Modern Farmer 4/26/20 Jacksonville Journal-Courier

MODERN FARMER

Farming more than Jill’s family — it’s in her blood ... Page 2 A special section of the Journal-Courier | Sunday, April 26, 2020 | $1

2 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Home on the farm

MODERN FARMER April 26, 2020

Jill-of-all-trades says farming more than family — it’s in her blood

On the cover:

Jenny Sauer Schmidgall works the family business in Bluffs with her father.

Darren Iozia | Journal-Courier

By Darren Iozia

darren.iozia@myjournalcourier.com

For Jenny Sauer Schmidgall, farming is not only in the family, it’s in her blood.

“It’s a source of happiness for me,” Schmidgall said, as she sits on an upside down 5 gallon bucket, wearing her Carhartt overalls and boots that were made for the roughest weather.

Schmidgall takes pride in the fact that she’s a female in a male dominated industry and her work ethic, knowledge and passion for the industry earns her the respect from fellow farmers.

“I can speak the speak,” she said of

On OnUs Us!

e .

Darren Iozia | Journal-Courier

Jenny Sauer Schmidgall’s father, Hunter Sauer, feeds his cattle recently. Hunter Sauer has been in farming his entire life and works closely with his daughter.

her farming peers.

A Jacksonville native, Schmidgall only recently made farming her fulltime job, but it’s something that has always been part of her life.

Prior to 2017, Schmidgall wore many hats and worked in several other industries — all of which she enjoyed.

She has lived in places like Los Angeles, Little Rock, Dallas and Chicago.

She has been a fitness instructor, a wine representative, she has acted, and still is an actor, graduated with honors from Illinois College with a degree in biology. With her degree, Schmidgall was published for work she did in clinic research.

“The research was about the correlation between the immune system and the eye,” she said.

But through all of her many careers and travels, one thing has always been present.

“Farming has always been the constant for me,” she said.

Sauer Farms in Winchester,has been a family business in the area since the ’70s and it all started with Schmidgall’s great-grandfather, Hunter Funk, who owned the John Deere store in Riggston.

Passing the farming bug down a generation, Schmidgall’s father, Hunter Sauer, continued the family passion by farming and working for other people within the area. During that time, he was able to make money by raising pigs until he could purchase his own equipment.

“He had to work for it,” Schmidgall said of his father’s success, adding that her father saved his money, purchased more equipment, then land and has been farming since.

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3 Uncertainty a part of farming 4 Peach leaf curl a commom challenge 5 Dairy farms adapting to decline 6 Food waste of the pandemic 7 Farmers cautious about season 8 The search for resilient plants 9 Small farms seeing calls to deliver 11 Outbreak tests meat supply chain 12 Panic buying comes for the seeds 13 Starting garden by season extension 14 Dog sleuths sniff out crop diseases 15 Creating an edible landscape 18 College completes banding research 19 Ag industry adjusting to rules 20 Toxic algae plan could be blueprint 21 Farm harvests metal from plants 22 Fears hit markets 23 Starting a garden: Begin with a plan 24 Mobile greenhouse teaches kids 25 Virus sours dairy industry 26 Stimulus bill offers help 27 Gardening key to better health 28 EPA announces new tool for soybeans Growers struggle as ethanol slows 30 Deep impacts of plant closure

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Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 3

From drought to pandemic, uncertainty a part of farming

By Rochelle Eiselt rochelle.eiselt@myjournalcourier.com

ARENZVILLE — David Virgin has been farming for 46 years and grows many different crops — soybeans, corn, hay, cattle and sometimes wheat have graced his nearly 1,300 acres.

He’s seen the upside and the downside his calling can bring. Although the idea of starting a new growing season in the midst of a pandemic brings with it a lot of uncertainty, it’s just another challenge to tackle head on.

Virgin enjoys farming and it’s a family affair. His wife runs the combine and does the bookkeeping.

“I enjoy it from a standpoint that everybody likes to watch things grow and do better than the year they did before,” he said.

“Maybe that’s all I ever knew was farming.”

He started farming in his early 20s. He went to college for a few years then decided to return to the fields, even though he knew there would be ups and downs.

Something Virgin went through that wasn’t easy was drought, especially in 2012.

“There was a drought in ‘83 and drought in ‘87,” he said. “Then, there was one in 2012 that was worse than any of them.”

It’s also been tough to see some of his colleagues struggle with either their operations or financial or health issues.

What makes it tough this year is social distancing — the practice of staying at least six feet away from others to help prevention the potential transmission of the

Rochelle Eiselt | Journal-Courier

David Virgin plows the field at his family farm in Arenzville.

COVID-19 coronavirus.

But the work remains the same.

Farmers “go in that cab, go to the field and … work until you get done,” Virgin said.

Farming is considered an essential business, meaning it has not faced the uncertainty that comes with having to shut down while the state is under a stay-home directive.

“My daily routine is I’ll

get up and I’ll leave here by 7 ‘o clock every morning,” Virgin said. “I’ll go nine miles southeast to check on about 35 cows.

I do that to make sure they’re in and where they’re supposed to be.”

Just coming out of winter, he makes sure the herd has lots of hay. Virgin has also been selling

hay for the past couple of years.

Then it’s time to turn attention to the crops: planting and growing in the spring, and harvesting in the fall.

Fortunately, he has a small army of help behind him — from a lender he said has been terrific and a part of his family for as

long as he can remember to his wife and children.

“This isn’t my farm, I look at this as ‘our’ farm,” Virgin said. “It’s a conglomeration of myself, my wife, our children, our lender.

“It’s a whole list of people.”

Facing the ups and downs together.

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4 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Peach leaf curl a common challenge

By Ken Johnson

For the Journal-Courier

Have you ever noticed the leaves of your peach tree becoming curled and puckered and turning reddish or purplish?

If you’ve seen this, you’ve likely had peach leaf curl.

Peach leaf curl is a fungal disease caused by Taphrina deformans. It is one of the most commonly encountered diseases of peaches and nectarines, especially in home plantings. While it primarily affects the foliage, it may also infect blossoms, young twigs, and fruit.

Peach leaf curl is relatively easy to recognize. Infected leaves become thickened and leathery and will also be distorted and puckered. The distorted areas are rather noticeable because they will become pink, red, or purple. Once the fungus begins

to produce spores, the affected areas will turn grayish-white and appear velvety. Eventually, the leaves turn yellow and fall from the tree. In cases where trees are severely infected, the trees can be defoliated. New leaves may be produced in June or July to replace the fallen leaves, especially in severely infected or defoliated trees.

Peach leaf curl doesn’t usually kill trees, but it can weaken severely infected trees. This can cause the trees to be more susceptible to other problems (diseases, insects, stress). There is also an increased chance of winter injury, as well as the potential for a smaller peach crop the following year.

Peach leaf curl overwinters on buds and the bark of trees. During cool, wet conditions in early spring, spores from the fungus will infect the leaves when buds

begin to swell. In order for the leaves to become infected, there needs to be at least 12 hours of moisture (high humidity or rain) and temperatures between 50degrees and 70 degrees. Once the leaves mature and the weather warms up (above 70 degrees), infections stop. All of this means that disease development is limited to a short period in the spring.

Fortunately, peach leaf curl isn’t difficult to control. However, the timing of treatments is critical. To prevent infections, a dormant spray of chlorothalonil, lime sulfur, or a copper based product such as Bordeaux mixture should be applied to trees in late fall after leaves have dropped, or early spring before the buds begin to swell. Once buds start to swell, it is too late to prevent infection.

Once leaves are infected, there is nothing that can be done to get rid of the disease this year. If you do end up having peach leaf curl, take steps to promote tree health and reduce stress such as: fertilizing (soil test first), watering when needed, and thinning fruit to reduce demand on the tree.

Family From page 2

Darren Iozia | Journal-Courier

Jenny Sauer Schmidgall visits with the cattle on her family’s farm, Sauer Farms in Bluffs.

Getty Images

ABOVE: Using disease resistant cultivars is a good way to help manage plant disease. While all peach cultivars are, to some degree, susceptible to leaf curl, Redhaven and cultivars derived from Redhaven are more resistant. BELOW: A branch on a peach tree shows leaf curl (Taphrina deformans) disease.

“We farm all of our own stuff,” she said.

In addition to farming, her father was able to work on his own equipment when problems would occur.

“You fix what you have and you buy when you need to,” Schmidgall said of how they think as a business.

“In farming, every year is like playing the lottery, you never know.”

It’s the Sauer Farms belief that taking pride in what they do, working with what you have and keeping things honest and simple goes a long way. “If you do a good job in farming,

people will come to you,” she said of new and repeat business.

But what brought this 36-year-0ld back to the farm full time?

For a five year period, her father was farming by himself, which is a difficult task for one person.

Schmidgall uses loading cattle on to trailers as an example. “You can’t do farming by yourself … it’s too stressful,” she said.

It was when Schmidgall was in L.A. that she was faced to renew her lease or leave. With that decision on the horizon, she came home and started working with her dad and Sauer Farms.

“I never really left,” she said.

In addition to working the family business with her father, Schmidgall is a full time wife, mother and continues to be an entrepreneur. She also owns the trademark for “GMO Survivor” and runs her own business called The Witty Farmer, which sells T-shirts and apparel with the GMO Survivor theme in addition to pro-farmer statements like ‘Without Farmers, You Would Be Hungry, Naked & Sober.”

Schmidgall’s life experiences have brought her full circle back to what she loves, farming, and can apply what she has learned to her passion.

“I am going to do what I want to do with what I know,” she said.

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 5

State’s dairy farms adapting to decline in demand

By Marco Cartolano marco.cartolano@myjournalcourier.com

The closing of schools and restaurants has created a major decrease in the demand for dairy items, but Illinois dairy farmers say that has not resulted in the dumping of excess milk seen in many states.

An estimated 2.7 million to 3.7 million gallons of milk could be dumped each day because of decreased demand, according to the Dairy Farmers of America.

Milk prices had been depressed for the past four years and the COVID19 pandemic could stymie what farmers hoped would finally be a rebound year for the industry, however.

The excess in milk is

due in part to how difficult it can be for farmers to reduce the amount of milk that young cows produce.

Tasha Bunting, associate director of commodities and livestock programs at the Illinois Farm Bureau, said farmers could look at methods such as changing feed rations to “dry out” cows and lower the amount of milk produced.

Don Mackinson, president of the Illinois Milk Producers Association, said he does not think milk dumping is a widespread issue in the state.

He credited the work of the dairy processing facilities to adapt to new demands for reducing the need to go to such an

extreme.

But dairy farmers have had to scale back their herds and a new distribution model needs to be worked out, Bunting said.

The loss of demand has also been felt on the side of dairy processing facilities, which have made shifts in production, Mackinson said. Processing facilities have been producing fewer gallon jugs and more containers of other sizes.

The Illinois Milk Producers Association is working to inform grocery stores and markets that the difficulties created by the coronavirus have not led to a milk shortage.

Mackinson said stores should not limit how much milk or dairy products a customer can buy, even if they are putting limits on other items to avoid panic-buying.

“There is no need for any grocery store to be limiting the amount of milk or dairy products that customers can buy,” he said.

Cows feed at Mackinson Dairy Farm in Pontiac. Dairy farms in Illinois have had to adapt to a decline in demand brought about

by COVID-19.

Photos provided by Illinois Farm Buerau

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6 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Smashed eggs, plowed vegetables: Food waste of the pandemic demic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell.

The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses.

The amount of waste is staggering. The nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 mil-

New York Times

In some places, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits.

Another farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And many states away, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil.

After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nation’s largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pan-

Rose Marie Cromwell | New York Times

After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores many of the nation’s largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic as they are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell.

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lion gallons of milk each day.

A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.

Many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks and Meals on Wheels programs, which have been overwhelmed with demand. But there is only so much perishable food that charities with limited numbers of refrigerators and volunteers can absorb.

And the costs of harvesting, processing and then transporting produce and milk to food banks or other areas of need would put further financial strain on farms that have seen half their paying customers disappear. Exporting much of the excess food is not feasible either, farmers say, because many international customers are also struggling through the pandemic and recent currency fluctuations make exports unprofitable.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Paul Allen, who has had to destroy millions of pounds of beans and cabbage at his farms.

The widespread destruction of fresh food — at a time when many Americans are hurting financially and millions are suddenly out of work — is an especially dystopian turn of events, even by the standards of a global pandemic. It reflects the pro-

Joseph Haeberle | New York Times

Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer, walks though his field.

found economic uncertainty wrought by the virus and how difficult it has been for huge sectors of the economy, like agriculture, to adjust to such a sudden change in how they must operate.

Even as Allen and other farmers have been plowing fresh vegetables into the soil, they have had to plant the same crop again, hoping the economy will have restarted by the time the next batch of vegetables is ready to harvest. But if the food service industry remains closed, then those crops, too, may have to be destroyed.

Farmers are also learning in real time about the nation’s consumption habits.

The quarantines have shown just how many more vegetables Americans eat when meals are prepared for them in restaurants than when they have to cook for themselves.

“People don’t make onion rings at home,” said Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer.

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Myers said there were no good solutions to the fresh food glut. After his largest customer — the restaurant industry — shut down, his farm started redistributing onions from 50-pound sacks into smaller bags that could be sold in grocery stores. He also started freezing some onions, but he has limited cold-storage capacity.

With few other options, Myers has begun burying tens of thousands of pounds of onions and leaving them to decompose in trenches.

“There is no way to redistribute the quantities that we are talking about,” he said.

Over the decades, the nation’s food banks have tried to shift from offering mostly processed meals to serving fresh produce, as well. But the pandemic has caused a shortage of volunteers, making it more difficult to serve fruits and vegetables, which are timeconsuming and expensive to transport.

“To purchase from a whole new set of farmers and suppliers — it takes time, it takes knowledge, you have to find the people, develop the contracts,” said Janet Poppendieck, an expert on poverty and food assistance.

The waste has become especially severe in the dairy industry, where cows need to be milked multiple times a day, regardless of whether there are buyers.

Major consumers of

dairy, like public schools and coffee shops, have all but vanished, leaving milk processing plants with fewer customers at a time of year when cows produce milk at their fastest rate. About 5% of the country’s milk supply is currently being dumped and that amount is expected to double if the closings are extended over the next few months, according to the International Dairy Foods Association.

Before the pandemic, a Dairymens processing plant would produce three loads of milk, or around 13,500 gallons, for Starbucks every day.

Now the Starbucks order is down to one load every three days.

For a while after the pandemic took hold, the plant collected twice as much milk from farmers as it could process, keeping the excess supply in refrigerated trailers, said Brian Funk, who works for Dairymens as a liaison to farmers.

But eventually the plant ran out of storage. One night last week, Funk worked until 11 p.m., fighting back tears as he called farmers who supply the plant to explain the predicament.

“We’re not going to pick your milk up tomorrow,” he told them. “We don’t have any place to put it.”

One of the farms that got the call was the Hartschuh Dairy Farm, which has nearly 200 cows.

A week ago, Rose Hartschuh, who runs the farm with her family, watched her father-in-law flush 31,000 pounds of milk into a lagoon. It took more than an hour for the milk to flow out of its refrigerated tank and down the drain pipe.

For years, dairy farmers have struggled with low prices and bankruptcies. “This is one more blow below the belt,” Hartschuh said.

See WASTE | Page 31

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 7

Farmers cautious about season despite rise in plantings

By Ben Orner

Capitol News Illinois

Despite projected increases in corn and soybean plantings this year after a disastrous 2019 planting season, farmers are gripped by uncertainty surrounding spring weather and the economic downturn from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture annual prospective plantings report, which shows how many acres farmers of major crops intend to plant this spring, indicates Illinois farmers are expected to plant 11.3 million acres of corn and 10.5 million acres of soybeans this planting season.

If all expected acreage is planted, that would be an increase of 8% for corn and 6% for soybeans over last year, when record precipitation from January to June decreased plantings and dropped production by 18% for corn and 20% for soybeans.

Although acreage projections for 2020 “are probably in the ballpark,” said Mark Tuttle, president of the DeKalb County Farm Bureau, any rebound from last year could be stifled by the economic shock caused

by COVID-19.

“The price of corn and beans are very poor right now,” said Tuttle, who grows about 900 acres of the two crops in northern Illinois.

As the COVID-19 pandemic drives down the price of oil, gasoline prices across the country have plummeted, with many Illinois pumps below $2 per gallon. That has stalled production of ethanol, a

gasoline alternative made from corn. Some ethanol plants have idled while being pushed toward unprofitability.

“When a lot of these acres were bid for, and talked about a month ago, none of this was foreseen at that time,” Tuttle said, adding that 40% of U.S. corn production is used for ethanol.

The economic hit could be lessened, Tuttle said, by exporting more corn, feeding more to livestock or switching some soybean acreage to corn, but that will not offset all damage.

“I think the farmers will plant their crops without a problem, we always do,” he added. “It’s a matter of marketing on the other end of this crop is going to be tough. It’s going to be tough to make money.”

Increasing uncertainty is a wetter-than-normal spring forecasted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA scientists currently predict April through June will be rainier than average in Illinois.

However, forecasters have said they expect this planting season will not be as wet as last year.

Tuttle said he has seen “extremely wet” conditions over the past two weeks while driving through northern Illinois and parts of Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. And although that does not guarantee 2019-like planting delays, “We need a good four-to-five-week dry period, late April through May, to get this crop established,” he said.

Planting season in Illinois generally runs from early April to early June,

varying in different regions of the state. Many farmers last year, especially those in the most flooded areas of the state, were planting well into June and even into July.

If June 2020 comes along and farmers have yet to plant corn, Tuttle said, some may forgo planting and instead activate the “prevented planting” payments in their crop insurance coverage.

“If there’s wet spots in the Midwest and it’s June 1, I think some of those farmers will just wait it out and take prevent plant,” he said.

Nationwide, the USDA’s report shows farmers expect soybean plantings to increase 10% this

Getty Images

year and corn plantings 8% . Illinois farmers are projected to be among the top states in acreage gains from last year if all acres

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8 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Extreme weather brings search for resilient plants

By Dean Fosdick Associated Press

Fiercer and more frequent natural disasters in recent years have many homeowners reevaluating their landscaping. Many are restocking with trees and plants more resilient in the face of storms, fires and flooding.

Scientists link the higher frequency of severe weather events to climate change.

There are steps home gardeners can take.

“Protect your property from wind and wildfires by checking tree and shrub species for winds and flammability before using them around the

home,” said horticulturist Mark Tancig.

“Native tree species are more adaptive to diseases and insects,” Tancig said. “They also tend to be more aerodynamic, making them a better bet for surviving high winds.”

Avoid trees with delicate wood that breaks apart easily in severe weather. Small species that mature below the strongest wind gusts are better choices in urban and suburban landscapes than tall ones, said Theresa Badurek, a horticulturist.

“Trees that grow very quickly usually have brittle wood,” Badurek said. “Slow and steady

wins this race.”

Trees with shallow or damaged roots are prone to blow over.

“Don’t cut the roots of a tree for sidewalks, driveways or patios.

Work around them,” she said.

People living in the Gulf and Mid-Atlantic states contend with hurricanes, while those in the West cope with wildfires. Thunderstorms, tornadoes and flooding cause most of the destruction in the nation’s interior, and then there’s the damage caused by lightning, hail, icing, mud and landslides — events that can occur almost anywhere.

“If mature trees are

damaged, rotting or dying back, hire a certified arborist to prescribe preventive pruning or removal and replacement before the next big storm,” Badurek said.

Lightning strikes are an unpredictable and explosive natural hazard.

“Tall trees can be damaged or killed by lightning,” Badurek said.

“Lightning can jump from trees into nearby homes and utilities.”

To help minimize losses, install lightning rods toward the top of your highest-value trees and ground the coils, Tancig said.

People facing wildfire damage should create defensible space around their homes. Close-in RIGHT: A windstorm broke off a large tree branch adjacent to a shed. If mature trees are damaged, rotting or dying back, hire a certified arborist to prescribe preventive pruning or removal and replacement before the next big storm.

BELOW: A wind-downed tree blocks a driveway. The chainsawequipped landowner soon had the driveway reopened and with added firewood in the process.

Certain plant species are more resilient in windstorms and wildfires than others.

Photos by Dean Fosdick | AP

areas should be free of brush, debris and firewood, have irrigated sections nearby and include an abundance of fireresistant plants.

No plant is fireproof, but many are fire-resistant. These are plants with supple leaves without waxy or resinous surfaces, said horticulturist Amy Jo Detweiler.

Proven fire-resistant plant species include daylilies, coneflowers, coreopsis, lavender and high-moisture succulents.

Lilacs and hedging roses make good shrubs for wildfire country, while hardwood varieties like maples, poplar and cherry are safer choices among trees. Avoid landscaping using conifers

with wood containing flammable waxes, fats or oils.

Although fire-resistant plant varieties might still be damaged or killed in wildfires, their foliage and stems don’t significantly fuel the fires’ intensity, Detweiler said.

Some other precautions include: • Trimming trees and shrubs and placing them about 10 feet from one another.

• Using non-flammable mulch like crushed rock around houses and outbuildings.

• Cleaning debris from roofs and gutters.

• Removing lawns near houses or keeping them watered and mown short.

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 9

Small farms seeing more calls to deliver

By Tejal Rao New York Times

For over a decade, Jennifer Field Piette has put together boxes of local fruits, vegetables and various pantry staples — rice, pale blue pastured eggs, crusty loaves of sourdough — and delivered them to people’s doorsteps.

The customer base for her business, Narrative Food, has grown from 85 people a week to about 350.

“I think there’s a wake-up call going on, in terms of food systems,” Piette said. “I hope it’s not a blip.”

The potential danger of a crowded supermarket during the coronavirus pandemic, for both shoppers and workers, and the fragility of the industrial food supply, have people frantically looking for reliable, low-contact or no-contact groceries.

For those who can afford the weekly cost of a subscription, specialized services like Narrative Food (where charges start at $43 for a box of vegetables) are increasingly popular.

Other farms are also rising to the occasion, adopting more direct distribution models for local, seasonal foods in a time

Photos by Maggie Shannon | New York Times

Bags of bread await pickup by delivery drivers as people find alternative ways to get hold of the bread.

of crisis.

Thao Family Farms sells its specialty produce to restaurants and at farmers’ markets

Joy Brooks delivers a food box to a home. Some community-supported agriculture services have seen their membership triple in just a few weeks.

and is among many now packing up prepaid boxes.

The boxes help make up for the farm’s lost business and get home cooks what they urgently need.

For $40, shoppers can order a mix of sprouting broccoli, green garlic, mustard greens, fennel and more, then pick it up at a handful of markets and restaurants. The vegetable box is just one of the items on the Middle Eastern restaurant Kismet’s new grocery menu, along with wine and beer.

Underwood Family Farms has started shipping produce boxes anywhere in the United States except Hawaii, via FedEx — this week’s are full of black kale, purple carrots, unripe avocados and tangerines.

But some shoppers are prepaying and driving to the farm, then waiting safely in their car with the trunk popped open, while the food is dispatched.

People can place all of their orders online, picking and

choosing among cheeses, honeys and other foods from a number of vendors for curbside pickup, in a kind of custom-built, no-contact community-supported agriculture, or CSA. The market’s new menu also includes an $18 donation of fresh citrus, berries and vegetables that goes directly to seniors who live nearby.

Although plenty of grocery stores have reserved shopping hours for older people and those with compromised immune systems, many of them don’t feel safe making the trip, handling items in the aisles, or even paying.

“I’ve had regular clients just redirect their subscriptions to their elderly parents,” Piette said.

And at a time when Amazon and Instacart workers are walking off the job in fear and in protest, and both food and delivery workers are on the front lines of the pandemic, See DELIVER | 10

10 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Photos by Maggie Shannon | New York Times

LEFT: Xan Dixon picks up an order to add to the company’s weekly delivery of provisions. ABOVE: A delivery is left at the front door of a client.

Deliver From page 9

people are eager to know who is working behind the scenes, and under what conditions.

Joy Brooks is an owner and the operations manager of Sublime Delivery Service, a small courier company that works with about 20 drivers, delivering food, pharmaceuticals and other necessities.

She said she is looking to hire at least 10 more drivers in the coming weeks to keep up with demand.

Brooks makes many of the deliveries herself.

“Right now, food deliveries are our highest demand,” she said, referring both to the provisions boxes from Narrative Food and to

meal kits.

As more restaurants close, small food producers lose their regular orders, and Piette is scheduling more pickups to get that food to home cooks, including bread and fresh noodles.

“You don’t usually quintuple your volume in a few days,” said Piette, who was racing to keep up.

At the company’s commercial kitchen space, where workers packed boxes, one staffer was now entirely dedicated to enforcing distance between employees, frequent hand-washing, sanitizing and other crucial hygiene practices.

Meanwhile, the orders for more produce boxes, and more local foods, kept coming in.

“I wish it wasn’t a tragedy that was changing things,” Piette said.

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 11

Outbreak tests meat supply chain

By Ben Orner

Capitol News Illinois

Meat has been among the most in-demand items at supermarkets as people stock up on essentials amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

That has people up and down Illinois’ livestock supply chain – especially producers of beef and pork – trying to keep up. Industry leaders say the Illinois factories processing beef and pork are running at normal capacity with multiple shifts a day to keep shelves and meat cases stocked.

“There has been and continues to be a steady supply reaching consumers,” said Jill Johnson, executive vice president of the Illinois Beef Association. “In the beef industry right now, there’s nothing that’s pointing to not being able to fulfill that demand.”

As orders for pork – of which Illinois is the fourth-biggest producer in the country – come in more frequently from grocery stores, the state’s three major pork packing facilities are functioning at normal capacity, according to Illinois Pork Producers Association Executive Director Jennifer Tirey.

“Our farmers don’t stop working during this. They are in it for the long haul.

And we are moving meat to grocery stores on a daily basis,” she said.

While meat flies off supermarket shelves, some of the stress on the supply chain is eased by a decrease in orders from restaurants, which had to close their doors to dine-in customers this week.

“We’ve actually had grocery stores be able to step

in and pick up that slack,” Johnson said. “So in terms of keeping beef moving to a consumer, that’s not an issue.”

Jacob Liebman, a beef cattle farmer with a small farm in Morgan County, said he has had a consistent stream of calls and texts from slaughterhouses, including one on Friday morning searching for more ground beef.

“He was looking for old bulls, old cows, just things that can be turned into hamburger, basically,” Liebman said.

Mike Doherty, a senior economist at the Illinois Farm Bureau, said one potential strain on the supply chain is uncertainty in the workforce for slaughterhouses and processing plants.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, Illinois has closed schools and put an added emphasis on caring for the elderly. So despite processing plants having “generally younger workers,” Doherty said some employees might need to stay home.

Tirey said pork packers “are managing to continue with normal operations,” but “as time goes on,” they have expressed similar concerns about workforce availability.

Johnson said the beef industry has “not seen the workforce be impacted in a large way by what’s happening.”

The ag industry also got a vote of confidence in uncertain times at both the state and federal government level week.

Gov. JB Pritzker issued a “stay-at-home” order in March, closing all nonessential businesses. But all

Stu Forster | Getty Images

A butcher wearing a protective mask and gloves handles meat.

ag and food operations are among the “essential businesses and operations” that will continue to operate.

“Agriculture and the press, veterinarians and plumbers, laundromats and banks, roads, bridges, and transit – the fundamental building blocks that keep our society safe and steady – will not be closing down,” Pritzker said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has classified agriculture as a “critical infrastructure” industry in a guidance letter, naming it alongside health care services and pharmaceuticals as necessary for American health, safety and economic security.

The guidance tells state governments to prioritize continued operations of such essential businesses as grocery stores, restaurants, truck stops, food processing plants, food safety workers and farm workers.

Tirey said the guidance will likely mean workers will get easier access to future government aid and COVID-19 tests to limit disruptions to production and processing.

“We’re also advocating at the federal level, that if our farmers need lines of credit, if they need support financially, that

those things be provided to them,” Tirey added.

“Because if they can’t continue to operate their business, they can’t continue to help the consumers.”

Federal and state transportation agencies have also loosened regulations in the past week to make it easier for trucks to deliver food.

The U.S. Department of Transportation exempted semitrailers, including livestock haulers, from normal limits on driver hours as long as they are carrying certain food or medical supplies and equipment.

Pritzker also waived fees for overweight trucking permits for the movement of emergency relief supplies, including food but not livestock. However, fees for livestock haulers have been waived nationwide by the U.S. Department of

Transportation.

Liebman noted that while a majority of people can work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers can’t, and he called the continuance of the supply chain “a matter of national security.”

“It’s just like a snowstorm, except it’s a long one. We don’t know how long it’s going to take, but everyone’s still out there,” he said. “Farmers are still going to be out there doing their job in pretty much full capacity, as usual.”

Doherty said that as long as processing, shipping and transportation networks keep running, people should not be concerned about food.

“This country can feed itself. And for the most part right now, agriculture has not been disrupted,” he said.

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12 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Panic buying comes for the seeds

By Kendra Pierre-Louis

New York Times

On a recent Sunday, after I’d completed my pushup challenge, counted my rolls of toilet paper and sketched out a new work-from-home schedule that I would eventually abandon by midday Monday, I looked online in search of something that my pandemicaddled mind had decided overnight was essential: seeds.

Crises can release memories, and as I entered my third week of social isolation, a half-remembered fragment of “Candide” resurfaced from high school French class. I must, the voice demanded, cultivate my garden. And, as it happens, I have a weedy patch of backyard that I can turn, if

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not into an Eden, then at least something slightly less weedy and more nourishing.

Despite one disastrous deck garden (I blame questionable soil), I have a reasonable track record of messily coaxing food from the earth. I grew up with a backyard garden, spent a summer working on farms in Vermont and worked for three seasons in a botanical garden.

I knew firsthand how calming gardening can be, especially when you’re not dependent on the food for your immediate survival. Time slows down a little, thoughts meander and a feeling of flow can arrive, even when the land you’re cultivating is a tiny patch within earshot of a bus stop.

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red and white Chioggia beets, fiery peppers and enough basil to start my own pesto company, website after website warned that my vegetative dreams may be delayed.

“It feels like we are selling toilet paper,” Mike Dunton, founder of the Victory Seed Co., a small seed company focused on horticultural biodiversity, told me via email. (He was too busy filling orders to come to the phone.)

I’d been searching his company’s website for glass gem corn, a popping corn that originated with Carl Barnes, who was a part-Cherokee farmer in Oklahoma. In recent years, the corn has become internet famous because of its kaleidoscopic jewel-like appearance.

My pandemic prep included buying 4 pounds of standard yellow popping corn; glass gem corn felt like a way of stepping up my game.

But the website cautioned that all buyers were agreeing to abide by “pandemic ordering terms,” and warned that the shipping backlog was 18 to 24 days.

Clearly, I was not the only person who thought the best path through the pandemic was to panic-buy a bunch of seeds.

“We have called nearly everyone who has ever worked here and is already trained to do the job, and added a couple of new faces,” Dunton said.

“These are crazy times.”

The impetus to grow things right now is not limited to those with yards.

“It’s been crazy, the amount of uptick we’ve seen in the past two weeks,” said Bryce Nagels, founder of Nutritower, a hydroponic gardening company. (According to Nagels, the system lets people grow the equivalent of a 30-squarefoot garden inside their home.)

Ordinarily, the company’s customers are schools — it’s a way of bringing gardening into the classroom. But in recent weeks the buyers have been home growers. Nagels said

Getty Images

that most start with produce like lettuce and herbs, but “I’m growing eggplant right now and a ton of cherry tomatoes.”

Gretchen Krusyman, cochief executive of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, a large seller of organic seeds for home gardeners and farmers alike, said of the demand for seeds: “Every day it just increases.

We think it’s going to slow down, and there’s no sign of it slowing down.”

The company prides itself on getting all orders placed by 1:30 p.m. out the door that day. But now, “we just can’t keep up,” Krusyman said.

When I checked the company’s website last week, seeds for Genovese basil, the classic Italian basil used in a lot of pesto, and sweet Thai basil (which in the United States gives a dish called drunken noodles their characteristic taste), were back-ordered until the end of March. But holy basil, which is less well known in the United States but is also used in Thai cooking and smells like heaven brought to earth, was still in stock.

Phew! I ordered all three.

“It really started going up on Friday the 13th,” Kruysman said. That week, Johnny’s Selected Seeds sold twice as many seeds to home growers as it had during the same week last year.

March 13, by the way, is the date that President Donald Trump declared a national emergency because of the new coronavirus.

Seeds aren’t the only food item in short supply, of course.

Good luck finding yeast, flour or a bread mill these days! But those other sudden rarities can produce food right away, while seeds are fundamentally forward-looking.

Why the rush then? It had to be a near-universal urge to garden, I decided. For me, the need to buy seeds and garden felt like part of the broader suite of practices I’d taken up — running, meditating, jump roping — to stay calm.

But then I talked to Jamie Mattikow, president and CEO of Burpee, the huge seed seller whose packets are ubiquitous at hardware stores. His company has seen an uptick, too. (It started as early as December but really ramped up over the past month.)

Mattikow told me that people aren’t buying just any old seeds. “I would say vegetables are driving it,” he said, distinguishing the demand from flowers and other plants.

“There’s a really, really high interest in vegetables.”

His comments had me eyeing the flower seed packets I had ordered — blush pink snapdragons, vibrantly yellow marigolds, deeply purple pansies — a bit differently. All of these flowers are edible, you see. Perhaps, subconsciously, I wanted to have my flowers and eat them, too.

This isn’t the first time in recent years that there has been a run on seeds.

“When the market crashed

in 2008, there was a big increase in people starting to grow their own food,” Kruysman said. But that uptick was more gradual.

Noah Schlager, the conservation program manager of a nonprofit seed seller called Native Seed Search, said: “I was talking with a colleague who was saying that a lot of elders lived through the Great Depression, and they remember times like this.”

“They’ve been saying, ‘This is the time to be saving these seeds and making sure that we can feed ourselves,’” he added.

The mission of Native Seed Search is to promote and conserve the crop biodiversity of the arid American Southwest. (Native Seed Search is responsible for bringing attention to glass gem corn.)

The company sells seeds to the public, “but our priority is seeds for indigenous communities,” Schlager said, pointing out that the Navajo Nation is suffering because of the coronavirus.

“They’re oftentimes the last place where real aid, or FEMA support or anything really gets handed out to people,” he said.

The uptick in sales was affecting Native Seed Search’s ability to serve native communities, even as this particular moment had led to a larger interest among native growers.

That, coupled with concerns over the size of some orders, suggesting that some buyers were hoarding seeds in a doomsday bunker, led the company to close the Native Seed Search shop until April.

“So much of our seeds today come from indigenous communities — corn, beans and squash,” Schlager said. “I want to make sure that people feel respect and reverence for that.”

Still, it’s not all seed hoarding. The Burpee website has an advice section for growers.

Referring to increased web traffic to that section in the past month, Mattikow said: “Interest in our advice has gone up 75%.”

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 13

Starting a garden by season extension

By Chris Enroth

For the Journal-Courier

Are you waiting on the edge of your seat, ready for when you can safely plant your tomatoes in the garden?

If you know any vegetable farmers, they already have tomatoes in the ground.

But perhaps you can’t fit a high tunnel in your backyard. Maybe the front yard?

Nah, the neighbors won’t like that one bit.

There are strategies to get you out in the garden sooner by extending the season.

Let’s cover some early- and late-season strategies for the home gardener which don’t involve 100-foot long high tunnels.

What is season extension?

Season extension is exactly what it means. For most back yard home gardeners there are three ways to take this: 1. Extending the warm season crops into the cooler months.

2. Extending the cool season crops into the winter months.

3. Or both.

OK, not every home garden will have space for doing both, because a tomato takes up space that could otherwise be occupied by a block of lettuce, and vice versa.

We are not talking about greenhouses (though I do wish I had one).

Greenhouses typically use active heating. Meaning there is some type of heat source in the structure. What we will talk about is passive heating by trapping sunlight in various types of structures, such as cloches, cold frames, and low tunnels.

Cloches Cloches are simply plastic jugs or bottles with the bottom cut off and placed over the top of plants. These are inexpensive ways to protect plants.

There are all types of variations on cloches, from gardeners using an old milk jug, to cloches with waterfilled sides that hold a lot more heat. Vent

on warm sunny days by removing the cap. However, since these are so small it can only hold so much thermal mass.

Meaning it will cool far more quickly than a larger structure. This would not be a reliable way to keep crops alive throughout a typical Illinois winter.

Cold frames A cold frame is essentially a bottomless box, with a clear covering.

Ideally, cold frame tops are angled and oriented to the southern sky for better interception of sunlight. Plants can grow directly in the soil inside the cold frame, or plants can be grown in flats or pots.

Cold frame construction — Often these are made of wood 1-inch thick; two-inch is more costly but provides better insulative value. Most cold frames have a repurposed window as the clear covering. You can also use plastic greenhouse film or clear polycarbonate panels.

Vent cold frames on warm, sunny days by propping the covering. There are some simple automatic vent openers available that do not require electricity.

Low tunnels Low tunnels offer a very flexible, lowcost way to provide a protected growing environment to crops. The frame of the low tunnel can be made from a variety of materials. But are usually tento eight-foot-long sticks of metal conduit, PVC, or high gauge wire, which are bent into 3-, 4-, or 6-foot half-circle frames, called hoops.

Setting up your low tunnel - The hoops are spaced at a maximum of six feet apart. Space hoops closer if you are in a high wind location or area that receives lots of snow. You can secure the hoops to a raised bed frame with pipe straps. For in-ground gardens, you can push the ends of the hoop into the ground. I also install a rope along the center of the hoops to act as a spine.

Stakes at either end of the low tunnel secure a rope looped around the middle of each hoop and pulled tightly. This helps with resisting wind and snow loads.

Getty Images

There are two types of material you can use as a low tunnel covering - spun row cover fabric and greenhouse polyethylene.

Row cover fabric is a plastic spun fiber material. It is porous which means it will let air through in addition to light. It is also handy to use in the

spring as a protective cover for plants as pest insect populations begin to grow.

The polyethylene film will only allow light through. Which will become trapped underneath as heat energy.

The low tunnel will also need to be vented on sunny days.

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14 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Dog sleuths sniffing out crop diseases

By Christina Larson Associated Press

Dog detectives might be able to help save ailing citrus groves, research suggests.

Scientists trained dogs to sniff out a crop disease called citrus greening that has hit orange, lemon and grapefruit orchards.

The dogs can detect it weeks to years before it Gavin Poole | USDA (via AP) shows up on tree leaves Detector canine Bello works in a citrus orchard, searching for citrus greening disease, a bacteria that is spread by a tiny insect that feeds on and roots, the researchers report. citrus trees.

“This technology is thousands of years old – the dog’s nose,” said Timothy Gottwald, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a co-author of the study. “We’ve just trained dogs to hunt new prey: the bacteria that causes a very damaging crop disease.”

Dog sleuths are also faster, cheaper and more accurate than people collecting hundreds of leaves for lab analysis, according to the study in the Proceedings of National Academies of Sciences.

Citrus greening — also called huanglongbing — is caused by a bacteria that is spread by a tiny insect that feeds on the leaves and stems of citrus trees. Once a tree is infected, there’s no cure.

The disease has also hurt citrus crops in Central and South America and Asia.

In one experiment in an orchard, trained dogs were accurate 95% of the time in distinguishing between newly infected trees and healthy ones.

“The earlier you detect a disease, the better chance you have at stopping an epidemic” by culling infected trees, explained Gottwald.

Matteo Garbelotto, who studies plants at the University of California, Berkeley, says the new research elevates the study of dog sleuths in orchards from anecdotal to field-tested, showing that dogs can detect an infection well before current methods. Garbelotto has been involved in similar research but had no role in new study.

Another plant scientist, Laura Sims of Louisiana Tech University, said she was impressed by the rigorousness of the research.

She applauded the steps taken to determine if the dogs were sniffing out the bacteria itself or a plant’s response to an infection.

To do that, the researchers infected a variety of unrelated plants with the bacteria in a laboratory.

The dogs were still able to pick out the infected plants.

“You’ve seen dogs working in airports, detecting drugs and explosives,” said Gottwald. “Maybe soon you will see them working on more farms.”

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 15

Creating an edible landscape

By Ken Johnson

For the Journal-Courier

When we think of the typical home landscape, our garden areas are usually separated by the type of plant being grown.

We have a separate bed for flowers and ornamental plants, one for vegetables and one for herbs.

Often the vegetable and herb gardens are tucked away in the backyard and out of view from the neighbors. However, in recent years there has been an increasing trend to incorporate edible food crops into landscapes or edible landscaping.

Edible landscaping is the use of food-producing plants in landscapes.

It combines fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, vegetables, herbs, edible flowers, along with ornamental plants. Many of our edible plants can be just as attractive as our ornamental plants, but with the added benefit of producing food (dualpurpose plants).

Just like planning any other landscape, make sure you start with a plan when incorporating edibles into your landscape. Keep in mind that most fruits and vegetables require full sun conditions, although some of the leafy greens like lettuce and kale can tolerate more shade.

Like selecting any other plant for your landscape, make sure to keep in mind how large the plant will

reach at maturity before placing it into your landscape, this is especially important for perennial plants. Edible plants can also have different care requirements than ornamental plants, especially if we wish to use them for food. So, make sure you familiarize yourself with their care requirement, as well as how and when they should be harvested beforehand.

Fruit trees like apples and peaches can provide beautiful flower displays in the spring as well as fall color in addition to their fruits. Apples are a good option if you have limited space, plants on dwarfing rootstock may only reach 6 to 8 feet in height (they may need support though). Nut trees such as walnuts and pecans can grow to be large trees (50-plus feet) and provide shade in addition to nuts (keep in mind it will take several years before you get nuts to harvest).

Edible shrubs such as blueberries, elderberries, and raspberries can be used to create hedges and screens or used as foundation plantings or accent plants. Asparagus plants can also be used to make a hedge, screen a fence, or act as a backdrop for flowers. Edible vining plants such as grapes and hardy kiwi can be utilized to cover fences or arbors.

Vegetables like cucumbers, peas, and runner beans can be used in the same

way. One landscape plant we commonly used as a shrub or vine, roses, have edible petals. Additionally, some cultivars will produce edible rose hips that can also provide color during the fall and winter.

Strawberries, nasturtium (edible leaves and flowers), and some herbs like mint and thyme can be used as ground covers. Other herbs and vegetables like basil, kale, lettuce, and swiss chard can be utilized for their colorful foliage while the Getty Images fruit of peppers and eggEdible shrubs such as blueberries can be used to create hedges and screens. plants can provide a touch of color. There are also a WE WORK HARD TO variety of different types of plants that have edible BRING YOU THE flowers such as bachelor BEST DEAL! buttons, borage, calendula, daylilies, lilac, and pansies. Even the dandelions growing in your yard are edible.

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Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 17

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18 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

College completes duck banding research Journal-Courier

This spring, the Western Illinois University Department of Biology offered its students the opportunity to participate and volunteer in duck banding to study lesser scaup.

Lesser scaup, a species of North American diving duck, are studied by the WIU Department of Biology and with the help of volunteers from other organizations like the Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Minnesota departments of Natural Resources, as well as volunteers from Ducks Unlimited and Delta

Waterfowl. In past duck banding seasons, ecology students and research method classes from nearby universities have volunteered their time, along with local hunters and naturalists.

The WIU Department of Biology traps in multiple spots, depending on the year and where the lesser scaup choose to group together. Both sides of the Mississippi River in Illinois and Iowa are scouted by the team before choosing the locations in which to lay traps.

Once the locations are decided, trap sites are

marked with bait for the ducks. Swim-in traps are used due to lesser scaup diving for their food.

Welded wire, heart-shaped traps are used and lesser scaup follow a trail of bait inside the trap. Once the ducks are inside the traps, they are collected, weighed on shore, their sex is identified and they are released with a leg band to continue migration.

Lauren Larson, a WIU Biology Department graduate assistant, of Owatonna, Minnesota, has been involved in duck banding for two seasons.

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“We definitely had to make adjustments in our banding operation due to COVID-19. We had many volunteers that were unable to make it due to concerns with the rising health crisis, which was totally understandable,” said Larson. “In the beginning, we limited our help to eight volunteers max per day, but usually only had six until the issuance of the stay-at-home order.

Most of these volunteers were locals and came back to help when we were short-handed.”

In addition to volunteers not being able to help, the season was stopped early due to the rising concerns of the pandemic and safety concerns. This year, there were an average of six volunteers per day, while duck banding other years had as many as 15 volunteers per day.

“We stopped banding once the stay-at-home order went into effect,” she said. “Usually, banding goes on for the entire month of March and even into April. This year we banded for a week and a half, so the time we were able to be in the field was definitely impacted.”

Larson, banding coordinator this season, has benefitted in many ways from participating in duck

banding.

“Much of what I do as the banding coordinator involves organizing people and equipment, as much as it does making trapping decisions. With banding, there are anywhere from 3-12 new people every day. Some of them have participated in banding before, but some are brand new,” said Larson. “It’s my responsibility to make sure that everyone receives the necessary training for their own safety and that of the birds.”

Larson said she makes sure that the right number of people are going to the right locations with the proper equipment so that banding can be done efficiently.

“While our ultimate goal is to put as many bands out as we can, I also like to make sure our volunteers are learning and enjoying this unique experience,” she said. “This opportunity has helped enhance both my communication and public outreach skills, things that will undoubtedly be useful in the future.”

One benefit of the banding program is the data that is collected through the process. Data can be added to a duck’s record at each recapture, as well as be used by management officials to make informed

decisions regarding conservation. During the WIU banding project this year, ducks have been found from Louisiana from 2019 and one that hatched in Montana in 2018.

Banding data can also give management officials information like migration routes taken, survivability rate and harvest rates by hunters. Duck banding information also helps determine bag limits for duck hunting.

Although the purpose of duck banding is trapping, banding and releasing the ducks, some ducks are held onto for further study.

“Part of my master’s research involves conducting short-term feeding trials to determine how much energy scaup metabolize from certain foods,” said Larson. “These birds are released after their trial to continue migrating. To avoid influencing the banded population data these birds are not banded.”

As for the benefits of duck banding, it gives students the opportunity to handle and band birds.

Students are able to work with volunteers of multiple organizations, like Ducks Unlimited and individuals from the Department of Natural Resources from multiple states.

“For those interested in pursuing a career involving wildlife, this is a great way to build their resume while networking with professionals in the field,” said Larson. “We’ve had students from several universities volunteer over their spring break. Many members from WIU’s chapters of The Wildlife Society and American Fisheries Society have also helped in the past. Students do not need to be a member of either to volunteer.”

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 19

Agriculture industry adjusting to social-distancing rules

By Ben Zigterman News-Gazette (TNS)

Farmers probably have less trouble keeping their social distance, but they’re still worried about coronavirus.

“We’re all trying to plan accordingly,” said Chris Hausman, who farms near Pesotum.

“I’ve been staying close to the farmstead.”

A mechanic from Jennings Implement Co. in Bement was working on Hausman’s planter to get it ready for this year’s crop.

“We’re definitely going to practice social distancing,” Hausman said. “I’m not going to be climbing in the cab with the mechanic as he’s in there working.”

While farmers naturally are spread farther apart, they tend to be older and thus more atrisk of COVID-19 complications. They also rely on just a few employees, so it’s important that each one is healthy during the short stretch of planting.

“I’ve reached out to my part-time help and have encouraged them to also be vigilant and be careful,” Hausman said, so that “in a couple weeks when we get the opportunity to get into the fields, they’re healthy and ready to go.”

Planting is still a few weeks away, so right now many farmers are working on their equipment.

“It’s more in the preparation of doing the things you have to do today to guarantee that you’re going to be able to work in two weeks

Getty Images

or 10 days or whenever Mother Nature decides,” Hausman said.

He recently picked up parts for his equipment and instead of stopping in and chatting with the employees, his parts were waiting outside.

“The parts were set outside the door outside

the dealership, which I appreciated them doing that,” he said. “They had a sign that said if we needed any other help just to call. So they’re also trying to do their part.”

Once farmers are able to get in the fields, Hausman said they should

be able to keep their distance.

“The beauty of farming is that most operators are going to be isolated anyways,” Hausman said. “We’re going to be in the cabs of fertilizer spreaders and planters.

From that perspective, it’s very doable.”

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At AHW, a John Deere dealer in Urbana, store manager John Tate said they’ve taken several steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“For the regular customers, we put the parts outside on shelves,” he said. “For the customers that don’t have an account, we have to go out and make change.”

They also wipe down high-traffic areas multiple times a day and have locked the showroom.

“It’s a lot of extra work,” Tate said. But “the crop has to go in when it needs to go in, so they have to be ready.”

Mark Pflugmacher, who farms in northern Champaign County, also said that getting parts can take a few extra steps.

“Some dealerships have closed their doors to the public, so you have to call ahead or do it over the internet,” he said.

And Dirk Rice, who farms near Philo, said the coronavirus has

helped highlight the lack of broadband internet in many rural areas.

He’s on the Illinois Corn marketing board and has been attending virtual meetings.

It’s “dragging a bunch of old farmers kicking and screaming into 2020,” Rice said. But “one issue this has really brought to light is that rural internet access is really behind.

“I’m having to do these meetings on my phone because it’s the only thing I can keep a good connection on.”

Farm bureau’s mask request making a difference When the Champaign County Farm Bureau asked for masks to donate to local hospitals, farmers delivered.

So for, about 475 masks of all types have been donated, with the majority being N95 masks, assistant manager Bailey Edenburn said.

“It’s nice to see the community stepping up to help our health care workers,” she said.

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20 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Toxic algae plan could be blueprint

By John Seewer Associated Press

Nearly halfway into a 10-year pledge to combat the toxic algae that turns Lake Erie a ghastly shade of green, Ohio has made little progress. Its patchwork of mostly voluntary efforts hasn’t slowed the farm fertilizers that feed algae blooms, leading to contaminated drinking water and dead fish.

The governor has authorized an ambitious plan that this year will begin offering farmers financial incentives to adopt new agriculture practices and will create a network of wetlands to capture and filter runoff from fields.

The broad approach is being watched closely by states struggling with an increasing number of algae outbreaks. Some environmental groups are skeptical, but others that have been at odds with the farming industry are hopeful.

While there are no guarantees the strategy will revive the shallowest of the Great Lakes, there are potential pitfalls, including a lawsuit calling for tougher regulations, that could upend the state’s goal of drastically reducing nutrient pollution entering the lake’s western end by 2025.

“We can’t move forward as a state unless we preserve Lake Erie,” Gov.

Mike DeWine said when he announced plans to pay farmers to voluntarily participate, part of $172 million targeted for water quality.

One of the biggest hurdles is that the state must convince farmers to make changes without any certainty they will be enough. And no matter how many get on board, progress will be slow because phosphorus from chemical fertilizer and manure has built up for years.

Backers of the state’s plan worry that farmers could get discouraged and lawmakers may back away from committing more money if algae blooms continue to overwhelm the lake.

That’s why the state’s immediate focus is on convincing farmers in the western Lake Erie region to commit to some changes. “Our measure of success will be in how many farmers enroll in each county,” said Dorothy Pelanda, Ohio’s agriculture director.

Nathan Eckel, who raises cattle and farms with his family, said he and many neighbors already are doing several recommended practices, including planting cover crops and vegetation along streams and mixing manure into the ground.

“We’re doing what’s most time efficient and what’s best financially,” he said.

One of the state’s suggestions for reducing phosphorus runoff is to inject fertilizer into fields instead of on top, but that equipment costs

close to $200,000.

“How do you justify that coming off a year like we just had?” Eckel said.

What holds back others are lingering questions about whether the recommended steps are feasible and effective, said Robyn Wilson, a behavioral researcher.

“I can’t blame the farmer,” she said. “Even those committed to it aren’t getting enough feedback.”

Surveys have shown that while up to 20% might not be willing to change, a larger share are open to new ways but face barriers, many of them financial.

“It’s a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time,” she said.

Incentives is the key.

“We cannot expect farmers to do things that will drive them out of business,” said DeWine, who first talked about long-term solutions just months after he took office a year ago.

States throughout the U.S. will be monitoring the results because reducing nutrient pollution from farms has been a much bigger challenge than slowing it from sewage plants and factories, said Dan Obenour, an environmental engineer at North Carolina State University.

“In general, states are still trying to figure it out,” Obenour said.

Leaders have been under pressure to fix the lake since algae toxins in 2014 left more than 400,000 people unable to drink their tap water.

Jeremy Wadsworth | The Blade (AP)

An algae bloom appears in a boat basin. The approach Ohio leaders are taking to deal with the outbreak is being watched closely by states around the U.S. that are struggling with an increasing number of algae outbreaks in lakes and rivers.

Studies by have shown that roughly 85% of the phosphorus going into the lake comes from agriculture.

Many experts think the only way to reduce that is to order agriculture to make changes instead of relying on volunteers.

Paul Sancya | AP

Charter boat Capt. Dave Spangler holds a sample of algae.

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 21

Farm harvests metal from plants

By Ian Morse New York Times

Some of Earth’s plants have fallen in love with metal. With roots that act practically like magnets, these organisms — about 700 are known — flourish in metal-rich soils that make hundreds of thousands of other plant species flee or die.

Slicing open one of these trees or running the leaves of its bush cousin through a peanut press produces a sap that oozes a neon blue-green. This “juice” is actually one-quarter nickel, far more concentrated than the ore feeding the world’s nickel smelters.

The plants not only collect the soil’s minerals into their bodies but seem to hoard them to “ridiculous” levels, said Alan Baker, a botany professor who has researched the relationship between plants and their soils since the 1970s.

This vegetation could be the world’s most efficient, solar-powered mineral smelters. What if, as a partial substitute to traditional, energy-intensive

and environmentally costly mining and smelting, the world harvested nickel plants?

Baker and an international team of colleagues have set their sights on convincing the world that the idea is more than just a fun thought experiment. On a plot of land rented from a rural village on the Malaysian side of the island of Borneo, the group has proved it on a small scale. Every six to 12 months, a farmer shaves off 1 foot of growth from these nickel-hyperaccumulating plants and either burns or squeezes the metal out. After a short purification, farmers could hold in their hands roughly 500 pounds of nickel citrate, potentially worth thousands of dollars on international markets.

Now, as the team scales up to the world’s largest trial at nearly 50 acres, their target audience is industry. The researchers hope that in a decade a sizable portion of insatiable consumer demand for base metals and rare minerals could be filled by the same

Hyper-accumulating plants thrive in metallic soil that kills other vegetation, and botanists are testing the potential of phytomining.

kind of farming that produces the world’s coconuts and coffee.

Phytomining, or extracting minerals from hyperaccumulating plants, cannot fully replace traditional mining techniques, Baker said. But the technology has the additional value of enabling areas with toxic soils to be made productive. Smallholding farmers could grow on metal-rich soils, and mining companies might use these plants to clean up their former mines and waste and even collect some revenue.

“It’s icing on the cake,” Baker said.

The father of modern mineral smelting, Georgius Agricola, saw this potential 500 years ago. He

smelted plants in his free time. If you knew what to look for in a leaf, he wrote in the 16th century, you could deduce which metals lay in the ground below.

Rufus Chaney, an agronomist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 47 years, coined the word “phytomining” in 1983 and with Baker helped begin the first trial in Oregon in 1996. His name is immortalized in one of the nickelsucking plants used in the Malaysian plot.

Now, after decades behind the lock and key of patents, Baker said, “the brakes are off the system.”

With patents no longer an issue, the scientists hope the technology can benefit small farmers in Malaysia and Indonesia.

“The hope is that we can show it off and have proof of concept and show people how it works, and that it works,” added Antony van der Ent, a plant scientist at the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia. His dissertation began the Malaysian project.

Nickel is a crucial element in stainless steel. Its chemical compounds are increasingly used in batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energies. It is toxic to plants, just as it

Photos by Antony van der Ent | For New York Times

LEFT: Nickel-rich sap is taken from a tree in Sabah, Malaysia. RIGHT: A small plot of land yielded hundreds of pounds of nickel citrate every six to 12 months.

is to humans in high doses.

Where nickel is mined and refined, it destroys land and leaves waste.

In areas where soils are naturally rich in nickel, typically in the tropics and Mediterranean basin, plants have either adapted or died off. In New Caledonia, a New Jersey-size French territory in the South Pacific that has been a major source of nickel, botanists know of at least 65 nickel-loving plants.

Such plants are the most common metal-craving vegetation; others suck up cobalt, zinc and similarly crucial metals. With new electronics spurring surging demand for rare minerals, companies are exploring as far as outer space and the bottom of the ocean. Far less explored is one of humanity’s oldest technologies, the farm.

The language of literature on phytomining, or agromining, hints of a future when plant and machine live together: bio-ore, metal farm, metal crops. “Smelting plants” sounds about as incongruous as carving oxygen.

Proponents of phytomining see the greatest potential in Indonesia and the Philippines, two of the world’s biggest nickel ore producers, where hundreds of mines shovel topsoil into smelters. The two countries likely harbor many nickel-hyperaccumulating plants, but research has been scant.

Hyperaccumulators don’t just tolerate metals; their roots crave them. The nickel may help the plant fight off pests, or perhaps it enables the plant to more readily take up potassium, a scarce resource, from the soil. Regardless, there has been no need to genetically modify or selectively breed to increase the plants’ nickel-philia. Nature’s smelters are already as efficient as

the extractive industry would want.

They have the potential to remedy the mining industry’s biggest problem: abandoned mines, which pollute waterways. A leftover mine, planted with hyperaccumulators, could salvage the remaining metals for additional revenue.

That incentive could persuade companies to invest in rehabilitation or minewaste cleanup.

Currently, the most common way to extract nickel for electronics requires intense energy — often derived from coal and diesel — and creates heaps of acidic waste. A typical smelter costs hundreds of millions of dollars and requires increasingly scarce ore that is at least 1.2% rich with nickel.

In contrast, plants on a small nickel farm could be harvested every six months on land where the nickel concentration is only 0.1%. After two decades, the roots would struggle to find enough nickel, but the land would have been sucked dry of its toxic metals and fertile enough to support more common crops.

That the nickel crop might be so productive and lucrative has led to fears that farmers might push for opening tropical forests for cultivation, foreshadowing another case such as palm oil, a cash crop that has devastated Borneo’s native forests. But that isn’t a likely outcome, the researchers said. Areas with the most phytomining potential tend to be grassy, and few other plants are likely to grow on land selected for mineral farming.

“We can grow these plants on soils where it’s already been deforested,” Baker said. “It’s a way of putting back, rather than taking away.”

22 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Fears hit markets just as needed most

By Tamara J. Benjamin The Conversation

The familiar sight of weekend shoppers brushing shoulders at farmers markets across the U.S. is under threat from the coronavirus and fears of its spread.

In many states, farmers markets have been suspended altogether. In others, they remain open, but residents are being warned against gathering in groups and told to practice social distancing.

Such uncertainty is likely to hurt so-called “beginning farmers” – typically smaller-scale, start-up operations. As an expert in diversified farming systems, I can see vulnerable farmers closing down as a result of this crisis, and this could have a knock-on effect on the long-term food supply chain.

Vibrant community Nearly 30% of U.S. farms are run by farmers who have been in the business for fewer than 10 years. In comparison to the general farming population, beginning farmers are more likely to be women, people of color and military veterans.

They also have an average age of 46 – more than 10 years lower than the general farmer population’s average age of 57.5.

Beginning farmers form a vibrant and diverse part of the U.S. farming community. However, they are also among the most economically vulnerable of farmers. Since they are just starting out, they are often still formulating business plans, balancing farm finances, creating new marketing opportunities and establishing their farms’ viability.

They are also less likely to farm commodity products – crops such as corn, soybeans and wheat.

Instead, they tend to focus on diversified fruits and vegetable crops, such as heirloom tomatoes, green beans and blueberries, depending upon the climate and soil conditions.

Farm to table Beginner farmers also tend to find it harder to access capital investments or federal loan opportunities that would provide support during inclement weather or a pandemic lockdown.

Clearly, this makes the more than 900,000 beginning farmers in the U.S. at risk from potential closures of farmers markets and farm-to-table restaurants due to coronavirus restrictions.

Beginning farmers typi-

It is also much harder for small-scale farmers to get contracts to sell into large grocery stores, so they will be disproportionately affected by any lengthy shutdown of restaurants or farmers markets.

Getty Images

cally farm on small acres of land, with a diverse array of crops, and sell to nontraditional supply chains, instead of large grocery stores.

Many small-scale beginning farmers have found success in the past decade due to the public’s increased interest in consuming local food. That has made farmers markets

and community-supported agriculture important supply outlets. The value of sales of local food and products direct to consumers has more than doubled between 2012 and 2017.

These niche markets have increased engagement between farmers and consumers. The supply chain is based on local farmers modifying what they farm based on local consumer needs. This increased interaction has benefited both parties, but it has also left the system vulnerable to the realities of dealing with the current pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic puts these smaller businesses at great risk amid uncertainty about whether farmers markets will remain open.

The added challenge for farmers also pertains to their business model.

Farms incur nearly all of their costs at the beginning of the growing season when farmers are purchasing seeds, growing seedlings and preparing the land. Without a market in place for these farmers, they will be more at risk of losing their business.

Growing hope A hopeful sign is that some places have deemed farmers markets essential places where people can go to purchase food.

Farmers markets can be safe places for people to go to pick up local products at a minimum risk if protocols are put in place to increase social distance and reduced handling of products, such as ordering online and then prepackaging the products into one box or bag per customer.

Most small-scale beginning farmers will have few options for marketing without the direct sales of their products to consumers. Without them, farming businesses will decrease, impacting the capability of growers in the U.S. of providing enough food, fiber, and flowers in the future.

There are some glimmers of hope for beginning farmers. By their very nature, they may have had to be creative in identifying new opportunities and innovative in their marketing approach – qualities that might make them innately prepared to adapt to the new conditions, such as moving their business model to online sales. What they need now is for society to ensure that some type of supply chain is in place for them to be able to capture the current demand.

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 23

Starting a garden: Begin with a plan

By Katie Parker

For the Journal-Courier

The key to a successful and productive garden is a plan; it saves time and makes the garden easier to care for.

By starting with a plan, you will be ready to get to work once planting time is here.

So let’s get started.

Site selection Location, location, location is what they say when buying a house, and that also applies when planting a garden; the success of a garden is largely dependent on its location. When determining a garden location, it is important to choose an area exposed to full sun as most vegetable crops require a minimum of six hours of daily sunlight to grow.

Be sure to avoid trees and shrubs that might shade your garden area. It is important to choose a location with loose, rich, level, and well-drained soil.

Do not use an area where water stands, or the soil stays wet; vegetables do not grow well in poorly drained areas.

Ideally, water would be supplied through timely rain events; however, we have experienced dry years, so it is wise to have a backup water source near your garden for supplemental watering.

I would also suggest taking a soil sample from your garden to know if any additional fertilizer is needed or pH needs adjusted.

Crop selection Now for the fun part; deciding what to plant.

What you plant is dependent on the size of your garden.

If you only have room for a small garden, you may not want to plant watermelon or pumpkins as they take up too much room; unless all you want is watermelon or pumpkins. There are some alternatives for vine crops in a small space; these plants can be trellised on fence or other support structures to take up less space.

Radishes, turnips, and beets require less space and yield quickly; whereas, tomatoes, bush green beans, squash, and peppers require more space but produce for a longer period.

Ultimately, you should plant vegetables that you and your family like to eat.

Planting arrangement Arrange vegetables in a way that utilizes space and light.

To avoid shading plants, tall vegetables such as corn and tomatoes should be planted on the north side of the garden.

Also, group vegetables according to their maturity; this makes it easier to remove quick growing vegetables, and for the space to used for later plantings.

For perennial crops such as asparagus or rhubarb, these should be planted toward the side of your garden since they will remain in the same location each year.

For annual crops, do not grow the same vegetable or vegetables in the same family (ex.

Solanaceae family consists of eggplants, bell peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes) in the same location more than once in every three years.

By rotating crops each year, it helps to control diseases that survive in the soil over winter.

Now it’s time to plan Once you have your garden location and vegetables selected, you can now design your garden.

Some things to consider when you are sketching out your garden include row length, row orientation, row spacing between rows, spacing between plants within the row, and planting dates.

All of this information can be found on the seed packet.

With a plan in place, your garden is destined to be a success.

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24 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Mobile greenhouse teaches kids healthy eating

By Rachel Ravina Via Associated Press

Teaching children about produce and healthy eating is something Howard Brosius said he loves — and what he loves even more is taking it on the road.

“Seeing the little faces, and when I go into a classroom you can barely hear yourself think with, ‘Mr. Howard, Mr. Howard, Mr. Howard,’” he said.

Brosius pursues his passion on wheels with a mobile greenhouse built to grow plants and double as a small classroom.

The nonprofit launched in 2010, according to Brosius, but his love of fruits and vegetables began much earlier.

He grew up during World War II on a working farm with dairy, cattle, chickens, pigs, steer, vegetables and mushrooms.

“He (Brosius’ father) was one of the first mushroom growers in the country,” he said.

Brosius went on to receive a degree in agriculture.

When he returned to his family’s farm, he found love and married his wife, DJ. Brosius said that DJ was a kindergarten teacher, but added that she was instrumental in getting his operation off the ground.

“She helps me with the program designs, and the recipes, and comes to some of the classes,” he said.

After starting the nonprofit, Brosius would

go to various daycare centers and schools. He would bring 4 foot by 8 foot heated raised beds for the planted herbs and vegetables, but it was difficult for the instructors to water and maintain the mini gardens.

“I came up with this idea: why don’t I just take it with me?” he said.

With that, his dream to build a mobile greenhouse was born.

With the help of his son-in-law, Pete Maruca, a builder, Brosius used a flatbed tandem trailer, framed wood trusses that took 50 cans of spray paint, double walled polycarbonate panels, and string lights to create the greenhouse. The entire building process took about six months.

He uses heaters and has a thermostat inside the facility so that it won’t get colder than 40 degrees.

The space is also complete with picnic tables built specifically for 4-year-olds to learn about and taste vegetables.

Plans for improvements including installing an air conditioner and building a shelf to include a microwave and burner for cooking.

Brosius also faced another obstacle in his journey: where to plant his herbs and vegetables?

Brosius said he starts plantings with seeds in supermarket baskets at his home and then takes them to the farm to be germinated.

When asked what types of species he typically plants, Brosius said greens including flowers, carrots and radishes.

ABOVE: Children listen to Howard Brosius talk about produce, healthy eating and overall sustainability. RIGHT: Howard Brosius reads a story to children. BOTTOM RIGHT: Howard Brosius demonstrates the importance of fresh produce and healthy eating with a carrot inside his mobile greenhouse. BELOW: A variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers are planted inside Howard Brosius’ mobile greenhouse.

Photos by Rachel Ravina | The Reporter (AP)

Brosius said the “mobile greenhouse is a game changer,” as he can inspire more children with his lessons of healthy eating habits.

Brosius said that seeing their smiling faces is priceless.

“That’s the thing that gets you up in the morning,” he said.

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 25

Virus sours business for already-reeling dairy industry

By Lisa Rathke Associated Press

Pat Sutphin | Times-News (AP)

Ricky Jones walks out the door as 4,100 gallons of milk pour down the drain. With restaurants across the country closed, milk processors have lost a significant chunk of their market, leaving dairy farmers with no one to take their milk.

added stress and anxiety.

The small Putnam Hill Farm, which milks 37 Jersey cows, needs to upgrade a tractor but is trying to figure out what it can afford right now.

“It’s pretty scary actually,” said Sarah Putnam.

Dairy farming, she said, has “always has been a roller coaster ride anyway, and it seems like this is a extreme ride.”

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This was supposed to be a rebound year for dairy farmers embattled by at least four years of depressed milk prices — and then the coronavirus hit.

Schools, restaurants, institutions and universities closed to help slow the spread of the virus, wiping out much of the food service market that makes up for a big chunk of dairy farmers’ business.

Now farmers and cooperatives from Florida to Wisconsin to Maine are dumping milk because there are no plants that will take it and the price paid to farmers has collapsed again.

Plants set up to make food service products — like large packages of mozzarella cheese — aren’t able to pivot quickly and start churning out gallons of milk. Retail milk sales were up when the virus first hit as consumers bulked up on groceries but has declined since then, officials said.

“So dairy producers were really looking at 2020 to be the year they repair their balance sheets, and now they have a worse hit to their balance sheets than they ever actually experienced in those previous years,” said Alan Bjerga, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.

“We had about four or five good months there for the farmers, and this was looking to be an up year finally after about four straight years of flat and low milk prices, but it’s going to be a terrible year for milk prices here. We’re going to see milk prices down as low as we saw in 2009 after the financial crisis caused a recession,” said John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association.

Dairy farmers expect milk prices to fluctuate, but typically they go in a threeyear cycle. The last slump extended longer, with fewer people drinking milk in part because of plant-based alternatives like soy milk, turbulent export markets and too much fluid milk for the demand.

Cows don’t shut off, and fluid milk is highly perishable.

In the past five years, about 5,000 dairy farms have gone out of business across the country, and the ramifications of the

virus outbreak will drive more to the brink, according to Cornell University agricultural economist Andrew Novakovic.

It’s the worst the industry has seen, comparable to the Great Depression, he said.

“It’s going to push dairy farmers out of business; it’s going to push processors out of business,” Novakovic said.

The couple that owns Darlington Ride Farms in Darlington, Wisconsin, come from long lines of dairying families and said earlier this month that they had been disposing of 15,000 gallons of milk a day for about a week — something they’ve never had to resort to before.

“It’s absolutely devastating,” said Katie DiGangi. “It’s devastating. It’s really hard for us and it’s hard for our family, and it’s really challenging.”

Farmers who belong to cooperatives get paid something for dumped milk, but it greatly reduces their revenues, according to Bjerga.

To try to make do, Agri-Mark Cooperative, which gets milk from 840 farms in all six New England states and New York, has been churning out retail products since the virus hit. It has also donated food service products — such as big containers of sour cream — to food banks.

“The retail market’s been stronger but certainly not anywhere near enough to make up for the loss of 50% of the business,” said spokesman Doug DiMento.

“So we’ve been making cheese. We’ve been putting out more cheese in the last month than we ever have.”

Dairy groups and agriculture officials from some dairy-producing states have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to step in to support the industry and buy the additional products for emergency distribution.

It’s frustrating during a national emergency to see empty shelves or limits on milk purchases at a time when some is being dumped, said Dale Cole, who has a 90-cow dairy farm in Sidney, Maine.

“We want to sell it to people who need it,” he said. “It’s very frustrating for the farms.”

In the meantime, the unknown of how long the pandemic will last is causing

26 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

For farmers, stimulus bill offers help

By Eric Lipton and Sharon LaFraniere New York Times

After providing nearly $26 billion in aid to farmers over the past few years to offset losses from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, the administration now has another giant new pot of money to pass out to them with little or no oversight, courtesy of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.

The legislation allocates as much as $23.5 billion in assistance for farmers and gives broad leeway to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to direct it where he sees fit.

The money was inserted into the bill by senators from farm states after an intense lobbying push by major corporate farming groups. Parts of the industry are suffering immediate hits from the coronavirus outbreak, such as corn growers who have seen prices for ethanol plum-

met and mom-and-pop suppliers of farm markets that have closed in many cities.

But unlike industries such as airlines, hotels and automakers, which have largely or completely shut down, most farms are still operating. And sales of some products in the industry have surged as worried consumers stock up, generating shortages of meat, chicken, eggs and flour.

The law provides Perdue with $9.5 billion to support farmers, including livestock producers, suppliers of farm markets and producers of specialty crops, and $14 billion in borrowing authority to replenish the fund he used to make trade-related payments to farmers in the past two years. The department’s entire discretionary budget request for next year is about $23 billion.

The Agriculture Department will also receive an additional $25.1 billion for food aid programs for poor families from the stimulus

bill.

“We are effectively subsiding every other sector of the economy” in the $2 trillion stimulus package, said Joshua Sewell, a farming industry analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, which advocates less government spending. “So I guess the argument goes that agriculture wants its piece of the pie, too.”

The administration’s use of the money will become a major political factor in rural America in the middle of an election year in which Midwestern states could be pivotal, said Lawrence R. Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at University of Minnesota. He predicted that Trump would soon be trumpeting it as part of his reelection campaign.

“This is just an extraordinary and unprecedented opportunity in the modern era for a president to dole out cash,” he said. “In urban areas, they call this walking

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around money, which a politician hands out to secure support.”

A small army of groups mounted the fast-moving campaign for aid, including the politically powerful American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

Joining them were other smaller players representing producers of goods like turkey, pork and potatoes or sunflowers, sorghum, peanuts and eggs.

Among their targets were farm-state lawmakers like Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, who pressed for $50 billion in aid for agriculture.

Others included Sens. Pat Roberts of Kansas, John Thune of South Dakota and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. All are Republicans who serve on the Senate agriculture committee or the appropriations subcommittee that oversees farm aid.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the agriculture committee, was also lobbied.

“We want to make sure that farmers, ranchers and rural Americans are also recognized as needing assistance,” said Dale Moore, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau and a former chief of staff at the Agriculture Department.

Farmers in Midwestern states like Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota — as well as in Texas and Kansas — reaped much of the $26 billion spent in the past two years to blunt the economic effect of the administration’s trade policies, according to Joseph W. Glauber of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Without those payments, net farm income last year would have dropped about 5%, he estimated. Instead, it

Mark Abramson | New York Times

A farmer sprays for weeds. After providing nearly $26 billion in aid to farmers over the past few years to offset losses from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, the administration now has another giant new pot of money to pass out to them with little or no oversight, courtesy of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.

rose nearly 12%.

Seth Meyer, an agricultural economist with the University of Missouri, said the economic blow to agriculture from the virus could be harder to offset than the lost sales from trade policy.

“If you are producing flowers and there is no wedding this summer, if you were a fruit and vegetable grower selling through a restaurant wholesaler, what do you do now?” he asked. “What if you are a milk producer selling your product to a processor who has trouble organizing transportation and labor?”

The bottom line, he said, could be a bigger effect on farmers than that created by the trade friction with China — “much bigger, potentially.”

Still, some parts of the industry are seeing benefits from the pandemic. Some big meat producers, including Tyson Foods, announced special bonuses this week for farmers to reward them for the increase in work to keep supermarket shelvesstocked.

In general, farmers have weathered recessions better than other economic groups because while consumers cut purchases of goods like clothing and change their eating habits to save money, they always need food. This

downturn is fundamentally different from others in many ways, but Wall Street analysts are issuing bullish predictions for parts of the agriculture industry based on the surge in demand for products like beef and chicken.

“Meat is flying off the shelves” wrote Ken Goldman, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, who upgraded the stocks of Tyson and Sanderson Farms, two major chicken and meat producers. “We now believe that outstanding retail demand for meat is more than offsetting soft demand at food service.”

Prices being paid to farmers raising cattle and other animals have dropped in recent weeks, reflecting declines in financial markets worldwide and disruptions in supply chains, although these prices recovered somewhat this week.

Major meatpackers are drawing scrutiny as demand rises, amid some suspicion that they are gaming the system to push up their own profits at the expense of farmers and consumers.

“If packers are illegally manipulating markets during crisis we need USDA & DOJ & CFTC to investigate + help farmers,” Sen. Chuck See STIMULUS | Page 31

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 27

Gardening can be key to better health

By Melinda Myers For the Journal-Courier

Break out the tools and garden your way to a healthier mind, body and spirit. Gardeners know and research proves that getting outdoors, digging in the soil and gardening help strengthen muscles, increase flexibility, reduce stress and elevate our mood.

Include gardening as a major component of your workout schedule. You’ll stretch and strengthen muscles while promoting cardiovascular health and maintaining bone mass.

A University of Arkansas study found that yard work as well as weight training significantly maintained bone density in women over 50.

And for those trying to lose weight, add 30 minutes of gardening to your daily or weekly routine to help shed some extra pounds. A half hour of raking burns 162 calories, weeding 182, and turning the compost pile a whopping 250. Gardening several times per week will help keep you and your landscape looking top notch.

Don’t let a lack of time, space or painful joints stop you from growing nutritious vegetables, beautiful flowers or an attractive landscape. Staying active through gardening not only increases flexibility and strengthens muscles, it helps fight anxiety and depression that arthritis sufferers and others often experience.

Those struggling with limited time, space or

mobility may want to try container and elevated gardening. Both can be placed on patios, decks or balconies. Select a size and style you can easily reach and one that matches your garden design. Those on a tight budget can add drainage holes and paint 5-gallon food grade containers or nursery pots to create attractive planters.

Protect and support your hands with gloves that fit and provide support like Foxgloves’ Works gloves (foxglovesinc.com). Padding and reinforced fingertips protect your hands and knuckles from scrapes and bruises. Gloves with long cuffs or those that extend

to the elbow provide added protection when working in the garden.

Select gloves that are machine washable, so you always have a clean pair ready when you venture out to the garden. Keep a pair of gloves, pruner and your favorite weeding tool in a bucket near the front or back door. You won’t waste time looking for your favorite tools plus you can take advantage of those small blocks of time to weed, deadhead or pick a bouquet of flowers to enjoy.

Enlist the help of ergonomic tools that allow you to garden longer with less pain and fatigue. Look for designs that keep your back and wrist straight when digging, pruning and raking. Select tools with soft wide grips to further reduce hand fatigue. Wrap the handles of existing

tools with foam pipe insulation for added padding.

Protect your joints and muscles while gardening.

Warm up, just as you would for any workout, with a few simple stretches. Protect your knees by using a stool, kneeling pad or one-legged kneel instead of squatting.

Take regular breaks. Gardening in twenty-minute intervals and resting in between to enjoy your handiwork and hydrate will pay off with less muscle strain and fatigue.

You’ll then be ready for your next workout session in the garden that will invigorate your mind, body and spirit.

Melinda Myers has written numerous books, including “Small Space Gardening.” She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” DVD series and the nationally syndicated “Melinda’s Garden Moment” TV & radio program.

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Gardening helps fight anxiety and depression while providing plenty of fresh-from-the-garden produce.

28 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

EPA announces new tool for soybean growers Journal-Courier

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has registered the use of isoxaflutole on genetically engineered soybeans, providing soybean farmers with a new tool they can use to control weeds that have become resistant to many other herbicides.

“We’ve heard from farmers across the country about the importance of having new means available to combat economically-damaging weeds,” said Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “We listened and believe this action balances the need to provide growers with the products necessary to continue to provide Americans with a safe and abundant food supply while ensuring our country’s endangered species are protected.”

“Safe and effective weed management is a constant challenge that farmers face,” said Bill Gordon, American Soybean Association president. “The EPA’s registration of Isoxaflutole will

provide soybean growers with an important new tool to combat damaging weeds and help better control emerging herbicide-resistance issues. The American Soybean Association appreciates the diligence by EPA to provide farmers access to this new tool with the necessary guidance for using it safely to protect people, our wildlife, and the environment.”

The EPA reviewed relevant data and conducted detailed human health and ecological assessments in deciding to register the use of isoxaflutole on soybeans genetically engineered to resist the herbicidal effects of isoxaflutole. In addition to the risk assessments, the EPA also requested public comment on the proposed registration decision.

Based on this analysis and careful consideration of public input, the EPA concluded that the application of isoxaflutole on genetically engineered soybeans with certain use conditions could be done in an environmentally-protective manner in certain parts of the country.

Isoxaflutole is already registered by

the EPA for use on corn in 33 states.

Like this existing use, the new registered use of isoxaflutole on genetically engineered soybeans is classified as a restricted-use pesticide, meaning that applicators must receive special training in order to use it. The training will emphasize ways applicators will protect ground and surface water and nontarget plants.

The new use on genetically engineered soybeans would be limited to specific counties in 25 states. The EPA is limiting use to these specific counties to protect endangered or threatened species from exposure. The EPA is also including additional use restrictions, such as not allowing aerial and irrigation system applications.

The registration is limited to five years during which the EPA will evaluate any potential weed resistance issues that may result. As part of the terms and conditions of the registration, the registrant must provide an herbicideresistance management plan and submit annual reports to the EPA.

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Growers struggle as demand for ethanol slows

By Pat Morris

The Center Square

Last year, the nation’s corn farmers sent more than 5 billion bushels of corn to the ethanol industry.

“That’s about 40% of our product,” said Jeff Kirwan, an Illinois corn farmer and member of the board of the Illinois Farm Bureau.

With people driving less, that 40% of the corn market is disappearing. Ethanol is a form of alcohol used as an additive to gasoline, and the gasoline market is tanking fast. A spat between Saudi Arabia and Russia has lowered crude oil prices, Kirwan said. And the COVID-19 pandemic means “people aren’t driving. Nobody’s using gas.”

And ethanol plants, he said, are slowing or shutting down.

“You’ve got ethanol backing up in the pipeline. You’ve got storage facilities getting full. I mean, there’s just not a lot of choices here,” Kirwan said.

Like many farmers, Kirwan, who is a board member of the Illinois Farm Bureau, plants a rotation of corn and soybeans. For him, it is half and half, for some other farmers corn is two-thirds of their crop, he said.

“In the short term, it’s pretty bleak right at the moment. We’ve seen what happens from a farmer perspective when there’s no demand for our product,” Kirwan said. “You (have) the deterioration in the commodity price, and when you couple that with no demand – it’s really creating some very unprofitable times right now.”

One ray of hope is that some ethanol plants can convert to making sanitizing products and even consumable alcohol, Kirwan said.

“There’s an ethanol producer down in the central part of the state around Peoria that already was making high-grade or high-high grade alcohol out of corn for the drinking markets and sanitizing markets,” he said. “They were already set up to do it. But some of these other plants that were just geared for making ethanol for the gas industry and fuel industries … some of those can and some of them cannot switch over.”

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 29

30 • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • Modern Farmer

Farmers face deep impacts of plant closure

By Patrick Anderson Argus Leader

Mike Ver Steeg grew up on the family farm where his dad raised pigs and sold them to the John Morrell & Co. plant in Sioux Falls.

Ver Steeg, 47, now runs Prestige Pork in Inwood, Iowa, with the help of his own son.

Like his dad did, Ver Steeg sells his hogs to the plant in Sioux Falls, now owned by the Virginia-based processing company Smithfield Foods.

Smithfield’s indefinite closure of its Sioux Falls plant forced Ver Steeg to start looking for alternatives and to consider the future of his farm. The shutdown removes an important link in the supply chain that connects farmers and consumers. It raises questions about the

long-term future of the pork industry and local farms and food security, but it also raises an immediate, more pressing need: What to do with all the pigs?

Ver Steeg has another processor he sells to, but he is still relying on Smithfield for answers.

“Hopefully they can get a few loads here and there to some of their other plants is what I was told,” Ver Steeg told the Argus Leader.

“But that’s not a guaranteed thing.”

Losing Smithfield means losing a major buyer of hogs.

The company’s Sioux Falls campus processes as many as 20,000 pigs a day, about 5 million a year. Smithfield announced the facilities would close indefinitely, and as of April 14 more than 400 people who worked at the

plant had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The demand created by Smithfield’s plant was important to area hog farmers who need to sell their herd within a specific weight range and also need to make room for the next group of feeder pigs.

“For every pig harvested, there’s one born,” said Shane Odegaard, a hog farmer near Lake Preston. “There’s pigs in the pipeline that are being harvested continuously that are ready to be marketed.”

Odegaard and his family met for three hours, discussing options for their pigs during breakfast. They have 900 market ready, with no place to go and 1,300 more about to reach market weight later this month.

Other farms in South Dakota and the region will likely face more serious

decisions in the weeks and months to come.

“The repercussions of this will be long-term, just to rebound,” Odegaard said.

“I’m afraid there will be family operations that may not be able to survive through this financially.”

Farm closures are a real possibility, with the Smithfield closure capping a difficult series of weeks for hog farmers in the region, said Glenn Muller, executive director of South Dakota Pork Producers. His group represents hundreds of pork producers across the state.

About 550 independent operations depend on Smithfield to harvest their livestock, Muller said.

Hog futures have plummeted The onset of the coronavirus pandemic and result-

Abigail Dollins |The Argus Leader (AP)

Mike Ver Steeg is concerned with what he’ll do with his stock now as he experiences the effects of the coronavirus.

ing state of emergency had already left a mark on the industry, with hog futures initially climbing to as high as $75.80 on March 12, then plummeting by more than $30, according to NASDAQ. Restaurants, normally a key buyer of bacon and other pork cuts, are closed across the country, resulting

in an abundance of supply of pork in cold storage and hogs waiting to be harvested by processors. The pipeline is already so tight that it’s hard for farmers affected by Smithfield’s closure to find another processor, Muller said.

See PLANT | Page 31

Modern Farmer • Sunday, April 26, 2020 • 31

Plant

Stimulus

From page 30

From page 26

“We’ve totally disrupted our food chain,” he said.

The closure will have potentially devastating consequences for family farms in South Dakota in the short term, including euthanizing pigs. Re-opening Smithfield as soon as possible will be an important part of any solution intended to help farmers, Muller said.

“Anybody in business that has to take their end product and destroy it for no value, you can’t sustain that for a period of time,” Muller said.

Long-term, not only are farm closures possible, the viability of the United States’ pork supply is in

Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote on Twitter on Friday, referring to the Department of Justice and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates markets where these goods are bought and sold.

Congress imposed almost no limit on how Perdue spends the money, suggesting only that the $9.5 billion chunk be used to support a wide range of agricultural producers.

The legislation set aside $750,000 for the agency’s inspector general for “conducting audits and investigations of projects and activities carried out with funds.”

Similarly, with the $14 billion for the Commodity Credit Corp., there is very little guidance on how that money can be spent other than it be used for an “emergency requirement.”

Abigail Dollins |The Argus Leader (AP)

Hogs are kept in a barn, ready to be sold.

danger.

The events at Smithfield are enough to show how fragile food security has became during decades of centralization of food processors, said Doug Sombke, president of the South Dakota Farmers Union.

While there might be an abundance of pork now, disruption caused by Smithfield closure will continue to ripple throughout the industry, Sombke said.

“The amount of food we have in reserve is not good enough,” Sombke said.

Waste From page 6 To prevent further dumping, farming groups are trying everything to find places to send the excess milk — even lobbying pizza chains to increase the amount of cheese on every slice.

But there are logistical obstacles that prevent dairy products from being shifted neatly from food service customers to retailers.

At many dairy processors, for example, the machinery is designed to package shredded cheese in large bags for restaurants or place milk in small cartons for schools, rather than arrange the products in retail-friendly containers.

To repurpose those plants to put cheese in the 8 oz. bags that sell in grocery stores or bottle milk in gallon jugs would require millions of dollars in investment. For now, some processors have concluded that spending the money isn’t worth it.

“It isn’t like restaurant

With the streets empty, cars parked and demand for fuel depressed, corn growers are among the most likely recipients.

Meyer of the University of Missouri said about 40% of corn production goes into the ethanol industry, in which“you are starting to hear of people shutting down.”

Historically, the Commodity Credit Corp. only made payments to wheat, corn, soybean and livestock farmers during unexpected drops in crop prices because of surpluses or declines in output related to weather or disease.

But the administration has used this program to reimburse farmers for billions in dollars in losses after China stopped buying soybeans and other crops to punish the United States for tariffs Trump imposed on Chinese products.

Perdue has repeatedly warned farmers not to count on continuing to receive payments from that federal program. But

every time funding has been about to run out, Trump has clamored to spend more.

In late February, after the administration reached a new trade agreement with China, for instance, Perdue said, “I am not advising any farmer to expect any market program at this point, as the market should adjust for the current trade expectations.”

The very next day, Trump tweeted that if farmers needed more aid while waiting for the terms of new trade deals to kick in, “that aid will be provided by the federal government.”

Although the Agriculture Department is not obligated to use its new spending authority, industry analysts fully expect it will, especially with Election Day a little over seven months away.

Brent Gloy, a corn, wheat and soybean farmer and agricultural economist from Nebraska, said, “Those checks are going to go out.”

Joseph Haeberle | New York Times

A field of onions waits to be buried.

demand has disappeared forever,” said Matt Gould, a dairy industry analyst. “Even if it were possible to re-format to make it an 8-ounce package rather than a 20-pound bag, the dollars and cents may not pan out.”

Those same logistical challenges are bedeviling poultry plants that were set up to distribute chicken to restaurants rather than stores. Each week, the chicken processor Sanderson Farms destroys 750,000 unhatched eggs, or 5.5% of its total production, sending them to a rendering plant to be turned into pet food.

The chief executive of Sanderson Farms, Joe Sand-

erson, told analysts that company officials had even considered euthanizing chickens to avoid selling them at unprofitable rates, though the company ultimately did not take that step.

In recent days, Sanderson Farms has donated some of its chicken to food banks and organizations that cook meals for emergency medical workers. But hatching hundreds of thousands of eggs for the purpose of charity is not a viable option, said Mike Cockrell, the company’s chief financial officer.

“We’re set up to sell that chicken,” Cockrell said. “That would be an expensive proposition.”

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