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Sunflowers

Sunflowers need a hybrid lift
Crops, Oilseeds

Sunflowers need a hybrid lift

With Western sunflower acres dropping sharply in recent years, new varieties are needed to claw acres back from easier-to-grow soybeans

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Reading Time: 4 minutes There are fewer sights more appealing than a field of mature sunflowers, but this golden vision is growing rarer. The reason is simple — sunflowers are losing out to soybeans. In Canada’s biggest sunflower province, Manitoba, acres dropped under 62,000 this year, with a little more than half the crop going to black oil and […] Read more
MacDon opened a new parts distribution centre in Winnipeg in 2016. (Macdon.com)
Corn, Crops, Forages, Machinery

Harvestec owner Linamar set to buy MacDon

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Reading Time: 2 minutes Canadian harvesting equipment company MacDon is set to join the ag arm of industrial equipment and parts manufacturer Linamar. Guelph-based Linamar Corp., which markets the Harvestec brand of corn harvesting headers in North America, on Thursday announced a “definitive” agreement to buy 100 per cent of Winnipeg-based MacDon and its group of companies for $1.2 […] Read more
An intense focus on on-farm research, plus a busy program sending staff to top educational programs means Agricost excels at adopting new technology.
Crops, Guide Business

Europe’s biggest farm

On an island in the Danube, the Agricost farm is 145,000 acres, which its owners say makes it truly sustainable

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Reading Time: 9 minutes Here on the Great Island of Braila in the middle of the Danube River in Romania, the summer day is hot and dry, perfect for the beginning of the barley harvest. On the Agricost farm, 20,000 acres of barley wait for the combine. The crop looks good; conditions have been ideal. Agricost farms 145,000 of […] Read more
The cover crop plot with the most complex blend of different species, including planting dates, method and rates.
Crops

PHOTOS: Farm Show demo digs deep on value of soil health

Roots, worm casts and different cover blends show amazing effects

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Reading Time: < 1 minute Soil health has been a buzz phrase that’s gone from a whisper three to five years ago to a chorus that’s spreading across the agrifood industry. That goes to show the swinging of the pendulum away from plowing and aggressive tillage — and it seems to be gaining more advocates with each passing day. This […] Read more
(Photo courtesy BASF SE)
Crops, Reuters

BASF ready to snatch seed bargains as rivals sell assets

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Reading Time: < 1 minute Ludwigshafen, Germany | Reuters — BASF will consider buying seed assets that rivals are putting on the block to win antitrust approval for tie-ups, saying bargain prices could persuade BASF to overcome its traditional reluctance to expand into the seeds industry. Sources familiar with BASF’s thinking have said that competition regulators looking at potential buyers […] Read more
This satellite-gathered image shows the raw Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for Western Canada on July 25, 2016.
Crops

How’s the crop?

That’s the question that StatsCanada asks 10,000 farmers, but increasingly, the grain trade doesn’t believe the answers

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Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s become a predictable pattern. Statistics Canada releases a crop estimate. Reporters call traders and analysts for reaction, who inevitably say it’s either too high or too low. That reflects a general dissatisfaction with StatsCan’s time-consuming system of contacting 10,000 farmers to ask how their crop is doing. Replacing a survey-based crop report with technology-sourced […] Read more
(Bruce Fritz photo courtesy ARS/USDA)
Crops

Sunflowers down, but not out in Western Canada

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Reading Time: < 1 minute CNS Canada — Canadian sunflower plantings will be down in 2017, but perhaps not by as much as the official government estimate. Statistics Canada forecast the country’s sunflower area at only 50,000 acres in its planting intentions report. That would be down from 70,000 the previous year and the second-lowest acreage base of the past […] Read more
Flowering plants such as alfalfa provide a home for beneficial insects such as parasitic wasps that can control diamondback moth, wheat midge, aphids and Hessian flies.
Crops

Be kind to your insect friends

Of the thousands of insect species around your fields, only a few damage crops. Here’s a guide to identifying and protecting the good bugs that eat the bad ones

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Reading Time: 2 minutes It can be worrying to see insects crawling over your nicely developing crop, but are they doing any damage? And even if they are, before ordering the insecticide, will spraying kill the good bugs that are already at work controlling the bad ones, not to mention other insects that are important for pollination? While killing […] Read more
Parasitoids of potential pest insects Insects that parasitize and kill other insects are called parasitoids. In their immature stages these parasitoids live in or on the body of another insect (the host), but they are free-living as adults. Many of the parasitoids of insects in Manitoba are either wasps or flies. Parasitic wasps do have what looks like a stinger, but they use this to lay eggs in the insects that they are parasitizing, and will not sting people.
Crops

PHOTOS: A guide to beneficial insects

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Reading Time: < 1 minute There are thousands of insect species in the fields across Canada. But how can you tell which are the beneficial insects and which bugs are trouble? Here’s a quick guide to help you identify and protect the good bugs that prey on the bad ones. This guide is also available on the Manitoba Agriculture website at www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture […] Read more
A kochia seedling.
Crops

Step one: Identify your weed enemy

Step two: Identify the best means to combat it. Here are some ways to help determine the treatments for weeds, insects and diseases

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Is that cow cockle or cocklebur? It’s easy to tell when it’s grown so much that it’s already cost you yield, but not so easy when it’s first popping out of the ground. And once you know for sure, what are your control options? Insect control is even trickier. Is that critter eating my crop, […] Read more

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