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n January 10, I attended the 2018 Kansas Soybean Expo in Topeka. I had never attended the meeting before, but had heard Southeast Area Agronomist Doug Shoup talk about it. The meeting was excellent. The conference began with representatives from the U.S. Poultry and Egg Export Council and the U.S. Soybean Export Council presenting some of their group’s projects. The Kansas Soybean Commission provides financial support for these and other commodity promotion commissions. The Keynote Speaker was Roger Radley, a farm boy turned standup comedian who was quite entertaining. Other groups presented including the National Biodiesel Board. Also recognized were the DuPont Young Leader Award recipients who included Labette County’s own Jared and Kimy Nash. During the Expo, Yield Contest results were presented. Once again, winners were recognized from the Wildcat District – Chester Hobbs from Roper (Wilson County) with a yield of 74.58 bu/A won the SE District Conventional Tillage while Timmons Brothers Farm, also of Wilson County took 2nd with a yield of 73.7 bu/A. Additionally, Bradley and Emily McVey (Wilson County) won the No-Till SE District with a yield of 74.48 bu/A. Wilson County was obviously well represented at the Expo! The event wrapped up with four K-State Research and Extension specialists (Ignacio Ciampitti, Dallas Peterson, Brian McCornack, and Mike Smith) presented some of their commission funded research.
-On January 19, I attended the Plant Pathology and Entomology Update in Emporia. This is a yearly event, but I was unable to attend last year due to my traveling for the North Central Region Academy. I look forward to these events as the opportunity to continually learn is definitely my favorite perk of this career. The Plant Pathology folks were first and they covered not only agronomic crops but also horticultural crops as well. The hands-on portion was actually over tomato issues and it reminded me how glad I was to have a co-worker like Jacob to handle that particular crop. Doug Jardine provided an update of the row crop diseases and stressed the new Bacterial Streak Disease which has been confirmed around the state. I hope to spend some time scouting for this disease this summer as the only county in the district where it has been confirmed is Labette. The Entomology folks wrapped up the meeting in the afternoon. Jeff Whitworth presented on the agronomic crops and he spent quite a bit of time talking about how the alfalfa weevil was quite unique in 2017. This was due to the early warm temperatures we had.
-Near the end of the month, I have started my scouting duties once again. Wheat acres are way down in southeast Kansas, but I still enjoy the crop and will continue to. One newer project I have started is to utilize Canopeo, a smartphone/tablet app released by Oklahoma State Extension. The app is designed to quantify the percentage of green plant material covering an area. I plan to utilize this in the Parsons Wheat Variety Performance Trial to try and estimate the differing vigor and tillering ability of the varieties. This is a really great tool to compare the stand of various crops and forages. It is definitely better than the naked eye and provides real, hard numbers for comparisons.