First agriculture seminar a major success

By ADAM SHEPARD

shepard.95@osu.edu

Dr. Tony Vyn explains dif­fer­ent tillage sys­tems and meth­ods for corn and soy­beans dur­ing the South­west Agron­omy Day held in Fayette County in Jan­u­ary. (Photo by Gary Brock)

Well, I can offi­cially turn the page on the com­ple­tion of my first major pro­gram with Extension.

The South­west Ohio Agron­omy Day was held on Jan. 23 at the Fayette County Agri­cul­tural Ser­vice Cen­ter in Wash­ing­ton Court House. Atten­dance for the pro­gram was around fifty-five, which really pleased me. The weather was prob­a­bly favor­able for atten­dance; with highs in the teens an indoor event may have been appeal­ing for many individuals.

I was very for­tu­nate by being able to plan a date that was open for two great speak­ers from Pur­due Uni­ver­sity: Dr. Tony Vyn and Dr. Bob Nielsen, in addi­tion with our new Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Soy­bean and Small Grains Spe­cial­ist Dr. Laura Lind­sey. The after­noon brought dis­cus­sion from a cou­ple of my Exten­sion col­leagues Dr. Steve Pro­chaska and Harold Wat­ters. Prob­a­bly one of the top­ics that received the most dis­cus­sion was the nutri­ent man­age­ment portion.

It seems like in some form or another we have all heard to some extent the con­cerns regard­ing phos­pho­rus appli­ca­tions to agri­cul­tural fields. In Exten­sion we are try­ing to pro­vide grow­ers the oppor­tu­nity to learn about the 4R approach to nutri­ent man­age­ment, and pro­vide them with some options to improve the prac­tices on their farms. The 4R nutri­ent approach deals with pro­duc­ers and con­sul­tants select­ing the Right fer­til­izer source at the Right rate, at the Right time and in the Right place. The con­cept of the 4R sys­tem is based off of best man­age­ment prac­tices iden­ti­fied and endorsed by The Fer­til­izer Insti­tute and The Inter­na­tional Plant Nutri­tion Insti­tute. More infor­ma­tion about the 4R pro­gram can be found at www.nutrientstewardship.com.

Finally, I would like to tell you about some of the upcom­ing pro­grams in Fayette and sur­round­ing coun­ties. Fayette County will be a remote site for the Ohio Beef Cat­tle School from 7 to 9 p.m. The school will spread over two more nights: Feb. 26 and March 19. Orig­i­nally the reg­is­tra­tion cost was $10 per meet­ing or $25 for the three-night series that started in Jan­u­ary but thanks to the gen­eros­ity of the Fayette County Cat­tle­feed­ers there will be no cost to attend.

A cou­ple other dates to watch for are the Cat­tle­feed­ers ban­quet sched­uled for Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the newly remod­eled Mahan Build­ing. Tick­ets to this even are $20 per per­son and will be avail­able from Pettit’s BP, OSU Exten­sion Fayette County, or any mem­ber of the Fayette County Cat­tle­feed­ers. Also the South­west Ohio Corn Grow­ers will have their annual ban­quet on March 6 also at the Mahan Build­ing at the Fayette County Fair­grounds. For more infor­ma­tion about any of the above men­tioned activ­i­ties please give us a call at 740–335-1150.

(Adam Shep­ard is edu­ca­tion spe­cial­ist, Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion, Fayette County.)

Posted by Tina Murdock on Feb 24 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.