I know that we are more than a month away from harvest but I wanted to put this topic out so that you would have an opportunity to take advantage of it and maybe do a little planning ahead.
In the past couple of weeks I have had quite a few people who have stopped in the office looking for certified weed free straw. The reason that it is in such high demand is because when a re-seeding is done over a pipeline or other constructed site that needs to be seeded back to grass, a mulch of straw that is certified as being weed seed free must be used.
Unfortunately, when these people come to me and ask about purchasing some bales of certified straw, I have to send them to other counties. The reason for this is because, as of today, we do not have any producers who have had their straw certified. So, my general course of action whenever someone asks is to send them to surrounding counties that do have producers who have certified straw to sell.
A couple of weeks ago, we had an area extension meeting here in Sidney and I was mentioning this issue to some of the ag agents that were gathered there, when one of them piped up and explained that the reason that most people do not certify is because of the cost ($2.50 per acre or a minimum fee of $25.00 whichever is greater) and the fact that there is no guarantee that the straw harvested from a certified field will be sold.
So, this agent continued, a few of his producers came up with a solution to this problem. They essentially sold the straw to a construction company or whoever needed it prior to it being harvested. This way, the company knew that they would be getting their much-needed straw and the producer knew that he/she would be guaranteed that the straw would be sold. He did not mention it specifically, but my guess is that an arrangement could be made where the end user of the straw could even agree to pay for the fees to get the straw certified.
One potential drawback that I could see with this kind of an arrangement would be if the straw was sold prior to certification and then it did not meet the criteria for certification. I guess, however, in this instance, the producer would have to give the company a refund of whatever monies had been spent up to that point.
If you are interested in potentially selling straw this way, I would be happy to start a list in the event that more people come into the office looking for straw. Just a reminder that if you are wanting to have straw certified, it must be done prior to harvesting the crop.
As always, if you have questions, feel free to give me a call at 433-1206 or send an email to [email protected].
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