This week, along with their issue of Alberta Farmer, grain producers in the province will receive a new publication called Yield Alberta, a joint project between Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC) and Alberta Farmer.
Yield Alberta contains variety yield data as reported by farmers participating in AFSC’s crop insurance program. It lists varieties produced by five or more producers in each of the 22 crop insurance risk areas.
The publication is also available online in a searchable “flip book” format.
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AFSC officials note that the basis for the data is different than for the Alberta Seed Guide, where varieties are compared province-wide in test plots of equal area under equal conditions. There will be situations where there were only a few acres of some varieties, especially newer ones which tend to have higher levels of management. Those fewer acres of a certain variety might also be the ones that happened to be on better soil, or caught some extra rain from a thunderstorm.
The Alberta Management Insights (AMI) data on Ropin’ the Web allows more detailed analysis of the AFSC data. The site allows producers to enter their legal land description and compare varieties by yield and by whether they were grown on stubble, fallow or irrigation.
