Field Notes offers update on Palmer amaranth in Minnesota
Alright. Well, welcome everybody back to another session of the strategic farming field notes edition. It's our summer, shorter format program. Today is July 16, and we're kinda entering that, that sort of a lay by period here in Minnesota where, some of our herbicide weed management work is wrapping up, and we are kind of starting to scout for insects and that sort of thing, anticipating managing some of those issues as the season goes on. But with that, we decided today to to have a special topic here that would fit well at this time of year.
Speaker 1:And we're gonna have a little bit of a Palmer amaranth update, just to get the status of of that weed in the state. It's something that's been very actively managed with the Department of Agriculture. And so for today, we do have a guest with us, Tony Quarterlet with the Minnesota Department of Ag, to talk about this issue and kinda bring us up to date on on where we're at with Palmer Amaranth in the state of Minnesota. So it's a good opportunity here in in the mid season kind of time frame to talk about that kind of topic. Just a couple of housekeeping notes.
Speaker 1:You're all familiar with this by now, but any questions, that might pop up in your in your head, that you like to get answered today or maybe have help facilitate the discussion, you can enter that into the q and a box. That's the best place to do that. If you're having any kind of technical issues, please use the chat box for for that. So, anyways, those are kind of the basics. We do wanna, thank some of our supporters here today, U of M Extension as well as University miss or sorry, Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council and Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council.
Speaker 1:Again, we got about a half hour to facilitate the discussion today, and we're more than welcome to have your questions, come in as we, go through the update here. So, with that, I wanna welcome Tony.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Brian.
Speaker 1:And so, Tony, I don't know if you wanna start, if we think, well, maybe let's just start at the beginning. We're the first year that we saw some Palmer amaranth in the state was it the worst year, if I remember right, or was the the big explosion year the first year that we saw a lot of Palmer amaranth?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we're this takes us all the way back to 2016, and we had a situation where some CRPC that had been sold in the state as the particular mix had been contaminated. With Palmer amaranth, we think that started in a in the kind of native seed pathway, from black eyed Susan seed that was brought in from Texas or Kansas. And that, as you can imagine, when it comes into a seed mix that's distributed, in a program like CRP, it spreads pretty quickly. Most of the sites were in Yellow Medicine in Lyon County, So it was localized here.
Speaker 2:There was a similar situation in Iowa that year. So that was really our our, you know, ground zero year for Palmer coming into the state. And we, you know, we put all hands on deck because we had listed it in 2014 as a prohibited eradicate noxious weed, which is our highest priority list, the stuff we don't want, in Minnesota. Minnesota. And, yeah, we got on it right away.
Speaker 2:It wasn't easy. We found it. Farmer had reported a strange looking pigweed in, during the soybean harvest. So we're talking into, late September, early October, which is not a great time to find Palmer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's it's a little too late. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So since then, you know, we've been pretty lucky. We've been able to identify different pathways. By the way, the the seed industry in Minnesota has really stepped up and done a great job of testing seed and labeling seed accordingly, to make sure that Palmer's not in it. So kudos to them.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, we've really been able to paint a a good awareness about it.
Speaker 1:So, Tony, you bring up a good point here. You know, a lot of folks, I know we back when we were kinda talking about this weed initially, know that Palmer amaranth is actually a plant that's native to the Desert Southwest. And so the places where we're getting some of the seed from actually deal with Palmer amaranth on a regular basis. It's not like a new weed for Texas or Kansas, you know, even in their crop production systems. They're they've got the the weed to deal with.
Speaker 1:And so, you bring up an interesting point because, you know, if you've got need of seed, you know, herbicides are difficult or if not impossible to use with production of some of those plants because it's just not labeled or, you know, a broadleaf herbicide kills a broadleaf, and so you can't really you know, you have a difficult time segregating those those kind of things. And so it's it's kind of an interesting perspective that, you know, the that could be a potential source. And I know you guys have done a lot. And I don't wanna disrupt, like, the timeline kind of thing, but, maybe that's something to talk about. Is that seed source pathway in some of what's been happening there?
Speaker 1:Because I know you guys have done a lot of development done on how we kind of sample and and make sure some of the seed is is not infested, I guess, is what I would say.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the that pathway is important, especially when you're bringing seed in from other states. When you were when we're talking corn, soy, small grains, for the most part, because they're, you know, so intensively managed in any state, you know, for for good yield purpose, the seed's pretty clean. So we haven't seen seed contamination in sort of your common commodities, at least up here, what we consider common commodities in Minnesota. That issue in 2016 was interesting because it just happened to be a fluke.
Speaker 2:It was actually a, what I would call a bad actor in terms of, somebody that, you know, wasn't, as we investigated that case, handling, their seed correctly and, nor really following the Minnesota seed law. But that said, today, it can still be an issue, what we're seeing is with cover crop seed because that is becoming more popular and people are grabbing things from, you know, wherever they can get it and where it's cheap. So we've been telling a lot of growers, just be aware of your, you know, if if you are getting seed for cover crop or any type of planting seed, know where it's coming from. If the seed producers in Minnesota, they know what Palmer is, Unfortunately, because, you know, we identified that pathway early on, it kinda put them under the microscope, and that was never our intention. But at the same time, they've really stepped up.
Speaker 2:So there's a ton of great seed production in Minnesota that I think, you know, if you're getting your seed locally from a Minnesota grower, cleaner and labeler, you can feel really comfortable that you're getting good seed. But, you know, when it's coming from another state, they don't have the emphasis that we have put on Palmer. And, you know, and and that's a whole another issue maybe we can talk about, but, why Minnesota is so focused on it versus other states.
Speaker 1:Okay. That yeah. No. That makes sense. You know, one thing that comes to mind is, my kids like eating Cheerios.
Speaker 1:And do you remember a handful of years back, the Honey Nut Cheerios had this, pollinator seed pack in it. Do you remember that or no? I've always been curious. I was like, we should plant that and see what grows. And then I we never did, but I was just so suspicious.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking all these people even good with their pollinator pack from their Cheerios box. Like, what's in there? And how how is, you know, how is that regulated? You know?
Speaker 2:Well, we I oversee the seed regulatory program, and that group, we spend a lot of time with stuff like that where you know, look. The companies have great intentions. A lot of nonprofits will hand out, you know, garden seed packets or pollinator packets. And, again, the intention, awesome, but it's not sometimes those packets actually don't even come from The US. It depends, you know, who the company is that puts them together, where they get the seed from.
Speaker 2:The origin, it might be, you know, a purple coneflower in there, for example, but it might not it might originate from another country or a completely, different part of The US where you could, you know, call one of our local seed dealers and and put those packets together. So when you're putting stuff in Cheerios and it's, you know, it's going around the country, it's probably coming from one source, and you'd be lucky if it's from your backyard. You know? So the intention's great, but, you know, it's and the germ of that stuff is, you know, whether it's gonna even even, be really positive for you. So that's another thing we're we're concerned about when we've learned from Palmer is, you know, these things have consequences.
Speaker 2:For years, we got so good in egg, with, you know, tillage and herbicide combinations to be able to prep fields, plant crops, harvest them, get big yields. And then something like Palmer comes in, and it's a game changer because one of the things it's it's out competing is our ability to really get it with a with a good herbicide regime. And so many farmers have become really dependent on that for their pre and post, you know, weed control. So, yeah, you don't want that seed in there because a plant like that produces so much of it. And, you know, you get one or two plants go through a combine, and the next thing you know, you've you've got a a big problem on your hands.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So they get so big take home messages if if you're interested in pollinators, search out those local Minnesota seed sources for those plants or try to acquire the plants to plant or transplant, I suppose, and and kinda work at it that way. So good good take home message, I think. You did bring up something interesting. So in parts of the country where they're managing Palmer, they are somewhat challenged in certain circumstances with using herbicides because, one, the weed is a fast growing weed, so, targeting or timing post emergence herbicides tends to be kind of difficult.
Speaker 1:And then the second thing that's been a big challenge I know, which is really unpredictable just looking at a plant is what sort of herbicide resistance traits does that plant have that might be growing now in Minnesota? You know, is it it because the parts of the country this is coming from, they are just like our waterhemp, seen herbicide resistance issues as well as multiple herbicide resistance issues, and so it can be a real guessing game, I guess, what to what to try even try to use to manage it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I on the herbicide front, somebody like Evelyn Sarangi could, you know, address that a lot more specifically because he's doing a lot of work with that, which is great. Our biggest concern, Ryan, back in 2016 was not about CRP. Right? We Palmer doesn't compete well in that type of environment.
Speaker 2:These were first year planting, so, yeah, you're gonna see pigweeds. We knew that we probably wouldn't see a lot of, pig pigweeds the following years. What we were concerned about was every one of those CRP patches was either adjacent to a production field or was in the center of a production field. And we did not want it to get in there because the problem with Palmer is it looks like all the pigweeds, and, you know, yeah, there are some key characteristics in the U of M extension, websites and and the Department of Ag website too has great, resources to learn how to identify it. But even that, it makes it really difficult.
Speaker 2:It's not like a lot of the other noxious weeds I deal with where it's an easy flower. And by the way, by the time it's flowering, it's too late. Palmer and even, you know, waterhemp, which are very similar, have to be treated at, as you said, right, in a specific time and very early on for success. Well, it's really hard to identify Palmer, and a lot of people ask me, you know, well, what's the difference? Why aren't you going after waterhemp too?
Speaker 2:Well, waterhemp's been here for a long time, comparatively, and, Palmer is waterhemp on steroids. And you've heard that from a lot of our weed scientists in the Southern States. It hasn't behaved that way in Minnesota. I don't know why. North Dakota has, some establishment.
Speaker 2:South Dakota now, Iowa. I believe Wisconsin does. But what I would say is we've taken a stronger approach just because we wanted to buy farmers time to learn how to identify the plant and to get on it the best way they can. So it is resistant. We've had we do some testing, genetic testing when we find new locations in the state.
Speaker 2:One of the things we'll try to do if it's if it's a reoccurring infestation, which we don't have many of those, we maybe have one or two, and we have those under control. But we wanna know are they resistant, you know, herbicide resistant biotypes. And we have found some. I mean, obviously, the seed is coming in from other states where resistance has already developed. So it's that is probably the single biggest thing that is making us focus on Palmer because we have giant ragweed out there now that's, you know, similar traits even though it's from the, you know, US.
Speaker 2:And I mean, so is Palmer, but giant ragweed has been around the Midwest for, you know, forever. Right? So, we're worried about those things that are resistant to those tools that farmers are relying on, and Palmer is one of them.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. So let's, let's start again at twenty sixteen and kind of work our way towards where we're at today. And then maybe after that, we could chat a little bit about what's what's been happening in the summer. So
Speaker 2:Sure. Yeah. So the the the following years have been pretty sporadic in terms of what we find. We have had like I said, I mentioned, since since then up to today, we've had about a 121 sites. Of those, we're still managing seven and what in seven different counties.
Speaker 2:And what managing means, that could mean physically out there killing plants, at locations or mostly it's it means following up, yearly monitoring. We'll monitor a site for three years until we don't find Palmer anymore for that three year cycle, and then we consider it time to move on. We only I only have three full time staff in my program, and, you know, we we do partner with the U of M. And so there's some resource there, but it's pretty hard to cover everything. This up to this year, you know, like I said, we have, last year, we had four new counties, with several locations.
Speaker 2:One of the big issues was a cover crop seed that got sold. And the cool thing about that, even though you don't wanna see that happen, and it does happen, is that the seed company reported it right away, and we were able to get out to the customers that had received the seed in Scout Fields. And so of those, I think there were, like, 40 some locations. We found Palmer on, I believe, five. And of those, it was, like, a handful of plants here and there.
Speaker 2:But so this this summer, Julie Delick, who's my main Palmer person, will be out, surveying those fields as well as about another 15 that we consider high priorities right now. So when you consider that out of a 121 locations down to, you know, just a handful we're still looking at, I think we've been pretty successful. I I wanna say this too. A lot of people give us kudos at the department and even, you know, we give kudos to extension because we've been partnered with Devlin and and, all the crop, educators, you know, getting the word out and helping us along the way. But it's really been the farmers.
Speaker 2:I mean, if without them and the companies, you know, that that, find out, hey. We had this. We think this may be suspect. Can you check into it? I think it went out here at the you know, this field, that field, as well as the farmers saying, hey.
Speaker 2:We're finding something strange. So this summer, really, what the game plan is is to just continue to monitor when, you know, the sites that we consider high priority as well as we receive a ton of calls. And we have something called the report a pest line, and any farmer can call that. It's on our website. And, that gets to one of my staff immediately.
Speaker 2:And we generally if it's if it's, credible, you know, you can upload a picture, we ask everyone, pull out that phone you've got in your pocket and use it. Take good pictures. Send them in, and we can usually tell right away if, if it's Palmer or it's waterhemp. We get a lot of waterhemp calls, but, we've gotten pretty good at identifying it so we can tell pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:What's the name of your hotline again?
Speaker 2:It's called Report A Pest. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That name changed at
Speaker 2:some point, I think. Right? Yeah. I
Speaker 1:think it
Speaker 2:was Arastapest.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. That sounds good. No. That's a good that's a good we'll make sure we get that link into the chat here. So but look back to a 121 sites that Palmer established at.
Speaker 1:So you actually had or was that just a 101 that reported?
Speaker 2:Okay. 121 where it was reported, forty four of those had had Palmer positively confirmed. Seventy seven had nothing. So a lot of it, it was following up might be somebody said, hey. We've sold some cover crop seed that came from, you know, Kansas or whatever.
Speaker 2:A lot of screenings, issues with manure. That's another big pathway. Probably the most important one is any farmer receiving screenings for livestock feed. Be real careful about that if you're spreading manure out on your your fields. Millet and sunflower have really been problematic for us in that, because a lot of it's coming from Kansas South and they're not you know, the Palmer is so common there.
Speaker 2:They're not really you know, that's business as usual now for them. So, just something to keep in mind if you are, spreading manure.
Speaker 1:So so okay. So 44 established, seven in seven counties still following up, and then there's 15 new cases this year that you're following up with? No. No.
Speaker 2:That's the total. That's just part of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Those are the high
Speaker 2:priorities that we're continuing to look at.
Speaker 1:Okay. Excellent. Just kinda just trying trying to get that straight because we do rate this up at the end of the Oh, yeah. End the show. So we just wanna get straight.
Speaker 1:But okay. So now we talked about the seed pathway. You started mentioning manure and some of the livestock feed. What are the other kind of pathways if we wanna segment them and then maybe talk a little bit, you know, where the issues have been and how important they are, other than that seed source?
Speaker 2:I would say machinery, manure, any any seed input, you know, or any input to your land, that's coming from, you know, certainly other states, or other areas that might be suspect. Any bedding, hay, you know, with the droughts that we had going on over the, you know, last decade here and there, there's been a lot of hay that's been coming from other states that's been problematic. We had a gentleman call us last year who had bought a a combine from an area in Nebraska that was heavily inundated with Palmer. The the you know, he got it off the dealers the lot. It was used, but it wasn't clean.
Speaker 2:So he brought it had it shipped all the way here, and we were able to go out and take some of the the cleanings and whatnot or the stuff from his screens and, other parts of the combine and test it for Palmer. Ton ton of amaranth seed on it, not not any Palmer. But, you know, those are kind of the main pathways. I'd say the ones to watch the most are screenings where, you're they're cleaning. Like I said, millet or, sunflower tends to be, you know, problematic if those cleanings are coming from, grain that was imported from another state.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, just keeping an eye on where you're buying your seed. It's always best to buy from Minnesota by local because everyone here is kinda on the same, you know, pathway, I guess, you would say in reverse of keeping Palmer out. So, yeah, those are sort of the main ones. I I would say probably the screenings leads to the manure part of it, and a lot of people always are surprised by that. Like, how could it go through my, you know, cattle and end up out in the, you know, the field?
Speaker 2:But, you know, we know ruminants don't break down, small, you know, hard coated seed very well like that. So we have seen that be a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And certainly, certainly being your own spreader of a weed problem is not, not something that you wanna be responsible for. Now are there, people looking at ways to kinda denature or degrade weed seed in some of these feeds? Like, what what can we do there, I guess, is because it these do end up being pretty cheap sources of, you know, a supplemental feed for dairy or whatever. And and so it's they're nice things to have as far as a cheap resource to feed animals, but, you know, are there steps that people can take to, to kinda help, you know, reduce the risk at least?
Speaker 2:That's the big issue right now. One of the things we've been, looking at, we've been working with a farmer in Southern Minnesota who's organic and is receiving sunflower screenings from us from a source that we have found Palmer in, and he is using a hammer mill. And, you know, we're still finding it does reduce, about down to about 44%. It is reducing the Palmer viability, but there's still some that makes it through. However, let's be realistic.
Speaker 2:You know, the the great Don Weiss and I always used to talk. He'd say, well, you guys are are trying to eradicate it, you know, and then he would laugh. And I would always say, no. Eradicate is a term we use because it's a legal term within the noxious weed law. We're simply trying to keep it from becoming a problem as long as we can, but it's going to come.
Speaker 2:And I you know, farmers need to know that. Everybody that's importing grain, they can't you know, they gotta that's their business. You know? They can't get all the sunflowers they need, for example, for Minnesota. That's not the way ag works.
Speaker 2:So, we're gonna have Palmer coming in, and so we need to try to do the reduction of, you know, spread as much as we can, but that's not gonna be totally possible. So at the end of the day, farmers are gonna have to be vigilant and know how to identify palmer early on and get after it. And they can do that. That's the good news. I think the reason it's such a scary thing in these pathways is that in the Southern states where it kinda crept up on them and they weren't prepared for it, it got out of hand in such a fast way that they're clawing back.
Speaker 2:Right? We don't have to do that here if farmers remain, you know, steadfast in trying to identify it and control it. So that's probably the best way to answer your question because I don't think we're gonna be able to clean grain down to a sterile 0%. You know?
Speaker 1:No. Certainly. But looking at those high risk sources and figuring out maybe something we can do to to help reduce that risk. You know? And then I think the big thing then, Tony, is to follow-up, like, okay.
Speaker 1:This is where I've been spreading manure. Maybe we keep tuned in better on, you know, okay. I see some waterhemp. Now maybe I go out there and I try to distinguish and see if if in fact it's waterhemp or or, you know, palmer or something of that sort. So so, yeah, just keeping keeping tuned in.
Speaker 1:I think Minnesota has done a real great job with, with everybody involved with everything, and we really haven't had the the major issues that some of our neighboring states have had. And so it's it's been kind of a a success story overall. And, kind of changing gears here, though. So there are other noxious weeds. We mentioned the noxious weed law.
Speaker 1:Do we wanna talk about anything else as far as weeds that are kind of of importance that we know can be really problematic for us and in, you know, just kind of maybe a general alert to some of those issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, now, the kind of, you know, generally recognized noxious weeds that the counties and townships, you know, help us enforce, where every landowner is sort of required to manage. You know, your wild parsnip, Canada thistle certainly is in bloom now. You know, the original noxious weed law in 1872 was called the Canada thistle law. So that tells you how well we've been, managing that weed.
Speaker 2:And it's probably right now the number one complaint we're getting in. We're kinda past the parsnip, peak. But, you know, we'll move along into the fall, and and other things will kind of, come along. And, yeah, it's just they're sorta the best thing you can do is if you see big patches of weeds, thistles are probably the easiest for people to recognize. You can reach out to your local county egg inspector, and you can either get their contact off our website.
Speaker 2:We have a whole section dedicated to the county egg inspectors. They do all the enforcement of the noxious weed law locally, so it's done county by county. Or you can talk to your if you know your individual township supervisors, and they can kinda help you out. There's not really any one particular weed across the state. Minnesota's pretty diverse, so it's better to kinda pay attention, reach out to your counties, see if you can talk to your ag inspector and ask them, hey.
Speaker 2:What should I be looking out for? And they can sometimes help you if you let them know where you live too.
Speaker 1:So I don't wanna put you on the spot here, but it seems like over the years, we've been really losing the battle against wild parsnip. And I'm I'm kinda curious, like, you know, it's not a difficult weed to control, but it's just so pervasive and invasive that, you know, you see a patch bed on a highway and pretty soon, 30 miles in each direction, you've got that weed. You know? So it's like it's one that I've always been bewildered at how fast it seems to just Yeah. Get around.
Speaker 1:You know?
Speaker 2:It, you know, it likes roads and you know, I've been doing this for for going on almost three decades, and it's those it can of thistles in the same boat. A lot of these get spread by the rowing the mowing process we have, you know, in place. We see them because they're along the road, and other fields are managed, but they'll go out into, you know, undisturbed areas or wildlife management areas and so forth. Not a hard one to control. The problem is there's so much of it that it gets expensive, and people don't understand always how expensive and how many miles of roadside we have.
Speaker 2:And, they like to beat up on the road authorities, but they do a lot of management. It's just there's only so much money to go around. One thing I always kind of chuckled about in this job, I get calls where people are chewing my ear about why aren't you doing more about this? And it's like, well, do you wanna pay more taxes? You know?
Speaker 2:And no one wants to hear that, but it's the reality. We only have so much money to manage those roads. Can we do a better job? Certainly. But, yeah, it it it the roads weeds along roads are a problem.
Speaker 1:Well, you bring that issue up, like, you know, so the roadway is really managed. And the example here, we were canoeing on the the the fourth on the Zumbro, come up off of a canoe landing, one of the designated landing areas from the DNR, and, like, they're all on a a bridge abutment, you know, and we're hiking up, and it's, like, wild parsnip until you get to where they've been managing the roadside, and then it's mostly grass or whatever. So, yeah, it's just a it's a real bear, and it's you watch people walking up off the river, and they've got shorts on, and you're thinking, boy, watch out for that weed. But, anyways yeah. So folks that might not know that if you get in contact with a parsnip sap and then UV light, you can get extreme, skin burns.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's a it's a nasty one. So, anyways, yeah, we covered a lot of ground. Thanks, Tony, for being on today. Thanks everyone for tuning in, and I I wanna thank our sponsors again at Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council as well as Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council. And, we're gonna call that a wrap for today.
Speaker 1:So thanks, everyone.
