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CapitalPress.com
Friday, January 22, 2021
Idaho farmer trades clean
fields for healthier soil
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
KIMBERLY, Idaho —
Todd Ballard’s family has
been farming just east of
Twin Falls for more than
100 years, and each gen-
eration has taken pride in
clean fields, nicely tilled and
weed-free.
But Ballard is slowly
changing things up, leaving
stubble in the field, planting
cover crops and direct seed-
ing — all to build soil health
and keep more money in his
pocket.
“The old way wasn’t
really penciling out,” he said.
The farm used to be grav-
ity irrigated, which requires
corrugates that have to be
maintained. But he and his
father, Ron, phased in sprin-
klers over the last 20 years
and have taken a vastly dif-
ferent approach to farming
— using no-till and mini-
mum-till practices.
“We used to work the
ground to death, we almost
had to for gravity irrigation,”
he said.
The father and son started
Leading battle
against potato pest
By BRAD CARLSON
Capital Press
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
Todd Ballard on the family farm in Kimberly, Idaho. He is
converting some of his fields to no-till and minimum-till
to boost soil health and save money.
experimenting with cover
crops about eight years ago
and direct seeding three years
ago, increasing the no-till
ground yearly.
A lot has changed, and it’s
taken some adjustment.
“The main thing is the
look of the field,” Ballard
said.
The heavy tilling of days
past produced nice, pretty,
consistent fields, he said.
“Now there are all these
dead gray plants, stubble,
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TODD BALLARD
Occupation: Farmer
Age: 58
Location: Kimberly, Idaho
Acres: About 300
Crops: Beans, alfalfa, malt
barley and wheat
Management: Cover crops,
no-till and low-till
Family: Wife, Teresa; son, Riley
clumps of straw. It looks
trashy,” he said.
That was the hardest
thing to get used to, and it’s
taken him a while to accept
unmanicured fields.
But armoring the soil with
what conventional farm-
ers would view as unsightly
growth has resulted in no
blowing soil and no water
runoff.
“We try to keep the fields
covered, with living roots
(below),” he said.
Although he’s a soil
health enthusiast now, he
was a reluctant convert to
no-till.
“I was trying to lower my
fertilizer usage, going for
more soil health,” he said.
This story was first pub-
lished June 19, 2020.
LOUISE-MARIE
DANDURAND
New weapons in the bat-
tle against the pale cyst nem-
atode — a major potato pest
that has cost farmers millions
of dollars since it was found
in southeast Idaho in 2006 —
include a bio-fumigant and a
surprisingly efficient “trap
crop.”
Researchers are also
making progress in devel-
oping PCN-resistant potato
varieties.
“Understanding the biol-
ogy allows us to target the
weak point in the life cycle,”
said University of Idaho
Associate Professor Lou-
ise-Marie Dandurand, proj-
ect director of the Globodera
Alliance.
Globodera is the genus of
the potato cyst nematode.
The alliance is a five-
year, $3.2 million project
funded by USDA to assess
the risk of and work to erad-
icate potato cyst nematodes.
The 16 alliance members
include researchers and edu-
cators from the Northwest,
New York, Canada, Scot-
land and France. An advisory
board includes industry rep-
resentatives and federal and
state regulators. The project,
in its final year, is seeking
funding to continue its work.
Cysts with viable eggs,
which can number in the
hundreds, can persist in the
soil for decades. There they
remain relatively resistant
to chemical and biological
stresses, an alliance news-
letter said.
The group also stud-
ies the golden nematode —
found in New York, where
resistant potato varieties are
available — and the related
Globodera
ellingtonae,
Occupation: Research
associate professor, Depart-
ment of Entomology, Plant
Pathology and Nematol-
ogy, University of Idaho.
Project director, Globodera
Alliance.
Age: 61
University of Idaho
Louise-Marie Dandurand
in the University of Idaho
pale cyst nematode Lab-
oratory.
which as yet lacks a com-
mon name.
Dandurand said G.
ellingtonae has been found
in Oregon and a couple of
Idaho locations, but does
not appear to reduce potato
yields. Alliance members
are studying it because it
behaves like the golden
nematode.
“When we see invasives,
the whole industry becomes
at-risk,” she said.
Pale cyst nematode is of
particular concern because
it can reduce yields substan-
tially, and resistant potato
varieties are not yet avail-
able for Idaho, where PCN
for years has been the tar-
get of government-ordered
eradication.
“These encysted eggs
can survive in soil anywhere
from 20 to 30 years,” Dan-
durand said. If they have a
host plant, the nematodes
will hatch, swim to the
potato plant’s root, invade
it, “and reproduce to form
more cysts that contain
anywhere from 300 to 500
eggs.”
A 2016 study by UI Agri-
Hometown: Lives on a
small farm near Moscow,
Idaho. Grew up on dairy
farm near Franklin, Vt.
Education: B.A., botany,
University of Vermont,
1981; M.S., plant science,
University of Connecticut,
1985; Ph.D., plant pathol-
ogy, University of Califor-
nia-Riverside.
Family: Widowed (husband
Guy Knudsen, a UI soil
microbiology professor and
fellow Globodera Alliance
member, died in 2016), two
grown children.
cultural Economics and
Rural Sociology Profes-
sor Chris McIntosh found
PCN cost Idaho $25 million
that year in potato farm-gate
revenue, lost jobs and other
impacts. The loss would
have been about $30 million
if not for replacement crops
like barley and wheat. Non-
host crops like grains can be
planted in fields where PCN
is present if equipment is san-
itized per federal standards.
USDA on Jan. 10
announced
deregulation
of five Idaho fields, a total
of 404 acres, after sur-
veys showed no PCN. That
brought the total regulated
area to 7,150 aces, 3,446 of
which were infested.
This story was first pub-
lished May 22, 2020.
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