Day 16 of Nuffield Extension With OSU

Another full on day today with the OSU (Oklahoma State University) this time in the great company of OCES NW Area Agronomist Roger Gribble.  Roger and I met in Stillwater and headed out towards Enid to the North.  We stopped briefly to look at some where the wheat grazing trials are located at the OSU Wheat pasture research Unit.  We headed on to meet up with Brent Smith who works for Equity Marketing Alliance.  This company markets the grain from many of the OS grain coops, taking the grain marketing pressure off the elevator managers.  In total between 40-50 million bushels are marketed each year (1.1-1.4 million tonnes) by the company.  The main commodity being wheat but some corn, canola, grain sorghum, soya and sunflowers.  After the visit we took a drive to one of the many elevators based at Enid.  In the picture above there is an elevator capable of storing 60,000,000 bushels (1.6 MT) of wheat!  There is actually enough storage in Enid to store all of Oklahoma's wheat if required.

On the way to the next stop, a meeting with Mike Rossen from Wheeler Brothers Grain Elevator's I saw the graveyard for the other major industry in Oklahoma; oil.  There are 'nodding' donkeys everywhere.  New drilling rigs are being installed almost daily and there is plenty of employment opportunities for people working in the oils industry.  It's something that Agriculture has to compete with to attract and retain new entrants.

Mike's operation is wide reaching from grain storage and marketing to seed, fertiliser and chemical selling and scouting.  There is also custom application of lime and fertilisers and even applications of pesticides applied by air.  The company also has it's own railroad to move grain around the SW of the US even down as far as Mexico.  Another string to the operation is a cattle feed yard.  There is space there for 30,000 head of finishing cattle.  At the moment it isn't filled right up as there is no money in beef with high corn prices.  Cattle come into the wheat grazing fields (1st Nov ish) at about 200Kg before staying on the pastures until mid Feb (ish) and weighing  about 375 Kg before putting the final weight on in the feed lot, ending up at 570Kg.  There is a compromise between grazing too much, which increases soil erosion and reduces wheat yields and not grazing enough which reduces the value of the cattle.  It's a bit of a compromise but as wheat income has improved and cattle numbers are reducing, there are fewer 'stocker' cattle being used this way.

After lunch we headed down to Oklahoma City to the Producers Cooperative Oil Mill.  This mill started crushing cotton seeds, producing cotton oil in 1944.  The mill is owned by a cooperative of Gin's from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee and processes over 200,000T of cotton seed/year.  There is storage for 128,000T of whole cotton seed which takes up a lot of space as shown here

The cotton goes through various stages to extract the oil.  Firstly the lint is removed in the gin saw.  This takes two passes and the better quality cotton first taken off is used in domestic markets for bedding, then the next grade with a few husks in it is used for cellulose breakdown, hot dog skins, jet fuel, dynamite and TV screens!  The husks are then removed and used a s a 'filler' in beef cattle rations before the oil is chemically extruded from the seed or meat.  these chemicals are then refined out of the process firstly on site then through a couple more processes at the customers.  THe plant is also able to crush Canola now which has enabled Oklahoma growers ti have a local market for the newbie crop in the state.  Canola area is gradually increasing thanks to work form the OSU, providing technical knowledge and the fact that adding this crop into the rotation in contributing to higher wheat yields. Thanks to Joe Gribble for showing us around this afternoon, it was the first time I had visited a cotton crushing plant.

After the cotton crushing plant Roger and I headed into Oklahoma in search of some an authentic cowboy hat for me.  We located one fairly quickly and it was steamed to create the right style.  We had a look around the Oklahoma Cattle Stockyards before Roger very kindly drove me to drop the hire car off and find a hotel for the night.  A very, very big thank you to everyone at the Oklahoma State University, but especially to Jason and Roger for their time, knowledge, hospitality and information they have shared with me over the last couple of days.

Day 15 of my Nuffield Study, Oklahoma State University

What a great day and so eye opening to new opportunities and to conform some of my thoughts are not complete rubbish.  If you want to make things happen they will, even if they are considered outside the box.  Also you don't know unless you try.  The morning started with an office meeting with Dr Brian Arnall, Bob Hunger and my host for the day Dr Jason Warren.  We talked about Precision Farming techniques employed here in Oklahoma, namely the Green seeker device for monitoring chlorophyll level in the leaves, before talking wheat breeding traits, drought tolerance and rainfall patterns.  Jason and I then headed out for a 12 hour road trip around the trial sites and local farms.  We started off with stripper headed harvested wheat, originally drilled at 10"spacings and then soybeans planted between the rows.  It looked really odd seeing the stubble standing up missing the ear of wheat but the soybean stand was very good.

Next Jason and I headed to Lahoma, one of the Oklahoma State University trial sites.  Here Jason is with the cover crop species trials that he and the team are growing.  It was a very interesting comparison to see establishment rates and how the different crops competed with the weeds.

The soil in this part of Oklahoma is actually very good and over a 12 month period this area will have over 30 inches of rain which is more than we get at home.  The difference is that the evaporation rate from the soil and the crop is immense.  With low humidity, high temperatures and strong winds these fields can loose over 21 inches of moisture.  Cover crops would still use up a proportion of this moisture but that moisture would disappear anyway and by using these cover crops, at least nutrients are being locked up and organic matter in the form of root, stems and leaves are being formed to recycle the nutrients.   It's a big dilemma for farmers in this area, especially considering the extra cost to the rotation of the seeds.

One man Matt, shown here in his Sorghum Sudan Grass and Cow Peas mix (a row of each planted with a John Deere air seeder) has taken on the cover crop challenge and is doing a great job.  The tall stubble protecting the crop from wind (evapo-transpiration) are the grazed remains of forage rye and triticale used to fatten 'stocker' cattle over the winter.  Incidentally Matt manages to stock at twice the density of others, due to cover cropping.  Matt puts this down to extra moisture retention at planting (August) due to the amount of organic matter covering the soil.  When 4" of rain falls in an afternoon it is important that it goes through the soil profile and is protected without washing off or being blown away from bare soil.

Here is another example of the Cow Pea nad Sorghum Sudan Grass which looked equally as well.  By the way this was only planted 20 days ago and was already 15" tall!  Many thanks to Jason for taking a full day out to show me around and demonstrate the great work that OSU is doing.