Pipeline Easement Workshop - Feb 6

More pipelines will be crossing South Texas properties associated with the development of the Eagle Ford Shale. The Texas AgriLife Extension Service of Live Oak County and the Extension Leadership Advisory Board of Live Oak County are hosting an educational program to help those landowners that are still in the negotiating phase become educated on important items to look out for when negotiating their gas or oil pipeline lease.

A Pipeline Easement Workshop is scheduled for Monday February 6, 2012 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Live Oak County Courthouse 301 East Houston Street George West Texas District Courtroom on the 2nd floor of the Court House. The guest speaker for the evening will be Mr. Judon Fambrough from the Texas Real Estate Center. Mr. Fambrough is an attorney specializing in property rights, including oil and gas, wind power, hunting leases and landowner liability. Those planning to attend should RSVP to the Live Oak County Extension office at 361-449-1703 by Friday February 3, 2012. There will be a $10.00 registration fee for this educational program and 2 CEU’s will be offered for private, commercial and non-commercial applicators. For more details contact the Live Oak County Extension Office at 361-449-1703.

Individuals with disabilities, who require an auxiliary aid, service or accommodation in order to participate in any of the mentioned activities, are encouraged to contact the County Extension Office eight days before all programs for assistance. Educational programs of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service are open to all citizens without regard to race, color, sex, disability, religion, age or national origin.

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Sorghum Clump Planted Produces No Yield Increase in 2010 and 2011

There has been some recent farm press indicating there might be an advantage to planting grain sorghum in clumps vs. the traditional seed drop method, so the question was how this system work locally. David Ocker agreed to evaluate this planting alternative, so for the last two years a study was implemented on his farm in Nueces County. The goal was to evaluate planting of grain sorghum in clumps vs. conventional seed drop method, while at the same time keeping the same plant population per acre.

Traditional sorghum seeding plates were altered by closing holes so that seed would be dropped in clumps rather than traditional even spacing. Grain sorghum was planted in clumps (5 to 6 plants per clump, with clumps spaced about 23 inches apart) within rows and conventionally in a randomized complete block design. Seeding rates in both cases was 61,256 seed per acre. Row space was 30-inches.

Results from this study suggest that there was not a real difference between treatments (i.e. clump planting vs. conventional planting) as the clump planting average yield was 3,683 pounds per acre, while the yield for the conventional planting was 3,545 pounds per acre. Rainfall during the growing season was below normal as only 2.22 inches were recorded. Results obtained in 2010 were very similar with no significant yield differences with above normal rainfall.

ONLINE VIDEOS OFFER TIPS TO CATTLEMEN

RanchTV.org is a video library developed and maintained by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service for the purpose of extension information to cattle producers. The primary speakers in these videos are from the Extension Beef Cattle Unit.
Some videos that would be of interest now during this drought, include a channel on Drought Cattle Management. Individual videos on this channel address water issues, prussic acid and nitrate toxicity in forages, supplementation, and culling, just to name a few. Another channel that is provides excellent information related to nutrient requirements of cattle is the Nutrition Feeds and Feeding Channel. Individual videos address evaluating forage conditions, hay considerations, feeding for intended use, which feed to purchase, reading a feed label, mineral supplementation, non-protein nitrogen, protein limiting factors, use of co-products, protein cubes/cakes, pelleted feeds, using tubs, supplements in tubs, supplements in blocks, loose minerals, mineral blocks, cottonseed hulls, soybean/cottonseed meal, corn gluten/distillers grains/ rice hulls, and wheat mids/soy hulls/alfalfa leaf meal. Videos on many other aspects are also available on RanchTV. These videos can be accessed on the Internet at www.ranchtv.org
Another option available at this web site is Cowsense U. If you are interested in taking online courses that teach best beef cattle management practices then visit Cowsense U. At this site you will find multiple online courses, many of which are free. Upon the successful completion of each course you will receive a certificate that says that you completed and passed the online course from the Texas AgriLife Extension Service. Topics include Beef Quality Assurance, Low Stress Cattle Handling, and Market Cow Management. Other courses will come online in the near future.

CROP INSURANCE - AN IMPORTANT RISK MANAGEMENT TOOL

As we begin 2012, the persistent drought is on the minds of most Texans.
Those that depend on rainfall for their livelihood (namely farmers and ranchers) are quite concerned as cattle herds have been reduced significantly due to lack of standing forage and very short hay supplies, while farmers debate when and if to apply fertilizer to their fields, wondering what crop they will be able to plant, depending when and if the rains do finally come.
Rainfall recorded in 2011 only amounted to about 11 inches of precipitation in the Coastal Bend, meaning that we are roughly 20 inches below normal. Most of our deep soil moisture is gone, used up by last years crop. With projections for continued below normal rainfall, the crop potential for 2012 looks rather poor.
With these poor soil moisture conditions, farmers should take advantage of an important risk management tool, that being Crop Insurance. If you have not already established a relationship with a Crop Insurance Agent, now is the time to make that a high priority. The sales closing dates for South Texas Crop Insurance for corn, cotton, grain sorghum, sunflower, and sesame is January 31, 2012.
There are many crop insurance options now available to help producers manage their risk associated with their particular crop. Lets take cotton as an example. 2011 saw some important changes to the crop and revenue insurance programs. A range of products like multi-peril crop insurance (i.e., the old APH yield policy), and the revenue insurance products that applied to cotton (e.g., Crop Revenue Coverage, Revenue Assurance, and Income Protection) were basically repackaged by USDA-RMA, with a common mechanism for price discovery and rating. In short, the price that will be used to value insured cotton will be based on the average of futures prices at defined periods of the year. This approach is new for yield insurance, but similar to how CRC coverage was priced in years past, according to Dr. John Robinson, Extension Economist - Cotton Marketing.
Speaking of insurance options, there is the repackaged program known as the COMBO program. Instead of separate insurance products to insure cotton yield, or cotton gross revenue, cotton growers have a wide range of choices within one package. The first set of choices involve whether the grower wants to insure only yield (similar to the old multi-peril, APH yield policy, and is now simply called Yield Protection), or gross revenue (known as Revenue Protection, or RP, and similar to the old CRC product using the higher of planting or harvest time futures prices to value the coverage) or gross revenue without the harvest time price valuation (known as Revenue Protection Harvest Price Exclusion, or RPHPE, and similar to the old RA or IP products. The three new product choices vary in cost as they provide differing levels of protection.
Beyond the choice of a product, growers have to decide the level of coverage, i.e., 60% or 65% or whatever. All things being equal, the cost of your insurance premium will be higher at higher levels of coverage. Cotton growers have additional choices to make. The most notable one is the cottonseed endorsement, which provides additional coverage for the value of lost cottonseed in the event of an insurable loss in lint yield.
Like I mentioned earlier, there are many options to consider, so you might need to consult with your Crop Insurance Agent soon to determine which crop insurance option is most appropriate and applicable for your farming operation. Additional information regarding crop insurance can be found through the USDA-RMA website at http://www.rma.usda.gov/