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Plants or Crops

All Plants or Crops Content

Hay with a brown, carmelized color.

Minimizing Hay Storage Loss From Heating or Fires

Successful hay storage is essential to preserving high quality forage, while ensuring desired performance from livestock and deterring economic losses from unwanted hay storage fires.

Female FSA employee reviewing paperwork with a male producer.

Counties Designated as Disaster Areas and Qualify for Other Programs

Five South Dakota counties have been given disaster declarations due to dry summer conditions. This declaration gives producers in these counties and those in contiguous counties access to USDA-FSA emergency loans.

black cow drinking from a nearly empty stock pond.

Feed & Water Testing Laboratories

A partial listing of available feed testing laboratories.

Rows of corn growing inside a research facility.

Consumer Demand for Genome-Edited Crops: Implications for Farmers’ Adoption Decisions

Genome-editing is a breakthrough technology for crop improvement that makes site-specific modifications in the genomes of cells and organisms.

tractor near pile of harvested silage

Silage Moisture Testing Tips

Two key points to keep in mind when making high-quality silage are moisture content before harvest and nutrient content before feeding.

Round hay bales wrapped with net wrap in a stack.

How Will You Make Hay This Year?

With plenty of spring moisture, hay season will be here before you know it. Have you considered the type of binding material you will use to put up hay this year?

Fresh potatoes, carrots and canned vegetables in the cellar.

Storage Life of Vegetables

The storage life of various types of vegetables can be extended by several days or even months by keeping them at recommended temperature and humidity levels.

Orange larvae on discolored soybean stem.

Soybean Gall Midge in South Dakota

Fact sheet about soybean gall midge in South Dakota

Four fall-hardy bulbs blooming in early spring: Daffodil, Glory of the Snow, Crocus and Tulip.

Prepare for Early Spring Blooms by Planting Hardy Bulbs in the Fall

Don’t put away your gardening tools quite yet! Fall is the perfect time to plant hardy, spring-flowering bulbs.

a prescribed burning taking place in a field

Fall Fire Safety

The moisture and cooler temperatures of fall make it easy to become lax about fire danger, however, conditions can still lead to easy ignition and rapid growth of wildfires.