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Soybean Farmers Are on Alert for Infection

Posted on: Sunday, 17 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

Jul. 17--If soybean farmers in Missouri and Illinois can get through the next few weeks without finding Asian soybean rust, they will have avoided a major expense in protecting what could be another bumper crop.

Hurricane Dennis and its spinoff storms that came up the Mississippi River Valley early last week from the Gulf of Mexico may have carried spores of the fungus, just as hurricanes last year brought the rust to the continental United States for the first time.

Although the rust has been found on kudzu and on soybeans in test plots in Florida and Alabama, none has been spotted in the Missouri Bootheel, where it was found last fall after bean plants had matured.

"We are getting into the critical period" when plants are flowering as they begin to make pods, said Warren Stemme, president of the Missouri Soybean Association and a St. Louis County farmer with 600 acres in beans this year. "Now is the time when we have to be pretty vigilant."

Last year, Missouri farmers planted 5.1 million acres of soybeans, and Illinois farmers sowed 9.7 million acres. This year, Missourians planted about 2 percent more acres in beans, while Illinois farmers cut back by 250,000 acres. Both states, as well as the nation, produced a record soybean harvest last year.

In a rebounding market, soybean futures for delivery in November were trading at $7.311/2 a bushel on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

In recent years, Asian soybean rust has devastated crops in South America, particularly in Brazil and Argentina, two large producers in the Southern Hemisphere.

When it arrives, if climatic conditions are right, the fungus works quickly. It attacks the plants' leaves, turning them yellow and eventually killing them. Some fungicides can be applied to prevent it, while others can be sprayed onto the plants after the rust has been discovered. Either way, application of fungicides can add costs of up to $25 an acre.

Like most U.S. soybean farmers, Stemme is keeping one eye on a U.S. Department of Agriculture Web site (www.usda.gov/soybeanrust/) and the other on the weather.

As long as the soybean plants are relatively dry and the days are sunny, he said, chances of the fungus attacking the leaves are minimal, even if spores are in the environment. But several cloudy, rainy days, with spores present, could spell trouble for bean farmers.

Another factor for local farmers is where the spores are found this year. Wind can carry them quickly from one part of the country to another.

"If it gets to Arkansas, I'll be looking more closely," said Stemme, who like many farmers has stocked up on enough fungicide to begin spraying quickly.

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Copyright (c) 2005, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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