Farmers don’t get snow days when they can’t go to work.
Dairy cows need milking at least twice a day. Beef cows need fed when pastures are covered in snow. But even farmers with soybean and corn crops keep right on working. For all, there are jobs to do despite storms.
I saw it in spades at recent two-day Crop Management Conference by MU Extension. In Columbia, we had a real blast of winter weather. University leaders closed campus. No school. “Non-essential workers” were to stay home.
Campus-closing weather didn’t seem to bother 300 farmers and certified crop advisors from being there for the 8 a.m. keynote talk. They’d signed up to attend, so they drove from all across the state. Bad roads were part of the job.
Of course, public schools were closed, as well. That’s the new norm.
At coffee-break talk, some were surprised that University people couldn’t get to class. “What a bunch of wimps,” one farmer said.
Casual talk continued. Some older members shared tales of walking to school, no matter snow depth. School teacher would be there, with a fire going in a stove in one-room schools. Long ago, we never had snow days.
The talk was amusing. “Closing comes from administrators, coming from southern climes, who’ve never seen real winters,” one said. Others said MU leaders had no choice in this legal age. If someone had an accident driving to class MU would be sued for millions. Another noted that back when we went to college, few scholars had cars. And, all students lived in dorms on campus.
Things change. Snow days are expected.
The crop management conference is a wonder. It originally started to provide recertification for crop advisors. Those are workers at farm service companies and agencies. They need to keep a step ahead of farm customers on new crop science. And, there are endless rules.
A journalist, writing to update farmers, faces two intense days. There’s over 40 sessions, three tracks at once. It’s like the Livestock Symposium the week before. Three tracks kept me wishing I was in another session at the same time.
Over time, crop farmers started joining the advisors. They want to stay ahead also. Conference staff said 10 percent of the crowd was farmers.
On snow day, a dozen of those preregistered didn’t show. Without snow something would have stopped that many driving to Columbia
I must attend to stay informed. The big advance was sessions on growing hemp. I have a lot to learn. And, I’m amazed not on agronomic techniques, so much as new rules. Hemp regulations are like no other crop. The State Highway Patrol and other enforcers will check preregistered fields. There will be endless pre-planting red tape. That includes precise maps of plots.
Growing hemp, whether for seed, fiber or medicine, will look a lot like growing marijuana. Crop season chemical tests will be required. If it contains too much chemical it must be destroyed. That’s a different risk in growing hemp.
I recall the MU soybean symposium a while back, the bean farmers talked of the new lucrative hemp sales. They’d heard high prices for some of new products. They assumed that all it took was to buy seed, fill their planter and start farming. Taint so.
Already, there’s danger of over supplies, which farmers suffer in all crops. Too much seed causes prices to drop. It’s already happened.
Hemp economics require lots of learning. An MU taskforce wrote working budgets and guide sheets. For ag news writers there’ll be plenty to do.
For some hemp, such as for fiber, there’ll be ultra-need for hand labor. Way back when I started in photojournalism, there were tobacco farms. Hemp fiber and tobacco have similar labor demands.
Hemp seed production seems similar to soybeans. But, not near as simple.
Hemp guide sheets are being posted on the MU Extension web page.
Write to daileyd@missouri.edu
