Tribute to Dr. Norman Borlaug

I had hoped to report on harvesting this week, but weather is preventing that until next week.





Instead I am overdue to write about something much greater than any single harvest, the death of what I think is in my opinion the greatest "farmer", most likely the greatest man ever to live-Dr. Norman Borlaug. Dr. Borlaug is oftern referred to as the father of the green revolution.

At his Nobel Prize Award presentation it was declard that over a Billion (BILLION with a B) people have been saved from starvation due to his lifes work. To put that in perspective he has saved NINETY TIMES more lives than the 11 million Hitler had put to death during WWII.

It is really sad to me how few people know someone who saved 90 times more lives than Hitler took. I doubt that 1 in 50 kids under 20 have ever heard his name. He had the misfortune of passing a month after Michael Jackson and it was still wall to wall coverage of the singer's death.

The awards given to him are amazing.
1) Nobel Peace Price
2) Presidental Medal of Freedom
3) Congressional Gold Medal
4) Several other equivalent honors from Pakistan, India, etc.

A combination of awards only won before by 4 others including Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandella, and Mother Theresa.

If you have a few minutes here are some videos on YouTube very worth watching:

Iowa News Story of his Death:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8aVAxUx7I0&feature=fvw (3 minutes)

Short 7 minute biography. Fantastic!


Dr. Borlaug talks about hunger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy2sLKf0oYM&feature=related

10 minute Humorous Piece/Tribute to Dr. Borlaug from Penn & Teller (language not for kids)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEBtO25xW-o

You can read more about his life at Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

During the 50's Dr. Borlaug led the introduction of high yeilding varietes of wheat combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result of his work Mexico, which had many starving people due to food shortages. He recognized that the climate in Mexico could support two growing seasons and intruced short season hybrids that allowed them to produce two crops a year instead of just one. Mexico actually became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. In the 60's his work nearly doubled production in Pakistan and India. He did similar work with wheat in China and later with corn and wheat throughout Africa.

Dr. Borlaug dedicated his life from his early 20's to his death at 95 to increasing food quality and quantity for the world. At age 72, after many people would have retired he founded "The World Food Prize" to inspire food production. It is a Nobel like $250,000 award presented to the person who does the most to increase food production for the year.

Maybe someday his contributions will be known, I hope someday another like him will come along, but I doubt it.

"You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery"-Norman Borlaug.

Fall is here!

Harvest is going to be delayed 1 more week as the corn is just drying really slow. But there are so many other great signs fall is here.

Going to bed at night and hearing the dry corn rustlng in the wind, I love that and is always a sure sign. There are only a couple weeks a year where leaves are that dry before harvested, but it is such a soothing sound going to bed or when I wake up in the middle of the night. Seems I always forget about it until fall is here again.

Beans are starting to turn, that means about 3 weeks they will be ready.

If the weather cooperates and we don't get too much rain we are going to start corn next Sat for sure!

Maybe you have to be a farmer to appreicate it but I woke up this morning and just spent about 20 minutes drinking my coffee and looking out at the golden corn-easy to lose appreciation for things so beautiful when you see them every day.

On the business side of things I ordered a lot of my seed and fertilizer for next year, and input prices on some fertilizer was half of last year! That was a real pleasant surprise.

Harvest starting next week

Some early corn testing 20%, so will start it next Fri. Unfortuntely it is only a 6 acre test plot-but will give us a chance to test if everything is working ok.

We should be able to start around the 25th on the corn that did get planted early, majority of it won't be started before 1st week in October.

Our beans haven't started turning yet, but I see some are starting to show.

Julie and I were down in Alton area for a quick 15th wedding aniversary trip before harvest starts. Sunday afternoon I made it out to visit a friend who farms in that area and get some time on the combine-that got the juices flowing. They were picking corn about 21% moisture. Saw a couple beans fields in that area that are very close to being read.

Farm Show Season

This past week was farm show season. On Saturday Madison and I went to the 50 years of progress farm show in Rantoul, Il. It is really amazing!! There are (not exagerating) more than 1,000 tractors there-and many old ones running in the field. It was pretty neat to see some of the equipment I used to help my grandpa farm with when I was a kid.






The Farm Progress Show on Wed was an entirely different story. All the latest and greatest equipment was on display. The size (and cost) of this new stuff is staggering, but it sure is fun to watch. Below is a video of the newest largest Lexion combine shelling 16 rows of corn and unloading at the same time-the rate that is coming out of auger is amazing.







I posted a lot more pics of both shows on our website at: http://www.paul-julia.com/FarmShows2009.jsp

Seeing the old and new equipment has my blood boiling to get started here, but the cold weather is just causing the crops to take forever to mature. There won't be much done in Central, IL before Oct 1. I will probably start slowly sometime between Sept 20 and Sept 27, but probably won't hit it hard before the 5th or 6th of October.

Of course we need to keep an eye on the stalks and if they start to have standability issues we will have to go no matter what the moisture-but drying costs continue to be really high and I sure would like to let it dry in the field as much as possible.


Beans are looking much better, the rain we got this week should help finish them off. My South farm got 2.5" but the North one only got 1/2". I have no idea on harvest time for the beans, but I will say with the headline fungicide we sprayed (which delays maturity) these will undoubtely be the the latest beans I have ever had in my short farming career.


In the next couple days I will start posting bi-weekly moisture tests, when it gets under 20 we will start something...at least I hope we can wait that long.

Harvest Prep Step 1

Where did the summer go? The state fair has came and gone and ditches and waterways are getting mowed-the signs that always indicate to me that harvest is near. Add to that the farm progress show in Decatur, IL is coming up in a couple weeks and the juices are starting to flow.

I spent about 10 hours mowing this past week, and about the same working on the combine and trucks. If I had to guess now I would say we will have a little to start on the Sat after Labor day-but with the cool year havest probably won't hit full steam until the later 1/3 of Sept.

Mowing always makes things look nice, so I did get out and grab a few pictures of the crops.

This next week will probably bring more of the same, there is a 50 years of progress show which has a lot of the 50 year old equipment out and running-I hope to get some pics there and will post, and the following week farm progress.

Couldn't have said it better myself

I am going to be a lazy blogger this week and not post much other than a link to another blog-but this guy nailed it so good that I had to post it.

This is a little long, but EXCELLENT description of many of the misunderstandings of agriculture:
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals

We are getting close to harvest-probably about 3-4 weeks. From now on I will stick to blogging activities on our farm. This week we finshing spraying fungicide and tomorrow will start mowing around field edges and waterways in preparation for harvest activities.

Crop is looking good, but wouldn't mind a little rain.

Organic Crop Production – Part 3 of 3

I will be glad to conclude this topic of organic production myths. I really started this blog to share what we are doing on our farm-but as I said in earlier posts I just felt I needed to correct these myths, primarily because many of my non-farming background friends were asking me why I was not organic and repeating many of these myths to me.

The final two myths I have to cover are that conventionally grown food hurts the environment and organically grown food is better for the environment and the myth that organic production is more profitable.

I could give example after example of how organic food production is not as friendly to the environment, but for the sake of brevity I will just give three examples.

1) Land required produce the food.

A recent study concludes that organic potatoes use less energy in terms of fertilizer production, but need more fossil fuel for tillage. An acre of conventionally farmed land produces 2.5 times more potatoes than an organic one. Similar numbers are found in corn and other crops. We simply do not have enough land to grow everything organic, and even if we did the fossil fuel and labor required would be prohibitive.

2) Erosion loss, increased fuel usage due to increased tillage.

Without the tool of chemical control of weeds the only reasonable method of control is mechanical. On my farm we practice what is called “no-till farming”. This means that I seed my crops directly into the residue of the previous crop. If I did not have the chemicals to control weeds I would be forced to work the ground to control weeds. It is not uncommon for organic farms to be fall plowed, disked, and field cultivated once or twice to get a good seedbed. Then after planting crops may have to be cultivated as many as three times just to control weeds.
All of this tillage requires tremendous amounts of time and fuel. Additionally the benefits of carbon sequestration from no-till farming is lost and the soil structure is highly compromised and much more venerable to wind and water erosion.

Ironically many of the people who support organic production are many of the same ones pushing no-till farming methods.

3) Increased Pesticide Use

By using crops that have insect resistance built into them we do not need to use pesticides to control yield robbing pests such as corn rootworm beetle and European corn borer. Without these traits we would have to spray pesticides-these pesticides also kill beneficial insects (such as honeybees and lady beetles) and in concentrated doses can be harmful to the farmers who apply them.

The independent had an excellent article on environmental impact of non-GMO crops which can be accessed at the following links: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-great-organic-myths-why-organic-foods-are-an-indulgence-the-world-cant-afford-818585.html

Genetically-modified crops have benefited the environment, says IL entomologist Mike Gray, quoting http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/pdf/2009globalimpactstudy.pdf .

1) Since 1996 global farm income improved $21.8 bil. from beans & $7.2 bil. from corn.
2) In 2007, 12 mil. farmers used GMO technology, 90% of them in developing countries.
3) Pesticide use has dropped 8.8% (359 mil. KG of active ingredient) since 1996.
4) Herbicide and insecticide use has dropped a total of 17.2% since 1996.
5) Because of less pesticide use, 2007 tractor fuel savings totaled about 100 mil. ga

Final Myth: Organic Agriculture is more profitable

Farming is a very low profit margin business, and when I say business I mean that in every aspect. Even my very small farm must spend over $200,000 to produce a crop that I hope will make yield $220,000 in grain in a good year. I know the farmer image for many involves overalls, a hoe, and slopping pigs, but that just hasn't been accurate for more almost 1/2 a century. Many average sized family farms invest well over a million or two million dollars or more every year.

If organic production offered even a 1% increase in overall profitability every farmer I know would jump on it, I know I would. It is profitable precisely because it is a niche market with dramatically higher labor costs. This niche is the reason that stores like Whole Foods and various others that sell organically grown crops must charge so much more than regular stores, often as much as 500% more for comparable products. But if every farm somehow began to grow organic production I would say the niche would disappear-but in reality the food shortages would be so dramatic that no-one would notice because all food would have to be selling at the levels now only seen in the organic stores.

Some groups have been honest and acknowledged these facts, but insist that we should move to organic production-or more often the codeword “sustainable agriculture”. While many in the U.S. would be able to absorb a large increase in food prices I believe the impact on those elsewhere in the world just make it not acceptable for mass food production, and that organic should be left to those who choose to produce and consume it rather than being forced on all.