FARGO, N.D. — With planting season around the corner, Peterson Farms Seed is hosting Cup of Agronomy sessions throughout the region to help prepare farmers for the upcoming planting season. A big topic during these sessions are diseases that could potentially be a problem on producer's farm acres this year, specifically tar spot.
“It’s basically a new disease to the area in the last year. Just trying to give them the tools they need, whether it is a different hybrid with some resistance that way, or, you know, letting them know what you can do from a fungicide standpoint, just to stay ahead of it,” Rick Swenson said.
Swenson is the corn product manager for Peterson Farms Seed. He says along with tar spot, cyst nematode is also something to watch out for. Cup of Agronomy sessions are scattered through the area. Swenson says farmers are concerned about different issues depending on where the Cup of Agronomy session is taking place.
“Some of these are actually held all the way down by the Twin Cities … then all the way out to Minot. So really, Twin Cities and Minot have nothing to do with each other, and just trying to make sure that information that goes into it fits that geography and can help the growers there,” Swenson said.
According to Swenson, things are currently sitting well as planting season approaches. With most of the snow melted in the region, soil temperatures are starting to rise, as much as 10 degrees Swenson says. While things are in good shape now, rainfall will be imperative after the seeds get deposited into the ground.
Peterson Farms Seed has some exciting things on the horizon. Swenson said that the company has new technology coming out in corn, a commodity that continues to spread throughout the upper Midwest.
“The further north we go, corn is here to stay. I mean, we're placing stuff almost all the way up to Canada right now,” Swenson said. “Really what the corn industry has done … in the last 15 years, we're able to push things further and further north all the time, and we're seeing yield levels we've never seen before. A lot of that goes into the germplasm from a yield standpoint, but then also the resistance.”
If you are interested in attending a Cup of Agronomy session, the dates and locations are listed on the Peterson Farms Seed website.