International regulations are a complex web for Canadian producers, speakers on a late-July Keep It Clean webinar warned.

“When you think about the different crops that are represented, our major field crops, canola, our cereals and our pulses, a large proportion of those are exported,” noted Krista Zuzak, director of crop protection and production for Cereals Canada.

WHY IT MATTERS: Failing to follow the pesticide label or pre-harvest application windows sets farmers up for marketing issues and also risks Canada’s international trade reputation.

This export dependency means farmers must consider regulations beyond Canada’s borders, Zuzak added.

“Countries do have the right to set their standards and their rules that are around human and plant animal or environmental health,” she said.

Glufosinate-ammonium is a prime example, said Jeff English, vice-president of marketing and communications at Pulse Canada. While glufosinate-ammonium has generic registration for lentils in Western Canada, it shouldn’t be used due to misaligned and unset maximum residue limits, he warned.

Even glyphosate, widely used for pre-harvest weed control, carries market risks.

“We do have MRLs established in all major markets,” English said. However, the product is still flagged for caution because market acceptance varies based on end users.

Technology innovation meets trade reality

The disconnect between domestic approvals and international acceptance extends to new technologies. Zuzak pointed to spray drones as an example of innovation constrained by market considerations.

“While there are a lot of advancements in research happening around this technology, spray drones cannot yet be used to apply pesticides on field crops in Canada,” she said. “Currently, there aren’t any agriculture field crop chemicals or pesticides that have labels right now that authorize spray drone use.”

Applying via drone, besides being illegal, is thus also considered an off-label use and could pose a market risk.

Daily decisions carry global consequences

The complexity translates into detailed operational requirements for farmers.

Curtis Rempel, vice-president of crop production and innovation at the Canola Council of Canada, said that careful precision is required for glyphosate applications on canola.

“For canola staging, because of the indeterminate nature of the crop, it can be a little tricky, but we have enough research, and I think, enough visual guidelines now to really indicate that 30 per cent moisture is 50 to 60 per cent seed color change,” he said.

Farmers must also consider disease management for trade purposes.

Market-driven precaution

So far, the industry has adopted a precautionary approach where even legal products may be restricted based on market concerns rather than safety issues.

“We have our product advisory … which is annually updated, as well as our pre-harvest glyphosate staging guides and our pre harvest interval calculator,” Zuzak said.

The importance of farmer-buyer communication can’t be overstated, English said.

“We always recommend talking to your grain buyer before application, just to confirm as a fail safe.”

The post Keep it clean on pre-harvest chemical use appeared first on Country Guide.

Smaller drones designed for surveying, and crop/livestock monitoring are already a tool in many farmers’ toolboxes, but the larger spray drones are also becoming more practical in a Prairie context.

“With the spraying we’re doing on canola and other crops, we’re losing too much money on tracks, and it’s getting costly for airplanes and helicopters,” said Dwayne Bacon, a farmer from Kinistino, Sask. attending the event.

“This will be a new thing for farmers to get into,” he added.

The spray drones on display had the capacity to cover 40 to 50 acres per hour. However, while the technology is there, regulatory approval for the applications of most interest to farmers is lacking.

“The regulations are running behind the technology… which puts farmers in a tough position,” said David Koop, chief operating officer of Green Aero Tech.

Under the current Canadian regulations, spray drones are legally allowed to do such things as applying fertilizer and spreading seed, but no pesticides have regulatory approval from Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA).

“It’s not allowed, but is it being done? Absolutely. And is it the primary interest? Absolutely,” said Markus Weber, president of Landview Drones. He expected the vast majority of spraying drones were being used for applying pest control products, desiccants and herbicides. “I realize that’s not currently considered legal by PMRA, but that is what most of the people buying spraying drones are doing.”

“There are definitely people being told that it is legal to apply on their own farm by vendors that are eager to sell these drones. That is not the case, the PMRA considers it equally illegal if you’re spraying on your own farm or spraying on someone else’s farm,” said Weber.

“There are people going in with their eyes closed, but there are also people going in with their eyes wide open and they don’t have another option,” said Weber, noting that small farmers often have no other choice for applying fungicide in-crop without a high clearance sprayer.

“It will be a year full of drama, and I’m looking forward to that drama because I think that’s what it will take in this business to get things to change,” said Weber.

“Many farmers don’t realize that spraying off label with a drone is considered illegal by PMRA, and I hope those aren’t the people that are prosecuted,” said Weber, noting he expected to see some enforcement in 2024 with heavy fines a possibility.

While approval for agricultural chemicals could be years away, there was a glimmer of hope when the PMRA approved the Garlon XRT brush-control herbicide for drone usage in just the past week.

“We look forward to when we’ve gone through the process and are able to do everything,” said Koop, adding “farming’s tough up here, and guys need every single edge they can get.”

The post From AIM: Expect a year of drone drama appeared first on Country Guide.

Farmers and scientists for years have reported problems with dicamba drifting away from where it is sprayed on fields, causing damage to plants not modified to resist the herbicide.

The EPA said it received about 3,500 reports this year indicating that more than a million acres of non-dicamba-tolerant soybean crops were allegedly damaged when the chemical drifted from where it was applied. Trees and crops like rice and grapes also suffered damage, the agency said.

The number, severity and geographic extent of the incidents was similar to 2020, when the EPA tightened restrictions on dicamba use, the agency said.

“Right now we don’t know whether over-the-top dicamba can be used in a manner that doesn’t pose unreasonable risks to non-target crops and other plants,” said Michal Freedhoff, an EPA assistant administrator.

The EPA is evaluating all its options for addressing future dicamba-related incidents, Freedhoff said.

Further restrictions would be a blow to Bayer, which sells the herbicide and seeds to grow dicamba-resistant crops. The company has settled lawsuits brought by land owners who say their crops were damaged by neighbours using dicamba.

Bayer, which has said dicamba can be used safely, had no immediate comment.

Some farmers and seed companies have called for regulators to limit spraying to the spring season, before crops are planted.

Regulatory changes will probably not be fully implemented by the 2022 growing season, the EPA said. The agency said it will work with states that want to impose further restrictions, though.

In June 2020, a U.S. appeals court blocked dicamba sales and ruled the EPA had substantially understated risks related to its use.

In October 2020, the EPA under former president Donald Trump re-authorized the use of dicamba-based herbicides, invalidating the court ruling.

— Tom Polansek reports on agriculture and ag commodities for Reuters from Chicago.

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Regina-based Brandt announced Tuesday it has closed its previously-announced deal to buy the assets of GeoShack Canada — two weeks after Dallas-based GeoShack declared that “a mutually beneficial deal… has not been attained.”

GeoShack has been the “long-time exclusive supplier” for Topcon Positioning Systems equipment in Ontario, including sales, service, and rentals of GPS and other equipment for the ag, construction, survey and engineering industries, through locations in Toronto, Ottawa and London.

California-based Topcon’s agricultural products include precision seeding, spraying and harvest equipment as well as autosteer and guidance systems.

Brandt, which already had a “pre-existing Topcon footprint” in Western and Atlantic Canada and last month made a deal with Topcon for distribution rights to the Quebec market, is now “the exclusive dealer for Topcon Positioning Systems and other complimentary tools and technology for the entire Canadian market.”

GeoShack, in a separate release Monday, said the deal also makes Brandt “likely Canada’s largest geopositioning technology supplier.” Its staff in Ontario are employed by Brandt “effective immediately,” GeoShack added.

“The combination of… GeoShack’s Ontario-based team and Brandt’s national infrastructure is going to be powerful for our Ontario customers,” GeoShack president Scott Beathard said in the same release.

“We’ve worked very hard to build strong relationships and a solid operation in the Ontario market over the last 16 years and we’re completely confident that Brandt will continue to grow the business and provide unmatched value for clients in that market.”

“We’ve worked hard to make this a great deal for our survey, engineering and construction customers in Ontario and Quebec,” Brandt CEO Shaun Semple said Tuesday.

“Brandt’s 56 locations from coast to coast to coast coupled with GeoShack’s strategic locations in Ontario will position Brandt, with the industry’s largest team of experts, to provide an unmatched degree of aftersales support,” Brandt said.

Brandt’s deal with GeoShack parent Ultara Holdings also includes Inteq Distributors, a “complementary business” with a distribution centre at Exeter, Ont. providing sales and service on “an extensive selection of construction instruments, optical equipment, survey supplies and accessories.”

Both the GeoShack and Inteq brands and operations in Ontario will be “transitioned” into Brandt Positioning Technology, the company said.

Neither Brandt nor GeoShack said exactly why the deal had appeared to die late last month, nor did either company say what had happened to revive it. Privately-held Brandt did not disclose the financial terms of the final deal.

Formed in 1995, GeoShack expanded to Ontario in 2003 when it merged the Toronto- and Exeter-based businesses of Laserline Ontario with those of three other independent distributors in Texas, Ohio and Michigan.

Outside Ontario, GeoShack will still have 16 U.S. locations in eight states. –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Brandt closes GeoShack deal, locks up Topcon sales in Canada appeared first on Country Guide.

“Flea beetles are common throughout the Prairies, everywhere we grow canola. We haven’t been able to predict in advance where they’re going to be the worst or which fields. We really lack the ability to predict this particular insect,” said Keith Gabert, an Alberta agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada.

“A sheer number of flea beetles aren’t always the problem,” he said, adding the damage is most often in combination with a crop that isn’t doing well for various reasons. Those include a slow-growing crop because of drought, excessive trash on a field, pounding rain, crusting soil, and other types of pests.

That’s been in the case in Alberta with flea beetles where damage has so far gone hand-in-hand with damage caused by gophers, according to Alberta Agriculture’s latest crop report on Friday.

James Tansey, an entomologist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, said some flea beetles have been seen in that province.

“There’s a lot of discussion about flea beetles this year, but the damage level is not extraordinary. I would consider it to be on the moderate side,” he said, noting cooler-than-normal spring weather helped to delay the beetle’s development.

Crop damage created by the beetles has been in conjunction with cutworms, plus strong winds and dry topsoil conditions, according to Thursday’s crop report from Saskatchewan Agriculture.

In Manitoba, “there’s been a fair bit of canola that had to be sprayed or even reseeded because there have been flea beetles feeding,” according to provincial entomologist John Gavloski.

Though strong winds hampered spraying, canola has reached the point where it’s outgrowing the damage caused by the beetles, Manitoba Agriculture reported Tuesday.

In Saskatchewan, Tansey said there have been a good many reports of bertha armyworms, along with some reports of yellow cutworms.

“However, no reports of the usual suspects. No reports of western cutworm or redbacked cutworm, to date,” he said, noting those two could become an issue.

Damage from cutworms also required some fields in Manitoba to be replanted, Gavloski said. Traps for bertha armyworms were set up across the province’s growing areas as well.

As for diamondback moths, Gavloski said they are definitely present in Manitoba this year, but “they haven’t been much of an economic problem this far.”

In Saskatchewan, Tansey said traps have caught a significant number of adult diamondbacks in some regions. He suggested farmers keep an eye out for the moths, as they arrived early this spring.

“The direct correlation between catch numbers and resulting damage is pretty loose,” he cautioned.

Gabert said moth larvae in Alberta have been 200 to 300 per square metre. Farmers need to look for holes in the leaves of their crops as a warning sign. A few holes should mean the moths shouldn’t be much of a problem, but a lot of holes could mean trouble ahead.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

The post Flea beetle damage ‘moderate’ across Prairies so far appeared first on Country Guide.

Hundreds of millions of the voracious insects have swept across Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya in what the U.N. has called the worst outbreak in a quarter of a century, with Uganda, Eritrea and Djibouti also affected.

Authorities in those countries are already carrying out aerial spraying of pesticides, but experts say the scale of the infestation is beyond local capacity as desert locusts can travel up to 150 km in a day.

They threaten to increase food shortages in a region where up to 25 million people are reeling from three consecutive years of droughts and floods, say aid agencies.

Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said specially developed prototypes would be tested that can detect swarms via special sensors and adapt their speed and height accordingly.

“Nobody’s ever done this with desert locusts before. So we have no proven methodology for using drones for spraying on locusts,” said Cressman.

“There are already small atomizer sprayers made for drones. But with locusts, we just don’t know how high and how fast to fly.”

The swarms — one reportedly measuring 40 km by 60 km — have already devoured tens of thousands of hectares of crops, such as maize, sorghum and teff, and ravaged pasture for livestock.

By June, the fast-breeding locusts could grow by 500 times and move into South Sudan.

The impact on the region’s food supply could be enormous — a locust swarm of a square kilometre is able to eat the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people, says the FAO.

Can drones work?

Climate scientists say global warming may be behind the current infestations, which have also hit parts of Iran, India and Pakistan.

Warmer seas have resulted in a rise in the frequency of cyclones in the Indian Ocean. This caused heavy downpours along the Arabian peninsula, creating ideal conditions for locust breeding in the deserts of Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Researchers are increasingly looking to technology to help provide early warning signs and control locust outbreaks amid fears climate change could bring more cyclones.

Officials in Kenya say drones could play an important role given the limited number of aircraft.

“Every county wants an aircraft, but we have only have five at the moment and they can only be in one location at one time,” said David Mwangi, head of plant protection at Kenya’s ministry of agriculture.

“We have not used drones before, but I think it’s worth testing them as they could help.”

Existing drone models are restricted in terms of the volumes they can carry and the distances they can cover due to their size and limited battery life, say entomologists and plant protection researchers.

Another challenge for drone use in such emergencies is the lack of regulation. Many east African countries are still in the early stages of drafting laws, prohibiting usage unless in exceptional circumstances and with strict approvals.

That makes it harder to deploy larger drones, which have petrol-powered engines capable of carrying tanks of up to 1,500 litres and travelling distances of up to 500 km, and often require special approval.

Drones can also be used in the aftermath of an infestation.

“The other use case for drones is in post-disaster mapping,” said Kush Gadhia from Astral Aerial Solutions, a Kenyan firm that seeks to use drones to address development challenges.

“Governments need to know the extent of the damage afterwards. Combining larger satellite maps with smaller drone maps — which provide higher resolution images — will give more accurate assessments on the extent crop loss and health.”

— Reporting by Nita Bhalla for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights and climate change.

The post Drones to be tested against Africa’s locust swarms appeared first on Country Guide.

Fungicide applications are more likely to be profitable when the canola hits 30-40 bushels per acre, said Colleen Redlick, senior technical development specialist at BASF.

Justine Cornelsen, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, put the recommendation for economical spraying at roughly 30-35 bushels.

A thin canopy also lowers the disease risk, as it allows more air movement than a thick canopy, she said.

Weather, of course, is another factor. Humid or wet weather at the early bloom stage creates ideal conditions to launch the disease, Cornelsen said. Heat also fosters disease, she added.

Moisture in the crop canopy — whether from rain or heavy dew — is all it takes to promote sclerotinia, Redlick said.

“If you walk into your canola crop around midday and your pants are still getting wet,” there’s enough moisture for sclerotia bodies in the soil to germinate spores, she said.

If farmers are in a dry pocket and have a thin crop stand — about 20-25 bushels per acre — it’s probably not a crop that warrants a fungicide application, said Redlick.

Cornelsen, based in western Manitoba, noted they are seeing some early-seeded canola with thinner stands.

Still, crops are looking nice in many areas, Redlick said. “We have that dense crop canopy, what’s looking like good yield potential.”

In the future, farmers may have more precise ways to measure disease risk. 20/20 Seed Labs is trialing spore-detecting equipment in farmers’ fields this summer, for sclerotinia and fusarium head blight.

Rotation’s role

Rotation doesn’t play as big a role in sclerotinia development as other diseases such as blackleg and clubroot. That’s because many other broadleaves, including crops such as sunflowers and soybeans, host the disease, Cornelsen said.

Sclerotinia is not like fusarium, where specific strains infect different plants, she said. “Sclerotinia is a generalist.”

Unfortunately, sclerotia bodies can also survive in the soil for several years, she said. This means it’s usually safe to assume that sclerotinia inoculum is present.

Tight rotations don’t help the situation either, she said; canola-on-canola can increase risk, as inoculum builds.

Redlick suggested farmers consider the disease state the last time they grew canola, as it can affect disease pressure in the current crop.

“A lot of canola is being seeded on that 2016 stubble. And 2016 was a very intense year for sclerotinia pressure,” she said.

Managing the disease

Redlick suggested farmers establish an even crop stand of five to seven plants per square foot. Excessive seeding rates can lead to more lodging, she said.

Farmers should also protect the crop from early-season insects and diseases, she said. For example, flea beetles can cause more stand variability, which affects fungicide staging.

Blackleg can also cause lodging, so farmers should use a resistant variety or use fungicide if the disease is an issue.

Farmers can choose varieties with sclerotinia tolerance, Cornelsen said, but in high-risk years, they should still spray.

Fungicides are generally registered for the 20 per cent to 50 per cent bloom stage. Cornelsen and Redlick both suggested aiming for earlier than 50 per cent.

Sclerotinia infects the plant through the petals, which catch between the stems and branches when they fall, causing the infection. At 20 per cent bloom, none of the petals have dropped yet, and the fungicide is coating the petals, Cornelsen said.

“Once you move to 50 per cent, you’re already starting to see some (petals) fall down. So you might have an early infection.”

At 20 per cent bloom, farmers will see about 15 open flowers on the main stem. Cornelsen said this usually happens four to six days after flowering begins, but the recommendation is to pull plants and count flowers.

By the time the crop as a whole looks really yellow, it’s likely at 50 per cent bloom, Redlick said. At that point farmers will see more than 20 open flowers on the main stem, plus flowers starting to open on the side.

There are times when an early application won’t be enough. In 2016, canola crops had a very long flowering period, Cornelsen said, and that led to early and late infections, and two applications often proved to be more effective that year.

There are also conditions when farmers can skip the fungicide. In 2017, Cornelsen saw early symptoms of sclerotinia in areas, but dry weather kept the disease from turning into a yield-buster.

But even with dry weather, one rain can raise the risk, she added.

“It’s very environmentally-dependant,” Cornelsen said. “I think that’s what makes it so frustrating to deal with.”

— Lisa Guenther is a field editor for Grainews and Country Guide at Livelong, Sask. Follow her at @LtoG on Twitter.

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The threshold for applying an insecticide to control soybean aphids is 250 and rising. The “rising” part is important says, Cassandra Tkachuk, production specialist with the Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers.

“I hope farmers aren’t spraying unnecessarily,” Tkachuk said in an interview.

Economic injury to soybeans doesn’t occur until there are 670 soybean aphids per plant, she added. The 250 per plant and rising threshold is meant to give farmers enough time to arrange to spray a field if necessary.

Farmers should be scouting their soybean fields not only to see if the aphid population is rising, but also whether beneficial insects are present, If they they can help control soybean aphids without applying an insecticide. Insecticide is an extra cost and will kill the beneficial insects.

Tkachuk also urges farmers to contact local beekeepers who might wish to move nearby hives before a field is sprayed.

There are many insects that prey on soybean aphids. The Aphid Advisor app available for iPhones and BlackBerry can help farmers determine whether they should be spraying soybean aphids or not.

The five main beneficial insects (photos are on the app) are as follows:
1) Lady beetles (adult and larvae)
2) Lacewings (adult and larvae)
3) Hover fly (Syrphid larvae)
4) Minute Pirate Bugs (Orius), (adults and nymphs)
5) Aphidoletes

Manitoba Agriculture Pulse specialist Dennis Lange has seen soybean aphids in different parts of the province this season and echoed Tkachuk on not spraying unnecessarily.

“Just because your neighbour is spraying doesn’t mean you have to be spraying,” he said. “Farmers need to be scouting their fields and looking for soybean aphids, especially under the leaves.”

The post Some soybean aphids showing up so scout your fields appeared first on Country Guide.

Whether they’re applying a fungicide to a wheat field or corn crop, or whether they’re engaged in seeding a cover crop, aerial applicators are still a novelty on most farms, even as the circumstances necessitating their use are seemingly on the rise.

In spite of the glamour associated with flying, aerial applicators are facing the same cost-efficiency challenges that growers are contending with. Farmers may believe they’re in tough times these days, grappling with higher costs for seed, fertilizers, inputs, pesticide and fuel, but the pilots running these planes and ’copters are just as challenged in their operations.

As different as their machines are, aerial applicators are united in one other aspect: row-crop farming doesn’t make up a large portion of their annual income, despite the perception that more farmers are calling for their services. Still, it’s hard to discount the demand that does come from farming practices.

For most fliers, the bulk of their business comes from the forestry industry, with most of that taken up by seeding or reseeding operations throughout northern Ontario and even into Quebec and Western Canada. Agricultural applications may account for only 30 to 40 per cent, depending on the location of the service provider.

Paul Zimmer of Zimmer Air Services, near Blenheim, Ont., says it’s getting harder to justify some of the conditions that go with the farming portion of his business, something he doesn’t like to concede after 40 years of providing aerial application services.

“Right now, I would say that because of the fungicides that growers put on their corn and bean crops, we’re seeing a bit of resurgence in aerial applications,” says Zimmer. But that upsurge hides a difficult reality, he says. “We’re being regulated and really pushed out of business.”

The same crop-protection hoops and hurdles confounding farmers are taking their toll on Zimmer and many of his colleagues. The regulatory oversight imposed by the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) is one of the biggest factors. Most products registered for in-crop use now require an aerial application permit process, and according to the MOECC Permit Application Guide for Aerial Application of Agricultural Pesticides, it can take up to 45 business days (nine weeks) to gain approval for a request for a permit.

“If that isn’t a way of saying, ‘You’re not going to do it,’ I don’t know what is,” says Zimmer. Even at two to three weeks, working as he does with an MOECC pesticide specialist who he knows, a farmer facing an outbreak of fusarium head blight can quickly run out of time. “If you have a crop dying from a fungus or it’s being drowned out by excessive rain, can you wait three weeks for a permit? And it’s no different than the neonic situation: this government is not agriculture friendly.”

It’s not even that it’s a national strategy, adds Zimmer, noting that there is no such permit approval process for Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta.

Same technologies, different realities

Zimmer uses many of the same technologies that farmers are using, such as GPS. There are also new advances in spray equipment such as flow control (if he slows his flight down a field, the flow adjusts accordingly) and automatic shut-offs for the end of a row.

But from an agricultural perspective, investing in those technologies is a tough call some years.

“There are advances going into our machines, but I’m never certain of how much I’m going to do since we’re basically the last resort,” says Zimmer, referring to both spray and seeding applications for farmers. “With seeding, that’s very hit and miss — we might not do that for two or three years. Yet having said that, over the past two to three years, there seems to be a resurgence and we seem to be getting a lot of calls about cover crops.”

Despite such an upturn in interest and the potential for more business in agriculture, Zimmer points out that most farmers who are calling about seeding cover crops often want it done sometime during the late summer, between mid-August and early September. But that’s the time of year when he has packed up his helicopters and headed north.

“So we’re struggling with whether we should keep a machine around to do that, but again, seeding isn’t a big money generator for us,” says Zimmer. “It’s a lot more work because you’re hauling heavy loads, plus you have to have guys on the ground to help the process.”

Best hope may be cover crops

In spite of the associated costs and the logistical headaches of answering the demands of growers for cover crops, Paul Hodgins believes that’s where there’s a greater potential. As president of General Airspray Ltd. of Lucan, Ont., he has also seen an increased demand for his services in air seeding cover crops.

Aerial applications for Hodgins generally took a hit with the recession in 2008. He notes that it often takes two years for the forestry industry to react to such an economic downturn, which is what happened this time too, with the crunch coming in 2010. About that same time, he started getting calls about spraying fungicides on corn as a growth regulator. His first was in 2007, and originally, the farmer didn’t like his asking price.

“Then BASF started calling, and said, ‘We still want you to put about a dozen plots in: we’ll pay you to spray it and the farmer will buy the chemical,” recalls Hodgins. “So we ended up doing 35 plots for them between Lucan and Exeter, and the next year, we did 12,000 acres.”

Then the use of fungicides in corn tailed off, at least where Hodgins was concerned, and he put it down to a drop in commodity prices. Yet in subsequent years he has seen the demand increase with higher grain prices.

“I have one big customer who says, ‘I will drive through my wheat, and I’ll drive through my beans, but I will NOT drive through my corn,’” says Hodgins.

Of late, Hodgins has been fielding more requests and doing more fact-finding about cover crops, much the same as Zimmer. For Hodgins, there’s been interest in ryegrass as a cover, as well as oilseed radish, and even some more elaborate blends which include crimson clover. Just as cropping plans and practices differ from farmer to farmer, so can the demand for a cover crop.

Like Zimmer, however, Hodgins recognizes that call for the air seeding of a winter cereal comes only as a last-minute decision by growers, often made in spite of any higher operating or seed costs. Some growers value maintaining their rotations, while others who are more concerned with growing conditions heading into winter may opt for another year of soybeans.

Size and distance

In that sense, Hodgins believes that farm size is playing a great role in calling in an aerial applicator. As the size of the operation grows, so does their skittishness. They’ve got more acres to cover, yet they often also are better at appreciating the financial penalty if they don’t get the job done.

Another factor that plays a significant part of the decision-making process — for the flying services — is tied to travel, and how far will they go to do business. Given the tighter margins and demand for keeping their costs manageable, both Zimmer and Hodgins opt to do business as close to home as they can. Although it’s true that Hodgins needs a runway from which to operate while Zimmer can put one of his Robinson R44s on a flatbed truck and haul to a job site, there is a limit to how far Zimmer will go.

“In agriculture, as long as I can make the numbers work, we’ll go,” says Zimmer, who went to New Liskeard and planted a few thousand acres of winter wheat last fall. “But when things are busy, I’m going to stick closer to Kitchener, west and maybe a little north. We don’t do too much the other side of Toronto, but if there’s a call for it and it can make economic sense, and we can put our helicopters on our trailers, then we’ll go. That’s why we truck these around: it’s hard enough to compete and these machines are so expensive on a per-hour basis, even compared to an airplane.”

From a logistics perspective, Hodgins only needs a runway close to a farmer’s field. There, the dealer or farmer can park a water truck and load it along with the fungicide, seed or the fertilizer.

So, which is better, a helicopter or a fixed-wing? Zimmer and Hodgins agree that each has its strengths: helicopters don’t require a runway but airplanes can perform slightly tighter turns to get coverage on unique angles in a field.

Both also provide good coverage, including below the canopy.

“We get good penetration from our AgCat,” says Hodgins. “A ground sprayer’s going at five miles an hour, whereas we’re getting 110, so we have the speed of the spray being driven into the canopy.”

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