.

Our lab, we're very proud of the fact that we're like a full-service lab, full-service in the sense of you can submit samples to our diagnostic lab and we can get any testing that you need accomplished.

Not all of that testing may happen within the halls of our diagnostic lab.

We occasionally will refer things out, but we can receive all of those tissues and relay them on.

There's not a lot of labs that do, like, toxicology testing, for example.

And I think even for a private laboratory like IDEXX, they have their niche and they have their tests that they do very well and in large volumes, but even some things for them, they would have to potentially outsource as well.

- Okay!

Thank you.

I learned something.

Ian?

(chuckles) From Missoula, this person has purchased some marijuana from a local dispensary and he's concerned that it may be contaminated with pesticides.

First of all, educate me.

Is there organic marijuana available at dispensaries?

And do you do testing for pesticides from dispensaries?

- Two very simple topics, marijuana and pesticides.

(panelists laugh) So, there can be organic marijuana.

There certainly can be organic hemp.

So cannabis is eligible to be certified organic under the USDA National Organic Program grant rights.

So retail marijuana in Montana is regulated by the Department of Revenue.

And so, the Department of Revenue has approved a number of private labs that will do retail marijuana testing, and that's for THC potency, microtoxins, heavy metals, and pesticides.

So the retail testing know the Department of Agriculture analytical lab is not involved.

But we are the state lead agency for regulating pesticides in Montana.

So if there was any issues related to misuse or unapproved products, or any sort of complaints related to pesticide applications, then we potentially could get involved.

Or if there was an active ingredient that was inspected that was not registered on marijuana, we could be involved.

So our compliance folks still could get involved, but retail testing is essentially done by the Department of Revenue.

- Okay!

Thank you.

I wanna throw a couple of them at you.

Have you put out a mountain guide yet on how to grow marijuana in the state?

- [Abi] No!

(panelists laughing) So in absentia, we can't do that yet.

- Yeah, I know that.

(panelists laughing) I just had to see if you were.

Okay.

- So, I mean, so, yeah.

So I would add too.

So, you know, our lab, our analytical chemistry lab, you know, the new space we just built, does have a DEA license, but the same thing.

So we cannot handle retail marijuana in that space.

And that is, you know, on ground, owned by the university.

So that is beyond the scope of what our DEA license currently allows for testing of cannabis.

- Okay!

We answered that.

And sorry if I put you on the spot.

But not really.

(panelists laugh) This person, I've got you up, Abi, from Great Falls, this caller said he called last, or they called last week but did not get an answer so we'll get it up now.

"When is it okay to dig begonia bulbs in the fall?"

And do the tops need to die before they do that?

- So I usually like to wait until after the first frost has passed to dig them up, and then you let them kind of dry a little bit before you put them in storage.

So depending on if you had kind of cool temperatures, it would be fine to do that.

Either now or in the next couple of weeks while the soil is still workable, and then let them dry for a couple of weeks before you put them in storage.

- Okay!

Thank you.

And I'm sorry we did not get to it last week.

We were swamped.

Tahnee, back to you.

This is an interesting question.

How do you select the samples that you will actually test in your lab?

I know you don't do everything.

What criteria, this person would like to know, that they have to meet before you start testing for something?

- Um, I hope I understand the question, so bear with me here.

So it really depends on kind of if you're figuring that we're trying to diagnose disease in animals, it depends on what the clinical presentation is as far as deciding what the best sample is to submit that.

We have a professional staff at the diagnostic lab, a pathologist and a veterinary microbiologist that folks can call in and consult with.

And they can help understand kind of based upon what is being seen in the animal, you know, in real-time, on what the best path is as far as diagnostics.

Veterinarians in general should have some of that training from their time in school to help, you know, identify what samples are best to submit and then what tests are best to be done once those samples get to the diagnostic lab.

So it's a little bit of a team effort.

- Okay.

That makes sense.

Switching over to Eric, from Dillon.

The caller has a question for Eric.

"When will there be a full farm bill?"

- [Eric] A full farm bill?

- Yes!

- [Eric] Well, if I knew that.

(panelists laugh) - [Panelist] You wouldn't be sitting here.

- Yeah!

That's a great question.

So I guess we should step back.

The last farm bill was 2018, Trump's first term.

It was signed.

It has expired, and I think we're under three one-year extensions.

The last one expires September 30th, so in a few days.

The farm bill has been making progress though.

It's moved through the House, it's moved through the Senate Ag Committee.

Still needs to be voted on by the full Senate.

The, I guess, the leaders in the Senate, think mid-November is kind of the timeframe they're thinking, for whatever that's worth.

You know, thinking less about economics and more about the politics of the situation, I think it, you know, thinking about kind of what's coming up and potentially a, you know, a lame duck session over the next- After the elections in November, just what that looks like.

Does the party in control have incentive to wrap it up before they leave, you know, the majority?

Or if they're gonna stay in, maybe they wanna keep and try to get some of those things that they're trying to negotiate in the farm bill.

So there's still some meaty things in there but I think the politics might either push it, you know, mid-November, or we might be talking about this next fall again.

- [Jack] Or next year.

- Sure!

Yeah!

Yeah, why not?

- Five decades from now.

You never know.

It's a slow process.

- You know?

Yeah!

I mean, the one thing that I think the people involved have learned is to try to get rid of all the... You know, it used to be if you didn't fund a farm bill, there were a lot of things that happened and they've kind of eliminated a lot of those things.

And so, they've sort of learned to maybe, you know, to prolong it.

And there's not really the political penalty that you used to feel, because the programs don't expire.

They'll continue on and so, at the farm level you might not notice any difference without a farm bill.

You might just see some of the new programs not starting.

But, yeah, so for now, we'll see.

Mid-November, I mean, I don't know.

I think maybe mid-November might not be a bad guess on when it gets done.

- Okay.

Thank you.

That'd be nice if we had it.

- [Eric] Sure!

- It really would be.

We talked about this before the program.

There was a caller last week from Kalispell thinks that they're seeing more cattle with horns now than they used to see, and they wanted to know, "Is that an advantage in production or not?"

And we couldn't come up with a great answer, but we don't think it is.

What do you think?

- I don't think it is.

I think it's probably largely personal preference.

I think we have seen an increase in rise of some kind of maybe non-traditional breeds, so like the Highlanders.

I think Corrientes, people are realizing you can produce meat with those as well.

And so as you see an uptick in some of those numbers, I'm guessing that's why we're seeing an increase in horns.

But I think it really is a personal preference on whether they're the- I don't know that there's a benefit, just a personal preference.

- I think you're absolutely right, but I'm not absolutely sure either.

From Helena, a caller has 35 year, 40-year-old white oak that has not had acorns for the last two years.

The squirrels are going hungry.

- [Abi] Mm-hmm!

- What's happening?

- So the lack of acorn production in oaks could be for a variety of reasons.

One of the most common could be environmental stressors.

It's been a couple, few really, stressful years for our trees.

And when they're stressed, they may not put all their energy into producing the acorns.

Other issues could be, especially for this year, if the flowers were blooming when the frost hit, which we did have that late frost in June, that could prevent that production of acorns as well.

So if the tree is otherwise healthy and cared for and you're not seeing any other issues, I would just say be patient, there should be plenty of food for the squirrels hopefully in the next couple of years.

But if you are seeing some other issues, along with the lack of acorn production, that could warrant maybe getting it looked at.

- Okay.

Good answer.

Thank you.

- What about pine cones?

So in the Helena area, like, we've gotten lots of calls about just massive amounts of pine cones.

- Yeah!

- And, like, pine nuts being everywhere and squirrels being everywhere.

- So this has been a banner year for a lot of our coniferous plants, and a lot of that can be cyclical.

So when we have tough weather, sometimes these conifers will over-produce the cones.

And so this past year was one of those years where we had that banner year of really intense cone production in pines.

And sometimes that can be environment-based, and sometimes that's just cyclical where every handful of years, they'll just produce an excess just to kind of out-compete pest and disease issues from time to time.

- Okay!

Thank you.

Ian, this person from Hardin has a small herd of goats.

And, by the way, the goat ancestry in the state is pretty good size.

It's surprising.

They ship most of them down to Colorado for Spanish festivals, yeah.

But anyway, this person says they've been buying bagged feed and their goats were fine, they're a little more lethargic now.

Is there anything in food that could make the goats a little more lethargic or not as productive?

- Sure!

So, I mean, I think with any animal that you're having a challenge with, you know, certainly reach out to a veterinarian.

But, you know, if a veterinarian comes out to investigate and thinks that potentially the feed of that animal is causing challenges, one of the regulatory services that we provide is that we do have inspectors that will come out and collet samples of that feed and then we'll send it to our analytical lab here on campus and they'll get a result.

One of the things that we've seen for goats and sheeps in the last few years is sometimes some spikes in copper, and that copper spike can kind of cause some impacts for goats and sheep especially.

- Okay, on that note, I have a personal trainer that raises 100, 150 chickens, and they bought bulk chicken feed from a producer here in the state, and since they started feeding that bulk chicken feed, their egg production has dropped dramatically.

Is there something they should be testing in there?

And I know we don't have a poultry specialist here, but it's an interesting concept because you feed somebody something and they don't produce as well, there's something that's not right.

- Yeah, for sure.

I mean, we could certainly collect a feed sample in that situation.

But I'm not sure what would impact, you know, egg laying in chickens.

- I think protein content is a really important one.

Calcium content, right, for formation of the egg, would be the two that would come to my mind.

Not being a poultry specialist either, but, I mean, I think those are two really components.

- I promise someday we'll have a poultry specialist on this program, for all those.

I tried last year and I was unsuccessful.

But I would agree with the protein especially.

- Yeah!

- If you don't have a good strong shell, that would be the calcium, I believe, yeah.

While I have you up, talking about chickens and stuff, did that lab, or your lab, get caught up in the bird flu epidemic this past year?

- They did!

And I think we're really thankful that they did.

We've got, actually, a fairly robust laying industry here in the state of Montana.

Quite a few barns with birds in them that produce a lot of eggs.

The diagnostic lab here in Bozeman is what is considered a NAHLN lab.

That's tied into USDA where they're capable of doing some of the what we call foreign animal diseases or diseases that aren't normally present in the United States.

They can do some of that testing at the lab, including testing for avian influenza or highly pathogenic avian influenza.

So we're fortunate that all we have to do is get samples from the field to the lab in Bozeman, and then they can do preliminary testing.

It helps us get an answer to whether the birds are dying from avian influenza or not a lot faster.

Then if we had to send those samples to the lab in Iowa, and that just allows us to respond quicker, help those producers out quicker, and ultimately protect all of our poultry industry in the state by limiting the spread of disease.

- Okay!

What is the current status in the state of avian influenza?

- So we had our first detection this fall, so avian influenza naturally circulates in wild migratory waterfowl.

So as the fall migration gets underway, we know that those birds are capable of spreading the disease around the landscape.

If you look over the last 30 days in the United States, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin have all had detections.

Like right, they're all kind of in a line, if you look across the map.

So that's that migration beginning to come south.

We had our first detection in Ravalli County, about a week and a half ago.

So kind of right in line with all of our surrounding neighbors.

And we actually have another case that we have been working on testing on over the last couple of days, also in that neck of the woods.

So it is, we're back to a risk period for avian influenza on the landscape.

- So looking at it from an economist's viewpoint, should I be buying egg futures?

(panelists laugh) - I mean, it sounds like you're always gonna deal with some amount of spread, so maybe it's not high enough to really concern about a reduction in the supply, but.

- It's really hard to say.

So typically with circulating avian influenza viruses, avian influenza viruses change really rapidly.

And so what we've seen in past outbreaks is where we'll see kind of that spike in cases and then as that virus kind of continues to evolve, is we'll start to see a die-off in it.

We're in year four now of this outbreak and it doesn't seem to be lifting.

Right now it's been primarily meat birds and kind of backyard small poultry flocks have been affected.

As the migration gets a little bit further south, that's when we get over the top of the layers.

And so it's a little bit early in the fall yet to know how many layer barns will be impacted.

- Interesting.

Yeah.

- So maybe not the whole bank in the futures.

(panelists laughing) - I'll take that under advisement.

Definitely.

Ian, this person, probably from MSU, wants to know: Does the Montana Department of Ag analytical lab do some research work with Montana State University?

- So we do have some cooperative agreements with the Ag Experiment Station, mostly on forage quality testing.

So we do, you know, a full wet chemistry method on our forage samples.

So we're getting results that have a very low analytical variation result for protein and crude fiber.

So I think we do have a pretty robust relationship with the ag experimentation on forage.

- Yeah, and with that new building- - Yep!

- It's gonna probably even get stronger every day.

Okay, Abi, we have a garden program here in town that you wanna kinda highlight.

It's with Eagle Mount.

And you might say what Eagle Mount is, for those people out-of-state that aren't familiar with it.

- Yeah!

- And tell us a little bit about their horticultural program.

- Yeah!

So Eagle Mount is a really great organization, and I recommend you go to their website.

It should be on the screen.

It's EagleMount.org.

And they have a variety of really cool programs that they offer.

And the one that I wanted to highlight today is their Adaptive Horticulture Program.

So it allows people with physical and mental disabilities to be able to participate in the therapeutic aspects of horticulture.

And they are one of the finalists for the National Gardening Organization's grant process.

They're the only Montana finalist for that, from the National Garden Bureau.

And this is a vote-based grant, and so they're in third place right now.

So we figured we'd highlight on Montana PBS one of our finalists to please go on the website.

You can go to EagleMount.org and on the top center you can go to the voting link.

Or you can go to the National Garden Bureau website and vote for them as well.

And they'll use these funds to then get tools that are going to be better and more adapted tools for easier use and people to be able to utilize and participate in horticulture better.

So that's a great organization we wanted to highlight a little bit and encourage you to learn more about that.

- Well, tell us again how you vote for that.

I'll vote for it.

- Yeah, so go to EagleMount.org, and it's in the top center of that website.

Vote for the horticulture program, that's right there.

Or you can go to the National Garden Bureau website and look at their therapeutic horticulture program.

But I think the easiest would be to go to EagleMount.org and go to the center, and click on that, and it'll take you to where you get to learn about that and all the other interesting therapeutic horticulture programs around the country.

- [Tahnee] Awesome.

- So being on PBS, we're not supposed to promote things like that, but I made an exception because that is such a good program.

- Yes!

- There's no doubt about that.

So if I insulted somebody, forget about it.

(panelists laugh) Okay!

(chuckles) Billings, this caller is wondering about the status of Chronic Wasting Disease in the state.

Is it increasing?

And how much testing?

Who does the testing, by the way?

- So the veterinary diagnostic lab here in Bozeman does testing for the state of Montana.

We also do some testing for some outside entities as well.

We run about 8 to 10,000 tests a year.

I might not be the best source, as far as what the status is of CWD in the state, but I know that we're continuing to see detections and continuing to find it in, you know, gradually in newer areas of the state.

So there is concern about kind of ongoing spread.

- You know, it's been a couple years since I harvested an elk, but I had mine tested.

Is it a recommendation that people around the state have their animals tested after they're harvested?

- Yes!

So CWD, kind of the body of available science says that it is not capable of spreading to people.

But because of the severity of the disease and some maybe behaviors in other species, they recommend that individuals should have their meat tested, and that, out of an abundance of caution, they should not consume meat from animals that have tested positive.

So I believe that Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has a mechanism where if you harvest an animal and it does test positive, that they can, I think you are issued a replacement tag for that animal.

- [Jack] Yep, they do.

- Yep!

- Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

That's good information, by the way.

And an excellent question.

I enjoy questions like that.

- [Tahnee] That is a good question.

- That is very important to people because this is an outdoor state.

- [Tahnee] Outdoor state, especially this time of year.

- Okay!

(chuckles) While I have you up, from Potomac.

Who knows where Potomac is?

- [Tahnee] Over by Missoula?

- I think it is, yeah.

(panelists laugh) Okay, good answer.

This caller wants to know how prevalent rabies is in Montana.

- Oh, that's a great question.

So in Montana, we see, I would say, about 12 to 24 cases on average a year.

We've seen a few years where we see a slight uptick in that.

We have two variants of rabies in the state.

We have the skunk variant that's predominantly in the southeast corner of Montana.

And then the bat variant which we can find kind of anywhere across the state.

So probably not the incidents that states to the south and east of us have with, you know, having the raccoon variant on the landscape, but enough of a presence here in the state that we wanna make sure that we're keeping animals rabies-vaccinated, that we're paying attention to potential exposures.

The diagnostic lab down in Bozeman does rabies testing for us, so we're very fortunate to have that capability, and we work really closely with Public Health on making sure that the risk to both people and animals is addressed.

- My question is: If you have a positive for rabies, is it generally a concentration of animals in a given area, or is this an isolated animal that shows up with it?

- So on the bat front, I think the estimate is about 10% of bats in any given population will have rabies.

So it's relatively uniform, I think, through our bat populations in the state.

If you look at how the submissions come in from around the state, they tend to be concentrated in more populated areas.

I think that's just because there's more opportunities for exposure.

Or, excuse me, more opportunities for interactions.

Not necessarily that, you know, we're not having, I'm trying to think of a county that maybe is under-represented.

You know, not that there's a lack of bats in that area or a lack of rabies in that area, it's more that there's a lack of people having interactions with species that might spread it, and therefore need testing.

- I have to throw a little story out.

My sister, who lives in Omaha, is petrified of bats.

And she was taking a bath one day and a bat joined her.

- [Tahnee] Oh, shoot.

- Yeah!

(panelists laugh) Talk about panic.

She had- - [Tahnee] That would've got my pulse up a little bit also.

(panelists laughing) - Maybe she was rightfully so, because, you know, bottom line, 10% is a pretty high.

- Yeah.

- 10% is pretty high.

And we know what natural bat behavior is, right?

Like, they're active in the evening.

So when you're outside at night and there's bats flying around, you know, your head, that's very normal bat behavior.

A bat in a shower in the middle of the day is a little bit atypical.

Also, the teeth of bats are very small and so a lot of times people may not even know if they have been bitten or not.

And so I think anytime you have exposure, contact with a bat, it's worthwhile just, you know, asking some simple questions or following up with Public Health or a health care provider to make sure that if there is any risk there that it's being addressed.

- Okay.

Thank you.

This is a good question.

This person noted last week that we talked a little bit about the increase in the prime rate.

This person, who's not a producer, would like to know what the general rate for an operational loan on a farm is in this state.

Do you have an answer for that?

- Well, I'm not gonna throw out a number, but I would say that, so interest rates in general across the board are higher than kind of they've been in the recent past.

You know, they sort of start with, you know, we heard the Fed raised their federal fund rate and that then kind of goes into all the other layers.

So if you're looking at 30-year mortgages, if you're looking at operating loans, everything is kind of gone up from that.

And so kind of across the board, and, yeah, agriculture operating loans are higher than they normally are.

Getting interest rates down is pretty tough because, you know, the Fed, when they're sort of setting their rates, they are looking to limit inflation and sometimes the best way that they can combat that is through lifting up the interest rates.

And so, yeah, we have a higher than normal interest rate right now.

They do take a while to come down.

- [Jack] Yeah.

- But yeah, they're... - Well, let me.

I'd like to put you on the spot a little bit.

- Let's go!

Yeah.

(panelists laugh) - Okay.

So your mortgage, home mortgage, loans are right now around 7%, give or take a little bit.

Are operating loans higher than that or lower than that?

- Operating loans are gonna be higher than that.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Yeah!

And they've always been higher than that.

And, you know, you look at the risk from a bank's perspective, the risk of running a business versus, you know, giving out a mortgage loan where someone maybe has a, you know, an income stream that's pretty stable.

The risk to that is gonna be a lot lower, whereas an operating loan's gonna be a bit higher.

So, yeah, they've always operated higher than that kind of 30-year mortgage rate.

- That's what I think this person wanted to find out.

- [Eric] Yeah.

- Yeah, okay.

Thank you!

Ian, this person from Missoula, probably the same person that called earlier, would like to know: What's it cost to do a pesticide test on dispensary marijuana?

(Eric laughs) - [Eric] All the marijuana questions today.

- [Jack] We had to ask it.

(panelists laughing) - So that's a good question, for sure.

I mean, I don't know that number because the commercial labs that are operating in that space are very, very competitive, and they're very, very efficient.

You know, they are running those as businesses so they're balancing both providing a service to the growers, the marijuana growers, and then being able to run a successful business.

So I would imagine that it is pretty close to their costs with a reasonable profit margin, but I couldn't guess at what a private- - Yeah, educate me a little bit.

I mean, there's probably 20 different pesticides that could or could not be used on any crop.

And if you wanted to have that crop or that plant tested, how would you?

Do you have to select a single pesticide that you're testing for, or is there kind of a broad spectrum that you could test for all of them?

- Sure!

So there's a couple different ways that that can be done.

You know, our analytical chemistry lab is usually targeting a specific active ingredient or a handful of active ingredients.

So we don't typically run those big pesticide screens.

So what our lab does is gonna be more cost-effective than what those private marijuana labs do because they are having to test for a big list of active ingredients.

So we do a more targeted approach, 'cause we usually have drift complaints or we know more information about the question we're trying to ask with our pesticide samples.

So our lab can be a little bit more targeted in what we do and a little more cost-effective.

- On that note, we do have a question from Helena.

This person would like to know if they suspect that somebody inadvertently sprayed and their garden got hit with the pesticide, who would they complain to?

Or what would be the process that they need to follow to have that corrected?

- Sure!

So we have, you know, a pesticide compliance and enforcement team based state-wide.

So we have offices in Kalispell, Missoula, Helena, Bozeman, Glasgow, and Billings.

And so you can call our offices, we can come out, we'll do an investigation, we'll look for signs of damage, and we'll be able to collect samples, send those to our analytical lab, and then we can answer that question and follow-up with the applicator if we need to about what happened in that situation.

But drift cases are our most common complaint in our pesticide enforcement program.

- Yep!

Can you give me a rough estimate of how many around the state you might get in a given year?

I mean, you don't have to be exact.

- Yeah.

We get hundreds of kind of drift complaints.

- Okay!

- We're seeing more actually now because of the rapid utilization of drones.

So some more drones are- - Good point.

- Have started to come onto the marketplace that are actually used for either spot-spraying or some right-away work.

And so anything that's gonna be in the air.

We get more complaints about any aerial applications.

- [Jack] Okay!

- A couple hundred.

- All right.

Thank you!

You know, earlier this year, I sent a picture in of my garden.

And so if we could bring that picture of my garden up and explain what happened here.

I had one or two Canada thistles in my garden last year.

- [Panelist] One.

(chuckles) - And a friend of mine came over and rototillered it for me and a month later, this is why my garden looks like this.

So, Abi, you wanna explain what I did wrong?

- [Abi] Yeah!

Um?

(panelists laughing) I wish- - [Jack] Easy!

(panelists laugh) - Jane was here!

Jane was here too, or Tim.

But, yeah, the way that Canada thistle grows is you need to get- Like rototilling it into the soil means you've chopped it up into lots of pieces that are going to propagate.

So you're doing everything right for cultivating a nice patch of Canada thistle, Jack.

(Jack laughs) The best ways to manage them are to use a combination of that removal of seed heads, mechanical control, and using herbicides like glyphosate, that you mentioned.

So when you chop them up like that, they can propagate through all of those different fragments.

That's just how that plant is so prolific.

- [Jack] I did a really good job growing it.

- [Abi] You did!

You're growing.

You're, yeah.

- [Jack] Oh, it was wonderful.

(panelists laugh) Yeah, and if Tim were here, he'd probably have a recipe for it.

- [Abi] Yeah, he probably would.

Yeah.

- Anyway, that follows up.

We've had a question both last week and this week about the status of glyphosate in the United States following the Supreme Court decision.

We have a weed scientist on in a couple weeks, or next week actually.

As far as I know, I bought glyphosate this year.

It's harder to find in small containers.

It's not Roundup anymore.

Roundup is a lawn product today.

- They have several products, they just don't have glyphosate.

- Glyphosate!

- Specific as Roundup.

- So glyphosate is sold as glyphosate now, right?

- Yeah!

Through multiple different, yeah.

- It's hard to find a quart.

Most of it comes in 2 1/2 gallons, which is probably what I needed for my garden.

(panelists laugh) So, okay!

Eric, this is a really interesting question and it's my curve ball to you tonight.

We were talking about calf prices earlier, and this person would like to know: Are black calves worth more than red or Charolais calves?

- [Eric] Okay.

- [Jack] Okay, so there you go!

- Yeah!

(panelists laugh) Um?

- [Ian] Good question.

- [Jack] It depends, right?

- Well, it depends.

I mean, you know, the first thing I think is just, you know, the Angus, you know, premium that you could find which could go along with the black calves.

And so I guess my first thought is just to say there's a bit of a premium on black calves.

I don't know.

Is there more to that question or is that just a curve ball question?

Or is there more to that one?

(laughs) - [Jack] You know, I don't think there's a big difference, is there?

- Yeah!

No.

No.

- Okay!

Well, I let you off easy there.

From Roundup, the caller wants to know what the percentage of rabid skunks in the South-Central Montana, i.e., the Billings area, is.

- Ah, it seems to be really cyclical.

Like, we'll have years where we don't see any cases of rabies in skunks in Southeast Montana, and we'll see years where we see, you know, a dozen flocks of them.

I sometimes wonder if it is local awareness and knowing kind of what to do with skunks that are behaving abnormally, and so not all of them are submitted.

I would say that anytime you see a skunk in Southeast Montana, Yellowstone County, you know, all the way down to the North Dakota, you know, Wyoming border, that, you know, people should be cautious and keep skunks, or, excuse me, keep rabies on their mind, in the back of their mind.

- [Jack] Okay!

Thank you.

- I don't have the same percentage like we do for bats, unfortunately.

- [Jack] You don't wanna work with skunks as readily.

- No.

No!

(panelists laughing) - You know, on that note, I don't see as many skunks as roadkill anymore as I used to, and the same holds true.

When I first moved out here, there were porcupines all over the place on the road.

I saw my first one in the last three years on a trip out east from Montana.

I think the numbers are down.

I don't know why.

- [Tahnee] They could very well be, yes.

- Okay!

Bozeman!

Is it possible to get garden soil tested for P-F-A-Fs?

What is that?

- So PFAS, PFOA chemicals, you know, there's a lot of press around those right now, right?

So they've kind of gotten into agricultural spaces because of land-applied biosolids.

It's more of a problem where you have bigger cities that have to deal with municipal waste, and one of the ways to deal with that is to land-apply that with some potential fertilizer benefits to the plants.

It's very, very, very challenging to test for PFAS, PFOA chemicals, just because they're ever-present in the environment.

And so the regulatory entity in Montana is the Department of Environmental Quality, so you'd have to reach out to the Department of Environmental Quality to get that PFAS test done for soil.

You know, there are some cities that have tested wells recently that have come up positive for chemicals in Montana.

Those are all done under the EPA drinking water program.

So for soil within Montana, you'd have to reach out to kind of Department of Environmental Quality.

- Okay!

Would they actually do the test or would they give it to the analytical lab to do?

- So we do not currently have the capabilities to test for PFAS, PFOA chemicals in our facility.

It's a very, very sensitive test.

And, like I said, those chemicals are present in kind of the lab environment because of what the qualities of those chemicals that are used across the spaces.

- Okay.

Thank you.

I learned something.

I was not aware of that.

Question, good question now, for Abi.

Since you're now a weed scientist too.

- [Abi] Oh, no.

(panelists laugh) - "How do you tell the difference between quackgrass and crabgrass?"

And that came from Billings.

- Okay!

That's a good question.

So a lot of people confuse these two common lawn weeds.

They're both grassy weeds, but they are very different from each other.

So crabgrass is a summer annual weed, and quackgrass is a perennial.

It's a cool season perennial.

So the way that you can tell the difference is the time of year that they're going to be prevalent.

With crabgrass, it's going to be prevalent in the kind of early summer months, as soon as the temperatures warm up.

And for the quackgrass, it's gonna be more prevalent when the temperatures are cool.

So if you're seeing a weed that has those broad green leaves, it could likely be quackgrass.

Other ways to tell them apart is how they grow.

So quackgrass has a more upright growth and crabgrass kinda lays flat against the grass a little bit more.

And management can differ too.

So for crabgrass, you can apply pre-emergence in the spring before they would germinate.

And you can also mechanically remove it pretty easily, because it has a pretty shallow root system.

So it's pretty effective.

Whereas, quackgrass, it has rhizomes and so if you are trying to mechanically remove it, it's hard to get all of the different of those lateral stems out.

So it can still readily propagate through.

So maintaining healthy turf that's competitive is the best way to combat both of those.

But, if you're seeing it this time of year, it's probably quackgrass.

- Especially in- - [Operator] Thank you!

- Crabgrass is only present in Yellowstone County.

Is that right?

- [Abi] I've seen it in a few pockets, so it's definitely not as common.

- Okay!

- Because our cool season grasses really compete with it.

- All right.

Thank you!

Interesting question for Eric.

Last week, we talked about, on the program, this caller says, "Label of origin for beef in the state."

He's all in favor, but his concern is, "Is that only for grocery stores or would that extend to restaurants and fast food places?"

- Yeah, good question.

And a legal question.

You know, I think once you mandate something like that, there could be some carve-outs, I guess, within that legislation.

But my understanding, it would be anything that goes through a processor would have to be labeled with, you know, whether it was, you know, US-born, raised, slaughtered, or, you know, any kind of iteration of that.

And we had talked earlier just about, you know, beef coming in, you know, from places like Brazil and maybe, you know, going into our hamburger supply chain into fast food.

And so, yeah, a lot of that stuff would have to be labeled separately than stuff that was born, raised, and slaughtered in the US.

- It's complicated.

- Yeah!

I mean, you know, part of the complication, you know, is a lot of our beef supply chain has grown through, you know, NAFTA, at least with Canada and Mexico, of kind of the free-flow of animals.

And before I was here, I was down in Texas, and a lot of animals from Mexico, you know, kind of jumping back and forth between.

You know, animals coming up from Mexico to, you know, to go to packing plants, and then be exported as products down to Mexico.

And so when you have a lot of that system set up and then you try to impose the regulations, you know, there'll need to be some time to adapt to something like that.

- Okay.

Thank you!

- One of the things that we do at the Department of Livestock is just track animal movements, right?

In case of a disease, we need to know where animals have moved to and able to kind of get all of the exposed population.

And so we ship about 350,000 head of feeders to Canada each year, and they end up coming back on trucks to the south to be processed here in the States.

So we have a pretty robust kind of international market here in the state as well.

- Yeah.

- Has the tariffs affected that very much?

- Initially, and this is, I'm outta my lane here a little bit.

I can say that initially, there was a lot of concerns that it would.

But it seems like, based upon numbers that we have for last fall, right, that's the heavy shipping season, is that it ultimately did not.

We sent a lot of animals north last fall.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Yeah, I mean, that's my understanding too is that the things that are actually been hit with the tariffs are actually very specific and we've avoided a lot of the, you know?

Ag products, like, I know there was concern over fertilizer, for example.

Some of those things have been exempt from those tariffs.

- And we haven't seen any impact on, like, feed grains or pulses going north.

That commerce has still happened kind of the way that it did before any tariffs were proposed, so.

- That's good news, really.

Yeah, it is, for the agricultural industry here in the state.

(Jack chuckles) Put on your vet clothes again.

- [Tahnee] Uh-oh!

- Okay?

This caller is from Hamilton.

Caller has three feral cats and a seven-month-old puppy who loves to eat cat scat.

And that's not unusual for dogs.

The caller wants to know if it's okay to treat the puppy for worms, since the cats are much harder to treat for worms.

(Jack laughs) - Yes, it is.

I would say there's a couple different reasons to be concerned about parasites in animals is, one, the health of the animal itself.

And then, two, some of the parasites that those animals carry can also spread to people.

And so depending on how much interaction an individual has or a family has with the dog and the cats might determine how much effort they put into treating those cats in particular.

But yeah, dogs are usually a little bit easier to treat.

- I would agree entirely.

Yeah, no doubt about that.

I have stories I can relate to that, but I'm not allowed to do that here.

(panelists laugh) Okay.

Quickly!

When should people stop watering their lawn for the season?

I stop when I don't wanna mow anymore.

- Yeah!

Fair enough.

If it's looking really dry, it'd be nice to give it a little sprinkle before it goes dormant.

But usually, most people have started to get their irrigation systems blown out by now, so it'd be fine to stop doing that right now.

But if you're starting to see heat stress and drought stress issues, give it a little sprinkle before you get your irrigation system ready for winter.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Eric?

- [Tahnee] True for trees, also?

- For trees, we wanna continue encourage watering in the fall because they can be susceptible to really drying out over the winter, especially if we have a dry winter like last year.

So for trees, we're recommending that people continue to water.

Especially after you see the leaves change color and you see them go dormant, it's good to give them a nice deep soak around the drip line, around the root zone and beyond.

Make sure the water gets down and deep, not just sprinkler irrigating, so that they have a nice amount of moisture reserve going into winter before the ground freezes.

- Thank you!

Eric, since you wouldn't make a recommendation on egg futures, what about wheat futures?

This person wants to know.

And we had this question last week.

Corn and soybeans have had a pretty decent spike in price.

Wheat not so much so, even though spring wheat's gone up some.

- Wheat's gone up a bit, yeah, from where it was, you know, earlier in the year for sure.

Yeah, we've seen a bit of a spike.

You know, next year I think looks, you know, better than kind of when we were coming into this year.

And so, you know, we operate in a global market and I think a lot of the talk is that the global supply is gonna be restricted, especially in the Black Sea regions.

So, you know, that limited supply, you know, is gonna have a positive impact on prices.

So I'm not giving investor advice here, but prices right now, you know, look stronger than they did, you know, lets say six months ago.

- Yeah!

In fact, most commodities have gone up.

Except eggs, they've gone down.

- Except eggs.

Well, I mean, if you wanna say, you know, cattle has been up for a while.

It hasn't gone up more, but it's still up there.

But, you know, I was happy to see wheat prices go up a bit 'cause they were really just, you know, really scraping kind of the bottom of the barrel for a while.

And now they're maybe in more of an area where, you know, some of these operations can operate.

And some of our production, you know, was at a very low level this last year.

So we'll kind of see going into this next year what that looks like.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Several questions here.

Number one, we have somebody wanting to know what to do with raccoons that are settling, moving into town.

There are more raccoons this year.

I've seen quite a few around.

Steve Vantassel, Montana Department of Ag, you can Google or look up the Department of Ag, I don't have his phone number.

I gave it out last week.

He hates this program because every Monday morning he gets a ton of calls.

- [Panelist] He gets the phone calls.

- Yeah!

(panelists laughing) But anyway, Stephen can answer that question.

And we have a question here about medical plants.

Who would they contact to learn about medical plants?

- There are a few cool programs around Montana about, like, medicinal plants specifically.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of it, but next week I'll have a good answer for you.

But I know there are a few entities that do medicinal plant trainings and certifications, and we do have a few extension agents around the state that also have an interest in medicinal plants.

- Have you ever heard of mullein having a medicinal value?

- Mm-hmm!

Yeah, I've heard of mullein being used in teas and tinctures and things like that.

- Hmm!

And they wanna know what medical conditions it might be used for.

I don't know.

- I think that's above my pay grade.

- Pay grade?

Okay!

(panelists laugh) Canning!

Is there anything really that we're concerned about moving into the state that you're testing for, watching, in the livestock industry?

- Maybe two things that come to mind really quickly.

One is New World screwworm.

So, New World screwworm is the parasitic, or is the larva phase of a popular fly.

It has recently kind of made its way back to the north so there's cases in both Texas and New Mexico.

We're fortunate, for the time of year that we're going into, it doesn't do well in cooler temperatures.

Certainly, in the warmer months of Montana, we wanna be on the lookout for kind of atypical presentation of larva or maggots in wounds.

And then, the other one is, as we're seeing ticks expand around the country, some of those ticks are moving with diseases that we haven't traditionally seen here in Montana.

- All right!

(soft mellow music) I hear the music which says, "Get outta here!"

(panelists laugh) So I wanna thank everybody, especially our guests from the Montana Department of Agriculture.

Thanks for coming down.

Next week, we're gonna have an interesting program.

We're gonna look at Montana's working dogs in agriculture.

- Oh, nice!

- And our guest will be Stefanie Leach, who is the executive secretary of Montana Wool Growers Association.

Make sure you join us next week.

I think you'll really enjoy the program.

Good night and have a good week!

- [Announcer] For more information and resources, visit MontanaPBS.org/AgLive.

(bright guitar music) - [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by: The Montana Department of Agriculture.

(uptempo guitar music) MSU Extension.

The MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture.

The Montana Wheat & Barley Committee.

Cashman Nursery & Landscaping.

The Gallatin Gardeners Club.

And the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

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