Reading Time: 5 minutes The Italian pasta industry sent a ripple through Canadian agriculture a few years back when they changed the way they dry their noodles. Traditionally, pasta makers had hung the noodle for 15 hours or more at temperatures between 60 C to 70 C. Although this produced world-class spaghetti, it also took a fair amount of […] Read more
Plant breeding basics
Plant breeding is a key driver of crop agriculture — but it’s even more complex than might first appear
Nitrogen fixing pulse crops are a win-win for growers
There’s a compelling economic and agronomic case to be made for pulses, not just soybeans
Reading Time: 5 minutes If you ask Lee Moats why he grows pulse crops on his farm, he doesn’t have to scramble very hard for the answer to that question. “It’s about money,” the farmer and vice-chair of the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers Association told Country Guide during a recent discussion. On his farm at Riceton, Sask., Moats says they’ve […] Read more
A crop diagnostic lab on a microchip
New technology is bringing the science lab to the field for better, faster scouting decisions
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s a sentence nobody likes to hear, especially in the midst of all the time pressures and the short windows of farming today. “I’m not sure about this, we’d better send a sample to the lab.” It might be an agrologist or crop scout who says it to you, or a plant pathologist or veterinarian, […] Read more
Precision ag ready for big time
After two decades of development, farm technology has finally caught up with the opportunity to shave inputs and drive yields
Reading Time: 5 minutes An old cartoon shows two scientists standing at a ship’s rail, gazing out over the beauty of the horizon. In a reflective moment, one extends his arm, motions to the setting sun and says to the other: “Ever thought about all that data out there just yearning to be processed?” Substitute a couple of modern […] Read more
Insect post mortem
Top Prairie pest specialists reflect on 2014’s major insect trends… and what they could mean for the coming year
Reading Time: 6 minutes Insects are like the commodity markets. It’s really easy to know what they’re going to do, once they’ve already done it. One of agriculture’s big challenges is dealing with different insects in different geographies, and doing the best you can to hedge your bets. Like the markets, however, insects are subject to a fair bit […] Read more
The science of how neonicotinoids work
Reading Time: 2 minutes Neonicotinoids, like many of our insecticides, are neurotoxins that go after the central nervous system. We often refer to the nervous system as an organism’s wiring, but its workings are a lot more complicated because all physiological actions must take place at low temperatures that won’t damage the surrounding proteins. Any electrician will tell you […] Read more
Neonicotinoids for pest management
Evidence in support of neonics is impressive, if you take the time to understand it
Reading Time: 6 minutes Another summer is over, another harvest is done and now the key decisions are starting to loom for next year’s crop. The canola page in the seed catalogue is open, but whether the varieties on display are OPs or hybrids, herbicide tolerant, Argentine or Polish, most of them will come with a seed coating containing an […] Read more
Make better soil for crops
da Vinci said we know more about the stars than the soil under our feet. That is changing
Reading Time: 7 minutes Farmers make this kind of discovery all the time, but for Washington State geology professor, David Montgomery, it was a big lesson about soil when he and his wife moved to a new house in north Seattle some eight years ago. Their new lawn was a sparse and ratty patch of grass trying to thrive in […] Read more
Shelterbelts: a habitat for beneficial insects
Even if ripping out an old shelterbelt could help you work more acres per hour, it may leave you worse off
Reading Time: 5 minutes Back in the Dirty ’30s, farmers planted shelterbelts in a desperate bid to slow those drying winds and keep them from blowing our precious topsoil east. Now, at almost 100 years old, these wind-breaks have grown into stands of mature trees that continue to serve that purpose well. Not only do these shelterbelts curb wind […] Read more
Humanity must stop treating soil like dirt
Why we care: Farmers around the world know soil is the stuff of life
Reading Time: 6 minutes Winnipeg was the site of 2014’s World Congress on Conservation Agriculture where farmers, agronomists, researchers and policy-makers from 33 countries around the globe met to discuss the world’s soil, as the stories in the special ‘Sustainability’ section in the July 2014 issue of Country Guide reveal. In fact, Country Guide, and our farm readers, feel so strongly about […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
