By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

PRINCETON, Ky. — The buzzword in agriculture this year could very well be “soybeans” as many grain producers are turning to the crop to boost profits.

Planting projections suggest a 20,000 acre increase over 2008 or 1.41 million for this year. Some of that increase came from wheat growers, many of which decided against planting a winter crop last year to put their “wheat eggs” into the soybean basket mainly due to input cost and low prices in the wheat market.

Keith Tapp serves as the vice president of the Kentucky Soybean Association (KSA) and has been farming for over 30 years in Webster County.

Tapp said one of the big positives for the state and the industry is how in tune the Kentucky congressional delegation is to agriculture.
“We have a great congressional team in Washington. They all have been good to agriculture and understand issues. We can go there and visit with them and come away feeling they have listened and will take matters into consideration,” he said.

Members of the KSA Executive Committee put that good relationship to work recently during their annual spring trip as part of the American Soybean Association quarterly board meeting. The issues discussed ranged from farm program payments to the bioenergy program for biodiesel.

That energy issue is a hot topic these days especially with a new administration in town. According to the National Biodiesel Board, soy biodiesel use has increased from 25 million gallons in 2002 to between 650 million and 700 million gallons in 2008. That being said, Tapp thinks there is certainly a place for soybeans in the biodiesel industry but said the push has slowed somewhat.
“Although there is a plant 30 miles east of here, we can’t even get biodiesel for our farms right now. Most of it is going overseas,” he said.

In fact, approximately 677 million gallons of biodiesel were exported in 2008 most of which went to the European Union. That could slow however due to the removal of a tax credit loophole and new European import tariffs according to the Energy Information Administration.

The bottom line will be the bottom line; however, and if 2009 bean prices mirror last year’s, producers should be happy.

To the field
Regardless of how things shake out in the world market, the issue at hand here is planting. The wet spring has once again played a role in getting the soybean crop in the ground but summer-like temperatures of last weekend will help remedy that problem.

The story in the fields right now is whether the rust issue will be an issue at all. For the last few years, soybean rust has shown up too late in the year to be a problem but forecast maps for 2009 are lending to a bit of concern for ag experts.

Don Hershman, University of Kentucky College of Agriculture extension plant pathologist said the U.S. soybean rust distribution map looks significantly different from a year ago.

“I’m not saying that soybean rust will be a problem this season, but the current location of soybean rust in the U.S. does merit our attention,” he said.

For the first time, soybean rust has overwintered on kudzu without any break in detection in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana according to a release from UK. The report went on to say that when there is significant disease activity in the central Deep South, spores of the rust fungus commonly move in high numbers across a broad span of northern production areas. If this occurs early enough in the growing season, serious crop damage could ensue.
“The overwinter survival of soybean rust in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana may have very little or no impact on what transpires during the rest of the season, or it could have a tremendous impact. The determining factor will be the weather conditions over the next two months,” Hershman said.

He added that there’s been no indication of an increase in disease development despite wet conditions in those states nor has soybean rust been found on soybeans in the Deep South but it’s important for Kentucky growers to periodically monitor U.S. soybean rust distribution throughout the growing season.

To do so, producers can visit the national soybean rust monitoring web- site at http://www.sbrusa.net/ or UK’s soybean rust website at http://www.uky.edu/soybeanrust