A new course by the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association delves into all these components and more.

“The High-Performance Forage course will be available early in 2026 to producers, agronomists and technical teams interested in improving the quality of Canadian forage available for market both domestically and internationally,” according to Kaylee Healy, the CFGA’s communications and knowledge technology transfer logistics manager.

The course covers a range of topics designed to give participants in-depth knowledge on the different aspects of growing high-performance forage across Canada, including examining regional challenges.

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This 12-module course is designed for producers who are already growing forage and who are ready to take their product to the next level to take advantage of existing and new markets. Participants can expect to walk away with an in-depth understanding of forage production and practical next steps to improve the quality of forage produced by their operations.

The course is being developed with the help of forage specialist Dan Undersander from the University of Wisconsin, who brings knowledge of more than five decades of advancing forage production.

His expertise spans all aspects of forage management, including production and harvesting methods for hay, haylage, baleage and silage, as well as forage analysis and grazing. His work is supported by other subject matter experts from across Canada and the United States.

“We’ve been building this information for the last three years with Dr. Undersander,” Healy said.

“It’s building on a series of workshops held back in the early 2000s. They were in-person workshops geared towards agronomists and technical experts in forage to help develop higher-quality forage across Canada.”

What’s in the course?

The course takes a ground-up approach, starting with planning growing systems, defining the rations and yield potential. Planning the system helps identify goals, determine labour and management costs and determine crop goals. It is the foundation for the rest of the course and includes elements to help producers track and assess performance.

It’s important to understand the seed mix, including seed genetics, which will grow best in a producer’s region based on climate, soil fertility and other growing conditions.

The module also looks at seeding rates and seeding strategies.

Fertility is an important component of growing quality forage. It begins with understanding the nutrients and density required to match the seed selection made.

Emphasis on soil testing illustrates the need to understand soil pH and existing nutrients, plus soil additives including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, calcium and magnesium. This module also explores the use of liquid and solid manure and touches on the impact of salinity.

Seed management looks at different tillage systems designed to facilitate proper seed placement and other seedbed preparation considerations, while weed control covers topics such as assessing weed pressures and challenges. It specifically looks at when weeds cause a problem, how to manage weeds through pre-seeding and post-seeding, mechanical needs for weed control and when spraying may be required.

Disease and pest management dives into understanding the pressures that these problems place on crops. The module looks at how to identify problems and manage them.

The course offers a diverse look at harvesting and harvest systems, beginning with targeted harvesting time. This is a natural segue into matching forage quality to animal requirements and targeting moisture levels at harvest.

The harvest module also looks at minimizing field losses, selecting the best mower for your operation, the use of conditioning systems, racking, preservation and making baleage.

Making forage is only part of the equation. The course also features modules on storage including packing density, bunk filling rates and other storage considerations to minimize loss.

Producers feeding out forage will appreciate the module on feed-out management, which touches on topics such as maintaining a fresh bunk face, designing storage systems and engaging a nutritionist. It closes with tracking forage quality and building rations.

As the course winds down, participants will gain a better understanding of tracking and performance, including what records to keep, why producers should keep them and how to inventory quantity and quality in storage.

The initial plan, the tracking and the records help producers better understand the cost of production for an operation. Producers walk away from training with a template to develop the cost of production for their own operation, looking at the cost of harvest and storage losses and the overall cost of forage production.

The course closes with discussion on sustainable management, greenhouse gas impacts and management strategies to help producers with soil carbon sequestering and determining manure storage and application methods for their operations.

Producers will complete training with a plan on how they can improve the quality of forage they produce.

“The course presents information using a combination of written and video materials and provides resources and action items so producers can take the techniques and strategies outlined in the material and apply them to their farm,” Healy said.

Why now?

The CFGA has been working with Undersander and other experts for several years to create this training series based on the demand from producers and extension specialists to improve the quality of forage produced in Canada. It has been long recognized that forages are essential to maintaining the health of cropping systems in addition to being an important crop on its own.

Growers face a number of challenges regionally, including disease, pests, drought, excessive moisture and varying rates of soil fertility.

A pilot three-day workshop offered this past March in Manitoba underlined the desire for knowledge and the need to build new supports and connections for growers.

“With experts planning retirement or moving into other roles, the CFGA recognized the opportunity to capture this knowledge now and assist with transferring it to the next generation of producers, agronomists and technicians who are looking to improve Canadian forage,” Healy said.

“This free online course will be available through the CFGA’s learning management system in both English and French early in 2026.”

The new High-Performance Forage course joins other online educational opportunities provided by the CFGA, including Advanced Grazing Systems with sub-courses on dairy and brown soil zones.

The post New high-performance forage training program to launch in 2026 appeared first on Grainews.

The pending commercialization of one of its hybrids is a milestone for the Manitoba Crop Alliance (MCA), the commodity group that represents the province’s sunflower growers. The organization has invested in its own sunflower breeding program. In October last year, the MCA said it had put licences for two Manitoba-developed hybrids out to tender. U.S. farmer-owned co-operative CHS has opted in for one of those hybrids, the MCA has confirmed.

Why it matters: Locally developed genetics could make confection sunflowers more attractive to growers.

A limited amount of seed is expected to hit the market for growers to access for the 2026 growing season.

It’s a major milestone for the group’s breeding program. It marks the first time a homegrown confection hybrid will be broadly accessible to Prairie growers.

“It’s a win for farmers and for the MCA,” said Katherine Stanley, the group’s research program manager for special crops.

Road to seed market

The MCA has registered two hybrids so far, after more than a decade of research and farmer investment: MCA 359239 and MCA 359306. CHS has chosen to produce MCA 359239, marketing it under the simplified name MCA 359.

The second hybrid is still available if other seed producers show interest but, for now, Stanley is just thrilled to have reached this milestone.

“We’re super excited to see one of our hybrids that performs really well under Manitoba conditions making it out into the field,” she said.

CHS’s sunflower division, based in North Dakota, will handle seed production and marketing. While seed volumes will still be scaling up next year, Stanley said interest from Manitoba producers has already been strong.

Made in, and for, Manitoba

Confection sunflowers are a crop that has long struggled with outdated genetics. The most widely grown confection hybrid in recent years has been Nuseed’s 6946 DMR. It was registered more than a decade ago and developed primarily for U.S. conditions. It also lacks herbicide resistance traits.

Manitoba is Canada’s biggest producer of confection sunflower seeds, but in recent years, through a combination of marketing and agronomic challenges, the edible varieties have taken a backseat to sunflower varieties produced for oil.

The new MCA-developed hybrid is designed to change that. MCA 359 carries Group 2 herbicide resistance and early maturity. The breeding program also focused on disease tolerance and wind resistance — traits that matter in Prairie fields vulnerable to lodging and disease pressure.

“Manitoba farmers who are interested in growing confections, now have a crop that can perform for them,” Stanley said. “That’s our No. 1 outcome.”

According to MCA performance trials published in the Seed Manitoba 2025 guide, MCA 359 yielded 109 per cent compared to the check variety, Nuseed’s 6949 DMR. It also matured about two days earlier and stood roughly two inches taller than the check, offering growers a small but practical edge.

Unlike oil-bound sunflowers, confection crops are also sold with minimal processing. Appearance and flavour are critical.

“There’s a lot more things that need to be considered,” Stanley said. “Even things like the seed colour and the number of stripes, whether it is black or gray-black, never mind all the flavour profiles and the per cent nut meat.”

Because Manitoba’s confection sunflowers are typically shipped to North Dakota for processing and often blended with U.S. product, Canadian hybrids must visually match their American counterparts. That adds another layer of complexity to breeding work.

MCA’s goal, Stanley said, was to give farmers a variety that could compete agronomically, while meeting the strict aesthetic standards of the confection trade.

With MCA 359 poised for commercial release, Stanley said the alliance will keep refining its breeding efforts as long as farmers see value in the crop.

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Cover crops offer a lot on paper, but timing remains a major roadblock for Prairie farmers. Recent trials done through Manitoba’s Diversification Centres suggest there may be a workaround — at least for wheat.

Jessica Frey, an applied research technician with the Parkland Crop Diversification Foundation and a University of Manitoba masters student, led a multi-site project looking at cover-cropping legumes with spring wheat. The goal wasn’t to produce a lush forage stand, but simply to get legumes established early and growing alongside a cash crop without compromising yield.

Why it matters: Getting cover crops to fit better into the Prairie growing season could help farmers build soil without sacrificing productivity.

“We’re not going for massive gangbusters growth in that stage,” she told farmers during a field day at the Prairies East Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Diversification Centre at Arborg, Man. “We just want to see that the cover crop is there. That is the goal.”

Solving a Prairie problem

Frey pointed to a 2020 survey of 281 Prairie farmers that found 71 per cent reported benefits from cover cropping — from improved soil health and biodiversity to less erosion and a reduced need for fertilizers and pesticides. But getting them established remains the major challenge. In fact, that same study said the top two reasons farmers are reluctant to plant cover crops are the short shoulder season and limited moisture in the fall.

“We have a short growing season,” Frey said. “We’re sometimes working with 90 frost-free days. We can’t count on that fall window to get a cover crop in the ground after our first harvest.”

Seeding the cover crop at the same time as the wheat is meant to solve that. Instead of waiting for conditions that might never come, the legumes get heat and moisture during the one part of the season Prairie farmers can count on.

In Frey’s trials, she adjusted the seeding rates to give the legumes a fighting chance. The wheat was seeded toward the lower end of the recommended rate, while the cover crops were seeded at the higher end of the recommended rate to compensate for their deeper placement in the same row.

“That gives the cover crops access to early season heat and moisture,” she said.

The cover crop treatments included four legumes — alfalfa, red clover, sweet clover and white clover — plus a non-legume cover crop control. A wheat-only plot served as the main control for comparison. This allowed the research team to track both legume establishment and any agronomic impact on the wheat.

The research was conducted at four Manitoba diversification centre sites in 2023, and repeated in 2024 at two of them. In total, five site-years generated data on wheat and cover crop establishment.

Wheat: No penalty, even in drought

Across those site-years, including the dry 2023 season, wheat performance for all treatments matched the wheat-only control. Yield, protein and biomass remained unchanged.

“There was no impact on the wheat compared to just the wheat-only control,” Frey said. “Even in drought years, that impact on the wheat was not there.”

Cover crop establishment was variable, depending largely on moisture. Alfalfa tended to produce the strongest stands across sites. White clover thrived at most but not all locations. Some failures occurred in extremely dry plots and one herbicide misapplication.

Still, the legumes were consistently present, and that was a win.

“Once it’s there, you have options,” Frey said. “It acts as that nutrient bank. You’re injecting nitrogen into the system.”

Weed biomass data is still being processed, but Frey noted the cover crop appeared to help suppress weed pressure.

Canola: management issues and moisture limits

The second half of the study aimed to let the legumes overwinter, then manage the biomass in spring and seed canola into it.

The same cover crop treatments were carried into the canola phase, using Clearfield canola so the biomass could be terminated chemically in early spring before seeding. The goal was to control the legumes, then evaluate how canola would establish and perform in the residue.

Here, the system stumbled. Cold, wet conditions at some sites delayed canola emergence, leaving a narrow spray window. The cover crop got ahead.

Arborg was the only site to produce a canola harvest, but even there, it wasn’t great.

“I wouldn’t claim it was an amazing canola yield by any means,” Frey admitted.

She repeated the phase this year at Roblin using mowing and Liberty Link canola. That mechanical approach showed better early establishment, but data isn’t yet available.

Unlike the wheat phase, moisture appeared to be the limiting factor in canola, which speaks directly to one of the main reasons Prairie farmers hesitate to try cover crops in the first place: water competition with the cash crop.

Moisture was also front and centre in related work by Manitoba Agriculture cereals specialist Anne Kirk. She designed her winter wheat trial to closely follow Frey’s approach, and the two researchers stayed in contact as the projects progressed.

Kirk ran her trial at Arborg using the same legume treatments seeded with winter wheat, adding a spring broadcast treatment as well. The biggest contrast between the wheat and canola phases came down to soil moisture.

She explained that canola has small seeds and requires a moist, firm seedbed. Deep-rooted legumes took the limited moisture first, both in fall and again before spring seeding.

“The big story here would be moisture,” she told the field day crowd. “The canola was seeded, and it just sat in the ground for a very long time because the moisture was quite low,” Kirk said.

Overall, while the wheat phase offers a promising path forward, the canola side of the system still needs work.

Lessons for today

The wheat phase did exactly what Prairie farmers have long hoped for: it established cover crops without sacrificing yield or quality. That opens new possibilities for integrating legumes while managing risk.

“We can pull this off without taking a hit economically,” said Frey.

Still, no one should expect lush forage under the wheat canopy, nor rush to seed canola into living legume sod without a refined management plan.

“If your goal is an amazing forage field, then don’t do it my way,” Frey said, but added that it could be helpful for some mixed farms. “It might be just enough to give you that week or two in the spring that you need before turning them out onto your regular pasture.”

Next steps

Understanding how much nitrogen the legumes contribute to a following crop was one of the main goals of phase two. Frey collected plenty of nitrogen data, but the canola struggled to establish well enough for her to draw clear conclusions from it — at least for now.

“What I don’t have yet is the story behind it,” Frey said of her nitrogen data.

Both projects will continue refining biomass control and evaluating the right crop following wheat.

But on the wheat side, the message is already clear: cover-cropping legumes can work here.

“We have a really unpredictable spring and fall,” Frey said. “Seeding together gives that cover crop access to the moisture and to the heat when it’s actually there.”

The post Cover crops seeded with wheat show no yield penalty in Manitoba trials appeared first on Grainews.

Quattro Ventures in Alberta is one of very few. Emily Ford, senior agronomist at the joint-venture farm where mint is cultivated for the essential oils market, knows of only one other Prairie farm producing this specialty crop.

Ford said this presents some unique challenges for agronomists like herself.

“When you are growing other specialty crops, let’s say potatoes in southern Alberta for example, you usually have a wealth of peers and experts to phone up when something looks funny or you have a problem,” Ford said.

Why it matters: If a given crop isn’t often commercially grown on the Prairies, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was never possible.

With mint, there isn’t a network of people Ford can readily turn to for help. She noted some agronomic information is available through organizations, such as the Mint Industry Research Council in the United States, but much of what Ford understands about commercial mint production has been largely self-taught.

“I didn’t know anything about mint five years ago until I started working at Quattro,” Ford said, adding trial and error has been an important aspect of the learning process.

“If you are given the opportunity to work with a crop like this, you just dive in, read as much as you can, lean on the people who know something about it, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You have to work with farmers to figure it out together, because mint is so different from other crops that are really commonly grown,” she said.

“I think agronomists become agronomists because we’re curious people who want to find out how things work, so I can say this has been a fun challenge.”

Community curiosity around this novel crop has been strong as well. Ford noted a lot of producers in the area have visited Quattro Ventures so they could get a first-hand look at commercial mint production.

“We do a lot of farm tours, but so far no one has taken the plunge and tried it.”

Located in the Bow Island/Burdett area in southeastern Alberta, Quattro Ventures comprises five family farms cultivating a diverse array of crops across dryland and irrigated acres. This includes dill, another speciality crop grown for the essential oils market, as well as cereals, seed canola, peas and potatoes.

Ford helps run the 3,000-acre operation as part of the farm’s management team, which includes both owners and non-owners. Quattro Ventures was founded by the Palliser Triangle Marketing Group, a collection of forward-thinking farmers intent on exploring new agricultural marketing opportunities. The idea behind it was to unite the strengths of individual family farms while leveraging the group’s collective knowledge, resources and markets.

Essential oils are highly concentrated, aromatic liquids extracted from plants that capture the plant’s fragrance and flavour. The spearmint and peppermint essential oils produced by Quattro Ventures go into such things as candy, chewing gum, toothpaste and cosmetics, while the farm’s dill essential oil is used for dill pickles.

According to Ford, India and the U.S. Pacific Northwest are the main areas that produce mint for the essential oils market. In Ford’s estimation, Quattro Ventures has grown to the point where it now produces 25 per cent of North America’s mint oil.

One reason more Prairie farms haven’t followed Quattro Ventures’ lead could be that commercial mint production isn’t for the faint of heart.

Mint is a perennial rhizome crop that propagates through rhizome cuttings, not seed, so specialized agricultural machinery is required for planting and harvesting. Specialized processing equipment is also needed to extract and distill the oil from the harvested mint leaves.

Ford acknowledged some farmers may shy away from the risks associated with producing an unfamiliar crop such as mint, given the hefty expense of getting everything up and running.

“It’s a big investment. You need to have specialized equipment and facilities to process the oil and get it to market, and it’s very expensive.”

Area well-suited for mint

According to Ford, Quattro Ventures’s location in southeastern Alberta has several attributes that make it a prime area for producing high-quality mint oil.

One is linked to where it is situated in the Canadian brown soil zone. “Because of the soil types we have here, we produce a certain oil that meets quality standards the flavour houses or brokers are looking for with purity, menthol content, aroma, all of those sorts of things.”

Growing conditions in the area are another major plus. Mint requires long, warm summer days and cooler nights for optimal oil production. Quattro Ventures fits the bill, with an extended growing window of 124 to 132 frost-free days and average crop heat units in the 2,400 range.

As well, mint is a thirsty crop requiring reliable, consistent moisture, especially during peak summer heat. Quattro Ventures relies heavily on irrigation infrastructure provided by the St. Mary River system — something that’s particularly important within the drought-prone Palliser Triangle region where the farm is located.

“You can’t grow mint without irrigation,” Ford said. “At peak crop staging with the hot, dry weather, you’re looking at an inch to an inch and a half of water a week.”

Planting and field management

Each mint production cycle at Quattro Ventures starts with disease-free tissue culture plantlets the farm gets from a specialty nursery. The plantlets aren’t planted in fields right away but are placed in nursery blocks where they serve as a source of clean rhizome rootstock.

“Once those plantlets are established, the next spring we go back and dig up some of the rhizomes from that clean stock. We use a modified potato digger to dig up them up and then they’re planted into a production field.

“You only need one inch of a viable rhizome to create a mint plant. The first year we really focus on establishment and then after that, we’re looking at production and are harvesting a crop every year.”

The mint fields, once established, will remain productive for up to five years, Ford said, adding “because it is a five-year crop, there is no tillage on that piece of land for five years.” She noted this kind of tillage reprieve provides a nice break for fields, particularly since Quattro Ventures grows some heavier tillage crops, such as sugar beets and potatoes.

“I think that’s really beneficial for soil health, not just for the mint crop but for all the other subsequent crops we grow on that land.”

According to Ford, mint is a heavy feeding crop for fertilizer, which is applied to Quattro Ventures mint fields in the spring. Typically, each acre receives 120 to 150 pounds of nitrogen, along with 100 pounds of potassium and 80 pounds of phosphorus. Because mint doesn’t grow in rows, fertilizer is distributed through broadcast applications.

In recent years, Quattro Ventures has started using environmentally smart nitrogen products for its nitrogen applications in mint fields. Ford said the slow-release fertilizer allows nutrient availability to be better matched with crop uptake. It has also meant fertigation, something the farm has practiced in the past, is no longer needed.

The mint at Quattro Ventures is typically harvested in late July to early August. Swathed crops are chopped with forage harvesters and loaded into specialized tubs, which connect directly to steam lines at a central distillation facility at the farm where the essential oils are extracted.

Crop residues left over from the distilling process serve a very useful purpose, Ford said. They spread the “mint plugs” on the fields to increase organic matter and remediate areas that are erosion-prone.

“It is a nice soil addition, with very similar characteristics to well-composted cattle manure. And there aren’t any restrictions on what fields you can put it on because it’s clean. It has been steamed to 300 degrees, so essentially all the weed seeds are not viable.”

Weed, disease and pest management

According to Ford, weed control in mint is critical, especially after it is first planted in a production field.

She noted because mint is a broadleaf crop, there are limited options for broadleaf weed control. As a result, Ford said, “we really focus on the first couple of years trying to get weed free. Usually by the fifth year, it’s a tough time to try to control those broadleaf weeds.”

Careful herbicide selection is also essential because of rotational considerations for the following crops. “Re-cropping restrictions mean there are only certain chemicals we can apply in the first couple of years of a mint stand.”

As far as disease threats go, powdery mildew is an important one to watch for in mint because it is a heavy canopy crop. Powdery mildew is a fungal infection that can cause mint leaves to wilt and fall off.

“It is imperative to maintain those leaves, because the leaves are where the oil is. You don’t want them on the ground,” Ford said, adding early fungicide applications are used as a preventative measure at Quattro Ventures to help protect against powdery mildew.

Ford noted verticillium wilt is also on the farm’s radar since it has been a problem for mint producers elsewhere, particularly in areas when mint has been cultivated for much longer than it has in southeastern Alberta.

“We have been lucky not to see it here. That’s something you have to really watch out for, because there’s nothing to be done about verticillium wilt once it shows up.”

According to Ford, disease control efforts are hampered due to very few products with minor use registration being available for a specialty crop such as mint. It’s a big reason Quattro Ventures always ensures it is sourcing disease-free mint stock.

Ford said while mint is generally resistant to major insect pressure, spider mites can emerge during hot, dry spells. They can harm mint plants by sucking the oil out of the leaves.

However, spider mites usually only appear near the field edges, Ford noted, adding the bugs avoid moisture so they can be effectively controlled with irrigation.

The post How a southern Alberta farm maintains mint condition appeared first on Grainews.

They discussed their recent policy papers on what Canadian agriculture needs for economic stability and productivity in a recent webinar.

Courtney Anderson, Dislène Sossou and Andu Berha highlighted the financial benefits and challenges of adopting soil conservation practices, the impact of climate change on agricultural production and how federal and provincial farm insurance programs are — or are not — mitigating these effects.

Impact of land values

Anderson took a high-level look at the economics of farmland use — including returns from farmland compared to land purchase and rental costs — and what rising farmland values means for the longevity of the sector.

Overall, Anderson reaffirmed that Canada’s farmland is currently in “long-term decline” from development and other pressures, that farmland rental rates have caught up to farmland value appreciation in most areas of the country, and the appreciation of the value of most farmland alone “does not provide a high-enough all-in discount rate of return for most investors.”

Farmland rentals, says Anderson, offer a strong potential additional return on investment to those owning farmland, but come at considerable risk and uncertainty for the renter. Speaking during the CAPI event, he says statistical data indicates rental costs siphon some 90 per cent of operator income, leaving only 10 per cent to cover all other production expenses. This, he says, indicates strong competition in farmland rental markets.

Given the competition for farmland, Anderson argues a better understanding of what future generations will require to invest in farming — whether through renting, purchasing or other methods of farm investment — is needed. He also points to policies from different regions across the country, which have restricted land ownership, as possible models by which farmland can be conserved in other areas.

What drives adoption of new practices

Sossou’s research focused on what drives the adoption of more environmentally minded production practices in vegetable systems, something she says is ever more important as consumer demand for domestically grown produce spurs growth in the vegetable sector.

Because vegetable production often necessitates the intensive use of inputs, tillage and other elements of production mechanization, says Sossou, soil health degradation is a growing concern. The adoption of soil conservation practices helps remediate these issues, while often reducing production costs for the farmer.

However, many vegetable farmers are still reluctant to adopt soil conservation practices due to financial constraints, implementation challenges, access to information, market access, non-targeted support and general negative perceptions of some practices.

These perceptions are not necessarily unwarranted, given that economic and environmental goals don’t always align on the farm. Sossou details how “there is a potential tension between economic sustainability (via succession planning) and environmental sustainability (via Environmental Farm Plans),” adding policymakers or advisors “need to balance both objectives when designing conservation programs.”

Policies promoting the adoption of soil conservation practices should also account for farmer crop specialization, including recognition of the soil nutrient requirements for the vegetable in question.

Additional recommendations to increase the adoption of effective soil conservation practices include expanding technical assistance and market access for vegetables demanding particularly high levels of soil nutrients, enhancing supply chain integration and connecting farmers with wholesalers or processors preferring vegetables grown with soil conservation practices, designing irrigation and incentives policies for a balanced land-use strategy and implementing policies to sustain an effective workforce for labour-intensive crops.

Different farms, different insurance programs

Berha’s work highlights how a one-size-fits-all approach to production insurance programs is increasingly costly, as well as ineffective at promoting change on the farm.

When the climate is good — that is, when poor and extreme weather has not been the norm — Berha says farmers tend to specialize in a few high-performance crops in pursuit of high returns. This occurs at the expense of greater crop diversity, which, while often being less profitable overall, helps protect farmers in the face of an unfavourable climate. Diversification only happens after the onset of poor conditions.

There is thus “a clear trade-off” between sustainability and productivity, says Berha. The imbalance in that trade-off is costing farmers and insurers a lot of money, with Canadian farm insurance payouts jumping from $1.9 billion in 2018 to nearly $5.7 billion five years later — a cost surge that has occurred alongside more extreme weather.

A means of reducing insurance costs involved is complementing current business risk management programs with “resilience built in.” This would include promoting climate-resilient crop choices and farming practices, as well as addressing different risks faced by farmers in different regions.

Berha identifies four additional means of improving insurance programing. This includes a guarantee of prompt payouts to meet cash flow needs, scaled coverage to better match losses — special mention is also given to the upward adjustment of coverage caps and top-ups to reflect greater risk during more extreme weather — simplified paperwork processes, and greater transparency through the publishing of an annual business risk management performance dashboard, which includes reporting payout times, approval rates and regional uptake.

The post Improving agriculture’s economic and environmental sustainability appeared first on Grainews.

Urea fertilizer, with nitrogen-use efficiencies nearing 60 per cent, is the dominant form of nitrogen (N) fertilization on the Canadian Prairies today.

In the project, granular urea was tested against two “alternative” granular fertilizers used in Europe and Australia — ammonium sulphate nitrate (ASN) and calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) — to see whether they could provide Prairie spring wheat growers with a viable alternative source of N, said UAlberta’s Kris Guenette, the study’s corresponding author.

WHY IT MATTERS: Facing a policy focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizer, Prairie farmers need to know whether other N delivery systems offer anywhere near the same crop yields.

Also in the mix were a couple of N stabilizers (also called inhibitors), including DMPSA (3,4-dimethylpyrazole succinic acid) and urease inhibitor NBPT (N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide). Both were measured for yield.

Ultimately, none of the alternative treatments showed any more than marginal effects on wheat yield, although the stabilizers performed their primary jobs of reducing N loss from the soil as nitrous oxide (N₂O) and preventing the loss of urea through volatilization, explained Guenette.

The emissions results — although not quantified — are in line with trials conducted in 2024 by Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) that showed nitrification and urease inhibitors are effective at reducing N₂O emissions in winter wheat.

“The cool thing about it is, as soon as you add any form of inhibitor, you’re pretty much reaching that 30 per cent reduction in N₂O emissions right off the hop,” said DUC winter wheat specialist Alex Griffiths in a 2024 Manitoba Co-operator story, referring to the federal government’s 30 per cent reduction target in N₂O emissions on farms by 2030.

“We don’t need to cut our nitrogen rates by 30 per cent. You can just apply an inhibitor, and you’re probably going to be good.”

However, Guenette urged producers to weigh the costs of N stabilizers from both agronomic and environmental perspectives. He noted that their effectiveness is highly situation-specific and depends on factors such as precipitation, soil type, fertilizer strategy and crop genetics.

“They may have an environmental benefit, but they may not always have an agronomic benefit,” he said, adding growers shouldn’t expect N stabilizers to make a significant difference in spring wheat yield.

The setup

The project was conducted at two Alberta sites: Lethbridge (on irrigated dark brown chernozem) and Barrhead, 120 kilometres northwest of Edmonton (on dark grey luvisol).

The site choices were not random, but rather based on farming density and regional access to AAFC facilities, explained Guenette.

An unfertilized control was used in the first five treatments to compare results with ASN and CAN. Barrhead trials used Canada Western Red Spring (CWRS) wheat, while Lethbridge used Canada Western Amber Durum (CWAD), reflecting local cropping patterns.

Fertilizer rates at Barrhead were 89 pounds of nitrogen per acre and 36 pounds at Lethbridge.

The next four treatments compared untreated urea to urea treated with either a 3,4-dimethylpyrazole succinic acid (DMPSA) nitrification inhibitor, an NBPT urease inhibitor, or a dual urease and nitrification inhibitor.

Each treatment received phosphorus in the forms of 17.8 pounds of phosphorus pentoxide (P₂O₅) per acre in the seed row and the same amount plus 13.4 pounds of potassium oxide (K₂O) in the mid-row band.

Few differences emerged between the fertilizer formulations, the inhibitor treatments and the wheat classes when it came to shoot N uptake. Similarly, total N uptake was much the same across treatments and soil types.

When averaged across wheat class and site years, there were no significant yield differences among any of the fertilizers, including untreated urea.

Deep-banding the secret weapon?

The lack of difference between treatments may have resulted from deep-banding fertilizer. This practice tends to reduce some volatilization and N-losses even without inhibitors. This is why urea and the alternative fertilizers performed similarly.

So how deep should fertilizers be banded? That was beyond the scope of the study, said Guenette, but generally-speaking, the deeper you band, the less risk you have of losing N fertilizer. He added that the ideal banding depth varies based on the farmer and their equipment. Some go as deep as four inches, others as shallow as two.

“It really depends on how deep they want to go.”

However, deep-banding has its risks.

“The further you place that band of fertilizer away from your seed or seed root, the longer it may take for that root to interact with it and therefore become available for the plant.”

Guenette is admittedly disappointed that nitrogen loss reduction — often viewed from an environmental perspective — was outside the scope of the project. He said there’s currently no clear economic incentive for producers to adopt practices that reduce nitrogen loss. He added that if environmental stewardship carried measurable value, producers might view these efforts differently.

“Perhaps this could be looked at in a different light instead of through the producer lens of purely agronomic outcome.”

— with files from Don Norman of Grainews

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Speaking at a July 29 field day in Carman, Man., research agronomist Kristen MacMillan said she’s in the final year of a study examining how much nitrogen dry beans can fix from the atmosphere through nodulation and whether lower fertilizer rates could be viable for Prairie conditions.

“We’re still waiting for the final results of this study, but almost 50-per-cent reduction in the nitrogen rate would have really important economic benefits for farmers,” said MacMillan.

That finding could come at an ideal time. Manitoba farmers planted a record 207,000 acres of dry beans in 2025 — including a record-high 123,000 acres of pintos — the highest dry bean acreage in two decades.

Dry beans are in the same legume family as peas and soybeans, well known for fixing their own nitrogen out of the atmosphere. Dry beans, though, are worse at it.

“The main reason is that it’s non-selective as a host, so it’s fairly promiscuous with the rhizobia in the soil, and that reduces its efficiency in fixing nitrogen,” said MacMillan.

That reputation has led to full fertilizer programs as standard practice. But MacMillan’s current trials aim to test whether modern cultivars — grown in Manitoba soils that have seen decades of pulse production — might be capable of fixing more nitrogen than previously thought.

Two earlier studies that MacMillan worked on showed that dry beans did respond to fertilizer, but not at economically optimal levels. MacMillan’s earlier work also looked at inoculants, which varied by product.

‘Lazy’ plants

A summary of dry bean nitrogen and nodulation on-farm trials from the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean growers said that yield increased in small plot pinto and navy beans at high nitrogen rates of 140 pounds per acre.

“When considering the return on investment, it was statistically the same for all rates of N application, meaning the economic optimum rate was to not apply any N fertilizer at all,” the summary noted.

It also cited black and pinto bean trials at Brandon, Melita and Carberry from 2021-2022, which found no yield change with different fertilizer rates, with the exception of uninoculated black beans in Melita in 2022.

The same resource noted that fertilizer had an inverse relationship with nodulation. The more fertilizer they put on, the less nodulation they saw.

Plants “become ‘lazy’ and rely on soil nitrogen alone,” the grower group said.

The focus of MacMillan’s current research is to show how much atmospheric nitrogen dry beans are fixing under Manitoba conditions, and whether that amount changes depending on nitrogen rate and inoculation.

One set of plots is measuring nitrogen fixation across 12 popular dry bean cultivars using a method called “natural abundance,” which tracks nitrogen isotopes. A second trial is testing nitrogen fixation under different fertilizer rates, with or without inoculant.

“The hypothesis that’s being tested is whether we can move from a full rate of N fertilizer down to a low rate and still maximize yield,” she said.

Dry beans in Manitoba typically yield around 2,000 pounds per acre, which translates to about 90 pounds of nitrogen. MacMillan said literature suggests N fixation could provide up to 20 to 40 per cent of that requirement — a meaningful contribution, especially when combined with residual nitrogen already in the soil.

In addition to saving farmers money, less nitrogen applied means less nitrous oxide — a heavily-scrutinized greenhouse gas — is released into the atmosphere.

“Environmentally, this could lead to less nitrogen-intensive cropping systems when it comes to growing dry beans,” she said.

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The trials at the Ian M. Morrison Research Station in Carman, Man., come at a critical time. BLS isn’t new to Canada, but infections are being reported with increasing regularity across the Prairies.

“Bacterial leaf streak has been detected in Canada since the 1920s but we are seeing the re-emergence of it. And it’s worsening rapidly,” said Dr. Shaheen Bibi, a plant pathologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba in Dr. Dilantha Fernando’s lab. Fernando and his BLS team lead the Carman trials.

Identification can be tricky

BLS often goes unreported because it mimics other cereal leaf diseases. Farmers may mistake it for tan spot or, in later stages, confuse necrotic lesions with natural senescence. Accurate diagnosis often requires lab expertise or a trained eye. That diagnostic challenge makes scouting all the more important during the growing season.

The disease is caused by Xanthomonas translucens, a bacterium with two pathovars of concern in Prairie cereals: pv. undulosa, which infects both wheat and barley, and pv. translucens, which primarily infects barley.

On leaves, the disease shows up as long, translucent streaks — hence the name translucens — that begin as small water-soaked lesions. Under wet conditions, lesions may exude a milky or yellow ooze — a key diagnostic feature that separates BLS from fungal leaf spots such as tan spot. As lesions mature, leaves lose photosynthetic area, and the flag leaf in particular, the part of the plant that contributes the most to grain fill, can be severely damaged.

Severe infections destroy photosynthetic tissue, and anecdotal reports suggest yield reductions of up to 50 per cent. The potential for loss is especially high because damage peaks at the flag-leaf stage.

But yield isn’t the only economic concern. The same bacterium can also infect heads, causing a symptom known as black chaff, which can reduce marketability by downgrading grain due to discoloration. Infected seed may also carry the pathogen, creating problems for seed use and resale.

Black chaff appears as dark streaks or bands across glumes and awns, sometimes alternating with healthy green tissue in awned varieties. In severe cases, glumes may turn completely black, and exudates can give heads a water-soaked appearance.

Conditions matter

BLS thrives during warm days, cool nights and in moist environments. Wetter years tend to bring more problems than drier ones, and areas that are naturally arid are less prone to outbreaks.

“Last year at Carman, we saw more of it because it was so moist,” said Bibi. “This year, not so much.”

Moisture also drives how the disease moves within fields. Rain splash, wind-driven rain, irrigation and even mechanical activities can help spread bacteria from plant to plant. On the Prairies, irrigation is a particular concern, especially in southern Alberta, where irrigated acres are more common. That’s one reason Fernando’s BLS team uses sprinkler irrigation on their Carman plots: to create the humid canopy conditions that allow the disease to develop.

The bacterium is primarily seed-borne but can also survive in crop residue, volunteers and perennial grasses. Because it is bacterial, standard fungicides, whether seed treatments or foliar sprays, are ineffective.

Management today

With no resistant varieties thus far in Canada, and no chemical options, growers are left with cultural practices and careful scouting to reduce risk. To help farmers manage the threat, a group of Prairie cereal organizations, including SaskWheat, SaskBarley, Alberta Wheat, Alberta Barley and the Manitoba Crop Alliance, released a joint fact sheet in 2023 outlining key practices and scouting strategies to reduce inoculum levels and slow the spread of BLS.

Start with clean seed. Infected seed is the main source of inoculum. If BLS is suspected in a field, especially when black chaff is visible, harvested grain should not be used for seed. Certified seed is not routinely screened for Xanthomonas translucens in Canada, so growers are encouraged to ask about testing or send samples to independent labs.

Stretch the rotation. Extending the break between cereal crops to more than two years helps reduce inoculum in residue. Volunteers and grassy weeds should be controlled to cut down on secondary hosts.

Scout carefully. Begin at herbicide timing and continue through senescence, with extra passes after storms that might wound plants. The best time to distinguish BLS is at the flag-leaf stage, when translucent streaks are most visible. Avoid walking fields in wet conditions, since the disease can spread on boots and clothing.

Manage irrigation. In irrigated areas, water management can reduce risk. Practices such as irrigating in the evening when the canopy is already wet with dew, letting the canopy dry between sets, and avoiding unnecessary irrigation can shorten the hours of leaf wetness that favour bacterial spread.

Assume susceptibility. No Prairie varieties are currently rated for resistance to BLS. Some U.S. wheats (Glenn, Faller, Prosper, Bolles) and barleys (AAC Connect, AAC Synergy) have shown partial resistance, but local screening is still underway. For now, farmers should plan as though their chosen variety is susceptible.

Research directions

Fernando’s BLS team is running controlled trials in Carman with inoculated seed and irrigation to create conditions for infection. The aim is to better understand how much seed infestation translates into seedling infection, how moisture drives spread, and whether genetic resistance is possible.

Fernando’s lab is tackling several angles at once. One project is characterizing Canadian isolates of the bacterium — collecting strains from different provinces to see how diverse they are and how that diversity affects disease severity. Another is mapping quantitative trait loci (QTLs), regions of DNA linked to traits such as disease resistance that breeders might eventually use. The team is also testing biocontrols that have shown promise in the greenhouse.

Most notably, they’re looking at cereal genes already known to confer disease resistance. The Manitoba team is focusing on two in particular — Lr34 and Lr67 — named for the leaf rust (Lr) resistance they provide. Both are broad-spectrum, meaning they protect against more than one disease. Lr67, for example, has shown some resistance to fusarium head blight and is most effective in mature plants.

Early trial results suggest Lr67 lines may show more resistance than Lr34. It’s too early to call, but the work could point to varieties with at least partial protection against bacterial leaf streak.

For now, clean seed, long rotations, careful scouting and mindful irrigation remain the most practical defences against a disease that is re-establishing itself across the Prairies. But resistance research offers a hint that the playbook could expand in the years to come.

“What we want to see is whether there are any lines showing resistance to BLS that could be used in breeding programs in the future,” said Bibi.

Article updated Nov. 6, 2025 to replace photo at top.

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Infected wheat kernels, known as fusarium-damaged kernels (FDK), can be visually assessed by a producer, typically appearing chalky white, shrunken and sometimes covered in pink or white mycelium. But other cereals aren’t as easily assessed, such as barley, which has a hull that hides the infection.

The visual assessment is also subjective, labour intensive and misleading, as contaminated kernels can appear healthy.

Sheila Andrade, a PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan, has been working on developing a method of detection to ease the struggles of producers, agronomists and industry.

“DON is measured by chromatography and immunological methods, which is costly, destructive and also time consuming,” she explained during her presentation at the Pan-American Light Sources for Agriculture conference.

The disease affects kernel development, and both DON and FDK are downgrading factors, with FDK often used as a proxy for DON contamination. However, those correlations are not consistent, since contamination is also influenced by the genotype isolate and the time of kernel infection. Because of this, Andrade has been studying an alternative method of detection.

Andrade is working with what she describes as “a synchrotron-based x-ray phase-contrast computed tomography” — essentially using powerful x-ray imaging at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). Her objective is to measure the physical traits of fusarium-infected wheat kernels, link those traits with DON contamination, and compare how fusarium symptoms differ between durum and bread wheat.

Once these parameters and the images are understood, they can be used to inform machine-learning technology to create an easy disease detection method.

Research process

There were four varieties of durum wheat and five varieties of bread wheat varieties used in the research. Each variety was planted in field nurseries and inoculated with Fusarium graminearum at the flowering growth stage. When they reached maturity, they were harvested and then went to CLS for Andrade’s research.

The wheat spikes were placed in test tubes, and scanned in batches of six using the biomedical imaging beamline at CLS. This beamline enabled Andrade and her team to non-destructively view the wheat spike from different angles and digitally reconstruct the kernels in 3D.

From there, the test tubes were separated and individual kernels were isolated. Researchers were then able to measure traits used to identify FDK, including total area, length, width and volume, as well as shape factor, density, grey mass and thickness.

“After we finish all the image processing and the segmentation, we wanted to know how the kernel was contaminated and the level of contamination of each individual kernel,” Andrade said.

However, to determine the contamination, the team had to manually thresh the wheat spikes and label each kernel to its corresponding image analysis. In total, they manually threshed 725 kernels and classified them into two groups: 369 DON-free and 356 DON-contaminated kernels.

This information was analyzed to learn how the parameters would shift between contaminated and non-contaminated. Andrade explained that a significant difference was found between the groups for most parameters, except for length. The DON-free kernels had high values in most traits, except for shape factor, as expected.

There were also significant interactions with the wheat type, where the physical differences were more evident in bread wheat.

Machine-learning model

By using the imaging from the synchrotron beamlines, Andrade determined that average size, density, shape, length and grey mass were the most important features in determining DON-contaminated versus DON-free kernels.

“We have some interesting results showing that, for example, density and gray mass and sometimes shape differ between the infected and non-infected kernels,” she said. “This why we got this significant difference, and why we use those parameters to train a machine-learning model.”

Using this information, Andrade and her colleagues tested four different machine-learning models. They trained the models with 70 per cent of their data set and reserved the remaining 30 per cent to test accuracy. One model performed best, correctly classifying about 80 per cent of DON-contaminated kernels and 82 per cent of DON-free kernels. However, it still missed about 20 per cent of the contaminated kernels.

Going forward

This was a “first step project” for Andrade. Its goal was to learn if X-ray images would be an effective way to separate kernels. So far, it’s been a success.

She said the next goal would be to use a portable machine to benefit wheat breeders, who have a lot of materials to analyze, and could eventually be used by agronomists, farmers and the industry.

A machine of this sort would be a game-changer in disease detection, helping better identify DON-contaminated kernels that may slip beneath the radar and cause a potential food security issues.

Andrade hopes that such a machine would be available in the next three to five years, based on machines similar to those used in the lab right now. The team already works closely with members of the engineering department, who developed a lab-level, portable RGB camera. She said she’d like to have something similar but for X-ray.

Potentially, there may be a need for combining more than one image type, such as X-ray and conventional photographic images, since colour can be important for identifying FDK.

Another part of the project is expanding to other cereals. Andrade has recently begun imaging and analyzing barley and will move on to other crops once that work is complete. Barley is a priority since the hull hides infection, leaving breeders, producers and industry “blind.”

“They don’t know what’s happening, so they need to test,” she said. “If we can use the x-ray image to predict DON, it will be really useful for them, because they don’t have the visual assessment to guide them.”

The method is proving helpful for wheat, and Andrade believes it could be even more valuable for barley. Once the key parameters are clear, much of the process can be applied to other cereals. Those should be quicker to image and segment than wheat, though still time-consuming. For now, Andrade has 1,500 samples — each with 100 seeds — from the past three years still waiting to be analyzed.

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This methodology was developed and first used commercially at Cornell in 2006, incorporating chemical, physical and biological properties to gauge soil health. Since then, this technique for measuring a comprehensive mix of indicators of soil health has been modified to fit locations around the world.

As the soil health lab manager at the Chinook Applied Research Association in Oyen, Alta., Zavala received the green light to modify Cornell’s technique for Alberta conditions, developing the Alberta Soil Health Benchmark.

“I learned from them everything I needed to put together here,” says Zavala.

Grading on the curve

The Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health technique and the Alberta Soil Health Benchmark analysis provide test results with handy scores that assess soil using a familiar format — a score from 1 to 100. As well, colour codes make it easy to spot where an intervention or practice change might have the biggest effect.

Zavala and her research team developed scores for each measure based on data collected from 2018 to 2023. During that period, 11 of the 12 applied research and forage associations across Alberta collected soil samples for this project.

Using these results, they calculated the mean and standard deviation based on a standard normal distribution for each test result. Then a scoring curve was developed for each indicator. These scoring curves enable the lab to provide test results that show where your soil fits relative to other soil in Alberta. After analyzing the data, Zavala developed separate scoring curves for coarse, medium and fine soil across the province.

As an example, through these tests, the average soil respiration rate in Alberta was found to be 1.22 mg CO₂ per gram of dry-weight soil. If your soil’s test result is 1.22, your score will be 50 out of 100, right in the middle. If your score is above average, you’ll get a score above 50.

Using these curves, each test result has been converted to a score from one to 100, with 100 being the best. Then each test result is colour-coded for convenience. From worst to best, the scores and colours are:

• under 20: red, very low
• 20-40: orange, low
• 40-60: yellow, medium
• 60-80: green, high
• >80: blue, very high

With the colour-coding system, users can quickly see their biggest soil problems and consider potential solutions. Measurements shown in red are constraints, areas where improvement may increase soil health and ultimately yield. Measures in green and blue are areas where growers can sleep easy at night.

A curve for every test

For most soil health indicators, more is better. A higher test result means a healthier soil and a better score. In these cases, curves are generally shaped like the curve in Figure 1.

For some indicators, such as the amount of manganese or iron in the soil, a lower test result is better. As you can see in Figure 2, curves for indicators where smaller results are better are drawn in the opposite direction, so lower test results bring higher scores.

Sometimes the best test result is in the middle. These cases are shown in Figure 3 as an optimum curve. Soil pH is an example of a measurement in this category. Test results that are very high or very low would return a low score. A score in the middle of these extremes would be in the green zone (high, meaning “good”).

The Alberta scoring curves will change over time. As more soil tests are done, the new data will be built into the scoring curves so farmers can have more accurate results.

Meanwhile in Saskatchewan

To the east, a team led by Kate Congreves, a professor in the department of plant science at the University of Saskatchewan, is working on a Saskatchewan Soil Health Assessment Protocol that includes scoring functions similar to those developed for the Alberta Soil Health Benchmark.

There are subtle differences in this protocol. Rather than creating scores based on smaller regions of the province, the Saskatchewan protocol is developing scoring curves by soil type: brown, dark brown and black. Saskatchewan researchers noted that soil class generally influenced most soil characteristics.

For example, the Saskatchewan report mentions soil organic carbon. Generally, a soil organic carbon of three per cent would be a “good” score in Saskatchewan. But in Saskatchewan’s black soil zone, soil organic carbon levels tend to be higher. In the black soil zone, a soil organic carbon of three per cent would rate as “poor,” with a score between 20 and 40 on the scale of one to 100.

And the rest of the country?

In the spring of 2024, the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry released a report on soil, “Critical Ground: Why Soil is Essential to Canada’s Economic, Environmental, Human, and Social Health.”

This report includes 25 recommendations, the first of which is that soil be designated as a strategic national asset. Many other recommendations centre on encouraging soil stewardship, using tools like tax credits and carbon markets.

There are many ways to evaluate soil. This report recommends that the federal and provincial governments develop a consensus on how to measure, report and verify soil health.

Zavala would like to see comprehensive soil health testing in place across the country.

“If the government doesn’t see the importance of what we have done in Alberta and look in more detail at how beneficial this can be, we aren’t going to understand what’s happening in our soil,” she says.

“We need to see the soil in a different way.”

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