NSA representatives will be attending the annual National Sclerotinia Initiative meeting on January 20-22 in Minneapolis. The ARS-led Initiative supports projects aimed at neutralizing white mold’s economic threat to seven different crops: sunflower, soybean, canola, edible dry beans, chickpeas, lentils and dry peas. This consortium of federal and state university scientists includes 10 land grant universities and five crop commodity groups, and is led by the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s chief scientific research agency. 

The National Sunflower Association’s 38th annual Sunflower Research forum begins tomorrow morning in Fargo, ND. Researchers from the Dakotas, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Canada will present. It’s not too late to attend – you can register at the door. For more information and a schedule, visit www.sunflowernsa.com/events/.

Producers in the Texas High Plains have a new budgeting tool available with the release of the 2016 High Plains Crop Profitability Analyzer. A team of AgriLife Extension and Texas A&M AgriLife Research specialists created the tool, with a producer advisory committee. The irrigated crops available for analysis are: alfalfa, canola, corn, corn silage, cotton, peanuts, sorghum, sorghum seed, sorghum silage, sorghum Sudan grass, soybeans, sunflowers, triticale and wheat. Dry land crops include canola, cotton, sorghum, sorghum Sudan grass, sunflowers, and wheat. The spreadsheet program contains four sections where analysis is performed: enterprise budget, breakeven, comparative, and irrigation. The budget cost estimates are averages and producers will need to modify the budgets and change input costs and yields to fit their operations. The 2016 High Plains Crop Profitability Analyzer can be downloaded for free at http://amarillo.tamu.edu. 

South Dakota’s Sully County is the top sunflower-producing county in the nation. That’s just one of the articles you’ll find in this month’s issue of The Sunflower magazine. The magazine also includes results of the 2015 Sunflower Survey, a look at how confections are changing, as well as a Wisconsin sunflower love story. You can read all that and more online at www.sunflowernsa.com/magazine. 

The National Sunflower Association High Plains Committee is proud to be a sponsor of this year’s “Cover Your Acres” Winter Conference, scheduled for January 19-20 in Oberlin, Kansas. The conference is for crop producers, consultants, and others interested in northwest Kansas agriculture. The meeting is a producer-driven program focused on new ideas and research-based updates in crop production in northwest Kansas and the central High Plains. The conference typically draws more than 600 attendees from Kansas and other states, highlights the latest technology, methods and conservation practices to improve crop production the High Plains. This year, it will feature university specialists and industry representatives discussing issues such as kochia and palmer amaranth control, soil microbiology, new pests in wheat and sorghum, farm profitability, managing soil pH, unmanned aerial vehicles, weather forecasting, the economics of fertility management, and an economic comparison of today’s farms to those of the 1980s. Early registration is due by January 13. Continuing education unit credits are available. For more conference details and online registration, visit www.northwest.ksu.edu/CoverYourAcres. 

The annual Drainage Design Workshop will be held at two locations in 2016:

The two-day workshop is intended for those interested in a more complete understanding of the planning and design principles and practices for drainage, sub-irrigation, and water table management systems. Topics covered will include the legal aspects of drainage, basics of drainable soils, agronomic perspectives, doing your own tiling, land evaluation tools, utilization of lift stations, sub-irrigation, a farmer panel and wetlands and conservation drainage concepts and techniques. The workshop is a collaborative effort of the University of Minnesota and North Dakota State University Extension Services. To register for either of the workshops, visit www.regonline.com/2016Drainage.