Details

Last Updated on Tuesday, 28 July 2009 04:01

Written by Christy Hemken

Powell – Increased input costs, alternative crops and profit potential are a few aspects of Wyoming’s crop industry that are fueling the ongoing crop and variety trials at the UW Powell Research and Extension Center (PREC) in Powell.
    “We’re looking for something with lower inputs, primarily in fuel, fertilizer and seed costs,” says PREC Research Associate Randy Violet, who, along with other researchers, is analyzing these alternative crops in the Big Horn and Wind River basins.
    “We’re constantly looking for profit potential and giving producers more return per acre,” he says, adding that water conservation also plays into the research. “In our location we’re very blessed with water availability even in drought, but as researchers we need to be ahead of the curve and start thinking about conservation.”
    Through PREC’s variety trials Violet says, “We try to see if we can find varieties to fit into our area’s production scheme in management issues such as cultivation, herbicide work and fertilizer application. Then when a producer approaches us with an interest in growing, for example, lentils, we can help them get started.”
    Currently the Center maintains soybeans, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas and sunflowers, among other crops.
    “We’ve recently began working with confection sunflowers, which are primarily an export market,” says Violet, explaining the Europeans buy them and eat them like peanuts. “The objective of confection sunflowers is size – we need a large seed size. Confections came to the forefront of this work because there’s an added value to them.”
    He says confection sunflowers are worth 20 cents more per pounds than the oilseed sunflowers. “Last year oils were worth 24 to 28 cents per pound, and growers were selling confections for $40 per hundredweight. That’s exciting because our yields in this area are extremely good.”
    A grower in the Heart Mountain area has cooperated with the Center for four years. Violet says they were impressed with variety trials from last year.
    “The contracts are set up with a premium for large seeds and half that price for anything that falls through the screen,” says Violet. “We were looking at 60 percent staying on top of screen at the Center, but our cooperator got 85 percent of his seeds to stay.”
    Last season the Center worked a lot with planting density and fertility. “We’ve got a pretty good handle now on how to get 80 percent of the seeds to stay above the screen,” says Violet.
    “One of the huge advantages in the Big Horn Basin with sunflowers is we have no insect damage and no diseases, and we have not had any bird problems,” says Violet.
    Of the results of the sunflower work, Violet says, “We have very good yields with very little inputs. There are contracts available, and you can look at a gross per acre of at least $1,000.”
    Another plus to sunflowers is the equipment they require. “You don’t have to buy more implements or equipment, just a set of pans for $2,000 and you’re ready to go if you’re already a barley grower. Capital expenditure is very minimal.”
    Another crop PREC is researching is flax. “Flax is an oilseed crop we began working with two years ago, based on using is as a substitute for soybean meal in animal feed,” says Violet. “Since then flax has developed potential as a specialty crop for health food stores. If you Google flax the first 10 or 15 hits will be health food stores trying to sell it to you for $4 to $8 per pound.”
    “Flax has tremendous potential for animal feed,” says Violet. “It will replace soybean meal in your ration, and it’s easy to grow.”
    Prairie coneflower has received some research attention as a species for reclamation. Violet says there are producers growing the native broadleaf for seed in the Heart Mountain area, which is worth about $20 per pound, he cautions of the fickle reclamation market.
    Soybean research has taken place on both seven- and 22-inch rows. “The seven-inch rows out-yielded the 22-inch rows by quite a bit,” says Violet. “If you’re interested in soybeans, you’re probably better off running them through your grain drill.”
    He cautions growers about soybean markets. “We’ve been faced with a lot of inflated commodity crop prices in the last few years, and we just came off a record-setting year for soybeans, but it’s got to come back down to reality and we’ve got to start making comparisons because this year won’t be as good.”
    He says over three years of research conventional soybeans have out-yielded Roundup Ready varieties. “I would venture to guess if we were to plant soybeans this year the paradigm would start moving to the advantage of Roundup Ready, because the genetic base has grown and seed companies and geneticists have made the shift from conventional to Roundup Ready.”
    He says the crop that soybeans are most often compared to in the Big Horn Basin is dry beans. “They’re both legumes, and there’s probably no advantage in soybeans over dry beans,” he notes. “We’ve had some producers grow 30 or 40 acres of soybeans, and the deer harvested their crop.”
    He says one use for Roundup Ready soybeans is on a new piece of ground when the new manager doesn’t know anything about the weed seed bank. “The Roundup component would be your advantage to clean up the field before going back in with your regular crop.”
    In the lentil world, there are now Liberty Link and Clearfield varieties available. “When you start to get the large chemical companies playing in the genetics game of crops, you know there’s money somewhere,” says Violet. “One of the issues we have is weed control in lentils, and that’s now been addressed.”
    He says lentils probably do not have an advantage over dry beans, as there are some disease issues and they are a challenge to harvest. “If we swath them and put them in a windrow, if any wind blows they roll up like a tumbleweed and you chase them around a lot.”
    According to Violet, chickpeas are a neat crop to work with. However, palatability can be a problem. “If you have a rabbit in the vicinity, they will find it,” he says. However, the plants re-grew at the research station after the rabbits hit them and he says there’s a decent opportunity for a return on chickpeas.
    Dry peas have a lot of potential in the area, says Violet. “There’s a true value to them as a seed crop, and on seven-inch rows we dramatically increased our yields. That’s how we’d recommend you plant them.”
    The fertilizer program on dry peas is the same as dry beans, and Violet says not to forget to inoculate. “The average price has been around $7 per pound in the last five years, and at 3,000 pounds per acre that’s a pretty decent return. If you don’t like your bean contract, check into dry peas,” he says, noting there’s no wildlife problem on the dry peas in comparison to chickpeas.
    The center runs research on all varieties of sainfoin, two of which were developed at UW. “The biggest thing for sainfoin is no bloat,” says Violet. “If you’re interested in grazing a legume and not having the expense of pouring nitrogen on it and making it safe, sainfoin’s a good option for you. The other advantage is weevils won’t get into it.”
    Randy Violet presented information on crops research at the Powell Research and Extension Center at the early February Fremont County Farm and Ranch Days in Riverton. For more information on alternative crops, contact Violet at 307-754-2223 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Christy Hemken is assistant editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Details

Last Updated on Friday, 23 October 2009 04:50

Written by Christy Hemken

Casper – On Aug. 25 the Great Plains Camelina Company introduced nine new varieties of camelina designed to boost yields, allowing increased production on every acre planted.
    Great Plains is a renewable fuels energy company, founded with the purpose of manufacturing and marketing biodiesel from camelina. In the last few years they’ve begun to actively seek grower contracts in the high plains, including Wyoming.
    “We like to think we brought camelina to the biofuels world,” says Great Plains CEO Sam Huttenbauer, noting his company is in its fourth growing year.    Although the company currently only has a handful of growers in Wyoming, Huttenbauer says they’d liketo  pick up more.
    “The ideal grower for us is a producer looking to rotate an oilseed crop into a wheat rotation,” says Huttenbauer. “Typically they’re dryland farmers that may not have an alternative oilseed to work into their rotation.”
    He says ideal growers are also those with fallow ground because of lack of moisture or weed or disease pressures, as well as growers without an alternative who are forced to do wheat-on-wheat. He points out land producing marginal crops is also a good candidate because of the low input needs of camelina.
    The company says their additional varieties provide growers of the biofuel crop with more options that can be tailored to their climate, geography and other factors.
    “What we’ve done as a company for over five years is focus on a number of aspects and work on breeding new varieties,” says Huttenbauer. “For over 14 years we’ve been researching the crop genetically and developing agronomic programs specifically for our growers, tailored to their growing regions.”
    He says among the new varieties are some offered for fall planting, which will help solve some moisture and establishment challenges. “We find a lot with the dryland growers in the plains that their moisture for the year comes at the end of winter, and by the time they get their crops in the field it may be April, and they’ve missed the moisture window. They then get into a period of prolonged drought and have trouble getting crop establishment.’”
    Because there are only a few Great Plains camelina growers in Wyoming at the present there aren’t any specific elevators established, but the way the contracts are set up the grower is responsible for shipping the first 60 miles and Great Plains covers the rest of the freight if there’s not an elevator within that distance.
    “If a grower is beyond our typical growing region they shouldn’t worry about a lack of delivery points,” says Huttenbauer, adding, “As we continue to add growers we’ll look for points to consolidate the product, which will benefit everyone.”
    Huttenbauer says Great Plains offers either a set price or a contract with market ties, which includes a base price, then upward incentives based on petroleum markets.
    Looking to the future, Huttenbauer says his company grew 200 percent in contracted acres last year, and they’re looking to double that this year. “We’ve had tremendous growth, and seen an increase in the mention of camelina for biodiesel,” he notes.
    He says when Great Plains began contracting four years ago camelina was an unknown crop. “Since that time there have been two changes in biofuels,” he explains. “One is that there’s been a switch to ‘next generation’ biofuel crops, and camelina plays nicely into that from water, pesticides and fertilizers, which means it plays favorably in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.”
    He says another characteristic of the next generation crops is that it’s grown and processed into biofuel without affecting food production.
    Huttenbauer says in the near future the airline industry will begin to use camelina biodiesel for jet fuel. The biodiesel process also produces a meal high in omega 3 fatty acids.
    “Camelina makes an interesting and unique crop because, unlike other processes for biofuels, it’s non-food and adding to the feed needs for livestock. That’s the opposite of the complaint about the first-generation crops,” he notes.
    “Another reason why camelina is growing so fast in popularity is because it’s great for farmers,” says Huttenbauer. “It’s a sound rotational crop that provides a good return on the farm.”
    Christy Hemken is assistant editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Details

Last Updated on Thursday, 19 May 2011 10:04

Written by Christy Martinez

Park County sunflower producer Lyle Euelo says that sunflowers can be a very competitive crop with his area’s traditional crops of beans, malt barley and sugarbeets, and that he’s had good success with the confectionary crop.
“The difference in inputs between sugarbeets and sunflowers is that sunflowers take less than half – the seed doesn’t cost even close to beets, and you don’t have the tech fee,” he notes. “Your input costs are similar, and maybe a little higher, than barley.”
Sunflower growers in Euelo’s area have worked closely with Randy Violett of Powell’s UW Research and Extension Center. Violett has conducted variety trials and research to determine the technical details of producing the crop in Wyoming, including plant density, varieties and fertilization.
“Plant density will affect seed size,” says Violett. “The less dense the population, the more room there is for the seed head to grow, and the larger your seed will get.”
Violett says current recommendations call for 17,000 plants per acre. Euelo says he’s been planting between 17,000 and 18,000 plants per acre.
“Any lower, and you have a lot of big heads and more field loss because it’s difficult to harvest them,” he says. “You don’t want to go over 19,000 per acre, because your seed size and production will drop.”
Violett says growers should be aware of issues that could reduce the plant stand, like jackrabbits, antelope and deer.
“When the plants are just emerging they’re ripe for the picking, and they’ll never grow a seed head if they’re eaten off. A cooperator killed over 75 jackrabbits one evening on his place, and he estimated that in one year they cost him $25,000,” says Violett.
Although sunflower plates are available for planting, Violett says most growers use sweet corn plates.
“Our advice is to get silicone and fill every other hole to adjust the planter density,” he says. “Finger planters tend to work really well, and one of the biggest issues is worn seed tubes, where sunflowers can get caught.”
“Order small or medium seed, as they seem to emerge better than bigger seeds, in my experience,” says Euelo. “Sunflowers do not do well in cold soil. One time, about five years ago, at the end of May we got some cold weather that came in while the plants were germinating, and the sunflowers started to grow down into the soil, because they grow to wherever the warmer temperature is. Then they had a gooseneck when they did start coming up.”
Euelo says to plant one to two inches deep, with two inches being the absolute deepest.
“You really don’t want to go that deep. One-and-a-half to one-and-three-quarters inches are what we find works best. The seeds are nice and big, but they don’t have much push,” he says, adding that growers in the warm soils of Kansas and Colorado can plant them deeper than those in Wyoming.
Regarding herbicides, Violett says he’s tested many over several growing seasons. One thing he’s found out is that sunflowers are very sensitive to residue, and growers need to be mindful of what was applied to a field the previous year.
Euelo says he has a field that had a lot of nightshade, and he had treated it with Stinger.
“If you use Stinger, it’s best not to follow up with sunflowers,” he says. “Some will pull out of it and keep going and produce a nice head, but some don’t. The Stinger stays in the ground a long time, because in the same field I’ve rotated barley and come back to sunflowers and still had chemical reaction in some places, even though it’s been plowed twice.”
Violett says the dry bean strategy of pre-irrigating, planting into the moisture and then spraying the weed flush from that irrigation with glyphosate also works well with sunflowers.
Euelo says he fertilizes his sunflowers very similar to the way he’d fertilize malt barley, with at least 150 units of nitrogen to get a good yield.
“Test soils both shallow and deep,” he says. “Sunflowers have a good taproot, and a very aggressive surface root system, so they’ll mine some nutrients for you.”
Violett agrees, saying, “Sunflowers are scavengers, and they will go after nitrogen up to six feet deep. That’s one thing that’s really appealing about sunflowers – especially in a sugarbeet rotation – is that they can get down deep and get after the nitrogen.”
Euelo does add that sunflowers are very sensitive to salts, and can’t be treated like corn with fertilizer close to or on top of the seed.
“There’s no need to sidedress. I’ve done some of that, and research has found you might as well put all your fertilizer down up front, because they’ll do just as well,” he notes.
Cultivation can also be incorporated into weed management. Violett recommends cultivating at least twice, but says that some years that’s tough because of rapid growth.
“When they start to grow, you don’t have much time,” says Euelo. “They’ll be really slow starting out, but when it warms up and they take off, you better be on the ball.”
Euelo recommends not giving sunflowers too much water up front.
“Irrigate them after the second cultivation, unless they start to wilt or are in light, sandy soil,” he says. “Let them develop a taproot. Make sure your soil profile is full, and between bud stage and bloom is when you want to make sure they have plenty of water.”
For later irrigations, Euelo says he’s found it works best to move the water through quickly, avoiding the saturation given to barley or sugarbeets.
“What can happen is you might get sunflowers with a great big head, and if the ground’s all wet and a 60-mile-per-hour wind comes along they can fall over,” he says, noting that he doesn’t see that as much with the newer hybrids, which tend to be stronger.
Both Violett and Euelo recommend removing plants around gated pipe.
“Spray out the plants near irrigation ditches and gated pipes, because it’s not fun to change water when the heads are in the way,” says Euelo.
Now that there are over 1,000 acres of sunflowers in the area, Violett says growers are beginning to run into the need for pest control, including lygus bugs, which he says can be devastating, and the painted lady butterfly larvae.
Row crop heads are used to harvest the crop at 11 percent moisture, usually the end of October into November. In 2010 most contracts paid 26 cents per pound, while this year contracts will pay 30 cents, says Euelo.
“We have a lot of dry bean growers in the area, and if they know how to grow dry beans, they can grow sunflowers,” says Violett. “The management is very similar.”
Christy Martinez is managing editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Details

Last Updated on Tuesday, 28 October 2008 08:19

Written by Liz LeSatz

Shoshoni – Life is sweet. Especially for Shoshoni-area raspberry farmer Greg Jarvis.
    Greg, wife Jan and their family, produce raspberry products in Fremont County for a consumer base that once found it hard to get good-quality, fresh raspberries in small Wyoming communities.
    Raspberry deLight Farms saw its beginnings in the spring of 1999. The conception of the raspberry farm came after Greg grew tired of receiving similar commodity prices as he had 20 years prior. To supplement the income from their hay and small grains operation, the Jarvis’ started looking into specialty crops and the journey led them to plant several acres of the red berries.
    In the beginning Greg spent countless hours on a slow dial-up Internet connection researching the crop and how to grow it.
    “We had absolutely no idea how to grow this stuff,” he says, but added that his research paid off.
    After a trial run with picking equipment, Raspberry deLight eventually went back to doing the task by hand. The equipment was good for picking soft berries, but the firm berries that are ideal to market as fresh were getting left behind. The Jarvis’ now rely on workers to comb the bushes for the specialty crop.
    With a season from mid-August to mid-October, the Jarvis’ hit the farmer’s markets, including the one at Wyoming State Fair, and have a stand in Lander where they sell fresh raspberries and sweet corn.
    Finally, after a few years of slower growth, the berry production exploded and the Jarvis’ had more fruit then they knew what to do with.
    “It was good the berries didn’t come to full production until the fourth year because I don’t know what we would have done with all of them,” Greg says.
    The raspberry production grew so high that demand couldn’t keep up so, the Jarvis’ started freezing berries to market in the winter. That took care of some of the product but they still didn’t know what to do with the softer raspberries. Because softer berries aren’t good for a fresh market, the farm was throwing them to the livestock. Greg says it felt like throwing money out the door so in 2004 Raspberry deLight Farms expanded into the jam business.
    Beginning with four products, the company now has 15 products. Everything from jams and jellies to raspberry chipotle sauce and pancake syrup can be found with the Raspberry deLight label. The company even has sugar-free versions of some products and is in the development stages for a raspberry salsa and raspberry barbeque sauce. The products are in 12 retail stores and Greg hopes to expand to more.
    To accommodate the production of their line of raspberry products, the Jarvis’ converted a calving shed into a certified kitchen equipped with radiant flooring and solar panels on the roof. The change has been well received. “I haven’t missed the calves a bit,” Greg jokes.
    Head cook Lea Delay and other employees use the kitchen to cook up their sweet concoctions. Delay helps develop the recipes that Raspberry deLight markets, drawing from old-time recipes to create delectable raspberry spreads with peach, pear, apple, rhubarb and honey. It helps that the operation has a “professional” taste tester right at home.
    “Greg has a excellent taste buds so he is the ‘official’ taste tester,” Delay laughs.
    Being a Wyoming-made product company, the Jarvis’ understand the importance of supporting local products. They make their products with Wyoming-grown sugar and even add Niobrara County company, Guakel Grown and Ground whole-wheat products, to their gift boxes.
    Raspberry deLight also offers a “u-pick” opportunity for fresh produce lovers. Customers can make a day of it and travel down to the farm to pick their own fresh raspberries and sweet corn. Eventually the Jarvis’ hope to put in a day park with picnic tables to better accommodate the folks who already come to spend the day frolicking among the berries.
    “We get folks from all over the state,” Greg says. “It’s neat to see people come in and pick their own. The kids come in with their faces all red. I think they eat more than they pick and keep.”
    Greg says he loves interacting with people from all over the state and they’ve made the raspberry portion of his operation an ongoing joy.
    With the success of the raspberries, Greg says he would like to point more attention on the juicy moneymakers and he has a vision to keep expanding Raspberry deLight Farms. The Jarvis’ have come a long way from their search to supplement their income and now provide Wyoming and beyond with mouth-watering, home-grown products.
    “It’s still home,” Delay says. “It’s still done the old home way, one batch at a time.”
    For more information or to order products call 307-856-2939, e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , or visit www.raspberrydelightfarms.com.
    Liz LeSatz is the 2008 Summer Intern for the Wyoming Livestock Roundup and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .