Managing Editor / Ag Proud – Idaho

Cassidy is a contributing editor to Progressive Cattle and Progressive Forage magazines.

Rick Waitley, the association’s executive director, praised Jaynes in an announcement about the award at the 2024 IHFA Conference in Idaho Falls. Waitley said, “[Lynn is] very deserving of this honor and [has] been a definite leader in the Idaho hay and forage industry for several years.”

Jaynes’ journey in agriculture and writing began after attending college at Brigham Young University. She farmed with her husband, Fred, south of Twin Falls for several years, raising five children in the process. Jaynes says that “being a farm wife was all I ever wanted, but farming forever wasn’t in the cards for us.” They eventually reduced the farm to a few acres of hay and moved south of Filer, and both went to work at other jobs.

Jaynes’ second love, after farming, was writing. She merged her love for agriculture with writing 11 years ago when she joined Progressive Publishing in Jerome as the managing editor for Progressive Forage magazine. This role opened her eyes to the diverse practices in hay production.

Reflecting on her experience, Jaynes humorously remarks, “What a surprise it was to an Idaho girl to realize there were growers who never put one drop of irrigation on their alfalfa!”

In her time as editor, Jaynes contributed to various sister magazines such as Progressive Dairy and Progressive Cattle, and more recently Ag Proud – Idaho.

Walt Cooley, vice president of Progressive Publishing, commended Jaynes for her outstanding contributions to the company, including her role in launching Ag Proud – Idaho magazine in 2019.

“Lynn laid a solid foundation for Ag Proud – Idaho,” Cooley says. “She is a talented and relatable individual, serving as a friend and mentor to many within the industry and our company.”

Expressing her gratitude for the award, Jaynes says, “For a ‘woman of words,’ it’s amazingly hard to adequately express my love for this industry and the people in it. I always thought my first love was family, then farming, then writing. Maturity has made me realize that my first love is God, family, farmers and then (but still) agriculture. I have been so privileged to meet with so many smart, humble, God-fearing hay producers – and that really has been the highlight of my career.”

The post Lynn Jaynes recognized for contributions to Idaho’s agriculture industry – Ag Proud appeared first on Idaho Grain Producers Association.

Managing Editor / Ag Proud – Idaho

Cassidy is a contributing editor to Progressive Cattle and Progressive Forage magazines.

With a $13.1 million price tag, this 9,600-square-foot facility is poised to become a beacon of innovation in agricultural research. Focusing on critical fields such as nematology, pomology, plant pathology, microbiology and hops quality, this center aims to equip growers with the tools needed to thrive in an ever-evolving agricultural landscape.

“When I think about agriculture and agricultural production and technology, and how rapidly that is changing, it is extraordinary,” said Michael Parrella, dean of U of I’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) and special assistant to the president for agricultural initiatives. “So having a new facility that will enable us to embrace and use those technologies, I think that is a big part of what this facility represents.”

Initially facing closure in 2009 due to budget constraints, stakeholders recognized the center’s vital role, not only in the Parma area but Idaho agriculture as a whole. Their collective effort led to the formation of the Treasure Valley Agriculture Coalition, which ensured the center’s survival for another 15 years and laid the groundwork for its revitalization that began in 2019.

“No one entity could have done it themselves,” Parrella said, acknowledging the $3 million in stakeholder donations, as well as investments from both the university and the state of Idaho. “We couldn’t do it as a university. It is unlikely the stakeholders could have put together enough resources to do that, and the legislature as well. But given the fact that it was a coalition here, and benefiting multiple stakeholders, we were able to get that support.”

Saad Hafez leads a tour of the new Idaho Center for Plant and Soil Health. Photo courtesy of the University of Idaho.

There are 118 different crops that are grown in the Parma area, making it one of the nation’s most diverse agricultural regions. Parrella believes having an updated facility will help attract top-tier faculty to conduct ongoing research that benefits a wide range of crops.

“We want to bring in early career faculty that are doing cutting-edge work that are aware of the technological advances in agriculture,” Parrella said. “When I think about precision agriculture – the application of artificial intelligence to all applications of agriculture, a better understanding of soil health – all of these things I think this new facility is going to be able to have our faculty address and to do that in a pretty comprehensive fashion.”

An example of this is CALS’s newest addition, Armando Falcon-Brindis. Brindis is an early career extension specialist in entomology stationed at the Parma Research and Extension Center, whose research agenda spans a broad spectrum of Idaho crops, with a focus on pests like two-spotted spider mites, thrips, aphids, wireworms and alfalfa weevil. Brindis also brings with him a better understanding of the use of X-ray technology when analyzing leaf cutter bees used to pollinate alfalfa crops.

“As a new researcher, [this facility] represents hope. It represents competitive research. It represents the future,” Brindis said.

Furthermore, CALS has raised about 85% of the necessary funding to establish an endowed chair position in nematology that will be based at Parma and will honor Saad Hafez, a longtime extension specialist and professor of nematology who is nearing retirement.

A bird’s-eye view is shown of the Idaho Center for Plant and Soil Health building at the University of Idaho Parma Research and Extension Center. Photo by Bill Schaefer.

Parrella said, “This facility is only the start. Let’s use it to bring modern technology to agriculture through hiring the best faculty we can.”

Jeff Hartman, a fifth-generation vegetable seed grower in Parma, also expressed enthusiasm for the facility’s revitalization, anticipating the wealth of knowledge and resources it will offer to the next generation of farmers like himself.

“As we find ourselves in situations that we need help, these folks are going to be there close. We can just go have a face-to-face conversation with these folks about what we need,” Hartman said. “The community is excited and grateful for what the University of Idaho and the College of Ag and Life Sciences is doing down here, as well as the potential for the future and growth.”

The grand opening of the Parma facility builds upon recent progress within CALS toward opening new facilities to ensure a bright and sustainable future for Idaho agriculture, including the ongoing construction of the Idaho Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Idaho CAFE) in Rupert, which will include the nation’s largest research dairy.

“Basically, research done in Parma doesn’t just benefit that area,” Parrella concluded. “Wheat research that’s done there would benefit wheat production throughout Idaho; potato research does the same. So, in that sense, an investment in Parma means an investment in the broad agricultural industry in the state. This facility is helping production move forward.”

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Managing Editor / Ag Proud – Idaho

Cassidy is a contributing editor to Progressive Cattle and Progressive Forage magazines.

According to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Idaho barley growers yielded 60.5 million bushels, trailing the 2016 record of 62.1 million bushels. The average barley yield reached 112 bushels per acre, a slight increase from the 2022 record of 111 bushels per acre.

Barley growers Nathan Scafe (Ashton), Mike Wilkins (Rupert) and Steve Samowitz (Soda Springs) share insights from their 2023 growing season and plans for 2024.

How was the 2023 growing season for barley on your farm?

SCAFE: The yields were good, but a lot of it got sprouted. Most of our barley goes to Anheuser-Busch, and they have already taken some that was 8%-10% sprouted, but we still have a lot to go. They say they are going to take it, but it just depends on if it keeps working to malt or not. My yields were good – maybe a little above average – but the quality was kind of bad just because of all the rains we had during harvest.

WILKINS: We had a rough start; it was dry, and then it turned too wet. But, once it warmed up, the growing year was really good. It didn’t get too hot, so that’s what made our quality. It wasn’t our best year in terms of yield, but it’s up in the top 5%. Our quality was really good, probably as good as we’ve ever had.

SAMOWITZ: Where we are a 100% dry farm, we may have seen a greater yield bump than maybe some of the irrigated growers. I would say it was one of our better years. Quality-wise, we had great quality, but with the shortened window for harvest, we had to cut it a little bit sooner than we would have liked. We’ve had a little bit of a challenge trying to dry our grain down to the right quality specs, but as far as the other quality specs, we are right on the money. We had a little bit of sprout damage with the rain during the late harvest, but it hasn’t been anything that we haven’t been able to work through.

Pictured are Nathan Scafe and his family. Scafe farms both irrigated and dryland acres in the Ashton area. Photo provided by Nathan Scafe.

Were there any specific challenges or unexpected factors that impacted your grain production in the 2023 growing season?

SCAFE: Yeah, just all the rain that we got. The rains through the growing season were good; they helped where we didn’t have to water quite as much, and my dry farm yields, which are usually around 65 to 70 bushels, we ended up getting around 80 bushels, even with lower test weights. It probably would have been 85 to 90 if we didn’t get rained on at harvest. The rains were good for the crop, but then through harvest, they were really bad for the crop.

WILKINS: No, not really. It was a cool spring, but after that, things went pretty good. We didn’t have the problem on our farm because we were done combining by then, but there were some guys in our area that were later, and we got a rainstorm, and they had some pre-harvest sprout, but we didn’t have it on our farm.

SAMOWITZ: We weren’t lacking in the moisture department for our dry farm, but we had different challenges. We were about a month behind starting our seeding, which put everything behind. I would say about 15% of our operation we had as fallow because we weren’t able to get everything planted, so we had some preventative plant claims. Follow that all the way through; we were a month later starting harvest, which, in our area (we farm above 6,000 feet), if you’re not done with harvest by mid-September to early October, you may not get it done because we may start fighting early winter weather. With the later harvest, we were challenged to finish the harvest before winter. We normally have about an eight-week window to get our harvest complete. In 2023, we had to get it done in four to six weeks. I think our biggest challenge right now is the moisture content of our grain in our bins, just trying to get that dry. Every year is different and this was definitely a year we’ve never experienced.

Pictured are Steve Samowitz and his family. Samowitz farms roughly 10,000 acres of dry farm along with his father-in-law, Scott Brown, in Soda Springs. Photo provided by Steve Samowitz.

Are there specific lessons learned from 2023 that you plan to apply or adjust for the upcoming growing season?

SCAFE: The trouble is you can’t really outguess the weather. The thing that messed us up was just the harvest rains. They were so sporadic, and we didn’t hardly have a week without any rain. And so there was really nothing we could do about it. I have insurance, so I am going to keep malt endorsement on my insurance. That has paid out with some of the barley we’ve had problems with. That’s one of the practices I will keep; it’s more expensive, but so far, it’s been paying out.

WILKINS: I learn something new every year, but I don’t know that there was anything big that stood out. We are going to plant a new variety this year. And that’s just because our old variety is being discontinued, so that will be different. We will be planting Odyssey, and the only change will be that we have to use a growth stimulator, which we didn’t use on our old one.

SAMOWITZ: I guess the lesson we learn every year is that we have to just kind of change and adapt to what Mother Nature gives us and just keep our eye on the forecast and adjust our process and procedures accordingly.

And are there market trends or opportunities that will influence your decision-making for 2024?

SCAFE: The malt companies are contracting fewer bushels, so we might be growing more wheat, and with the prices of everything it is still a guess on what type of wheat we will grow.

WILKINS: The price is down for barley. We vary a little bit each year, but pretty much we’re staying with the program on the number of acres we plant.

SAMOWITZ: We definitely have our eyes on the market changes and are ready to adapt to meet those changing needs, but I don’t foresee anything particular in 2024 that we will be changing. Our plan is to plant our normal amount of barley.

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