Ag Talk Tuesday Resumes

University of Idaho Extension’s popular virtual discussion series about Idaho agriculture, called Ag Talk Tuesday, will return for a seventh season beginning on May 7, taking participants on a deep dive into several key issues facing the industry.

There is no fee to participate in the bimonthly Zoom sessions, but advanced registration at uidaho.edu/ag-talk is required. Ag Talk Tuesday are scheduled for 11 a.m. to noon on the first and third Tuesday of each month from May through August.

At the beginning of each session, participants are invited to share local crop updates. Following the crop discussions, featured speakers address a chosen agriculture-related topic.

“In addition to giving participants a chance to hear about hot topics. we like to use Ag Talk Tuesday to introduce new faculty,” said Kasia Duellman, a UI Extension seed potato pathologist who is a co-organizer of Ag Talk Tuesday. “The sessions also give Extension educators and specialists the opportunity to highlight their research.”

Agricultural experts from outside of the university are also invited to serve as speakers to offer a variety of viewpoints:

• The series begins May 7, with a water supply update by Keith Esplin of the Eastern Idaho Water Rights Coalition and an agricultural outlook presentation by Josh Huff of Ag West Farm Credit.
• On May 21, U of I Distinguished Professor Sanford Eigenbrode will present work from Dr. Dane Elmquist, a recent U of I graduate who is currently a Conservation Cropping Outreach Extension Specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Eigenbrode will speak about the role of soil arthropods in soil health and Pacific Northwest wheat systems.
• The presenter for June 4 is Joan Campbell, a U of I researcher who will present on post-harvest weed seed control using light technology.
• On June 18, UI Extension economist Brett Wilder will speak on the landscape for corporate and family farms in Idaho.
• On July 2, Armando Falcon-Brindis, a new entomologist based at the Parma Research and Extension Center, will speak about his research and extension program that he is initiating this year.
• On July 16, nematologist Pooria Ensafi will discuss his research on nematodes associated with cereal crops and management strategies.
• On Aug. 6, UI Extension educator Reed Findlay will speak about the use of annual alfalfa as a source of nitrogen for subsequent small-grain crops, research that is being done in collaboration with fellow extension educators Joseph Sagers, Justin Hatch, Tom Jacobsen and Jared Gibbons and UI Extension barley agronomist Jared Spackman.
• On Aug. 20, UI Extension economist Pat Hatzenbuehler, an Ag Talk Tuesday regular, will speak about the Idaho crop profitability outlook.

Doug Finkelnburg, a UI Extension area educator of cropping systems, Pam Hutchinson, a weed scientist based at the Aberdeen Research and Extension Center, and Juliet Marshall, head of the Department of Plant Sciences, are also Ag Talk Tuesday program co-organizers along with Duellman.

The program has steadily increased its participants throughout the years. In 2023, 135 people — including crop researchers, farmers, agronomists, students, agribusiness representatives, financial institution representatives, Idaho Power officials, chemical company representatives, media, students, commodity commission representatives and others — registered for Ag Talk Tuesday.

Each season, Duellman periodically sends out an Ag Talk Report newsletter that includes summaries of selected featured presentations along with other interesting articles related to agriculture, research, and current season challenges.

The program originated in 2018 when Duellman and Hutchinson sought to revive a former UI Extension tradition of hosting informational lunches for agricultural fieldmen in eastern Idaho. The two originally co-hosted the lunch-hour discussions at locations spanning from Burley to Rexburg.

In 2019, they tried hosting the meetings over breakfast, also offering a Zoom option for people who couldn’t be there in person but still wanted the information.

“Logistically, hosting these face-to-face sessions at different locations across east Idaho became difficult for us during our busy summer months, and it was hard for people to get to them,” Duellman said.

The 2020 pandemic offered an unexpected solution by allowing the organizers to focus on virtual, online sessions only, which is the format used today. This allows sessions to be recorded and uploaded to the U of I CALS YouTube channel for viewing later.

Published in Catching Up with CALS