STARTING YOUR OWN FARM WEBSITE

In 2011, Indiana farmer Brian Scott decided he was tired of reading about what other people thought of agriculture. 

“If there are no farmers talking about how food is grown, somebody else is telling that story,” says the corn, soybean, wheat, and popcorn grower. 

So Scott started a blog, even though he says he didn’t really know what he was doing. While that may have been true initially, Scott has grown to be a powerful agvocator who uses multiple social media platforms to share the work that’s done on his farm. 

In fact, he is now on the AgChat Foundation board, giving advice to other farmers interested in agvocating. His technology skills have grown, and he now shares videos he shoots with a GoPro and a drone, which he swears to his wife is also for crop scouting. 

He is no longer a tech novice, but his blog is still on WordPress. He selected WordPress originally because the platform makes it easy to set up a website. Scott (no relation to the editor) continues to use it because it makes updates painless. 

If you’re considering launching a blog or website, WordPress may be the best content-management system for you. WordPress is free, user-friendly, and responsive, so your website will automatically change sizes to fit the device users are viewing it on. 

This is why half of the websites on the internet are on WordPress. You, too, can be online in just four easy steps.

1. PICK A DOMAIN NAME.

This will be your website name. Scott chose thefarmerslife.com. Other farm websites incorporate their farm name or their last name, such as yostfarm.com or hildfamilyfarms.com.

2. REGISTER THE DOMAIN NAME AND SET UP A HOSTING SERVICE.

You can do both of these steps through a web-hosting platform, such as ehost.com, bluehost.com, or hostclear.com. Select a hosting company that has one-click installation for WordPress. (That will make Step 3 much easier.)

Prices vary for these services. Some will allow you to register the domain name for free and will then have a low monthly rate in the $2 to $6 range. 

3. INSTALL WORDPRESS.

There are two options for getting WordPress installed to your domain name. The first is to use the one-click installation process available through your hosting company. You will see this after you’ve logged in to your account on your hosting company’s website.

If necessary, you can manually install WordPress. Be warned that this will require more steps and time. You can find a more detailed overview of this process at codex.wordpress.org/installing_wordpress.

4. LOG IN TO THE DASHBOARD.

Go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin. This is the dashboard you will use to customize your site, add pages, new posts, etc. 

There are a lot of options at this point. In the beginning, make sure you update the following three areas.

Themes. WordPress has a variety of premium and free themes available. To only see the free ones, select this from the drop-down menu on the Themes page. After you’ve selected a theme, you will need to install and activate it.

Pages. You can add pages by pushing the “add” button next to Pages in the left-hand rail. The format is similar to Microsoft Word, making it easy to add a page with text and images. (Blog posts are added in the same way by pushing “add” next to Blog Posts.)

Menus. After you have created pages, you can add these to the website menu by clicking on the Menu tab. This screen will let you add new pages to the menu as well as rearrange the menu. 

For more information on getting WordPress up and running, visit wordpress.org

source: successful farming

CROP DIVERSITY PAYDAY

When crop prices are slumping, it isn’t easy to change the norm. Growing corn and soybeans is what many of you know and do all too well. But look closely to see the cracks forming in the corn-soybean foundation that dominates the Midwest. 

• Low crop prices that threaten the economic viability of a monoculture crop sequence.
• Herbicide-resistant weeds that can be hard to kill in this rotation.
• Slumping soil organic matter that can impair the soil’s ability to function as a system.

Farmers of a few generations ago grew a number of crops in addition to corn and soybeans. These may have included flax, clover, oats, or buckwheat, and these crops may have been harvested for grain, fed to livestock, or plowed under for green manure. 

Great-Grandpa was onto something. He didn’t have a lot of the agronomic problems that plague today’s farmers. Over time, however, farmers became less diversified, and focused on a few cash crops, says Dwayne Beck, who heads the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, South Dakota. Government programs, the availability of commercial fertilizers, and improved machinery helped hasten that movement.

“Farmers 150 years ago, used essentially zero fossil fuels,” Beck says. “Now we’ve gotten pretty good at taking fossil fuels and making stuff, then shipping it out. We’re mining energy. We fail to look at soil as a resource. It’s just there, a vessel that we take stuff out of.” 

Diversifying crop rotations can help make you more sustainable and add profit potential, too. Take the example of Dan Forgey, agronomy manager at Cronin Farms, near Gettysburg, South Dakota. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, the farm averaged 30-bushel-per-acre winter and spring wheat, and 50-bushel-per-acre corn. They fallowed some land and worked the ground first with a sweep plow, and they later added a rodweeder. By 1991, the farm included 5,150 acres and employed four people. A quarter of their acres lay in fallow each year. “We thought it was the best we could do. We were good farmers!” Forgey says.

At Beck’s urging, they switched from minimum-tillage to no-till and kept the same rotation: spring wheat, winter wheat, corn, and sunflowers. New problems emerged, though. “Cheatgrass figured out our crop rotation, so we changed it,” Forgey says. “We put three years of broadleaves into our crop rotation – rather than just two years – and got cheat under control.”

That simple move spurred change on Cronin Farms. 

“I’ll fix an agronomic problem with crop rotation rather than use a chemical. It took me a while to learn that I needed to work with Mother Nature rather than against her,” Forgey says.

“If you have an agronomic problem, you have given Mother Nature an opportunity,” Beck adds. “With herbicide-resistant crops, you might have thought you didn’t have to worry about crop rotation, and soon you had resistant weeds.”

DRAWBACKS GALORE

There are plenty of reasons to not diversify the crop rotation. Having to change equipment to plant and harvest a new crop, plus find a market for them are two drawbacks. Farming is hard enough without diversifying enterprises. 

Adding a crop like wheat, for example, is particularly unappealing due to the commodity’s record-low prices (adjusted for parity).

FOR THE SOIL

However, Forgey believes there is opportunity, too. To date, his Cronin Farms operation has adopted more than 13 crop rotations, none of which is fixed. This includes more than 20 crops, including teff, field peas, lentils, forage sorghum, sunflowers, radishes, millet, sudan, field peas, and more. “I like the challenge of growing different crops, but I love the diversity they give the soil,” he continues.

Furthermore, he has added cattle to the operation to consume some of those crops and to diversify the farm’s income stream.

“I’ll fix an agronomic problem with crop rotation rather than use a chemical,” says Dan Forgey.

You may not choose to incorporate the array of crops that Cronin Farms does. However, tweaking the crop rotation just a little bit breaks up disease and pest cycles. 

“That’s an effect that’s really visible and easy to see. The impacts are there. People have seen those effects for centuries,” says Lisa Tiemann, assistant professor of soil biology at Michigan State University. 

Studies at the University of Wisconsin show a 19% yield bump for corn and soybeans when grown in a rotation rather than in a continuous system. The reason has not been defined, but it is likely due, in part, to reduced disease and insect pressure.

BELOW THE SURFACE

Tiemann, meanwhile, believes yield increases can also be attributed to what happens in the soil. 

She and her colleagues have studied more than 300 crop-rotation comparisons involving single-crop systems, two-crop systems, and more diverse systems.

Adding one cash crop to a monoculture increases by 21% soil microbial biomass, or all the microorganisms living in the soil. 

Further, organic carbon and organic nitrogen concentration tend to increase dramatically in soils on which diverse crops are planted, as opposed to a monoculture. In a crop rotation, Tiemann sees increased stability of larger soil aggregates, which indicates the formation and accumulation of soil organic matter (SOM). 

Add a cover crop to the system and soil organic matter accrues 15 times faster than rotations without a cover crop, she adds. 

It’s hard to visualize diversity within the soil, and Tiemann reckons it may be a few years before you see financial gain due to crop rotation. She points out, however, that you can reverse the decline in SOM by incorporating crop diversity. 

“Whenever soil is tilled, you lose organic matter. If you want to start thinking about building it, do it now,” she says. 

Building SOM by 1% has real benefits. In 1 acre, 10,000 pounds of soil carbon – and 1,000 pounds more inorganic nitrogen – are added. Also, water-holding capacity in those soils increases, up to ¾ inch more per foot. 

South Dakota’s Forgey notes that SOM levels average 5.1% in native grass near Gettysburg. In 2001, soils that had been farmed conventionally for years had an average SOM of 2.8%. By 2012, SOM in those same soils increased to 4.1%. 

“You may not see an economic advantage right now, but think about the future and the legacy you’ll leave behind,” Tiemann says.

source: successful farming

PARIS INTERNATIONAL AGRIBUSINESS SHOW

SIMA, Paris International Agribusiness Show, will be held in Paris Nord Villepinte (France) from 26 February to 2 March 2017. Taking place every two years, SIMA is one of the biggest international events for the agricultural sector. It is the exhibition of all technologies and solutions for high-performance and sustainable agriculture.

Click register for SIMA Paris Internation AgroBus Show.

SIMA IN A GLANCE

238 848professional
entries

23%international 
visitors

Visitors from5continents

1740companies

MOREREVIEW OF SIMA 2015

A COMPREHENSIVE RANGE OF PRODUCTS

• tractors and power equipment
• spare parts and accessories, embedded electronics
• tilling, sowing, planting
• harvestry (fodder, cereals, root, fruits and vegetables, etc.)
• post-harvestry (cleaning, sorting, drying, conservation)
• equipment for tropical and special crops
• handling, transportation, storage, and buildings
• breeding equipment
• dairy and milking products
• breeders and breeder association
• creation and maintenance of rural and wooded areas
• pro equipment for green spaces
• sustainable development, renewable energy
• professional organisation, services, consultancy
• management and IT software

source: sima website

The Ever-green potential of ‘Cucumis Sativus’

“Cucumis Sativus” generally known as Cucumber is a vegetable fruit that is loaded with benefits not known to many. It is best grown in farmlands close to a waterbed. This is expedient as cucumbers are usually more than 90 per cent water. It is also pertinent to note that cucumbers need to be grown in a rich humid soil as they are often planted in raised beds of about 6 inches high.

Cucumbers are very easy to cultivate and only need about 36 days before harvesting depending on the climate. Some of the seeds can produce 500kg, 200kg or 50kg cucumber per hectare while others can produce up to 1 tonne, 2 tonnes or 3 tonnes.

The health benefits that abound in “Cucumis Sativus” include:

–         Weight loss and digestion

–         Rehydrates the body

–         Cures diabetes

–         Boosts skin care

–         Reduces cholesterol

–         Helps in hair care

Nigerians are encouraged in the spirit of greenness to seize the opportunities in the abundant and ever-green potential of “Cucumis Sativus”.

Madumere urges Corps Members to advance ‘Buy Made In Nigeria’ Campaign

Imo State Deputy Governor, Eze Madumere, has urged National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members to join the campaign for patronage of Made in Nigeria goods towards developing locally made products to address present economic challenges.

Madumere who addressed corps members during the official opening of the Orientation Course for the 2016 Batch ‘B’ Stream II Corps members deployed to Imo State stressed that buying Made in Nigeria products would help galvanise Nigerian economy and put it on the part of growth and sustainable development.

“The initiative will not only encourage Nigerian investors but will spur other Nigerians to put to work their ingenuity in bringing solutions to Nigerian myriad problems since there will be a guaranteed market thereby saving foreign exchange,” he stressed.

The deputy governor, however, called on the corps members to partner with the state government in its Back to Land Policy, which is part of efforts to boost agricultural activities and agro-allied business in the State.

Assuring corps members that the Okorocha-led administration would ensure that they were comfortable throughout their service year, he urged them to uphold the essence of the NYSC scheme which remains unity, love, patriotism and spirit of brotherhood.