MEET THE WORLDS BEST PIG PRODUCER.

When Bruce Livingston was a child, his favorite day of the week was Wednesday. He eagerly woke at 3 a.m. to ride with his dad to Harbine, Nebraska, to sell feeder pigs, arriving back home in time to catch the school bus.

“I could not wait for the weekends and summer breaks to arrive so I could work with pigs,” says Livingston.


When he was 8 years old, his father, Ed, and an uncle, Cal, gave him two breeding gilts in payment for helping them with their swine enterprises near Mahaska, Kansas. He also won a gilt for placing first in a 4-H judging contest. By the time he graduated from high school in 1987, Livingston owned a 150-sow farrow-to-finish operation outright. He had his mind set on his future in the hog business, so he never considered college. Today, his sow number is 25,000 and growing. This puts Livingston on the Successful Farming® Pork Powerhouses® list for the first time. In the Livingston Enterprises Inc. (LEI) office across from the county courthouse in Fairbury, Nebraska, Livingston opens a thick binder of notes and records. He scans the data, but already knows it by heart.

“Company-wide, the past year we average over 30 pigs weaned per sow per year on 25,000 sows,” he says proudly. In the month of July, that productivity number was over 35 on one of the units. (Most sow farms in the U.S. wean 20 to 25.)
“I don’t know if you could find better numbers in the world on a 25,000-sow system,” says Livingston. “We can be as competitive as anybody.”

How does he achieve high sow productivity?

“First, you have to have a high number of pigs born,” he says. “Second, you have to raise them.”
Sounds simple enough, but, of course, it isn’t.

“It’s the little things,” he says. “We treat each sow as an individual. It’s just like when I was a kid. I knew how many pigs were on every sow. I knew how much feed each sow ate.”

He flips through the binder in front of him and does some calculations in his head, tapping his fingers on the desk. “You can’t measure records you don’t keep,” he notes.

Livingston has his units benchmarked by Swine Management Services in Fremont, Nebraska, which has a database of more than 900 farms and 1.5 million sows. Each of his units is toward the top of the list for many of the productivity and efficiency indexes measured.

Livingston says he has seen numbers from operations many times his size that average 21 pigs per sow per year. He calculates that he produces .25 million more pigs on his 25,000 sows each year than they do on 25,000 of their sows.

“You’ve got to be efficient,” he says.

Expansion Mode

Driving out of town to visit his newest sow farm, a 7,300-sow unit that started farrowing in April, he talks about his company’s greatest challenge: finding and keeping employees, who he refers to as team members. Some of the people he hires have dropped out of school, had substance abuse issues, or trouble with the law.

“Life is difficult,” he says simply. “If you tell them exactly what’s expected, most work out. We can use any kind of person.”

Two of his employees have been with him for 21 years; one oversees farrowing and the other oversees gestation and breeding. He’s always looking for more employees who want to take on more responsibility and have a rewarding career.

“The limiting factor to how big we’ll get is the number of key people we’ll find,” he says.
Livingston’s oldest child, Connor, 19, is now working full time for the company. He is in Lincoln today with some of the farm’s truck drivers picking up four new semis to haul pigs.

“He’s learning the business,” says Livingston, proudly. (Bruce and his wife, Trudy, have four children: Connor; Bryn, 16; Ellie, 11; and Lucus, 7.)

Livingston constantly needs new employees because he is in expansion mode. The company is in the permitting process for a new 7,300-sow farm to be built in 2017. Each barn is built by Midwest Livestock, based in Beatrice, Nebraska. Modifications to the design make each one better than the last.All barns are within a 22-mile radius of Fairbury, and Livingston visits each sow unit at least once a week. He works with the breeding stock company DNA Genetics, based in Columbus, Nebraska, to select the most productive sows.


Most LEI pigs are sold as weaned pigs at 20 days old. They are contracted to The Maschhoffs, based in Carlyle, Illinois. He weans pigs four days a week.
The maternal barrows from the multiplier site, as well as the smallest weaned pigs, are fed in a nursery. Livingston retains ownership on up to 10% of the weaned pigs and grows them to feeder pigs.

At the new site, Livingston immediately notices some spilled feed, a tiny amount, around the augers. “I wish they’d get that feed cleaned up. I hate to see spilled feed,” he says. “I will have to talk to them about that.”

Feed, the largest cost for his company, is cheap this year. “I’ve already bought a year’s worth of corn,” he says. “The basis was at a level that I could justify.” He uses a spreadsheet, plugs in the corn price, and buys when it hits the level he sets.

Besides wasting money, spilled feed means rodents. “My two sons and I spent one weekend placing bait stations around each barn and securing them down,” says Livingston.

Around the barns on all sides is a concrete sidewalk, which helps considerably on maintenance. He doesn’t have to spray or mow weeds next to the building, and it is a place to secure the bait stations. Matting material with rock on top is laid neatly between all barns.

This half-section of flat Nebraska land where the barns sit is a prime spot. “I saw the land come up for sale, and I was at the right place at the right time,” says Livingston. He adds that some local farmers were unhappy he got the land. “You can’t make everyone happy in this business,” he admits.
He waves to an employee driving down the gravel road after going off shift in the farrowing house. The next shift has started. “We have someone 24 hours a day in the farrowing units,” says Livingston.

This new 7,300-sow farm is weaning 31 pigs per sow per year “right off the bat,” he says. “We are weaning 12.6 pigs off of gilts.”

Disease issues are low right now, but Livingston is not breathing too easy. “We’ve had our share of PRRS over the years. It’s sickening when it comes through.” He is fairly isolated in southeast Nebraska from other hog farms, so that helps.

To help with disease control, his barns are shower in/shower out, and he has facilities to wash and heat (he calls it “bake”) five hog trailers at a time. “We can house 23 trailers inside buildings.” 

the worst day

You can never quite breathe easy in this business, he says, because there is always something unexpected around the corner. Livingston’s worst day in the hog business was March 22, 2015. It was a Sunday afternoon and he was home with his family. An employee called to say the Stateline sow farm was on fire.

“I raced out there,” said Livingston. “You’ve never seen anything burn so fast.” Nobody was injured, but he lost hundreds of sows and pigs. They never figured out the exact cause of the fire.

Bruce and Connor spent that night in his truck at the smoldering ruins of the farm. “It was a turning point for my son,” says Livingston. “That’s when he decided to stay. Ever since then, he has stepped it up.” They rebuilt that farm and kept growing.

The new barns have a totally different electrical wiring system that makes them less prone to fires.

have to work hard

Livingston drives around the new unit and likes what he sees. The barns have manure pits underneath and two lagoons are east of the barns. He is hoping for an early corn harvest in his area so he can start applying manure. His manure pumping system, operated and managed by Connor, is made by Puck Custom Enterprises in Manning, Iowa. “It’s amazing,” says Livingston. “We can apply up to 4 miles away.”


As he leaves the sow unit, he drives by a 12,000-head cattle feedlot. “When it smells bad [the feedlot], we are blamed,” he notes. “The things people put on Facebook.”

He admires a pen of cattle on the edge of the feedlot belonging to his 72-year-old father, who has a cow-calf operation and grows corn and soybeans nearby. “Dad can’t slow down,” says Livingston.
Like father, like son.

What does his dad think of his growing swine operation? “He’s pretty proud of me,” says Livingston. “At an early age, my folks taught me how to work and that nothing comes easy. I have worked hard for everything I have.” BY BETSY FREESE.

SEABOARD FOODS BUYS TEXAS FARM

Seaboard Foods has purchased Texas Farm, based in Perryton, Texas, for an undisclosed amount. Texas Farm, a subsidiary of Nippon Meat Packers, Inc., of Osaka, Japan, has 25,000 sows in production (capacity for 40,000).


The purchase takes Seaboard Foods of Shawnee Mission, Kansas, to 290,000 sows. Seaboard has a hog processing plant in Guymon, Oklahoma, with a second processing facility under construction as part of a joint venture with Triumph Foods, called Seaboard Triumph Foods, in Sioux City, Iowa. That plant will be operational by August 2017, killing 10,000 hogs a day.



Seaboard is aggressively adding sows by acquisition, purchasing 35,000 sows in January from Christensen Farms. BY BETSY FREESE.

CHINA VOWS TO ACCEPT U.S BEEF AFTER 13YEARS BAN.

After 13 years, China has finally lifted its ban on accepting U.S. beef exports. This announcement comes after China’s Ministry of Agriculture concluded a review of the U.S. supply system.
The country will only accept U.S. beef that comes from animals under 30 months of age.


“China is already the world’s second largest buyer of beef, and with a growing middle class, the export opportunities for U.S. cattlemen and women are tremendous,” says Kent Bacus, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s director of international trade.


The U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) is quick to note that the announcement is exciting, but China will still need to negotiate with the USDA to approve export certificates and agree to standards U.S. beef will need to meet to be accepted into China’s market.
China originally halted U.S. beef imports when mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state cattle in December of 2003.

What History and Data Tell Us

In 2003, the U.S. sent 11,500 metric tons of beef to China valued at $27.1 million, according to the USMEF. However, in 2003 China only imported 57,200 metric tons in total, and demand has grown exceptionally since then. In 2015, alone, the country imported 495,000 metric tons valued at nearly $2.4 billion, according to the Global Trade Atlas.


“China’s 2016 imports are running well ahead of last year’s pace,” says Joe Schuele of the USMEF who calls China’s spike in demand for beef from 2012 to 2015 “extraordinary.” In just those three years, China upped beef imports by 424,500 metric tons.


“Our export markets are a great outlet for cuts of beef that are not traditionally popular in the U.S.,” says Dr. Phil Reemtsma, Iowa Cattlemen’s Association president. An example of this is the strong market for beef tongues in Japan.

Check out Beef Is Bouncing Back for an idea of how the U.S. cattle herd and beef markets are holding up.

The announcement to begin accepting U.S. beef was made by China’s Ministry of Agriculture and General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine on September 22.

7 WAYS TO KEEP PORK MOVING.

Hog markets have dropped to unprofitable levels for many producers this fall. “This is a challenging time for agriculture and especially for our producers,” says Jan Archer, National Pork Board (NPB) president and a pork producer from Goldsboro, North Carolina. “Our goal is to help producers during this time and provide consumers with a great value and quality pork.”

Archer shared a few of the things the NPB, using Pork Checkoff funds, is doing to keep pork moving and help producers.
1) Partnering with major grocery retailers.

This fall the NPB is working with the top 10 U.S. grocery retailers, including a holiday promotion for Walmart with on-pack recipe labels, digital marketing, email blasts, and in-store pork promotions. Costco had an October “Porktober” promotion, consisted of in-store pork product demos, instant rebate coupons on featured pork cuts, and advertising in the Costco Connection member magazine. Kroger is driving pork loin, shoulder, and ham sales for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The program includes radio and digital ads and in-store events.

2) Focusing on foodservice.
NPB is working with high-volume restaurants to present a clear message around the opportunity pork presents through versatility, profitability, availability, and customer appeal. To reach the industry at large, the foodservice team will launch a print and digital brand campaign with custom ads from February through May 2017.

3) Keeping pork top of mind via digital marketing and PR.
During the holidays, the Pork Checkoff is encouraging consumers to make every moment – big or small – one worth celebrating. The Make it a Moment campaign is helping pork stand out from the typical holiday messages. "Using social media technology, we connect social media users with great-tasting pork recipes to match their meal plans," says Archer. When people visit the Pork Be inspired Facebook page, they can open Facebook Messenger to help find the right recipe.
4) Maximizing multicultural marketing.

The NPB is promoting budget-friendly pork and building on the success of summer’s Grill For It campaign, which incorporated a Spanish-language component. New promotions showcase the Make it a Moment campaign and feature our Spanish-language site, including new 1-minute videos to help consumers become more comfortable with cooking pork.
 5) Inspiring new trends.

To help bolster pork sales, the Pork Checkoff is working with retail partners to encourage consumers to broaden their options. Along with ham, NPB is promoting pork roast as a holiday meal.
6) Promoting U.S. pork exports.

While the high value of the U.S. dollar and competition from other countries in key export markets has curbed U.S. pork export demand, there are positive signs on the horizon, says Archer. “About 25% of U.S. pork production goes overseas, and we need to keep moving product to keep producers profitable.” Mexico, China, Japan, Korea and Canada are pork’s big five buyers, and the Pork Checkoff, through the U.S. Meat Export Federation, continues to invest in pork promotions overseas.
7) Reaching online consumers.

As consumers search for recipes online for meal planning, the Pork Checkoff’s online ads are reminding them about pork’s great taste and value, says Archer. They are also working directly with food bloggers on PorkBeInspired.com.
“Together, we can get through this time,” says Archer. “Pork producers are resilient. We’ve faced challenges before. We want to help our producers in any way we can.” BY BETSY FREESE.

SCIENTISTS CRACK CODE DETERMINING LEAF SHAPE IN COTTON.

Researchers know that the variation in leaf shapes can mean big differences in a farmer's bottom line. Now, a new discovery gives plant breeders key genetic information they need to develop crop varieties that make the most of these leaf-shape differences.

 

In a paper published Dec. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, NC State researchers and colleagues from the Danforth Plant Science Center, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Cotton Incorporated describe how they used genomic and molecular tools to find the location of the DNA sequence that determines major leaf shapes in upland cotton.


The researchers also describe how they manipulated the genetic code to alter the shape of a cotton plant's leaves in potentially beneficial ways.


This discovery represents a significant step toward developing cotton varieties that produce higher yields at less cost to the farmers, said Dr. Vasu Kuraparthy, an associate professor with NC State's Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and the project's principal investigator.


Scientists have recognized that cotton plants with leaves that have five deep lobes, like the leaves of the okra plant, offer advantages to farmers over what researchers refer to as "normal" leaves. Dr. Ryan Andres, a postdoctoral researcher who worked in Kuraparthy's lab while he was a graduate student, said the so-called "okra" leaf cottons are less susceptible to boll rot than the stably yielding "normal" leaf cotton varieties.


The okra leaves also allow a spray to be more evenly dispersed across a plant and are associated with higher rates of flowering and earlier rates of maturity in cotton, Andres added.
To determine if they'd found the DNA sequence that controlled major leaf shapes in cotton, researchers infected okra-leaf plants with a modified virus that silenced the target gene. That led to a temporary production of normal leaves until the plants overcame the experimental virus and reverted to okra leaf shape. BY NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY.


Kuraparthy and Andres said they hope that this leaf architecture leads to an ideal cotton cultivar, or ideotype, capable of combining the advantages of the two leaf shapes.
"We were able to create our ideotype but only in a transient fashion. One day we want to able to do it in a heritable manner, and the first step in that is finding the gene and proving that this is the gene and these are the polymorphisms in the gene that cause these changes," Kuraparthy said. "This research does that."

WHEAT HIGHER IN OVERNIGHT TRADING ON EXTREME COLD.

1. Wheat Futures Rise in Overnight Trading on Winterkill Worries
Wheat futures rose in overnight trading after extremely cold weather in the eastern Midwest and the Southern Plains hurt plants that lacked snow cover.

“Winterkill was noted in west-central Illinois, southern Iowa, and northern Missouri over the weekend,” said Donald Keeney, a senior agricultural meteorologist at MDA Information Services. “Very cold conditions yesterday resulted in some widespread winterkill damage in southern Nebraska, much of Kansas, eastern Colorado, northwest Oklahoma, and northwest Texas as snow cover there remains thin.”

Temperatures are expected to moderate as the week goes on, he said.
Wheat futures for March delivery rose 1¼¢ to $4.10½ a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. Kansas City futures added 3¼¢ to $4.18 a bushel.

Corn and soybeans were lower overnight as investors focus on supply rather than demand. U.S. growers likely harvested record crops this fall, boosting supplies of both commodities. While demand has been strong due to low prices and easily available supplies, it may not be enough to underpin prices, analysts have said.

Corn futures for March delivery fell 1½¢ to $3.54¾ a bushel in Chicago.
Soybean futures for January delivery declined 5¢ to $10.31¾ a bushel overnight. Soy meal dropped $1.50 to $315.60 a short ton, and soy oil fell 0.07¢ to 36.67¢ a pound.2. Speculators Lower Bets on Higher Soybeans, Lower Corn Second Straight Week

Speculative investors lowered their net-long positions, or bets on higher prices, in soybeans and were more bearish on corn for a second straight week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a report.

Investors were net-long 121,859 soybean futures contracts, down from 124,758 the prior week, the second consecutive decline, the CFTC said in a report on Friday. Speculators raised their net-short positions, or bets on lower prices, in corn futures by 5.5% to 69,050 contracts, according to the agency.

Bearish factors – including ample supplies after record corn and bean harvests along with improved weather in parts of South America, which could add to the glut – have investors concerned that prices will decline as the new year approaches.

U.S. growers likely produced 15.2 billion bushels of corn on yields of 175.3 bushels an acre and 4.36 billion bushels of soybeans on yields of 52.5 bushels an acre, all record highs, according to the Department of Agriculture.

The bearishness, however, comes amid strong demand for U.S. supplies. Exporters in the week that ended on December 8 sold more than 1.5 million metric tons of corn and 2 million tons of soybeans to overseas buyers.3. Extremely Low Temperatures Have Wheat Farmers on Winterkill Watch
Extremely low temperatures in parts of the Southern Plains have winter wheat growers watching their plants for winterkill.

Temperatures in Guymon, Oklahoma, in the state’s panhandle hovered at about 3˚F., while Amarillo, Texas, was at 6˚F., according to the National Weather Service.

Winterkill occurs when plants that lack a protective layer of snow are expose to temperatures that stay below freezing for more than a few hours. The so-called polar vortex has left the weather much colder than normal, though temperatures are expected to moderate as the week progresses, the NWS
BY TONY DREIBUS.

said.
Wind chills this weekend from -20˚F. to -30˚F. in much of the Upper Midwest.

SIGNIFICANT COST SAVINGS WITH USED PRECISION AG EQUIPMENT.

The solution to Kory Schafer and Adam Babl’s problem of finding an affordable guidance system for their sprayer presented itself at their local dealership.

“The sprayer [a John Deere 4710] wasn’t equipped with either guidance control or rate and section control,” says Schafer. He and Babl co-own GKS Farms of Albion, Nebraska. “We farm in 20-inch rows and spray across the rows, and we wanted to run in previous tracks on a second spraying. So guidance was a must.”

Schafer (pictured above, left) and Babl turned to a used monitor and receiver that were being sold by Green Line Equipment in their Albion, Nebraska, outlet. “We priced a new unit. With the price of corn and soybeans, we needed something more affordable,” Babl says.

The used Deere GreenStar 1800 display, loaded with guidance and sprayer control, and a StarFire iTC receiver were purchased for 35% to 40% less than a new display and receiver by the farming team. “We also had the activation fee for RTK,” Schafer adds.

GKS Farms joins a growing list of farmers who are capitalizing on the savings gained by purchasing used precision equipment. “Our business started taking off around six years ago,” says Jon Bickel of Used Precision Ag. “I notice there are now quite a few websites such as ours that are listing equipment.”

Bickel began buying, selling, and consigning used precision 12 years ago. The equipment he sells is reconditioned (which includes removing old data and upgrading firmware) and includes a three- to five-year warranty. “The big change since then is, besides a growth in business, now farmers realize that the used monitors or receivers in their equipment have value.”

The latest and fastest-growing category of used equipment at John Deere’s dealer site, machinefinder.com, is precision ag. At press time, that site had nearly 1,000 listings of displays, controllers, receivers, cabling, and activations.

Dealerships like Green Line Equipment have begun removing precision gear from trade-ins and listing the items on their websites.

“We noticed that lots of monitors and displays were being stored on shelves never to be used again, both on farms and at our dealerships,” notes Ashley Babl of Green Line (wife of Adam Babl). “We saw the potential in repurposing that equipment, especially now that commodity prices are lower. Farmers are looking for values.”

The advantage for a dealership, Ashley feels, is the opportunity to give farmers – who couldn’t afford that new precision equipment – a way to “maximize the bottom line and to cut input costs,” she says. “If we can help by selling a used sprayer section control, for example, and that saves money, then we’re providing a much-needed service in today’s economy.” BY DAVE MOWITZ.
GKS Farms’ first purchase has already whetted Schafer and Babl’s appetite for similar equipment. They’re now looking for used guidance gear for their primary tillage tractor.

SIDEWAYS CORN TRADE FOR REST OF 2016, SAYS ANALYST.

Slightly defensive trade was seen today, which might have simply been attributed to some pullback going into the end of the week closer to a more middle of the road price level.

It was another strong week of demand, which could raise the level we should expect support to come into this market. Last week the low price in March was 350 1/4 and today's low was 353 1/2, which might already be showing the added support from strong demand.

It's tough to suggest much movement for either direction over the next two weeks.


 News will remain slow and volume will also continue to slow, which continues to suggest sideways trade to the end of the year. Corn traders should pay attention to outside markets for short-term direction and watch news in beans and wheat just as much as corn. Let's still expect resistance in the 360's with initial support found in the low 350's with strong support anywhere in the 340's.

Bulls

• As long as demand continues strong there is reason to expect better support and even possibly reach closer to 370
• Bulls can look for better support but want to avoid looking at breaking 369 resistance simply due to low volume trade the next two weeks. BY RICH NELSON.

Bears

• Wheat could be the market which would most likely weigh on corn short term, bears will want to watch wheat closely
• Most important over anything else right now bears will want to see demand slow and take away much of the support currently being seennotice. There is no guarantee that the advice we give will result in profitable trades.

WITHOUT REGISTRATION, THE MARKET COMMENTARY IN THIS COMMUNICATION SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED A SOLICITATION.

AMERICAN AGRICULTURE BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER OVER THE HOLIDAYS.

Christmas and other December holidays are steeped in a variety of traditions, but perhaps there is no other time of the year when celebrations revolve so strongly around U.S. agricultural products and thoughts of farm life.
Christmas and holiday cards, trees, meals—all focal points of the holiday season—have strong ties to American agriculture. Although relatively few Americans have personal connections with farms, rustic farm scenes remain popular images on Christmas and holiday cards symbolizing a warm, nostalgic view of the life people long for during the holiday season.

Most holiday traditions begin on the farm, as each year, some 25 million to 36 million fresh-cut Christmas trees find their way into American homes.

    

The trees are supplied by some 15,000–20,000 tree farms, found in almost every state.
Food from America’s farms and ranches provide the social centerpiece for holiday gatherings, whether it’s the hors d’oeuvres for the holiday party, crackers and cheese for visiting friends, or the main holiday meals that bring families together.

American holiday meal traditions trace their origins to the meals served in the home countries of immigrants who have come to America, but the evolution of agriculture has continuously improved the assortment on the holiday table.

Most holiday meals are built around meat. Turkey, beef, goose, lamb, venison, rabbit, duck and pheasant, and pork, were popular in England, and appeared on American Christmas dinner menus as early as the 1600s. Turkey, ham and roast beef remain the most popular meats served at American holiday meals. Hams have been featured in December celebrations in many countries for centuries. At one time in the U.S., turkeys were kept on farms because they required little care and could be used to feed a crowd without economic sacrifice. Chickens had more economic value for egg production, as cows did for milk, and the commercial beef industry didn’t evolve until the 19th century. Now, modern farming practices make them all readily available.

By the late 1700s, holiday menus included ice cream, acorn squash, lima beans, sweet potatoes, raisins and nuts, cranberries, plums, peaches, and apples and cherries for pies.

In the pioneer days, American Christmas menus depended on location, economics, home situations, and heritage. People in larger cities—as well as those living on or near farms—tended to have more access to a broad range of food items than those living in outposts, camps or wilderness areas. By the early 1900s, agricultural expansion made it possible to incorporate lettuce, oranges, celery, grapefruit and other fresh fruits and vegetables into holiday meals.

Although Americans spend more on food in December than any other month, a traditional holiday meal with all of the trimmings remains a bargain. A holiday meal with turkey as the centerpiece costs about $5-$6 per person—less than the price of a burger, fries and soft drink at a fast-food restaurant. Dinner with ham, roast beef or prime rib is slightly higher, but still as little as $10-$12 a person, and less than the cost of lunch at a fast-casual restaurant.

While still a bargain, the real value of a holiday meal is priceless: the true worth comes from the fellowship and joy of gathering family and friends around the table to celebrate. From the scent of a Christmas tree to the smells and tastes of a holiday meal, America’s farmers and ranchers are happy to play their role in making it all possible.

On behalf of America’s farmers and ranchers, and all involved in American agriculture, have a joyous and safe holiday season, and best wishes for the New Year. BY ROBERT GIBLIN.

6 THINGS YOU DIDNT KNOW ABOUT HERBICIDE.

Think you’ve heard it all about herbicide-resistant weeds? Here are six often-overlooked facts about them to consider as you ready your weed-management plan for the coming growing season in 2017.

1. They’re not new. “The first resistant weeds to atrazine were reported in 1970,” says Ian Heap, director of the International Survey of Herbicide-Resistant Weeds (weedscience.org). At latest count, arazine (Group 5) has had 235 reported cases worldwide of weed resistance.

“The interesting thing is, we’ve known how to combat weed resistance for most of that time, too,” Heap says. Herbicide labels from the 1980s – before Roundup Ready was in anyone’s vocabulary – encouraged chemical rotation, full-use rates, and herbicide use only when necessary.

2. More are en route every year. Heap says, on average, 11 new cases of herbicide-resistant weeds are reported annually by weed scientists somewhere in the world. That’s been a steady pace for about 30 years. Up through 2015, 461 unique cases were documented, involving 247 weed species.

The reason there are two different numbers – 461 unique cases of 247 weed species – is that many weed species now show resistance to multiple chemicals. For instance, Heap says, wild oat shows resistance to five different herbicide classes, putting it on the list of unique cases five times.

Meanwhile, rigid ryegrass is resistant to 11 classes. About 90 weed species are resistant to more than one herbicide.

Corn used to be the crop most impacted, but now it’s wheat, Heap says. About 130 weeds that are significant to wheat growers are resistant to at least one herbicide. Corn has about 100 resistant weeds, and soybeans and rice have about 80.

3. They’re bigger than glyphosate. Weeds that resist glyphosate in herbicide-tolerant systems may get the most attention. That’s especially true in North America, where Roundup Ready soybeans burst onto the scene and dominated the weed-control market in just a few years, says Heap. The class of herbicides known as ALS inhibitors (such as Pursuit and Accent) actually has had the fastest worldwide growth in resistance in recent years, followed by PSII inhibitors (such as Buctril).

Worldwide, there are 56 registered ALS inhibitors on the market and 26 PSII inhibitors, compared with just one glyphosate. Hence, the former two classes lead the resistance race.

Part of the problem associated with the Roundup Ready era is that it’s been 30 years since we’ve discovered a new class of herbicides, Heap says.

“Glyphosate came along, and people thought it was game over. They (agricultural chemical companies) shut down their discovery programs,” he says.

“What is concerning are the herbicide groups 14 and 27,” says Mike Owen, Iowa State University Extension weed specialist. Group 14 herbicides are the PPO inhibitors (like Cobra and Flexstar). Group 27 herbicides are the HPPD inhibitors (like Balance Flexx and Callisto).

These have been popular alternatives where glyphosate resistance has surfaced. Yet, even in 2011, the estimated percentage of waterhemp in sampled fields estimated Group 14 resistance at 10% to 12%. With group 27, the resistance was estimated at 24% to 27%. Continued use will only raise these numbers.

4. They’re everywhere. North America does have the most resistant weed cases (over 160 and counting). However, western Europe has over 100 cases now. China is growing fast with over 40 resistant weeds, compared with just 15 in 2010.

“Countries with cheap labor sources have the fewest cases of resistant weeds,” says Heap.
5. There are 7 top offenders. Of the 32 weed species resistant to glyphosate, only seven actually account for about 99% of the economic losses, says Heap. Here is the biggest offenders list.

• Giant dogweed
• Johnsongrass
• Marestail (horseweed)
• Palmer amaranth 
• Rigid ryegrass
• Sourgrass
• Tall waterhemp 

For good measure, Heap adds kochia. It dries out and becomes a tumbleweed, spreading seeds as it rolls. It may soon crack his worst-offenders list.

6. You can keep track of herbicide-resistant weeds.

 A website (weedscience.org) is devoted exclusively to this topic and is managed by Heap. Public and private industry weed scientists in over 80 countries use the site to track new cases with updates and maps by state, region, crops, sites of action, and much more. BY GIL GULLICKSON.