Canola harvest is still a few months away, but it’s still a good time to get familiar with your combine. Last weeks “Picking up Profits” combine clinic put on by the Canola Council of Canada brought industry experts as well as a number of different combine manufacturers together in an effort to help producers limit… Read More
Corn is a plant that likes heat, but how much is too much? When you get into a situation where later planted corn is involved, that heat has to be balanced with the crops ability to access water. In less mature corn, that root structure may not be able to access. Parts of Ontario are… Read More
A big part of a successful pest control strategy depends on pests behaving in a certain way and us basing our control measures on that. When an insect pest deviates from typical behaviour, it can in some cases, negate any control strategy we implement based on that behaviour. Things like emergence patterns, feeding habits,… Read More
This episode of the Wheat School can be summarized as a bit of a fusarium clinic. Peter Johnson, Cereal Specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs gives us a first hand look at the difference in resistance between older wheat varieties and some of the newer generations. Here we get confirmation… Read More
Lygus bugs are a pest that are not particularly picky when it comes to what they feed on. The bug has over 300 known host plants, and feeds on the sap of a plants new growth and reproductive tissue. Unfortunately, among the long list of plants they like to feed on is the canola plant…. Read More
By Ken Coles, FarmingSmarter.com In July I attended the Precision Ag Conference in Springfield, Illinois. I though in my first blog post I would cover my thoughts and observations at the conference. Day 1 Last week Brent Nicol and I attended the infoag, precision ag conference in Springfield, Illinois. (www.infoag.org). Not being a seasoned… Read More
In this episode of the Wheat School, we talk to Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada Plant Pathologist Kelly Turkington about the elevated risk of fusarium in parts of Alberta. Fusarium in Alberta is nothing new, however, weather conditions in Alberta in June and July have made the potential for infection that much greater. That abundance of… Read More
When it comes to disease problems in wheat, the conditions have been pretty favourable across most of the prairies. With the exception of the past week or so, temperatures have been below average and moisture has been above average across the west. Those factors elevate the risk of fungal disease, making scouting and control extremely… Read More
The start of the 2011 growing season was challenging to say the least. Wet weather and unseasonably cool conditions in the majority of the west had producers stressed out and wondering if they would get a crop in at all. That was the case in fact in large areas of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Fast forward… Read More
Studies are underway to help winter wheat producers to improve production in a number of areas and to help expand the amount of acres being grown by farmers across the west. The two year study by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Alberta Winter Wheat Producers Commission will look at a number of factors that… Read More
When you consider the temperatures across the prairies even a month ago, it’s hard to believe we’d be here now talking about the effects of high temperature on canola. That’s the nature of life on the prairies though. While prolonged periods of high heat may not be in the cards for most of the prairies,… Read More
A number of industry partners came together in Lacombe, Alberta in an effort to promote winter wheat production as a good choice for producers from both an economic and an environmental perspective. Bayer CropScience, Agrium and the Alberta Winter Wheat Producers Commission have partnered with Ducks Unlimited Canada in an effort to help in conservation… Read More
Wet conditions over the past few years have brought the importance of fungicide back on to the producers radar. Those conditions are the final piece of the puzzle diseases like sclerotinia need to get established and cause real damage to canola. The devastating results of fungal diseases are helping producers to realize the importance of… Read More
Stripe rust is one of those diseases that has been around for a while, but hasn’t really been that much of a threat. A few new developments with regards to the disease may have changed that. Firstly, resistance to stripe rust in one variety of winter wheat was found to be ineffective. Second, the disease… Read More
If you talk about controlled traffic farming in Alberta, you’ll only come up with a handful of names of farmers involved in the practice. Steve Laroque is one of those farmers. We talked to Steve a while back about his involvement in controlled traffic farming and why he thought it had the potential to fit… Read More