- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by (gentle guitar music) the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(lively guitar music) - Good evening.

You are tuned to "Montana Ag Live," originating tonight from the studios of KUSM on the very exciting campus that we call Montana State University.

And coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

I'll be your host this evening.

Those of you who have watched the program in the past know how this work.

All you have to do is provide questions, comments, and we will get them on the air to the best of our ability.

Without your questions and comments, this show can be plenty boring, but you can make it entertaining with some of your questions that challenges our esteemed panel this evening.

This evening's panel I'll introduce here in just a moment.

Starting off, way on my left is Uta Mckelvy.

Uta is our new plant pathologist, hired full-time just this past year.

Welcome on board.

She's very knowledgeable, so if you have any questions concerning plant diseases, call me tonight.

We'll challenge her, make her think a little bit.

Our special guest this evening, Paddy Fleming.

Paddy's the director of Montana Extension Manufacturing Center.

Paddy's been here before one other time, but a lot of people don't realize that the extension does have a manufacturing center, and they help fledgling industries make it, most of the time, we hope.

But if you have questions about how industries start in this state, especially ag industries, good chance to ask those questions this evening.

Joel Schumacher.

Joel, welcome back.

Joe is an economist, ag economist, for Extension Service here at MSU.

Very knowledgeable, labor problems, lots of other economic questions that you may have, he can definitely answer this evening.

And Mr.

Dynamic, (laughs) Dave Baumbauer.

He's our horticulturalist this evening, and I know if you have questions about horticulture, any of the plants that you try to grow here in the state of Montana, good chance to ask those questions this evening.

And I do wanna mention that we have had a minor challenge with snow here in the Galton Valley this past couple days.

And we have one question that came in, I'll get to Dave in a moment, but we've had about 20 to 24 inches of snow throughout the valley, not out by Three Forks, not out by Manhattan, but from Belgrade on into Bozeman, it has been dynamic.

One of the best snowfalls I've seen in a long time.

Answering the phone this evening is Deanna Mydland.

She's here in the studio.

Deanna, thanks for being here.

And Judge Bruce Loble is taking calls remotely, so keep that phone ringing.

We'll have the phone number up here in a moment, and then we'll start answering those questions.

Paddy, tell us about your operation.

- Sure, Jack.

So 1996, Dr. Bob Taylor in the College of Engineering started the Montana Manufacturing Extension Center.

He got it approved by the Board of Regents and the legislature.

It is partially funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, partially funded by the Montana legislature, and then the remaining part of our budget we have to make up by charging our customers for our fees.

When we started in 1996, there were about 1500 manufacturers in the state of Montana.

As of this year, we are at about 4,500.

So we've seen amazing growth in manufacturing.

We have a staff of about 13 right now, with offices spread around the state.

We're loosely based on the Ag Extension Model, except that we do have to charge for our services and rather than help farmers and ranchers, we help manufacturing.

And if you talk about the definition of manufacturing, that's where you take something physical and you do something to it that changes its value, and that's called manufacturing.

So in manufacturing we have basically two different types.

You can call one of them value-added mining and the other one is value-added ag.

- You know, I like the term value-added ag, and a lot of people probably understand a little bit that you take a basic commodity and add value to it.

Give us some examples of how that's worked here in the state of Montana.

- So we have lots of great examples.

Going back to Wilcox's Ice Cream, to Wheat Montana, to High Country Beef Jerky.

Recently we have 41 Grains out of Scobey that just won an award.

They're taking pulse crops and making flour, chickpea flour out of it.

So anything that we grow or produce on a farm and ranch in the state, if we can add some value to it and get it to the market, we not only help the farmer that grew it, we get the profit there, but also we get the profit for the processing of it.

- Okay, so why have you, the Department of Ag, Montana Department of Ag has innovation grants and so forth.

Does your operation interact a lot with the Department of Ag in this particular arena?

- We sure do.

Those are called Value-Added Ag Producer Grants.

There's also, USDA puts those out, so does Montana Department of Ag.

These are fantastic opportunities for somebody to do a feasibility study.

I believe most of 'em go up to about $50,000 available, and the state or the USDA will pay half of that, and that way you can have a study done to determine whether putting a meat processing plant on your ranch is a good idea, and we'll pencil out in the next few years.

So we are often paid to do the study ourselves.

- Okay, thank you.

I neglected to say early on that we do take questions via email.

I haven't seen our phone number up on the screen yet, so that will be up shortly.

And we also take questions through Facebook or Meta, so those are your chances to send in questions and we can go that route.

Now, I have one that is very pertinent for Dave, and this came in via email this week and it reads, "Do I have to mention I am sick of snow?"

and every year this person tries to start plants indoors, I assume vegetables and tomatoes and so forth, but without, not much success.

any suggestions on improving that operation?

- So probably the most important thing that you can do is to improve the quality of light.

And so having a south-facing window is nice, but most modern houses have low-e glass, so that block some of the light coming in, so it's really challenging to have enough light.

And so, fortunately, LED horticultural lighting's made some great strides, mostly thanks to the cannabis industry, but anyhow, there's some really good lights out there.

They give you the ideal spectrum for plant growth, and more importantly, they don't give awful lot of waste heat, so they can be positioned fairly close to the plants.

And so a grow cart that has multiple trays, multiple shelves with a couple different levels of light, you can grow some really nice plants.

So that's probably the, like the number one thing you can add to improve the success of your garden starts is improving the light quality.

- Okay.

- And quantity.

- Do you have a price range for the cart that you just mentioned or something of that dimension?

- So just like a lot of things, you get what you pay for, and it's sometimes confusing when you look online to compare different light fixtures because they'll use different units as far as what the intensity is, and some of the units are confusing.

So you'll see like lux, which is kind of an old-fashioned unit.

Modern plant physiologists talk about micromoles per meter squared per second, which is a very odd thing to like talk about with just layfolks.

But typically like the higher the number and if the spectrum's designed, and a lot of these lights have this kind of purple glow because plants respond photosynthetically most to red and blue light, but, so those are the things.

So getting the most output in the appropriate spectrum.

- You know, bringing up an interesting point.

Every year, (Deanna speaking faintly) - Thank you so much, sir.

- About this time, but not this year, you see all these plants being sold at our big box stores, and various other places that are produced outta state or maybe with contracted greenhouses in the state.

Paddy, is there a potential for growing or somebody starting a business and growing transplants like tomatoes, peppers, and being relatively successful and would that be something you would work with?

- Yes, absolutely.

I also think there's a huge opportunity, a lot of people are taking advantage of this right now is fresh cut flowers.

- Okay.

Yeah.

And boy, they're not cheap.

(laughs) - I think that's why it's started.

- Okay, thank you.

From Helena, Joel, "What is driving all the interest in local foods?"

Any idea there?

- Oh, we've seen a bunch of things over the last few years.

I mean, this was growing before the pandemic, but certainly the pandemic had some sort of constraints on supply in general.

So they're kind of looking at, you know, like you can't get beef at the store, is there a local option?

So I think that was part of it, was just being able, you could source that product, but there's also been sort of kind of a local economic development story, kinda like Paddy was talking about with some of his businesses, that there's just an opportunity to capture more of that here.

So that's been going on.

And also, you know, Montana's population is growing, and has been, so that gives a little more dynamic, you know, you got a little few more customers, which might cut your transportation costs, that might make some of those businesses more viable, you know, in Montana compared to years past.

- Okay.

Uta, I have several questions.

Some from last week, some from this week, and also from emails.

A lot of the spruce trees and pine trees people are seeing in their yards and the shoulder belts are showing some brown needles.

They want to know why.

Some people think it's a disease.

Others think it's environmental.

- Mm-hmm.

- Any suggestions there?

- Yeah, so I mean, you know, browning could be due to a lot of reasons, but something that I've noticed a lot in this past week before it became winter again is what I call, what we call winter injuries.

So over the winter, conifers still have needles, so green tissue, so they still do photosynthesis and so they can literally dry out, and that can cause a browning of the needles.

And one way to maybe discern that from a disease is that this browning... Oh yeah, like shown in this picture here.

That's something that I took earlier this week.

So you see those brown needles, and the browning is typically on the south, southwest side of the tree where they get the most sunlight and yeah, so unless it's really bad, it's not gonna kill the plant.

Something to help prevent this is watering the tree throughout the season and well into the fall to make sure that they have adequate soil moisture throughout the winter.

That just helps the plant.

- Okay, good advice.

Question from last week that I kind of jumped around and didn't answer very well.

This person wanted to know will the panel from last week share the recipes that we showed on TV with the various pulse crops?

And we will be doing that.

They've been accumulated, and if you look at Ag Live at montanapbs.org over the next several days, those recipes should be up, and over the next couple of weeks we will have the Ag Live newsletter back up and they will also be in there.

Speaking of vegetables, tomatoes, this person from Whitefish would like to know the difference between determinant and indeterminate tomatoes.

- So there's obviously lots of different types of tomatoes out there, but probably the first kind of segregation is determinant versus indeterminate.

And so determinate tomatoes grow to a certain height.

They set all their blooms approximately the same time and the fruit's all ready.

And so determinate tomatoes are good ones to choose if you're gardening outside and you don't want to deal with excessive trellising where we have a really short season.

So most of these varieties that are developed for cold climates, short season tomatoes are determinant.

If you have some protection like a high tunnel greenhouse, hoop house, something like that, an indeterminate tomato grows until frost kills it or the grower stops growing it.

And so, and like the thoroughbred tomatoes grown in fully controlled greenhouses, you know those plants will go 30 feet and so, and they can, a good grower can produce 60 pounds of tomatoes from a plant.

- Wow.

- But it takes a lot of infrastructure and trellising and fertility to do something like that.

- Bottom line for Montana, determinate tomatoes are the choice for most people.

- Yes.

For most people, yeah.

- Paddy, are there any what you call hydroponic greenhouses still producing in the state that you're aware of?

I'm sure there are, but I do not know.

- [Jack] And we have a horticulturalist, Joel?

- Joel probably knows more.

- Yeah, we were at the capital this week, and they had some lettuce from one of 'em, but I can't remember the provider that had them up, but it was Montana-grown lettuce.

- There used to be a lettuce grower in Big Timber, but I'm not sure they're still there, but- - So it was a pretty good-sized firm in the Bitterroot?

- Yes.

- Not a Hamilton called Local Bounty.

So yeah, they're doing salad mix and things like that.

- Fully automated.

- Yeah.

Pretty impressive.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I like those kind of local industries that provide fresh produce for the state of Montana.

That really works well, and it might be a little more pricey, but in reality sometimes the flavor makes up for it, definitely.

Question from Billings for Paddy.

"Are there any new meat processing facilities in Montana?

And if not, why are there not new ones?"

- There are lots and I can ask my friend Joel to pipe in here too, but boy, something that I can name off the top of my head is I know there's a new one at Malta, there's a talk of a tribal one on Fort Belknap.

- [Joel] Yep.

- There's a new non-profit one at Livingston, which is an interesting model.

- The other thing I'd say over the last couple years, the state has put a lot of grants into helping current processors expand.

So even though the numbers might be the same, they're doing more animals per week, so that's added a lot.

- Yes.

- To lots, and I mean dozens of our current processors expanded in the last few years.

- But, you know, and I wonder if the caller might be wondering if it's any big processors, and we do not have any big processors at this point.

- So what factors limit the ability for small a meat processing facility to develop here in the state?

- I would say one of the first things is HACCP, which is their food safety, is the biggest hurdle to get over, having an adequate and reliable supply.

You know, five animals a week (Deanna speaking faintly) doesn't just happen overnight.

It's gotta be staged out and you have to have the supply chain figured out, otherwise you're sitting around for two weeks waiting for animals to be finished.

- Yeah, good point.

- I think labor's been a big- - How about labor?

- Yeah, labor's been a challenge.

You know a lot of the meat processing plants are not zero-skilled jobs, but they're also jobs that a lot of times are sourced from within the community, and they're not immune from the labor shortages we've had either.

So depending where you're at might be a little better or worse, but if they had more labor they could probably do more processing.

- And we should probably add, with that too, that Miles Community College has implemented a meat cutting program that is doing very well and helping a lot of these processors out.

- That's great.

And maybe we can get somebody from there to talk about that on the program sometime.

Good information.

Uta, this person from Belgrade has noticed they have vertical cracks in their maples and, to a lesser degree, in their ash.

Any idea what might be causing that?

- That sounds like frost cracks, also something that I've seen a lot this winter.

And so what frost cracks are is that the name implies, so if we have like very extreme temperature changes from really cold to really warm, which probably sounds familiar to most people watching from Montana, this essentially, you know, causes the water in that's in the tree trunk to expand, form ice, which makes the cells disrupt.

And so that's literally what the cracks are.

They can be pretty superficial, they can go deep if it's happening over years.

So it's definitely something to check out if there's decay where the cracks are.

Certain trees are more susceptible to that than other trees.

And then something that, and I think younger trees, too, and something that you can do to protect the tree is to put like a, I forgot the name, but like a tree guard or something around them.

But really only in the fall and throughout the winter.

They're typically white to kind of deflect the sunlight, and so it keeps the temperatures a little bit more stable.

- And another trick with the tree guards, and they're plastic, if you've got young trees, you want that tree guard right down at soil level, because as soon as it snows melts, you're gonna know that we've had a real vole problem in the state this year.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And they will girdle young two-inch diameter fruit trees, so get that guard right down in the soil there.

- They'll girdle six-inch diameter, 10-year-old.

(group laughs) I lost 30 trees, a couple winters, 30 apple trees.

- I remember that.

Yeah, and it's- - They were stripped to the bark a foot off the soil surface.

- And they don't recover?

- No, no.

- No.

- Paddy, "What is the MSU manufacturing center doing to help the industrial hemp growers to make it more profitable?"

And that call came in from Great Falls.

- Well, we offer our typical services which include growth, innovation and profit enhancement to all manufacturers, including the hemp growers.

We also offer that to the cannabis growers as well.

In the hemp market, I think there's market conditions and market drivers that are hurting them more than anything.

I think, just my opinion, Joel can weigh in here too, that I think that the CBD oil craze is pretty much over, and I think that now people need to focus on what we can do with the fiber instead of working with the oil.

- Uta, do you have any idea, are we still growing a fair amount of ham in the state?

- Actually, I don't know.

I don't know the acreage.

- Joel, have you got any clue?

- I didn't see the '22 numbers, but there was still certainly some.

I think Fort Benton has some of the processing going on there.

- Okay.

It'd be nice if we could get another profitable crop in this state.

- Yep.

- And hopefully, over time, we'll find that it will be profitable.

- So I'm curious about the CBD oil.

What do you think's caused the decline in it?

(Deanna speaking faintly) - It's just that there's not a market demand?

- I believe- Or there's other production?

- Yeah, I just think there's not a market demand as much as they expected it to be.

- Okay.

Uta, you have a little book there.

- Yep.

- I keep looking over there to see what it is.

Why don't you show the audience what it is?

- Yeah, so I brought with me the Montana scouting guides for trees and shrubs, and it's been out for probably two years now.

But I just want to, you know, we're all hopeful that spring is really around the corner, and so this is a really neat resource where you can browse for actually what kind of trees are growing in Montana and shrubs, what diseases, insect issues and abiotic issues, such as frost cracks, appear.

And so just a reminder that we have that resource, and you can find it in the MSU publications store.

So it's just MSU Extension publication, of MSU?

I must have forgot the name.

- msuextension.edu now.

- Yeah, right.

And then so you just searched for the publication store and they should have some there.

- Okay.

- We're trying to make sure that there's constant supply.

- Sounds good.

(laughs) This is interesting.

I'm curious about this for myself.

A caller from Helena would like to know about the most unusual or surprising manufacturing projects that the manufacturing guest has worked with.

Now, that is a good question.

(group laughs) - There's a couple of 'em that we can't talk about on TV.

- Okay.

(group laughs) - So let's put those away.

Boy, you'd have to come back to me.

- Well, you think about that and we'll come back.

And a comment from Laurel, it says, "Hydroponic roots, Swanky Roots is a company outta Laurel, Montana."

That they wanted to share, so that answers some of the questions there.

This is caller from Swan Lake and I'm not sure... Joel, you might want to take this one.

And it says, did the state ever come to a decision on a slaughter house for our state?

I think at one point wasn't there supposed to be... - There's been a couple larger-scale studies to see if the state could support one, but that wasn't gonna be a direct state investment.

So the feasibility studies were done and the information's publicly available.

One of 'em on the One Montana site is where you can access one of 'em, but kind of seems to me the way the market's been going here in the state the last few years, it's been additional small processors and our current small processors expanding.

- All right, thank you.

Dave, you can do this one from Helena.

Boy, a lot of questions from Helena tonight.

It must be nice up there, not snowing.

Pruning apple trees.

The ground is still frozen.

Is it too late or too early to prune?

And is it too early to spray with a dormant oil?

- No, it's a good time to prune and it's a good time to treat with dormant oil.

- Yeah.

Up until when?

- You want to have both of those operations done before you have bud break.

- Yep.

All right.

From Great Falls, this caller would like to know, are there any mobile meat processors in the Great Falls area or anywhere else in the state?

And I think there is one but you guys can jump on that.

- Yep, I can start off.

There are mobile units you can buy and several groups have bought them in Montana, but moving 'em is not an easy task, with hooking up to septic and water and all that.

So as far as I know the one the mobile units that have been bought for Montana in Montana are not being moved.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, that's generally what I'd say.

And you know, what we see sometimes, too, is an animal will be taken in and the slaughter will take place at a licensed facility, and then the carcass, half, whole, quarters, can be sent further.

So sometimes we see kind of some mobile things happening that way, where you don't have the whole slaughter plant, but you're buying, might even be your animal or using it, but it was taken to a licensed slaughter facility but then you did the further processing somewhere else.

- Okay.

This is an email question from Manhattan.

"The aspen leaves are still on the tree this spring."

Of course they're desiccated.

"Why didn't they drop off?"

Uta, do you have any thoughts on that?

- Yeah, so we had a pretty sudden start of winter, like pretty sudden temperature drops and that essentially disrupt the normal process that plants or trees go through to kind of mature the leaves and then drop them.

And so the leaves just stayed on brown and dead, and shouldn't do any harm to the trees.

And it's, you know, with the wind over the winter, or now, or at the last, you know... Now, when it's hopefully finally spring and the new leaves are budding that should push out or push off or drop the final leaves.

- She's so optimistic.

- Now that it's spring.

(group laughs) - I gotta cling to something.

It's gonna be there.

It's gonna be there, yeah.

- Somebody has to be optimistic here.

(group laughs) - It's just another month or so.

- No, it is a late spring, I'll say you that.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

We've had several questions about skunks and voles and everything else.

In a couple of weeks we're gonna have Steve Vantassel from the Montana Department of Agriculture, and he's our critter guru, so we'll answer all those questions when he's on that evening.

Dave, from Plains, last fall, they had a load of three tons of top soil to fill a gully and then they see now that ground is full of clay.

They're not about to move the top soil, so I think they got clay instead.

They want to know what planes will grow well in clay.

Tough question.

- It is a tough question.

You know, there's that old, there's a Japanese proverb, "Where there's clay, there is hope."

(laughs) (group laughs) - Yeah.

- So probably the best thing to do is think about what can you do to amend even like the top two, three, four inches to improve the water infiltration into that clay and to avoid the cracking, the shrinking and swelling that they're going to do.

So compost, things like that, would help greatly.

And then other than that, a lot of plants will actually do fine there.

The big challenge of course then is water management, making sure that you have adequate water, but not too much, and that maybe it's ideal for a drip system so that you can, you know, slow the rate of the application of the water so it has time to infiltrate and not just run off the surface.

But I think the first thing I would do before I planted anything was to improve the porosity and you know, the temptation is sand, oh just dump a bunch of sand on top.

- [Jack] (laughs) Cement.

- And it's really, really challenging 'cause it takes a lot of sand.

Sand doesn't create that big a particle.

So actually I think compost, manure sources that you know are free of herbicide residues, or manure mix with straw and get that incorporated in the top few inches.

That'll go a long way to help.

- Okay, thank you.

Paddy, from Butte.

Interesting question.

This person knows that there are a ton of microbreweries in the state, and you mentioned earlier you did work with a lot of them.

They wanna know about the sudden onset of distillers.

Are you working with distillers here in the state?

- We are as well, yes.

I would say there's well over 100 brewers in the state right now, and I think there's probably 30 distillers right now.

- 80?

- 30.

- 30, okay.

- And big ones in the works.

There's one that's being planned right now at Power Montana that's supposed to be very large.

- So are we consuming all this in the state or are we shipping it out?

- We're shipping it out.

In fact, a few of the distillers are contract manufacturing base alcohol.

- [Jack] Okay.

- [Paddy] That is then aged, given to other distilleries that age it and market it.

- [Jack] How do they ship that out of the state, outta curiosity?

- I haven't asked but I would assume they would probably leave the... Oh, I don't know.

I'm sorry.

- [Jack] I don't either.

Casks or, probably in some wooden casks.

- I would say probably in stainless steel tanks.

- [Jack] Okay.

Stainless steel tanks.

Good to know.

- What's the feed stock they're using for that?

What are they making it from?

- Mostly barley.

- Barley, okay.

- Okay.

- Has the barley acres increased?

I mean the distilleries have increased.

You'd think the barley acres would really be increasing in the state.

- I haven't heard from that.

You'd know.

- I haven't seen any big trends in barley.

- Big trends?

Okay.

- But the price of barley's quite strong now?

- Yeah, the prices have been pretty good the last few years for, you know, a number of crops.

So yeah, could be a good time to have some barley.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- So for the control panel, this person would like to see the phone numbers for the panelists because they would like to contact Dave and Joel because they want to pick your brains a little bit more.

So we'll get- - That won't take too long.

- No.

(laughs) (group laughs) - Hey, Mr Lively here.

That's good.

Caller from northern Wyoming, and thank you down in Wyoming for watching.

And they have a slug issue.

They had slugs eat on their potatoes last year.

How do you deal with this in the future?

You want to handle the slugs?

You can drown 'em in beer.

I know that.

(group laughs) - [Uta] That's the waste.

(laughs) - So the question is like the habitat that you create for slugs, and you know, I haven't experienced a lot of slug issues when I grow outside.

I've had slug issues when I grow in the greenhouse or the high tunnel, especially if I'm utilizing like a plastic mulch where you have this really high moisture and they're able to come out of the plastic mulch at night and then feed on the crops.

So I'm guess I'm wondering about moisture management, if they're creating conditions that are gonna favor those slugs.

Yeah, that's a tough one.

I mean there are mollusk sides available, but I'm not familiar what's labeled for use on potato, and I have no really idea what the economics on that one would be.

- I think you nailed it, it's moisture.

But that brings back a story on this program.

Many, many years ago, Sue Blodgett, who was an entomologist at the time, ran across a study where a graduate student, I think at South Dakota State University, or might have been Kansas State, one of those two, did a taste test with beer to see which beers were most effective in controlling slugs.

And the most successful was Coors Banquet Beer.

(group laughs) So you know, grad students will go to all kinds of lengths to have certain types of projects.

I just remembered that after your explanation.

Okay, back to Uta.

Belgrade caller has several trees, including mountain ash, which have brown leaves still attached.

Are these trees in trouble and is there anything they should do to help the trees?

You partially answered that earlier.

I don't think they're in trouble, do you?

- No, I don't think so.

I guess, I mean I would start being concerned when all the other trees have green leaves and then you still have the brown leaves from last year.

But (laughs) other than that, yeah.

It's probably the same issue that we discussed before, the winter came to sudden - Yeah, I agree.

- And it's not leaving but it will.

(laughs) - They'll fall here, and actually the last few windstorms we had, I've lost a lot of leaves off my aspen, and it looks funny when you've got leaves all over the top of your white snow.

- Yeah and one issue that I observed, because I have that in my aspen trees in my backyard too, you know they have more surface, so you capture more snow.

So like one potential issue is that you just have more branches breaking from the snow and I definitely had that happen.

So I have to deal with the branches that are somewhere up in the crown now broken off.

- Okay.

- They'll come down eventually.

(laughs) - Question for Paddy from Missoula.

This came in via email, and this person says they love lamb, but they have never seen the product sold in stores with "Made in Montana" on it.

Most of the lamb they get is from down under.

I think that's correct.

Why isn't Montana looking at lamb as a regional industry here?

And Joel you can jump in, too.

- I'm gonna let Joel take the first part.

- Well, you know, one thing I'd say, if you're just trying to find some local lamb, a lot of the meat processors actually buy animals, both beef and lamb and they have a meat counter right at the processing plant, and you can go in, you don't have to buy a whole lamb, but you can buy particular cuts.

So if you're having trouble sourcing it, and obviously if you get it at the local processor, you know it came from, you know, Montana.

Grocery store options, you know, I'm sure they do have the choice whether to get an international product or out-of-state product or a local product here, but lamb numbers in Montana have been, you know, generally on the decline for the last decade, but maybe more stabilizing, so certainly there's plenty of potential to grow lamb here if there's a market for it.

- Yeah, I read an interesting article that the average annual per capita consumption of lamb is, anybody want to guess?

0.7 pounds per person.

And I do that in one sitting.

I mean I like lamb.

(group laughs) So anyway, there's enough said there.

- And Jack, I would say, too, that speaking of the sheep industry though, a good point in this is the amount of wool that's being processed right now, especially by John Helle out of Dillon, that's being used as Duckworth products.

So that's a good sign for wool production.

- That process or his operation has really taken off.

I mean he runs a large number of sheep and their product is recognized nationwide.

It's a great product.

We've had John on the program one time.

- Okay.

- Very, very knowledgeable.

From Lewistown, this caller is a Pennsylvanian transplant who used to attend Pennsylvania farm, fruit and garden conferences and take classes on ag and garden topics.

Does Montana have similar conferences or places to attend similar classes?

- Yeah, there are a lot of opportunities.

We have the Montana Master Gardener program, if that's something that you're interested in.

The MSU Extension IPM program is hosting several workshops and other educational events throughout the year.

One that might be of interest is we usually have it in the fall and it's called Turf to Tree workshop that's targeting the green industry but also, you know, just interested people from the general public.

And then I think there are several associations in Montana that you know, you could consult some one that comes to mind is AMTOP.

I'm actually not sure what the acronym stands for.

- Association of Turf and Ornamental Professionals.

- Okay.

- And then there's also the Montana Nursery Association, and their meeting typically is in the first week of January and it bounces between Missoula and Billings.

- And we also have a master gardener, very active master gardener program in the state.

So if I wanted to find out about these extension ag and garden programs- - Great question.

- Where would I go to look?

- Thank you for that question.

So the MSU Extension IPM program has a website that's associated with MSU extension.

So Montana... Oh sorry.

Joel, help me out again.

(laughs) - msuextension.edu.

- The new address, and then I think it's just /ipm, yeah.

- Okay.

Joel, from Red Lodge.

This person would like to know, "Did Montana lose workers during the pandemic?"

- Well, you certainly have probably seen help wanted signs everywhere.

Montana is one of the states that was an exception.

We've got about 20,000 more people working in Montana than we had prior to the pandemic, which ranks us, you know, relatively near the top third of states in terms of gained workers over the last couple years.

But kind of an interesting point, this isn't because a higher percentage of Montanans went to work, it's because a lot of people became Montanans and moved to Montana during the last couple years.

So that's how we've grown our workforce is primarily because of all the folks that have moved to Montana in the last couple years.

- You know, and before the program, I asked these two gentlemen what would happen if we had 0% unemployment, which will never get to, we're at 2.4% for the state right now, but at 0% unemployment would we still be short of workers?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So we've had a major issue in this state.

- You know, one thing that's kind of addressing that is the Montana Department of Commerce has just initiated 0% loans to manufacturers for automation to try to create free up existing employees to work on other things by automating dull, mundane and backbreaking work.

- Okay, thank you.

From White Sulphur Springs.

We don't get a lot of calls from White Sulphur, so thank you for the inquiry.

This is for the panel.

With the closing of sugar plants in Sydney, what will farmers grow instead in the far eastern part of the state?

And next week we'll address that too with the director of Montana Department of Agriculture.

But you guys jump on it too.

- Joel, you probably know best.

- Well, one thing I just say about this, the plant in Sydney, which is different than the sugar plant in Billings is, you know, they send contracts out, just like barley dealers every year, and they were contracting, and the number of acres they had had shrunk a lot in the last decade, just across the board.

And I think a lot of that was economic reasons for the growers that they already had other crops that were better in their rotations.

So I think you're gonna see more of a lot of the crops we have, so, you know, some pulses, maybe a little bit of corn and soybeans, even, out in that lower part of the state there.

But you know, just the traditional crops, I think, are gonna suck up those acres.

And again, we're talking about probably less than 25,000 acres that had been in sugar beets out there, and some of those acres were actually on the North Dakota side of the border too, so they weren't even all in Montana, so.

- So, and with today's corn yields, and we can grow corn for grain out in the Sydney area, can we get 200-bushel corn out there right at it?

- (laughs) I don't know if we can get to 200, but we can probably get a lot better than we were doing 10 years ago.

- 10 years ago.

- The varieties have gotten a lot better for the shorter season, and I think just across the nation, you've seen the corn planted acreage shift north and west over the last 20, 25 years, as the varieties have become more suited towards growing in places like that lower Yellowstone River, and a lot of North Dakota, you know, has made a transition towards corn.

- You know, you're an economist.

I sit back and I look at what alfalfa is selling for right now and we can grow five-, six-ton alfalfa pretty reasonably without a lot of inputs.

Where does alfalfa compete with say, sugar beets or corn?

- You know, it certainly could come in, you know, obviously a lot of those sugar bees were grown in irrigated acres, so the other crops that we're primarily are gonna be considering replacing are other crops that do well in an irrigated conditions.

And hay is certainly one, whether that's alfalfa, you know, but also we have irrigated barley in places in the states.

So those are gonna be kind of the, you know, I'd say the go-to crops to start with, and corn being the other one.

- Okay.

Paddy, I go back a long ways in this state.

We used to have a processing facility, I think it was at Mile City, that took alfalfa and made little like shredded wheat biscuits out of them and shipped them all over.

Do we have any exported alfalfa products that you're aware of, or businesses in the state?

- I'm not aware of anything that's processed.

I think it's all going out as baled.

- Okay.

Yeah, a lot of it goes out as baled.

There's no doubt about that.

From Clyde Park, this person wants to an start asparagus bed and they want to know should they start with seeds or should they start with roots?

It's all yours.

- So you can do either.

The problem with seed-started asparagus is that it's going to be four, five, six years before you harvest.

So if you start with roots or crowns, you'll cut that in half.

And so I'd be tempted, unless there's some variety.

So the only time I really recall doing asparagus from seeds when we were doing heirloom varieties for the Tinsley House.

So those old-fashioned varieties that were grown in the 1800s weren't available, but you could still buy seeds for 'em.

They weren't available as crowns.

And so yeah, you'd probably better off, unless you're really patient, then you're better off to get roots.

- Yeah, roots are the way to go.

- Yeah.

- You're gonna start harvesting on your third year.

- Yeah.

- A little bit.

- Yeah, and the key though, you have to think about, you know, and there are those asparagus beds last for years and years, but you get viruses and things like that.

You should think about if you're really an asparagus aficionado that you're gonna start a new bed three or four years after you start the first one, and you're gonna do it in a different location.

And so that you rotate that so that you keep the production high and of course the drag with asparagus is the weed management issues.

- Yeah, you can't use Simazine anymore 'cause you can't find it, even though I think it's still registered.

Paddy, vegetables.

Do we have any market vegetable producers that ship vegetables in or out of the state that you're aware of?

- Not that I'm aware of, but lots of 'em hidden in the farmer's markets.

- And farmer's market are pretty lucrative and they've really grown.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Jack] And you can get good vegetables there.

This state can produce vegetables.

We just don't have a big enough market, I don't think.

- Long history of that.

- Oh yeah.

- Bozeman was big in peas.

- And carrots.

- Yeah.

- Back in the 1920s, we grew carrots and Montana-grown carrots, if you let 'em in the ground until after a good, hard frost, there's none better any place in the country.

They are really sweet.

- We do, Jack, see some of the community-supported ag, like here in the valley, where there'll be a salad at a local restaurant that's from Montana, you know, production.

- Product.

- So I mean it's maybe not be shipping hundreds of miles, but it's probably being shipped 10 or 20 miles, and available in that way.

- Okay, thank you.

We have lots more callers about pocket gophers and voles.

We'll do those in a couple weeks, so keep watching.

Our critter guru really knows how to take care of those things, and we'll get to those at that time.

Sagebrush, any idea how to get rid of it?

I mean, you're well versed in all kinds of different things.

- Well, I'm sure there are products registered for that, but I don't know which ones they are.

- I don't either.

We have a weed scientist on next week, so we'll get to that at that point.

And we also have a caller from Livingston that wants a product to eliminate cheatgrass, and we do have some new herbicides for that.

I'm not gonna get into it because it's not time to spray yet, and we have somebody who knows a lot more about it next week.

From Helena Valley, this person wants to become a hobby bee farmer.

First of all, they wanna know how they get the education to become a bee farmer.

And number two, where do they get the bees?

You're part-time bees.

- I keep bees.

I keep bees.

And so the first thing I would I tell the viewer is to find a mentor, and if you haven't worked bees before, before you make the investment in the time and the money, you should go and do a hive inspection and make sure that you're super intrigued with the whole process of smoking the hive, opening up, extracting the frames, that kind of thing.

Some of the counties have beekeeping workshops.

Lewis and Clark County did have a county agent who was a very active beekeeper, so I would start with your county agent and see if they have any programs coming up.

You have to plan fairly far in advance, because you have to order your bees.

So our bees primarily come from the Central Valley of California and you buy them as a package.

And so literally they come in shoebox size with three pounds of bees and a queen, and we really encourage new beekeepers to try to set up two hives so they can compare the rate of development between the two colonies.

There's that old kind of adage about livestock, right?

25 great, 25 percent's not good and 50 percent's average.

It kind of applies to bees, too.

So if you happen to get, if you only set up one hive and you happen to get kind of a bum package, or would be the queen would be not adequate, you really can't gauge how well your site's doing and your management.

And so if there isn't a locally available beekeeping class, then there are some online ones.

Our colleagues at U of M have an online multi-step beekeeping program that's pretty good.

And also our colleagues at the University of Minnesota, since they obviously specialize in beekeeping in northern climates.

So those are two good places to start.

- Or then you teach a beekeeping course, don't you sometimes?

- Well, I have a, it's part of the Topics in Horticulture class.

- Okay.

- So yeah.

- All right.

From Miles City, this person is interested in possibly starting a value-added industry.

They'd like to know does the Extension Center Manufacturing Center help secure venture capital in any way or form?

- Not really.

We're not qualified to do that.

We can give you a list of the existing venture capitalists in Montana.

We can give you a list of other options for funding, but we're just not qualified for that.

- Okay.

Yeah, thank you.

Uta, this is a comment that came from Big Sandy.

Last week, we talked about growing continuous wheat or cereal and pulse crops, but this person said with the last three or four years of drought, we're pretty much going back to a fallow system anymore.

Are you seeing that too?

- I certainly heard comments.

- Yeah.

- You know, that go in that direction.

The drought situation, especially in north central Montana is pretty severe and, yeah, people were struggling with having enough soil moisture to grow their crops.

- Yeah, well I think, you know, if you don't have a soil moisture, you're forced back to a fallow system.

- [Uta] Mm-hmm.

- And I think we've seen that the last three or four years based on the extreme drought.

Paddy (laughs) from Whitehall.

I love these kind of questions.

If you had a crystal ball, what is something on the manufacturing horizon that Montana ag families should look into?

It's fun getting the good ones.

(laughs) - Any final product that you think your crop is being used for.

So I think we talked about the beer industry in Montana.

I think the reason that started in Montana is there was just some people that were really into beer and wanted their own brewery, but some, you know, farmers could have looked at that and said, what is our barley being used for?

And did a little research and figured out it's being used for beer.

Why don't we make our own beer and cut out the middle man?

But I would think, you know, Farver Farms in Scobey's done a great job.

They're growing lentils and making a snack cracker out of the lentils.

David Oien's done a great job at Timeless Foods in Ulm where he's producing a final product there, too.

And of course David, or Bob Quinn, excuse me.

- Oh yeah.

With his producing the Kracklin' Kamut from the crop he grew.

I think meat products.

You know, I mentioned 41 Grains out of Scobey, too.

Chickpeas have high protein and that's a great opportunity to make something out of the high protein product.

- Creativity.

- Yeah.

- You gotta think a little bit and find something that fascinates you and then research it.

- Yes.

- And go with it.

- So one of the questions I would think that you have to ask yourself is how are you gonna market this, and how are you gonna get it there?

And so we had a small culinary herb greenhouse and that was our biggest challenge, and wasn't necessarily growing it or selling it, it was just, it costs so much to ship and yeah, developing new markets was a big, big challenge.

- I agree with you, David, and I think that's part of your feasibility study is you really have to verify your market, and how far does this type of product travel before it's consumed?

That is the reason that many of our ag processing facilities are not located in Montana, is because we don't have enough consumers right here.

So it's cheaper to ship grain to a high population area, make it into bread there and serve it to all the people in the area.

Shipping costs of the bread being low right close by, so that has to be a huge consideration when you start a business.

- Transportation in Montana is becoming more and more of an issue too, I'm told.

- I would almost say it's getting a little bit better than it has.

- Has it?

- Just because we're getting more product coming in now.

- You know, for some of these local foods there's kind of getting to be a critical mass where we have some kind of intermediaries that's willing to pick up, you know, Paddy's product and five miles down the road, pick mine up and then bring them to Billings or Bozeman, you know, our regional hubs, as opposed to me, as the producer/manufacturer having to do all that delivery myself.

So, you know, I think there are some, in some areas of the state, I think some things are getting a little bit easier.

- Good.

That's good to know.

Uta, question from Facebook, how can they get rid of corn smut in their garden sweet corn?

And you know, I haven't seen corn smut in sweet corn for a long time.

- Me neither.

- I think it was a varietal thing for the most part.

- Yeah, you know, honestly, (laughs) I think corn smuts super interesting.

I'd always be, if you ever have that, can you bring a sample to the diagnostic lab?

I kinda wanna see it close up and maybe taste it.

I hear it's the delicacy.

- It is.

- For some people in some cultures.

But you know what, I'm blanking right now on how to get rid of that.

Is it seed-transmitted?

Do you know?

- I'm not sure anymore.

- Yeah.

- I've been so long since I took introductory plant path.

I can't remember.

(group laughs) - Well, I don't have that excuse I guess, but I'm still blanking on it.

So I guess I would suggest if you wanna follow up with me, my phone number, I think, is gonna be coming up here, or send me an email and I'll do my due diligence here and research the answer for you.

- Okay, thank you.

Interesting question from Livingston.

They just lost a wood processing facility there.

- Yep.

- What do you see as a future, and this call came from Livingston, as for the wood product industry in a state like Montana?

- I would say it's gonna be higher value-added wood products.

So traditionally, Montana, we've produced two-by-fours and the likes.

If we can go into a higher value-item that the two-by-fours could be used for, or similar, I think we have a great opportunity.

We have two companies in Montana doing something called cross-laminated timber.

So basically figure a breadboard, but eight-foot two-by-eights laminated to 40-foot two-by-eights and five layers thick.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And basically like a semi-trailer.

But those are being used for architectural, one-piece floors, walls.

So anything we could do with the wood past the two-by-four or the dimensional lumber, I think, would be the future.

- Okay.

On that note, digging back in my brain from a few years back, there was a company that tried to start up making, I won't say wood products, but laminated products, out of wheat straw in Conrad area, I believe, or?

Has that never taken off that you're aware of?

- Not that I'm aware of.

I haven't heard of the company.

- Okay.

Well, that's been several years ago.

Okay.

I have one more question here for Joel.

And they say baby boomers are basically at the retirement age.

Is this a pro or con for small Montana business?

- Well, I'd say the first thing is your supply of workers is probably going down, 'cause baby boomers are, like you said, hitting retirement age.

They're leaving the workforce.

They're a large generation relative to the next, so the workers coming in is not enough to just ensure numbers to replace them.

On the other hand, if you're a business that maybe sells to an aging population, you might have a growing customer base coming into there.

So probably overall it's probably a negative, but there are some situations where it could be a certainly a positive.

- What is the average retirement age?

I mean is 65 out the window?

- You know, 65 is a number that came with sort of Medicaid eligibility, right.

- All right, we gotta cut this off guys.

We're running out of time.

- All right.

(gentle guitar music) But anyway, it's been a good session.

Enjoyed it.

Thanks for all the calls this evening.

Next week, Christy Clark with Montana Department of Agriculture will be with us.

If you care to, join us again.

Meanwhile, have a great week and avoid these 20 inches of snow.

Good night.

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(gentle music continues) - [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, (gentle guitar music) the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

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