FMC Corporation announced its “Stand and Be Heard Anthem Singing Contest,” an opportunity for students in agriculture to showcase their patriotic singing skills for a chance to win scholarship prizes. Any member of a national agricultural student organization is invited to submit an audition video singing the national anthem. Participants may submit their entries online until June 15.

More rain came to most of Texas, improving drought-damaged pastures and rangeland, according to Texas AgriLife Extension Service personnel.

The rains greatly improved the agricultural situation, according to weekly reports, but many ranchers were still feeding hay, though the green-up allowed them to cut back. The warmer-than-normal weather and moisture also brought on weed growth in pastures, particularly those pastures damaged by last year’s drought.

The Mosaic Nutrient Removal data app has been selected by CropLife magazine as one of the 10 best apps for agriculture. More than 4,000 farmers have discovered this tool, which provides nutrient removal data by yield for 36 different crops. Results can be stored as a profile and emailed to contacts for use in input planning. Developed for growers using years of accumulated nutrient removal research, the free app is designed to help farmers put the data to work to produce higher yields.

A new model predicts that atrazine, plus its breakdown product deethylatrazine, has less than a 10 percent chance of exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standard for public drinking-water supplies in shallow groundwater in about 95 percent of the nation’s agricultural areas. Atrazine is a commonly used herbicide for weed control in corn and sorghum production. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) director Marcia McNutt said, “With the intensive, widespread use of the herbicide atrazine in agricultural production, some communities will need to carefully monitor the risk to groundwater and human health from this contaminant and its residues.

A Colorado State University biologist will lead a national team that will experimentally impose severe drought in Great Plains grasslands and evaluate how the landscape responds – the first large-scale project of its kind. The National Science Foundation has awarded $3.7 million to Alan Knapp, a biology professor and senior ecologist with the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State and principal investigator on the project. He will team with Melinda Smith at Yale University (who will soon join the Colorado State faculty), Scott Collins at the University of New Mexico and Yiqi Luo at the University of Oklahoma. The project is an outcome of a research working group supported by Colorado State’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability.

Southwest Missouri hay producers will have an opportunity to improve their hay making skills by attending a hay school from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., April 14 at the Fair Grove Lions Club, 142 S. Orchard Blvd., Fair Grove.

“There is a lot at stake when making hay and many things to consider to make it worth the effort and to be profitable,” said Brie Menjoulet, University of Missouri Extension agronomy specialist.

Even on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, where average rainfall is a mere seven inches per year, farmers can reap the benefits of winter cover crops without the expense of irrigation, University of California research has found. Growing a winter cover crop helps retain soil nitrogen – keeping it from leaching into groundwater – improves water infiltration, reduces runoff, increases soil organic matter and boosts long-term soil fertility.

The International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) has just released its newest publication in support of 4R Nutrient Stewardship titled "4R Plant Nutrition: A Manual for Improving the Management of Plant Nutrition." The manual was released during the 2012 Great Plains Soil Fertility Conference and Nutrient Stewardship Summit both held in Denver, Colorado this March 5 to 7.

Solar tents can easily, inexpensively and successfully kill weed seeds and rhizomes, eliminating the need for hauling weeds out of remote areas where the unwanted plants have taken hold, a UC researcher has demonstrated.

Research by Jim Stapleton, a UC Cooperative Extension advisor based at Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, was published as "Feasibility of solar tents for inactivating weedy plant propagative material" in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Pest Science.

Monsanto’s search for America’s Farmers Mom of the Year is back for 2012, along with a $10,000 grand prize. Anyone can nominate their favorite farm mom by visiting AmericasFarmers.com by April 23 and submitting a 300-word essay explaining how she contributes to her family, farm, community and agriculture.