30 Years Ago
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
filed under: Historical
Excerpts from the January 1995 Issue of The Sunflower
Hybrid Planter Provides Inexpensive Yet Effective Re-Entry into ’Flowers / By Don Lilleboe — “As with most farmers in his south central South Dakota vicinity, winter wheat and millet traditionally have been the staples of Waldo Armstrong’s cropping rotation.
“When he geared up for sunflower in 1991, Armstrong had no row-crop planter with which to seed the newcomer. His solution that spring was to borrow one from a neighbor — and then rent a tractor for the job, since his own were not equipped with a three-point hitch.
“Armstrong took a different tack when he moved back into sunflower in 1994, creating a hybrid ‘two in one’ planter for his grain and sunflower crops. Taking his 40-foot John Deere LX 812 hoe drill, the Midland, S.D., producer purchased 20 used JD row-crop planter boxes (for $75 apiece) and mounted them on eight-foot lengths of five-inch channel iron. Each length of channel iron carries four planter boxes and — with just two bolts — mounts directly behind the drill boxes.
“Armstrong attaches the sunflower units on the drill any time between the fall winter wheat planting season and the next spring’s sunflower seeding date. It takes him less than two hours to complete the entire job, with the units then taken off prior to the next wheat seeding season.
“When constructing the sunflower planter sections, Armstrong simply dropped the units’ spiral seed hoses down the back row of drill shanks, thus ending up with 24-inch row spacings. He didn’t use the drill boxes to carry fertilizer for application in the alternate 12-inch rows in 1994, but does plan to do so in time for his next sunflower planting season. . . .
“At $1,500 for the 20 planter boxes and another $400 to $500 in time and additional materials, Armstrong calculates he has less than $2,000 tied up in the development of his hybrid wheat/sunflower unit (aside from the cost of the sunflower planter plates.)”
Drill-Mounted Planter Fills the Bill for No-Till Grower / By Don Lilleboe — “The rolling countryside around Timber Lake, S.D., is largely a patchwork of rangeland, wheat fields and craggy buttes, with the occasional corn field tossed into the picture. Sunflower fields are a rarity; in fact, should one be spotted, it’s most likely a no-till field belonging to brothers Alan and Jiggs Biegler.
“Like other no-till sunflower producers, Alan Biegler’s list of herbicide options is awfully short. Even so, the north central South Dakota producer views no-till as the only route to take if he’s to raise a viable sunflower crop. Biegler’s stance is understandable, given the fact that 100 percent of his cropland is classified as highly erodible — and that he works with, in an average year, around 17 inches of total precipitation. (Make that just eight inches during the 1994 growing season.”
“ ‘Sunflower in this [area] has to be no-till, I think,’ says the Dewey County sunflower, wheat, millet and corn producer. ‘Otherwise, there’d be too much erosion.’ Not to mention lower sunflower yields. ‘Year in and year out, I estimate I’ll get at least 15 percent more yield with no-till versus conventional,’ Biegler states. ‘Typically, we’ll gain 300 pounds per acre or more.’
“The most dramatic change in Alan Biegler’s sunflower pro-duction system since going to no-till has come on the planting end. A need for better weed control provided the stimulus.
Biegler had been seeding sunflower in 38-inch rows with a standard row-crop planter. Though applying a preplant burndown treatment of Roundup, he typically still ended up with yield-slashing populations of late-emerging broadleaves — particularly redroot pigweed — in the open between-row areas. A pre-emergence application of Prowl has proven helpful in some years; but since the no-till producer counts on rainfall to incorporate the Prowl, the herbicide’s activity can be erratic.
“Biegler’s solution? Keep using the preplant Roundup — and then plant the sunflower crop in narrower rows in order to suppress the later-emerging weed populations.
“For the 1993 season, he bought a used IH Cycle 500 Series planter box and mounted it behind the hitch on his 15-foot JD 750 no-till grain drill; set up the series of eight seed tubes; seeded sunflower in 22.5-inch rows; and simultaneously used his drill box to apply fertilizer. He utilized the same approach on his 200 sunflower acres in 1994, and eventually plans on doubling his drill/sunflower seeder width to accommodate an anticipated increase in his sunflower acreage.”
National Sunflower Association: A Look Back at Its Achievements and a Look Ahead to Its Agenda / An Interview with Larry Kleingartner, NSA Executive Director —
“Originally, NSA declined to become a part of the federal farm program in any direct manner, case in point being the offer by a Minnesota congressman to introduce a sunflower loan program in the 1981 farm bill. By the late 1980s, however, NSA was actively — and successfully — pursuing inclusion in the 1990 farm legislation in the form of a marketing loan. What was behind the change in attitude?
“Sunflower has been termed a ‘nonprogram’ crop by federal farm policy. In 1981 there was Washington interest in creating a sunflower loan program. At that time, the NSA Board of Directors said ‘no thanks.’ Board members did not want to move this crop into a position similar to that of wheat, corn, etc., wherein the government became the warehouse when prices fell below loan. In hindsight, I think the NSA decision was the right one. We would have had a lot of sunflower forfeited to the government, thus creating serious market problems. A loan would not have avoided the problems this industry faced during the life of the 1985 farm bill.
“During the decade of the ’80s, the European Common Market created a monster of domestic and export subsidies that negatively impacted world agricultural supply and prices. American farm policy was written to protect U.S. producers from that situation. The Export Enhancement Program (EEP) and Sunflower Oil Assistance Program (SOAP), for example, were policy outgrowths designed to counteract the European intrusion.
“There was a real farm policy problem in that the 1985 farm bill seriously impacted nonprogram crops and nearly killed sunflower. Farmers could not alter production strategies unless they were willing to forfeit government payments and lose history. That was not a viable choice.
“So the National Sunflower Association had no alternative but to press Washington for relief from the very rigid program requirements. That relief came in the 1991 farm bill. Flexibility provisions such as 0-92 gave this industry a new lease on life.