Calling them the soybeans of Alberta isn’t being fair to soybeans, but faba beans are enjoying a similar surge in popularity, due in part to the crop’s ability to fix its own nitrogen and broaden farmers’ marketing options. Being a relatively new (or newly popular, depending on how you look at it) crop for many… Read More
Category: Features
Managing for nitrogen losses in crop production is important, absolutely, but N isn’t the only nutrient at risk of being lost from the plant’s refrigerator. Phosphorus, that other macro-nutrient we know and love, is also subject to losses — and while losses may go relatively unnoticed in the cropping system, our lakes are rivers pay… Read More
Ontario isn’t letting politically charged energy issues such as the ongoing gas plant cancellation controversy get in its way of its clean air policy development…and neither should farmers. Regardless of what party is in office after the next election, over the past couple of weeks it’s become even clearer the future of energy production here… Read More
There’s nothing quite like demo plots — where else will you find head to head comparisons of one variety or practice compared against its neighbour? The trouble with plots, though, is that you only usually see them once and then have to wait for data months later to find out what the real difference was… Read More
It’s been another busy week on the site. In news, we saw: the worrying PEDv update from the Manitoba Chief Veterinary Officer, an announcement of another new elevator for CWB and the Western Livestock Price Insurance Program is now accepting applications. On perhaps a more introspective level, Andrew Campbell challenged our ideas of animals and Owen Roberts tackled criticism of… Read More
If you cannot see the embedded player, click here. The second week of April brought the USDA’s monthly instalment of the world agricultural supply and demand estimates and the numbers were: relatively bearish wheat, bullish soybeans, and bullish corn. Oats year-end inventories were dropped by 10 million bushels to a new record low of 20… Read More
Despite efforts to explain pesticides’ role in modern agriculture, confusion still reigns supreme in the eyes of the public. And no wonder. Pesticides get blamed for a lot of things; most recently, for wiping out bees. That accusation caught the Province of Ontario’s attention last summer and fall, when wildly fluctuating accounts of bee mortality… Read More
If you’re overwhelmed by trying to keep track of every new crop protection product, formulation, tank-mix and re-cropping restriction, you’re not alone. While many farmers and agronomists have a well-marked-up copy of the Guide to Crop Protection, could there be a place for technology to make selecting crop production products easier? Absolutely! Enter Ag-Chem Expert…. Read More
We’re in the thick of calving season, and if the sight of healthy new calves frolicking doesn’t put a smile on your face, calf prices will. Year-over-year calf prices are rosy indeed, and the price improvements move all the way from calves, to cows, cow/calf pairs and on into the cull cow market. In this… Read More
From the very simple, to the GPS-reference, cloud-shared, multi-user type, the number of made-for-agriculture apps grows each month. If you’ve got a current smartphone or tablet, you’re set to begin incorporating these handy time savers and data-management tools into your farm. If you’re somewhat overwhelmed by the technology, fear not. Some apps are really just… Read More
A number of years ago, one of the first farm meetings I attended as a young radio reporter on the agriculture beat had a speaker talking on a subject that few farmers had considered. It was on what role activism would play in food production down the road, and how farmers could react. At the… Read More
If you cannot see the embedded player, please click here to hear this audio. As we ended the month of March and shovelled our way through “spring” weather in to April, the grain markets were hit with a fairly uneventful Stocks and Acreage report from the USDA. The biggest shock came in the form of… Read More
As the snow finally melts in Ontario, cash crop farmers have a lot to do in a short window. There’s still plenty of corn out there and lots of unfinished tillage work. In this episode of the Ontario Agronomy Geeks podcast, Bernard Tobin talks strategy with agronomist Mervyn Erb of Agri-Solve Inc. — what should… Read More
The theme of TechTour is simple — highlight products and services out there that save farmers time, money or both. A recent poll we ran here on RealAgriculture suggested that the sprayer is one busy implement, which makes it incredibly important for spraying to be accomplished efficiently. But efficiency doesn’t mean just going fast. The… Read More
Let’s call the March 31st USDA report the kickoff to the new growing season’s marketing year. Yes, markets are continuous and fluid, but this first glimpse of planting intentions for the U.S. is, for some, the first report in a while that really gets interesting. This week, RealAgriculture editor, Lyndsey Smith, is joined by Jon… Read More