- [Announcer] 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 & Landscaping.

The Gallatin Gardeners Club.

And the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(rousing country music) - You are watching Montana Ag Live, originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus that we call Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana Public Television System.

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

Happy to be your host this evening.

Have an interesting program tonight, and we're going to get into it here in a minute.

But before we do that, let me again tell you that this program is pretty boring unless you provide the questions for this panel to answer.

There'll be a phone number on the screen shortly.

And if you have any questions tonight for our panel, we'll make every effort to answer 'em on tonight's program.

Let me introduce tonight's program.

Way on my left, Sam Wyffels.

Sam plays with cows.

He's a beef extension specialist.

If you have any questions about beef, and right now the beef industry has a lot of questions that are being asked about the price of beef, the number of cattle, some of the pests that are coming in from Mexico.

So, Sam, you'll take anything that comes in tonight, right?

- I'll do my best.

(panel laughing) - Our guest tonight, Dave Kelsey.

Dave is a Montana Extension Advisory Committee member, and we're really gonna focus a little bit about advisory committees tonight, especially Extension, but also Ag Experiment Station and Farm Service Agency.

Everybody has advisory committees.

Find out what they do and how you get on 'em, and how valuable they are for the state.

Joel Schumacher.

Joel is our Extension Economist.

Lot of economic questions involved with agriculture right now with diesel fuel prices, so forth and so on.

We'll get into that during the course of the evening.

Ask the questions and we'll try to formulate a good answer.

Abi Saeed.

Abi, you took last week off.

- I did.

I'm sorry.

- You should be.

- I'm back now.

- Okay.

Abi is our Extension Horticulturalist.

She'll be happy to answer any questions that you have concerning your house plants, garden plants, so forth and so on.

Answering the phones tonight, Cheryl Bennett and Joe Vradenburg, and we thank them for being here.

The phone number will be up in a minute.

Keep 'em busy.

Dave?

- Yes, sir?

- Happy to have you here.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and with the Extension Advisory Committee.

- Well, Jack, I graduated from this university in ag education, taught high school vo-ag for a couple of years up on the high line.

And then my wife and I went back into farming and ranching.

And at that point, we both were 4-H leaders for 26 years, heavily involved with Extension during that timeframe.

And Extension's been near and dear to my heart.

And the opportunity arose to be on the Extension Advisory Committee, and I took that opportunity to try to be an advocate for Extension.

- So what do you as a member of the Extension Advisory Committee actually accomplish, do for Extension?

Give us an example of what an advisory group does.

- Well, I think one of the main things we do is kinda get a feeling from the rest of the state.

We are selected from throughout different areas throughout the state.

And you get a pulse of what some of the community needs are, whether it be the ag community, rural living, the urban area, whatever it is, and pass those on to our Extension employees.

And Cody Stone, the Director, we work with him heavily, and just try to communicate the needs of the state of Montana and advocate for Extension, let those people know that our Extension personnel is out there and does a wonderful job of providing services to make communities better.

- I've been around Extension here in the state for 45 years, and Extension has changed.

There's a lot of new programs.

I assume some of these came by the advisory committees.

And one I'm thinking of that's really very important now is the mental health specialist that we have in Extension.

Did the Advisory Committee recognize that there are mental health issues in agriculture and brought that to the attention of administration?

- Well, I think it was a combination of that, and just that coming through the communities as well, Jack.

I've done some PSAs concerning mental health issues, and we're trying to minimize the stigma that people used to feel by saying they needed some help, and we've instituted cases of mental health first aid and got some people educated in how they can visit with people and then try to recommend resources for them to look into to help mental health issues.

Unfortunately, Jack, Montana rates real close to number one in the nation in the ag community.

- I know that.

- And as well as the state overall.

That's not something you wanna be number one about.

And so, we need to continue to advocate for improvement in those areas, and we're working hard to do that.

- Okay, good points.

Sam, I'm gonna turn it over to you.

I mean, how long have you been here in Montana now as an employee?

- Oh, shoot.

I've been here for a while in different capacities.

(panel laughing) So I came in as a PhD student in 2015 and worked as an instructor through some of that, then was a research scientist, before moving into my role in Extension.

- Okay.

So the Extension Advisory Committee, I mean, a lot of them are involved with livestock.

Have they made suggestions to your program that you've incorporated in livestock production?

- Yes.

I mean, I usually always advocate Montana State University as a land grant institution with our primary focus as serving our stakeholders of Montana.

And for me specifically, being a beef cattle specialist, I try to talk to as many livestock producers as I can and understand what their issues are, so then I can help generate research projects, or at least find information to help those individuals get where they need to be.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Let's move over to Abi for a second here.

This person has heard from Bozeman that various root crops, like carrots, beets, are sweeter after a frost.

Is that true?

- Yeah, that's actually true.

So one of the things that happens with those fruit crops is that when you have those cool temperatures, those root crops end up producing more soluble sugars because sugars can help protect plant cells from freezing.

And so, when we have those cold temperatures in the fall, and even if we have a frost, we end up getting sweeter carrots, sweeter parsnips, sweeter beets, and I'm sure we've all experienced that after a frost, our root crops taste better.

- My carrots are always much better after frost.

- Absolutely.

- But I still haven't found a way to make parsnips all that much sweeter and that much better.

- Yeah.

It's not everyone's favorite.

I still notice the difference in sweetness after the frost, but yeah, carrots are very significant.

- Yeah, definitely.

Joel, this person from Joliet would like to know, "What influence," and everybody can jump in on this, "What influence the increase of diesel prices has on farm profitability?"

- Yeah.

I mean, I've gotten several calls in the last week on that.

The example I kinda worked through with somebody in Northeastern Montana a little bit earlier this week is a crop budget for wheat, and North Dakota State University actually publishes what they expect the cost per acre to be, and it has equipment costs and labor costs, but it also has diesel fuel in there.

And for that particular one, they budgeted at $2.60 for the price of diesel, and now we're looking at, we're getting close to six bucks, I think.

And so, I kinda looked at that.

If you're getting 40 bushel per acre wheat, you're gonna need a 38 cent increase in the price, just to cover that increased cost.

Not the total cost of diesel, but the amount that it increased.

Now, this year is a little bit, it's not quite that significant, because some of that diesel was used in planting, which took place several months ago and some things.

And even, you may have had a large delivery in the spring, so you might be working on some fuel that you bought at a little bit cheaper price.

But you're gonna run out of that here pretty soon and you'll be purchasing at these higher prices.

So if you take 40 bushel wheat and you're taking about 35 cents every one of those bushels, that cuts into your profitability, so that's an important thing for producers to consider, and it boils right back to profitability for sure.

- Dave, I'm gonna throw this at you.

We had a little barbecue for PBS people on the panel the other day.

Somebody on PBS said that they heard that a big combine, and I don't know the John Deere numbers anymore, but say a 97, 80 or whatever they are, and big Masseys and so forth, with 38, 40 foot headers burn 25 gallons of diesel an hour.

Is that true?

- Yes, it is true, Jack, and it depends a lot on how heavy the crop is and what kinda terrain that you're driving those combines over.

But under heavy conditions, they can easily use that much fuel.

So as Joel just pointed out, it has a huge impact on the cost of production.

- Even though you get 50 cents less than if I had a diesel vehicle and drove it down the road.

- Even though we get that, that's exactly right.

That 50 cents- - Doesn't go very far.

- I'm trying to be politically correct, okay?

- Okay.

- All right.

- A question from Billings.

They would like to know, and, Dave, while I have you up, I'll throw this your way, "How does Extension and research centers select people for the Advisory Committee?"

- We're always looking for people that are interested in getting involved.

And we don't like to get larger than a group of 20.

But we look at different locations throughout the state so that we represent each area as good as possible.

And so, if someone is interested, have 'em contact me, have them contact Cody Stone at the Extension, and we will pursue it.

- [Jack] It's an opportunity for people to get involved.

- Absolutely.

- And I encourage that.

And also, the program that I encourage people to get involved with, and post COVID we've had less people involved, is 4-H.

And if you wanna have fun and be around kids, join as a 4-H educator.

You don't have to be super smart.

You just have to have a little tolerance and patience.

And you've been in 4-H before, you know a lot about it.

How would you recruit people in 4-H?

- You mean students, kids?

- No, no.

- As leaders?

- As leaders.

- Oh, okay.

I think one of the things you would do would be to look at past members of 4-H, people that may have some expertise in certain areas that you could utilize, whether it be in livestock area or the gardening area, any specific area that you might need assistance that you normally are not an expert at.

Find some people that would be willing to share some time.

Shooting sports is another great example.

People enjoy hunting, and if you can help those people get started in showing students and 4-H members the proper way to handle firearms, the proper way to handle archery equipment, you name it.

But I think there's a great opportunity for people if they're willing to share their expertise with the young people.

And these young kids need advice, and they are looking for input.

And if you've got an activity for them to be involved with, they become so much more productive.

And I gotta say, that's part of the leadership development that 4-H offers to kids, is finding your way and becoming independent, and becoming a more confident leader in yourself.

- Yeah.

I read an interesting article by the ex-editor of Montana Outdoors.

His name is Tom Dixon.

And he pointed out that kids in Montana, if you put 'em on a nationwide scale, they use their cell phones less than any other kids in any other state, which talks highly that our kids are more active in agriculture and outdoor activities, so forth and so on.

I just had to throw that in, because Tom did a really great article on that.

- You know what?

And then we have a group called Montanans for 4-H, Jack.

That is another way for adults to get involved.

And we bring kids into the legislature every two years.

We bring them up to Helena so that they can present a couple of items to the legislators and let them know the outstanding work that 4-H does with them in developing our leaders for the future.

And believe it or not, each biennium, we have a turnover of approximately 30% So you're talking to a new group quite often, and quite often, some of those people don't know that much about Extension and 4-H programs.

So this group, Montanans for 4-H, is an outstanding group to bring that up.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Good points.

Abi, this caller is from Anaconda, and they want to know if the deer that are eating their raspberries will kill their raspberries, or they're just eating the leaves.

I assume they ate the berries too, because raspberry-fed deer is probably pretty good.

But will the raspberries survive?

- It depends on the age of the raspberry.

Usually if it's around late summer, early fall time of year and they're eating a lot of the leaves, usually that plant has enough stored energy in the root system that it should really bounce back in the spring and do well.

If they're eating all the leaves repeatedly, year after year, your plant's going to start to struggle.

But most of the time, plants are pretty resilient, and so, they often have the ability to grow despite some of these hardships.

So if it's been eating the leaves, especially this year because there isn't very much else around, just make sure take extra little care of that raspberry in the spring, make sure it's getting plenty of water, but it should bounce back.

And then consider fencing if you have issues with that year after year, after year.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Interesting question here.

It's my first curve ball to you, Sam.

- Wonderful.

- You always expect one.

- Yeah, I expect a couple.

Yeah.

- This caller is from the eastern part of the state.

They were up in the Lindsay area and noticed a herd of about 100 almost pure white cattle.

They're wondering what breed that might be.

- There's a couple that come to mind.

I would guess if it's a general beef herd in Montana, it's probably a Charolais.

But I'll be darned if I haven't seen some, I believe they're White Parks, running around here and there.

But my guess is, if it's a beef breed and it's general Montana, it's probably Charolais or Charolais based.

- So I've happened to be in the Lindsay area hunting a couple weeks ago and I think I saw this same herd, and they're beautiful.

Charolais have a little bit of tan color to 'em, don't they?

- They can.

- Okay.

These, if they're the same herd that I saw, is almost pure white.

They're really impressive animals.

So I don't know if that helps or not.

- Yeah.

Did they have black noses?

- I didn't get out and ask.

(panel laughing) - Yeah, I'd have to see them.

Charolais are very common in Montana, so that's kinda my guess.

Anything else would probably be more of like a specialty breed that's out and about.

Unless you guys have seen something?

- I haven't seen any pure white like that.

- Okay.

Well, they're pretty distinctive.

By the way, who knows where Lindsay is?

Good job.

It's a little bit north on the way to Circle from Glendive.

There's not much left there, but it was a... - It's bigger than Molt.

- That's true.

(panel laughing) Okay.

From Hamilton, this person is curious to know the panel's opinion on whether or not the county of origin label should be included on beef packaging.

That's a little bit of a political question, but your opinion?

Joel, I'll start with you.

- Well, I mean, we did just see an executive order, I don't know, two weeks ago or so, that asked USDA, some of the agencies to prepare a report and come back in 90 days with what they felt some of the economic concerns would be with that.

I don't know if that's gonna change much.

We had country of origin labeling at one point prior to a WTO ruling that took that off the table at that point.

So I mean, I think the roadmap for what it would look like and what it might do is pretty well known.

I don't know if there's some other new avenue or angle that would be involved with this particular recent effort, I guess, to maybe take another look at it.

- [Dave] I wanna jump in on that, Jack.

- You do it.

- I absolutely think that everybody should know where their food comes from.

I think it should be and should have never been dropped, and I'm totally opposed to the WTO decision.

I think it was the wrong decision and we should be allowing our consumers to know where their products are coming from, and we do it on almost everything else.

- [Jack] We do on a lot of things.

- And that's what's frustrating about this whole thing, about everything else we do that with, and with beef products, we've been allowing things to be co-mingled and you never know where for sure it's coming from.

So I am totally in favor of country of origin labeling.

- Yeah.

I would just throw out there that I think the United States produces the best beef in the world, so why not capitalize on that?

- Absolutely so.

- And one thing too, just about our beef supply here in the US, most of what we import is lean trimmings, and then it gets blended with fatter US trimmings to get down to an 80/20 or a 90/10 blend that typically, where we're importing very few steaks.

So it's kinda select products where this would probably have an impact.

If it's steaks, you probably have a pretty good chance that's already a US steak, but hamburger- - Even Wagyu steaks?

- Could be.

It depends.

Yeah.

So there'd be some niche markets, but hamburger is where you would probably see the biggest impact with this, just because that's the type of meat that we import.

- So on the hamburger, I have one, two, three calls here about the 300,000 metric tons of hamburger that we're importing to lower beef prices, and most of these people wanna know, is that going to happen?

- Well, so it's being allowed right now.

And the way that imports of beef are typically handled, and have been for a long time, is the first in-quota amount is at a low tariff.

So maybe you're paying 8% tariff when you come in.

Once you reach a maximum amount of that quota, then the tariff rate jumps from, say, eight to 30 or 40%, at which point it effectively stops any imports, and it's by country.

So that's been kind of the framework we've had for a long time.

So what this is doing is saying, above that initial quota, countries can bring in a total, collectively across the world, this 300 million metric tons.

That's about 2% of the US beef supply if they brought all of that in.

But we also have to look at where that might come from and what kind of supply.

If we looked at Mexico, they don't have 300,000 metric tons to send us.

Just, the supply simply isn't there.

So it's probably gonna come out of Brazil and Australia.

That's the two countries that probably have some capacity.

And what they bring in is almost certainly gonna be lean trimmings.

- So the question that these people wanna know.

Is a $7.95 hamburger gonna become $7.49 in the grocery store?

- I think there's probably not much chance that the consumer price is gonna see much impact at all.

- Okay.

And then I wanna ask these two at the end of the table, my question is, has that announcement impacted beef prices here in Montana?

Range cattle prices, in other words, stock cows?

- Absolutely.

- How much?

- Knocked about three to $400 off the going price for calves.

- [Jack] That's significant.

- Absolutely significant.

- I'd just throw out there, 'cause we saw this, was it a year ago, when they kinda did something similar.

But I think the problem that we really are running into is an inventory issue.

We had these big, persistent droughts.

A few years ago when Montana had two big droughts back to back, we lost 250,000 head of inventory.

That's only increased by, like, 1% since.

And then you look at the persisting droughts through the South and other places.

The reason beef price is so high is, nobody's rebuilding herds 'cause of these drought conditions moving around.

And so, importing those lean trimmings or that beef will maybe help with some of these hamburger box cuts, and I'm sure it's impacting future markets.

My guess is though, the problem still becomes actual animal inventory, and my guess is you'll see those prices probably bounce back.

- Jack, I think the thing about that is, I think if a person looks at the US Drought Monitor map, you'll see that the drought is affecting a huge portion of the United States, and we are not gonna be able to continue to even have the inventory we currently have in Montana if the weather doesn't come around and change for us a little bit, because that's harsh reality.

And this drought that hit this year for most of us in Montana hit really hard early in the spring when you need that early moisture for spring grasses and so on.

So our grass production is way down, and we're not gonna be able to continue this way.

In my area, there was no hay.

If you had it insured, it got zeroed out, and we did very little haying.

So if you didn't have carryover production from before, you're in a world of hurt and prices of hay have gone through the roof.

We're looking at anywhere from 180 to 360 bucks a ton, and 400-plus if you're doing small squares.

And some of that, then you tack on transportation at 6.50 a gallon for diesel, that adds up in a hurry.

- I don't wanna be in that industry right now, even though beef prices are still pretty good.

It's tough.

Yeah, I had a question here from Forsyth.

This person is somewhat interested in stepping up and trying to get on some advisory committees, but they wonder if the people on advisory committees actually lobby the legislature also?

- Yeah, we do, Jack.

And I think that the thing to remember is, most of us on these advisory committees are stakeholders.

We use the Extension Program, or we use the Animal and Marine Science Program, or you name it, and in order to convince legislators to help fund this program, you need to lobby for it.

And Extension is funded by approximately 40% state funding, 40% local county funding, and 20% federal.

So you need to lobby both at the state legislature, at the federal when you can get there, and really remember how important our county participation is in our Extension programs.

We need to help our Extension agents communicate to our county agents or our county commissioners and let them know what Extension is doing by giving them an update periodically.

That's a great way to keep them informed of what great programs we have going on in Extension.

- I've said this several times on this program.

If I had a to do over again, and I sincerely mean this, I'd consider becoming a county agent, because you have an opportunity to be involved with so many different aspects of community development, agriculture, 4-H.

It's just, it's very rewarding.

And we've had some great county agents and have some really good agents in the state right now.

So I speak very highly of 'em.

Shift over to Abi.

I know the answer to this, but I'll let you do it.

The caller has noticed a lot of dots on fallen hollyhock leaves.

Any idea what's going on?

- Yeah, I think Jack knows hollyhock would not be hollyhawks without rust.

Chances are that is what's going on.

When we have those cool nighttime temperatures and we have that moisture, which we've had in pockets, but even without that moisture, rust is very common in hollyhocks.

And if you have a heavy case of rust, you end up losing your leaves a little bit early.

Unfortunately, there isn't too much that needs to be done about it.

My hollyhocks have rust every single year and they're still hanging in there, they're still doing really well.

But if you have the ability to reduce any overhead or sprinkler irrigation, reduce those factors that are gonna encourage rust.

You can practice sanitation, removing those leaves when they fall.

Any other thoughts, Jack?

- [Jack] That takes care of it.

Hollyhocks are pretty tough.

- They are tough.

They are tough.

- So they'll tolerate a lot of stress.

Interesting question from Helena, and I have no idea on this one myself.

Of course, I'm not an animal scientist, so here it comes.

The caller was traveling by Miles City and noticed an Angus that had just calved.

Why might that be that they're calving so late in the summer, and is that normal?

- Depends.

Yes.

- That's a good answer.

- I'm gonna start using that every time, "It depends."

So traditionally in Montana, I would say primarily we look at spring calvers, that March, April, sometimes May timeframe, but there is some folks out there that employed fall calving systems.

So they're gonna be calving right around now, actually, the September, late August, September time point.

The theory there is that your animals are calving in nicer weather, and when those calves are ready to wean, you're hitting the market at a time where it's not flooded with calves.

There's some additional challenges with that.

The reason why a lot of folks are calving in the spring is because when that calf hits the ground and that animal starts lactating, that increases nutrient requirements substantially on that cow.

And so, timing that with when forage is at its best and the most helps get that animal through that nutrient stress of lactation and raising that calf.

Folks that are calving in the fall, our forage quality right now is at the lowest it is of the year, so it usually takes some substantial inputs to keep that animal on a positive trajectory.

So you usually only see fall calving in Montana with folks that have unique scenarios where they're putting up their own hay or have the ability to graze a higher quality forage system in the fall than like our general range folks.

- Okay.

That answers that question.

In the last two weeks, we've had numerous questions about gophers and other type of rodents.

Steve Van Tassel is not on the panel, but Steve loves us when I give out his phone number, because on Monday morning his phone really rings.

So Steve Van Tassel is a Montana Department of Ag rodent specialist or, I guess, kind of a critter specialist in general.

His phone number, if you have questions, is 406-431-7720.

Everybody call him between 8:00 and 9:00 on Monday morning, because he knows what happens.

He's been exposed on the program.

Email is svantassel@montana.gov.

And Steve is more than willing to help you with any rodent problems that you have.

- Jack, I'd like to throw out, our area down there has been inundated with an explosion of prairie dogs and gophers.

So it's a serious concern, and it is something that needs addressed for sure.

- So on that note, what do you do if you have a big invasion?

I mean, it's cyclical to some degree.

But when you have a really drought year, and they do eat a fair amount.

- Yes.

- Other than .22s or .22-250s, what else can you do to control this?

- Well, you can go into poisoning, and that is a project in itself, and expensive, and some of us have mixed emotions about that.

At the same time, when you get a big volume of it, you cannot shoot enough to control 'em.

And I've got people currently have about half a dozen coming in from Idaho that are gonna spend over a week in our area working on that.

We highly thank them for coming in, but you just can't do that enough.

And it's turned into quite a science, the prairie dog hunting.

I mean, most of the folks are coming in with suppressors, so they're not spooked as much and so on.

But at the same time, you just can't shoot enough of 'em.

- Yeah, I'll throw this out.

I used to shoot a fair number of ground squirrels, and we used the lead bullets back then.

But it's amazing that within an hour or two that you're shooting in a pasture, the bald eagles show up to feed on 'em.

How they know that and how they show up is amazing.

But in today's world, lead bullets have a bad name because of that.

So a lot of people have gone to copper coated bullets and so forth.

I just though I'd throw that out.

While I have you up.

From Whitehall, this person wants to know how often do advisory committees meet?

- Well, that depends on the advisory.

I got that depends in there.

- [Sam] Yeah, there you go.

- Anyway, ours meets, the Extension and the others meet different timeframes.

But about twice a year is what they usually meet.

And then we do, if we need to keep in contact, we just do some phone conference or that type of thing, Jack.

- Okay.

And you're also on the Southern Ag Research Advisory Committee.

How often do you meet there?

- Twice.

- Twice a year?

- Usually twice.

One of those is usually when we do the field days and that sort of thing too.

- How many people are on the Extension Advisory Committee for the state?

- Well, we try not to get any larger than 20.

But I think right now, currently we're probably at eight to 10 fairly active.

- Okay.

Same for the Ag Experiment Station out at?

- Yeah.

Well, closer to the 15 to 20.

And through the Ag Experiment Station, we encourage our local county agents to be involved with it, as well as, the Yellowstone County commissioners are very active, and the Musselshell Valley County commissioners have been pretty good as well.

- Okay.

Thank you.

I've got a quick one for Joel, and then we wanna find out a little bit more about cantaloupe from Dylan.

But, Joel, the Federal Reserve just recently increased rates, according to this producer.

He wants to know, is that gonna have a negative effect on agriculture?

- Yeah.

So they raised 'em by a quarter percentage point here recently.

They meet, I think, eight times a year to decide whether they should do that.

And when inflation's run a little bit high, that's one of their two mandates, is to manage that.

One of the ways they do that is to raise rates.

So on a kind of consumer level, whether you're a farmer or not, a lot of times, although it's not a direct link, a lot of loans will move roughly in tandem with what that is.

So if you were gonna go in and get an operating loan at 7%, it's probably gonna be somewhere near seven and a quarter, based on where that benchmark rate is.

- Yeah.

And some operating loans are rather significant, so it does happen.

- Yeah, and that would be true too for equipment loans or real estate loans.

Now, on the other side of it, if you have some savings at a bank, it probably jumped up a little bit as well on the rates they're paying.

A quarter point isn't a huge move.

But a lot of times with the Federal Reserve, they make small steps towards a goal.

So if things continue to stay this way, you might see at a future meeting another quarter point move down the road.

- Okay.

Switch over to Abi.

This is from Dylan.

This caller is wondering if Abi can give advice... I just lost it.

It jumped around.

On ripening cantaloupe.

They're not turning color, and they wonder if there's any way to get them to ripen sooner.

And I don't think there is, is there?

- No, there isn't, unfortunately, an When we see plants not change color like that, especially fruit, there are a few factors.

One could be heat, just the amount of heat units in a day and how quickly those plants are gonna ripen, as well as sun.

So sunlight can really help with ripening.

If it's in a location where you can allow it to have more access to sun, that could be helpful.

But there aren't really any useful strategies you can use to speed up ripening.

So at this point, kind of hope for the best maybe, and try and reduce any stressors.

When plants are stressed, they're gonna divert energy away from the fruit.

So reduce any stressors, make sure that it's getting plenty of sun.

And other than that, not very much.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Dave, this person from Joplin wants to know if all the ag experiment stations, I think we have seven in the state.

- [Dave] Yes, sir.

- Do they all have advisory committees?

- [Dave] I believe so.

- Okay.

That's probably good.

And how would you get on one of those committees?

Walk in the door and ask the superintendent?

- Well, that and be actively involved in ag production, is kind of a nice asset for it.

And that way you can represent your area more highly if you're involved in ag and you know what some of the needs are.

And our particular, well, I think just about all of 'em do satellite trials.

I've had plant variety trials and different tests on our operation for well over 30 years, that they come out and do a new trial each year, and that way you see what the different varieties are.

But it's easy to get involved.

If you're interested, if you're sincerely interested, I'd contact your local experiment station and see how you might be able to get involved with that.

- I have a question there.

Producers are getting older in the state.

There's no doubt about it.

The average age- - I have that feeling.

- I know, I... But are most of the advisory committees staffed with, I won't say senior citizens, but older producers, or are there a lot of new younger producers becoming involved?

- You know, I think we have a combination of that.

We've got several younger people on Southern Ag, and our maze advisory group has some younger representation in it, which is the statewide advisory group from the research centers, Jack.

And there's a good selection of both experienced, higher degree of experience I'll say, for the older folks involved, and then the younger generation is involved there as well.

- Good.

The younger might be more energetic.

- There you go.

There you go.

- I take a little license of liberty every so often on this program.

I was out in the eastern part of the state the first weekend and actually went over to Medora and toured that Roosevelt Museum, which is absolutely a stunning place.

But I'm gonna promote something.

It's called "Southeast Montana."

There's a lot of people that live in Missoula, Bozeman, Helena, Kalispell that don't know that there's another part of the state and that's Eastern Montana.

And why don't you get out of your zip code once in a while and vacation out in that part of the state?

It's really a beautiful area of the state.

It's very unique.

Some great restaurants out there.

There's a new restaurant in Savage that I won't mention the name 'cause I'm not supposed to do that.

But there's a lot of things that you can do and see in the eastern part of the state that you don't see if you live in the western part of the state.

Get out of your zip code.

Okay.

From Billings, this caller has a long needled pine that is dropping needles.

Is there anything wrong?

We covered this last week.

- So it's hard to definitively say what could be going on.

So needles can drop due to environmental reasons, they can drop naturally over a few years just to regrow new needles, or there could be disease issues.

So this would be a classic case.

If it's Billings, you have an awesome extension agent, Anthony Sammartano.

Reach out to Anthony and work with him to troubleshoot what exactly is going on.

If it's natural, nothing to worry about.

If it is a disease issue, he can give you recommendations on what the next steps are based on what it is.

Another thing that's helpful right now is, we also wanna encourage, especially for our evergreens, it is important to make sure that they're getting plenty of moisture going into the fall.

It's been really hot and really dry during this summer, and we're seeing a lot of that stress, which can also encourage that premature needle dropping, and also leaf dropping and change in color.

So make sure that you're getting plenty of water in your trees.

- And on that note, this person, I don't remember where from, I saw it on the scroll here, says, "Should we stop watering deciduous trees now?"

- No.

So usually we like to... So when some people are stopping watering, they're trying to increase stress, which may trigger some stress responses that could mean earlier leaf color change and earlier leaf drop.

Usually that stress isn't great for trees.

So for most home garden situations, we're not telling people to taper or stop watering at this time of year.

It's been really a tough summer for trees and shrubs, so we're saying, continue to water.

And when you are watering, make sure that you're watering your trees correctly.

To water your trees, you wanna water along the drip line and beyond.

So imagine your tree like an umbrella.

You want, where that water would drip, that's the area you wanna put your irrigation, and a little bit beyond that.

That's where the active root zone is.

You also wanna water slowly and make sure it's getting deep enough, at least six to 12 inches deep.

So often, lawn sprinkler systems aren't enough to get that water down to the root zone of those trees.

You want maybe a trickle or drip irrigation, or even a hose.

That's usually better.

You wanna get that water down deep into the root zone.

- Thank you.

Comment.

And by the way, folks, those of you who watch this program, if you got comments, especially positive comments, you can call 'em in, and even negative ones or suggestions.

We'll take those also under consideration.

This comment came from Glendive, and this is for you.

Caller states that the cattle mentioned in Lindsay were Eaton Charolais.

What's an Eaton Charolais?

- That's a great question.

It's a variety of Charolais.

That's about as far as I can get you.

- I think that's just a Charolais, but I might be wrong.

- [Jack] Are there other.

I mean, you got Eaton and Alt, or whatever, Charolais.

- I suppose there's the potential for that.

I mean, when you start thinking about- - Your job is, next time you're on, to find out.

- Yeah, I'll figure that out, I'll bring it up.

But you hear things like Aberdeen Angus and things like that.

So my guess is it's a Charolais, but it's probably bred from a specific region.

- Okay.

Well, now we know, and now we know what that herd was out there.

So thank you for that comment out there.

This one is, again, for you.

This person wants to know what's best, and this is interesting, 73/27, 85/15 or 93/7 ground beef, and why the difference?

(panel laughing) - Yeah.

I always defer these questions to, it depends on what you like.

So those numbers refer to the percent fat in a ground beef mix.

Some people like that fatty, greasy.

Some people like the more lean.

Personally, I kinda lean more towards the lean side of things, the less fat.

But I guess, if I'm mixing something with some elk, I probably want the heavier fat.

But yeah, that just refers to the fat content in that ground beef, and I don't know that there's a true answer of what's better.

It kinda depends what you wanna do with it and what you like.

- So if I'm gonna grill a hamburger, I because you don't get that char flavor.

But 85/15, would that be better than the really greasy?

- I don't personally like the really greasy, especially if I'm on a barbecue, 'cause then you see those grill fires start up and you're trying to keep the grill down so you don't have this giant.

- [Jack] That what you pour your beer on.

- Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

So I would guess, in that instance, I would go with the middle of the road.

But like I said, it all comes down to personal flavor.

- I agree.

- Dave, this person wants to know if local county extension agents have advisory committees.

That's a good question.

- If they what?

- Do local county agents, like the Alton County or Yellowstone County, do they have advisory groups also?

- A lot of 'em do.

We recommend that, because I think that's a way they get a good feeling of the population of their particular county, what they think is important in that county.

- Okay, thank you.

- Yeah, a lot of 'em do.

- Question here, and this is an interesting one, and I've noticed this myself.

This caller from central Montana, Lewistown said he's noticed that corn and soybean prices have increased rather dramatically over Wheat prices have not.

Why is that?

- Well, I think you got a little bit different markets there in terms of end uses.

I mean, most corn and soybeans, feed market is their primary outlook.

And we certainly had, I think, not great harvest is part of what's going on with those, that supply is down, so the prices came up some there.

Wheat is primarily not a feed wheat that's coming to human use, so it's gonna go into flowers, into pastas and things like that.

There's a little bit of low-quality wheat grown down in the Kansas area that might be headed for feed.

But here in Montana, if it headed for feed, something went wrong with that wheat.

So I think you're looking at kinda two different markets.

But that's also, we talked a little about cattle prices.

That's primarily once some calves head into a feed lot, it's gonna be corn and soybean meal is what they're gonna be fed.

So that puts some pressure on feeder margins, which has an influence on those feeder calf prices that we see here in Montana.

- And what is your projection for the wheat market?

I mean, I know you're gonna say it depends.

That's the standard.

- [Joel] Well, Sam taught me that's the right answer to every question tonight, so I'll stick with that.

- Okay.

What do you foresee?

- So there's a couple things right now.

We've seen some uptick in wheat prices.

Again, a little bit some quality concerns here, and just quantity of the crop is a little bit less than they though.

So lower supply tends to move prices up.

There's also, I think, some geopolitical concerns around the Black Sea wheat, which grows kinda similar growing conditions to Montana, so kinda similar type of wheat when we're looking at a world supply, that maybe some of that wheat isn't gonna make it to market.

So that's again kinda putting some upward pressure on prices, which is a good thing.

- I'd like to add a little bit on that, Jack.

The activity going on with the Russia-Ukraine conflict that's going, they are not able to ship the quantity of product that they usually do.

That, unfortunately for them, but fortunate for us ag producers here, has bumped the price of wheat up a little bit.

But there again, any announcement that says something is about to give, that knocks the price down.

So a lot of political activity can influence our market so heavily.

- Yeah, you're absolutely right there.

Good point.

Okay, back to Glenda, I have the clarification.

Eaton Charolais is just the last name of the people who raised them from Lindsay, Montana.

You're off the hook.

You don't have to do your homework.

- [Joel] That's good.

That's good.

- And, Abi, from Chester, this caller wants to express their appreciation for the new Master Gardener Manual.

Tell us about the Master Gardener Program.

- And I wanna start by saying, Sarah Eilers is our Montana Master Gardener Coordinator.

Hi, Sarah.

She's probably watching this tonight.

Sarah has done an incredible job of really re-energizing a lot of that information in our Master Gardener Program, and that with her leadership, along with a lot of our Extension communities around the state, putting a lot of time and effort into training people who are interested in becoming community volunteers in gardening education, there's a lot of excellent information out there.

So Sarah Eilers has led the charge in creating this really excellent Master Gardener Manual that has a lot of great information.

Stay tuned though.

We have some really big plans on updating it and making it current, and continue to make sure that it has great information, not just for people who are interested in becoming master gardeners or are currently master gardeners, but for anyone that's interested in gardening-related information.

So thank you to Sarah Eilers, thank you to all of the Extension offices that offer Master Gardener programs, and especially thank you to our Montana master gardeners for all that you do in our communities.

They are often that face of Extension in their communities and farmer's markets answering questions.

And so, thank you to our amazing master gardeners.

- And thank you for the comment out there.

From Manhattan, this person wants to know whether or not Montana is still brucellosis free.

I don't think we are, are we?

- Probably not.

So we have the designated surveillance zone that for here I think runs right down the freeway.

And so, there's brucellosis in the bison herd in Yellowstone, there's brucellosis in elk that migrate out.

I haven't heard of any recent, recent brucellosis cases in cattle, but I think there has been a handful in the recent past couple years.

- Okay, thank you.

Interesting question from Helena, and I like to put everybody on the spot.

I usually take it easy on our guests, but I'm not in this particular case.

This person said, "Would you ask Dave next time he meets, is there something that Extension needs to be doing that they're not doing?"

That's a good question if you think about it.

- Yeah.

So that question is to me, is there something Extension?

- Yeah, absolutely, yeah - I think there's always things that we can do.

In terms of what in particular we are not doing that we currently should, I think one of the things we need to do a little more of, and how can I say this politically, we've gotta be more concerned about how to keep our staff, staff retention.

And part of that is, it's hard to compete with the private sector.

- [Jack] It is.

- And so, that's an item that needs constant attention all the time.

That's another reason for us to help advocate and lobby at all of the levels, the county.

Some counties get in a little bind financially and they decide, well, maybe we can cut from two agents to one.

We've always gotta be concerned about that.

And I think we need to be... I think the other thing Extension needs to do more of is tell people more about our programs, toot our own horns on the excellent programs we have available.

We have the local government center, Jack, that is a tremendous asset for local communities, people that are in the treasury department in their local area that maybe don't have a detailed background in it.

Local government center helps them prepare for those jobs so they don't make serious mistakes.

We've got the Scutter Diagnostic Lab that is really helpful for a lot of things.

But I mean, I think we just need.

If you've got a disease that you don't know what, a lot of times you can take a picture of that, send it in here to Scutter Lab, and they can tell you what it is.

Or you can send the plant material in or whatever.

But I think we need to promote our programs better, communicate to people how beneficial they are.

We've got good employees, and we just need to let people know how successful those programs are.

- I agree entirely, and sometimes we're not very good at that.

They're a little bashful at times.

Abi, several strawberry questions, and to concise it, they don't think their crop is as good nor the berries as big this year.

Is there a reason for that?

- There are a few reasons for that.

Some of the issue is, it's been a tough growing year for a lot of our fruit crops, including a lot of our berries.

So if you had any issues with growth or production, if the plant is stressed out, it's gonna divert energy away from producing fruit or putting that energy into the fruit.

The age of your strawberry patch could also impact how well it's doing.

So if it's getting older, five to six years in, it might be time to renovate that.

That could be helpful.

Other things that could impact it are the soil nutrients.

So if you have been adding a lot more nitrogen and haven't been balancing some of those other macronutrients like phosphorus, for example, that could impact fruit production.

So there could be a few things to look into in terms of why the fruit may not be as big or as productive, but a lot of our environmental conditions this year have made a tough year for a lot of our fruit.

So working with your county extension agent on troubleshooting what that is can be really helpful to figure out what to improve.

- Guess what?

I hear the music.

You know what that means?

We're getting outta here in a minute.

Quickly, are you using any biodiesel in your operation?

- No.

- Okay.

I think biodiesel is more common in the state than it has been in the past.

Folks, we're down to the last 15 seconds.

I wanna thank Dave for being here, the rest of the panel.

Next week, we're going to feature the Johnson facility.

It's a whole new facility that we have here on campus to address production needs.

See you then.

Goodnight.

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(rousing country music) - [Announcer] Montana Ag Live is made possible by: The Montana Department of Agriculture.

MSU Extension.

The MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture.

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