 Good afternoon, everybody. A beautiful day at Fargo, North Dakota on the NDSU campus out in the test plots across from the Wellness Center right west of the new greenhouse complex along 18th Street. It's my pleasure this afternoon to discuss with you our organic research plot land development on campus. This is something new, at least new to me, new to the campus plot research, as long as I can remember and and that goes back I'm not going to tell you how long but several decades. This project began in 2017 and the project is to convert some of the test plot land, some of the acres on the 90 acres of research test plot land we have on campus into organic production. These organic fields will be registered through a certification agency so the produce from those plots will be certified organic production. We are in the transition period toward that end. We began in 2017. The plot behind me and slightly to my left was began in 2017 whereas the plots over here to my right those began the transition to organic certification in 2019 just last year. The practices that we are utilizing with production are in accordance to the USDA organic certification processes for organic production. These have been a three-year period without synthetic inputs regarding pesticides and fertilizers to the production. Organic systems are an ecological natural system of growing crops growing more than one crop and the order that we grow the crops and how we grow them is very important in the success of organic crop production. Organic produce demand is increasing in the US every year. Four out of ten households utilize organic goods in the foods that they eat and the other six out of ten have an interest and maybe one or two of those people also are not averse to buying organic food products. How do we get these organic products? The organic producers are the growers that provide these nutritious grains fruits and vegetables to us in North Dakota. North Dakota on acreage of organic production of crops is number five in the United States quite high. On a per capita basis there are more organic producers per capita in North Dakota than in Minnesota our next door neighbor. There are approximately 114 organic producers in North Dakota and around 185 190,000 acres of organic crop production. That's truly amazing. There is a need to reach this increased consumer demand for products. There is room for the organic producers to increase their production and also for more growers to enter the organic setting and crop production. Being organic doesn't mean you can't have conventional production too. You can have both. Probably more growers that are organic are strictly organic than doing both ways of growing crops. Here at the University we are into the transition. This is our fourth season on the plots to my left and the second season on the plots to my right. These plots have had production on a farm scale although they are not that big. They're only about one acre each. We have nine test plots here on campus that are transitioning to organic. Something different in the two plots behind me that I want to touch on is what have we learned so far? I've been a conventional test plot agronomist researcher for many decades. Pulled my share of weeds by hand but only when the pesticides didn't work. Now we don't have any of those pesticide aids to help us manage weeds in particular and here on campus and in many grower fields weeds are the nemesis of organic production. How do we control them? We've learned a few things in our four years in the field here about weed management in the organic world. The field to my right in a second year of organic production is hardwood spring wheat seeded on the very same day at the same seeding rate as the field on my left which is in the fourth year of organic production. The field on the right is showing a lot more unevenness in a stage of growth and a lot more weeds. Variable stand issues and more opportunist weeds in the field. The field that has been in his fourth year of organic transition production is showing no weeds over the top of the wheat canopy. The wheat canopy is very uniform in growth stage and slightly ahead of the field to the right although they were planted on the same day. So the big difference in these two fields is what happened before the 2020 growing season? What was the crop rotation management for these particular weeds fields? The field from 2019 is in its second year of production. It is wheat this year. Last year it was soybean intended for grain seeded in rows 30 inches apart, cultivated two times and the pigweed family weeds kind of took over as well as some mallow weeds and we didn't have the hand labor to go through row by row and weed it so what became of a soybean grain crop was converted to a soybean green manure crop so we mowed it down and made it green manure before the weeds went to seed. This year we moved in and we planted spring wheat and there is considerable weed seed bank in the soil so this spring the stands were not jumping out of the ground in any even fashion by any means they were slow to emerge spotty to emerge leaving bare spots in the field and the weeds take advantages of those situations so we have a weed issue will this wheat make at the harvest already I've tine weeded that particular field with the tine weeder behind me two different times this made a huge difference in the weed management in the field our primary weed management tool in the field is the crop itself mechanical ways help us keep the weeds in check even more so until the canopy of the crop can cover the ground and suppress weed growth at the surface we had a lot more suppression of weed growth at the surface in the field to my left that is in its fourth year we had a lower seed bank of weeds in the soil that also helped there was a better moisture situation in the field because it had been fallow the year before with a cover crop late in the season versus the field to the right that has been continuously cropped for the last five or six years so all of these subtleties and management of tillage and crop sequencing cover crops tine weeding the crop at different stages to get those small weeds and not injure the crop these crops now we're in the jointing stage they'll be in the boot stage in a week or two and they're going to be too big for the tine weeder there'll be too much crop damage so we're learning all of these things about how to be successful with our weed management weeds are the nemesis at the moment in these particular plots once we get to organic certification we will be able to sell the produce from these plots that's not our primary objective the objective of course is to get them certified another aspect of our work is to actually do plot research and the field to the southeast is a plot where we have test plots and that particular field went to organic transition in 2017 this will be the fourth season in that transition so that particular field is organic certified part of our research is to look at test plot responses to specific treatments with different crops for example we could look at the timing of tine weeding in wheat or barley in that particular field on a test plot basis doing those tillage tine weeding weeds at different stages of growth at different speeds of the tractor many different variables could affect the efficacy of the tine weeder controlling weeds we could do that on a test plot basis and look at different varieties and the type of damage the tine weeder might cause to certain varieties versus others this could be really important in the management of utilization of the tine weeder for weed control so test plots will tell us a lot of answers to questions in that regard whereas the bigger plots where we're farming it as a producer would will tell us about the approach to real on the farm scale organic production beyond that our goal is to look at collaborations among different departmental entities at NDSU to work together to solve some of the the mysteries of what happens in the soil biome under the under the crops that we grow in conventional or organic production this is kind of a mystery area that a whole lot more needs to be learned about we have scientists trained in pathology soil science and agronomy we have plant readers we have all of those skill sets here at the university we have those skill sets at the research centers across the state so collaboration with those entities collaboration with the producers on the farm scale work that we're doing and getting their input on what are some of the problems that plague them and their production weed control would be at the top of the list fertility management would be another challenge keeping the soil in place utilizing cover crops is a new area in both conventional and organic production a very exciting area in the sustainability of keeping keeping our soils in place we are blessed to have beautiful monosol soils in the Red River Valley deep black top soil we think it goes many many feet deep and it does perhaps go from one to two feet in certain areas but a hundred years ago it was easily twice that deep it's being lost right before our eyes we just don't notice it because it's still black on the surface so cover crops a very important and either type of production industrial or organic production with organic production if we don't need to rely as much on tillage for weed control if we can incorporate the cover crops that will be helpful in that regard soil is important for the food production for our society and we can't ever do too much to protect the soil the four-year organic production over to my left utilize cover crops in the fall to protect the soil from eroding away in the winter so very important a lot to learn really exciting times and a lot of potential collaborations with entities within the university within the research extension centers and the producers as well as the economists to help us figure out how to improve the net return