Reading Time: 6 minutes As most growers and industry stakeholders have heard by now, reports of shortages of glyphosate and glufosinate have become common since late 2021. They’ve led to bulletins of price increases of 100 to 300 per cent for glyphosate in some areas, and recommendations for how to manage their herbicide programs for 2022. One reason for […] Read more
Feeling cut off from glyphosate supplies?
The good news is that a shortage opens possibilities for sharpening weed-management skills
The latest in herbicides and fungicides for 2022
More active ingredient combinations offered to control resistant weed biotypes
Reading Time: 5 minutes As weeds and diseases continue to evolve and overcome the active ingredients and modes of action of different herbicides and fungicides, the chemical industry must evolve to keep pace. The research and development challenges are considerable — it can take more than 10 years to bring a new product to market, and cost nearly $300 […] Read more
Timing your N in the field is everything
ESN is winning the trials in some regions, but many growers just aren’t convinced
Reading Time: 6 minutes [UPDATED: April 4, 2022] Few things grab a producer’s attention faster than high yields, and for a lot of good reasons. Yield is the money-maker, a point of pride and the only real metric that matters. But this winter it may be getting a second look as producers learn more about how to use nitrogen […] Read more
The robots are here, and ready to weed your field
Robotics has started revolutionizing even the toughest jobs like weed control. Horticulture crops are first, but row crop robots are coming too
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the 20-plus years of precision agriculture, most field jobs have evolved so they can incorporate some level of data retrieval, prescription mapping, overhead imagery, or specific in-field applications like auto-steer and downforce components. But not all field jobs. Precision ag had seemed like it would also lead to site-specific weeding, but this never gained […] Read more
Tar spot continues to spread in Ontario
The infected region has expanded from five counties in 2020 to 19 in 2021
Reading Time: 5 minutes Tar spot was first identified in the U.S. in 2015. By 2018, it was beginning to make news in Canada, and every year since then has brought more evidence of its devastating potential. Alarmingly in late 2021, videos from Midwest U.S.-based agronomists showed infected crops with brown, wilted leaves, and stalks so stressed and weak […] Read more
Growing wheat in Eastern Canada
Public wheat breeding is gaining steam in the East with aggressive new variety goals
Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s been an incredible 20 months for researchers working with wheat in Canada and around the world. In that time, the industry has seen the release of its first transgenic variety (a drought-tolerant wheat in Argentina), and it has also wrapped up more than 13 years of mapping the wheat genome. The latter is a […] Read more
What’s up with fungicide resistance?
Resistance is hardly top of mind for most growers, but there are signs it should be climbing the ladder
Reading Time: 6 minutes Comparing resistance in fungicides to herbicides is like listening for a whisper above the noise of a pressure washer, or you could say the threat of disease resistance in major crops is advancing at a creep, not a run, as it is in weeds. Increasingly, though, that’s a challenge facing agronomists, advisors and those in […] Read more
How about a ‘nutty’ alternative crop?
Buckwheat is garnering attention as much more than ‘just’ a cover crop
Reading Time: 5 minutes Some growers opt for their region’s top crops. It only makes sense, after all, to reduce your risks by effectively pooling everyone’s combined experience. Others, though, look for ways to be different. They want to boost their margins, and they feel they need to be entrepreneurial if they’re going to move the yardsticks. For those […] Read more
Starting anew — with a research farm
Greg and Jolene Wilson embrace the opportunity to learn — and share that knowledge
Reading Time: 5 minutes It was February 2016 when Greg and Jolene Wilson made a momentous decision to leave their jobs with the same seed-and-chemical company and start their own independent research farm. The decision was fraught with anxiety, especially with their fourth child just born in December and the looming absence of a regular paycheque. Yet the two […] Read more
Why we need a sulphur test for eastern soils
Producers in the West routinely test their soils for sulphur. Soon the East may too
Reading Time: 5 minutes For much of the past decade, a growing list of organizations have tried to build a link between soil health and soil test levels. They’ve wanted to raise awareness of the current status of soils on farms across Ontario, sometimes by pointing the way to higher productivity and profitability, and other times with a focus […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
