- [Narrator] 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 and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(exciting music) - Guess what?

You're watching Montana Ag Live originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, long retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

We had an interesting program this evening.

I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

You're gonna make it more interesting by providing the questions that our panel answers and you'll see the phone number on the screen after I make this evening's introductions.

So with that, let me start off by introducing Uta McKelvy.

Uta's our plant pathologist.

Uta's been here numerous times.

She's really knowledgeable on all aspects of plant diseases.

So if you have any questions regarding plant diseases, hey, phone 'em in tonight and we'll make every effort to get to 'em.

Special guest this evening, Patrick Mangan.

Patrick is a county extension agent, actually a reservation agent up in the Flathead Reservation, very knowledgeable in a lot of different things.

He's also a horticulturalist, so if you have horticulture questions this evening, Patrick will answer those along with anything else you wanna know about what county agents do for this state.

And I have to give 'em a plug.

They do a wonderful job.

If I had to do over again, I might become a county agent because you get to visit with so many different types of people and work with kids, and that's a real positive.

Joel Schumacher.

Joel's our ag economist for the evening.

Hey, the economy's not in real good shape right now, so if you have questions, hey, call and Joel will stumble through, my promise.

And of course, Tim Seipel.

Tim's our weed scientist.

Pardon me, weed ecologist.

- There we go.

- And answering the phone this evening, we have Vicki Young and Carl Wetmore.

So thank you for being here.

Keep 'em busy.

They went through a lot of makeup to sit here, so, and boy do they look 20 years younger this evening, so get on the phone.

The number will be up there shortly.

Patrick, tell us a little bit about what you do up in the Flathead Reservation area.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So the Flathead Reservation is the home for the Salish, the Kalispel, and the Ksanka Tribe of the Kootenai Peoples.

So myself and a couple of coworkers are there on the Flathead Reservation, representing MSU Extension for the tribal communities.

I'm a agriculture, horticulture, and natural resources program area extension agent.

So I get to work a lot with our indigenous producers there on the reservation.

I do a lot of gardening program work with our food sovereignty program and our community health program to help promote vegetable gardening and fruit production as part of a good overall healthy diet.

I work some with youth.

And then I get the opportunity to work with a lot of great projects with some of our departmental organizations through the tribal governments.

I've done some economic development in helping to build out a meat processing facility lately and do a lot of technical support and grant writing and some assistance with that, as well as engaging with our natural resource department in implementing a program for on-farm irrigation efficiency to help farmers and ranchers with irrigation water and their efficient use.

So- - It sounds like you keep busy up there.

- We do a lot.

- Okay.

Now, what's the difference between a county extension agent, say in Yellowstone County, Gallatin County, and one that's on the Flathead Reservation or another Indian reservation?

How do these positions differ?

- Yeah, so all of our counties are represented in Montana with a county office.

You know, a few are shared between two counties and have at least one extension agent in that office that can serve a couple different program areas.

Layered over the top of that, so a lot of Lake County in Montana is part of the Flathead reservation.

We have four reservation offices that MSU Extensions helps host, the Flathead reservation being one of those.

So our office focuses and tries to find entryways into our indigenous communities and to work with those populations and those villages and towns and those population centers alongside our Lake County or other county extension agent offices.

- Okay.

- So.

- So do you draw upon the rest of these yahoos that we have here on the panel?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So all the same, very similar questions come into all of our offices and we'll, you know, answer questions for anybody who walks in our door.

So I will get weed questions and I'll reach out to Tim or to Jane Mangold and help get that question answered for that producer that way.

Or if I have a disease or pest or pathogen, very similarly we'll reach out.

Joel has come and been a speaker at one of my producer summits for my cattlemen in the spring.

So it's, we have the opportunity to bring that extension family into the place in the (indistinct).

- Okay.

Sounds like a lot of fun actually.

- It's a, you know, an extension agent job is a really diverse job, so we get to learn a lot and we always get to experience something new every day and reach out to our friends to get additional help and information, but it's a really dynamic position.

- We'll get back to you.

I've got some other questions that have come in here.

- All right.

- But before we do that, a little bit of homework from last week.

I promised the invasive species people that we would get to something called the pets rehoming or pets rehoming project that will take place here on campus on Tuesday, April 28th.

What this means is if you've got unwanted pets, and most of these are aquatic pets, you can find a home for 'em without turning them loose in the gout and river or in any of the other locations around.

Goldfish, one of the major invasive species that we're worried about in Montana.

A lot of people have goldfish, they get tired of 'em, they turn 'em loose instead of making goldfish meatballs out of 'em or whatever.

But bottom line is, pay attention to this aquatic pet rehoming project.

And again, that is April 28th here on campus.

Let's go to a question here that came in, and I'm gonna direct this one to Patrick.

This came in last week.

The caller has four mature blue spruce.

And the big wind last week, and we've had a lot of big winds this spring, knocks a lot of cones off.

And there's more cones on spruce trees than I've ever seen in the past.

They wanna know if these sprout and start growing within our yard.

- Probably not.

So definitely like a traditional yard environment is already a pretty competitive place with a lawn grass or different grasses.

So it'd be hard for a seedling to really get established and to wrestle its own space there and to get itself going.

And spruce, they're really shade tolerant.

They really are sun intolerant.

So definitely as a young seedling, it would want a lot of shade in order to be able to establish itself or it would just get cooked off by the sun.

And they like quite a bit of moisture.

And- - I will say, I've seen spruce sprout next to people's houses or the downspouts of gutters, and then they get the root systems too close to the house.

- Sure.

- So where you might want it to grow is not where it ends up growing.

- It's an open area more than where it has any competition.

So I know we've had rocks under our spruce trees, and every so often I see a little spruce.

I think Roundup does a good job on 'em.

Yeah.

- I'm guessing the lawnmower does pretty well.

- Yeah, lawnmower does very well, so.

Hope that answers your question.

Joel, from Shelby.

Do you have any clue what the current rise in fuel prices will do to the cost of producing a bushel of wheat?

- You know, I happen to get pretty similar question this week, so I kind of pulled out some crop budgets for wheat and, you know, in total we kinda look at around a little under $400 is what they expect it to cost to grow an acre of wheat this year.

And, you know, around $18 of that's gonna be fuel.

So with this roughly, you know, 25 to 30% raise we've seen, if you were purchasing at today's prices it cost you about five bucks a year.

Now, a lot of farmers fill up a big tank in the winter, so they may have already, you know, kind of filled up for the bulk of this year.

Probably the bigger impact if it were to stay, though, is energy prices have a lot to do with fertilizer costs, you know, and fertilizer costs are a lot bigger part of this.

So that could be more like, you know, 35 to $50 of an increase if the energy prices were to stay high.

- Okay.

I'm gonna put you on the spot.

Last year, what did a ton of urea cost a producer?

Urea is a nitrogen fertilizer that many, many producers use.

- That's a good question.

I had it just in terms of the per acre, so.

I had originally note about $106 an acre.

- Okay.

- As kind of the- - So where do you think it might be this year?

- Well, it jumped up in the spot market about 30%.

Now, one good thing for kind of Montana producers, number one, our suppliers, you know, they brought, we fertilize in the spring primarily.

So they brought in a lot over the winter and kind of stockpiled and now we're applying it.

So they purchased it at that lower price.

And a lot of producers took the chance to lock in a price for at least the spring application.

But what I'd be more concerned about, if energy prices and fertilizer prices stay high, those subsequent applications.

So whether that's a midseason dressing of that or the fall application of something, that's where I think the price impacts would probably come in.

- It's not only gonna impact producers.

I'm taking out a bank loan before I go get my lawn fertilizer this year.

I mean, it is gonna be definitely more expensive.

There's no doubt about it.

Do you still need to use it?

If you want a nice looking lawn?

The answer is yes.

All right, Uta.

Go.

- Oh no, I was gonna ask Joel, so if we, have wheat prices gone up, have commodity prices gone up on the spot market to follow urea and fuel prices?

- You know, last year, so in 2025, you know, most producers probably saw a negative return if we just pencil out averages for budgets on wheat.

There weren't a lot of margins to work with.

So a rise in input costs, I mean, we're cutting into margins that really weren't there.

We've seen a little bit of movement but not very much.

So if this holds and these increases were to come, that would really just, you know, contribute to a loss per acre.

- Yeah, it's not a good situation right Back to Uta, you've got a potato there and it doesn't look too bad, but I think there's something wrong with it, am I correct?

- Yes, you're right.

This potato came into the diagnostic lab, and so since people might be getting itchy about planting potatoes or anything gardening right now, I thought I'd give a little pitch to, you know, what to look out for when planting potatoes.

So, okay, so let's start with this particular case.

You might notice if I hold this potato still enough, these like raised dark pimples on the potato, this is called black scurf.

And a good way to remember that is, you know, kind of the dirt that you can't scrub off.

So this is actually no dirt but a sign of a pathogen, the pathogen being rhizoctonia.

And so if, so basically I, what I wanna say is like this is one of the reasons why I would caution everybody against using store-bought potatoes or potatoes that you harvested from your garden the last year and that might have pimples like that or other signs of disease on the tubers.

Don't use those to start your new potato crop this year for the very reason that these potato tubers can carry a lot of diseases and that's how you can introduce things or perpetuate diseases.

So for this particular black scurf issue, I mean, definitely wouldn't use that to replant and start a crop.

I think you could still eat this potato, it's not known to, you know, be like toxic, would probably wanna peel that.

You might not want like crunchy sclerotia in your, you know, on your potato side.

Yeah, what really promotes this disease is kind of wet conditions and cool soil temperatures.

So here is a pitch for planting your potatoes in warmer soils to kind of give them a good head start and outgrow these early season diseases.

- Okay.

Folks, the phones are quiet, and I don't want our phone operators to fall asleep so get on the phone with your questions and get 'em in, because we have a good chance of answering them if they do come in here shortly.

Back to the potatoes, and this did come in from Billings.

They call our works with senior citizens as in wanting to find out a source of low-cost certified potatoes.

Is there any sources of low-cost certified seed potatoes in the area?

They're cheap anyway.

- Right.

I mean, it just so happens that Montana has a seed potato certification program here on MSU campus.

So I mean, I guess from Billings, that's a two-hour drive away from you, but it might be worth it, you know, depending on how many potatoes you wanna grab.

Another place I would ask is just your local garden center or nurseries.

They would likely have different varieties of seed potatoes.

The thing you wanna be looking out for is like certified seed potatoes, right?

That means they have undergone that rigorous testing to ensure that they're disease free.

Another option would be ordering online from a trusted seed seller.

Or, in the area, not so much in Billings, but you could turn to a local seed potato producer themselves.

They might have some extra ones to give away.

- Patrick, on a reservation, on the Flathead Reservation, are you, I know you're involved with a lot of horticultural crops up there.

Are you growing any potatoes on the reservation?

- Yeah, we have a really big presence for seed potatoes in the Flathead area.

And so we have large farms and so we have some really local supply.

- Yeah, I know a lot of these are, non-reservation growers, too, in that area.

Do you actually have some reservation producers that are growing either food stock potatoes or seed potatoes?

- Not on a commercial scale.

We don't have a lot of indigenous growers that are producing it at that large scale for that resale of seed potatoes.

But we have a food sovereignty program that is our, one of our indigenous departments that And we have a series of community gardens and then also a more market garden or production garden and they'll grow a variety of crops including potatoes.

- Okay, thank you.

My first chance to throw a curve ball to Joel.

- All right.

- That's already a second one for Joel.

(everyone laughing) - What's the economic benefit to the state of some of these small garden activities like you have on the reservation there, like we have here in the Gallatin Valley?

Is there big economic benefit to the state?

- Well, yeah, and it does a couple things for Montana.

I mean, number one, you know, having some local supply is great, especially when there's supply chain issues.

Our fuel prices go up for transportation.

We saw during COVID sometimes just logistically getting crops.

So there's certainly kind of an insurance policy of having some of those things available and commercially grown here, even at the smaller scale, whether that's sort of, you know, farmer's market style, but a commercial enterprise still as opposed to just a garden and maybe sharing with your neighbor.

- So on that note, livestock, we're seeing more individual producers of livestock here.

I think you've got a program on the reservation where you're processing livestock there.

- Yeah, we have a, we're just on the very final edges of building out and getting certified a meat processing facility that will be USDA-inspected that'll allow us to process and market, you know, domesticated livestock, beef, lamb, but then also bison, so, as an inspected product.

So we would have both the opportunity for any of our livestock producers, our cattlemen, cattlewomen, that can bring in and have their beef processed and labeled, private label for them to be able to take out and direct market and sell to the market that they're developing.

As well as having, our center will have a more wholesale arm where that center can purchase an animal, purchase a bison, have that processed and then sell that out either to casinos or restaurants or places that are trying to sell bison.

As well as we move that into our food sovereignty program and our food assistance program for some of our elders and our other tribal members to be able to have protein as a source that is from our reservation and pair that some of our food sovereignty gardens so we can give them both vegetables and fruit as well as meat to just assist on.

- [Jack] Yeah, I'm gonna throw you a curve ball now.

- Okay.

- Roughly how many individuals, indigenous people are on the Flathead Reservation, the population that exists there?

- Oh, that's a- - Calling Montana.

- Great curve ball.

I don't know the answer to that.

- Gotcha.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- I was wondering, and maybe we'll sling a curve ball to Joel.

I've heard that some of the USDA, smaller slaughterhouses that are USDA approved in Montana have had issues with labor and keeping enough labor to really be able to run that.

Is that an issue on the Flathead Reservation in- - I don't know specifically about the Flathead Reservation, but our small meat processing plants in general, you know, labor supply has certainly been an issue.

There's kind of mid-level jobs, they're semi-skilled.

I mean, you don't need a four year degree, but, you know, just walk in off the street and be a skilled meat cutter either.

And they're kind of a mid-level pay, so, you know, finding the right people in the right communities.

And oftentimes what you see at the, and a lot of these processing plants are doing 10 to 20 animals per week, and they might have, you know, between maybe three and seven employees.

But if they're a little short on employees, instead of running 18 animals this week, they might run 11 or 13 is kind of how they.

So if you don't have the laborers, then you have less animals go through.

And for those of you that have gotten a half of beef lately and tried to get a slot, you know, they might tell you, you know, we'll see you in 90 days.

You know, so when they do have those shortages, it's definitely an impact on how many animals can get processed here in Montana.

- Okay.

- We definitely have seen with our experience on our building out that's finding interested candidates and then getting that pre-training involved so that we can both get them introduced to the idea of processing.

But then because it's such a small facility that's gonna run with seven employees, that they're all gonna wear different hats.

So we have, you know, the, one of the processors is also going to be in charge of making sure that all the records are kept for FSIS and all that inspection side.

You know, another processor's gonna run the onsite composting system to help deal with all the hides and awful things.

So there's a lot of different trainings and a lot of different skills that we're trying to build with those employees.

As soon as they take off, we gotta start back there and get that training done right away as soon as we can.

- With that local meat processing, and because you're mentioning the hide composting, so I mean, like, you know that native tribes would use all of the animals.

So are there some kind of like programs around, you know, what is not the meat from the animal that could be used downstream?

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

As part of the, you know, being an indigenous processing center, we're going to capture hides and then also engage our elders and other members of our societies who have that skill to be able to teach others that.

So we won't be composting all of the hides but kind of initially, especially as we get off the ground, I think we're gonna have more supply than we are going to have demand.

So we're gonna try to build that into our system, because we do wanna use the entire animal and return it to the land as we can.

- So, really cool.

- Okay, thank you.

From Gildford, we don't get many questions from Gildford.

- That was my first travel destination in Montana.

Gildford, Montana.

- It was?

- 2016.

Tim was in the car, too.

- I like it out there.

- Okay, good to know.

You wanna go back tomorrow?

- Nah.

Let's see what the question is.

- Just joking.

I love it out there.

Anyway, back to the question.

This person has heard that Syngenta, the manufacturer of paraquat, is going to cease making it.

Is that true?

- Yes, that is true.

So Syngenta is kind of a Swiss chemical company but really is owned by ChemChina.

They manufacture a lot of pesticides in the world.

They are one of the manufacturers of paraquat, which is used by a lot of Montana producers, especially at pre-harvest weed control during the latter part of the season.

But it's also highly toxic.

Two tablespoons is enough to kill a human being.

And it's also highly associated with Parkinson's disease.

And so Syngenta decided they are going to stop manufacturing it even though it's labeled for use in the United States and Brazil.

We're the, I think the only two countries left using it.

It's even been delisted in China.

What does that mean for Montana and Montana's pulse producers?

It means it's probably gonna get harder to find paraquat in the future and we're probably gonna have to think about some other pre-harvest weed control issues.

It's gonna be manufactured until June of this year in Britain.

And after that, I think, you know, we'll probably make it through this cropping season, but then it'll be important to think about how we get around that in Montana.

- Are there generic producers of paraquat?

- There are a couple of generic producers and they have labels in the United States.

They predominantly come from China though.

And I don't know much about the supply chain, and I do know most people tend to use the Syngenta, Gramoxone labeled product here.

So it will be interesting to see.

I think supply will definitely decrease.

And I'm not sure how long China will continue to manufacture it.

- Okay, so I don't think we have anybody that can really address this.

Probably wanna throw it out anyway.

That's kind of fun.

A Butte caller wants to establish a pollinator garden, but she has deer in the neighborhood.

I know.

Can you recommend plants that deer are not interested in?

And they say, "We love Montana Ag Live."

You wanna take a shot at that?

- I can start off for sure.

- Okay.

- So there's a great MontGuide that we can find online or you can get to at your local office there in Butte-Silver Bow, that is a guide of deer-resistant foliage and plants that are found for your garden.

You know, nothing is truly deer-proof, but there's kind of a suggestion of things that deer like less.

So it could be some non-native species of plants like lavender or daffodils, different things that you would look for.

I might also suggest that you reach out to your local conservation district, which a lot of conservation districts have programs for pollinator seed to develop pollinator seed beds.

And they'll have things like phacelia, which is a native flower that seeds really readily and grows really well, blanket flower, stuff like that.

Things that hopefully deer will steer away from a little bit, but they'll have some great seed source that can sprout readily and create a nice little pollinator space.

- Don't put any tulips in.

- You know, well, it's, you know, supposedly if you can maybe surround them by daffodils, they'll leave the tulip alone because they won't be able to get to it.

But, yeah, there's some things that work great and deer love and there's some things that they steer away from a little bit, but- - Funny story, a friend of mine that grows tulips south of Bozeman here, put up an eight-foot fence around his tulip beds.

And the next morning there was a dole in there munching on the tulips.

So eight foot wasn't quite good enough.

- Yeah, she appreciated the salad.

- They really do love tulips.

- They do.

- Caller is wondering if chokecherry branches can be used to stabilize river banks similar to willow branches?

I don't think so.

Anybody have a thought on that?

No?

We'll give it to Abby when she comes back.

Okay.

Patrick, I have one here for you.

- Okay.

- They wanna know, are there any specific weed problems on the reservation, and who is responsible for controlling weeds, noxious weeds particularly, on the Flathead Reservation?

- Every landowner has their own responsibility on their private land to become educated about the weeds they have.

We have a good white top problem in Western Montana and Lake County and the Flathead Reservation.

So that's a pretty resilient weed that we fight with quite a bit.

There's a tribal department, the Lands Department.

They have a weed management arm to their department and they control weeds on tribal trust land and tribal-managed land.

There's also a weed district for Lake County, so they do a lot of the county-owned, they interact with private property owners quite a bit and do a lot of the right of ways and things.

So there's some layering of different groups and agencies that are trying to help landowners no matter what the title of the land is.

- Who foots the bill for weed control on the reservation?

- So tribal government gets some support from the federal government on their side and their lands, but then also property tax for private landowners coming through the county to help support the county system.

- Okay.

You know, you mentioned that you're on the Flathead Reservation.

Are there similar extension agents on other reservations here in the state?

We have a lot of reservations here.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

So we, so the tribal reservation program is a grant program.

It's called the federally recognized tribal extension program.

And that is a grant that flows through USDA.

And for, there's, I believe, 37 programs nationwide that grant funds.

And in Montana there are four reservations that have the FRTEP grant program.

So my reservation, the Flathead Reservation, the Blackfeet Nation does, Fort Belknap and Fort Peck do.

And every office looks a little bit different.

Our office, the Flathead Reservation is a fairly large office compared to the others in that we have four positions in our office that have various funding streams.

One person is funded from this grant to do, to work in the community's agriculture, horticulture work, so funds a lot of the work I do.

But then we also have somebody who does a lot more family consumer science and mental health education and community health.

So that is a program that the tribes chose to specifically fund and work with extension as a partnership to say this is really important for us to have this here on our reservation.

- You know, before the program, we were talking about water rights on the reservation.

And you were telling me that you have a position now open to discuss how compact water rights are used and so forth on the reservation.

You wanna mention that a little bit?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So that was a part of the work I did as a agriculturalist with my tribal communities and some of my departments.

We, I started doing some teaching and brought in some specialists to talk about irrigation water use and irrigation efficiency.

And some of our tribal programs and our governmental offices there on the tribes got really interested in that idea.

And some of the plans that are moving forward into the future with the water compact, with the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes.

So that started about a two-year conversation that led to the formation and hiring of an extension agent who will work in our office and specifically focus on reaching out to producers and farmers, indigenous and non-indigenous, to start implementing and talking a little bit about water use efficiencies and how to decrease the amount of irrigation use and like use the right amount of water at the right time to optimize crop growth.

So really excited about that.

That is a job that is on the market right now, and we want good quality candidates who wanna work in a really awesome space and a really cool office, that's mine.

- You know, that's a good point.

But that's not only an issue on the Flathead Reservation.

Water usage is becoming more critical statewide.

- Yeah.

- And I think over time that's gonna be one of the big issues that extension will be facing.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

- Yeah, Uta.

- Yeah, Patrick, I was wondering based on your experience and maybe in exchange with other field faculty, do you feel like there is a different approach or priorities on the reservation to integrated pest disease management, you know, than outside?

Do you, did you perceive there to be any differences?

- You know, I think there's always a great opportunity for that conversation to be open, and to find a lot of entry points into learning more and to find the tools that work right for any producer, whether they're indigenous or not.

You know, I know a lot of our producers are trying to find, you know, the economic success that they can have in the spaces on their reservation lands.

But then also thinking about the longevity and the traditions and a lot of the indigenous knowledge and the history that they carry forward as producers themselves.

So how to bring some of the knowledge of integrated pest management into their management systems is really a great tool that they have with the indigenous knowledge that they carry forward about land management.

- That's what I'm really curious about, what's the indigenous knowledge on integrated pest management, right?

They probably have some really like, you know, some perspectives that, you know, we might be missing in what I would call like a very Western and traditional in that sense.

- Can we give a shout out to McRyhew and Virgil Dupuis from the Flathead.

Ian was a graduate student with Jane and I was on his committee, and he actually worked on, he worked a lot on trying to fight the invasive annual grasses and bring back some of the pollinators into, down on the south valley, in the north valley roads down there and had some great field sites.

He's a great graduate student.

And I know he watches sometimes.

- Okay, that's your plug for the- - That's my plug.

- Okay.

And why it got you up from Missoula.

We've got an early spring.

I'm estimating it's at least three weeks, and maybe even longer or earlier in your part of the country.

Is that gonna affect weed management this year?

- I think yes and no.

Is it gonna affect how we maybe go about, actually I was going down Huffine Lane on Saturday and I saw Dave Gettel driving in the spray coop on Saturday to go out and spray 'cause the wind was calm and it was kind of warm and so it's a good time.

I think a lot of people have been working in their pre-plant herbicide applications and conventional systems.

I've seen some tillage go in in the, around Billings, Huntley where they're putting barley and things like that.

Now I think we're gonna have a little cold spell, so maybe people manage some weeds and then they can come back and plant and hopefully we get some moisture and gets everything up.

And so I think yes and no.

I think, carry on, keep calm and carry on is what I would say.

I looked at some photos on my phone the other day and I planted spring wheat at the post farm last year, April 25th.

And so we're not that, we're a couple weeks ahead, but we're not that far out in there.

- You know, I might disagree with you a little bit.

I went out a week ago to spray my asparagus with glyphosate Roundup, the original style Roundup.

- Oh.

- So what I'm gonna do is let it get that high before we get to 19 or 20 degrees this week and have some tender little shoots, because that's gonna knock it back.

- Yep.

- So, okay.

- You know, you can always eat that white.

So if you're worried about the aboveground parts.

- You're right.

I bought that before, and you know what, I don't like it quite as well.

- I'll take it, Jack.

- Okay.

On the subject of food, a question from Butte.

This person is tired of spending 8.99 a pound for 93% lean hamburger.

Joel, when is that going to come down?

They wanna know.

- Yeah, so beef prices on the retail side have been really high the last couple years, and really the primary driving factor is just we've got a really small US herd size right now, so less animals means less animals coming through our feedlots, less animals through our processing plants.

And we've still got a really strong demand.

So low supply and high demand has led to pretty high prices.

And then kind of another complicating factor has been, we typically bring about a million head of calves in from Mexico every year and then put those into US feedlots.

And then those feedlots, you know, finish those cattle up here and then they get processed here in the US and are part of the US, you know, food supply chain.

Due to the New World screwworm, which is a issue for health for the animals, we've closed the border to those until we get that kind of sorted out.

And I do expect that's gonna resolve itself here certainly during 2026.

But once that reopens then we'll start to see that flow of calves back into the US and then we'll see our feedlots be fuller again and then we'll see more animals coming through.

But for the current time, I think you just better pay 8.99 if you want a hamburger at 93% lean.

- You know, my wife says I'm cheap, and she's probably right.

But bottom line is I was in a hamburger place probably known as a craft brewery when we were in Phoenix, and I balk at a $20 hamburger.

And that's what they were, $20 and 95 cents.

- And you know, as great as high prices are, you know, like for the producer side, it's been a great time to have calves to sell the last few years.

But you do worry, you know, at some point is, will consumers start to substitute for other protein choices?

So are we gonna see more chicken sandwiches?

Are we gonna see more pork or fish or substituting to maybe more pasta-based dishes or something?

And that's kind of a concern that's out there that, you know, it is great to have high prices, but high prices can kind of destroy demand as well.

- So in 2025 I noticed that Tim's barometer of cattle prices are high, crop prices are low is no one asked me about managing weeds in row crops.

They asked me about managing weeds in forage crops.

And so do we expect as fertilizer prices stay high and maybe wheat prices aren't very high either, do we expect to be producing more forages this year?

And is there gonna be less nitrogen going on more forage crops?

- Yeah, so there's one, you know, kind of interesting thing about, let's say you are thinking like, okay, you decide the cattle market is the place to be.

We can't, it's not like a house where we just all of a sudden start building more and have more contractors and we ship in more things.

You get one calf per year.

And at the end of each year you get a choice.

You can sell that calf to a feedlot, and if it's a female calf you can keep it to be a mother cow down the road.

It's kinda the only two options we've got.

A little bit on maybe keeping an older cow around a little longer, but when somebody's offering you a record price for that calf in the fall, it's kind of hard to keep too many extra around.

But I think if people see like a five or a 10-year trend that we think cattle prices are gonna be where we can make money, I think you might see some marginal crop land converted back to pasture lands.

And maybe, you know, using a little bit of our land resource to raise protein crops as opposed to maybe, you know, some crop acreage.

But in a one-year shift, pretty hard to make a big change.

- Okay, thank you.

We covered that well.

From Dillon.

I'm gonna let Uta and Patrick handle this one.

The last couple of years his garden has done poorly.

Some crops such as peas and beets did especially bad.

He has had his soil tested and had tested out good, except slightly deficient nitrogen.

Do you have any ideals as to what might be the problem?

- I think I would need more information as to what exactly went wrong.

Like are we talking about they came up fine and then they withered and died or, you know, were they just eaten off?

Like aka, is it maybe a seedling disease issue that seems like something that's possible or, you know, something I struggle with in my garden is that the bunnies just love the peas and they never make it to a pod.

So I personally would need more information, but you know, you are a very experienced extension agent.

Maybe you'd have a really good guess there.

- I have the same, a lot of the same questions of, I wish I had a little more information.

You know, is it that we're planting peas and they're not germinating and coming out of the ground.

That might just be, the soil might still be a little bit cold and those peas might be rotting in the ground instead of getting the chance to come out.

A little bit deficient in nitrogen.

I mean, nitrogen is the macronutrient that provides for shoot growth and green leafy growth.

So if plants are looking for those, especially that early vegetative growth part of the season, that a little bit of nitrogen may help with that, stimulating that growth early on to get to the place where they're gonna produce.

- Especially with the beets.

- Yeah.

- And it's possible that the peas are not fixing nitrogen if they've never grown.

- Yeah.

Peas are- - If they have some pictures from previous years or if they wanna give it another try this year, feel free to, I mean, send us more details.

- I would ask, do the peas and the beets look twisted?

- Oh, yeah.

- Turned, and kind of funny looking.

Not like a normal pea might look, or not, maybe, I could send you pictures of what the beets would look like, but they would be, are the leaves malformed?

That would be my question.

And if so, I would maybe ask my follow-up question would be, did you get top soil or compost from an external source?

And where did it come from?

'Cause it could be that sometimes it's contaminated with herbicide.

- But that would also affect the tomatoes and other things- - That would definitely- - And beans.

- The tomatoes are the bellwethers.

They are- - Beans.

- Yep, and the beans are gonna curl.

But peas are also really sensitive.

- That's true.

From Potomac.

First question I think from Potomac, how do you get your horse hay tested?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So the Missoula County Office is there in Potomac's area, and Natalie is the woman who's the agriculture agent there.

If you're looking for that nutrition and quality analysis, there are some contract labs that Natalie can hook you up with.

You'll, she's got a core sampler that can fit on the end of a power drill.

So she can send you out with that, sample 20% of your bales, drill into 'em and bring a composite sample, send it off to one of those contract labs.

And for 25 to 30 bucks, you'll get a full nutritional readout of that.

- So what are you looking for?

I mean, I've never raised horses.

Yeah, nutrition-wise, if you wanna sample your hay, do you want low protein, high protein?

What are you looking for?

- So usually with, I mean, with a lot of horses, they, we call 'em fat or metabolically challenged I suppose is the way to think about that.

So, you know, they don't need, so one of the big things that they wanna look with horse hay would be the molecule of sugars.

So they don't wanna have a lot of digestible sugars.

So it could be middle-of-the-road protein, they don't need a lot of protein.

Looking at the digestible fibers and the non-digestible fibers, and then the sugars, as well as some of the percentage of dry matter and the percent moisture for hay, you know, is a really good just baseline reading, too, to find out what the quality that it was put up at.

- Contrary to popular belief, grass is better, grass hay is probably better for most horses than pure alfalfa.

- Your horse really has to be a working horse and working really hard to utilize all the nutrition in good quality alfalfa hay.

So, you know, younger horses do a little better I think.

As horses get older and spend a little more time in the pasture and eat a lot of green grass, you know, some of the same issues that we see in that spring green=up is that we get horses that just get overloaded with really digestible grasses and really accessible sugars.

- Okay.

- And they can get themselves in problems.

So yeah, good old grass hay, low-carb grass hay is a great horse hay.

- Good information.

Yeah.

Even though most horse lovers would still like to give them nice green alfalfa.

- You know, if you have a vet that's really dialed into the nutrition needs of your horse, like have a great conversation with that vet, of, you know, where is my horse at, and what does my horse really need?

- All right, good information.

Thank you.

A quick one, and then I'm gonna get a plug, I get a plug tonight too.

From Edgar.

This person has some winter wheat that already has some yellow spots in the leaves.

Any clue?

I'm, winter wheat has really taken off early this year.

It's broke dormancy as early as I've ever seen.

- Yes, yes.

Well, given the time of year and this funky weather we had, my best guess is that it's probably some form of cold damage.

If, so if the, so if it's like, for example, leaf tips that are kind of dying back, yellowing, or if it's like blotches that don't have any like strong margins, right, just kind of like looks washed out, bleached, that's most likely winter injury or cold damage, right?

And it probably happened because we had these warm temperatures and the winter weed broke dormancy, and once it broke dormancy and resumes growth, it's a lot more susceptible to those cold temperatures and can take injury.

In terms of impact on the crop, it would depend on the growth stage of the wheat.

I think damage caught right now, if it's still in a, like, you know, re-greening and you know, tillering stage, that's probably fine.

Once we start looking at wheat that's jointing and starting to grow erect and there's that risk of the head in the stem catching injury, and that could have an impact on yield.

But hopefully we're not that far with the winter wheat yet.

So it's kind of like a wait-and-see situation.

And, you know, we were talking earlier about the weather forecast for later this week and the cold temperatures.

So I expect to see more cold damage and, you know, following this cold spell right now.

- I agree entirely.

My turn for a plug.

There's a institute out of Kansas, it's called the Land Institute.

And it was started by a producer-farmer in Kansas by the name of West Jackson.

And actually they, Kansas PBS has asked us to mention something that's gonna take place here in Bozeman.

And the first one is going to be Friday, April 17th at 6:00 PM.

This will be at MAP Brewing here in town.

And the title of that is Beer Saves the World.

And part of that is this institute has started production of something called Kernza, which is a cross with intermediate And it's a perennial wheat.

And MAP will be serving some beer made out of Kernza.

And then on Saturday, April 18th, at 7:00 PM at the Ellen Theatre, there's a documentary called "Prairie Prophecy."

It's a 90-minute documentary that will talk about Kernza and why it was developed and what the future holds for it.

So if you have any interest in that, I would definitely take that in.

I think I'm gonna try to take in the one at MAP Brewing, of course, yeah.

No comment.

- There's some acres, there are quite a few acres of Kernza that are grown in Montana.

There's a producer up around Conrad and then there's some out in Judith, so you may be drinking Montana Kernza.

- I'm gonna give her a chance.

Have you tried it?

- I have.

- And is it?

Come on.

- It's okay.

Yeah.

All right.

I have another question here for Joel.

And this one came in via Facebook this week.

It's from Malta.

It's prediction time.

I always love it when you ask an economist to predict.

So this person believes that pulse crops are gonna be overpopulated this year because of the high price of nitrogen, which will reduce the interest in producing spring wheat in that area.

So what do you foresee in the crystal ball for pulse production in the state this year?

- Yeah, so, you know, start by looking at 2025.

So first of all, like kind of across the board for most of our larger acreage crops in Montana, the per acre returns weren't great.

So whether you were in barley, spring wheat, winter wheat, summer pulses, you know, it's not like just one of them was kind of having a struggling year.

It was more across the board that it was kind of a collectively depressed market.

So I think producers are sitting down and penciling through their per acre costs and sitting down with their bankers and saying, you know, are any of these, you know, potential crops gonna pencil out a little bit better?

So I think some folks are gonna look a lot closer at pulses.

And pulses are not a niche market in the sense of like, you know, 30 to 50,000 acres where if all of a sudden we grew 300,000, like, you know, we could kind of, well oversupply the market in a hurry, but, you know, we're growing over a million acres here in Montana, pulse crops.

So it wouldn't surprise me if we saw a fairly decent jump, but I don't think we're gonna be in a situation where we're gonna see it, you know, just collapse the market because supply expanded so fast.

- Okay, I heard word on the street that lentil contracts this year aren't looking so great compared to what they've looked like in the past.

- Yeah.

- And Tim, could you comment on how easily, how easy is it at this time in the year to switch from a plant spring weed rotation to a pulse rotation?

- Yeah, that can be really tricky.

Herbicide applications for, you know, going from, you know, we'll talk about the northeast corner of the state going durum, pulses, spring wheat in in there.

You really have to be careful with your herbicide applications or you can have carryover that affects you the next year.

For example, Huskie FX people have been asking me about using this herbicide recently.

18 months back to lentils.

You can't just change your mind and decide you're gonna go into lentils at the last moment.

I heard canola.

What about canola?

And how's it crossing the border these days?

- Yeah, so we did see some increase in canola acres last year.

'Cause I think, you know, again, people were looking, you know, there has been a buyer up in Lethbridge that at least contracted kind of out of that, you know, northern golden triangle area, but there's also buyers here that aren't necessarily shipping up to that marjoram facility in Lethbridge.

So, but there have been not as many international trade issues as we had maybe originally thought.

- Is it, there's still a tariff on canola moving into Canada?

- There are still some tariffs, but the free trade agreement has held up for a lot of those.

So initially we thought it was gonna be much higher, but yeah, there's certainly still a little bit of concern about some of that.

Because again, Canada has a lot of processing capacity.

And also we're just geographically really So, you know, dropping off to Lethbridge a lot of times is closer to a lot of places in Montana, so.

- Later this month we're gonna have somebody on from Montana Renewables to talk about what some of these crops are going to be used for for fuel here in the state.

And I think that's the last Sunday of April.

I'd have to look at my schedule.

But stay tuned for that.

- And I got some really interesting things going on about vegetable oils growing here in Montana.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Patrick, anybody can jump in on this.

From Missoula, the caller has been very ambitious.

They have planted his potatoes and onion sets.

You said it.

(everyone laughing) is it too early?

- You know, we've been having a great spring on the west side of the state and it's rocking and rolling.

So I am cautiously optimistic about potatoes and the onions that they probably will sneak through.

You know, especially if the potatoes, the greens aren't out yet.

If they're still, you know, spuds under the soil.

You're- - They'll stay there if we get down there.

- Yeah, yeah.

I think, you know, if it drops down a little bit, they'll kind of linger a little bit longer.

But we, you know, taking the drive from Missoula to Bozeman today, we are far ahead of the, even as far as, you know, Drummond and Deer Lodge to Bozeman.

We're a couple weeks ahead of y'all.

So I feel cautiously optimistic that that'll be fine.

- I don't.

- Unless it gets really cold.

Montana's not done playing winter yet.

- With my potatoes, I've learned the hard way to really wait till the soil gets hot enough, because is it scab and what else are the really, I've had issues with having this sort of potato diseases, - So like what I was referring to earlier, this black scurf has like kind of a seedling early growth stage disease that's called a stem canker.

And so that rhizoctonia pathogen can just kind of attack the stem and stolons when they're like slowly growing through the soil and the soil's still cold and wet.

And so then you'll have some form of damping off, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- You know, Nan always had Mother's Day for planting potatoes, which is usually, I think, the second Sunday in May.

- Yeah.

- This year, you might get away with it a little earlier, but hey, we, if you look, we still get down into single digits quite commonly.

So patience.

Onions, you can probably get away with.

Another question on potatoes.

This came in via email.

Can I use potatoes from the store to plant in their garden?

- Yeah.

Not yes.

More like, no, not to that.

- Yes.

- I was wondering, - Great question.

Would not recommend for the before mentioned reasons, mostly that, you know, those potatoes you grow from the store, they're grown in, you know, really to grow big potatoes.

And so they're not in the commercial potato industry.

They don't really screen that rigorously against diseases anymore.

So likely they will have things like black scurf, common scab, and then viral diseases that you really don't wanna introduce.

The other element is that oftentimes these store-bought potatoes are also treated with something to suppress germination so that they keep longer.

So that just might, you know, make it harder to start your potato in a garden that way.

So again, recommend certified seed potatoes, regionally sourced ideally.

- I can't tell you how many times I know people in years past, before we had blackleg here that used a sprout inhibitor, bought potatoes that had a sprout inhibitor on it and they couldn't figure out why they didn't get any potatoes that year, very common.

We got time for a few more questions.

We'll run through 'em in a hurry.

SARE, Western SARE.

Explain what it is and your role there, Patrick?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So Western SERA is the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research Education program.

It's a USDA NIFA grant that promotes grant money to get to the farmers, producers, and researchers to help find sustainable agriculture pathways and possibilities.

You know, it could be environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability.

So they fund different work for both producers and researchers in some really cool, innovative ways.

I run a part of that program for the state of Montana.

It's the professional development program.

So I get to give grant money to farmers and ranchers, producers, extension agents, or people like all of us, to seek out and find professional to just learn more information and to be better armed with knowledge and information to bring back to Montana.

So we offer both some small travel grants to just send people out to other states and other universities, to go to conferences and find that information, or some small seed money to start a conference or a workshop or a field day here in Montana, to provide that information to the local population.

- All right.

Now we're doing the spelling bee.

This person from Bozeman would like somebody to spell the crop that we were just talking about, that they're making beer out of.

- Oh, Kernza.

K-E-R-N-Z-A.

- Yes.

Agree.

Ding ding ding ding.

- That was tough.

- Okay.

(everyone laughing) I might have a Kernza beer later after spelling Kernza on television.

- I'm not offering that this evening.

Okay, Uta, we don't have a lot of time.

Tell us about sprinkler overhead irrigation and what happens to plants that get wet when they shouldn't.

- Right.

So as we're kind of starting the growing season and probably people are getting their sprinklers back in action, right, you wanna be thinking about readjusting your sprinklers.

So you wanna avoid them to reach the lower canopy of like your bushes and trees.

That's, you know, spreading the moisture in a place where it really causes disease.

Like you could have bacterial blight in lilac or your, you know, your evergreen, kind of leaf spot disease and stuff like that.

So readjust your sprinklers, have them not hit your trees, is the advice.

- All right, I hear the music.

We didn't get to profitability in ag tonight.

It's a new podcast of Joel's.

We'll get to that next week.

We'll tell people how they can learn a lot more about that.

Next week we have John Nasgovitz.

So I'll get it spelled right, yeah.

John, I've known for years as a cherry grower.

He's gonna talk about cherries on the Flathead.

So with that, folks, thanks for being here, Patrick.

Goodnight.

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