Farmers from South Carolina and other areas in the Southeast took a tour of Midwest crops Monday through Wednesday, with some help from Iowa State University Extension and ISU professors.

Brad Hammes, Clemson extension assistant county agent and ISU alumnus, organized the tour because he thought it would be helpful and interesting to progressive farmers in the region he worked in.

“They may be able to see something they’d want to incorporate in [their own farms],” Hammes said of the farmers who spent three days learning about crops in Iowa.

The tour began Monday with some visits to Iowa farms, a field extension lab, and a tour of a company that makes precision agricultural hardware, among other learning opportunities.

Tuesday, the visitors attended a three-hour conference in Agronomy Hall which touched on issues from weeds to insects to soil fertility.

During the presentations, which were given by ISU professors of agronomy Robert Hartzler and Randy Killorn, professor of entomology Donald Lewis, and associate professor of entomology Kenneth Holscher, the farmers shared some of their own experiences with the issues addressed in each presentation.

Some of the points the professors touched on included the proliferation of the weeds water hemp and giant ragweed, the problem of soybean aphids, and the need to watch the amount of nitrogen and potassium fertilizers put into the soil in a time of growing corn production in order to produce biofuels.

The excess nitrogen and potassium, Killorn said, may become a serious problem in the years to come because a fair portion of it ends up in the Mississippi River and flows into the Gulf of Mexico, which is not good for the environment.

The group will have finished their crop tour Wednesday, when they will stop at Purdue University in Indiana before traveling back home.

David Wallace, off-campus graduate student in agronomy from South Carolina, said there is significantly more agricultural activity in Iowa than there is in his home state – but South Carolina has greater diversity among its crops.

Wallace said he was interested in learning more about Iowa partly because he is taking distance education courses to achieve his master’s degree in agronomy from Iowa State.

“I’ve enjoyed the trip,” Wallace said.