Every farm has a business plan. It may be a well-referenced physical document or it may only exist in your head. In the same way, Stuart Lawrence, with AgLeader Technology, encourages each farmer to sit down (or dream up) their own precision farming plan. Not every farm is going to farm by the inch or… Read More
Category: Machinery
Proper tank clean-out is a key aspect of avoiding herbicide injury, but the waste water created from tank cleaning needs to be handled responsibly to avoid unwanted plant injury or water contamination. Using a biobed — essentially a clay-lined, dedicated area rich in microbes where tank water is emptied for further degradation by microbes —… Read More
Steve Laroque is starting to see some significant differences on his farm north of Drumheller, Alta., after three consecutive years of practicing controlled traffic farming. After learning some hard lessons in the first few seasons — their measurements were off when setting up a hitch for inter-row seeding — 2012 offered a glimpse at some… Read More
The world of machinery is really getting smaller. Ritchie Bros announced today that they sold more than one billion dollars worth of machinery in Canada in 2012. This is a new company record according to the company. Follow @RitchieBros on Twitter The Tweet From Ritchie Bros NEWS RELEASE: We sold more than CA$1 billion of… Read More
Beyond Agronomy’s Steve Larocque is rolling out the Air Cart Maximizer, an app for Android and iPhone that quickly calculates the maximum acres per fill one can achieve with their air cart based on tank size, fertilizer and seeding rates. “It will tell you where to put seed and fertilizer and how much product to… Read More
To say that soybeans are the hottest topic in Manitoba right now is an understatement. The excitement around the crop is perhaps eclipsed only by the recent opening of Ikea. The N-fixing crop is definitely turning heads and has many farmers asking how they can jump on the soybean bandwagon. And so it was, that… Read More
Farm auctions have long been a gathering place, a chance to meet with old friends and maybe even make new ones over a round of spirited bidding. While auctions have changed some, with many people attending via Internet, they’re still a great place and sometimes the only place to find much-needed items. In Western Canada,… Read More
Here at RealAgriculture.com we’re all about convenience. It’s in that spirit that we’d like to keep you from having to drive from dealership to dealership this winter to shop around for manure spreaders. In this video we take you back to the grounds of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show to visit four different manufacturers and get… Read More
Knowing whether or not the nozzles on your sprayer are doing the job they’re supposed to is something you shouldn’t have to learn the hard way. Being able to evaluate things like spray pattern, flow, wear and performance before you hit the field saves you time and money. In this video featuring OMAFRA’s Helmut Spieser,… Read More
The high clearance sprayer isn’t the sexiest of machines on the farm, but so much is riding on it doing a perfect job every time. Fall is a great time to give your sprayer a little attention and the respect it deserves so it’ll be ready to roll first thing in the spring. We caught… Read More
Can we capture the energy from manure that dairy cows produce and use it to fuel the trucks that pick up and deliver milk? The short answer is yes, but we’re not going to see bio-methane pumps around town any time soon. RealAgriculture.com caught up with OMAFRA’s Don Hilborn at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show to… Read More
Better timing of manure application with in-crop needs was the motivation behind developing a new low disturbance, shallow injection manure application toolbar. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (OMAFRA), along with industry partners, developed the multi-coultered toolbar to try and find a made-in-Canada solution for in-crop manure applications for not just pastures… Read More
Larger discs sure do look menacing. They also require far more horsepower to pull, but they wear out more slowly than smaller-diameter discs. But there are two very important considerations when choosing planter disc size. The first is trash management (guess which one cuts through straw better? You may be surprised) and the second is… Read More
The concept of controlled traffic farming — that is, running all equipment on set paths in a field to reduce compaction — is one RealAgriculture.com has explored before. In this video, Steve Laroque discusses what he’s learned in the second year of adopting the practice. Alberta is most certainly the leader of the practice in… Read More
Uniform seeding at a consistent depth is the first step to a banner wheat crop, but the first mistake many farmers make — seeding too deep — hurts them twice over. Wheat seeded too deep means fewer plants emerge and those that do are slower to grow and produce fewer tillers. It’s an issue for… Read More