How would you rank your listening skills? Do you try to understand the content, or are you just biding your time, antsy to pitch in with your own thoughts? Listening more effectively is just one tool Ginette Gamache, facilitator and coach at Reframe Leadership, discussed with Farmtech delegates in January, in her session on relationship awareness. Gamache’s goal,… Read More
Category: Video
There’s something about sprayers that makes them a “farmer magnet,” as Tom Wolf describes them. Tom and his “Exploding Spray Myths” partner-in-crime from OMAFRA, Jason Deveau, stopped by the RealAg studio at FarmTech to chat about what it is about pipes and pumps and nozzles that had farmers rappelling in from the ceiling (apparently) to get a… Read More
British baking company and long-time customer of Canadian wheat Warburtons is the latest grain industry player to take a seat at the Cereals Canada table. “It is critical that Cereals Canada have a strong link to the needs of end-use customers,” said Cam Dahl, president of the cereal crop value chain group, earlier this week…. Read More
For this episode of Under the Microscope, we take you into the depths of BioVision Seed Labs’ Sherwood Park laboratory, to hear last minute seed test recommendations from Sydney Vos, marketing coordinator with BioVision. In the video, Vos gives an overview of four of the most important tests to consider, including: Germination Cool Stress Vigour… Read More
“It has to taste fabulous first, and oh by the way, it’s good for you.” That’s the standard we should aim for with food, says best-selling cookbook author and home economist Mairlyn Smith. Smith brought her hilarious cooking demonstration to FarmTech in Edmonton, following up on her latest cookbook that features products grown by Canadian farmers…. Read More
Consistent planting depth and even emergence — it’s every corn grower’s goal, but it can be difficult to achieve. In this Corn School episode, AGRIS Co-operative agronomist Dale Cowan takes a close look at the impact planter down force can play in helping (or hindering) growers in their quest for an evenly spaced, picket fence… Read More
Are you paying enough attention to your soil? That’s the first question Iowa crop consultant Michael McNeill asks farmers when they want to talk about how to increase soybean yields. “Soil health is vital to optimizing profits in any crop we try to grow. Without good soil health we don’t have a chance,” says McNeill…. Read More
The entire seed industry value chain in Canada — from breeders through to grain companies —is adjusting to new Plant Breeders’ Rights legislation following the ratification of UPOV ’91 standards last June. As Lorne Hadley, executive director of the Canadian Plant Technology Agency, explains in the conversation below, the CPTA is working with all stakeholders… Read More
The number of soil tests in Manitoba with phosphorus concentrations below the critical level for crop production grew by 7 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to the new North American Soil Test Summary published by the International Plant Nutrition Institute. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec, as well as 13 U.S. states, all saw more… Read More
Do you grow wheat in a high-yield or low-yield part of the world? A farmer in the UK set the new record for world wheat yield in 2015, growing 16.52 tonnes per hectare or 246 bushels per acre. He broke the previous record of 233 bushels per acre set in New Zealand in 2010. In… Read More
When it comes to busting food myths, the SciBabe has a simple message for farmers: “Don’t let people without the facts control the conversation.” Yvette d’Entremont, known to many as the SciBabe, has emerged as a leading crusader against unproven food claims and pseudoscience in the media. Over the last two years, d’Entremont, who earned… Read More
While sunflowers often pencil out well, concerns about quality and yield risk at the end of the year are all-too-common when it comes to growing them. “It’s a high value crop and if you treat it that way, it’s going to pay,” says Troy Turner, agronomist for the National Sunflower Association of Canada, in the… Read More
Anybody thinking of growing lentils or peas in Western Canada this year? Syngenta is introducing a new fungicide to help growers protect pulses from foliar diseases such as anthracnose, ascochyta blight, mycosphaerella blight and powdery mildew. Elatus features two modes of action — a combination of Syngenta’s new Group 7 fungicide known as Solatenol (benzovindiflupyr) and a… Read More
In this episode of the Corn School, Real Agriculture resident agronomist Peter Johnson goes cover crop crazy. Standing in a residue-covered cornfield, Johnson sounds off on growers who insist on chopping corn stalks: “What a labour intensive, fuel expensive, ridiculous thing to do – it makes no sense whatsoever.” What makes better sense for growers,… Read More
Farmers are dealt a hand of cards each year. There are cards of fortune and cards of misfortune. Maybe it’s a wet spring or corn prices below $4/bu or skyrocketing fertilizer costs. Maybe you get all three in the same hand. A farmer can’t always choose what they’re dealt, but they can choose how to respond…. Read More