Durum versus spring wheat – what should a grower put in his cropping plan for 2017? Is there a real choice? According to John Ippolito, regional crop specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, there can be. It depends where you farm. “Durum is really adapted to the brown soil zone and the dryer areas of the dark [...]
What to include in the cropping plan is a bit of a puzzle every season. Proper rotation does add some constraints that have to be taken into account. Going wall-to-wall with one crop is not a feasible nor sustainable option for any grower. However, there are opportunities to push rotations a little depending on what [...]
Most of Saskatchewan is currently not at much risk of an overly wet spring. According to Mitchell Japp, provincial specialist for cereal crops at Saskatchewan Agriculture, most of the province has moderate snow cover, but is facing some warming temperatures in the next while which might impact those levels. “We went into fall with good [...]
You grow it, so why not use it? Seed, that is. It gets all the right care at the right time by the best grower you know – you. It can be sold easily into the commercial channel to, eventually, end up on a consumer plate somewhere in the world, so why not just reseed [...]
The GMO debate rages on. Will it ever end? It’s doubtful. Entire organizations and movements are devoted to its demise. Google “GMO” and the third result uncovers the Monsanto “conspiracy” - creating GMO crops to sell more Roundup herbicide. Additionally, you’ll find out that developing countries are far more concerned with health and the environment [...]
As we are more than aware, certainly now the 2016 International Year of Pulses (IYP) has ended, Canada is a global leader in pulse production. The global pulse community ensured that this registered on every stakeholder’s radar, from the grower to the consumer and everyone in between. Madeleine Goodwin is Pulse Canada’s IYP coordinator and [...]
What have we to look forward to in 2017? There are a lot of events happening globally that might impact the farm business here on the Prairies. Oil production is being reined in, the U.S. dollar continues to maintain its strength against the loonie, and there is the always interesting debate over crop supply and [...]
It’s been a long and trying season. Harvest is just wrapped up – though some growers still have harvest to complete in spring in some parts. Fall field work may or may not have been completed. It just seems like it was a tough and unrelenting year, and now, the eastern Prairies seem to be [...]
Plant growth regulators (PGR) are not a new technology, only relatively new to the Prairies. Where high intensity cereal management systems, specifically high levels of nitrogen fertilizer, are being used and lodging is a threat to yield and quality, plant growth regulators are commonplace, such as in Europe. Almost 90 percent of winter wheat acres [...]
It feels like a year like no other, but it’s not. There’ve been years in the past where Mother Nature has made it difficult to get the crop in the bin in the past. Harvesting in spring is not unheard-of, not common, but not unheard-of. Getting grain dry enough for storage is just one of [...]
