Reading Time: 3 minutes Sometimes it’s all or nothing where Mother Nature is concerned. The growing seasons in 2020 and 2021 were both dry, so it’s perhaps not surprising that in a trial designed to quantify the impact of using a seed treatment on spring wheat, there’d be very little return on investment in those years. It’ll be more […] Read more
No ROI for seed treatments — so far
Results to date were from dry years, so watch for 2022 results
Winter wheat is a kochia killer
Its head start in the spring gives it an advantage over the troublesome weed
Reading Time: 3 minutes As a yield-limiting weed, kochia has a lot going for it. A single plant can spread tens of thousands of seeds over a wide area after it dries out and starts travelling like a tumbleweed. All kochia across the Prairies is considered resistant to ALS inhibitors (Group 2), but kochia can also be resistant to […] Read more
Transforming the house
Business thinking is helping lead the way to a new era of world-class Indigenous agriculture in Canada. But how do we eliminate the remaining barriers?
Reading Time: 14 minutes The story of the Opaskwayak Smart Farm at Opaskwayak Cree Nation in The Pas, Man., starts with an improbable rescue. It was 2013. A group of hunters from OCN were way out in the bush when they stumbled upon a car stuck in the mud on a remote dirt road. The car belonged to a […] Read more
Pea fungicides — scout first
Manitoba results indicate spraying for ascochyta blight was economic in fewer than one-quarter of trials between 2017 and 2021
Reading Time: 3 minutes The past five years have definitely been on the dry side in Manitoba’s pea-growing regions — an important fact to remember when considering the results of Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers’ (MPSG) 2021 on-farm pea fungicide trials. That meant there was little disease pressure at the trial’s four locations (Roland, Swan River and two sites […] Read more
Rethinking trap crops in canola
Shatter-resistant varieties may allow the theory to be put into practice
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s the usual tradeoff: the agricultural research community has to balance promising new concepts in pest management against ease of use and efficiency gains for farmers. One such concept, an integrated pest management strategy called “trap cropping,” hasn’t always been an easy sell. The basic concept is that pests are controlled in a lower-value crop […] Read more
The new farm team
Katie and Andre Steppler are both running the show at Steppler Farms
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s the biggest business day of the year for Katie and Andre Steppler. Bull sale. Standing on the sales block at their annual bull sale every March, the Stepplers run a perfectly orchestrated show in front of an audience of 200. Many more watch online. Amid the booming flow of the auctioneer’s chant, a bull […] Read more
Scout first before applying a pea fungicide
Manitoba results indicate spraying for ascochyta blight was economic in fewer than one-quarter of trials between 2017 and 2021
Reading Time: 3 minutes The past five years have definitely been on the dry side in Manitoba’s pea-growing regions — an important fact to remember when considering the results of Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers’ (MPSG) 2021 on-farm pea fungicide trials. That meant there was little disease pressure at the trial’s four locations (Roland, Swan River and two sites […] Read more
Mustard biofumigation: coming to a field near you?
Its anti-pest properties are confirmed in potato, but researchers are looking at whether it has prospects for other crops
Reading Time: 5 minutes There may be more than one reason to plant mustard in 2022. Some producers will hope to springboard off 2021’s shortages and grow food-grade mustard for domestic and international markets. But others might choose mustard for a less conventional reason: as a biofumigant cover crop to help quash soil-borne pests and diseases. Mustard contains glucosinolates […] Read more
Season-long weed control strategies
Don’t only focus on spraying the young ones – also target the escapes before they get a chance to reproduce
Reading Time: 4 minutes If you’ve been focusing mainly on the CPWC, it may be time to switch strategy and add an “s.” CPWC — the critical period for weed control — is the period of growth during which a crop must remain weed-free to prevent yield loss. Suppressing weeds in that period is the objective behind most control […] Read more
Can buckwheat make a long, slow comeback?
Manitoba acres are still down, but buyers hope to contract western Canadian growers
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s not as easy as it used to be to find buckwheat honey in Manitoba. The province was once the buckwheat capital of Canada, with as many as 135,000 acres in 1979, but the area in recent years has been steady around only 5,000 acres. Although there’s demand for buckwheat grown in Western Canada, industry […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
