Much of the corn in the Northeast has been affected by drought, suffering lower starch build-up levels due to less water during the growing season. But most areas have received (and are still receiving) enough rainfall. In the latter areas, growers are seeing corn’s whole plant dry matter continuing...

There are many clever definitions of the word “average.” I like the one where an individual sticks a finger in ice water at 32º and another finger in water used to scald a freshly slaughtered hog at 140º. (We learned this in the meat and slaughter course I took at Cornell my junior year.) That scald...

Let’s flash back to 1966 and our family’s Greene County, NY, hillside farm where my dad wanted to purchase a new tractor. He was told he should expect to pay $100 per horsepower. He bought a new green 70-hp diesel tractor for about $7,000; he also bought a 250-gallon fuel tank and filled it up with ...

Throughout spring, the white or light pink funnel-shaped flowers of wild morning glory abound along many roadsides in the Northeast. With help from UConn Extension, I can provide information on this pretty white flower. Its scientific name is Calystegia sepium . Translated from Latin, it means “of h...

“Waves of Saharan dust will continue to fly over Florida, but will it bring ‘dirty rain’?” That’s the lead-in question in a USA TODAY article titled “ What is ‘dirty rain’? How Saharan dust is impacting the weather in Florida .” In that July 24 story, author Julia Gomez explained that Florida was se...

As crop growers approach the beginning of August, especially across the northern U.S. and southern Canada, they become very aware of night temperatures starting to drop. This occurrence starts slowing the production of the warm season crops – soybean, corn, sorghum, sudangrass, their hybrids and mil...

In the quest for reliable, economical energy sources, biofuels have long been praised as a potential tool in the fight against carbon emissions. However, a study published in February 2022 suggested that America’s reliance on corn-based ethanol fuel might be doing more harm than good. This is accord...

Who doesn’t like a David vs. Goliath story (with a happy ending… unless you’re a Goliath enthusiast)? Such an article appeared in my inbox very recently, having been published on June 28, 2024 by Mexico News Daily. The article’s headline: “Great news out of Mexico: The country has sent the ag chemic...

How crowding affects animals is something I learned about before acquiring a knowledge of how excessive population affects plants. Most of us are quite familiar with the adverse effects of overcrowding on livestock. But it may be difficult to compare too many hoofed animals crammed into too small a ...

During my last half of high school and all four of my undergraduate college years, my family called a chunk of real estate bordering Huntersfield Mountain home, on the edge of the Catskills. We raised beef cattle: Charolais, Angus, Herefords and their hybrids. They grazed and we baled small square h...

As I started writing this column the afternoon of June 17, our home’s remote-sensing thermometer registered 87º, which would turn out to be the day’s peak temperature. Right after that reading, at about 4 p.m., a phone recording from the Otsego County Office of Emergency Services stated that during ...

Two years ago, a TV commercial aired in which an all-wheel-drive SUV pulled a landscape gravel rake across an oceanside sandy beach, gathering huge quantities of litter. The now-clean beach was shown with swarms of baby sea turtles “winging” their way surf-ward, no longer impeded by human debris. Th...

During the last week of May, the same chilly weather that made emerged corn look yellower than growers liked also made autumn-planted winter forages (triticale, rye, wheat, barley and some speltz) look pretty good. That was particularly the case if these small grains got a dose of nitrogen (N) as so...

From his Connecticut residence on May 26, my son Peter forwarded me a 25-minute video. In it, John Oliver, a transplanted English comic, discusses U.S. corn, its production, politics and ecological and economic impact. Check out “Corn: John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight” here . Oliver begins on a light...

Exactly one year ago, as I was writing my column, Canadian wildfires were building up a full head of steam (or more accurately, smoke). The maximum impact would be felt in the northern tier of the U.S. during the second week of June 2023. During that period, Canadian firefighters scrambled to put ou...