(gentle upbeat music) (fire crackling) - Today on "SUNUP," we're talking wheat.

How's the crop looking after freezing temps, followed by rain?

Plus the power of prescribed fire.

Kim with Market Monitor and timely management advice in Cow-Calf Corner.

Grab your cup of coffee.

I'm Lyndall Stout, and "SUNUP" starts right now.

(upbeat music) We're talking wheat now with our west district agronomist, Josh Bushong, and Josh, we've gotten lots of good moisture lately, which has certainly been very welcome.

- Oh, yes, the wheat's been hanging on, but this rain's definitely getting us in the right direction for spring green ups.

- In terms of the cold temperatures, though, did the freeze have any impact on the crop?

- It did have some impact.

It is obviously below freezing for several hours, well, over 100 hours for some guys, so we definitely had some leaf loss, but overall, I think most of the tillers are still viable, especially guys that had some ground cover with the snow.

That helped out some.

But as we got southwest, obviously buried ground there, but didn't get as cold southwest.

But we definitely saw some leaf tissue damage where we've kind of gone chlorotic in some fields, and so you might first initially think nitrogen or something like that, but definitely some of those leaves got hit pretty hard.

But like I said, all the tillers I've been looking at last week or two, it's definitely still a viable tiller.

So we haven't really lost too much.

- In terms of the crop overall, how are things looking?

- I've been pretty satisfied with our stands.

Our early-sown wheat are for wheat pasture, for grazing and stuff.

It's a little shaggy, a little uneven stands, but definitely a good enough stand to start grazing somewhere.

A little sooner than we would like to see, but they've been holding on pretty well.

Our later-sown wheat, typically for our grain-only, the stands are there, maybe a little thinner than I like for some guys, but definitely a good stand for most of them.

At least a couple tillers on each plant.

So I'm really liking the growth stage there, and so we're just waiting to take off.

And then the really late-sown stuff, you know, November was very dry so those stands are a little thinner behind our double crop acres.

But overall, the stands are there.

We're getting pumped up for the spring.

- For sure, and with with sunny days like this, it'll start moving along quickly.

- Oh, you bet.

We've had a lot of top dress going out with these little rain chances we've had, and there will be more once we start to get the fills dried up again.

But top dressing, like I said, there's some chlorotic wheat out there.

Guys wanting to get some more nitrogen on.

Some know that they need it.

In some innard strips, we've been seeing and some we haven't.

So we're using those tools as we need be.

But overall, there's a crop worth taking care of out there right now.

- What are you seeing in terms of weeds?

- Since a lot of us kind of drug our hills getting sowing, waiting for rains and start dusting in, a lot of the weeds came up with the crops.

So there's quite a few fields out there that are pretty shaggy with weeds.

You can see just a straight green field in between the furrows so we know that's not all wheat.

Getting out there, there's a lot of ryegrass, which is becoming more and more of an issue every year just because of the issues with resistance and a few options for herbicides there.

But cheat's been another big issue, and we've had some issues with the resistance with that in North Central Oklahoma with the issues, but overall, there's a lot of mustards out there, some henbit, and then all of our grassy, typical weeds, they're there.

So we need to get those managed pretty quickly as well.

- So guidance on weeds, and I know we have a new weed scientist we'll talk to in a few weeks here on "SUNUP," but guidance at this stage on weeds.

- So for now, since we got some warmer temperatures, we always like to time those herbicide applications when we have a warm period, ideally a week or more, you know, a few days before and after application, for one, to get the weeds growing.

So we get the herbicide into the weed, but also for crop safety.

The crop does have to metabolize it.

Even products we've used for decades, like Finesse, if we spray around a freeze event, we can see some crop injury, but once we start warming up, we'll get those out.

Some of our herbicides, we need to get out pretty soon before jointing, especially some of our newer traded wheats, like the CoAXium Wheat Production System.

We want those out there before we go reproductive that joining.

Then even some of our Group 4s that we're mixed in there for broad leaf herbicide control options, our 2,4-Ds, MCPAs, Dicambas, we want those before jointing as well just for crop safety.

But we want 'em after we're done tillering.

So there's kind of a sweet spot in there.

We might get some more tiller production this spring, but then we're gonna be hitting, you know, jointing really quick after that.

So a very tight window to get those applications on and then timing 'em around rainfall events.

and it's always a dance that we have to partake in, so.

- For sure, and last but not least, you know, here it is, another month gone by, and we'll be talking about first hollow stem soon.

- Yeah, like I said, the law of our early-sown wheat, there's kind of a unevenness to it.

There's some older stuff and some newer stuff, but overall, if we're grazing real heavy, it's been holding it down.

So when we start looking at the plants, seeing if we're starting to hit that first joint, that 1 1/2 centimeters, you know, just over a dime.

Try to check areas outside the hot wire where the wheat's not really being held back from grazing.

It'll give you a better idea of where the wheat wants to be.

So if we're grazing heavy, that's gonna delay the wheat maturity, and so if we push that too far, we won't have that recovery period for the wheat to really make a grain crop, so.

- We got guys still deciding whether they're gonna graze out or they're gonna pull off to go for a grain crop.

Like I said, I'm pretty optimistic right now for a grain year this year.

So anytime we go past first haul stem, we're reducing that potential for a grain crop.

Some of us, you're looking at the insurance state in mid-March.

We were usually hitting that with the varieties we're growing now in February.

So really this month in February, we need to look out those fields.

We got tools online like the Mesonet app, First Hollow stem, where you can put in some variables like what maturities are.

And we also have some other tools and some fact sheets to support, green ground cover.

And so, that's just gonna tell you how much percentage of the ground's covered by green wheat.

And we got some data we can show as well, how much ground cover when we need, when we pull off the stalkers and how likely we are to maintain that granule potential.

'Cause if we're grazing it off, there's not much there.

We need more rain and sunlight, and growing conditions to recover.

But if we do have excellent ground cover, say over 60% ground cover, when we pull off, we're setting ourselves up for really good grain crop.

- Okay, well let's hope it's continued positive news throughout the rest of the growing season.

- Yep.

- Josh, thanks for your time today.

And for a link to those educational materials and apps that Josh mentioned, we have a link on our website, sunup.okstate.edu.

(upbeat music) - Good morning everyone.

Wesley is off this week, so I'm flying solo again.

And of course we're gonna start with the drought monitor.

Let's go right to the new map.

Well, our colors are shrinking on the drought monitor map for this week.

We just have a little bit of drought left in the state.

We are really making good headway against this problem we've had for the last three years, with just a little bit of a moderate drought down in far southwest Oklahoma.

We do have some moderate and severe drought in both south central and North central Oklahoma.

A little closer to southeast and northeast Oklahoma.

But again, those are also shrinking.

So we are making some good progress, and now let me show you why.

Take a look at that January rainfall hot off the presses.

And we do have some wonderful rainfall amounts across most of the state.

Even those amounts out in the panhandle are still above normal.

So we go from about four to six inches down in far southeast Oklahoma, a little bit heavier rain from south central up into northeast Oklahoma.

And then of course we drop precipitously as we go through the northwestern part of the state, as is usual and normal for Oklahoma.

But if we look at that departure from normal rainfall map for that same timeframe for January, we do see again most of the state has a pretty good surplus from about a half inch out in the panhandle to one to two inches in the main body of the state.

Just a few deficits in some very localized areas.

So that's again, a good reason for some of that good drought improvement in the state.

But it doesn't stop there.

Of course, we also had a very wet December, let's go back and take a look at that, December through January rainfall map.

And lots of good colors on this map, again from southeast up through northwest Oklahoma.

A little bit more spotty, heavier amounts scattered about the state from two, three, four, even five, six, seven inches in some cases.

But again, if we look at that departure from normal rainfall map, we see some wonderful surpluses, especially across West Oklahoma where they have surpluses of two to three to four inches.

And in fact, the panhandle had its wettest December through January period on record, and that dates back to 1895, so a wonderful stat for those folks.

for West Central Oklahoma, it was their second wettest, December through January on record.

And for north central Oklahoma it was their third wettest.

And even in southwest Oklahoma, it was their 10th wettest.

So that's really good rainfall in the cool season for Oklahoma, and that's what's allowed us to shrink that drought so rapidly over the last couple of months.

Now let's go to the February outlooks.

Again, we still have that El Nino impacting the state.

We do see from the precipitation outlook increased odds of above normal precipitation across at least the Western three quarters of the state, but especially the western half of the state.

Now we look at the temperatures, we do see increased odds of above normal temperatures, across the northern two thirds to three quarters of the state.

But again, that's not necessarily too bad for February, that increase in precipitation would be wonderful, 'cause that would again help us to get rid of that drought situation across south central and North central Oklahoma.

And finally, when we look at the drought outlook for January from the Climate prediction Center, we see most of that drought is expected to improve.

A little bit expected to remain through February, but then again, we're just going into spring.

We might take care of it there.

This is that little final remnant of the drought left over this three year period we've suffered through this hazard.

So great news for January.

Hopefully, some good news coming in February with increased rainfall through that month as well.

Let's get this drought outta here.

That's it for this time, we'll see you next time on the Mesonet weather report.

(upbeat music) - With one exception.

There's really not a lot that you need to be doing as a pond owner during the winter months.

- Ponds are much like gardens in that wintertime is a good time for just dreaming and thinking about what's going to be happening in the spring and what we might do different this year to improve things.

One of the things that people may be thinking about as they reflect back upon their pond is the quality of fishing.

(water splashing) If you're having problems with the quality of fishing, do not automatically jump to the solution of stocking fingerlings.

Fingerlings generally get eaten in short order when they're stocked on top of a bass population.

Instead, consider fishing the pond heavily in order to get a good picture of what's going on with the various fish populations in it.

Maybe take a few pictures also to share with somebody if you have problems knowing what it is that you're looking at.

We need to know what species of fish are there, and in particular, if anything is becoming overabundant and small and skinny.

If that's the case, probably we're going to suggest that you try to do some selective harvesting.

In other words, fish for those particular size and species heavily, and keep all you can catch in an effort to try to restore the balance between bass and the prey species.

Likewise, if in the past, you've had problems with overabundance of aquatic plants, it's not going to be any better in the coming year.

So make a resolution now that comes springtime, you'll get some photos of the overall pond situation and the closeups of your problem plants, and share them with your county extension office, so we can come up with some possible herbicide solutions or other management steps to reduce that overabundance issue.

But as for that one exception, it's very important now that everyone realize that it is unsafe for animals or plants to be on top of ice cover in our ponds.

It's almost never the case that the ice becomes thick enough for it to be safe to be out on it.

Make sure that you keep animals away from the pond and you make everybody aware of the dangers of going out on that ice, especially children who might be tempted to try to rescue a beloved pet who's fallen in.

Let's keep dreaming about positive thoughts about what's going to happen in our spring as soon as the sun warms up a little bit and how our pond is going to be better, and what we might be doing to improve everything.

(bright music) - The USDA just released the crop conditions report.

So Kim, what did that tell us?

- It said that crop's in better condition than it was last year.

You look at the seven states, that'd be Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Montana.

The the seven major hard red winter wheat states, you've got 53% good to excellent.

In December, it was 49.

Last year is 21%.

You look at Oklahoma, 63% of the crops in good to excellent condition, 67% last December report, and 17% last year.

So these good conditions is gonna partially offset the 5% less planted acres in Oklahoma and the 6% less planted acres over the hard red winter wheat area.

- So tell us a little bit more about what's happening in the markets.

- Well, there's not a whole lot going on right now.

You gotta mention the Suez Canal that's prohibiting some wheat coming outta the Black Sea area, going to like the Philippines, or the Eastern Asian countries.

You've got in the Black Sea, Russia predicted to produce another 3.4 billion bushel crop.

This will be the third one in a row.

Their average is 2.9 billion.

They've got a tremendous amount of wheat to put on the market.

They're gonna produce more.

You've got Kazakhstan is improving their technology so that they can increase their yields in wheat.

And then China and Argentina got an agreement, where China will start importing Argentina wheat.

- So how have those things affected the prices?

- Well, not a whole lot.

You got them just watering around right now.

You look at wheat, it's been trading between $5.44 and 5.81, somewhere around 5.50 to 5.60 right now.

Moving sideways, mostly.

Corn, it bottomed out at $4.27.

It's trading between 4.27 and 4.37 sideways.

Soybeans might be producing a bottom down there around 11.40, 11.39.

It gets as high as 11.85, so it's trading that range.

It's still in a downtrend, but it looks like it's trying to bottom out.

- So what does all this information mean for producers?

- Well, the market's not doing a whole lot right now.

Producers, most of them have their crops sold.

I think it's a time for planning.

You need to look at the forward contract prices for the next crop and determine how you're gonna use your land, labor, capital, and management to produce the highest level of profit.

- All right, thanks, Kim.

We'll see you next week.

- Thank you very much, Kim and Elizabeth.

And by the way, we want you to help us welcome Elizabeth Hokit to the SUNUP team.

She is our new multimedia producer and we're certainly happy to have her on board.

- And now let's talk about some much needed improvements that are coming to the OSU Agronomy Research Station in Stillwater.

The A&M Board of Regents approved a request to draft construction plans for new facilities at the site, which is home to OSU's wheat breeding program, one of the top programs in the world.

The first phase of the project will help with the design and construction of new greenhouses and a head house.

The university has commercialized 34 wheat varieties in the past 25 years.

To learn more about the Agronomy Research Station project, we've linked the latest for you on our website.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Good morning, Oklahoma and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

This week's topic, one that I've received some questions on and there's been some debate on recently, involves the cattle cycle and how long can we expect these historically high, really good cattle prices to last.

And so we take a little time to visit about the cattle cycle.

It's something that's repeatable.

It's something that happens through the course of us taking inventory of cattle on a national basis.

And what the cattle cycle fundamentally tells us is that when the inventory of our nation's cow herd is low, there's fewer cows in production serving as the initial source of the product, That being the wean calf, that turns into the yearling, that turns into the finished calf that ends up being beef.

Prices for all those categories and classes of cattle are gonna be higher when we're at low inventories, which we are right now.

We show that our cow inventory on a national basis is about as low as it's been since the early 1960s.

Now eventually as we move through the cycle, we have to sell fewer calves in order to pay our bills and generate revenue.

It permits us to retain more heifers, eventually turn them into the next generation of the cow herd.

And as we rebuild that inventory, the price per pound of calves, yearlings and fed cattle tends to go back down.

So what does this tell us about where we're at right now and how long we can expect to see sustained good prices?

Well, there's several things that indicate that we're not in a process of a rebuild and several things that work against that.

And one is just the cow biology.

It takes a couple years from the time we retain a heifer that she actually goes in production as a cow.

Other things working against us is relatively high interest rates that we're dealing with.

A lot of older producers that have liquidated cows may not plan to get back into the business anytime soon.

There's little evidence of a great deal of heifer retention at this point in time.

And we're dealing with still relatively low hay inventory and hay stocks on a national basis, particularly relative to parts of the country where drought persists.

We have seen some relief from that drought widespread in Oklahoma, but still a lot of the parts of the country that are suffering from drought.

And so right now the bottom line as we consider all those things, it looks good in the cow-calf sector for producers that have inventory on hand.

It looks like 2024 has a high profit potential for those in the cow-calf sector.

And it looks like it should be solid in terms of prices for a few years to come.

How quickly we rebuild remains to be seen.

I hope this helps and as always, I appreciate you joining us this week on Cow Calf Corner.

(upbeat music) - Talking land management now.

These warmer days, along with plenty of moisture and light winds means some landowners are thinking about prescribed burns.

But with conditions like these, do the safety precautions change at all?

For the answer, we turn to our fire ecologist, John Weir.

(upbeat music) - So we're out conducting a burn today.

You know, we're only a few days out past that really bad cold snap and all the rainfall and weather.

Grassy fuels have dried out.

We've got some really beautiful weather today, perfect conditions.

We got winds that are well within conditions, good humidities and stuff.

And we get that a lot of times following those bad fronts and those bad spells of weather.

We're gonna start picking up some few good days before our next front comes in.

And we've got another one coming in towards the end of this week.

So we've got a couple of good days here.

We might as well take advantage of them.

- Today, we're burning a half section for two different landowners and we got them to work together to burn it all at one time.

So that way we didn't have unnecessary fire breaks and a lot more work.

We made it real easy.

We're using the roads as fire breaks and natural barriers like wheat fields and a bunch of land we already burned.

(fire crackles) - Most of the state's got some really great moisture.

We're wet, the soil's wet.

Everything's looking really good.

A lot of places or ponds are filling back up.

So we've got good moisture conditions.

So also within that good moisture conditions, we got a lot of people wanting to start to burn 'cause it's not too dry.

Not like we've been the last couple of years where this time of year has been really dry all the way up into March or April and then everybody's trying to throw their burns in.

So a lot of times, people, these kind of good conditions and this kind of winter we're having is suitable to start burning as early as you can.

A lot of times again, people think that it's too wet to burn.

Again, grassy fuels are burning great, they're one-hour fuels.

Now, if you're wanting to burn leaf litter and stuff like that, it's not going to burn.

That stuff is too wet.

It's shaded, it's not getting any sunlight, it's not getting much wind, and it's bigger fuel particles, those hardwood leaf litter stuff is, and so it's not going to burn well.

You've got to get this done, you've got to have the fuel.

So first off, you've got to have adequate fuel load of grassy fuels and then get good conditions, 'cause it dries quickly.

And thinking that, well, it won't burn, or it's too wet, or it's going to burn slow.

It'll still get out and go.

And one of the other big problems that you run into that you've got to be thinking about too, with burning under these kind of conditions, especially as wet as it's been, is where you can get vehicles around.

'Cause a lot of times where you could take vehicles when it's dry, you can't get 'em, they're going to bog up, you're going to have vehicles stuck, and then you're going to have some of your equipment out of commission.

And when you need it, it's stuck, or you're having to send people that you need to be watching the fire, they're over trying to get something unstuck.

And the other thing people have to remember, once you burn an area off like this where it's blackened, you don't have the support of all that dry grass and everything else.

So it's a whole lot easier to get stuck out here in the black than it is area that hadn't been burnt.

So you've got to really be careful, or you'll have all your fire trucks all stuck.

- [Rancher 1] You still have to watch the humidity.

Even when the winds calm, if the humidity's low, you can still get a spot fire and then you're calling the fire department to come help.

So as long as you monitor the wind and the humidity and you've got plenty of help and you follow your burn plan, you should be pretty safe.

- [Rancher 2] Again, our wildfire season really starts in November when everything goes dormant in the state.

We've had a pretty mild, mild winter.

Again, high humidities.

Our humidities have stayed really high.

And then we've also been blessed with rains off and on.

So again, that's helped with that.

Again, we've still got dry fuels, that grassy fuels, one-hour fuels that can dry out quickly.

So care still needs to be taken with everything.

And again, just as I mentioned earlier too, on the prescribed fire side, especially on the wildfire side, thinking about going out and trying to put a fire out, you can only go to areas where that vehicle can travel.

(flames crackling) - [Rancher 3] CBAs are good for rural communities because a lot of places are overgrown by cedars and brush and lots of neglect, a lot of years of neglect.

It's good for farmers and neighbors to get together and be able to have enough help to manage their property with fire correctly and safely.

- So again, if you're interested in doing conducting burns and stuff, we've got 26 prescribed burn associations scattered around the state.

And if you're interested in finding out if there's a prescribed burn association near you, check the SUNUP site.

- That'll do it for our show this week.

A reminder, you can see us anytime on our website and also follow us on YouTube and social media.

I'm Lyndall Stout, have a great week everyone, and remember, Oklahoma Agriculture starts at SUNUP.

(bluegrass music) (bluegrass music continues) (bluegrass music continues) (bluegrass music continues) (gentle melody)