Farmers post crop conditions, thoughts on agriculture Web site

The winter wheat on Keith Schott’s central Montana farm is the best he’s seen in three or four years, and his newly planted spring wheat finally, after a few seasons of drought, seems to have better than a fighting chance.

By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press Writer The Helena Independent Record

He blames his optimism on the rain. And both, he knows, can dry up fast.

”As always, time will tell,” Schott, who grows wheat and barley near Broadview, wrote this week as part of an online survey of Montana farmers meant to gauge attitudes as much as crop and moisture conditions across the countryside.

The Web site http://www.montanamarketmanager.org/ is run by the Montana Grain Growers Association http://www.mgga.org/ Responses, posted each Monday from spring planting to fall harvest, are generally short and often rich in detail.

One farmer from Shawmut, in central Montana, noted problems with kochia, Russian thistle and other weeds. Another from Whitewater said wind was taking a toll on crops on her north-central Montana farm.

Richard Owen, the Grain Growers’ executive vice president, said the survey that his group has conducted for four years now provides information beyond coffee-shop chatter such as rainfall totals in parts of Fergus County after the latest spring storm.

Congressional aides, federal and state agriculture officials and even crop insurance agents monitor the responses. They’re watching for trends, from the scope and severity of a dry spell to outbreaks of crop diseases and yield projections, that may signal a need for assistance, Owen said.

Leaders of the farm group participate to ensure representation in all parts of the state, while other producers – about 30 in all – help fill in the reporting gaps, Owen said. Only six participated in the season’s first survey, which Owen attributed to the frantic pace of spring planting and farm work and, maybe, forgetfulness.

The response rate picks up greatly as the growing season progresses, he said.

”For farmers, it’s a chance to see how the crop is progressing, to see if they’re ahead or behind others in the state or if insect problems are coming their way,” he said.

Kim Murray, who farms near Froid in northeast Montana, said the survey provides growers with a ”heads up.”

”If he knows something’s coming, and this was the first place he heard about it, that might give him time to do some planning,” he said.

But the survey goes beyond crop conditions and soil moisture, which the federal government officially reports on each week, and often reveals the farmers’ attitudes and the struggles they’re facing.

Responses last year, as a summer heat wave dried up many growers’ hopes, were telling.

”We went from good potential to very poor in the course of the last few weeks,” Jim Squires of Glendive wrote on July 29. ”111 degrees, hot winds and a few very light showers have left us in grim shape.”

A week later, Darin Arganbright said the drought continued, and he didn’t expect much from his winter and spring wheat crops.

”We got about four-hundredths of rain the past week, and we are counting every last hundredth of moisture,” he wrote.

Arganbright, a farmer near Carter in north-central Montana, added: ”We are hoping for an early frost so we can finally catch a break. The early seeded spring wheat may make something, but the later stuff is in need of divine intervention.”

Schott said personal comments can be an encouragement to other farmers, and that he tries to add some at the end of his e-mails.

”Sometimes,” he said, ”it’s reassuring to see other people are going through the same problems you are.”

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2003/04/30/montana/a11043003_02.txt