NNY Ag Development Program

Northern New York Agriculture

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NNYADP: Farm Bureau Ag Priority Program

The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program is among the priority programs that NY Farm Bureau (NYFB) is encouraging State legislators to fund in the 2015-16 State Budget. NYFB recently sent a notice listing 13 of 35 programs it supports; NNYADP is on the longer list that advocates will be presenting in Albany on March 2-3.

On Monday, February 23, NYFB issued a call for support for NNYADP and other organizations not in the earlier mailing. The following link was provided in that email for expressing your support for funding renewal for NNYADP.

http://capwiz.com/nyfb/issues/alert/?alertid=64154016&type=ST&show_alert=1

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Growing Greens in Winter in NNY

The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program has funded season-extension production and high tunnel research to help NNY growers maximize profitability year’round. NNY CCE Horticulture Specialist Amy Ivy shares this look at Growing Greens in Winter in NNY: How we do it. . .

The first step is to use a full-sized high tunnel. You might think that a smaller tunnel would be easier to keep warm but in fact, the opposite is true. The large volume of air in a high tunnel acts as a buffer, warming up quickly on a sunny day and cooling down more slowly than the outside air at night.

Growers do need to pull covers over their plants every night and on cloudy days, whenever the sun isn’t out. These layers vary between single and double layers of rowcover, the spunbound fabric home gardeners use outdoors, and sometimes a sheet of plastic on top of that on the really cold nights.

Only the most cold-hardy crops will get through the winter without additional heat, but spinach, kale and various mustard greens do fine. Lettuce and chard are less hardy but do well in all but the coldest, darkest months of December, January and early February. By mid-February the days become long enough to really make a difference to winter crops in a tunnel.

Some growers may supply a small amount of heat, either through tubing in the soil much like household radiant floor heat, or with short term heat sources during the coldest weather such as a wood stove or a propane heater.

Another way growers in Northern New York produce winter crops is to plant two sets of crops. One set is planted in late August for harvesting all fall into December. The second set is planted in late September or early October, but will not be harvested until mid- to late February when the days are longer and new growth begins. This second set of crops grows enough in the fall to become established, and is then covered with a couple of layers of rowcover and left alone for the deepest part of winter. This crop is held in a sort of dormant, cold storage until February. Then, once the days lengthen and the sun becomes stronger, they are uncovered on the sunny days to resume growth and can be harvested from late February through spring.

This process of growing throughout the winter is far more complicated than I can fully explain here, but this overview gives you an idea of how it’s done. An excellent resource on this topic is The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman.

Locally-grown winter greens are available at the Winter Farmers Market in Plattsburgh, the first and third Saturdays at the Plattsburgh City Gym. For more information about the market and products available visit http://www.plattsburghfarmersmarket.com/. If you do not live near the Plattsburgh area, ask your local Extension office for winter markets in your area.

Click here for more information on NNYADP horticulture research projects in Northern New York

Contact Amy Ivy at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Clinton County; 518-561-7450, adi2@cornell.edu.

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Dairy Performance Workshops: 2/18, 2/19

Extension Dairy Performance Management Workshops: Feb. 18 in Malone, Feb. 19 in Canton

Cornell Cooperative Extension will present 10am-3pm workshops on performance management for dairy operators on Wednesday, February 18 in Malone and Thursday, February 19 in Canton. The workshops are targeted to dairy owners interested in learning more about leadership styles and qualities and how to put them to work to attract the right employees.

Presenters are Tom Mahoney with the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and University of Vermont Professor Emeritus Rick LeVitre, who is now executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension Franklin County.

Workshop participants will discuss how to prepare a job description to attract the desired workers as well as techniques for documenting and positively disciplining problem employees. An Employee Handbook authored by Mahoney will be available for $7.

The Malone workshop will be held at the 911 Emergency Services Building on Bare Hill Road; the Canton workshop will be at the St. Lawrence County Extension Learning Farm.

The workshop fee includes lunch and is $30/person; details and registration are online at https://reg.cce.cornell.edu/Dairy_216. For more information, contact NNY Dairy Specialist Kim Morrill at 315-379-9192, kmm434@cornell.edu or Rick LeVitre at 518-483-7403,rlevitre@cornell.edu.

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Farmers Invited: NNYADP Meeting 2/27 in Chazy

The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program is inviting North Country farmers to hear the results of its latest projects at its annual meetings in eastern NNY on February 27 in Chazy. The research reports sessions begin at 1pm at Miner Institute in Chazy. Registration is not required to attend.

The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program is a farmer-driven research and technical assistance program serving all sectors of the agricultural industry, from dairy and crops to livestock, maple and horticultural production, in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties.

‘The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program is noted for producing real-world, practical results, and the 2014 project reports live up to that expectation,’ says Program Co-Chair Jon Greenwood, a dairy producer in St. Lawrence County.

‘Northern New York Agricultural Development Program small grants connect North Country farmers with faculty, researchers, and specialists with Cornell University, Cornell Cooperative Extension, the State University of New York, W.H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute, and other expertise to address critical needs and emerging opportunities,’ says NNYADP Co-Chair Joe Giroux, a Clinton County dairyman.

Reports at the meetings will cover:
. emerging corn and soybean diseases
. the identification of mastitis-causing pathogens
. corn grain variety trials under Northern New York growing conditions
. evaluating alfalfa-grass mixes for dairy and livestock forage
. production practices for the Juneberry superfruit
. health management for sheep and goats, and
. how the inexpensive biocontrol developed with long-term NNYADP funding to beat back the highly-destructive alfalfa snout beetle now holds promise for helping fruit and vegetable growers statewide.

One of the acclaimed Northern New York Agricultural Development Program successes came through long-term funding that provided the time needed for Cornell University researchers to develop an inexpensive, biocontrol treatment that is now substantially reducing the impact of the highly-destructive alfalfa snout beetle. The concept of using native nematodes that destroy the larvae of the beetle is now being applied in trials to reduce other types of pests in strawberry crops in Northern New York, in apple and grape crops elsewhere in the state, and at the Battle Island Golf Course in Fulton, NY.

As time allows, the meeting may also make note of recent NNYADP projects focused on winter forage crops production for the dairy and livestock industries; enhancing agricultural environmental stewardship through tile drainage, nutrient recycling, and on-farm water quality; adapting to climate change; enhancing market opportunities for North Country beef producers; and season extension for fruit and vegetable growers.

Complete research reports are posted on the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program website at www.nnyagdev.org. For more details on the annual meetings, call 315-376-5270.

According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, 4,365 farms manage more than 1.1 million acres of farmland with a hired labor payroll of more than $67.2 million. Those numbers represent a gain of 97 farms, 64,487 acres, and $15 million in payroll since the 2007 Census.

Photo:
2014 NNYADP MeetingNorthern New York Agricultural Development Program Co-Chair Jon Greenwood, a St. Lawrence County dairy owner, 2nd from left, and NNYADP Coordinator Margaret E. Smith, a Cornell University professor of plant breeding and genetics, 2nd from right, welcomed legislative representatives to the 2014 annual meeting of the farmer-driven NNYADP: left to right are Brian Peck with the office NYS Assemblyman Ken Blankenbush, NYS Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell, and Michael Schenk with the office of NYS Senator Patty Ritchie.

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NNY Soybean Disease Update

The December issue of Cornell’s What’s Cropping Up? newsletter includes an article by Jaime A. Cummings and Gary C. Bergstrom of the School of Integrative Plant Science.

The article: Resistance to Brown Stem Rot May Be Needed in Future Soybean Varieties for New York State notes the funding support of the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program for a survey of corn and soybean diseases in the NNY region in 2013-2014.

The opening paragraph follows. Please click on this link to read entire article

A potentially yield-reducing disease called ‘brown stem rot’ (BSR) was confirmed for the first time in New York soybean fields in 2013, and was found again in 2014. It showed up in some plants from soybean fields in Cayuga, Herkimer, Niagara, and Yates Counties collected by Cornell Cooperative Extension Educators Kevin Ganoe, Keith Severson, Michael Stanyard, and Bill Verbeten, with support from the New York Soybean Check-off Program. The disease was diagnosed in the Field Crops Pathology Laboratory at Cornell based on characteristic symptoms and the laboratory isolation of the causal fungus and confirmation of a portion of its signature DNA sequence. So far, BSR has not been detected outside of the four counties mentioned above. It is noteworthy that BSR was not detected in soybean fields in northern New York scouted in 2013 and 2014 by CCE Educators Michael Hunter and Kitty O’Neil, with support from the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program.

Click here for NNYADP-funded Creating a NNY Corn and Soybean Disease Diagnosis and Assessment Database Project and the discovery of Northern Stem Canker in 7 counties in New York State, including one in NNY