Category: Uncategorized

It has been a while since I wrote a blog post, but I have a good excuse – Maybe! I really try to post something every week or at most every other week so that I make myself stay up to date on organic topics and keep you up to date on organic topics. The first of March we got word from USDA that they had posted the “Request for Funds Application” for the Organic Research and Extension Initiative or OREI and they were due by March 31, 2022. This meant a hard month of coordination, collaboration and grant writing but it’s almost over!

These grants are from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture or NIFA and they can be substantial and if funded, can mean years of good organic agriculture work for both researchers, extension and our organic growers.

Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension has been fortunate to receive funds from these grants in the past and we certainly want to keep helping the organic producers and the organic program in Texas. These grants help researchers look at the important problems facing organic producers and then develop the tools producers need to overcome those problems and stay profitable. Currently, having high quality, disease and insect resistant, water and nutrient efficient, organic varieties to plant is the major issue facing organic producers. This means our grant applications are mainly focused on variety breeding and the issues that surround bringing organic varieties to the market.

There are a lot of researchers and extension specialists in the Texas A&M AgriLife system, and I don’t know them all, but I do know four teams that have been working hard over the last few weeks to develop these OREI proposals.

Dr. John Cason is a peanut breeder at the Texas A&M Center in Stephenville where I am privileged to be located as well. Dr. Cason has a great organic peanut project called, “Addressing the Challenges of Organic Peanut Production with Conservation Management Strategies and Breeding.” I am just one of several who are involved in this proposal which includes a team of 10 scientists and extension specialists working together.

Dr. Waltram Ravelombola is an organic crop breeder at the Texas A&M Center in Vernon and in a fairly new research position for organic growers. His project is working on cowpeas, a crop that we use for cover, soil health improvement, animal feed and as a great human food crop. His OREI project is, “Evaluation and breeding of short duration and stress resilient cowpea varieties suitable for organic cropping systems in the southern USA.” Cowpea (we call them blackeyed peas) reaches across all cultures in Texas and is harvest commercially while also being a farmers market favorite.

Dr. Shyamal Talukder is a rice breeder at the Texas A&M Beaumont Rice Research Center. He also is a new researcher but has a real passion for helping Texas improver overall rice breeding efforts with a special emphasis in organic rice. His project proposal is, “Development of effective phenotypic selection criteria, molecular markers, and varieties for organic rice systems.” I am privileged to be part of a 6-person organic rice team that will be working to develop and test rice varieties developed specifically for organic systems. We are especially concerned with fertility, weed control and ratooning potential.

Dr. Genhua Niu is a horticulture researcher at the Texas A&M Center in Dallas and is very interested in the organic vegetable industry in Texas. She has worked on transplant media for several years and has developed a proposal entitled, “Enhancing the transplant quality – a bottleneck in the sustainable production of organic vegetables.” This project has a great team of seven researchers and extension specialists and will have research projects scattered from West Texas to the Rio Grande Valley to Central Texas. Should be fun!

Now that they are all about to be submitted to USDA, the hard part starts – waiting to see if they get funded! Wouldn’t it be great for Texas organic producers and handlers if they were all funded? We sure hope so….

Yes!  That was easy.

Many plant breeders and seed companies are hesitant to grow and sell organic varieties – as you know there is a lot of paperwork!  Also, even if the organic variety is superior there is the concern that conventional growers won’t buy or even look at a great variety with an organic label.  But there is a growing body of evidence that we need to be looking at varieties from below the ground first before looking at the above ground yields.

            What am I talking about?  Well according to many sources but in particular an article in Trends in Plant Science, “Breeding crop varieties with the target of improving soil health and reducing soil degradation will produce better conditions for crop growth through more efficient resource use and stress tolerance, so a win-win is possible where both yield and soil are improved and could be the cornerstone of regenerative agriculture.”

            “By targeting soil structure building traits (in plant breeding), abiotic (environmental) stress resistance of both plants and soils could increase through microbial habitat formation to improve nutrient cycling, stabilization of soil against erosion, and a greater capacity of soil to absorb, store and drain water,  … but these processes are generally ignored in plant breeding, where the primary focus is yield.”

            In other words, the scientific ability to monitor and measure what roots are actually doing is teaching us how important they are to “naturally” living and interacting with soil and all the microbiome in soil.

            “Perhaps plant breeding exacerbated soil degradation by focusing on yield and resource capture in conventionally fertilized soils.  Fertilizers (conventional) decrease the benefit of root-soil interface plant traits such as exudates and root hairs to capture nutrients (the normal, natural process) making those exudates and root hairs expendable.”

            This article, like many others, gets very technical and in-depth, but the premise is we need to look at what a variety is doing below ground as well as above ground.  In organic systems, plants must be able to interact with the soil microbiome in the root rhizosphere to take in nutrients, protect itself, and be more water efficient.  So, YES, we need organic breeding programs producing highly efficient, high yielding organic varieties!

Dr. Justin Tuggle did a great job at the Organic Cotton/Peanut Seminar discussing peanut seed quality.  He showed some great pictures of peanut seed with the seed coat removed showing the damage underneath. His point, which is 100% right, is that this damage is causing the germination problems in peanut fields and this damage is mostly caused by harvest equipment.  

I was in a “webinar” recently and part of the discussion was damaged cotton seed as well.  Some observations have shown that upwards of 30% of the seed in a bag is damaged in some way.  In some cases, the damage was up to 50%.  The seed may germinate but it is evident that the vigor is diminished.  This was in a conventional seed bag with seed treatments!

Corn seed can have just as many problems but again seed treatments can make a difference and do.  I have seen lots of estimates but in cold soils damaged corn seed in the bag can lower overall germination 20% to as much as 50%.

This issue is difficult to solve but realizing some of the causes is a big first step.

At the Organic Cotton and Peanut meeting in Seminole I asked producers to fill out a quick survey of their production. It was anonymous and the information is very valuable as we plan organic programs. Here are the results:

Average years farming – 18.6

Average of total acres farmed – 3,726

Average of total acres organic – 1,210

Average of organic peanut acres – 659

Average of organic cotton acres – 1,055

Rank all these problems you face as an organic  farmer?

#1 Weeds    (ranked most important)

#2 Disease or insect problems

#3 Adapted organic seed varieties

#4 Market Price or Marketing Issues

#5 Water/Irrigation

#6 Organic fertilizer  (ranked least important)

What is your source of information for organic farming?

#1 Other growers  (most responses)

#2 Consultants

#3 Company representatives

#4 Texas A&M AgriLife Extension/Research

#5 ACRES, Rodale, other organic groups

#6 Other sources  (least responses)

            When I asked the question how growers heard about the meeting, most said “from other growers” but in close second was the “Organic News” newsletter like the one sent out every other month. Still, most growers are getting news and information from each other!

Cotton Varieties Planted. I asked producers who did the survey to tell me the cotton varieties they plant.  I know there aren’t really any true organic cotton varieties but, these conventional varieties are the most used.

Cotton Varieties: University of Arkansas – UA48, Green Dirt Exceed –  2244, 4344, 6000 and 6494, Brownfield Seed and Delinting –  BX4, BX9, and BSD 598, Israel Ido Tal Pima – GL 6 and V 70, Gowan – 1432 Pima Hybrid

Peanut Varieties Planted. Same question for those that plant peanuts knowing that there is no “organic” peanut variety but plenty that are used on organic acres.

Peanut Varieties:  Spanish AT 9899, TamVal OL14 , Tamnut OL 06, Valencia C, Span 17, Valencia 309.

Here is the latest newsletter mailed to folks interested or involved in organic agriculture. Yes, I still mail out newsletters you can hold in your hand!

To see the newsletter just click on the picture above and it will take you to a pdf you can either read or download and print.

Lots of good information and as always I welcome your comments and suggestions.

If you farm in the Northwest Panhandle of Texas here is a great opportunity to get both conventional and organic corn and sorghum grain or silage production information.

I will be discussing organic corn and sorghum production, integrated pest management techniques and strategies for organic pest control, soil health and fertility related to organic crop production and a good emphasis on organic weed control. I will also discuss cover crops, rotations and equipment for organic weed control. This will be an in-depth look at the types of cultivators and timing for good control of weeds in an organic system. Should be fun!