Some may know that the Irish Tillage and Land Use Society biennial tour took place recently to the midwest regions of the US, plus the Dakotas. There were many topics and visits that generated considerable interest and many of these will be reported on in the coming editions.

The group of 23 visited farms in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. Visits included crops farms, cattle ranchers, a beef feedlot, merchants, machinery suppliers, oil producing farms in ND, a plant producing a range of products including various nitrogen compounds from lignite and a number of ethanol factories. On top of that, individuals spent a day with local families in Missouri and we had discussions with members of the Farm Bureau and also from the Bunge Corporation.

In this article I look at a number of the general overview topics that struck a chord. And while low commodity prices are unquestionably on the minds of farmers there, it seemed to me that there was less preoccupation there with the consequences of low prices than there is at this side of the Atlantic. This may be because they have always lived with volatility in both price and production and they have hedging mechanisms in place.

I recall a story from back in 2012 when midwest farmers were hit badly by drought. Yields there were hammered and prices rocketed everywhere as a consequence. Offering condolences to friends in the US, I was quickly reminded that this was not a matter of condolence. In the world market, supply and demand will vary between years, and price varies accordingly. My US friends told me that bad years are part of the business and until you have had one you must live in fear that it will always be next year.

Grain stores

That specific year (2012) marked a type of landmark reaction in other ways too and this was very visible wherever we travelled in the US. Commercial farmers know that the consequence of high prices is increased production, which invariably generates surplus to depress prices. This was ultimately predictable back in 2012 and very many US farmers made a conscious decision to increase their on-farm grain storage capacity. Some even trebled their capacity to hold three years’ production so as not to be caught having to sell in the years when prices were low.

Shiny new grain bins can now be seen all through the US as a consequence. And with farms there being quite big by our standards, many growers have more than one storage facility in different locations. This helps to reduce haulage distances during the very busy harvest period.

Trucks and trailers

Another thing that was very obvious when visiting farms was that there are no tractor trailers. Trucks move produce and tractors work the land. On a number of the farms we visited the truck was the prize possession – the item that farmers wanted to own and to which bells and whistles might be added. Customisation of Peterbilt and Kenworth trucks was common but it took a conversation with some truck owners to explain some of the variability in the truck trailers.

Tipping trailers, as we know them, are relatively uncommon. Grain trailers tend to be hopper designed and empty via a sluice gate underneath each hopper. For grain trucks, all modern facilities target both filling and emptying in under three minutes. For filling, a buffer tank is used to fill by gravity and a buffer hopper is used to empty by gravity.

Load sizes are a lot more challenging. Different states in the US operate different weight and traffic legislation. This is mainly driven by state law and vehicles that cross state lines must be configured to be compliant and therefore must frequently adopt the lowest common dominator.

Things you notice include the length of the tractor units and the distance between front and the drive axles. Then come the trailers. Some have shorter trailers with a second towed behind but some states do not allow this. Most have normal 40ft plus trailers but the axle configuration can vary. Some have both trailer axles up well under the body. Others have both axles very close to the rear. Others have the two trailer axles well separated with one close to the rear of the trailer. All these configurations are state-controlled and challenging for long-distance drivers. Many trailers have the ability to change the axle spacing on the trailer when moving from state to state. And many trailers are constructed from light materials so as to maximise the load size.

Trailer construction was curious also. It was very common to see single-hopper gravity-empty units for heavy loads such as sand but the hopper was only a small part of the total length. To the front and rear of the hopper was just heavy lattice construction to add length to the trailer. This is because the trailer axles have to be a minimum distance from the tractor axles.

Perhaps it was the wasted space in these trailers that drove a different construction design for heavy materials. We saw a lot of half-barrel type trailers on the roads and these tip sideways and to either side. These can be the full length of the trailer chassis or shorter. Interestingly, this requires the tractor truck unit to have a hydraulic pump facility but most trucks do not have this.

One such trailer we saw was fitted with an engine in the trailer chassis under the hopper. This engine then drove the hydraulic pump to tip the hopper. Doing this modification enabled the owner to haul this dump trailer using any of his trucks whether it had hydraulic capacity or not.

Mobility in systems

As we travelled from state to state it was very apparent that there was considerable movement in farming systems still ongoing in the US. This was particularly obvious in dairy and beef. These enterprises have virtually disappeared from some regions while substantial expansion continues in other regions.

Beef production (cows and calves) is an important part of agricultural production in much of the Dakotas. Systems are mainly extensive, with 12-20 acres per cow being relatively common practice. However, there is considerable development taking place with regard to improving the general health of soil, which is increasing the productivity of both grassland and cropland. And where good practice is used some ranchers in slightly higher rainfall areas have been able to get stocking rates up to around five acres per cow while decreasing other management costs in the process.

Much of the cattle management in this region is done on horseback. It is truly amazing to witness the level of control that riders can exercise over even the biggest of bucking bulls. Good horse control makes it look so easy and guys that are good on a rope leave animals with nowhere to hide.

Much of the range or prairie land really only lends itself to cattle as it is quite rolling and steep. It also tends to be quite dry country which equates to around or under 16in of rainfall for the season in much of the north Dakotas. And much of this comes as snow and considerable effort is being put into mechanisms which help hold the snow on the land for thawing rather than allowing it blow off.

As we travelled through these states, the countryside was impressively green, but it had been a wet spring. And one could tell that farmers were worried that so much of their rain had fallen early in the season leaving the risk of dryness when conditions warmed up from July onwards. Hence the nervousness of markets with regard to hot US summer weather.

Dairy production

Dairy production has tended to become much more concentrated over the past decade or so. Much of this has been driven by the availability of maize distillers from the numerous bioethanol plants that emerged in the renewable fuel era. Dairies seemed to rely heavily on this product to go with maize silage or alfalfa hay, depending on where they were located. The US uses approximately 120m tonnes of maize to produce ethanol annually and roughly one-third of this or 40m tonnes is returned to the feed industry either as wet or dry product.

Dairy output in the US has expanded massively in recent years. This was helped by high prices which have eased back recently, but not as much as in Europe. Much of this milk is produced from cows located indoors and some of these operations are impressive as they continue to expand. The emphasis is quite different though as good buildings are considered to be not that costly when they are used all year round and where even the high cost capital milking parlour is managed to be used 23 hours per day, every day.

Environment

It would appear that the environment is receiving increasing consideration in the US. While problems of eutrophication and erosion do not get much international acclaim, some of the people we met said these are very real and very big issues now in the US. It is now more common to encounter people whose job it is to try and improve this situation and this is being targeted exclusively through land management.

We were told that there is a big problem with surplus nutrients now evident in the Gulf region. We were also told that there are a number of regions now in the US where local water is not allowed to be consumed by humans due to various contamination issues.

Many of those people we met (researchers and farmers), who are either researching or practising such techniques, say that the benefits are more than environmental. Better soil management may mean reduced nutrient loss but it also means increased land productivity and lower costs and that is good for agriculture and farmers.

I will deal further with these issues in a separate article in the near future but one county jurisdiction in North Dakota estimated its agricultural output to have increased by $6bn over a five-year period. This signals the potential for considerably increased productivity from even extensive grassland systems on the prairies. This level of payback certainly justifies the provision of state resources to help improve the situation for both the environment and the farmers.

Another element of environment that has become more influential is food labelling and non-GM. This was a constant topic through much of our travels and many of the farmers we visited had opted to not produce GM varieties of crops.

The non-GM market would appear to be growing in the US, not necessarily because consumers feel that it is in any way unsafe, but an increasing proportion feel they are entitled to know and understand the origin of their food. Indeed, there is a bill going to congress at the moment which aims to put in place labelling legislation with regard to GM for consumer foods, but this does not require that meats fed with GM grains be labelled as GM.

It will be interesting to watch this movement as the level of weed problems helps to drive growers away from herbicide-tolerant traits. Indeed, it is now common to see many growers in the midwest rotating corn and soya to use the Roundup Ready trait in one crop but then to use Liberty Link, or the glufosinate tolerance trait, in the other. This enables them to control volunteers in the following crop.

But weed resistance problems, following the continued use of Roundup alone, continue to emerge. More and more farmers have some problems and now many crops are being fitted with a double herbicide-tolerance stack for say glyphosate and 2,4-D. And dicamba resistance is another potential trait which is just around the corner. All of these are awaited to help contain many of the weed resistance problems.

Other growers have moved away from herbicide tolerance traits and back to conventional herbicide options, many of which are visibly hard on crops.

However, new actives are also increasingly uncommon in the US.