Catching Up with CALS — March 22, 2023

Dean's Message — Collaboration Fosters Solutions

Farmers are generally eager to work with crop researchers investigating options to help them produce more food with fewer inputs and with less impact on the environment. They’re often reluctant, however, to take a leap of faith on a novel approach without fully understanding how all the variables could impact their bottom line. Trying something new that might not work could lead to yield losses that could reduce income. Renowned University of California Davis entomologist Neal Williams offered his innovative approach toward providing greater surety to would-be grower collaborators on March 1, when he visited campus to deliver a keynote address as part of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) Distinguished Speaker Series. The forward-thinking ideas he shared inspired many CALS faculty who were in attendance. It's becoming clear that Williams’ hour-long speech could have lasting impacts, both within the college and on many Idaho farms.

Williams, a professor who specializes in sustainable pollination strategies for agriculture, has been studying how planting flowering plants in strips may improve pollination within California’s almond orchards. These pollinator patches also attract a broader diversity of bee species and create valuable native bee nesting habitat. Williams has found pollinators are often scarce in the agricultural areas that most need them. Yet it’s no small task to convince a farmer operating on a tight margin to invest time and inputs on a crop that won’t be sold. Having data to help growers see the bigger picture is crucial. Toward that end, Williams created a computer model enabling producers to enter information and run simulations, thereby removing some of the mystery. As Williams explained, models are only as good as the data and assumptions they use. He described his model as a tool to help producers identify the optimal pollinator seed mixtures for any dollar amount invested to accomplish any of a list of outcomes – such as improved crop pollination, supporting bees at every life stage and soil-health benefits. With his model, Williams is able to guide growers in making choices such as where to plant, seeding rate and species to include in their pollinator blends. All this is done understanding the grower’s budget and how much they are willing to spend. 

Sanford Eigenbrode, a distinguished professor in the Department of Entomology, Plant Pathology and Nematology, found Williams’ message to be especially relevant. Eigenbrode is co-principal investigator, working with project lead Jodi Johnson-Maynard, head of the Department of Soil and Water Systems, on the largest grant in the university’s history, funded through USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. The U of I-led project will span five years with an investment of up to $55 million. Most of the funding will directly benefit more than 100 farmers and ranchers throughout the state by incentivizing them to adopt climate-smart practices on about 10% of Idaho’s active cropland. The project is intended to reduce the equivalent of 31,000 to 70,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year from being emitted into the atmosphere. Producers will receive payments for trying specified climate-smart practices, such as planting cover crops – crops raised primarily for soil health benefits rather than commercial harvest. The team aims to start registering participants and commencing with projects this fall. Eigenbrode and Johnson-Maynard face precisely the same challenge as Williams in finding farmers willing to try practices that are unfamiliar but may hold the potential to improve both the environment and their production. Over coffee on the morning after the speech, the researchers discussed the possibility of adapting Williams’ model to help inform growers interested in planting cover crops for U of I’s Climate-Smart grant. “The more unknowns there are, the less likely somebody is to adopt cover crops,” Eigenbrode explained. “We are on the hook to provide technical support, which could fall right into a model like this.” It’s far too early to know if Williams’ ideas will take hold in Idaho. But the mere possibility that Williams’ presentation could provide a tool to help U of I address a significant challenge evidences the wisdom of bringing great minds onto campus to trade thoughts with our faculty about high-level research.

Michael P. Parrella

Dean
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

By the Numbers

The largest grant in University of Idaho’s history, funded with up to $55 million over five years through USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, will emphasize aiding Idaho food producers from underserved communities. About 100 producers willing to try designated climate-smart practices on their farms will receive payments through the program, which will register participants who will start commencing with projects this fall. At least 30% of enrolled producers will be from underserved communities. According to USDA Ag Census data, 31% of Idaho’s principal producers are women, 2.9% are Hispanic, 0.6% are Native American and 0.2% are of Asian descent. Among the funded partners in the grant are two sovereign tribal nations. The team will seek to enroll 100% of producers on those reservations who are tribal members.

Our Stories

Ag Talk Tuesdays Reaching Producers

On certain Tuesday mornings throughout summer, University of Idaho Extension experts and agricultural professionals meet virtually to share observations on crop progress, pest and disease threats and other timely topics in statewide food production.

Following each of these online roundtable discussions, a featured speaker addresses an agricultural topic of the week. Known as Ag Talk Tuesdays, UI Extension started these informal, coffee-shop style online group chats in 2018 to share current, science-based data and updates to help food producers and industry leaders make informed decisions.

Meetings start at 11 a.m. MT, last about an hour and are scheduled for the first and third Tuesdays of each month from May through August. The 2023 Ag Talk Tuesday schedule will include seven morning meetings, with no meeting on the first Tuesday of July due to Independence Day. Visit the Ag Talk Tuesday website to register for meetings, which are offered admission free. Each session is recorded and archived on YouTube for those who can’t attend live.

On the Friday following an Ag Talk Tuesday meeting, UI Extension specialists compile and send out a related newsletter, including Extension research, information on Ag Talk Tuesday discussion points in greater depth and an overview of the featured presentation. Archived newsletters are also available at the Ag Talk Tuesday website.

Participation in the program has grown steadily, rising from a combined 61 participants in the first year’s sessions to 163 participants registered for the 2022 sessions.

“I feel that as we get the word out it will grow even more,” said Kasia Duellman, a UI Extension seed potato specialist who helped organize the program. “I’d like to see hundreds of people register and I’d like to see at lease 50 people attend every session.”

Years ago, UI Extension hosted regular “fieldman lunches” during the summer to bring farmers, agronomists, food processors, industry officials, UI Extension experts and others from the public and private sectors together to discuss issues that surfaced each growing season. Duellman, along with Pamela Hutchinson, and Juliet Marshall agreed to work together to resurrect the discussions in a new format.

During the initial year in 2018, participants met at a different location in eastern Idaho each time for a luncheon discussion. The first event – a sponsored lunch hosted in Blackfoot – drew a large crowd.

Subsequent events not offering a free lunch, however, were sparsely attended, and some agricultural professionals said the lunch hour wasn’t an ideal time.

In 2019, the meetings adopted a hybrid model, hosted in person at a different location in eastern Idaho each time but with a Zoom option, enabling people to join remotely. They were also rescheduled for breakfast time. Ag Talk Tuesdays became entirely online in 2020, which proved to be a more convenient format and has been retained ever since. Zoom meetings also appealed to a statewide audience, with some participants even joining in from surrounding states.

While the featured talks often draw participants interested in a particular topic, the roundtable discussions attract a core group of regulars.

“Anyone who has information to share is invited to share it,” Duellman said. “That’s where we get the most feedback that this is something that really is valuable to participants.”

Featured speakers during 2022 covered topics such as herbicide resistance, maximum residue limits of farm chemicals on various crops set by trade partners, crop insurance updates and Farm Service Agency programs.

The 2023 series will begin on May 2 and end on Aug. 15. As usual, the first discussion will focus on the water outlook and the final discussion will feature economic outlooks. Other topics have yet to be determined.

Other program organizers include Pamela Hutchinson, an Extension specialist in potato cropping systems weed science; Juliet Marshall, head of the Department of Plant Sciences; Olga Walsh, an Extension specialist in cropping systems agronomy; and Douglas Finkelnburg, area Extension educator in cropping systems.

Intercropping Study Results Surprise

For more than a decade, University of Idaho Extension Educator Steven Hines sought an answer for Magic Valley farmers in need of a short-season crop to plant after harvesting corn silage for additional livestock forage.

Planting in late September, however, the days were simply too cold and short for anything to grow. At long last, Hines, of Jerome County, believes he’s found a simple and cost-effective solution to raise bonus forage for fall and spring grazing without forgoing a commercial silage crop. Better still, his research shows his approach improves soil health and may even boost corn silage yields.

Hines recently finished crunching the numbers from the final year of a three-year study evaluating a system of leaving more space between rows of silage corn and subsequently planting cover crop seed blends in those gaps, thereby lengthening the growing season for the cover crops to produce forage.

In his trials in Kimberly, Hines used a four-row planter, with corn rows in tight pairs. The pairs were spaced either 44 inches or 60 inches apart, compared with standard 22- or 30-inch row spacing. Hines also grew check plots with rows spaced 30 inches apart and no cover crops interplanted.

Cover crops are grown primarily to improve soil health, but producers are also looking for additional grazing opportunity. The cover crop mix included radish, clover and annual ryegrass, which survived the winter and provided both “soil armor” to prevent erosion and additional forage for potential spring grazing.

Though he assumed competition from the cover crops would reduce corn yields, he bet that he’d still come out ahead with interplanting based on the value of the forage. To his surprise, interplanting only improved silage yields in trial plots with 44-inch row spacing.

“I really see the producer who would adopt this as somebody who is looking for additional forage or somebody who is looking for soil health benefits,” Hines said.

Hines is still unsure as to why silage yields were greatest in fields with 44-inch row spacing, compared with rows spaced 60 inches apart as he anticipated silage planted in wider rows would benefit from more sunlight.

Nonetheless, in 2020, 44-inch spacing yielded 35 tons of silage per acre, compared with 30 tons per acre from the 30-inch-spaced check plots and 27 tons per acre from 60-inch spacing. His results were consistent in 2021, when 44-inch spacing yielded 36 tons per acre of silage corn, compared with 35 tons per acre from the check plots and 32 tons per acre from 60-inch spacing. In 2022, 44-inch spacing and the 30-inch check both yielded 37 tons of silage per acre, compared with 32 tons with 60-inch row spacing.

“The 44-inch spacing has been able to meet or exceed the standard 30-inch check,” Hines said. “We certainly thought there was potential for yield drag with cover crops competing with the corn.”

The 60-inch spacing yields a bit more cover crop dry matter than narrower rows, but Hines believes the extra silage from the 44-inch spacing makes it the most profitable scenario.

Hines started testing a version of the approach several years ago working with a Raft River dairy. The dairy operator raised corn for his dairy cows, aerially seeding the field with a cover crop blend when the corn plants were about a foot tall to provide additional forage for his beef herd. However, the corn crop’s growth stunted the development of his cover crop.

“Through reading about various practices with cover crops I noted a practice in the Midwest where they were planting on wider rows,” Hines said. “Part of that is to get more sunlight to the cover crops.”

For his recent trials, Hines planted the corn each season during the second week of May and used a fertilizer spreader to aerially broadcast cover crop seeds into the large gaps during the third week of June.

He’s shared his results with several colleagues and has yet to find a clear explanation to explain them. His best guess is that the diversity of plant roots in interplanted fields has created ideal conditions for beneficial mycorrhiza fungi in the soil, supporting the silage by making additional nutrients available.

“We proved we can do it and maintain yield, but boosting yield on the 44-inch centers? I’m still trying to figure that out,” Hines said. “One of the reasons we decided to do it a third year was to make sure that 44 inches wasn’t an anomaly. Something is going on here, increasing yield and giving us a graze-ready cover crop coming off the field.”

Research Provides Guidance on Fuel Breaks

An ongoing University of Idaho study should help officials with the federal Bureau of Land Management’s Twin Falls District Office better understand how and where to build fuel breaks for controlling wildfires.

Tim Prather, a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences within the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) and senior associate director of the U of I Rangeland Center, and Eva Strand, associate professor of rangeland ecology and management with the College of Natural Resources (CNR) are leading the research.

Fuel breaks comprise fire-resistant vegetation, enabling the BLM and rural fire protection associations to get a foothold toward controlling the spread of wildfires. The research team has been evaluating the species composition and effectiveness of 120 miles of linear fuel breaks adjacent to gravel roads throughout BLM land within the Magic Valley. They’re paying especially close attention to the role cattle grazing plays in maintaining viable fuel breaks.

“The big issue here is the fires are going to do a number of different things,” Prather said. “They continue to degrade the sagebrush steppe, so that has a conservation impact in that we see less area available for several different animals in the environment. In that the fires are impacting the ability of ranchers to utilize those areas, that’s a significant economic hit, as well.”

Erik Kriwox, fire ecologist with the BLM’s Jarbidge Field Office, and other BLM officials collaborated with the researchers in selecting which fuel breaks to study. The research data will also help inform planning of about 80 linear miles of additional fuel breaks scheduled for construction within Kriwox’s territory.

“It was really good coordination on U of I’s part to loop us in so we could make those recommendations of if you’re going to do this research here’s where we would like you to do it that would be the most valuable to us,” Kriwox said. “Even questions like orientations were questions that I had. Should we be focusing fuel breaks on north-south roads because the fires usually burn east to west or west to east?”

The three-year project started in October 2021. Kayla Johnston, a Ph.D. student studying forestry, range and fire sciences in CNR, has wrapped up her field work assessing 45 locations within fuel breaks south of Shoshone and in the desert between Twin Falls and Mountain Home. She gathered data from two designated plots at each location – one within the fuel break and one nearby.

Near Shoshone, fuel breaks have been fenced off 800 meters wide and up to 400 meters off the roadway, accommodating targeted grazing of cheatgrass as a fire-management tool. Within the desert, she’s evaluating fuel breaks established in 2016 and 2017. She’s collected data on vegetation cover by species, fuel load and plant height within the fuel breaks. Some of the species commonly planted within fuel breaks, such as forage kochia, are not native to the West but are chosen because they remain green throughout the season and don’t grow tall.

“One question I’m asking is if the non-native species are spreading outside of the fuel break,” Johnston said. “In my 45 plots, I saw maybe one or two forage kochia plants outside of the fuel breaks, so not really.”

Johnston is also evaluating targeted grazing, grazing of fuel breaks included within pasture and no grazing for their effectiveness in fuel break maintenance. 

In 2021, when it was dry, Johnston found fuel breaks with native perennial grasses and forbs that were not grazed had excessive vegetation compared with the grazed pasture nearby. She’s concluded fuel breaks with native grasses should be mowed or grazed even in dry seasons. In fuel breaks incorporated into pasture, cows attracted by lusher vegetation overgrazed certain spots, creating a situation in which highly combustible weeds could become established.

“Grazing is a great way to reduce fuels, but it’s got to be applied to the landscape very mindfully,” Johnston said.

Johnston plans to pore through fire records to determine if average wildfire sizes have shrunken over time where fuel breaks have been installed. She’s participated in regular Zoom calls with officials from the BLM and landowners with rural fire protection associations to update them on her progress.

“Fuel breaks are not meant to stop a fire. They’re meant to be another tool when firefighters are out there to stop a fire,” Johnston said. “When a fire breaks through one part of it, if there’s another fuel break not too far away firefighters can go and try to corral the fire next to it. Having a network of fuel breaks is really beneficial.”

Katherine Lee, an associate professor of agricultural economics and rural sociology, is conducting an economic study assessing the costs and benefits of building and maintaining fuel breaks. Part of Lee’s study will assess the value of forage for livestock grazing saved by fuel breaks versus the cost of creating and maintaining various types of fuel breaks.

“I think that would be a really key piece to see come out of that study, having something else to support putting funding into these projects — this is how much we’ve invested and this is how much it affects the permittees,” said Tony Erickson, supervisory fire management specialist with the BLM’s Twin Falls District.

The federal Joint Fire Science Program funded the research with a $409,580 grant under project No. 20-2-01-10, with work starting on Oct. 1, 2021 and scheduled to end on Sept. 30, 2024.

Faces and Places

The University of Idaho’s Rinker Rock Creek Ranch invites faculty to apply for funding to support a two-year graduate research assistantship for students conducting research at the ranch. Funding will be available this summer. Deadline for submission is 5 p.m. MT April 24. Submit proposals in an electronic format to Tracey Johnson and include “RRR Graduate Research Proposal” in the subject line.

Makenna DeWitt, a junior from Homedale studying agribusiness, Katie Hebdon, a junior from Nampa studying agribusiness, Courtney Marshall, a senior from Eagle studying agricultural education, and Cassie Moody, a junior from Middleton studying agricultural education, traveled to Denver in February for the 2023 Sigma Alpha Leadership Seminar. The trip was funded in part by generous donations from alumni and friends to the CALS Dean’s Excellence Fund.

CALS students in the Plant and Soil Science Club recently traveled to the Garden Creek Preserve located on the Snake River in Hells Canyon to complete a service project for the Natural Conservancy. This is an annual trip where members learn more about pruning apple trees. Emeritus Professor Bob Tripepi oversaw the trip.

Twelve UI Extension 4-H Youth Development participants recently attended the 4-H Ignite Teen Summit in Washington D.C., where they explored STEM, agriscience, healthy living, career readiness and emotional well-being through panels, speakers, workshops and networking opportunities. Attendees included 4-H’ers Tsones Nomee, Maryah Erickson, Danielle Vassar, Brighten Mullins, Soa’ali’I Moliga, Krisalyn Bisbee, Rainbow Henry, Kyra Fowler, Allie Higgins, Wendy Montaño-Lopez, Zitlaly Carreno Ocamp and Noely Nunez. The group was accompanied by UI Extension, Schitsu’umsh Reservation Administrative Assistant Cheryl Lockard, UI Extension, Canyon County Educator Tasha Howard and Area 4-H Educator Mike Knutz.

Dean Parrella and CALS CARET (Council on Agricultural Research, Extension and Teaching) representatives and Dean’s Advisory Board members Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association; Laura Wilder, Executive Director of the Idaho Barley Commission; and Pat Purdy of Purdy Enterprises were recently in Washington, D.C. participating in annual meetings and advocating on Capitol Hill for increased support for agricultural research, Extension and teaching nationwide.

Pam Hutchinson, UI Extension potato cropping systems weed scientist, has been selected to represent entrepreneurs, business owners and professions from the state of Idaho in the upcoming edition of “Who’s Who in America.”

Katy Doumit, a senior from Troy studying agribusiness, Trista Gates, a junior from Rupert studying agribusiness, Klay Hanrahan, a junior from Richland, Washington studying agribusiness, and Seamus House, a senior from Waitsburg, Washington studying crop management recently attended the 2023 American Farm Bureau Federation Fusion Conference in Jacksonville, Florida. The trip was funded in part by generous donations from alumni and friends to the CALS Dean’s Excellence Fund.