The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program (NNYADP) and Cornell University Crop and Soil Sciences and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences departments have released the results of their latest efforts to enhance real-time weather-based precision nitrogen (N) management in New York state’s northernmost counties.

Based in part on 18 years of field studies in Northern New York, the van Es Lab at Cornell University developed the Adapt-N data-driven simulation software to help reduce uncertainty about optimum nitrogen application rates, particularly driven by early-season variable weather conditions.

‘Nitrogen management on corn silage and grain acres can be costly when the nutrient is overapplied without any gain in crop yield. The dynamic recommendations of Adapt-N can reduce overall inputs, cost, and environmental losses,’ says Cornell Crop and Soil Sciences Professor Dr. Harold van Es.

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Adapt-N functions in real-time, daily adapting recommendations to current weather conditions. Farmers and crop consultants can receive weather-adjusted updates daily via email or text alert.

In 2013, with an uncharacteristically wet spring, the tool successfully adapted N recommendations to account for early-season N dynamics, and further demonstrated its ability to improve New York State farmers’ profits.

Click here to read about the results of 2013 strip trials in the June 2014 Cornell What’s Cropping Up newsletter

Northern New York – Research conducted on Northern New York farms by Cornell University researchers with funding from the farmer-driven Northern New York Agricultural Development Program (NNYADP) is helping farmers enhance their production of forage crops for their dairy cows.

Eight farms in Northern New York participated in on-farm double cropping trials from 2011 to 2013. The research specifically refines nitrogen fertilizer management guidelines for fields that will be used for double cropping – the practice of planting two different crops on the same field in which the second crop is planted after the first has been harvested.

By using the same land to plant two crops that can be fed to dairy cows, farmers can offset previous-year dairy cow forage inventory losses due to drought, excess water, or other causes.

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Link to Winter Forage Small Grains to Boost Feed Supply: Not a Cover Crop Anymore research report

Link to profiles on growing 70 acres of triticale as a double crop with corn at Brandy View Farm in Madrid, NY, and a cereal rye trial at BCS Dairy in Peru, NY.

 

On Wednesday, July 9 from 2pm to 4:30pm, the Cornell Willsboro Research Farm at Willsboro, NY, will hold an open house and tour of the facilities and diverse agricultural research plots. A number of research projects at the farm have been funded by the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program.

Research topics featured at the 2014 open house event include:

• Reduced tillage strategies for commercial pumpkin and sweet corn production
• Alley cover crops for plasticulture vegetable systems
• Developing Amelanchier – juneberry – as a commercial fruit crop
• High tunnel growing strategies for common and uncommon vegetables
• Forage grass and alfalfa variety trials
• Alternative annual forages
• Adaptive nitrogen management for corn
• Heritage and ancient wheat trials in an organic rotation
• Cold hardy wine grape trials.

In 1982 Willsboro farmer and entrepreneur E. Vreeland Baker donated his 352-acre farm to Cornell University for agricultural research and demonstration. The farm is managed by the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station.

The July 9 event is free and open to the public. Info

 

The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program (NNYADP) and Miner Institute have released the results of the first comprehensive analysis of products that can substitute for corn in dairy cow rations.

Corn is an expensive (about $200/ton), starchy commodity often mixed into dairy cow feed rations. A Cornell University field survey showing that high-production dairies in the northeastern U.S. and upper Midwest were successful feeding lower starch diets prompted interest by farmers in Northern New York to evaluate economically-feasible replacements for corn grain in dairy rations.

With NNYADP funding, the William H. Miner Agricultural Institute conducted a comprehensive inventory and analysis of accessible and appropriate dairy diet substitute products that are easily accessible in the Northern New York region.

Project leader Rick Grant, president of Miner Institute, says, “The Northern New York region is well-situated to take advantage of regional opportunities for purchasing good buys on such products as soybean hulls, distillers’ grains, malt sprouts, and gluten feed as well as citrus pulp and whole cottonseed stored in facilities along the St. Lawrence River.”

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NNYADP Project Results: Economical Substitutes in NNY for Corn Grain in Dairy Cow Diets

Northern New York – Common, emerging and re-emerging crop diseases are a threat to two of the economically-important crops in Northern New York, so a team of Cornell University faculty and Cornell Cooperative Extension educators with Northern New York Agricultural Development Program (NNYADP) funding are now in the second year of a survey of corn and soybean fields in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties.

This proactive disease assessment will help protect the health and profitability of corn and soybean production in Northern New York. The two crops combined are estimated to have a more than $106 million economic impact in the region.

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2013 / Year 1 NNYADP-funded NNY Corn & Soybean Disease Survey Report