1. Yes, BLS could be lurking in your fields

BLS is widespread both around the world and across the Prairies. Host species include wheat, barley, rye and triticale, and both forage and ditch grasses. Though infection typically requires moisture, even non-irrigated crops growing in drought years aren’t entirely safe, said Kutcher.

“(It’s) a bit like blackleg in canola, where you need the moisture to get spores to land. Here you need moist conditions to get the bacteria into the plant, but then it can turn dry and you can actually still find plants if you look hard enough that are infected. (Drought) doesn’t necessarily mean the disease goes away.”

BLS is an opportunist that needs an access point. It often begins as hotspots in a field that quickly spread, Kutcher said, and it can take off after wind or hail creates entry points in leaves.

2. Know what you’re looking for

Scouting is key to management. The first symptoms of BLS are streaked lesions that look like they are water soaked. Kutcher explained collapsed tissue looks like “you squished (the leaf) really hard between your thumb and forefinger.”

The lesions typically show a characteristic streaked pattern because the bacteria move via water droplets from the point of infection down the leaf. As the lesions dry, the damaged tissues will shift to chlorotic (yellowish-brown in colour and without chlorophyll) and then necrotic (dry and dead). Over time, the bacteria will also move up onto the spike, causing bacterial black chaff.

3. Differentiate between BLS and fungal disease

Producers very commonly confuse BLS with various fungal diseases. The most visible and obvious difference between BLS and a fungal disease is fungicide failure.

“Fungicides will not work so don’t get mad at your fungicide rep,” said Kutcher.

A closer look shows several additional differences. First, unlike fungal disease, BLS has no fruiting bodies. Second, in humid conditions (think early morning dew, for example), BLS will often have what look like water droplets beading on earlier-stage (non-chlorotic) lesions. These are bacterial ooze — bacteria oozing out of the leaf, ready to spread. Third, when a cut piece of bacteria-infected leaf tissue is viewed under a microscope in a drop or two of water, the bacteria will stream from the cut and cause the water to turn foggy.

The very biggest difference between BLS and a fungal disease is generation time. Whereas a spore typically takes one to three weeks to produce additional spores, bacteria divide one to three times every hour, said Kutcher.

“Imagine that you have one bacterial cell. In 24 hours, if it divides three times in each hour, you’ve got 272 (two to the power of 72). I’m not going to do the calculation but multiply two 72 times and see how many bacteria you’ve got. I don’t even know — it’s in the gazillions or something. It’s huge. So that’s why it’s quite a bit different than maybe dealing with a fungal disease in how quickly it can blow up.”

4. Plant clean seed

While BLS can overwinter in volunteers, in perennials and in residue, the disease is currently largely seed-borne.

“Right now, because the pathogen has not built up to really damaging levels on most people’s farms, we don’t know how significant the role of residue might be in future years,” said Kutcher.

Ensuring your seed lot is clear of the pathogen is critical, especially since there is currently no genetic resistance identified for BLS and no seed treatments or in-crop options available to tackle the disease. Researchers are working on all three.

Test, test, and test again your seed lots. Although there isn’t a test available to determine specific pathovars and it’s not yet known how much infection on seed becomes problematic, most seed labs can at least test for the presence of Xanthomonas translucens bacteria, which causes BLS.

“Even if you’re buying certified seed from a seed grower, you might want to be sure and get it tested again,” said Kutcher.

5. Expect this disease to show up more

There could be several reasons why the incidence of BLS is growing, Kutcher said. In addition to the fact that more people are aware of and looking for the disease, more international seed movement, more irrigation, wilder weather, and the unavailability of harsher seed treatments could all be increasing the likelihood of finding BLS.

Kutcher also said better control of fungal diseases in recent years may have an unintended effect.

“Maybe this is a bit of a consequence of doing a much better job of controlling the fungal diseases. Now we’ve got new opportunists — bacteria that have moved in. It’s just a theory but I’m tempted to think it has something to do with it.”

Looking ahead, tight rotations could prove an increasing issue as bacterial pathogen levels increase in residue. No-till management, which leaves more residue on the soil surface, could exacerbate that risk.

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According to a 2018 study by the University of Guelph, 35 per cent of farmers meet the classification for depression, 58 per cent meet the classification for anxiety and 68 per cent are more susceptible to chronic stress than the general population. Agriculture has 20 to 30 per cent higher rates of suicide than any other occupation in Canada, and farmers are four times more likely to use a firearm to die by suicide than the general public.

In 2021, the University of Guelph conducted a second agriculture-specific mental health study and found that one in four Canadian producers felt their life was not worth living, wished they were dead, or had contemplated taking their own life in the past 12 months.

“One out of four — that’s people in your circle,” said Megz Reynolds, executive director of the Do More Ag Foundation, during her “Building Resiliency Together” presentation at the Alberta Agronomy Update 2023 in early January.

Tackling mental health challenges in oneself or others can feel daunting. However, there are clear, actionable steps that one can do to support mental health, said Reynolds.

Normalize mental health

Just like physical health, everyone throughout their lives will go through phases of worse and better mental health. Unfortunately, the stigma attached to mental health — the false but lingering perception that those who suffer are “weak” — gets in the way of people seeking and accepting help. As an industry and as individuals, we must take strides toward normalizing and “universalizing” the concept of mental health.

Build understanding

Reynolds uses a traffic light model to describe mental health. A person who is in a green, healthy mental wellness zone can focus and take life’s challenges in stride, she explained. They have normal fluctuations in mood, confidence in self, and tend away from self-destructive behaviours. The green zone is where resiliency stems.

Without adequate care and attention, however, stresses can push anyone from a green zone toward the yellow, reactive phase; the orange, injured stage; or the red, ill phase. In the yellow phase, nervousness, irritability, sadness and feelings of overwhelm dominate. Orange, Reynolds said, is an increasingly unhealthy phase, where the person suffering needs intervention and support. Red is an acutely dangerous phase.

Often behavioural changes — such as withdrawal from activities, changes in socialization, sleep and eating patterns, or other areas — can indicate declining mental health. Unfortunately, however, we tend to normalize warning signs and see them as an individual’s traits or personal characteristics rather than the warnings they are, Reynolds said.

“We don’t see that restlessness or trouble focusing or quickness to react as … there’s something going on. We just say, ‘oh, that’s how Megz is, that’s her personality.’”

Ask, “What’s really going on?”

While only mental health professionals have the skills and training necessary to provide effective mental health therapy, anyone can help someone toward the first crucial steps of support, said Reynolds. That starts with identifying when there’s a problem.

If you’re concerned about someone’s mental health, get curious. Ask open-ended questions about how she or he is feeling and whether his or her stress is manageable. Validate his or her experience by listening well instead of trying to solve or fix things.

Seek out resources

Resources are a phone call or internet search away. Support can be delivered in person, over the phone or online, and much of it is available free of charge. Visit the Do More Ag Foundation for a full list of resources.

Support within your means

Because it is very easy to become burnt out providing support to someone suffering mental health challenges, create healthy boundaries, said Reynolds. That includes boundaries to personal space, emotions and thoughts; “stuff” and possessions; time and energy; and culture, religion and ethics.

“You can’t pour from an empty cup,” said Reynolds.

While it may feel selfish upholding boundaries that support your own mental health, Reynolds said boundaries are healthy and important for everyone.

“When you create boundaries, what you are doing is giving people around you the ability to do the same.”

Practice self-compassion

If you are worried about your own mental health, practice self-compassion and recognize that everyone suffers.

“What would you say to a friend who was going through the same crisis?” asked Reynolds.

She recommends using daily strategies that grow resilience and build coping skills. Practice deep breathing exercises, prayer or meditation, employ activities that force you to shift your thinking away from unhelpful thoughts, make simple, concrete choices like putting tape over a yield monitor or getting up and going for a short walk when stress gets too high. Practice forgiveness of others and of yourself.

“How do you take care of you to make sure … that you are starting from a place where you are in as tip-top shape as you could be?” asked Reynolds.

“It’s no different than hauling out the equipment prior to seeding or harvest — making sure that everything (within) your ability looks good and that there’s not a belt about to break or oils that haven’t been changed.”

You can also change the narrative. Negative self-talk is among the easiest patterns to fall into. When you catch yourself thinking negatively about yourself, actively shift to another direction of thought.

Additionally, try to reduce stress. While that is easier said than done, simple strategies can be effective. For example, when stresses build, write down the entire list of stressors including what is within and outside of your control. Then, actively cross off everything you can’t control. Taking control of the smaller list of controllable items can give you permission to release the uncontrollable items from your worry, said Reynolds.

Most importantly, seek help early when stresses build, your outlook darkens, or your burdens feel uncomfortably heavy.

“Earlier is always better,” said Reynolds.

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“Prevention is by far the best management tool you have available to you. Once clubroot shows up, you’ve got a big problem that’s not easy to manage. Any time and mental energy you can spend developing a plan to prevent clubroot from moving around is time and energy well spent,” says Michael Harding, crop health assurance lead with Alberta Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Economic Development.

Countering clubroot depends on a multi-pronged attack, with disease-resistant genetics a critical line of defence.

Agdata reports in 2018 resistant hybrids were planted in only about 20 per cent of acres. That number rose to 35 per cent in 2019, just under 50 per cent in 2020 and about 65 per cent in 2021. Not surprisingly, Alberta leads the country in planting clubroot-resistant hybrids at nearly 80 per cent in 2021. Saskatchewan followed at just over 60 per cent and Manitoba producers planted disease-resistant hybrids in about 55 per cent of total acres.

In a presentation about clubroot at Ag in Motion in 2021, Corteva Agriscience’s North American breeding lead Chad Koscielny said clubroot-resistant-hybrid uptake needs to increase further still. In fact, he said 100 per cent of Canadian canola fields should be planted to clubroot-resistant hybrids.

“You’re not going to see these spores. You’re not going to know when it’s going to come in, how it’s going to come in.… But if you grow clubroot-resistant genetics, it’s protection that’ll stop it from coming and manage that spore load.”

And companies need to support that shift too.

“We (Corteva Agriscience) were actually at the point two years ago in 2019 where we said we would not commercialize a hybrid that did not have clubroot resistance in it,” said Koscielny. “We just think it’s such an important piece for the industry going forward. We want to get in front of it, manage spore loads, keep spore loads across the West low, that as a company we only commercialize hybrids that are clubroot resistant. That’s an important piece. I would suggest it’s going to be necessary across all genetics in the near term.”

Why is it so difficult to manage?

Part of what makes clubroot so difficult to manage is its population consists of multiple pathotypes (11 in total, with three — A3, D3 and H3 — proving the most dominant). Effective, resistant hybrids carry multiple sources of resistance. Still, in areas heavily hit by clubroot, rotating resistant hybrids is as critical as rotating crops. In other regions, crop rotation is necessary but growing the same hybrid — so long as it carries some form of resistance — may be relatively safe.

“If you are part of the about 30 per cent who have never grown clubroot-resistant hybrids and are not growing clubroot-resistant hybrids … just get a clubroot-resistant hybrid. It doesn’t matter the source,” said Koscielny.

“If you go to some of those hot spot areas around Edmonton, or areas where they’ve found some potentially different pathotypes, then you want to start thinking about different resistance sources and how they affect things. Depending on where you’re at, (rotation) may be front of mind or may not pertain to you for a few more years.”

While an excellent control method, disease-resistant hybrids are only one piece of the management puzzle. Producers also need to practice adequate rotation (two- to three-year break from a host crop), effective volunteer/host weed management, frequent scouting for early detection and patch management and careful biosecurity.

“Because of the pathotype diversity that exists, resistant hybrids are always going to be at risk of eroding,” says Harding. “That tool is going to wear out if we lean on it too hard. So, crop rotation and some form of biosafety plan to prevent clubroot infesting new fields are two really important pieces. I understand that biosecurity isn’t very fun and crop rotation is tough when canola is $27 a bushel, but there are some diseases you can’t just turn a blind eye to.”

Best disinfectants

In 2020, Harding and colleagues trialled different disinfectants to determine which might be the best option for on-farm use. Of nine commercial disinfectants and three unidentified (non-commercially available) products tested, four achieved a 95 per cent or greater kill rate on resting clubroot spores. The two products with the greatest efficacy and fastest results were bleach (two per cent sodium hypochlorite), which inactivated all resting clubroot spores within 12 to 15 minutes, and Spray Nine, which was equally effective in about eight to 10 minutes.

Product efficacy is just one component of sanitation. The major hurdle for producers is the time required to adequately clean machinery, especially during the growing season’s busiest times.

“To think that somebody who’s trying to seed 3,000 acres of canola in three weeks is going to stop after every field and wash for five hours, that’s just not realistic,” says Harding. “Operational urgency comes head-to-head with (producers’) knowledge of biosafety and sanitization. And when the two things aren’t compatible, (they’re) often going to pick operational urgency over the risk that might come from not washing that piece of equipment when it moves from one field to another.”

That said, Harding isn’t telling producers to ignore sanitation outright.

“I get it if you can’t wash every single time. You can’t do everything and that’s okay. But it’s not okay to do nothing. You need to have a plan,” he says.

At the very least, Harding advises producers to identify their highest-risk field areas and management activities, then adjust management in those areas to minimize opportunities for inoculum spread. For example, treat differently fields located nearest a neighbour’s infected fields or any other notable risk factor, running equipment through them first or last, then ensuring excellent equipment sanitation before entering any other fields. Likewise, carefully sanitize any second-hand equipment bought from a location with heavier clubroot infection before driving it onto your own fields.

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Proper identification

Johnson says there are several critical factors to consider when insect sampling. First, farmers need to carefully identify what is crawling through a crop field to assess whether it’s actually a problem or not. That’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. Consider, for example, grasshoppers. Alberta is home to about 100 different species of grasshopper. A single crop field is often home to 10 or 15 different species of grasshopper — and a single forage grass field could easily host 30 species.

Usually, only maybe two of the many species in any given field will be problematic, crop-consuming pests, which makes identification critical. Other times, however, a single species can explode in numbers. For example, last summer Johnson sampled fields west of Lethbridge and in southern Alberta’s Foremost and Carmangay areas where nearly 100 per cent of the grasshoppers present were major pest species.

“There’s such diversity. It sometimes happens you have a lot of grasshoppers, but they’re really not a problem. But on the other hand, reality sometimes belies that conclusion — sometimes you can have a lot of grasshoppers and they’re all the problem,” says Johnson.

• Is your insect management plan ‘snug as a bug’ this year?
• Grasshoppers and flea beetle key pests of 2021

Number certainty

The second critical factor for effective pest population sampling is finding certainty in your numbers. Certainty depends on understanding the difference between two sampling measurements — accuracy and precision. When sampling, accuracy is how close your count is to the actual value in a specific sample area. Accuracy is important, but it’s not enough on its own since even the most perfectly counted sample can’t correctly describe an insect pest’s spread across an entire field. To account for population variance, one also needs precision: the measurement of “how sure you are that you’re right,” says Johnson.

“The problem with insects is they’re often clumped together. That means taking just a few counts is not really very good because the (sample) spread is way too wide. For precision, you generally use repeated measurements. The challenge is how many (sampling locations) do we need to do, and how wide is that spread in the counting?”

There’s no simple answer to how many samples are required, as each pest’s spread is different. However, the more (samples) you take, the better off you are, says Johnson.

Know when and what to count

The third critical factor for effective pest counting — and one of the most difficult — is knowing when and what to count.

“We need to know more than just number and temperature and things like that. We need to know the details of the life cycles; we need to recognize the stages. And we need to know something about their relationships to other things, (which includes having) an understanding of their natural enemies. Those aren’t extraneous detail. You might think, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to know, but we don’t have time.’ No. Those aren’t beside the point — those are the point. They’re absolutely paramount,” says Johnson.

In New Zealand, insect surveys now account for beneficials as well as pest species. Johnson hopes the same may eventually be the case in Canada.

Just how important are beneficials? Extremely, says Johnson, pointing to potato psyllids as an example. Johnson was part of co-ordinating a multi-year potato psyllid survey across Alberta, then across Canada. Because Alberta doesn’t use a lot of insecticide on potato fields, the fields maintain naturally high populations of beneficials. The researchers found that reasonably high populations of potato psyllid were well controlled by healthy populations of natural enemies.

“There are dozens of (natural enemies) that attack little insects like aphids and psyllids. When a psyllid comes along and lands in the field in Alberta, it’s probably killed. That’s brilliant. That’s ecological services. Free pest control. If people could try to tell these (beneficials) apart and keep an eye out for them, maybe they’d be able to harness that a bit more and help keep (beneficials) working that way,” says Johnson.

There will be curveballs

The final challenge in insect counting is nature occasionally throws seemingly inexplicable curveballs. Bruner’s spur-throated grasshopper, a major new pest in Alberta’s Peace region, is a case in point. Johnson collected samples of the grasshopper from various regions in Alberta — the Peace River region and Cold Lake in the north and Cypress Hills in the south. Collaborators sent him samples of the same species from both Wyoming and Vanderhoof, B.C. Johnson extracted DNA from all of the samples and says he was shocked to find that each region’s samples had very different DNA.

“Even when you have the same species, you can have totally different creatures in different parts of the country. We almost have to study at a local level in order to know what’s going on,” says Johnson.

That same grasshopper has another trick up its sleeve. Grasshopper forecasting is done by predicting spring egg hatch numbers based on the previous August’s adult counts. Yet, in the Peace River region, Bruner’s spur-throated grasshoppers have transitioned to a two-year cycle, says Johnson. “The population goes up, down, up down. That means the forecast is always wrong. Always.”

More recommendations

Johnson has several final recommendations. First keep a careful eye on government pest forecasting maps, which provide a good idea of what to watch for in your fields.

Next, scout. “Even if, maybe, you don’t feel you need to, scout anyway,” he says.

When you find insects in your crop, collect samples and keep good records. “Take photos with a (smartphone). Collect specimens in a bottle of alcohol. The number of times people call with questions but don’t have a sample? It happens all the time.”

And, finally, if you’re not sure what you’re dealing with, find help.

“Farmers know what they’re doing. They’re good at their jobs. I think they usually think, ‘I don’t want to bother (researchers and entomology experts) and make them identify my sample.’ But the thing is, people like me would like to, absolutely.”

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Rust risk

Because so little rust existed in-crop last year, overwintering is unlikely. Instead, rust inoculum including leaf, stem and stripe rust will blow in from the south. Inoculum from the Pacific Northwest typically infects south and central Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan fields, though spores can blow as far north as the Peace region and west-central Saskatchewan. Fields in the central to eastern Prairie region predominantly receive inoculum from the Texas to Nebraska corridor.

Kelly Turkington, a plant pathologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lacombe, Alta., says reports from both Washington State University and the Texas corridor have mostly predicted low to moderate rust risks, though late March reports indicated both leaf and stripe rust.

“It has been fairly dry, so there has been limited development. The recommendation for Pacific Northwest growers from Dr. Chen at Washington State University is that they may not necessarily need to put a fungicide on at herbicide timing but to keep monitoring crops and follow the rust risk reports in terms of whether the rust starts to develop as the crop moves into flag leaf stage and heading and so on,” says Turkington. “We’ll keep watching those source locations, especially as we move into late April and early May, to give some indication of risk for Prairie producers.”

• Will 2021’s heat and drought conditions affect this year’s disease incidence?

FHB management

Fusarium head blight (FHB) will likely be a key concern for cereal growers right across the Prairies, both because of its potentially devastating effect on cereal crops and its difficulty to control.

“Having to make the decision to spray before symptoms are evident in the crop can be extremely difficult to do and, quite frankly, can be quite stressful for the producer or crop consultant,” says Turkington.

Staying ahead of FHB depends on a multi-pronged management strategy.

“(Risk maps) can be a good starting point, but shouldn’t be the only tool a farmer uses,” says Ashley Ammeter, an agronomy extension specialist with the Manitoba Crop Alliance.

At the crop planning stage, producers should ensure a minimum two-year rotation between cereal crops, be cautious about planting cereals next to fields that suffered significant FHB infection the previous year, and — at least in high-risk areas — consider planting FHB-resistant varieties. Once the crop is growing, regularly walking your fields to be aware of moisture levels and crop staging is critical.

Bacterial leaf streak threat

Unlike FHB, it’s possible to see the in-crop development of cereal leaf spots and rusts (tan spot and septoria in wheat and scald, net blotch and spot blotch in barley). Plan a fungicide treatment strategy accordingly. Most wheat varieties on the market today have low levels of tan spot resistance, so maintaining a crop rotation with non-cereal crops (or either barley, which is less susceptible, or oats, which is resistant) is very important, says Ammeter.

Arguably the biggest new and notable disease risk for Prairie cereal producers is bacterial leaf streak (BLS), which has shown increasing frequency and severity in the last few years in wheat and, occasionally, barley.

“Producers might think, ‘That’s a southern Saskatchewan under irrigation problem,’ but it can occur anywhere in Alberta, Manitoba or Saskatchewan. We saw some issues in 2020 with a grower in east-central Alberta who, by the way, was not under irrigation,” says Turkington.

In addition to being easy to mistake for a fungal leaf spot disease, BLS is difficult to manage because control options are so limited.

“People looked at antibiotics, they looked at copper-based or other products, but the level of control has been variable and disappointing. There’s really no in-crop application you can put on for it,” he says.

That reality, together with the fact that BLS remains, at least for now, largely seed-borne in the Canadian Prairies, means careful seed selection, together with ongoing scouting, is critical. BLS requires points of entry into the plant, so cycles most easily on a crop that has been compromised by severe weather — scout carefully after thunderstorms, hail, heavy rain or windstorms.

Seedling blights, root rots and other seed and seedling diseases get less attention than above-ground, more visibly symptomatic, diseases. Fields with inconsistent germination may be compromised by Fusarium graminearum or the spot blotch pathogen, which also causes kernel smudge.

Mid- to late season, pull up plants to look for root disease, especially in fields with tight rotations.

Producers should also watch for ergot, which ebbs and flows in infection rates across the Prairies but is most common in copper- and boron-deficient soils, crops stressed at head emergence and/or uneven crop stands, says Turkington.

While predicting crop disease risk is difficult, Ammeter says producers should keep the classic disease triangle in mind: susceptible host, virulent pathogen, favourable environment. Also, looking at fields’ histories could be advantageous.

“One way a producer can try and gauge what issues they may have is to look at past field and disease history as well as any adjacent fields. That gives a good indication of what potentially might be there and what potentially could develop, especially together with the disease resistance rating of the variety you’re looking to grow as well as previous varieties,” says Turkington.

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“In much of the Prairies, we’ve had dry conditions for a few years in a row. Generally speaking, dry conditions provide poor environments for pathogens, so going into 2022, there may be a reduced buildup of pathogen inoculum and potential for some diseases may be slightly reduced in some areas,” says Ashley Ammeter, an agronomy extension specialist with the Manitoba Crop Alliance. 

That said, it’s not all good news. Whereas fusarium head blight (FHB) in cereals or sclerotinia in canola are monocyclic (infect a host and produce spores just once in a season), cereal leaf spot diseases can cycle on a crop every seven to 14 days, and even as often as four to six days depending on the pathogen and conditions. Therefore, early-season leaf spot inoculum levels have little bearing on season-long infection rates — even silaged fields can retain plenty of inoculum in the few inches of stem left unharvested. 

Also, anyone hoping that last year’s heat and drought conditions might have killed off pathogens will likely be disappointed. 

“In Australia, they have daily highs during the summer, depending on location, in the 40 to 45 C range, yet they continue to have issues with residue-borne diseases. Those dry, warm conditions we saw last year are not necessarily detrimental to pathogen survival in the infected crop residues, or in the soil itself,” says Kelly Turkington, a plant pathologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lacombe, Alta. 

In fact, exactly the opposite may be true. Even under normal conditions, the typical cereal-canola-cereal rotation is not long enough for residues to decompose and inoculum to decrease. Last year’s drought conditions will make tight rotations functionally even tighter. 

“(Last year’s) dry conditions affected disease development, but it also affected microbial activity, in general,” says Turkington. “Typically, in a dry year, residue decomposition is greatly reduced … which may mean you have an increased risk of carryover of pathogen survival structures.”

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“I don’t have words to describe how exciting it is to have our children part of our farm. It’s something I try not to even speak about publicly because it’s so emotional – that tells you how exciting it is. It’s not just that they want to be part of carrying on what we care about, it’s exciting for the agriculture industry as a whole,” she says. “However, it takes effort, commitment and a lot of communication from all of us to keep us on track as a team.”

Lynne Hilton and her husband, Spencer, together with sons, Dane and Reid, and brother- and sister-in-law Sterling and Lianna, operate a fifth-generation Alberta grain farm called Hilton Ventures. The farm includes 12,500 acres of cropland spread between Drumheller and Calgary. Alongside growing a diverse crop rotation and servicing multiple end-buyers, the farm supplies premium two-row malting barley to the farm business subsidiary, Origin Malting and Brewing Co., which is managed in part by daughter, Meleah, and son-in-law, Kyle Geeraert.

While operating a farm with extended family is a dream many farmers aspire to, multi-generational success isn’t as easy as simply welcoming one’s children home and then expecting parent-child dynamics to remain as they’ve always been. Instead, says Hilton, it’s critical that the younger generation be given space and opportunity to become their own kind of farmers.

“In agriculture, it’s common to hear farmers justifying techniques or attitudes because of tradition. But the ‘I do it that way because my dad did it that way and his dad did it that way,’ isn’t good for anyone, and it’s definitely not good for agriculture,” says Hilton. “It takes the newer generation to move agriculture forward.”

Forty years ago, Hilton was on the receiving end of that kind of freedom. In 1979, she and her husband moved onto his family’s homestead, joining his parents and, later, taking over the farm from them. Hilton’s father-in-law, Gordon, was a pioneer of no-till farming 40 years before sustainability became a buzzword in agriculture. Gordon was also progressive in his attitude toward the next generation, seeing them as true partners rather than grown-up kids. In fact, as soon as Hilton and her husband returned to the farm, her father-in-law allowed them free rein to try new technologies, improvise and take on responsibility.

Today, Hilton is pleased to offer the same to the next generation. While Dane, Reid and Meleah all left home in their late teens to pursue education and other careers, they’ve each chosen to return to the farm, bringing with them skills that are proving critical to today’s kind of farming.

“Thank goodness our kids don’t feel like they have to do it the way we did it. We encourage trial and error and the entrepreneurial spirit,” she says.

It’s important that everyone on the farm — the older generation too — feel room and support to grow the business in new and creative ways, she adds.

“We’re not stuck in a box like, maybe, agriculture was when we started. This business and this industry are whatever we dream them to be. There’s nothing stagnant about what we do — there’s new stuff and new possibilities coming down the pipe all the time.”

Communication takes practise and hard work

The single most critical component of making a multiplayer family farm work, says Hilton, is excellent communication. Every morning starts with clear communication between the Hilton Ventures management team. iPhone-based chat groups keep the operational discussions going throughout the day. For bigger-picture topics like major operational decisions, the family holds dedicated, scheduled, relatively formal, business meetings.

“We spend a lot of time talking about communication, learning about communication and relying on communication,” says Hilton. “In any operation, communication takes practise and hard work. In a family operation, you need to try even harder because those are relationships you really want to strengthen and have endure.”

Respect — intentional, consistent and practiced — is another priority.

“Everyone’s seat at the table is important. Everyone is allowed a voice and respected no matter how off the wall the idea. Everything we do is based on the awareness that we’re in this together,” she says.

Negotiating the family business dynamic also requires an active and ongoing decision to trust each other. Micromanagement simply doesn’t work, both because it’s inefficient and because it undermines the relationships critical to the family business success.

“We trust that everyone on the team is doing their best for Hilton Ventures,” Hilton says. “When we release a task to someone, the rest of us have to trust that person is going to do the task to the best of their ability, and we have to trust that person’s judgement.”

Luckily, that trust comes easily, since the family all shares a deep love for the land and business.

“There’s no fostering of passion for this business — we don’t have to work at being excited about what we do. That’s just there. You wake up and it’s there, you go to bed and it’s there. We wear it on our hearts every day,” she says.

Hilton Ventures’ vision of true success goes far beyond this season or next.

“Agriculture is a generational occupation,” says Hilton. “We’re blessed to know this farm didn’t stop with Spencer’s parents, it didn’t stop with us, it won’t stop with our kids. That’s a blessing you can’t take for granted and a responsibility, too. We’re expanding our land base and working to improve the health of our soil, all with an eye to the next generation. It’s a big window ahead of us. We want to pass on something that’s better and stronger because we were here.”

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Why it matters: Invented by a farmer for farmers, Farmbucks is a subscription-based, grain and oilseed price discovery service. Available as both an app and a website, Farmbucks collates and compares pricing from buyers across the Prairies in real time, providing a one-stop information source for producers looking to sell their grain.

“As a farmer myself, I felt constantly bombarded by pricing information through websites, apps, emails and text messages. I found I’d either skim through it really quick or ignore it outright, and it was easy to forget what I saw yesterday,” says Lynn Dargis, a grain farmer located near St. Vincent, Alta., and the creator of Farmbucks.

Invented by an Alberta farmer for Prairie farmers, Farmbucks collates and compares pricing from buyers across Western Canada in real time. Its inventor says it takes about a minute to get a picture of what the market is doing rather than hours to search out and sort through bids.

“And then, when I wanted to sell, I could spend hours and hours scouring the web and I still didn’t know if I had the information I needed to make a good decision. Often it’s hard to even know a (buyer’s) special when you see it because you get so inundated with information that it’s lost in all the clutter.”

What Dargis wanted was a way to easily compare what grain buyers were offering in her area, but that didn’t exist. With the calm practicality of a farmer, “we built it,” she says.

Farmbucks shows cash and deferred prices for all key crops in the Prairie provinces. Featuring pricing from more than 70 per cent of all Canadian Prairie grain buyers, Farmbucks is the largest grain price tracking database in Canada, according to Dargis.

The platform is capable of sorting about 100,000 bids per hour, and Dargis expects that number to continue to grow as more buyers see the value the tool offers. Dargis says while Farmbucks may have been built to help farmers, there are numerous benefits for buyers, including being able to reach a much broader audience.

“Any Joe Blow who didn’t watch a buyer’s website or wasn’t subscribed to the automatic emails now has eyes on their prices,” she says.

How it works

According to Dargis, the Farmbucks platform is pretty straightforward and easy to use. A farmer simply selects a geographic location and search radius, specifies grain types and clicks the search button. The results provide a localized snapshot of actual bids in real time, with delivery options extended out 12 months.

“It literally takes one minute to get a snapshot of what the market is doing, rather than the hours it would otherwise take to search out and sort through all those bids,” says Dargis. “I use it all the time. It saves me a lot of headaches and keeps me way more engaged in marketing.”

Dargis says in addition to the basic pricing provided directly from buyers, an expanding network of producers posts harder-to-find pricing information like time-limited specials.

“Farmbucks can offer thousands of dollars of return,” she says. “For my farm business, the return on investment of access to this kind of information is a no-brainer.”

Dargis came up with the Farmbucks concept in 2017. She says getting it off the ground involved many hours of creating and tweaking the program with computer programmers as well as hundreds of meetings with grain buyers, elevator companies and grain company executives to get them on board with the idea.

“It’s about relationships. Some buyers were receptive from the get-go. Some needed some convincing. It’s taken time but we’ve been able to gain that trust. We’re open and flexible and willing to work with buyers. And my motive is pretty pure — I’m a farmer building something for farmers,” says Dargis.

Relationships are a key aspect of grain buying and Dargis is quick to point out that Farmbucks isn’t intended to replace the personal connection and communication between buyer and seller.

“We’re kind of like a dating platform — we provide the information from the buyer and, if the farmer finds something they like, they can move forward,” she says. “We’re not eliminating the conversation between buyer and seller. We’re just making the conversation worth having.”

Farmbucks, which is available for a free, 30-day trial, costs $120 for a yearly subscription. Dargis says her goal is to keep the service affordable and of value to producers.

Dargis maintains the pandemic has worked in her favour, as buyers who might not have wanted to shift to an online platform have, by necessity, had to turn to digital technologies.

She finds farmers, on the other hand, eager to give Farmbucks a try.

“Comparing prices isn’t anything new — farmers have been doing that on their own forever,” says Dargis. “Farmbucks just allows an easier and quicker view of what’s happening for prices at any given time.”

Dargis says she’s excited to be at the forefront of what she considers a very necessary industry change.

“I hear it from people looking in from the outside all the time. They say, ‘What? Something like this didn’t exist? What the heck were farmers doing before?” she says. “(The) technology is here … and it’s available to help us. It’s time we modernize.”

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“Bacterial diseases in cereals have been around for decades, they’re usually rare and not that economically damaging. The first time I saw bacterial leaf streak was 2012 and it was only a couple of fields,” says Michael Harding, a plant pathologist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry. “Then we didn’t see it again until 2016 or 2017. But then in 2018 it was back, and there was a little more. And in 2019, more still. And in 2020, more again. Each year, it has been ratcheting up.”

Bacterial leaf streak may be an emerging disease in Canada, however, south of the border, it’s being considered “the” cereal leaf disease — even more important than any fungal disease. Some regions have fields with up to 50 per cent yield losses. The disease will continue to show up in fields until a good way to manage it is established.

Alongside increased incidence and severity, the disease is now hitting economic levels with 20 to 30 per cent yield losses reported in some fields.

The threat of this new disease isn’t limited to Canada. In recent years, it has been affecting wheat-growing regions across the United States and beyond.

“For some reason, bacterial leaf streak is emerging in multiple places right now,” says Harding. “The U.S. is a bit ahead of us — they’ve had it for maybe 10 years. And they’re ahead of us for impact as well. I’ve heard from North Dakota State that they’re seeing fields with up to 50 per cent yield loss.”

Harding says if someone had asked him about bacterial leaf streak a few years ago, he would’ve said it wasn’t an issue to be concerned about. In fact, he would’ve expected it to come and go sporadically, remaining little more than a curiosity, as that’s what has always happened in the past. Now, however, he thinks it’s here to stay.

“For us, it’s an emerging disease. But, in a lot of places south of us, they’re saying this is ‘the’ cereal leaf disease — more important than any fungal disease. That’s likely the trajectory we’re on. It’s going to get more and more common until we can come up with a good way to manage it,” he says.

Not to be confused with bacterial leaf spot

Bacterial leaf streak in Canadian fields is caused by Xanthomonas translucens pv. undulosa bacteria. It is not the first bacterial disease to strike Prairie crops. Bacterial leaf spot, caused by Pseudomonas syringae, has appeared in crops at less than economic levels for two decades or more. Some confusion still remains between the two diseases.

“Five years ago, I wouldn’t have cared if someone used the terms bacterial leaf spot and bacterial leaf streak interchangeably. But we’ve learned a lot since then. They’re two different diseases caused by two different bacteria. And if you go to a seed lab and ask for a bacterial leaf spot test, they may try to test for something you don’t actually mean,” says Harding.

Disease specifics

Bacterial leaf streak attacks cereals and grasses. While it can attack any cereal crop, the specific pathovar affecting Canadian fields appears mostly limited to wheat and barley.

The disease is spread primarily in seed, can overwinter in residue and can stay in a field through non-cereal rotations by surviving in volunteers. It can also attack certain weedy grasses, which means it can hide in headlands.

Unlike fungal spores, which can be transported long distances by wind, bacterial cells usually need to be moved on something — a tractor wheel, a farmer’s boots or, most commonly, infected seed — to colonize a new area. Large storms, which have been unusually common in the last few years, may also be contributing to the disease’s spread to neighbouring fields.

While bacterial disease spreads between fields less easily than fungal pathogens, bacteria have major advantages once they are present in a crop.

“Their population can double every day. You don’t have to start with many bacterial cells to suddenly have billions of them under the right conditions,” says Harding.

How to spot it

Because they share similar symptoms, bacterial leaf streak can be mistaken for a number of fungal leaf spot diseases. That’s why it’s important to have a good idea of exactly what to look for when scouting for the bacterial disease.

The fact sheet Bacterial Leaf Streak and Black Chaff of Cereal Crops in the Prairies, developed by Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission, Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission, Alberta Barley, Alberta Wheat Commission and Manitoba Crop Alliance, offers the following tips for spotting bacterial leaf streak in cereal crops:

• The first signs of the disease are small, oval, light-green leaf lesions, which can initially appear as water-soaked spots or streaks that are sometimes translucent. Symptoms typically start on the middle or apex of the leaf, where dew stays the longest.
• In wet conditions, the leaf lesions can exude a milky white or yellowish substance, which are masses of bacterial cells. This is something that helps differentiate bacterial leaf streak from common fungal diseases, although it’s important to keep in mind the exudates aren’t always present.
• As the disease develops, the leaf lesions come together to form irregular streaks, which rob the plant of photosynthesis. Heavy infection can lead to withering and death of leaves, starting from the leaf tip.

No in-season management tools

Unfortunately, there are no effective, economical, in-season management tools for bacterial diseases at this time. Harding expects that to change in coming years. For now, he recommends scouting carefully, saving seed only from clean fields and knowing your risk factors and risk tolerance (see more management tools here).

Though bacterial leaf streak might sound like the ultimate bad news story, Harding has confidence producers will take this new issue in stride.

“I think you’d be hard-pressed to talk to any cereal producers who haven’t had a new thing show up on their farms they’ve had to learn to manage. This is just the newest. Yes, there will be some producers who experience some losses that are hard to swallow. But it won’t be every field. This is not the end of the world. There will be some painful moments but we’re going to be fine.”

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First, he says, know what you’re dealing with — educate yourself about the disease, then scout diligently.

“This requires a shift in the assumption that every lesion you see on a leaf is fungal,” says Harding.

While fungicide failure is a common way farmers diagnose bacterial infection, doing so is poor disease management that may ultimately support fungicide resistance. Also, rolling a sprayer through a bacteria-infected field will not only help spread the disease, the added water will provide the humidity necessary for bacterial populations to explode.

Any lab (or farmer) with a microscope can easily diagnose bacterial infection by conducting a bacterial streaming test. Simply add a drop of water to a microscope slide and cut open a leaf lesion in that drop of water. If the infection is bacterial, bacteria will stream out of the lesion (see photo at top).

While diagnosing bacterial versus fungal infections is relatively simple, diagnosing the specific bacterial pathovar is far more difficult. Because the disease is fairly new to the Prairies, labs may not yet have the necessary tests in place to isolate specific bacterial pathovars.

“At this point, I don’t know who I would recommend you send samples to for testing,” says Harding. “That should change soon as labs develop the necessary testing capacity.”

Harding’s next recommendation is to do your very best to start clean. Though the bacterial leaf streak pathovar can overwinter in residue and can withstand rotation by surviving in volunteers and headlands, it’s most commonly spread via infected seed. As such, a farmer’s highest risk comes from farm-saved seed.

Harding doesn’t recommend saving grain for seed at the best of times. Rather, he recommends starting with certified, treated seed in all cases. However, as he knows many farmers do save their own seed, he recommends extra vigilance in any fields that could have bacterial leaf streak.

“If you see a bit of bacterial leaf streak in your field, you could be taking on a lot of risk if you save and replant that seed,” says Harding. “Farmers might think, ‘Well, there wasn’t much disease present last year.’ What was only a little bit of infection in a previous year can blow up into a much more significant issue if you replant that seed if the conditions are right for disease development.”

Finally, Harding recommends evaluating risk and planning proactively.

“Do your best to figure out what kind of risk both your seedlot and your field have. If you grew barley last year in a field and you saw streak in it, you probably don’t want to plant wheat there this year. If you have a field surrounded by rangeland, that may be a troublesome field and you might need to grow something else there. It boils down to risk evaluation — what can you do to minimize the amount of risk?”

One component of managing risk is doing all you can to promote crop health. While the bacteria can colonize healthy plants, it has an easier time attacking plants weakened by stress or wounded by wind, sandblasting or hail. Although controlling weather isn’t possible, give plants their best possible fighting chance by optimizing seeding date and rate, ensuring good nutrition and managing pests and weeds in a timely way.

It’s likely farmers won’t be able to depend on antibiotics to counter bacterial disease, says Harding.

“Our governing regulatory body doesn’t want the bacterial resistance issues that could come as a result of spraying antibiotics over large areas or applying antibiotics as a seed treatment. We probably won’t ever get an antibiotic registered in Canada to control a disease like this,” says Harding.

That said, certain other compounds — most notably some heavy metal products — may prove effective against bacterial disease.

“It’s not that there aren’t tools, it’s that we don’t have them registered yet,” says Harding. “I do think we’ll see steps forward with other options — it’s just a question of time.”

Harding has one final recommendation — and it may be the hardest to follow. Though it can be tempting to look for someone to take responsibility when a new disease strikes your field, Harding recommends against casting fault.

“As a plant pathologist, I watch people trying to point the finger of blame. If you want to point the finger of blame anywhere, point it at Xanthomonas translucens — the bacteria that causes bacterial leaf streak. This is a pathogen that is really good at hanging around, getting into seedlots and causing issues. It’s become selected and adapted to do this — it’s what it’s really good at. Seed growers are doing their best to manage all the diseases in all the crops they grow. This just happens to be one that we don’t have a lot of great tools for and it has caught us all a little unawares.”

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