I spoke too soon. Just when I mentioned that the winter had been rather mild with no subzero cold that was dangerously cold, as in 15 to 25 below actual temps, one of those polar vortexes breaks loose and makes a break for the Mexican border and actually gets that far south. Texas was in the spotlight as in their wisdom have never spent any tax money on luxuries like snow plows. Well buckle up sister and see if you can survive a northern Iowa or North Dakota type winter. Actually Rick Perry was interviewed on the Joe Pags Radio Show on Saturday and he explained that they had diversified their energy sources among wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, coal and a few minor ones. With their temps below freezing and sunshine hours running low the solar panels were not collecting many photons, the control gauges and flow valves were balky with the gas and four coal plants were off line. But the source of the largest failure was wind power which dropped by 90% as the blades iced up. Adding to the problem their grid is independent of neighboring states so nothing could come from neighboring states. We were visiting with a cousin in the Dallas area and there was no power and now water over a large area, making for 20 some fatalities related to exposure. There will be lawsuits resulting in these deaths.

Adding to the storm related problems were stories still being investigated were reports that the snow was not melting like snow does when exposed to a heat source. There are reports covering what compounds were contained in the snow. Keep your ears open. In the field of physics or meteorology solid water in the form of ice or gas will turn directly into gas in a process called sublimation.

Perhaps the smartest agronomist in the U.S. which a bunch of us know, Bufford Creech, the walking encyclopedia from Clermont, FL, somehow ticked off his commanding officer and received a two year assignment at the pole where the temperatures regularly dropped in the 50 below range. He said everyone stayed inside most of the time. They spent many hours reading any books they could scrounge.

Back to the real world

The Iowa Power Show was held but due to the overall uncertainty of the event happening in person rather than virtual the crowds were down. Many of the large companies were absent as they are still playing cautious with allowing their employees interact with people in the outside world. Thus the big chem, seed, and herbicide firms were absent rather than being anchor businesses.

Cropping cautions

It has been interesting to watch the other stories appearing in the Farm News and other publications and the topics they are covering. One I enjoyed was the one discussing roots and root architecture, meaning how wide and deep of a root structure plants of a certain variety form based on their parentage. Varieties that yielded and tolerated conditions well in 2018 and 2019, both of which were very wet years with no stress and did not have to reach deep for moisture faced a much more hostile environment in 2020 over the southern 80% of the state. Thus this past season people saw a 20 to 50 Bu/A difference in varieties when the two major influencing factors were corn following corn versus following soybeans or lack of rooting depth. This was a year where there was a minimal amount of leaf diseases compared to past years where leaf wetness hours were greater. For this factoid I have to give credit to a sharp Mr. Olson and his powers of observation and curiosity.

Weed control issues

In news that we were expecting to hear several years in the future and yet is not surprising that it was announced last week comes out of the weed labs in the state of Arkansas. The source is a weed scientist and the head of Palmer Amaranth is a Jason Northsworthy, He has visited the state in the past for field days and spoke at a Spraytec meeting four years ago, where Don Huber and Sue Martin also spoke. His predescesor at the University in the same role was Dr. Ford Balwin. Ford was a mainstay in recognizing problems before they occurred and was typically expecting things before they occurred. Jason was telling us how they had done work in the greenhouse where they created dicamba resistant waterhemp in two short years using a selective breeding program. Thus the roll out and all the drift problems it created had been recognized by the najor companies but greed got in the way. So the go-to product used in the Delta states and by many Midwest bean growers has been Liberty, also sold as Basta in S America for 15 years.

Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.