- [Announcer] "Montana Ag

Live" is made possible by

the Montana Department

of Agriculture,

the MSU Extension Service,

the MSU Ag Experiment

Stations of

the College of Agriculture,

the Montana Wheat

& Barley Committee,

Cashman Nursery and Landscaping,

the Northern Pulse

Growers Association,

and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(folksy music)

- Good evening and welcome

to "Montana Ag Live,"

brought to you

from the PBS studio

at Montana State University.

It's beautifully

green here right now,

and we are also

thankful for the rain,

and we know there

are parts of Montana

that haven't been quite

as blessed as we have been

in the Gallatin Valley,

so we are sincerely hoping

that everybody gets some

relief from the drought

and gets a little bit

of rain on this Sunday.

So we've got a great

show for you today.

We have an economist, ag

economist from the department

here at MSU, Diane Charlton,

and she's gonna be,

excuse me, Diane Thronson.

Her name recently changed,

so congratulations, Diane,

and she's gonna be talking

about labor relations

and that's definitely

something that's been

of major interest

throughout our economy

and especially in our

agricultural economy in Montana.

On my left here is Abi Saeed.

She's a horticulturalist

here at MSU.

We have Laurie Kerzicnik

tonight who is our entomologist,

and then on the end anchoring

for us is Mary Burrows,

who's a plant pathologist

and also director

of the research

centers here at MSU.

We have Nancy Blake in the

studio answering questions,

and we have somebody

downstairs, and I apologize

if I did not get the name of

who is downstairs answering,

giving me the

questions that will be

coming in over the computer.

So I'm Nina Zidack.

I am the director

of the Seed Potato

Certification Program here,

and this is a call-in station.

So please keep our

operators busy,

keep the questions coming in,

and we'll just start off tonight

and give Diane the opportunity

to talk a little bit

about what she does

here at MSU in terms

of agricultural labor relations.

- Great.

Thank you, Nina.

Yes, so I work in the department

of agricultural

economics in economics.

So I teach courses in

economic development

and agribusiness

management, and my research

primarily focuses around labor

markets, farm labor markets,

specifically in

the United States

and somewhat in Mexico as well.

- Okay, thank you, and

we're gonna get to some more

of those specifics

in a little bit.

Abi, can you tell us about,

what is the best

time to prune lilacs?

This is a question that

came in from Billings.

- This is a good

and timely question.

So lilacs, I would say the

best time to prune them

would be right after

they're done flowering

because in the summer they're

gonna start developing

those buds that are gonna

flower the following spring.

So get those pruned right after

they're done

flowering this spring.

- Okay, yeah, and so I

live south of Bozeman

and my lilacs are still

like at least a week

or 10 days away, so they're

very late this year,

which I think is kind of

indicative of this whole spring.

- I think so, mine too.

Mine are just starting

to, just started

to flower this past weekend.

- Yeah, that's great.

It's nice to see those.

So Laurie, a question

from Bozeman.

This person lost the leader

out of their eight foot tall

spruce tree last year, and it

looks like there's some holes

from bugs around the base

of where it turned brown.

Do you have any

idea what they are

and how they can

get rid of them?

- Yeah, I, it, that's probably

the white pine weevil,

but usually those holes

are at the top of the tree.

So maybe they were

seeing the beetles and.

- [Nina] Oh, at the

base of the brown part.

- Oh, the brown part, okay.

Yeah, that makes sense then.

Yeah, that's probably white

pine weevil and you can,

so that part that's

dead, they usually start

infesting right below that.

So you can spray with a

pyrethroid insecticide

or contact insecticide right

below that, about six inches

below that, where you're

starting to see the damage.

Right now would be a

good time to do that

or you could actually, you

don't even need to spray.

You could actually

prune that out.

If it's a younger tree,

you could prune that out

between now, actually you

wanna, they'd be in the tree

right now, but you wanna

make sure that you do it

before the end of July

when they exit the tree.

- Okay.

- So if it's a young tree, you

can still train a new leader,

but if it's an older tree,

then you probably will have

to spray because the tree

will start to look deformed.

- Yeah, yeah.

We've got a tree that

I think it's happened

three years in a row so.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It's getting to be quite

short and stubby, so.

- I know, it just keeps

moving down, yeah.

- Uh huh, for sure.

Okay, Diane, can you

tell us about the people

that work on US farms?

- Sure.

Comes as no surprise to most

people that the majority

of our farm workers

are immigrants.

It actually wasn't

always that way.

If we go back to in

1900, about 40% of

the US workforce was on farms.

Now it's less than 1%.

So the majority of our

farm workers are actually

from Mexico, and I think I

have a figure on this as well,

that shows the breakdown

of crop workers

and where they were born.

About two thirds of our crop

workers were born in Mexico.

About 25%, actually a

little bit less than 25%

were actually born in

the United States, and so

the primary data source

that we have for this

is the National

Agricultural Worker Survey.

It is nationally representative

of the crop workforce,

excluding H-2A workers.

So H-2A is a specific

guest worker visa

for seasonal farm jobs.

So it doesn't cover

permanent jobs.

It's very specific.

So yeah, the vast majority of

workers in the United States

come from Mexico, and this

is actually becoming a bit

of a problem for

the United States

because fewer and fewer

Mexicans actually want

to work in agriculture.

So just as the United States

transitioned out of agriculture

in the 20th century and less

than 1% of our population

currently works on farms,

Mexico's going through

that same transition process.

So this is a normal phase

in economic development.

As the economy grows,

fewer and fewer people

work in agriculture, so

we kind of, as a nation,

continue to produce a lot

of labor intensive crops

by importing workers from

a less developed country,

but as that country begins

to develop, we're having

to become more creative

in how we solve

this farm labor problem.

- Yes, yeah.

It certainly, it impacts the

potato industry, for sure,

and there are a fairly large

number of H-2A workers,

but one of the biggest

trends that I have seen

since I started in this

industry 14 years ago

was the increased mechanization.

The mechanization is huge

in terms of, you know,

the changes that we are

seeing and the equipment

that the farmers have had to

employ to get the work done

for the hands that

they cannot hire.

- Yeah, well, and here's

a breakdown of where

H-2A workers work

within Montana.

Montana has, I would say

roughly 1,000 H-2A workers.

It was a little less

than 1,000 in 2019.

This breakdown is from

2019, but H-2A employment

has grown nationally since 2019.

So H-2A was about

10% of the full-time

equivalent workforce in 2019.

I recently went to a

conference where Daniel Costa

said it was 14% now, so

I'm gonna defer to him.

He's usually an expert on this.

So that is a substantial

part of our workforce,

which is a really

interesting phenomenon

because H-2A has been

around since 1986,

but very few farmers

used it in 1986.

It's kind of a

complicated process to

recruit workers,

bring them over here.

The employer has

to provide housing,

has to provide their

transport from the country,

from which they were born.

So, yeah, it's a

complicated process.

1986, no one really

wanted to use the program

because lots of

workers were available.

A lot of them were probably

unauthorized workers.

There was, you know,

a great big surge

in unauthorized

immigration from Mexico,

particularly in the 1990s,

but ever since 2010,

and granted, I don't, well,

even in more recent years,

our, the unauthorized

immigration has primarily been

from central America, so

since 2010 net immigration

from Mexico has actually

been zero or negative.

So fewer Mexicans are migrating

here, and on top of that,

fewer Mexicans are

working in agriculture.

So it's putting a lot

of pressure on farms.

You mentioned the mechanization.

I was just talking

to some apple growers

in Washington state.

Of course, apples

are still handpicked.

They're like, bring

us the robots.

We're ready, and the technology,

we have the technology,

we haven't quite figured

out, engineers haven't quite

figured out precisely how to

make that technology work,

but as the wages keep rising

and, and I've been talking

to these growers,

like how efficient do

these robots have to be?

How expensive can

this technology be

And then they tell

me, well, this is what

I'm paying workers, and I

can't even find enough workers.

So this is the minimum bar

and that bar keeps rising.

So I think in the next 10 years,

we're gonna see some robots

harvesting our fruits

and vegetables.

- Yeah.

So, you know, Mary, Diane

is talking a lot about labor

in the agricultural

industry in general.

What are we seeing

across the College of Ag

in terms of being able

to find employees to work

in the College of Agriculture?

- I think we're seeing

exact same trend.

I mean, student labor research

centers have a real hard time

attracting farm labor

and in keeping employees,

and it's not just wages.

It's just, nobody is applying.

- Right.

So in the potato lab, for

instance, we hire between

35 and 40 student or temporary

workers every summer,

and right now we're

sitting at about 25,

which we're, we have to

feel pretty good about that

because I think considering

the labor market,

I think we're actually

doing pretty well,

but we still need to

get more people out

to pick potato leaves and

test them in the lab so.

- [Mary] So call Nina.

- Right, exactly, exactly.

(Nina laughing)

I use every opportunity I can

to pitch jobs at

the potato labs, so.

Okay, great.

Back to Abi.

What do you do with a

thin and patchy lawn?

- That's a tough question,

and I've seen lawns

in various arrays of

thin and patchiness,

but you wanna get to the bottom

of why it's thin and patchy.

So one of the things

that I would recommend

if you haven't done this

is to get a soil test

to see what those soil

nutrients are like.

There are a lot of

things that you can do

to keep your turf healthy.

A lot of times, for those

thin and patchy lawns,

some of the issues is, you're

not getting enough moisture.

Maybe there aren't

enough soil nutrients,

you're not fertilizing enough,

which you should do about

three or four times a year,

you wanna fertilize your lawn.

So try and get to the bottom

of why, get a soil test,

and then work from there

on some of those practices

to keep a healthy lawn.

We have a really nice lawn

guy that's talking about

taking care of your

home lawns in Montana,

and so that you can find

at the MSU Extension store

and download it from there,

but that has some great tips

on how to keep your lawn

healthy and full and vibrant.

- [Mary] I think mowing height

is also pretty important.

- Mowing height yeah,

that's a good point.

I usually say two and a half

to three inches minimum.

Don't go below that,

'cause you want your lawns

to be competitive with any

other plants that are gonna

try and encroach in there, yeah.

- Yeah, and one thing we've

noticed, we usually only

fertilize one time a year,

either once in the spring

or once in the fall and

our lawn is not the first

to green up, but believe me,

it does, and we have plenty

of mowing to do so

it catches up, so.

So Laurie, a question

out of Billings.

This person's ash trees

aren't looking great.

There's been some news

about the ash borer.

Is the ash borer,

could it be affecting

their trees in Billings?

- No, we don't

actually, don't have,

we haven't confirmed that,

they're probably talking

about the Emerald ash borer

hasn't been confirmed yet

in the state, but it is,

a lot of our ash trees,

Bozeman, Billings, other areas

are being, they're very slow

to leaf out so they

don't look very good.

I think that's changed

in the last week or so,

but we are still looking

out for the borer,

but I think, just give your

trees a few weeks to just

leaf out a little bit

and look healthy again.

Usually, we think about July

first, we, this has happened

a few times in the last few

years and July first is kind of

a time where we just,

something might be going on

if by July first, you're

not getting leafing out.

Do you have anything

to add about it, Abi?

- Yeah, I mean, I was

just gonna say the same.

The ash trees in the

boulevard in front of

my house too are pretty slow.

They're look, they're pretty

slow to leaf out too this year.

So I was wondering if

people are seeing that

a lot pretty

consistently, so yeah,

I like that comment of

giving it some time.

- Yeah, be patient.

- The crops are

in the same boat.

You know, we're just behind.

- Yeah.

- So, thank you.

So Diane, this is a

question from Bozeman

and it's not specifically

labor related,

but it's definitely

something on,

that's on everybody's mind.

How have increased land

prices affected farmers

in the Gallatin Valley?

- Yeah, that's a good

question, and I think

we're all noticing the

pressure of increasing

property prices here in Bozeman.

My colleague, Dan Bigelow,

is really the expert on this,

but just like anything, you

know, if there's an alternative

of what we can do with

our property, it makes it

more difficult to

stay in agriculture.

So as a farmer, if my option

is to keep farming and the cost

of inputs might be

increasing as well,

I'm going to be weighing

that option versus selling

for a very high prices.

So I think we're gonna see

more farmers moving elsewhere

in Montana where the

land prices are lower

or moving out of

agriculture together.

It's just another option,

and it's a high value

option right now.

- Absolutely.

Yeah, there's a lot

of competition for

especially in the

Gallatin Valley.

So Mary, field day

season is coming up.

Can you tell us a little

bit about the field days

that are gonna be happening

throughout Montana this summer?

- Yeah, so all of

our research centers

and the post farm here

in town have field day.

So we invite the community

in, there's usually some sort

of lunch provided, either

during, before or after.

It's a good time to

meet your neighbors

and talk to maybe your ag

lender, and look at all of

the research going on

at the research centers.

So I'll be at the

vast majority of them

and they're a fun time,

get out, and learn about

what's going on, and the one

in Bozeman here is July seventh

and the rest of them are on

our website, so Kalispell,

Havre, Sidney, I

can't remember if

Huntley, Conrad.

- [Nina] Conrad, Moccasin.

- [Mary] Yep, everybody's.

- [Nina] Corvallis.

- There's also some or other

organizations doing field days.

So there's a couple, MO is doing

a couple organic field days.

I think there's all kinds

of other tours if you just

look out in your

local community.

- Great, great.

Sounds like a good time

and maybe a free lunch.

- And sometimes a steak dinner.

- Oh, okay, okay.

That'll get the people in.

A question came in from

Great Falls for Abi.

This person's rhubarb is

putting out seed stalks.

Should they cut it

off or leave it?

- I'd say if you still wanna

harvest the more rhubarb

this season, which I would want,

'cause I haven't gotten

enough because it's been slow,

I would say cut

off that seed stalk

and keep harvesting, yeah.

- [Nina] Okay.

- [Mary] Remind me to bring

you some of my rhubarb.

- Yeah, please.

- I still have some

frozen from last year.

- I feel like I've been missing

out on rhubarb this year.

- So, so Laurie, you've

got some samples to show.

Can you, oh, give us

an idea of some of the,

do you have anything that's

creeping and crawling today or?

- It's, this one is creeping

and crawling and this kind of

relates to the ash trees we

were talking about before.

This sample's from Havre.

This is the leaf curl ash

aphid, and this causes curling

of the leaves, right when the

tree's starting to leaf out.

So some parts of the state,

our ash trees are leafing out.

So the aphid definitely

curls the leaves

and then releases honeydew,

so it gets pretty sticky,

and then after the

tree, this is nothing

to really worry about.

It looks kind of alarming,

but after the tree

finishes leafing out that

the aphids will leave

and then the tree will recover.

I actually watched

these back in Missoula,

a couple trees that had

leaf curl ash aphid,

I just followed them

through the season

and they looked pretty,

pretty bad this time of year,

and then throughout the summer

they started to look fine again.

- [Mary] So just don't park

under them for a while?

- Just don't park

under them, yeah.

That honeydew, that honey

can drip on your car

and then it could, and then

it could attract sooty mold

and just get yucky, so yeah.

- [Phone Operator]

Are you actually?

- Good point.

So Diane, from Helena, since

labor is relatively costly

in the US, should consumers

expect to be paying more

for their fruits and vegetables

at the grocery store?

- We might see some of that

transfer into higher costs

of our fruits and vegetables

and granted, there's a lot

of other inputs into

production of all of our

agricultural goods that could

cause those prices to rise.

So I mean, I think the

most obvious is just

the cost of fuel right now.

So with transport, anything

along that supply chain,

that's gonna get passed

along to consumers.

Farmers are under a lot

of pressure to try to keep

those labor costs

as low as possible.

So as labor is still a

relatively small share of

the total cost of what you're

paying for in the store,

so you're probably not gonna

see these huge jumps in prices

of produce just because the

cost of labor on the farm

is increasing, but it does put

a lot of pressure on farmers

to try to find more efficient

ways to employ workers

and to keep them busy and

try to complement workers

with mechanization, as

you mentioned earlier.

So, so even here, I remember

we talked about this

a little while ago, Nina,

a lot of the H-2A workers

in Montana actually

come from South Africa,

and I was just

thinking about that,

and we talked about Mexico.

Nationally, Mexico is a

major supplier of labor

to the United States,

but here in Montana

and in North Dakota, we see

some H-2 workers, H-2A workers

from South Africa, which is,

seems like a long ways away,

but if you're putting

those workers on a combine,

imagine all the work

that that person can do.

So we can amortize that

cost of bringing them over

from South Africa over

all that they produce,

and so when we have these

more mechanized jobs,

they can be higher paying jobs

and that won't necessarily

bring a big change

in terms of what

consumers pay for their produce.

Also have to keep in mind that

our producers are competing

with imports from other

countries as well.

So there's a lot of

pressure on producers to try

to resolve this issue.

- Absolutely, yeah.

We see, I mean, a huge amount

of our fruits and vegetables,

especially in the winter are

coming from Mexico and Chile

and you know, other

countries in South America.

It's pretty amazing when

you think of being able

to actually pick something

up in the grocery store

that has been transported

that many miles away.

- And some of the producers

that are producing down there

in Mexico are actually

US producers as well.

So there's a big

international network here.

- So do you think that

the incentive for them

to produce in Mexico is

because of labor costs?

- That is part of it.

That's what producers

have told me.

So, you know, US wages versus

a daily wage in Mexico,

United States wages are much

higher and workers are still

more available in Mexico

than in the United States,

but I think when I

started working in

shortly after I started

doing some research on Mexico

transitioning out of farm

work, there was a big story

in the "LA Times" about how

there was this two week strike

in Baja California, that

workers were not coming to work,

demanding higher

wages, more benefits,

and they actually held out

for an entire two weeks,

which is just consistent

with this story

of people moving

out of agriculture.

Usually other

people would move in

if somebody tried

to hold a strike.

So that labor supply in both

Mexico and the United States

is getting tighter where,

we are feeling that,

but some producers

are moving into Mexico

if they're able to.

- Yeah, that's very interesting.

So Mary, this is a

question that just came in

today from Bridger Canyon.

This person has tulip leaves

that have really scorched tips,

and also the flowers are

kind of burning back.

Is this from the frost?

- Well, it could be,

but we did get a sample

in diagnostic lab this week

of a Botrytis, so a gray mold

that was causing

some leaf scorching

and it's called

tulip fire disease,

and they could Google

some images of that

and they can always

submit a sample

to their county agent

to get it diagnosed.

- Okay, yeah.

Well, and yeah, if

it's a Botrytis, it's

- The sclerotia and been

in the soil a long time.

So just some sanitation

to get rid of those leaves

so they don't reinfect,

you know, throw 'em away.

Don't just compost them.

- Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

It's something that I

have never seen before

at the diagnostic lab.

- We've had enough

moisture lately, then.

There actually is.

- Yeah exactly.

You get a moist year,

you get diseases exactly.

Years that are good for

producing crops and flowers

and vegetables can

also be very good

for producing diseases so.

So Abi, from Polson, this

person has, is wanting

to plant a pear tree

and they're wondering,

how far does it need to be

from another or how close

does it need to be to another

tree to get crosspollination?

- Yeah, so for

crosspollination, I've read,

usually you wanna be within,

between 50 to 100 feet

away from each other,

definitely less than 100 feet.

You don't wanna go beyond that.

That's the best for like

optimal, pollen transfer

for your fruit set.

So, between 50 to 100 feet

from the original tree

for your different variety.

- Okay, great.

Thank you, and

finally for Laurie,

getting her back on her

favorite home ground,

a question from Kalispell.

Do we have brown recluse

spiders in this state

and how are they similar

to the hobo spider?

- Oh yeah.

I haven't had a question

about the spider in a while.

Yeah, we do not have

the brown recluse here.

It is not, we say it's

not established here.

We've never had a brown

recluse identified here

and it is, it could show

up here if someone brings

a shipment in from

Mississippi or Kansas,

where they're native

and a very large part

of the United States

where they're native,

but we haven't found it

here, and the hobo spider

we do have, and Kalispell, you

have a lot of hobo spiders.

They've dropped off a little

bit in the last couple years,

but the hobo spider is

a funnel web spider,

and it doesn't cause any

necrosis in the skin.

It doesn't have any

compounds in its venom

to cause necrosis in the skin.

So we call the hobo

spider a harmless spider,

a spider that is not of

medical importance to humans.

- But it still gets

a lot of bad press.

- It gets a lot of bad press,

but we're working on that.

- Good.

You, yeah, love your spiders.

- [Laurie] I do love my spiders.

- Okay, to Diane.

Back to labor.

This is a question that

came in from Stevensville,

and I know there's been just,

you know, a lot of rhetoric

in the public about seasonal

farm workers and crime.

Is there any evidence

be, or of a relationship

between seasonal crime

workers and crime rates,

or seasonal farm

workers and crime rates?

- Yeah, actually my

colleague, Brock Smith and I,

along with another colleague

from University of Alaska,

Alex James, we looked

at the association

between seasonal variation

in fruit, vegetable,

and horticultural employment

within US counties

and crime rates, and

we actually found

a negative impact

within a county year.

We looked from 1990 to 2016.

So we honestly, we

looked at this thinking

we might find zero impact.

We were kind of

surprised to find

a statistically significant

negative association.

So, you know, we, you know,

can't really tell what

the causal story is, but

our best guess at this

is that we think that the

additional economic activity

during harvest and maybe

labor intensive seasons

leading up to harvest

provides so many opportunities

for people that crime

rates actually decrease.

So when you see stories

of people trying to resist

seasonal workers from

living in their communities,

crime rate, we, isn't really

a, there isn't evidence

to support that they would

increase crime rates.

Actually, evidence would suggest

that crime rates decrease

during those seasonally

labor-intensive periods.

- That's good to know.

So Mary, question

from Manhattan,

do you need to worry about

Aphanomyces in peas this year?

- I think with increasing

temperatures and moisture,

Aphanomyces might be a concern,

but we have not

found Aphanomyces

to my knowledge in that area.

So I wouldn't be super

concerned about it.

It's more in the northeast

corner and then down

into the Triangle where

pea production has been

very intensive for

many, many years.

In the Gallatin Valley, we

did have a canning industry

for fresh peas, right

around World War II,

and it did decline because

of a root rat disease

called fusarium wilt, but

that is a different disease,

but as we get more

intensive pulse production,

we will get Aphanomyces.

- Of course.

Okay, so this is from

Helena and this is

a shout out to Laurie.

- [Laurie] All right.

- Please thank her for

connecting her with, to a group

of certified arborists

who came to help with

her elm leaf beetle problems

in which are now solved

because Laurie's wonderful

help, so thank you.

- That's great to hear.

- Yeah.

- Very happy.

- That's good to know

that you're actually

- Yeah, it's very nice.

- So Abi, a question.

This is kind of an

interesting question,

and we're gonna throw this

out to the whole panel

because I don't think any

of us are a specialist,

but their flower garden

has garter snakes.

Is there a way to get

rid of them and are they

creating any damage to plants?

This is a unique one.

- Yeah.

I have never heard

of garter snakes

doing any damage to

plants personally.

I think it would be a

beneficial sign of a healthy

flower garden if you

have garter snakes.

They're probably eating some

small insects in there too

that could potentially

be pests, but I would say

having garter snakes

would be a badge of honor

that you have a really nice

hospitable environment.

(panel laughing)

- Is it possible they might

have some rodent infestation.

- It could be, it could be.

- I don't know, do garter

snakes eat insects too?

They probably do.

- They, yeah.

I think that they eat

a variety of things.

Yeah, whatever they

can find probably.

- Pretty small and

harmless, so I don't think

that they would be hurting

anything, yeah, so.

- I've never heard of

anything like that.

Very interesting.

- Yeah, kind of like spiders.

(panel laughing)

So for Laurie,

out of Livingston,

a lot of their pine

trees have brown tips

at the tops of the trees.

Will this kill the tree?

- Well, we started seeing

brown tips in pines,

maybe even starting around

the pandemic in 2020,

just a lot of Austrian

pines with brown tips,

and mostly that

was environmental.

So we had, a lot of

that was winter kill.

So we saw a lot of

die back in the top.

We did see some, had

some samples come into

the diagnostic lab that

some had bark beetles,

some twig beetles, and

another type of bark beetle,

but that was in Great

Falls and just kind of,

one was in Stillwater so, but

mostly that was environmental,

and I've been kind of

watching an Austrian pine

across the street from me,

which is still doing fine.

I would just keep an

eye on it that, I mean,

that the top part of

that is still brown

and kind of died back,

but then just make sure

that doesn't progress

down the tree,

but if you're working

with a certified arborist

or you could reach

that top of the tree,

and it's not gonna

disfigure any part of that,

then you could

maybe prune that out

if it's, you know, just

for aesthetic reasons,

but most of the time it's hard

to get up there to

your tree to see it.

- Well, and that's one of the

things that always, I mean,

confused me in the very

beginning is because, you know,

the problem that happens at

the tips of our spruce trees

is the white pine weevil.

- [Laurie] Yeah, right.

- And I don't ever

recall when I worked

in the diagnostic lab

getting like a white pine

that came in with pine

weevil damage and it,

so does it kind of look

similar to what you might see

on a spruce tree except

where it's just taking

the leader of the tree out?

- Yeah, I'm glad you brought

that up because it doesn't,

it's, you would think that

it would hit that pine

would be a host for

that, but it's, it is

a little bit different just

because it's, it doesn't,

you don't see any of this

big holes in the tree,

and then you still

see the needles.

The needles are still on

there, and so basically

it just looks brown

instead of bare,

like the white pine weevil.

I mean, you'll, the white

pine weevil just looks

stripped of all its needles.

So, but different pests and

different situations, yeah.

- Okay, yeah.

Very interesting.

So, Diane, here's a

question from Lewistown.

During the pandemic,

they heard a lot about

the extreme labor disruptions

in the meat processing,

and I know we saw that they

were horrible centers for COVID

and a lot of plants

got shut down.

Has this particular labor

issue resolved itself

or is it still ongoing?

- Yeah, this is, to

my understanding,

it's still an ongoing issue.

So, the last I heard was,

it was a few months ago,

but workers have not returned

to the meat processing plants

in the same numbers

that were working there

prior to the pandemic,

much like other industries

are experiencing those

difficulties right now.

So a lot of those plants are

operating at reduced capacity,

and many of them are

looking into increasing use

of robots in those processes.

So a lot of demand for

engineers right now,

as fewer and fewer workers

are willing to do those jobs,

and I think as most

people are probably aware,

like it's a lot of

those refrigerated areas

during peak COVID times

was just conducive

to spreading viruses, so

particularly difficult place

to work during the

pandemic and people

have not returned

in the same numbers.

- It's also has to put a lot

of pressure on breeders too,

to make like, a more

homogenous crop so that

they can be harvested

uniformly by robots.

- Oh, in terms of like

plant production as well?

- Yeah, and livestock.

- Yeah, livestock.

Yeah, they have a uniform.

- Size and.

- Yeah, and I think I just

saw something in the news,

a plant in South Dakota,

a huge plant that I think

is going to be employing

a very significant amount

of robotics for meat cutting.

So it probably is gonna be.

- Changing the industry.

- Wave of the future.

- Yeah, definitely.

- So Mary, and this

is something that Abi

might be able to comment on too.

This is a question that

came in from Billings.

They have an old, very

sick looking arbor vitae.

The neighbor's arbor

vitaes are green,

but hers have gone

from green to brown.

It appears to be frostbite.

If not, what could it be, and

do you have tips to help this?

- I'll let Abi take that one.

- Yeah, so we're

seeing a lot of,

our Schutter Diagnostic Lab

is seeing a lot of samples

of winter injury in a

lot of our evergreens

just across the state.

We're seeing so much

of this right now.

So I would say, give it

time, take a look at it,

give it some TLC,

make sure it's getting

enough moisture right now,

but a lot of our evergreens

are showing a lot of that

winter injury and are,

have that browning in there.

- [Mary] Arbor vitae in

particular seems to age.

- They're, yes.

I've seen very few

really excellent looking

arbor vitae around, so

yeah, I think they're pretty

susceptible to some of these

environmental conditions.

- And I would say too, that,

you know, she's comparing,

or they're comparing

theirs to their neighbors

and their neighbors might

be in a little bit more

protected location, might

not have as intensive

a southern exposure, you know?

'Cause I know some people

will actually put burlap

on the southern side of the

arbor vitae in the winter

to kind of give it a

little bit of a sunscreen.

So yeah, probably definitely

a winter desiccation issue.

- Yeah, that's what I would say.

- Also, what does boll damage

look like on arbor vitae?

Is there a specific

pattern that you see?

- I think in general, if you

get significant boll damage,

the whole plant or the

whole tree will die,

because it'll girdle them.

- [Laurie] Okay.

Okay.

- That's what,

yeah, I would say.

I don't know if there's a

pattern other than seeing the.

- [Mary] The teeth marks.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay.

- Okay, Laurie, from Billings,

all of their plants this year

are late and they've

noticed very few bumblebees.

Should he be concerned

about the lack of bees?

- Gosh, I think that might

be a better question for Abi.

Sorry to pass this over.

- Oh, what am I thinking?

Abi really is kind

of a bee specialist.

- Bee specialist here.

- So I would say,

yeah, it's hard to say.

There is a concern because

the bumblebees, the queen bees

right now are working on

starting their new nests,

starting their new colonies

and with the seasons

being so slow, there aren't

that many flowering plants.

So I would say it's hard

to say it, how this is

gonna affect bees, but it

is something I was thinking

about too, this season,

wondering about food sources

for bees right now, 'cause

we were talking about

hummingbirds earlier as well.

People were seeing some

hummingbirds and wondering

if there's enough nectar out

there for them to consume.

So it's hard to say.

- My crab apple was just

buzzing the other day.

So there was at least

some in my yard.

- That's fantastic.

- So probably, honeybees