Herbicide resistance is nothing new to Ontario farmers. It all started in 1973 when triazine-resistant lamb’s-quarters were found on a farm near Ripley, Ontario. Group 2 herbicide-resistant weeds were first documented in 1996. Fast forward to 2018, and we find that the province is now home to a host of glyphosate-resistant weeds including Canada fleabane, giant… Read More
Category: Spraying
Nearly 50 scientists and regulators with Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) hopped on a pair of buses a few weeks ago and spent a day in the field 45 minutes from Ottawa learning about how the crop protection products they regulate are used by farmers. The first-ever PMRA field day, held on a farm… Read More
Agriculture and Agri-food Canada (AAFC) has, until now, never developed an app. Until now, that is, with the launch of a new app called CAM. The Cereal Aphid Manager (CAM) is the first app ever developed by AAFC. Dale Leftwich, RealAgriculture’s Saskatchewan field editor, met with Tyler Wist, field crop entomology research scientist with AAFC,… Read More
If you’re talking early weed control, fall is the earliest you can get for next year’s crop. For many, a pre-harvest glyphosate application does double duty, drying down the crop and setting back those perennials weeds. But in this incredibly dry year, crop dry-down was so fast many farmers didn’t need to use glyphosate pre-harvest,… Read More
Cleavers is the only loser in the recent approval of a maximum residue limit (MRL) for the active weed-control ingredient quinclorac for use on canola. The resolve by industry to work collaboratively through the international research-based regulatory system means that in 2019, growers will be able to fight cleavers with a new and effective crop… Read More
What happens when you don’t follow the WALES method for adding pesticide formulations to a tank partially filled with water? You really can plug up a sprayer, fail to take advantage of good spraying conditions, and waste time cleaning up the mess. At the recent Crop Masters tour at Syngenta Canada‘s Honeywood research facility in… Read More
Optical sensors for selective weed control aren’t new, but the technology has come a long way in recent years. A new offering, the WEEDIt system, caught farmers’ attention at the recent CanolaPalooza field day event held at Lacombe, Alberta. To explain how the WEEDIt works, we caught up with Tom Wolf, with AgriMetrix. “It’s an… Read More
Every farmer doesn’t need to own and operate a drone for UAV technology to have a positive impact on their farm. That’s the message Scott Ditschun shares with farmers when he discusses how Bayer CropScience is employing drones in its agronomic and product research. He says UAV technology could effectively increase Bayer’s field research efficiency by… Read More
The idea of spraying with drones has gained interest as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become more common in farming over the past few years. In concept, UAV sprayers could identify and target weeds, and then apply herbicide autonomously in specific areas of a field. The technology for spraying with a drone is available and… Read More
Crop conditions across Western Canada are quite variable based on sporadic moisture. Even just field to field, the conditions can be so different that farmers and agronomists are facing some really challenging decision making situations. When conditions like drought set in, it can be easy to make assumptions on what is or not happening in… Read More
As a crop input, phosphorus is one of those nutrients we tend to think about early, make application decisions as we are seeding, and then all too often, do not think about again until the next growing season. In reality, our crops have a season-long need for phosphate, and this singular focus and approach to… Read More
It’s been 10 years since the presence of western bean cutworm (WBC) was confirmed in Ontario. Since then, the yield-robbing pest has moved beyond provincial hotspots such as Bothwell, Thamesville, and the sandy soils of Tillsonburg, and it continues to march eastward through to Quebec and into the Maritime provinces. Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food… Read More
Is the clock ticking on the future of your ground sprayer? Could it eventually be replaced by a swarm of UAV sprayers that could better target weeds and deliver herbicide to exact locations in the field? These are questions we explore with AGRIS Co-operative agronomist Dale Cowan on this episode of RealAgriculture’s Corn School. Cowan recently… Read More
Many agronomists talk about the importance of multiple modes of action when planning a weed control program. In this episode of RealAgriculture’s Soybean School, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs weed specialist Mike Cowbrough shows you why. We catch up with Cowbrough as he surveys a patch of Canada fleabane that has survived… Read More
What’s your strategy when scouting a newly emerged soybean field? When Agromart Group agronomist Steph Kowalski walks into a soybean field this time of year, the first thing she looks to assess is final emergence and population. “It’s important to know how well we got that seed into the ground,” Kowalski tells RealAgriculture’s Bernard Tobin… Read More