Winter cereals are a great idea, but will they work in Minnesota? with Jochum Wiersma
Good day and welcome to the University of Minnesota podcast Minnesota CropCast. I'm your host Dave Nicolai, University of Minnesota Extension Educator in Field Crops. I'm here along with my cohost Doctor. Seth Nave. Seth is a University of Minnesota Extension Soybean Specialist.
David Nicolai:We have a special guest with us today Doctor. Jokum Wursma. Jokum is located at Crookston, Minnesota. He is University of Minnesota Extension Specialist in all things small grain. So we thought we'd take an opportunity here to talk a little bit about what is happening in the state of Minnesota in terms of small grain acreage along with different crops and things that are developing.
David Nicolai:But before we jump into that, I know Seth you have a couple of quick questions as we set the stage because the sun is finally coming out this week, the rain is done and you wanna know about the crops.
Seth Naive:Yeah, I wanna know what's happening up in Northwest Minnesota. I have not had a chance to get up there this spring, so I've been imagining that things have been farmers have been pushing hard over the past few weeks before this last little shot of rain. I don't know how much rain you even had this week, but just wanna get a quick update from you how especially on the small grain side, but then also corn, soybeans, and others.
Jochum Wiersma:I you know, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. As far as crop planting progress in Northwest Minnesota, it started in earnest probably April, had a one little hiccup with a couple of showers, then we had really hot temperatures, you know, a week and a half ago, and then we've been cool once the rain started. In all, all the beets are in, all the small grains are in, a lot of the corn is in and up, soybeans are a lot of them are in. The larger operations probably have some soybean acres left.
Jochum Wiersma:The first beans are peeking through despite these really cold temperatures. Stands, beets, we've lost stands here and there due to crusting and the really hot dry winds just desiccating, this the this this four little beets. Corn, I haven't heard any problems with stands. Small grains, we've had a couple of problems with stands because of crusting and uneven depth control, which is always a challenge with the really big air seeders. Overall, I think we're in good shape.
Jochum Wiersma:The one crop that kinda took it in the shorts, especially in the trials, have been actually the winter cereals. I've never seen this much winter kill in the winter rye variety trials. The north most northern location, Roseau, has none. The most southern location of mine that I manage in La Center actually had substantial winter kill in the winter rye. The the North Dakota and the Gardner and the old Minnesota variety like Ryman actually came through the winter well, but the hybrid showed some winter kill for the first time.
Jochum Wiersma:And I think it was the open and very dry winter that basically caused these problems.
David Nicolai:Well, let's let's take off on that a little bit more in detail because we wanted to talk about some of these other what I would call non traditional small grain alternatives. Mean people typically, know when we mention something and they say well small grain, well that's all spring wheat. Well not necessarily, mean if you're looking even at the Upper Midwest, neighboring states, Wisconsin, Michigan and so forth. There are discussions and there's a lot of recommendations when it comes to other alternatives such as winter wheat, other winter crops and so forth. Can we segue into that, give us a little bit of a history, I don't know if you probably don't have all those numbers just right at your fingertips but you probably have some of them memorized.
David Nicolai:What kind of acreages are we looking at in terms of currently in Minnesota when it comes to some of these winter cereals and then we can talk a little bit more about the management and potential growth. So comments on that, I know you had a recent magazine article that you've been interviewed for. So hopefully, you're all prepped on this, Jochem.
Jochum Wiersma:K. So a little history. So we have a long history with spring wheat. After all, Minneapolis is called Mill City. At one time, actually, I think the wheat acres spring wheat acres peaked at about two and a half million acres.
Jochum Wiersma:But if you look at the spring cereals, it's not it's been in our generation actually, Dave, that there was 4,000,000 acres of oats in Minnesota that all but disappeared. We had when I started my career, there was three quarters of a million acres of of barley, mostly six row barley up in Northwest Minnesota that has all but disappeared. Winter wheat has always been kind of a small crop, cup you know, ten, twenty thousand, 30 thousand acres depending on the year. Some growers have been out because winter wheat is insured as spring wheat. There's been growers that have been able to get their APH up considerably with successfully raising winter wheat.
Jochum Wiersma:The newest one actually is winter rye and not the traditional open pollinated variety, but the hybrid rye out of Europe. That's a in a way, completely new crop. That actually now, I think, rivals, if not exceeds, spring barley acreage in the state. We started testing as a university. We started testing those hybrids ten years ago, and they have if you call it commercial heterosis, they out yield the old Rymans and Haslet's of the world by a good 40 plus percent.
Jochum Wiersma:So in the trials, Ryman might come in at 80 bushels to the acre on decent ground, and the hybrids will do a 20 to a 40 bushels. And so that makes them much more interesting. So if we take this broader historical perspective, Minnesota is the transition between winter cereals to the South, spring cereals to the North. And as if if indeed our winters get milder and our summers are getting hotter sooner, we're eventually probably gonna transition from a complete spring cereal scenario to more and more winter cereals, especially in Southern Minnesota.
Seth Naive:Okay. So just with this at that point, so I have a question for you. So how much of this limitation currently is related to winter hardiness versus pure demand driven? And I guess the second question is what's the, the real question is where is the future at? Is the future gonna, evolution of this gonna be driven by more breeding for winter hardiness that they'll increase the the utilization?
Seth Naive:Or is there more of a demand side related to to those winter winter crops do you think that that are gonna help pull that along?
Jochum Wiersma:You know, spring wheat, winter wheat, that is one scenario in there. Spring wheat is basically used predominantly as making every other wheat class look good. It its mixing characteristics, its baking characteristics, its gluten strength are used to make, for instance, winter wheat look better. Winter Spring wheat in a way is too expensive to use straight in any end product. The challenge I've had in my whole career, thirty years now, is that I'm in a way, spring wheat has to compete in our in our environment with soybeans and corn.
Jochum Wiersma:And right now, corn and beans are encroaching on what we historically would call spring wheat acres. In the in the South, spring wheat has a cap as far as that climate. It is a little bit too warm too soon, and so where I in this in the North can get to a hundred bushels an acre, which pencils for spring wheat in comparison to corn and beans. In the South, I can't get spring wheat yield enough to really be competitive.
Seth Naive:And you're competing against slightly higher soybean and corn Yeah. Yields and and higher land costs and
Jochum Wiersma:rental Yes. And so their winter wheat is starting to become a more obvious choice. Now winter hardiness in winter wheat has always been kind of a challenge in Minnesota. It's easier, especially since we have a very good program in South Dakota right now that puts out good competitive varieties that are winter hardy and have decent agronomics. And so the the winter hardiness question, especially in no till situations following soybeans, I think nine out of ten years, we do not have to worry about stand losses that are to the point where you have to rip up your stands.
Jochum Wiersma:Winter rye, and this is why I'm surprised this year with the hybrids desiccating out in these trials. Winter rye is another legion of its own for winter hardiness. It's up to this last winter, I would have said it's impossible to kill winter rye in Minnesota, even the hybrids. And I very seldom worry about it. I was surprised this year.
Jochum Wiersma:And so to me, winter rye, where can we get it? And this is where the challenge comes in, especially in Southern Mint. If we think about widening rotations and changing landscapes and ecosystem services, The challenge with wheat and with rye is the market. It's the local market as far as having elevators where you can actually bring your product and not have to haul it long distances. The all the elevators had to specialize because of the railroads.
Jochum Wiersma:They're set up for large volumes of corn and beans in the South. You have to really find those individual elevators that can manage that product and not have already from the get go a disadvantage in price because they widen their basis to, know, to manage their own risk. You have to have volume. The second challenge in the South is crop insurance. I write continuously have to write letters that the crop is fit for the area, etcetera, if there's no APHs.
Jochum Wiersma:And those are barriers to widen your rotation. We work I work with individual growers all the time to overcome some of those barriers. We have historically had more oat acreage, and so there is APHs in different counties. And luckily, RMA in Saint Paul, the regional office has been somewhat innovative in that for price discovery and for instance for crop revenue coverage, they let go of the futures price at the Chicago Board of Trade in the case of oats because it didn't mean anything for farm gate prices. They had discovered that themselves in their, you know, however they do their analyses.
Jochum Wiersma:And they, couple years ago, started a pilot where they now use the soft red winter wheat contract to do price discovery for oats. That was huge for oats in, for instance, Southeast Minnesota. That allows crop revenue coverage for those growers. That takes one barrier away. RMA has also basically now separated conventional rye, open pollinated variety, but hybrid rye.
Jochum Wiersma:You can separately insure it, which makes the crop insurance actually a viable option for that crop. But ultimately, you need a market. In the case of rye, most of it right now still ends up in the distilling industry. For instance, in Roseau County, Northeast min of Northwest Minnesota, Roseau, Pennington County, Marshall County, There's an aggregation point in Tea Forever Falls, and that all that goes into Kentucky, into the distilling industry. There isn't enough whiskey made to truly change landscapes across Southern Maine, and so you need to have it as a feed.
Jochum Wiersma:And that's where the challenge comes in. The feed industry is completely geared up as if we look at swine on corn and soy meal for very good reasons. If you go to Northwest Europe, you go to Denmark, Northern Germany, a lot of the swine rations there are 50 to a % rye. And so and we have the research now in The US. You can have the same gains.
Jochum Wiersma:You actually have a couple of advantages with feeding rye. Meat quality doesn't change. But you are as it's been explained to me by those that understand this, we are in the valley of death when it comes to product adoption. It's a chick I call it the chicken and egg. Feet males are willing to do it.
Jochum Wiersma:Individual swine operators are willing to switch, and the growers are willing to switch, but none of them is willing to take that first step and say, okay. Let's integrate it and let's do this. In other areas in The US, we've had more success with introducing rye into swine rations, but for different reasons.
Seth Naive:So just to throw out this last piece to this, and you alluded it alluded to it with this ecosystem services comment, is, you know, getting some additional bonus for these crops as cover crops. So if we treated them in a system as if they're cover crops or for farmers that are maybe mandated to put a cover after, you know, a canning crop or or if there is some future governmental regulations around covers, that would quickly change this calibration. Right? Is that is is that a reasonable assumption?
Jochum Wiersma:I I think that's a reasonable assumption. If if indeed we start looking at, you know, cropping systems and rotations, adding a third crop in of itself already creates a lot of advantages. If you just look at the economic, incentivizing that further and going beyond just having a cover crop for the sake of a cover crop, but actually consider it a third stream of income rather than an expense, I think we can make this. A one in three rotation is with a cool season annual in the system, whether that be winter wheat or winter rye across the South or oats as a spring cereal completely changes the other two enterprises in your in your system. Economists call that an opportunity cost.
Jochum Wiersma:The savings for instance in herbicides when you start being more effective in managing your seed bank because that's where we're at in weed control. The savings you can have on the side of your stacks on the corn hybrids where extended diapause corn rootworm. If you have problems with your populations on western corn rootworm, those savings are part of the rotation. They're a benefit of the rotation. So economists call this opportunity cost.
Jochum Wiersma:You have to attribute some of those benefits that you receive on those other two enterprises to your rotational partner. I'm fully aware that small grains probably always are gonna be the black sheep in your enterprise analyses. They're never gonna pencil as good as corn and beans do. But if you look at the whole system, I think there's a benefit. And individual growers that I work with, there's a there's a farmer around Marshall that has maintained a three year rotation through all these these years.
Jochum Wiersma:I work with an organic grower that has small grains in the rotation where he clearly admits, you know, corn and beans pay the bills, but I have to have small grains in the rotation to be able to make it work. I think if we get to that and we consider it rather than a cover crop actually an income stream, we have opportunities.
Seth Naive:Well, I was just I was just thinking Dave wants to jump in here. But I just thinking that, you know, if you think about a Christensen Farms or something like this, a big swine operation, if they can monetize their feed sourcing around, you know, CI scores or something like this Yep. And so they can I I was just thinking back to your your feed mill manager and your nutritionist, animal nutritionist trying to make this call? That's actually an easy call for them to make because they can write all these matrices and they can do all the economics. And it's an easy trigger to pull as long as someone above them gives them clearance and says that if you include this, as a source, in in our rations, then we are gonna get extra credit on our label or something like this.
Seth Naive:And that that would all happen then pretty quickly if this could all kinda come together.
Jochum Wiersma:So so so, you know, one of the things you have to become in academia is is be a cynic. One of the things that is is interesting, all the and this is something we've worked on with with all the major pork producers and processors is they all claim indeed they wanna have regenerative agriculture and they worry about the carbon footprints. Rye is hands down changes that whole equation. But ultimately, for an individual finisher, it's cost, feed cost, and security, and reliability, and supply. And that's where we're in this valley of that.
Jochum Wiersma:It it's everybody is staring at each other who's gonna take the first step. On the back of a napkin, I did the calculations once at a 50% substitution rate of the current swine ration, including winter rye, you're looking at a million acres across southern men with just what there is as far as a population of of of basically the production of of pork.
David Nicolai:You know A million Go ahead.
Jochum Wiersma:Go ahead.
David Nicolai:Well, I was gonna ask
Jochum Wiersma:A million
David Nicolai:Go ahead.
Jochum Wiersma:A million acres really changes the landscape in Southern Maine.
David Nicolai:I wanted to we would be remiss if since having you on that we didn't talk a little bit here on the agronomics. For those people especially in Southern Maine or the people that are listening may not be familiar, if you were to take us back to school and write a recipe and so forth, let's just review a little bit on the timing from how things are looking in terms of that and the proper seed bed and so forth for planting winter wheat and winter rye to be successful. What are some of the quick agronomic guidelines that you see company and I mean in terms of that and the fact that we may or may not have a lot of snow. I mean outside of other types of things but what does it take to be successful in in terms of having that that crop? What kind of grower do in other words?
Jochum Wiersma:I think winter cereals to reduce risk, you start looking at a no till operation. It doesn't need to be continuous no till, but establishing the winter cereals in a no till seed bed ideally following soybeans. And then for Southern Min, that means ideally around the October 1. Okay. That right away creates a challenge.
Jochum Wiersma:Are my beans off already? In in a perfect world, those that would start this enterprise would have part of their soybean acres, half a maturity group earlier. That just opens the window enough that the years that the chances of you get being able to establish your winter cereal every single year successfully improve. Gonna be years it's still gonna be challenged. It's gonna be you're gonna be doing everything at the same time, but you wanna follow soybeans.
Jochum Wiersma:One of the reasons for that is fusarium head blight. Fusarium head blight is stock corns of stock rotten corn, you don't wanna follow a small grain after corn. So beans are the perfect rotational partner in that sense. It also makes sense from a water management standpoint. You have a larger recharge period, and you can actually if we talk about cover crops, establish a legume after your winter wheat and winter rye harvest that will give a credit for your corn if we talk ecosystem services.
Jochum Wiersma:The only challenge in that is that you don't solve the problem of nitrates moving off the landscape after corn. That that still remains a challenge in that ideal scenario. The rye is almost fail safe to establish. Winter wheat is second to that. They're easy to establish.
Jochum Wiersma:You don't need much, but we have a little bit of challenge with equipment wise. You're gonna have to find in a no till situation equipment around that can establish the it. Seating is easy. So does that answer it, Dave?
David Nicolai:Oh, yeah. It it it does. I I I think just take it one more one more step. From your experience in terms of marketing that crop on the other end here and it used you've alluded to that but what are some things that growers should do in advance in other words they shouldn't be just harvesting in the, you know, when it's when it's ready and then thinking about, okay, now what what do I do with it? Where do I go?
David Nicolai:And so to speak. Any any guidelines is as far as, you know, thinking ahead here in terms of adequate marketing?
Jochum Wiersma:So a couple different ideas. I have one grower I've worked with who produces durum, which is really an a very small crop in Minnesota. I he might be the only one of maybe maybe there's two more in the state that produce durum. And I when we started this conversation, I said, where are you going to bring it? And he's on the West Side Of Minnesota, and he trucks it all the way to the East Side.
Jochum Wiersma:So it's an individual initiative that he figured out the market for himself and made that pencil. And he literally crosses the whole state on Highway 12. And so that's a long haul, but it pencils for him. The other in idea that has come out of Southeast Minnesota is, you know, trucking is expensive and because farms generally are a lot smaller in that area and don't all have semis, there is now basically this informal coop that aggregates at the farm level and then starts hauling it to one of the big oatmeals, in this case to Iowa. And so they're they manage it, the grain flow that way because you are gonna have to haul it further than your corn and beans.
David Nicolai:Okay. Just a quick spot I wanted to make out about oats. We've got a lot of conversation with the potential of other other mills and other things coming into Minnesota, other groups. We've always had a special market you know in certain colors of oats you know irregardless of whether or not that's really an agronomic decision but any comment about that you mentioned of course our acreages higher, lower, Is there potential here in in that? You wanna talk a little bit about that opportunity?
Jochum Wiersma:If I've learned anything over to my thirty year career is if there's an opportunity, farmers will grab it if they're if it makes some money. It is that simple. The growers in Minnesota are very apt to smelling out opportunities and adapting quickly and monetize on those. There are initiatives in Southeast Minnesota to indeed have more local supply of oats. What I hope happens is that when the acreage isn't large enough yet, that those processes kind of roll with the punches.
Jochum Wiersma:In other words, if we have a year where we don't all make 36 pounds, but 35 pound oats, that they're still gonna process those. We're when you get into a foods market, the challenge is that it doesn't is that if they no longer can just take the cream of the crop because that will turn off the grower in a hurry because the feed markets are no longer there. Unless you have a low basically, on farm use for that subpar crop. And by subpar, I don't mean horrendous quality, but the 35 versus your 36 pound
David Nicolai:A test weight we're talking here. Yes. Yeah.
Jochum Wiersma:Weight here isn't gonna make or break that miller. But if all of a sudden the grower can't, you know, unless it's a steep discount, no longer has a market for it, he has a problem.
Seth Naive:Yeah. I I this is a this is really important question. And a lot of this stuff kind of the secondary market for these products, these specialty products kind of evolve along, you know, that it's kind of it's kind of a tag along from the primary product in most cases. But if you can develop that secondary market along with it intentionally, I think there's a lot better opportunity for success. I think that's part of what you're saying.
Seth Naive:Yeah. I think in organic oats, it's probably there because there seems to be a lot of demand for organic feed for animals. And so, and maybe that's part of the, part of why I hear so much discussion about organic oats, or maybe it's just simply a demand driven thing, is that the oats that are most sought by the system are currently organic. Maybe maybe that's maybe that's the issue, or maybe it's just regionality of the processing. But I think finding, again, going back to these animal systems where they're able to utilize these alternative energy sources.
Seth Naive:You know, I spent a lot of time in Asia, and They're always shopping around for rice hulls or, you know, cassava or whatever they can throw in. And they're used to having more than corn and soybeans around. So I think if you could find a value proposition where folks could pull in some of these second products, that would be great.
David Nicolai:Do we agronomically, Yokum, have adequate yield test weight and from a variety standpoint on in terms of oats, is there anything that's really low that breeders have to be working on or do we have quote the horsepower already out there and available as it more of a matter of economics, winter and so forth. But I mean, is from a genetic standpoint, are we well positioned in terms of oats given programs in Minnesota and other states?
Jochum Wiersma:There are a couple of really active public breeding programs. Wisconsin is still active. South Dakota is very productive. Minnesota is is in the game. So we have genetics that are local.
Jochum Wiersma:The biggest challenge is that straight cutting is is still difficult with oats. The varieties we have are not always amenable to straight cutting that adds challenge to harvest and maintaining quality. But the biggest problem is crown rust. I think crown rust when left untreated in certain years really does a number on on it. And really you lose test weight in in bushels.
Jochum Wiersma:And convincing smaller growers that have never dealt with fungicides with small grains and haven't made that part of their whole operation is where I can see we can make the biggest gains for production.
David Nicolai:Well, thank you. This has been a very good overview of of opportunities and and challenges. Any last words here, Jochem, or you would like to provide the audience in terms of the things that we were recovered and talked about?
Jochum Wiersma:No. Thanks for the opportunity.
David Nicolai:Well, super. I I think we're gonna have you on a couple of different University of Minnesota programs upcoming here more from a standpoint of management and tests on our field notes program. So we look forward to visiting with you again with that. So Seth, anything else that you have at this point?
Seth Naive:No, it's been great.
David Nicolai:Alright, very good. Alright, well thank you. This has been the University of Minnesota podcast Minnesota CropCast. Our guest today has been Doctor. Yoke Morsimer from University of Minnesota, a small grain specialist located up in the Crookston area.
David Nicolai:I'm your host Dave Nicolai along with my co host Doctor. Seth Nave, Extension soybean specialist. Thanks for listening and have a good day.
