Mizzou Field Days Set for Sites Across State

Jul 01, 2024

By Shannon Beck and Julie Harker

Producers and the public are invited to save the dates for the following regional events in which extension specialists and researchers from the University of Missouri share their agricultural findings.

From August through October, events are planned across the state at Extension and Education Centers (EECs), administered by MU Extension, and at Research, Extension and Education Centers (REECs) that comprise the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (CAFNR) Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.

Extension and Education Center field days

Tuesday, Aug. 27 — Graves-Chapple EEC Field Day near Rock Port. The focus will be new technologies in digital agriculture, including drones and sensors.
Thursday, Sept. 4 (4-8 p.m.) — Hundley-Whaley Farm, Field and Family Day at Hundley-Whaley EEC, Albany. Producers and their families and friends are invited. Supper will be provided.
Thursday/Friday, Oct. 3-4 — Wurdack Producer Field Days at Wurdack EEC, Cook Station. The theme will be alternative forage options for the Ozarks, including summer and winter annual forages and warm- and cool-season grasses for cattle.

Research, Extension and Education Centers field days

Thursday, Aug. 1 (7 a.m.-noon) — Northern Missouri REEC Field Day at Lee Greenley Jr. Memorial Farm near Novelty. Complimentary breakfast will be served 7-8 a.m., followed by interactive farm tours with faculty and graduate students. Topics include crops, pest management and livestock. Lunch will be provided.
Thursday, Aug. 23 (8 a.m.-noon) — MU Ag Research Expo at Fisher Delta REEC in Portageville. Attendees can take part in interactive, hands-on discussions with research faculty, graduate students, staff and industry partners; take a self-guided tour of research fields; and visit industry partner booths. Grab-and-go lunch will be provided.
Thursday, Sept. 19 (10 a.m.–3 p.m.) The Southwest REEC near Mount Vernon, Mo., will host a Public Field Day and Career Exploration Day. Producers and area high school students can tour the research farm and visit with CAFNR faculty, MU Extension specialists and industry experts about advances in agricultural research and the wide variety of agricultural career paths available.
Saturday, Sept. 28 — CAFNR Showcase at South Farm in Columbia. Formerly known as South Farm Showcase, this family-friendly event is back.

MU Extension can help farmers take part in the goal of doubling the economic impact of agriculture by 2030 while sustaining natural resources. #2xAg2030. CAFNR research covers almost 14,000 acres across Missouri to help meet the needs of farmers and producers in each region of the state.

Source : missouri.edu

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators