Top Scouts Hunt Down the Pests

Southern States agronomists are on the job looking for bad bugs.

Regular monitoring of wheat fields pays off in good yields at North Carolina’s Nelms Farms. (From left, Southern States field sales associate Tom Gulley, Travis Nelms, Stephen Nelms and Southern States regional agronomist Ron Perry.)

Franklin County, N.C., is a tough place to scout for wheat pests. The reason: “We’re right in the transition zone between the Coastal Plain and the Piedmont regions of the state,” explains Tom Gulley, a field sales associate with Southern States.

That means some soils and pests from both geographic regions are present in the county. The result is that farmers can get a double dose of crop pests and diseases if they don’t watch their fields.

It’s the help of Growmaster-trained professionals like Gulley and Ron Perry, a regional agronomist, that makes a longtime business association with the Southern States Service Center in Louisburg, N.C., pay off for farmers like Stephen and Travis Nelms.

Four generations of Nelmses have tilled the same Franklin County soil since the Great Depression. Stephen is generation three, and his son Travis is generation four.

“We’ve been with Southern States since they came to this county,” says Stephen. And for 15 years Tom Gulley has been an integral part of the family’s crop-monitoring program.

“Our winter wheat acres require constant observation,” explains Travis. “If we miss spotting aphids in the fall, we could be dealing with barley yellow dwarf first thing in the spring.” The aphids are transmitters of that costly disease.

Of course, there are plenty of other pests and diseases that could hit their fields before the Nelmses harvest wheat in early summer and plant doublecropped soybeans on the same acres. Among them are cereal leaf beetle, powdery mildew and rust.

Gulley covers all of Franklin County for the Louisburg Southern States Service Center. “If there’s a problem anywhere in the county, Tom will give us a heads-up warning,” Stephen notes.

What’s more, Gulley is well versed on all aspects of wheat production. So in the fall he is on customers’ farms often. He helps calibrate drills, checks tiller counts and gives advice on the best time to put the wheat seed in the ground.

“We used to put in our winter wheat in late September,” notes Stephen. “That was the tradition.”

But with Tom’s advice the Nelmses now plant wheat in November. The result is that they reduce the problem with aphids in the fall, with no adverse affect on yields.

Perry says the Southern States Growmaster program has some specific goals for helping growers. “We make our recommendations based on three concepts -- sound agronomy, cost effectiveness and environmental responsibility,” he explains.

Those principles have made Stephen and Travis Nelms loyal, long-term customers. “We stay with Tom and Ron and the Southern States folks because we get way more than just product,” says Stephen.

That’s why the Nelms family has such a strong relationship with the Louisburg Southern States Service Center.