Reading Time: 4 minutes Areas such as road allowances, wetlands and shelterbelts take up land that could otherwise be used to produce grain. But does that mean that if you remove them, you’ll have more grain production? Maybe not. You might even get less, says Shathi Akhter, an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research scientist at Indian Head, Sask. She’s […] Read more
Putting a value on a shelterbelt
Yields drop immediately adjacent, but start to increase after 10 to 20 metres beyond
Boost the N and boost the fungicide?
Study shows oat growers should make separate decisions on how much of each to apply
Reading Time: 3 minutes With the increasing demand for oats in the food market, growers these days are paying attention to both yield and quality, leading to questions about managing both nitrogen and fungicides. Does use of one affect how much you should use of the other? Not by much, according to research published this spring. Agriculture Canada crop […] Read more
Winding down: How will Canada’s aging farmers sell their land?
As the Besser family discovered, it can pay to play the long game
Reading Time: 5 minutes In 2011, Howard and Jannette Besser found themselves at a crossroads. The pair, who farmed 3,000 acres near Plumas, Man., had reached their 50th birthdays, their sons were not interested in farming, and they could see they’d have to start purchasing bigger, newer equipment if they wanted to carry on. “We decided to step out,” […] Read more
Pushing the wheat seeding envelope
Good seed treatments are recommended, but research at Lethbridge suggests you should start the drill when the soil is at 2 C
Reading Time: 4 minutes Statistically, early seeding equals higher yield, at least over the long term. But how early can you seed without having a wreck due to cold spring conditions? Earlier than you might think, apparently. Last spring, Jay Schultz started seeding his CWRS wheat (mainly Brandon, with some Eli and Viewfield) on April 15 — the earliest […] Read more
Alone on the farm, or lonely?
Farm life can be more isolating and more challenging than ever, making it even more important to ask yourself these questions
Reading Time: 5 minutes Christi Friesen has learned to recognize signs that she’s heading into a spiral of negative thinking — and it usually happens when she’s pulling 18-hour days on the tractor on her Peace River farm in Alberta. “When you’re out in the boondocks, your closest neighbour is a half-mile away and you’re working alone and you’re […] Read more
A decade of midge-tolerant wheat
New varieties are in the pipeline for CWRS and SWS classes
Reading Time: 4 minutes Over the past 10 years, western Canadian farmers have deliberately seeded 27 million acres of wheat susceptible to orange blossom wheat midge — and saved themselves an estimated $1 billion in lost yield and quality. To be clear, only 10 per cent of the seed on those acres was susceptible to midge, and that’s been […] Read more
‘Soap opera’ prenups
Marriage agreements built on fairness can be a legitimate risk management tool
Reading Time: 7 minutes Picture this. The bride, decked out in finery, arrives at the church on the morning of her wedding. As she reaches the church doors, a man in a suit blocks her way. In his hand is a prenuptial agreement ensuring she has no rights to the property of the farmer she’s marrying. If she wants […] Read more
Balancing demands for both quality and yield in barley
New barley varieties show yield gains over old favourites AC Metcalfe and CDC Copeland. What’s needed now is industry acceptance
Reading Time: 4 minutes A quick scan of the farm press this spring might have been enough to convince you Canadian barley has a yield problem. The sharp drop in Prairie acreage suggests farmers may think the same thing — only 6.2 million acres were seeded last year, about two million less than 10 years earlier and half the […] Read more
A farm advisory team that works — for you
Advisors can help take the emotion out of business decisions
Reading Time: 8 minutes A few years ago, Harvey Aberhart came to a family farm meeting looking stressed out. Like many farmers across the country, he wanted the family to find their way to a healthy, forward-looking succession plan, but the night before the meeting, he had been kept up all through the early hours by thoughts of a […] Read more
Careful grain sampling key when looking for mycotoxins
Ontario’s worst-ever year for DON infection in corn may provide some guidance for managing the problem in Western Canada
Reading Time: 5 minutes For Ontario corn growers dealing with an outbreak of deoxynivalenol (DON), 2018 was a year to forget. “It was a really major, widespread issue,” says Art Schaafsma, a professor in field crop pest management for the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus. He says the last time the industry saw widespread issues with DON was in […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
