To know what's happening in a field, ag advisers learn to 'just start digging'

Bailey Tangen, a University of Minnesota graduate student teaching a session on soil health to a group of aspiring agronomists and farm-business sales reps on the school's St. Paul campus, was begging her students to climb down into the dirt pit.

"You fall in love with soil when you start playing with it," Tangen, who's studying water resources science, said as she rubbed a clod of dirt between her fingers. "Feel free to get your hands dirty."

For two days last week, University of Minnesota Extension put on its annual Field School program for young ag-industry professionals looking for a crash course on crop farming.

The aim is to arm agronomists, seed dealers, ag consultants, crop insurance sellers and folks in similar fields with the skills to better understand the everyday questions and challenges facing crop farmers — how much fertilizer to use, tillage and cultivation techniques, fighting weeds and pests, and other advances in the science of crop management.

"Particularly for young people in these jobs, it's to get them to understand the basics and the science," said Dave Nicolai, an Extension crops specialist based in Farmington who helps run the Field School.

That's what had Nicolai standing out in a field of test crops at the Agricultural Experiment Station just northwest of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds last Wednesday, three young men standing around him as he play-acted the role of a farmer with an underwhelming soybean crop. The students had been given a few basic details about the crop and had to try to diagnose what went wrong.

"Make a decision," Nicolai barked at the group, as they stared at the ground. "I need a recommendation here."

Last year's Field School was canceled by COVID, and Nicolai said this year's enrollment of 75 students is down considerably compared with recent Field Schools.

University officials took some convincing to let the Extension go ahead with it this year, he said, adding that "we're extremely happy that we're doing it. Two years, people forget about you."

Organizers put a premium this year on recruiting young people to participate, Nicolai said, because they're more amenable to training. "They strive to make the program as hands-on as possible for professionals who are likely to spend good portions of their career crouched over a plant in the middle of a field somewhere.

"To understand the basics and the science, that's what's going on here," Nicolai said. "We talk about a tillage instrument, well, we'll show you that tillage instrument."

That's what Jodi DeJong-Hughes, a soil specialist with the extension, was doing as she walked down a row of plows, explaining each one in turn. "This one is the chisel plow. This is pretty chunky for a field plow," she said.

The best way to understand how plows work is to climb out of the tractor and look at the earth that's just been turned, DeJong-Hughes said.

"A lot of farmers don't get out behind their plows, and they really should. They just look at the surface," DeJong-Hughes said. "Honestly, just get behind that tractor and see what it's doing."

Jochum Wiersma, an Extension Educator in Crookston who specializes in small grains, similarly told his students that the best way to understand plants like corn and soybean is to dig up samples and study them.

"I don't care what your crop is," Wiersma said. "Just start digging up plants."