Louise Carduner marks a kernel and then counts the rows during a Manitoba-Saskatchewan one-woman corn crop tour.

Corn crop estimates, the old-school way

Apps and satellite services have digitalized the job, but many still prefer to estimate crops up close and personal

Glacier FarmMedia — When it comes to estimating corn crops, Louise Carduner knows there’s an app for that. But she isn’t about to use it. “These are the nicest ears I’ve seen,” Carduner burst out enthusiastically while stripping a fat cob of corn in a field bordering the Red River just north of the U.S. […] Read more

A selection of Proven Seed corn varieties — including PV 60474RIB, due out for the 2025 growing season, at right — at Nutrien Ag Solutions' plot at Ag in Motion in July.

Select the right corn hybrids for your fields

Consider a hybrid that has the most genetic potential to meet yield goals while managing production stressors

Glacier FarmMedia — Corn seed is arguably one of a farmer’s greatest input investments each year, making the selection of the right hybrid mix an increasingly important task. “The most yield potential a crop has is when the seed goes into the ground,” says Paul Sullivan, CCA with Sullivan Agro Inc. “After that, stresses like […] Read more


Dry matter intakes, finished weights, average daily gains and gain:feed of steers fed a standard barley-based control diet were not statistically different from those of the steers fed any of the three corn diets in a recent comparison study.

Corn in western Canadian feedlot diets

The production risk still must be bred out of Prairie-grown corn before it can reach its full potential in feedlots

Corn acreage is expanding across Canada. There are about 25 acres of corn for every acre of barley in Ontario and Quebec, where temperatures, day length and moisture allow predictable corn yields and feed quality. There are around eight acres of barley for every acre of corn in the Prairies, although ambitious breeding efforts are […] Read more

soybean crops

New soybean varieties for 2025

Beans with high yields, improved standability, strong defence packages and more are on offer

Farmers in Western Canada have 15 new soybean options to choose from next year. BrettYoung, Corteva, Dekalb, NorthStar Genetics, Proven Seed, SeCan, Syngenta and Thunder Seed are all releasing new soybean varieties for the coming growing season. Note: the following list includes only brand-new releases for 2025. BrettYoung Corteva: Brevant Seeds Corteva: Pioneer Seed P003Z08E […] Read more


Corteva’s next round of soybean product launches will be enhancements on products that are already available.

Changing weather, changing varieties

With growing conditions in flux, adaptability is a consideration for soybean developers

Climate change has had a huge impact on farm operations in Western Canada for some time. Those shifting temperatures and weather patterns are also playing a key role in how future varieties are being developed. Grainews recently spoke with several prominent seed companies about new soybean varieties they have in the development pipeline and the […] Read more

A soybean crop near St. Adolphe, south of Winnipeg, in September 2023. Manitoba is estimated to have planted 1.426 million acres to soy in 2024, down from 1.595 million in 2023.

Prairie soybean crops stand to benefit in changing climate

Conditions that have curbed soy acres in the West were more market-related than meteorological

Soybeans have been at the vanguard of longer-season crops moving into the Prairie region. The soybean area in Western Canada has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. Manitoba’s soybean acreage increased from zero to over one million acres in the first decade of the 2000s. Manitoba’s soybean acreage continued to increase in the past […] Read more


Root diseases do their worst between germination and early flowering, leading to poor emergence and stunted, yellowed seedlings.

Phytophthora’s Prairie evolution

For Manitoba the ‘honeymoon’ is ending as soy diseases such as phytophthora root rot arrive

Glacier FarmMedia — The worst phytophthora infection that Laura Schmidt of Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers has ever seen was in the province’s west, just south of Souris. “Probably 25 per cent of the field was impacted,” the production specialist told attendees at a Westman Agricultural Diversification Organization field day near Melita, Man. “One in […] Read more

soybean research

Editor’s Rant: Seeds, saved

Against a changing climate, this is how we adapt

Before we all get much farther into this book, it needs to be said: Folks, we’re not trying to bright-side climate change here. It’s far beyond dispute that Earth’s climate is changing — in part due to natural factors over time such as changes in the sun’s radiation and the occasional volcano, but mainly due […] Read more


volunteer canola in soybeans

How to keep last year’s canola out of your beans

If any good herbicide options are off the table, canola will compete well against soybeans

Glacier FarmMedia — Fighting off volunteer canola in your soybean crop begins with added effort to keep your non-volunteer canola from escaping the back of the combine the year before. While there’s already been a lot of work done on the matters of volunteer canola issues and canola harvest loss, recent research from the University […] Read more

pile of soybeans

Possibilities prevail for the Prairie soy sector

Choices include the introduction of gene-editing and opportunities in the food market

Glacier FarmMedia — Canada has a small but growing soybean industry that faces some forks in the road. Soy Canada executive director Brian Innes tells growers from across the country that they should relish the options that lie before them. “Where do we want to go from here? The choice is ours,” he said repeatedly, […] Read more