Small Grains with Jochum Wiersma
Good day and welcome to the University of Minnesota podcast Minnesota CropCast. I'm your host Dave Nicolai. I'm a University Minnesota Extension educator in field crops. I'm here today along with our cohost doctor Seth Nave. Seth is University of Minnesota soybean extension specialist and Seth it is the wintertime and we're thinking about already planting for this spring and so we invited in who else but representative from up in the snow country in Northern Minnesota, doctor Jokim Wirzma.
Dave Nicolai:Jokim is a University of Minnesota Extension small grain specialist. And Jokim, how are you faring this well in terms of this cold weather here? Are you still out and around and functioning up there in Crookston area?
Jochum Wiersma:Well, it is cold. They didn't close campus here, or we haven't gone on reduced operations on this campus.
Seth:You're definitely tougher up there for sure.
Dave Nicolai:I Well
Jochum Wiersma:It is it but it is nippy, and it hasn't been this nippy, with as many blizzards in a couple of years. This is more a what I would call traditional winter, which is a stark contrast to last winter.
Dave Nicolai:You know, at this time of the year where where the homeowners get their seed catalogs and think about their gardens, What about these small grain growers? What kind of options do they have to look and think about growing small grain and dream about those fields next year? The Minnesota crop improvement or other sources? Tell us a little bit about what that's going on. And I I think that you've been hitting the road a little bit to spread the gospel on small grains.
Dave Nicolai:Have you not?
Jochum Wiersma:Yeah. So I was on the road last week with the small grains update in the Northwest part of the state starting in Dilworth and working our way up to Roseau. Saw a fair number of growers, and I talked to some of the seed dealers as well just to gauge indeed what everybody is thinking for next year. Betsy Jensen from, the farm management group, talked. She's an instructor.
Jochum Wiersma:She's been for twenty five years, I believe. You know, nothing looks pretty on paper right now cash flow wise. And wheat has had is is looking very tough, actually. And so sentiment right now is that seed is starting to move. Guys are stay have made choices, starting to clean seed, but there's definitely gonna be an uptick probably in corn acres.
Jochum Wiersma:And so it's gonna be interesting to see March's report on, prospective plantings when USDA comes out.
Seth:And, those, those acres are, the additional corn acres are gonna come from small grains, or you're gonna see it from soybean too? What do you think?
Jochum Wiersma:Good. I I'm not sure, but I definitely it's gonna be part of it is gonna come out of wheat.
Seth:Yeah. And I
Jochum Wiersma:think You know, the and it probably the majority is gonna come out of wheat would be my guess. They've had you know, we've had a very nice fall again this year. And so despite a little bit later planting on the corn acres, then we'd like to see. By the time everything was said and done, those yields were way above expectations, and they had very little drying cost, if any.
Seth:Yeah. So you've had several really good corn years. I think that's probably probably part of the the dynamic going on. Right? It's not it's not that soybeans and wheat have been so bad besides the market.
Seth:It is it is it is really the the fact that we've had really unusually, and maybe even I don't know. Can we say that we can't expect it every year? Is that is that fair to say with the corn side?
Jochum Wiersma:Well, only history will tell whether or not this was just a fluke or if this is new reality. And the the interesting is thing that one of the seed dealers said, well, you know, right now, it doesn't look at it's gonna have as many wheat acres. But if we have an early spring, the guys won't be able to hold back. They're gonna put wheat in the ground too. Yeah.
Seth:And that that pulls probably out of corn. I don't know if there's much nitrogen goes down in the fall, but you've got I think that corn and and small grains, wheat kind of fits together. And so that's kind of my questions, is where those acres come from. And I know farmers can find acres wherever they need to. We don't ever really move more than about 10% nationally on acres, and probably Minnesota is the same way.
Seth:And so it's just, it's not like people change full rotations in a year, it's just that they may have a quarter that they switch out, or maybe there's a portion of some fields that they have that they move, and it seems like a little bit around the edges. But I'm just kind of trying to figure out where the small grains and the soybeans fit together. But I can definitely see the wheat coming right, you know, corn coming really right out of that wheat acreage.
Dave Nicolai:Hey, Yoakum, not everybody was obviously able to maybe to attend or some of these meetings are gonna be slated to come in February in Southern Minnesota. But so take us inside one of these meetings. What are what are some of the topics that you covered? Subject matter, you talk about, you know, most recently released varieties, pros and cons, little production, disease control. What are what are some of the items and topics that you have covered and will be covering?
Jochum Wiersma:In most years, when I'm on the circuit, it one big part, of course, is indeed variety selection, strength and weaknesses of all the varieties. We we're in a fortunate situation in that market yet that we test all the varieties in our variety trials that the university runs. We talk about what we think are probably the best choices to that meet most of the criteria as far as, you know, yield quality and especially disease resistances. Two major drivers in that, realm, of course, are fusarium head blight. And more and more, it's also bacterial leaf streak because we cannot we don't have a bacteria site that's effective against bacterial leaf streak.
Jochum Wiersma:And super susceptible varieties will lose bushels and especially test weight if that disease shows up early in the season. And like other diseases, that that's driven by high humidities and high winds, which we seem to have ample of these years these recent years. The other thing we talk about a lot in the last couple years has been preharvest sprouting and how to combat that. Part of that is variety selection. Part of that is tactics on how to, you know, be more aggressive on the front side.
Jochum Wiersma:Don't wait until the crop is overripe, etcetera, etcetera. Start at 18% moisture rather than waiting on the grain to be 13% or 13 and a half percent grain moisture before you start up the combines. This year, I didn't talk much about disease management. I did that in the last winter, especially because we had, in a way, a thirty year anniversary of the nineteen ninety three, ninety four outbreak of fusarium head blight. Last 2024 season was pretty bad in in many ways rivaled, those early years of my career.
Jochum Wiersma:This year, it was mostly genetics, And there are some interesting things in North Dakota State University's program, got taken over by a young breeder, seven years ago now. And the first products are coming out of that program, and it's, made it Right away, he's hitting a home run with a variety that is, you know, once in a decade released that is more than LSD unit above everything else for yield and and quality. It has a couple of drawbacks and weaknesses, and one of those unfortunately is pre harvest sprouting.
Seth:Is
Dave Nicolai:what's the mix of spring wheat versus barley and other small grain mixtures in in Central And Northern Minnesota? How is it shaking out in in terms of market potential and what what folks are thinking about growing?
Jochum Wiersma:Barley has gone completely to a contracted crop and has all but virtually disappeared out of the state. Last winter, the Minnesota barley initialization of barley growers actually disband. There is no longer a checkoff for barley in the state. Oat acres outpace barley acres by I think it's almost tenfold if off the top of my head. Barley's almost completely disappeared.
Jochum Wiersma:And that's unfortunate if you wreck realize that in the early nineties before scab outbreak, there was three quarters of million acres of barley in the state.
Dave Nicolai:So is it a disease phenomenon, or is there is there economics in in the markets? Or what's drawn that?
Jochum Wiersma:It's it's a little bit of everything. Of course, fusarium headbite, played a major role. Freedom to farm played a role in it. And price of of course played a role with it. And then as eventually, of course, you got to the point where there were fewer and fewer elevators, and it that treated as a commodity, and it all went to contract.
Jochum Wiersma:And those contracts, some years are actually good, and people would like to get back in. But if they have a set of set growers already, contract growers with its where they had relationships with, it's hard to get back in.
Dave Nicolai:So then it's it's spring wheat. So flip that over. What about Southern Minnesota? Do we have there are winter cereals and fall planted crops filling in there, or or what's happening to that mix in in Southern Minnesota for small grain?
Jochum Wiersma:Winter wheat is a little bit up and down acres, and it's it's small. It's it's like barley acres in the state. There's there aren't that, you know, 20,000 acres maybe of winter wheat across the state. There aren't that many. There's in the South, when I talk to growers, it's it they go back and forward between wanting spring wheat or wanting winter wheat.
Jochum Wiersma:And individual growers will actually switch from year to year depending on how the falls run and how the springs run. Winter rye is 30,000 or so acres in the state. There, we have a little bit more latitude as far as planting date. You can push it probably a little bit later than winter wheat. Although the window of of opportunity and the window ideal window is pretty much the same as it is for winter wheat.
Jochum Wiersma:There we have some very dedicated growers in the South who do have done really well. And then as far as, you know, barley, there's a couple of acres of barley down south, especially in the around New Ulm that doesn't move very far away from New Ulm and is used locally. And then there's always been oats, and there is a little bit of an uptick in oats across the South.
Seth:Okay. So that's that helps me a lot. You know, I see these things. I see it in the field. But it's sporadic.
Seth:And it just you know, the number of acres is hard to estimate those things. And I never get digging deep enough into the NASS data to find those things. So I really, really appreciate that update. So let's go back to the rye question, I guess. So this help me understand the rye demand is how much of that goes anything that gets harvested for grain, is that all for seed?
Seth:Or is there some other value in the grain? Or is how much of that rye is chopped as rilage? What how are people using rye? And why is rye, favored? And and I guess part of that same question is why it's favored over over, wheat, winter wheat specifically.
Jochum Wiersma:Yeah. It's hard to kill winter rye
Dave Nicolai:Yeah.
Jochum Wiersma:Which is why it's probably one of the favorites in the cover crop industry because it needs very little moisture to get actually grow get going in for as far as germination. It can find water where no no other crop can find water and germinate and grow. And so it fails relatively fail safe to establish in the fall. Then it's the most winter hardy of all the cereals. Last year went to the very open and dry winter last year was actually the first time I've ever seen winter rye, winter kale.
Jochum Wiersma:And I was I was surprised. You could definitely see varietal differences that I had never seen before. The location where I had the least amount of winter kill actually was Roseau. Why? Slightly it was a no till trial and had slightly more snow covered throughout the winter.
Jochum Wiersma:And so I think ultimately desiccation, was more so than absolute minimums because it wasn't a super cold winter, but it was a very open and dry winter.
Seth:Where
Jochum Wiersma:does it go if it survives the winter? Up north, there is, especially Rosehill and Pennington County, parts of Marshall County. There is now an aggregation point in Tifferville Falls, and I think it's a half unit train as a whole goes directly into Indiana, Southern Indiana close to the Kentucky border, and that all disappears in the distilling industry. The rest of the acres in Minnesota are hodgepodge of end users. There are mills that buy some.
Jochum Wiersma:There are processors that buy some both food and feed grade. Some doesn't leave the farm and is milled on farm in swine rations. It's a very good substitute for corn and swine rations. The Europeans had already proven that. And local research, both organic and conventional, has in a way confirmed that in the American system of finishing operations, it works pretty much the same way.
Seth:Interesting. Yeah. That's that's wild. And I do you know, I brought up the the question about rilage is that I'm hearing around some of the big dairies that there's farmers around those that the big dairies are looking for some some forage early season. So they're contracting with some farmers for for rye, so that they can get some silage packed early in the season.
Jochum Wiersma:Yeah. And and acreage wise, that's the hardest one to probably get an estimate on because it doesn't show up in any ag statistic because finally, those acres more than likely end up as bean acres, soybean acres. Yep. And what is chopped is a mix of winter triticale and winter rye. Ah.
Jochum Wiersma:Both of them are not that they're mixed within the field, but it's as far as acreage for chop for chopping and early season, it's it's one of those two.
Seth:Okay. Well, this has been glad we called you.
Dave Nicolai:So you mentioned before, Jochem, that one of the things that you talk about the meanings is, you know, varietal characteristics. Are the different sources that are out there for growers if they wanna do a little home study in terms of varietal characteristics, in terms of things that might be on the web or different sources. And then if they are going to do that and sit down and look at that, what are the two, three, or four, five or different characteristics that they need to keep in mind when they are making those final selections, I guess? And in terms of spring wheat, I'll I'll just pick on that for right now.
Jochum Wiersma:No. For any it it actually is broader than just spring wheat. Mhmm. University of Minnesota basically was charged with doing independent validation of claims in variety trials ever since its inception. And in the small grains world, we still do that.
Jochum Wiersma:So if you go to varietytrials.umn.edu, you will see the the university trials for a bunch of crops, all the small grains, and those are published annually. And in the case of barley, oats, winter wheat, spring wheat, winter rye, winter triticale, in most all those programs, we solicit entries from both the public and the private industry and the public institutions in neighboring states. We test them in some cases five or six locations in the state. In the case of spring wheat, we have 15 locations across the state. All that data, not just yield and grain protein or maturity, but also disease reactions to the most and the the level of resistance to the most important economic dis diseases are in those different tables.
Jochum Wiersma:That gets summarized and published for spring wheat, for barley, and for oats in both Prairie Grains magazine. So if you are receiving Prairie Grains, you've seen those results already because that went out in November. And in the Minnesota Seed Guide, that is a product co coproduction of the Ag Experiment Station, Minnesota Crop Improvement, and is it Ag Week or Farm Journal? It's one of those two.
Dave Nicolai:I think it's Ag Week. Yeah. Probably.
Jochum Wiersma:Yeah. That that every single grower in the state, I believe, receives.
Dave Nicolai:So there's a lot of information. Now there's one other thing that's coming up here that you talk about that you're involved with here. I am well, you're can you're the principal author on here, and that is we haven't had it in a number of years, but I understand my sources tell me that there is going to be an exciting new small grain production guide that we're gonna be seeing here in the very near future. You wanna talk a little bit about that?
Jochum Wiersma:I don't know if it's an exciting feat
Dave Nicolai:Well, it might not
Jochum Wiersma:be or read for that matter. Okay. But there is gonna be a third edition of the small grains field guide. It's been a long time in the making for several reasons. There are no major shocking new, you know, principles discussed, but there is an update.
Jochum Wiersma:There are things that are you know, have changed in the since the first one came out in the early two thousands. And so it's a it's it's a field guide, and so it's gonna fit on the, you know, your dashboard in the pickup.
Seth:Well, I mean, just just having something print for people, I think, is appreciated. Not we're not we just don't get very much in print anymore. So I know farmers really appreciate print material, especially, small format stuff like that. So I I'm sure just the format itself, let alone the good content, is gonna be appreciated.
Jochum Wiersma:We we are choosing to do both indeed, not just digitally. We are gonna also have hard copies, because like you, I appreciate a hard copy now and then.
Dave Nicolai:Is this something to look forward to, March, April time frame here at this point in time?
Jochum Wiersma:Our goal is indeed to have it out and available before the season starts.
Dave Nicolai:Super. And if they wanna see more about that, I imagine we will have information at the University of Minnesota web pages for small grain in that particular area.
Jochum Wiersma:That would be my guess and hope.
Dave Nicolai:Yes. Well, that'll be great. Now let's talk a little bit about now we're coming towards the January. What's what's on your travel docket for meetings and so forth if producers are interested here in February that's coming up and maybe a little bit about when, date, and where?
Jochum Wiersma:So, there's gonna be a couple more, programs in Minnesota. We have the best of the best coming up February in, in Grand Forks and in, Morehead. But if we talk small grains exclusively, the the Southern small grains tour, which includes Grand Rapids, which is not exactly Southern Maine, but it's a nice it fits nicely in the programming. We'll be in Grand Rapids. We'll be in Gold Spring.
Jochum Wiersma:We'll be in Lucentre, Rochester, Slaton, and Benson, if I have them all there, in the week of February 16 through the twentieth. There'll be announcements in the crop news. Those that have been in the past will get email reminders, and it's an opportunity where this year, I'll there'll be a fair amount of focus on old production.
Seth:That you're gonna put some miles on your car for sure.
Dave Nicolai:Yeah. Let's just kinda close out and talk a little bit. Obviously, we there's a lot of interest in oats, quite a bit in Southern Minnesota in in terms of that. You alluded to that in in the past, but does it look like we have some good varieties and and capacity for oat production again?
Jochum Wiersma:Yeah. You know, the public programs, especially South Dakota's program, is cranking out really good varieties. Wisconsin released a new one that is breaking yield records left and right in the state. There are challenges. There are challenges with oat production.
Jochum Wiersma:In 2024, we unfortunately got reminded that oats is not immune to fusarium head blight either. But there is opportunities in the marketplace as well, and so we're gonna focus and I'm gonna focus in some of my talks on agri you know, variety selection, where varieties fit, and, focus on some of the basic agronomics and some of the challenges and how you, you know, head those off.
Seth:So there's a lot of interest around Southern Minnesota. Obviously, there's a farmer co op getting started. You know, we've seen oats in Northern Iowa for a lot of years. I see those when I go down and see my family in in Northern Iowa. You know, a lot of those are organic.
Seth:I know grain millers over, I think, in Osage has been producing oats and exporting oats. So what if we're going to grow more oats in Minnesota, where where are those going? Is there a new market? Are they we shifting things around? Is this is this a non gluten, gluten free alternative that's expanding?
Seth:Or what what's the big picture on oats?
Jochum Wiersma:The big picture on oats is is interesting in that it's a little bit of everything, and that's a good thing. Perm, the the pet food plant in perm, which is a is a major, consumer of of cereals in their diets, whatever they make, is has shifted part of their production towards oats. And so you have seen an increase in old acres in Northwest Minnesota. And you come across old acres where I hadn't seen old acres before in my career. In the South, there is problems with groundwater and a desire to widen rotations, and oats fits there.
Jochum Wiersma:And part of that is because, you know, if you just look at the Southeast part of the state, there used to be 500,000,000 a basically, half a million acres of oats grown. Not in our lifetime necessarily, but I believe by the time you get to the mid fifties, so seventy five years ago, half a million acres of oats. Where did that go? Well, the two largest oat mills are indeed in Minnesota and in Iowa, and those are the largest in the world. And so they sourced it locally, and they like to source oat locally when other areas are not as accessible.
Jochum Wiersma:This happened, for instance, when there was a lot of oil being pumped in Western North Dakota. The railroads were occupied, and the grain millers couldn't get oats out of Western Canada, one of their major areas where they source oats. At that time, there was a renaissance, which is now about fifteen years ago. For different reasons, there is there is room for more acres in Southeast Minnesota. And part of the is because it can go very well into swine diets as well.
Jochum Wiersma:I know several old grow of several farrowing of grow of producers that farrow that love weaning pigs off of oats rather than standard feed.
Seth:That's wild. Yeah. There's a lot going on. And I just am imagining in my head that I hadn't thought about this before, but oats imports into The US, you know, that might be one of the silver linings to some of the trade issues we've got with China. We think a lot about export or to Canada.
Seth:We think a lot about exports to Canada, but I suppose we've got net imports into The US from Canada on oats. So trade difficulties might benefit the local pro local oat price here a little bit.
Jochum Wiersma:Yeah. And we even now and then import out of the EU, believe it or not.
Seth:Okay. Well, there's somebody else we've Pissed off.
Jochum Wiersma:Don't go there.
Dave Nicolai:Well, I'm I think there's certainly
Seth:Dave's given me the hook. We're gonna cut this thing off here.
Dave Nicolai:Claim to claim claim to fame. I I just have to put one more plug in for my own Mhmm. Farming background as a as a kid, Yokum, but my dad was maybe he was one of the last or a few people down in in Renville County, and we we had hogs. But he was always a big proponent of oats in the hog diet. And this is this goes back, you know, into the, you know, into the sixties and and and so forth.
Dave Nicolai:So maybe maybe he saw the future there or just had something good, and he never he never really gave it up.
Seth:The reality is is people had a lot of horses around, and when they got rid of the horses, they still liked to grow oats. They had to find a lot of places to feed the oats. So they decided that the pigs liked the oats.
Dave Nicolai:Well, you know, as they say on the farm, Jochem, they needed the straw. So there you go.
Seth:And they all needed the straw. That was
Dave Nicolai:They needed the straw. So you gotta go bale oats.
Seth:Yeah. Oats straw for sure.
Dave Nicolai:This has been great. Thank you for your time today, Jochem. We're at end of our time here today for our podcast CropCast. We do appreciate that. And again, if people want to attend some of the sessions, they can pay pay attention to the University of Minnesota crop news or go online to some of the crop pages at University of Minnesota Extension web pages as well.
Dave Nicolai:So thanks again. We hope you stay warm there this next week or so under this cold weather but by now you're used to it. So appreciate you taking the time, Joakim. Thanks again.
Jochum Wiersma:Thank you for the opportunity.
Dave Nicolai:Alright. Thank you. Well, this has been the University of Minnesota podcast, Minnesota CropCast. My name is Dave Nicolai with University of Minnesota Extension a crops educator. And I'm here with my co host Doctor.
Dave Nicolai:Seth Nave, University Minnesota Extension soybean specialist and it's been great to have you along and we'll see you next time. Thank you.
