The 2024 Potato Field Day was held at Montcalm Research Center on Aug. 8. The total registrations for this event were 105 with 98 total sign-ins at the event. This field day event brought producers, agribusiness professionals, local agriculture industry, state regulators, federal services like USDA, and Michigan State University (MSU) academic staff and researchers together around Montcalm County's best commodity output: Potatoes. This year's field day consisted of three breakout sessions: water stewardship and irrigation efficiencies, compost and fumigation trial demonstration, and a harvest/post-harvest handling demonstration. These topics were a focus area because they were important and timely topics that producers in this area are facing or have requested.
The water stewardship and irrigation efficiencies breakout featured Todd Feenstra of Midwest Water Stewards who demonstrated the active monitoring of a well and pivot system to educate high-capacity water users on the importance of irrigation monitors. This highly contentious topic of water usage for high-capacity water users demonstrated to both producers and state regulators that real-time data can be collected to assist in the management of water systems at a producer’s level.
“Education is such a critical piece of keeping growers aware of regulations, how they can protect their water rights, and how they can better manage their water use,” Feenstra said. “It all starts with understanding how important it has become to demonstrate their water use is sustainable and is not depleting either groundwater or surface water. It ends with how to measure and monitor the water resources. We strive to make the complicated simple, to make monitoring affordable and effective, and to enable growers to defend their right to the water.”
The compost and fumigation trial were an important session as it highlighted the work being done studying the effect of composting and fumigation on soil health in potato systems. This session highlighted the compost trial, in which researchers have partnered with Morgan Composting. Kevin Vail with Wilbur-Ellis was also featured and discussed how fumigation can be another tool in a producer's arsenal. Often, people will scoff at each of these opposite approaches to soil health, but the clear message we wanted to convey was that both can serve as an effective tool for producers to solve a myriad of problems.
The final session was focused on harvest and post-harvest handling. MSU Extension educator Nicolle Ritchie led this session, which focused on key considerations when potato harvest is taking place in order to improve overall quality and sustainability of the harvest for storage and for marketable potatoes. This breakout featured a new four-row harvester run by one of the area’s long-time producers, John Crooks, as a demonstration of a modern harvest system in commercial potato production.
"The success of Montcalm Field Day highlights the value of involving growers in shaping our educational agenda,” said Kelly Turner, executive director of the Michigan Potato Industry Commission. “The impressive number of attendees and the exceptional support from our industry partners underscored the significance of this event in fostering knowledge exchange and strengthening our potato community."
– Steve Whittington, Michigan State University Extension Field Crops Educator, Montcalm County