View From The Cab

By David Tollefson, Columnist

On a scorching 90 degree, 70 some dewpoint day, I ventured a couple hours south of here to Redwood Falls for the annual farm show on the prairie not too far south of the Minnesota River.

Part of the reason to go south is to see how the crops are doing. On average, they may look a little better than my part of Pope County, but a good description would be “highly variable.”

On July 25, my part of the county had severe straight-line winds up to 80 or 90 miles per hour from north or northwest. Numerous trees and branches came down on my property, and also neighbors’ land where I rent crops; wheat, corn and soybeans. The storm also put my 10kw wind tower out of commission temporarily.

As I write this, we are harvesting my wheat crop, and picking a lot of branches and twigs out of the ripe wheat. The same will be true when it comes to harvesting soybeans and corn.

Leaving Pope County going south, the trip to Farmfest takes one through Swift, Kandiyohi, Renville and into Redwood County. This is some of the very productive, valuable land, gently rolling, and with numerous county ditches to drain the excess water into the Minnesota River.

It does not take long to figure out the number one crop, which, of course, is corn. Soybeans are not far behind, and sugar beets are an important crop also.

Driving south along those nice county and state roads, it is amazing how corn on one side of the road can look a bit drought-stressed, while the other side can look just amazing. I suppose it can be a variety difference. Corn hybrids now can have drought resistance bred into them, along with insect and disease resistance.

A main attraction at Farmfest was the listening session of the U.S. House of Representatives Ag Committee of at least 10 members. Under the auspices of Pope County’s own Kent Thiesse, the committee and audience heard from numerous heads of farm organizations with each one limited to about two minutes. Chairman G.T. Thompson, of Pennsylvania, said that this listening session was number 51 for him.

One speaker I enjoyed hearing was Pope County’s own Richard Syverson, now chairman of the Minnesota Corn Growers organization. His comments to the committee were about maintaining or improving our crop insurance program, which is participated in by over 90 percent of farmers.

Syverson’s comments were repeated by several Minnesota and North Dakota radio stations so it was good to hear from a respected farmer that lives 6 or 7 miles southwest of my farm.

Another guy that got my attention was Congressman Brad Finstad, 1st district of Minnesota. He wanted to do good things in the new upcoming farm bill to support his third-generation farm, and looked at the audience for his fourth and fifth generations coming up after him. He told about his 18-year-old son, who planted corn this spring until 2 or 3 in the morning to get the crop in the ground.

As I mentioned earlier, it was a very hot, sticky day to be at Farmfest. As I left soon after noon to get home for some wheat harvest, the temperature on my car thermometer read 95 degrees, but as I drove north on the way home, it reduced somewhat.

Because of the heat and humidity, I did not walk around much to see a lot of machinery displayed, or other exhibits.

One display I did go to was at the MN Corn Growers tent. As I traveled the two hours, I did hear a fellow on the Linder Network talking about “the World’s First Flex Fuel Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle.”

At that Corn Growers tent I met in person the very guy I heard on the radio and got to see the car.

As many of you know, there are rather vigorous discussions going on in Minnesota about EVs (totally electric vehicles).

Being a corn farmer, I’m a bit partial to growing corn for ethanol to be blended with our gasoline. I happen to be one that fills on with E15, or 87 blend at our local pumps for my Equinox car. On my flex-fuel pickup, I usually fill on E85, since the price right now is about a dollar less.

The Renewable Fuels Association promotes ethanol, obviously. I picked up the fact sheet that was with the car as described above. I will quote from the handout, which to me makes some sense, like “having your cake and eating it, too?”

The goals of the future are being set, and oftentimes with a specific vehicle in mind: battery electric vehicles (BEV). As we all know, their penetration into the overall fleet will take decades as the vehicles are introduced and infrastructure is built, but that doesn’t mean the goals should wait. The combination of a flex fuel vehicle (FFV) and a BEV is possible today.

The Renewable Fuels Association recently purchased a new 2022 Ford Escape Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) as our latest vehicle project. The concept is to use this vehicle to demonstrate that ethanol (E85) and electricity can jointly power our vehicles today. In fact, in some cases, the E85 portion has a lower carbon intensity, along with cost, than pure electric.

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In the interest of space for this special car, I think I will take next week’s column to give more details of the testing of this maybe revolutionary car.

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Please contact David Tollefson with thoughts or comments on this or future columns at: adtollef@hcinet.net