- [Narrator] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by: The Montana Department of Agriculture.

MSU Extension.

The MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture.

The Montana Wheat & Barley Committee.

Cashman Nursery and Landscaping.

The Gallatin Gardeners Club.

And the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(country music) - Welcome, everyone, to another episode of "Montana Ag Live."

Coming to you from the studios of KUSM on the vibrant but chilly campus of Montana State University this evening.

I'm your host, Tim Seipel.

I'm an extension specialist, IPM director and a professor, assistant professor in the Land Resources and Environmental You all know how this show works.

Get your calls in to our excellent panel Tonight, we have a special guest who's gonna be talking about extension's Local Government Center and how local government gets reviewed in Montana.

And we'll come back and give him some time in a minute.

But first, let's go around and introduce the panel tonight.

On the far end down there, we have Joel Schumacher.

He's an extension economist specialist.

Get him all your questions about where the grain market's going, what cattle prices will do in two years, and all kinds of other questions.

Our special guest tonight is Dan Clark.

He is the director of Montana State University Extension's Local Government Center, and he's gonna tell us all about it in just a few minutes for all us ag nerds up here.

We have Jane Mangold.

She is our noxious weed and rangeland extension weed specialist, weed scientist Jack, if you're watching tonight.

So get all the questions in you have to her about managing your weeds, getting everything closed up for the year before the snow falls.

And next to me is Chloe Rice.

She is our extension diagnostic specialist who works in the Schutter Diagnostic Lab, IDing all our insect problems and can help you out with a lot of management recommendations.

But so tonight our special guest is Dan Clark and he's the director of the Local Government Center.

So Dan, can you tell us what does the Local Government Center do at MSU and what stakeholders does it reach and where do you guys work in the state of Montana?

- Yeah, thanks, Tim.

Yeah, the Local Government Center, we've been around for 40 years and this is our 40th anniversary this year and we're excited to be celebrating that milestone.

We've been working with local governments, so cities and counties and special districts across the state of Montana providing technical assistance, research and training, helping them better serve the citizens of Montana.

- Great.

All right.

I realized I forgot something.

I forgot to introduce our phone operators.

Before we come back to Dan.

Tonight, on the phone we have Nancy Blake and Jared Lyle.

So get them all your questions, make the phones ring and keep them busy.

Okay.

Now after that, let's come back to Dan.

Let me ask you another question.

So this is the 40th year of the Local Government Center.

When you guys go talk to a local government, first of all, what does the Local Government Center do?

Do you just advise people, "Oh, hey, you should organize your government in a different way," or is there a formalized process where stakeholders and the government and local governments get involved with you?

How do they reach out to you?

- Yeah, it's mostly when people reach out, we go where we're invited.

And so when a local government is interested in receiving some training or better understanding their roles and responsibilities, they'll often call our center and we'll provide support and assistance to them.

We'll either come to their community and provide training and help them better understand how to operate within the scope of the law.

Or we can provide that virtually.

We also provide online training for many of our local government practitioners.

- Okay, thanks.

I'm sure we'll have a lot of questions as we come back to you, but Jane, let's talk about our show and tell since I get to be the weed scientist, weed ecologist hosting tonight.

We can talk last week on the show, we had a caller who called in and asked about managing hoary alyssum and Jack asked me to describe hoary alyssum on the spot, and he told me I did a pretty good job.

But we brought in a sample to show to people.

So do you want to talk a little bit about hoary alyssum and maybe it's management?

- Yeah, thanks, Tim.

It's hard to beat a real plant or insect when it comes to describing an organism.

So like a good weed scientist, I went out before the show and brought about the largest hoary alyssum plant I could find.

It is a mustard and it is tap rooted.

So this is one of the stems coming from this plant.

This was the taproot, or sorry, the rosette, the basal leaves with the tap root right here.

I didn't get it all out, but.

So this was growing from here.

And it is a mustard, it's on the noxious weed list.

It's probably easiest to identify it by the small white flowers.

It has very small white flowers.

The flowers- - [Tim] You had a video clip of that too, right?

- [Jane] Yeah, we have a video clip.

- [Tim] I think we have a short video clip of the flowers.

Yeah.

- But there we go.

Yeah, flowers, each petal has a notch at the tip of the petal, so it kinda looks like it has eight petals instead of four.

But that's very distinctive for this white flowered mustard.

And then the other thing you'll probably notice is it has all these seed pods running along the stems and there's, you know, seeds in there.

They're gonna shatter and drop the seeds.

They're kind of oval shaped and, and stay very close to that main stem.

So those are two features of the plant to look for.

This plant, I think I mentioned it is on the noxious weed list.

I think it was added to the list in 2008.

It is toxic.

It's toxic especially to horses.

But there's have been some reports of toxicity to cattle as well.

And animals might graze it.

Or what often happens is it gets bailed into hay.

It's common in alfalfa fields or grass, alfalfa hay fields.

So this is, you know, a very large plant.

This thing's probably been growing since May.

It starts growing early in the season and as you can see, you know, we're into almost mid-October.

We've had some frost and it's still growing.

This plant that Tim brought in.

- My specimen wasn't as large.

(all laugh) - But it is more typical of the size of a hoary alyssum plant.

This was probably mowed at some point and then grew back.

That's why it's not as big.

This one was completely unmanaged and I won't disclose where I picked it up, but not managed.

But yeah, be on the lookout for this.

Historically, southwest Montana was kind of the epicenter for hoary alyssum.

It likes really graveley soils, but it's been spreading across the state and becoming more and more common.

- So is that a perennial rosette there?

Will that regrow next year or will it die?

Is it like a biennial or do you think it will live?

- This is one of those species that can behave as an annual perennial or biennial.

It kinda does it all.

I would guess given the size of the root on this individual, it would come back next year.

You know, that's a pretty robust root and be behaving as a perennial, but it can kind of do it all.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

All right, thanks.

And then what's the best way for people to manage this in general?

- Yeah.

Well, you can hand pull it.

I mean, it is a tap root so you can hand pull it, dig it up.

Usually when you, I mean, you could do that if you just had a few plants.

Usually though, you end up having a patch of these and there's hundreds of plants in a patch.

Using like a broadleaf herbicide, that 2,4-D, something like Metsulfuron.

Those work well on this plant, especially if you're hitting the rosettes in the spring or the fall.

And you would wanna use a good surfactant because it does have a lot of hairs.

- [Tim] Yeah, you can feel the really- - If you had a hand lens, it has these star-shaped hairs.

That's where, you know, the name hoary comes from kind of this grayish color to the leaves that are caused by those hairs.

But you wanna make sure you use a good surfactant so you get good coverage with that herbicide.

- [Joel] Is it too late to treat it this fall?

- That's a great question, Joel.

This time of year it's always like, is it too late?

You know, this plant, you're not gonna have any benefit.

If you had some small rosettes, and I would say if we still get some warm sunny days, I think you could do it.

But we're really up against the edge of the calendar for managing any obnoxious weed.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Thanks, Jane.

You that was a nice long discussion about already.

- [Jane] Yeah, That was super long.

- Listen, no wait, it's a very common question that comes up.

Okay.

Dan, we had a question that came in and this caller says every, they're trying to understand the law.

"Every 10 years, do we vote in Montana to review our government systems, our local government systems?

And if we do vote and they think they voted in Gallatin County to review that, how does that process work and what do people do in that situation?

What does it mean to review your local government?"

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And so Montana, in our constitution, that was adopted in 1972.

One of the unique things to Montana's constitution is this local government review concept.

Many other states, about over 30 states have a review every 20 or 30 years, they'll ask the voters whether they wanna review their constitution.

We in Montana have the same provision, but we are unique in Montana having this local government review.

And that's where every 10 years, local governments, so municipalities and counties are required to place on the ballot.

The question, do you wanna study your local form of government?

If those voters in that jurisdiction, the city or county vote yes, then individuals in the city or county can then file to be study commissioners.

And if they get elected as study commissioners, they have about 18 months to study the existing form of government and compare that existing form of government with alternative forms of government.

And then they can make choices whether they want to, if an alternative would be an improvement upon the existing form.

And if that is determined by the study commission, they can then place that question on the ballot, should we change our existing form of government to adopt this alternative?

And so it's a very Jeffersonian idea that those framers of our constitution had that as we, as a state and as our communities and counties evolve and grow and change, that we have this opportunity to check in and evaluate the existing structure of government.

And could it be better by adopting some of these alternatives?

And so it allows us to either evaluate and say, yes, it would be, or no, we feel like what we have today is sufficient for us moving over the next 10 years.

- When does the county decide or a local municipality, when do they decide to change their government?

What often precipitates change?

Is it that you have people decide to review the government and then potentially vote on it when you have population growth, when you have population decline, is it differences in economics?

What usually precipitates people to make change?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

So what causes change?

And so often, the things you listed, if there's a growth in the community, say a community, we'll pick on Polson for example.

Polson is not a large town, but it's a complicated town.

It's a tourist community and there's a lot of things happening during the summer months at the southern tip of the Flathead Lake.

And so at some point, those citizens in that community recognize that having someone from our community elected as the mayor to serve as the chief executive that performs the day-to-day operations is a bit more challenging for someone to volunteer in the community to do that role.

That, you know, we've grown, we've got maybe 75 employees, we have a $20 million budget, and there's too much at stake to leave that to just a citizen to be elected in that role.

And so that's when the community might say, is it time for us to change our government to adopt a manager form?

And that's what Polson did about 30 years ago, if I recall, where they voted to change their form of government and now they have a city council and a manager who performs that executive function that an elected mayor had historically performed.

Now they do have a mayor, but they're more of a figurehead that they serve as the head of the council and they manage the meetings, but they don't have any executive function as the manager would.

- Well, all right, thank you.

I'm sure we're gonna come back.

We have some more questions that are starting to stack up here for you.

Chloe.

So this week, it was really warm in Bozeman.

And I know a couple, I also had them on the side of my house.

I had these bugs and they were some interesting-looking bugs and I'm not really, sometimes I wanna call them stink bugs, but I'm not totally sure.

Could you explain what bugs that kinda look like stink bugs that are around this time of year and where they are?

I think we have a picture of them too.

I sent in a picture and I was wondering about them and maybe that'll lead into some of your other questions.

- Right.

Thanks, Tim.

So the picture on the screen right now, it looks like that's a boxelder bug.

It's one of several species of bugs that this time of year, people start seeing either on the sunny sides of their houses or starting to enter the houses themselves.

And with the boxelder bug in particular, although it's called a boxelder bug, so it does feed on the seeds of boxelder trees, but they'll also feed on ash and maples too.

And you can get quite a large number of them, like I say, this time of year.

And they can produce, you know, slight odor to them, which I think might be why people confuse them for stink bugs.

But although they're not actually stink bugs, I do have true stink bugs on display at the front of the table here.

- [Tim] So how do you identify a true stink bug?

- A true stink bug, well actually, if we're talking about a group which are called a pentatomidae, they'll be like this almost like a shield shape to them if you zoom in.

So there'll be that general shape, whereas the boxelder bug that you had on the screen before is a lot more slender.

But they are quite similar actually in that they have these piercing mouth parts and that's how they would feed and plants and cause damage to plants.

They boxelder a bug though, which was on the photograph.

The damage would be very minimal to an ornamental tree.

It's just that it's a nuisance pest when it gets into the home.

So really if you are having a lot of these on the outside of your house, you gotta look into how well sealed your windows and doors are.

If there's sometimes they get in through the attic as well, that can be where there are some openings, but it's not a huge cause for concern.

They're not something that will actively try and, you know, bite people or cause like structural damage to the home.

So just way see them, vacuum them up and then just make sure your windows and doors are sealed properly.

- Yeah, I mostly greeted them when I walked in the door.

Actually, the doors have been closed in the house and we have a tight house so they haven't been getting in, which is good.

- Good.

- But they've been liking the south facing warm fun next to the door.

Okay.

Chloe, we have another question.

Let's stick with you for a second.

So this is Tim's other problem of insects that I had questions on and that is aphids.

Oh, while you can really see the aphids on the back of the leaf too.

- Yeah.

- So this year, I had more aphids in the garden than I've had in many other years past.

And usually, I don't have to deal with them very much, but this year, they were a little bit more problematic.

How should I go about managing them this time of year?

- So I have a couple of ideas based on what you've told me there.

I'm wondering how much crop rotation you do.

So are you growing your cruciferous or even plants in the garden in the mustard family, which is what these aphids will feed on.

If you're growing that in the same place in the garden each year, then over time you will get a buildup of the population there.

Once you get into a point where it's affecting the growth of your crop, then you might want to consider actually not growing, you know, any cabbage, broccoli, anything- - But Kohlrabi is my favorite vegetable.

That's a problem.

- But if it becomes a huge problem in the long term, just give it a break of a couple of years might help a lot.

And then another thing to bear in mind is that they'll often lay their eggs on the plants and then when that debris falls, that's how they're overwintering it under the debris around the plants.

So just making sure you're getting that debris up at this time of year as we come to the end of the growing season.

And then- - Can I put it in the compost or should I get rid of it in a different place?

- I would actually personally just pop that in the like trash that goes away from your home.

I know that they've started some services where they all remove garden waste.

So that's actually why I would do.

But certainly, don't leave it lying around in your garden, around your vegetable crops and in your vegetable beds.

And then just going into next year, we're looking at next spring at this point for treating it, I would really recommend that you start scouting a bit earlier.

So when you gain a population size of aphids like this, where it's almost covering a lot of the surface, you know, of the leaf here, next spring, you gotta get out and try and treat them whilst they're still nymphs.

Right?

So you'll see aphids before they're even at the stage where they have the wings.

So these little wingless aphids that start appearing, that's when you want to treat them.

You can use an insecticidal soap to do that.

Or you could try washing them off, but there has mixed success with just using water, so.

- Yeah, I did some dish soap treatment this year and it works for a period of time, but you really have to keep up with it all the time.

Like chasing all the aphids and I'll have to say, the aphids reproduced faster than I could wash them off with.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was a big problem, you know, in Montana.

For any of you guys who are gardeners, I'm sure you're used to this issue where if you're in a bad aphid year, it's almost like a constant effort to try and keep on top of them.

But once they get out of control, you know, in their numbers like this, it can be a point that's gone a little too far to actually get them under control again.

- Okay.

Okay.

Joel, we have a question that came in for you.

And this is about how farmers contract grain and pulses and all their commodities.

So they asked, "Do Montana farmers, do they make forward contracts to sell their grain in during the year?

Or do they wait till it's all harvested at the end of the year and then do they sell and contract that grain?"

- Sure.

Well both of those can happen.

I mean, it's kind of the short answer.

The longer answer is, you know, we've got a whole range of farmers and some are gonna go ahead and usually in five or 10,000 bushel increments, you can certainly get onto your local elevator and you can forward contract that for delivery at some point post harvest.

You may also sign a futures contract where you're still gonna have the choice to do whatever you want in terms of delivering it where you deliver, but you've hedged the price.

But again, those are often times in 10,000 bushel increments.

So farmers choose to do that sometimes.

And they may choose to just hedge a portion of their crop, so maybe half of what they expect to produce.

We're also gonna see producers that have more of a program, like I market 10% of my crop every month starting in December.

So then they've marketed it essentially by the time harvest gets around, or they'll do it in chunks and you do see some folks that wanna market it in December for tax reasons, or those that wanna wait until the new year as well.

So there can be a little bit of some tax implications in terms of where they do that.

Now there's also crops specifically with some of our more specialty crops, so things that aren't maybe quite as readily traded, maybe that's a mustard or a safflower, you know, crops that are grown here but not in millions of acre quantities.

And oftentimes those are grown fully under contract in advance.

So we agree to, you know, plant 300 acres to this and then the price is set and a delivery point is set for that crop that comes off of that field.

So you also see that with variety specific things.

So malt barley is one that comes to mind.

A lot of the malt barley contracts are for specific varieties.

You know, Molson Coors or some of those, they're not buying any barley, they're buying these specific times.

Okay, and so they're gonna provide that seed to those growers and then want that specific variety back.

So that's almost all grown under contract in advance.

- Okay, so speaking of malt barley, most of Montana's malt barley is exported out of the United States?

Or does it end up with Molson Coors?

Does it end up with Anheuser-Busch?

Where does Montana's malt barley go?

- Certainly a lot of it is here domestically and it's, you know, the big brewers in the US but also, you know, the company that makes Modelo down in Mexico, they source a lot of barley out of the Fairfield bench area.

So there's certainly a lot of Montana barley that is exported as well.

I couldn't tell you exactly in terms of percentages.

We've also got kind of a movement over the last 10 years for some more niche barley.

So some of our craft brewers want something and that may not fully be grown under contract.

It's a little bit different market for some of those niche kinda local craft brewery type operations about where it's being sold, where it's being malted.

But you know, Molson Coors and the big players are certainly contracting for barley here in Montana.

- Okay, thank you.

Okay, Dan, we had a question that came in.

Well I'm gonna combine a couple questions here that we have.

So we have a call from Lewis and Clark County and then we have another question that came in.

And they asked could Dan talk about how the Local Government Center interacts with local communities and ag communities in Montana?

And the other follow up question was, how does the Local Government Center work on ag-related issues and with ag related organizations in Montana?

- Yeah, good questions.

The center doesn't have... Most of our partnerships are with other associations that focused on supporting local governments.

But the work we do within communities does have an impact I think, on the broader local economy.

And so one of the things that we have found, and some of the research bears itself out is that in order to have a thriving economy and a thriving community, a lot of that's dependent upon good leadership and effective government, local government.

And so that's where our focus is on the core of effective leadership and government.

So we not only provide training for local government officials, but also the staff that works in local government.

We provide leadership development and training for them so that as well as the elected officials so that they're having the opportunity to really engage their community, have conversations about how government can help them and you know, through transportation.

So a lot of our rural communities are connected through roads and these roads are managed by our local government officials.

And so that's what connects us all, fair.

If you think about a fair, I always get a kick out of driving through small rural counties and towns that some of the most prized real estate in these areas is the fairgrounds.

And you wonder why are we still maintaining a fair ground in this day and age?

And I'm convinced that in our local, particularly rural communities fairs and having fairs are really an important part of maintaining community and helping people come together at least once a year to connect, develop relationships.

And I think that's one of the things that makes a more resilient community is through fair and through other opportunities for communities to come together.

Some, you know, facilitated through the government process by having fairs and fair boards and there's many other ways in which communities come together.

Just having conversations about who are we, where we wanna go, and what role does government play in helping facilitate that vision that communities can create.

- [Tim] All right, thanks.

- [Jane] May I ask Dan a follow up that?

- Yeah.

Could I give all the 4H and ag agents out there who work so hard during fair, I'm gonna give them all a shout out for helping put all that together, A big part of their MSU extension.

Jane, ask a follow up.

- Yeah.

Well you mentioned fair boards.

I was also thinking, like in my world, I know there's like the county weed boards.

Do you provide trainings for boards like that?

Like how to run an effective meeting?

How to, you know, yeah, what sort of interaction do you have with fair boards, county weed boards, other types of boards?

- Yeah, so a lot of our work, you know, besides working with, you know, directly with county commissioners and county elected officials and municipal official folks is working with these special districts and boards.

You know, if I'm a person that's really passionate about weeds and I get appointed to be on the weed board, what I'm bringing to the table is my passion and understanding and awareness of weeds.

And I wanna contribute that to the conversation about weed management in my community.

What I may not be coming to the table with is how do I govern in this space of weed management?

And there's this whole area of governance that needs to take place.

And if that's not effective, if we're not governing in that context as a weed board following the law, making sure minutes are taken, we're noticing our meetings properly.

If that's not happening, then a lot of the energy that I have that I wanna spend contributing to improving our weed situation in our county is spent what I'd say fussing around the edges on this governance part.

And so oftentimes, we will help weed boards and conservation district boards and planning district boards, helping them understand the governance process and helping develop good bylaws so that they can operate consistently and seamlessly and then their energy is spent doing the thing that they want to participate in.

So I think of the Local Government Center, like the old BASF commercials, we don't make the paint, we make it brighter.

And so we're not specialists at all the things that government does.

We're specialists in how government functions.

And so if we can help that part, help all of local government function better than the parts that people come to the table with that expertise can be leveraged effectively.

- All right.

- That's great.

- Thank you.

Yeah, it's important how we manage all our rural communities.

Okay.

We have one follow up comment from Livingston.

and the comment was that ivory soap tends to work better than a detergent like soap, maybe like Dawn dish soap in that respect.

They found that the ivory soap has worked better than using a different detergent-like soap.

Which is interesting.

Maybe it's the fattiness, but I think, you know, ivory soap is a bit more creamier and maybe less detergent like than the others with maybe more fat.

- I wonder as well, you know, it depends on which product you use and what kind of additives are put into the soap.

So, you know, and sometimes maybe if they've added a kind of fragrance or something like that, I wonder if that could- - And so what is the dish soap or the detergent, the ivory soap actually doing to the aphids?

Is it, you know, killing them or is it just making it so slippery that they can't hold onto the leaf anymore?

What's actually happening when we get them there?

- There are two kind of ways this will work.

It can kill them as you said.

And then sometimes, something like a detergent is actually added to other insecticides because it'll break the surface tension and allow like a water, you know, something that's water.

So to actually get to the insect instead of just sitting on top of it.

So there's like two ways that can, you know, help you kill insects.

- All right, thanks.

Thank you.

Okay.

And now we have another comment.

Well, a question for Chloe, actually, from East Glacier, and I know other people who've had this issue as well.

Caller wants to know how to get rid of the little red fruit flies that have shown up this time of year in their house.

They've tried traps bought online, which failed.

A mixture of honey and apple cider vinegar and soap, but that was only partially effective.

- With the apple cider vinegar trap, I've used this one personally, so I've had issues with fruit flies before.

And what I found made it more effective is, I am not sure, you know, what they use.

Sometimes people put a funnel at the top, but what I used was plastic wrap and then just punctured holes in the toothpick.

So, and I only used an inch apple cider vinegar and that really picked off the rest of them.

But the key to actually getting rid of fruit flies in the home, you know, you could keep putting these traps out, but as long as that food source is still there, that acts as, you know, a food source and a breeding ground for the fruit flies.

So really, my advice would be look around the kitchen so carefully you looking, you know, underneath the refrigerator or the big appliances, any food that's dropped beside the kitchen cabinets, you have to find a source of the food.

Now, in my case, actually the source was outside.

So I had a compost bin that had a lot of decaying fruit matter and it was right outside of my kitchen window.

And so that's how they were gaining access in my situation.

So really just you have to find that food source, whether it's just a, you know, a dropped piece of vegetable or banana skin that slid somewhere.

You have to get it.

And then another place that people often don't look actually is the bottom of their trash can.

So over time, all of those lovely, like stinky food juice is build up and that's a really great breeding ground for fruit flies.

So clean, clean out.

- So can fruit flies?

This is a question that's come up.

Can fruit flies live in your dish drain where the water starts to flow into the drain?

- That's not typically actually fruit flies.

That's a different kind of thing called a drain fly, that they might be a bit confusing for that.

- It's called a drain fly?

- Yeah.

- Very appropriate name.

- We have drain flies, you know, they'll also come out of kitchen sinks that I always forget the name, but they have those mechanisms where it grinds up the food debris.

- Oh, the garbage disposal.

- Garbage disposal.

- Garbage disposal, yeah, yeah.

So there can be a problem there.

And you have that buildup of organic matter.

You'll probably know it's drain fly if you place, you know, an old sort of butter container, margarine container over the top of the drain and you can put a bit of Vaseline on the inside at the top.

And then you can just leave that for a while and they'll fly up and get stuck into Vaseline.

Then you know, you've got drain fly.

- So that's the sticky trap for drain flies.

- Yeah.

- All right.

- I really feel like I need to go home and clean my house.

- Yep.

Children, if you're watching tonight, we're gonna clean the kitchen.

Woo-hoo.

Okay, so we've had some other questions come in.

Well we have an interesting question out of Manhattan.

And they have asked, "What is the chemical or the herbicide that is used to kill the potato plants prior to harvest?

And does that chemical get into the potato tuber?"

- Oh, are you asking me this question?

- Well, maybe Jane, you defined a burn down herbicide and then I can go from there and we can talk a little bit about it.

- Yeah, so there's a category of herbicides called burn down herbicides, contact herbicides.

And what they do is when they make contact with plant foliage, it just kills where it's making contact.

They don't get moved around in the plant at all.

So they're not going down in the roots like to the tubers.

It's just strictly burning.

Burning the plant material that it touches.

- [Tim] Yeah, essentially a chemical burn?

- Yes.

Yeah.

- So basically, in general, the burn down herbicides that we use are not trans located by the plant.

So it is literally causing a chemical burn to the plants on the surface and burning those leaves down.

And when that happens, it's not translocated to the tuber.

So no, the answer is, it's not generally making it into the tuber in those situations.

- I don't know what contact herbicide is used- - For potatoes.

- Potatoes?

- I guess, yes.

So often, the most commonly used burned down herbicide in Montana is paraquat, which is a very toxic herbicide, but it's not translocated.

That's typically what's used in pulse crops.

In potatoes, there may be different herbicides that are used, something called Aim or Carfentrazone.

There's a few other things that are out there, but in general, they're not trans located by the plant and they just cause defoliation or burn down on the surface and it's not translocated to the tuber.

Yep.

So that'll help answer that question hopefully.

Another question for Dan, this one came in.

"What sorts of trainings does the Local Government Center provide?

A little bit more specifics.

and then they asked about how can these be utilized by the ag community?"

Which I think you touched on that a little bit, but.

- Yeah, so we offer a variety of trainings.

A lot of them are focused around governance.

So we will do what we call just the basic board training.

But in that training, we'll focus on the open meeting law, the laws around citizen participation, allowing the public to participate, make public comment.

Minutes, taking appropriate minutes of meetings.

The Montana Code of Ethics, making sure that the government, and its the elected officials as well as the government structure with the Montana Code of Ethics.

So those are some of the basic governance trainings that we do.

And then we'll do roles and responsibilities.

So I was an elected mayor in Montana years ago.

My arm is still sore from being twisted to serve in that role.

But, you know, I was a young guy, I was a county extension agent.

And people said, "Hey, you've been pretty involved in the community, why don't you be the mayor?"

'Cause no one was running for the mayor.

And so I said, "Sure, I guess I'll do that."

And so here, I've got this interest, I'm willing to step in that space, but what's my role and how am I as the mayor, what is my role different from the council?

And I think back to the civics class you take when you're in junior high class that talks about the three branches of government.

And so that's one of the trainings we'll often do.

And I know we're doing a municipal election right now, so we'll be voting soon.

So in November, we'll elect new city council members and new mayors.

And so we'll be very busy over the first of the year.

We're gonna be doing trainings around the state that we'll be doing newly elected official training.

And so we'll talk about the roles and responsibilities of the different branches.

How are they separate and different and how do they work together, right?

Because we talk about them as co-equal branches of government that check and balance, and they are some shared responsibilities between those mayor and the council and where are those spaces where they're shared and where they're separate.

And once people understand what their lane is, it's much easier for them to operate that way.

And then it makes the drama in the community much less when people understand, oh, this is where I'm supposed to work on this area and that space over there, that's either the councils or the mayors.

And if they're doing their job and I'm doing my job, it works beautifully.

I often talk about the elegance of local government.

But it's very fragile because it depends upon people's willingness to play their role.

If I want to jump over to someone else's lane.

- [Speaker] Okay, and what's your question, miss?

- Just thinking about driving in someone else's, laying down the road, it's not good.

Things don't happen.

- [Tim] Could be bad.

- You're either gonna, yeah.

So, and that's typically what happens, right?

And we often call ourselves firefighters that we respond to fires around the state where there's some of these tensions and it's often because people don't understand that there's this particular lane I need to stay in.

And so we help them understand that.

And then I'll wrap up with what I mentioned earlier, leadership training.

So you'll see on the graphic there, that leadership infrastructure is really important.

If you think about every board, there's like some 20 odd boards that are appointed by the county commissioners just to do the basic governance of a county.

And then there's a half dozen to a dozen boards depending on the municipality that serve under the municipalities.

And then there's all these special districts.

So that requires a lot of leadership in our communities.

If we talk about the minimum of five people serving on these boards and there's, you know, 45 or 50 boards, that's a lot of people that are serving in a leadership role.

So one of the things that we are offering as leadership training along with extension agents, often in their communities will offer a community leadership program.

And then we offer a leadership program specific in the context of serving in a job or in a career in local government, in public service.

And so, you know, those people that are deputy clerk and recorders or I'm a county planner or I'm a public works director, or I'm a work at the water plant, you know, all those different positions.

I'm a supervisor of two or three people in my crew, you know, how do I be a good supervisor?

So we're there to help build the confidence and competence of those local government public servants that serve in government as well as, you know, when we provide those trainings, often, we'll invite nonprofit organizations and others to join in that training because they're not that dissimilar.

And most people in rural areas are really looking for opportunities to develop and grow their leadership competence.

- Great.

Yeah.

And so really important in parts of the state and we see it traveling around as extension specialists all the time, or you have bankers coming to your events, you have local commissioners, you have the extension agents, you have producers, you have everyone.

And it's always great to see how these communities interact with each other.

- Maybe a follow up to that, Dan, like, how different are like Billings and Bozeman versus Circle and Wolf Point, just in terms of, I mean, the scope of what they're doing, but also the staff's a lot different in terms of numbers.

- Yeah, so the staff, it's a lot different than some of those communities.

You know, I'm not sure where Billings at now, but they probably have 700 or 800 employees.

So you know, quite a few employees.

And so there's a level of com complexity to that.

And then you have other communities where you have 12, you know, I think a lot of our communities have between four and 12 employees.

Last I counted, we have about 50 municipalities in the state that have less than 500 people in population.

So you know, of 127 municipalities in the state.

And we have a lot of them on that bottom end of just small communities.

And so they don't have very many staff.

And so how do we help build that and develop that competence within them to do their job and do it well?

I might know a little bit about bookkeeping, But doing, you know, like a municipal clerk doing public financing is a whole different ball of wax.

And a lot of people that have been their whole life in accounting and in finance.

They say when they come and work for a city or a county, they realize this is, I'm relearning a whole different way of doing financial accounting and figuring out how public finances work, which, it's different.

And what we do is support people in those roles and being able to help them be successful in those positions.

- All right, thanks.

Okay, Chloe, we have another question.

We have a question that pops up for you.

Clover mites, since they're coming into the house and these people live next to a golf course where the lawn is very well maintained and the turf is maintained.

I've never heard of clover mites.

Could you tell us a little bit about them and are they generally a problem?

- So clover mites are, you know, something you might not have actually noticed because they're very, very small and people tend to notice them when they start accumulating, you know, even on their houses or they're coming into the house.

And with it being only, you know, a millimeter to two millimeters in size, tiny little thing.

So it can easily get into the home, but outside, they're feeding, you know, mainly on grasses and they actually really like to feed on turf grass.

And often, people won't notice them there until, you know, there's a large number of them.

You might see some dead patches, some silvery flex, you know, on the strands of the grass.

And they do like sort well maintained grass, especially turf grass that has had quite a lot of fertilizer applied to it.

So when they start, you know, moving from lawns or turf grass in onto the home, sometimes, that's caused when you have a drought, right?

A really dry spell.

And then that forces the mites, you know, out of the lawn.

And another reason that they'll climb up structures is actually when they molt their skin.

So they grow by molting their skin a series of times.

So when they lay their eggs, they actually like to climb a vertical structure.

So this is why you'll often see like a house and then the grass immediately around a house can be affected by these mites, but they can be really tricky, right?

To try and stop such a tiny thing from get getting inside your home.

There are a few tricks.

So you could apply like to talc-based powder like baby powder, that kind of thing, or even something like corn starch that can be used as a barrier basically.

And it'll dry them out.

And really as well, you wanna maintain a barrier of, you know, a good two feet of either bare soil or just something, just no grass, basically between the foundation of your house and the rest of that turf grass.

And that can help to slow the rate that they're, you know, getting to the home.

And then apart from that, you probably are looking into applying a kind of, you know, foundation treatment, a spray that will go around the outside of the home, but you have to be, you know, aware that that can be quite short-lived.

The effects of that.

So again, you have the barriers that I mentioned with the powders, but another thing I guess to think of is having sticky traps along the window sills and the areas where they seem to be coming in.

And those sticky traps actually are really useful for helping find, you know, that hole where most of them are gaining access to your home.

And then if you are seeing a large number of them, like on the wall outside the home, you can, you know, we mentioned using like dish soap, you know, mixture water to try and treat insects earlier in this episode.

But you can try that with the mites as well.

And that will wash them off the wall, but that's not gonna have a residual effect, right?

So once you, you know, treat the mites that are on the wall there, then others can then come along and climb up into your house still.

- Okay, thank you.

Maybe, yeah, lawns difficult.

Okay, we have a couple questions and comments that came in for Dan from Havre.

And one question was, "Since local government council members are elected, do they get training in how state law in Montana functions?"

- Yeah.

So typically, there isn't any required training or any training that there is an expectation for them to receive it outside of their own motivation.

So for example, in Havre, if they're gonna have several newly elected city council members, I know they're getting a new mayor.

The mayor in Havre at least last I heard was not running again.

And so oftentimes, the city will reach out to us and say, "Hey, we have new council members, we got a new mayor.

We'd like to start out with a good understanding of what is or what are those lanes."

And those lanes that I talked about earlier are defined by the law.

It gives roles and responsibilities of those different branches of government are defined in the law.

And so we can help them understand that and as well as we can help them how to operationalize that.

What does it look like in our behavior when we're following what it says in the law?

And so say for example, Havre would contact us and say, "We would like to host a training on roles and responsibilities and we'll invite all the other communities that are nearby to come to this training."

And so oftentimes, we would like to leverage our travel around the state.

I think that we showed a map earlier, the different communities we've been around in the state this last year.

And so the cities and counties, we've been into I think 54 of the 56 counties that we've provided training.

And there's a picture there and I think all those black dots are communities or community members that have participated in our trainings or I guess public officials.

So we do have a pretty large presence around the state.

There's not many of us, but we're very active in both reaching people through conferences or doing site training.

But I think any community that they're to contact us, we're happy to come out and do training.

The other thing I'll mention as well that we offer is strategic planning for local governments.

That's one of the things that they find to be very valuable as they start thinking about how do we be strategic over the next three to five years in making decisions about the limited resources we have to leverage that for the biggest impact for our citizens?

And so we spend a lot of time working with cities and counties and other districts and helping them with their strategic planning.

- All right, thank you.

We'll come back to you in a second for another question.

Joel, we have a question from a producer who is interested in buying a new round baler for the next season.

And they were interested in what you think the trajectory of interest rates available to them for financing would be in the next six months?

- Yeah, yeah.

And this is commonly the time of year people are starting to look at equipment, right?

For next year to see what's kind of in their budget, what they might want to upgrade.

And specifically on the cattle side, it's been a really strong year, so good chance to maybe reinvest in some equipment and So in terms of interest rates, you know, it's a market for those in terms of kind of supply and demand for money that flows.

But a lot of times, that's fairly closely linked to the federal funds rate, which the Federal Reserve sets and they meet every, I think six weeks and then, you know, they had a rate cut here of a quarter point, so you know, a 0.25 of a percent.

And oftentimes, other rates will move kind of in tandem with that.

The other interesting thing about the Fed is when they have one of these meetings a couple weeks later, they release what they talked about, kind of like the key points.

And in there is usually what they expect interest rates to do for the rest of the year.

And in terms of rate cuts or increases from the fed.

And the most recent one I was reading is they're expecting two more quarter point cuts in rates before the end of the year.

So might be an indication that we might see up to maybe half a percent downward trend in rates, you know, maybe in the next six months or something.

Again, you're kind of crystal ball looking, but that's probably kind of the best hint we have.

Another thing that's kind of interesting though right now is, you know, we kind of have a haves and haves not in terms of ag.

Our cattle producers are smiling, talking maybe talking to an investment person.

And on the other side, the grains folks have had a lot more challenging here in terms of profitability.

So what we've seen in the equipment market is equipment that's being used by cattle producers, not seeing as many discounts on those prices.

They're holding really strong for good used balers, stackers, tractors move that.

In terms of farming equipment cedars, a lot of the true farming folks are holding off on making those.

So we're seeing a lot more deals on combines, cedars, larger horsepower tractors.

- I've heard that car vehicles, vehicles bought from dealerships have, we're getting into like five, six, seven, eight-year loan premiums or loan terms.

How long does a typical farmer finance a baler for in Montana?

Are you on a 20-year loan program?

A 10-year loan?

- I doubt many bankers are gonna wanna give you 20-year money on a baler unless they've got balers I've never seen before, you know.

But you do see in kind of the three to seven-year range for a lot of equipment.

Maybe on a larger end combine, you might see out to maybe 10 and you know, some of those pieces of equipment are getting pretty expensive.

But they also had appreciate and break down, you know, one of the last things you want is to have an equipment that's fully worn down, not useful to your operation and you still owe a big chunk of money on it, you know, so you want to kind of time that loan.

If we think this baler's gonna last seven years< you probably don't want a loan of over five on it.

- Okay, interesting.

And so we still have no farm bill, the government is currently shut down.

So do those farm bill provisions or any of the loan programs in there affect how people buy equipment, think about purchasing equipment?

Or is depreciation written into any of the farm bill laws of how fast you can depreciate equipment and things like that?

- Well the depreciation piece would be general to kind of all business equipment.

So that would include a construction company or you know, so that's sort of a more general business IRS type implication.

Nothing too unique to ag in that sense.

So that piece isn't there.

You know, we don't have a farm bill but the budget bill in early July covered a lot of the key pieces, which is a little bit unique.

We need some other cleanup legislation to come.

So a lot to watch and I don't quite have an answer for you yet in terms of when we'll see that those loose ends tied up.

- All right, so we're getting down on time, everyone, this evening.

Thank you for getting all your questions in.

If we did not get to your questions tonight, we will pick up some of the questions next week.

Dan, thank you for being the guest tonight and giving us a lot of information about the Local Government Center.

I have a couple questions we didn't get to from it.

Just quickly, in 10 seconds, where does the Local Government Center funding come from?

- Fee for service and appropriation and a little bit from extension.

- All right, thank you for letting us know that.

And thank you, all, for watching tonight.

We're really looking forward to next week's show as well.

We're gonna have a special guest, Mary Burrows, who used to appear quite often on the show and she's gonna be talking about some of the pathology issues and the different things that we had.

Dan, Joel, Jane, Chloe, thank you for being guests tonight and thank you for all the great information.

We look forward to seeing you all next week on the show.

Thank you and goodnight.

- [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

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