Aug. 14 Flint HIlls Beef Fest seminar coming up
Brian Rees
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The 23rd Annual Flint Hills Beef Fest will be held August 14 to 16 in Emporia . Most of the events will take place on the Lyon County Fairgrounds, although there will be a couple of other sites for activities.
For many years there has been a Friday morning breakfast and educational seminar following an hour-long live radio broadcast sponsored by a Topeka radio station. This year, the Anderson Building on the Lyon County Fairgrounds will be the site and the educational seminar once again looks to be top-notch. The pancake and sausage breakfast will begin at 7:30 a.m. (coffee will be available way before then) with the producers seminar set to kick off at 8:15 a.m. These have always been very informative sessions, and this year sets up to follow the pattern.
On the program are Congressman Jerry Moran bringing an update from Washington DC; Greg Doud, Chief Economist with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association with the topic “Where’s the US Beef Industry Headed;” and Neil Hammerschmidt; Coordinator of the USDA/NAIS Program speaking on the Status of the National Animal ID Program.
What will it cost to attend this type of a program, and be fed? Nothing — it’s free! But you will need to sign up at the Lyon County Extension Office by Aug. 12 so we can make the appropriate meal arrangements. Contact the office at 341-3220 to reserve your spot for the breakfast and informational seminar. We have already had calls come in from the Kansas City area to get a spot.
What a relief the past few days have been, and it looks like this should be a beautiful weekend if the forecast holds. Hard to beat low to mid 80’s in mid-July. Maybe the weather will provide an opportunity for some of our later-planted corn to actually pollinate and start the grain filling process without being blasted by 100-degree temperatures and 20 mph south winds that feel much more like a blast furnace than anything else.
At this point there have been reports of gray leaf spot in the Kansas River Valley, and the warm humid temperatures over the past few weeks have been cause for concern in that area. However, we haven’t seen anything threatening the corn crop locally to date. If that should change, I’ll try to let you know.
I did see some significantly higher moth counts in the corn earworm moth trap last week. From July 6-12, I had counted nearly 200 moths — an average of over 25 per night, counting 39 Sunday evening the 12th. Although most commodity producers never treat, corn earworms are estimated to cause losses in field corn of nearly 2.5 percent annually.
Treatment thresholds for sweet corn production are at 5 moths per trap per night for fresh market sweet corn, and 10 moths per trap per night for processors (these thresholds are from the University of Illinois ). With the stages of our field corn and pollination, last week was a great time for moth flight and subsequent egg-laying, resulting in a high potential for ear feeding in the coming weeks. Producers and gardeners should also be aware that the corn earworm is also the soybean podworm, the cotton bollworm, the sorghum headworm, the tomato fruitworm, etc. You can see from the names that it is not a picky eater and can damage a wide variety of crops.
Be on the lookout for pest and disease outbreaks in your garden and crop fields, but let’s enjoy the unusually mild July weather while we can!