The banquet had just let out. It was 10:30 p.m. Many people were still mingling and networking and catching up with people they haven’t seen in a while. I was spent and I had to emcee the next morning’s keynote.

There was nobody in front of me as I walked to the elevator. I was too spent to carry a conversation and I’m generally too chatty not to try, so I was pleased, if not excited, at the prospect of riding the elevator by myself.

Rick Mercer was also waiting for the elevator. I saw him when I took that hard right. Mercer had just finished speaking at CropConnect 2019, a conference I helped plan and one where Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers and many other commodity groups have their AGMs.

“I enjoyed your talk,” I said.

“Thanks,” said Mercer.

I was scrambling. I was going to the well for something smart and engaging to say, but coming up empty. The elevator, for the short distances in needs to travel, was quite slow.

“So… How does CropConnect compare to FarmTech?” I asked.

FarmTech is similar to CropConnect, but is significantly larger. And it takes place in Edmonton.

“They don’t really compare,” said Mercer. “FarmTech is just so huge. The room that I spoke in was so large.”

He then started to look at his phone.

Mercer did not come across as rude. Instead, his demonstrably aloof actions were a direct match to my poorly thought-out question. I knew this. It didn’t bother me.

I opened the door to room 543, brushed my teeth, set my alarm and fell asleep thinking about the speaker I needed to introduce, Darby Allen, Fort McMurray’s fire chief during the 2016 event that saw the whole city evacuated and a state of emergency declared across the entire province.

Allen’s story was powerful. And then a few hours later I got to meet Kevin Cheveldayoff, the general manager of the Winnipeg Jets.

After each of the AGMs I attended over the course of the conference, I was struck and rattled by the same thought: the ag industry is driven by those who show up.

Growing attendance

I see the regulars at various AGMs. It’s great. But they represent a small segment of the farming population.

It’s through people such as Mercer, Allen, Chelveldayoff and Michael “Pinball” Clemons that we hope to attract more farmers to such events.

If you, as a farmer, attend the AGM of the commodity group to which you pay a check-off, and you raise a concern or question, you have my word that it will get taken into consideration.

Every year, we condense the previous year’s operations into brief reports and we brace for criticism. Often, it’s the same people getting up to speak.

I appreciate catching up with my friends and colleagues at these events, but I really do want to see new faces. I want to see farmers emboldened to attend and take the mic. I want to see farmers who are visibly nervous — ones who’ve never raised their hands before — ask a question of their association. I can’t overstate how meaningful that would be.

The agricultural industry is used to hearing from the outspoken and is in many respects driven by a vocal few.

This industry is yours to direct. And it’s an industry constantly scouring for new people to take directorships and more people to take an active interest in steering an industry that is constantly moving and constantly in need of direction.

The ag sector will always have a space for you. It’s waiting for you to take the mic. And we’re a friendly, welcoming bunch. Get involved. You may meet Rick Mercer in an elevator along the way. If you do, I hope you’ll come up with better things to say than I did.

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Why blockchain, you ask? Well for us crypto currency-types who have long left the tedious and bulky business of bundling up a few million paper dollars,(from the feel of it, I don’t think it is even paper anymore)… but for us who can’t be bothered to stuff $10 bills in a packsack, protecting my transaction through a blockchain is the only way to go.

I would write more on this but my 3D printer just finished creating my artificial intelligence head set and I have to go explore an alternate universe. (I don’t really use artificial intelligence. I have artificial hips, but beyond that I get by with a meagre allotment of God-given smarts.)

If you haven’t guessed it already, I confess I am beyond being mildly lost in much of this new technology. I get stumped at the first two questions that come to mind: 1. What is it that we are talking about? and 2. Even if I faintly understand it, how would this improve my life?

Such was the case in late January when I attended the annual Farmtech Conference in Edmonton and my editor made me go to the session on New Frontiers in Grain Trading — Blockchain. Let’s be honest I haven’t completely got my head around all the nuances of the old grain trading frontier. I don’t think I was ready for this.

First, I was a few minutes late getting to the session and all the 125 chairs were already taken by young and older farmers. I had to stand. But it confirmed in my mind that this was obviously important as all these farmers were there to learn how to more effectively use blockchains as they grow crops and livestock. I’d better get with it.

The presenter was Elaine Kub, a U.S. expert in grain marketing who is still involved with the family grain and livestock farm in South Dakota. She is a grassroots person, with an engineering degree as well as a masters in business administration and very knowledgeable in all aspects of grain trading. And she did an excellent job of explaining a blockchain in fairly down-to-earth terms.

So this is what I learned. If you are a person using crypto currency (digital currency) to buy rice from or sell wheat to China, for example, you can conduct the transaction through a very secure internet website mechanism known as a blockchain. It is a multi-layered, tamper-proof website that is so secure that it makes Fort Knox look like a free-stall barn with turkey curtains. Once the transaction is on blockchain there is no messing around, or reneging — the deal is cast. And that is good to know.

I still have trouble with some of the fundamentals. I don’t really understand why crypto currency is something I need in my life. It is digital currency, which as Elaine Kub explained anyone can create. As long as I can convince you, for example, that I have a secure million dollars in my bank you can buy shares in Lee’s crypto currency and then if you need $50,000 to buy a new truck, you can transfer that digital currency to the seller — through a blockchain, of course. There is a certain amount of faith involved — you have to have faith that I do have the money in the bank like I say I do.

Kub says there are between one and two thousand different crypto currencies out there. Bitcoin — created 10 years ago — was the first, and is the largest, but there are hundreds more. These digital currencies had a heyday a couple years ago as people rushed to invest and buy shares in them. But the bubble burst or at least started leaking. A share or value of a Bitcoin started out at less than a penny, over the years eventually peaked at nearly $20,000 in late 2017 now it is worth about $3,400. Bitcoin company was worth about $30 billion in early 2018 and now it is worth about $2 billion — still a fair bit of value. All crypto currencies have followed a similar value trend. If you look at a graph tracking crypto currency values and pretend it is an electrocardiogram you might say the patient had flatlined.

My basic question is why do I need digital currency? I suppose if I wanted to launder drug money it would be good to avoid the chartered banks. But my kids look after all that sordid business for me (and I don’t ask questions) so again why do I need crypto currency?

I guess if I did need to use crypto currency then a blockchain would be a good way to protect my transaction. Although, interestingly, as I heard from Elaine Kub the computer capacity needed to “mine” crypto currency and operate a blockchain, with this enormous security system, requires a huge demand on electricity, so companies establishing blockchains do it in countries where electrical rates are low like Indonesia or Venezuela. But with the issues in Venezuela right now, who wants to do their shopping there? Kub says sometimes the electrical cost to use the crypto currency/blockchain transaction could be greater than the value commodity being traded.

Do I understand this, and how would this all improve my life? I still haven’t connected the dots on that. In the meantime I am pleased to say I finally have a pretty good handle on doing on-line banking, so I am sticking with that. Besides if I use my Scotiabank debit card enough, eventually I earn enough points to get a free movie pass. So far I haven’t heard any crypto currency or blockchain group dangling that carrot in from of my eyes.

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This is a quote from a session I attended at FarmTech, put on by Farm Management Canada.

Farm Management Canada has gathered some very interesting information in an extensive cross-Canada survey focusing on best farm management practices. Their research looked at the adoption of business management practices across Canada. The results reveal: There’s room to improve.

The chart below shows the key activities and the percentage of producers surveyed who actually do the activity as a part of their farm management.

From that list they highlighted the seven farm business management practices that drive farm financial success:

1. Continual, lifelong learning.
2. Business decisions made using accurate financial data.
3. Seek the help of business advisors/consultants.
4. Have a written business plan, follow it, review annually.
5. Know and monitor your cost of production and what it means for your profits.
6. Assess risks and have a plan to manage and mitigate risk.
7. Use a budget and financial plan to monitor position and options.

Here is a benchmark study that Global Ag Risk Solutions created by combining 9,000 individual years of data from 2011 to 2015, using farm financial data collected by GARS from across the Prairie provinces.

The chart below shows the average of all farms surveyed. The average is compared to the results from the top 25 and bottom 25 per cent of included farms. The data speaks loud and clear to me and reinforces the seven key practices mentioned earlier.

There is quite a gap between the “average” farms and the “top 25 per cent” farms when you look at the revenue, gross margins and the net income. The opportunity to improve is certainly there. If the top 25 per cent can achieve those numbers, so can the rest, with some change in focus or farm management practices.

Those farms that know their numbers and farm aggressively, agronomically, are seeing exponentially better gross margins and net income that calculates out to significant extra dollars of profit at the end of the year.

Having a written business plan and marketing plan are key to helping you stay focused on the business.

Know your risks and have a plan to mitigate them. Production and marketing risks are two of the key ones you face each year. The weather variable that can throw a wrench into the best written plan

Track and monitor your financial progress throughout the year.

Track your marketing progress as well, to see how you are doing based on your plan. See if you need to make any changes to the plan if conditions change.

Farming is a big dollar business. If you want to be the best of the best you need to be doing what the best farmers are doing. The surveys and data prove that what they are doing makes the difference.

Visit the Farm Management Canada website for more great information and farm management resources.

*Note: An earlier version of this article said that this information was presented at FarmTech. That was not the case.

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Drew Lerner from World Weather Inc. is always popular. This year, he aptly named his presentation “Wild and Whacky Weather.” Lerner’s key message was that the weather across the Prairies and the U.S. is deeply influenced by the La Niña event currently in place.

“How long will it stay in place?” is the question. Some say it could linger into early summer; others are saying that it is already starting to dissipate and will be gone by the end of March.

Lerner said the key indicator to the length of La Niña is the ocean temperature in the Gulf of Alaska. If those temps remain cool, the La Niña will linger on — the dryness across the Prairies into the central U.S. will not improve. If the ocean temperatures start to warm up, that will weaken the La Niña which should mean a shift, bringing some moisture to the Prairies and U.S. regions over the spring and early summer. Lerner is concerned that the La Niña may fade, but not totally disappear. It could possibly re-emerge later in the summer, which would mean warm and dry.

World grain markets

From a world grain markets perspective I listened to two speakers, David Drozd and Greg Kostal.

Drozd and his team at AgChieve Corporation focus on charting and technical analysis.

Looking at wheat markets, Drozd said the average premium for Minneapolis spring wheat futures over the Kansas winter wheat futures is usually about $0.50/bushel. Currently that premium is sitting at $1.60/bushel over, and was as high as $2.70/bushel over in Nov./Dec. This was driven by the low-protein crop we grew this past year, and the trade needing to get their hands on the limited supply of higher protein wheat. This premium will not last — it has already started to fall back slowly. If you have high-protein wheat, sell it sooner than later to take advantage of the protein premiums being paid now. Drozd suggested a target sell price for No. 1 CWRS 13.5 per cent in the $7 to $7.50 range depending on where you are on the Prairies.

Feed barley prices have been flat. Drozd suggests it is time to sell. If the U.S. dollar continues to fall, it will be more economical to bring corn into southern Alberta, which will lower Canadian barley prices. Drozd thinks we are at the top of the feed barley market, barring short-lived severe winter weather price spikes.

With canola, Drozd sees resistance on the November 2018 futures at the $510/tonne level, and is suggesting targeting that level for your first new crop sales. With a larger carryout than first expected and more seeded acres planned for this spring because of the pulse market uncertainty with India, Drozd feels this is a target sell price.

Greg Kostal

Kostal focuses on fundamental market analysis. His FarmTech talk was titled, “Filtering Through Commodity Noise.” Once you peel the noise and news away, he said, the world supply of grains is growing faster than demand. The main reasons for this are back-to-back bumper crops in many parts of the globe over the past three years, aggressive ag expansion in the Former Soviet Union region over the past five years and improved seed genetics.

We’re heading into a very dry spring seeding season across most of North America, which could eliminate that world surplus fairly quickly.

Pulse markets, primarily driven by India, are in turmoil after India applied import tariffs back in November. India was carrying excess inventory (purchased last year in fear of a continued drought), so after a decent crop this past year India has more than enough stocks to get through this year and into next harvest. Domestic prices to Indian farmers were below support levels so the government needed to do something to increase farm prices in the year of an election. The government implemented import tariffs to slow or stop the flow of grains from outside, driving domestic prices for farmers higher.

Currently India is having some moisture issues in some of the larger pulse growing regions. If this persists, India will no doubt be back in the markets looking to buy to ensure supply.

Recent announcements of processing and protein extraction plants to be built on the Canadian Prairies will help shift our dependence away from Indian markets and into a local and hopefully higher-value, long-term market.

World demand has soybean crush growing at four per cent per year and there are only three main exporters in the world: the U.S., Argentina and Brazil.

Argentinian weather concerns can have a big market impact.

The Canadian wheat market has an excess of low protein wheat. The only way to get rid of the excess is to feed it or hold it and blend it away next year. With the U.S. dollar falling, more corn is coming into the feed markets, pressuring the price of other feed grains like wheat lower, so it isn’t likely we will get rid of the extra low protein wheat as feed.

A spring weather futures rally will be short lived if the cash price doesn’t rally to support the futures. With ample world supplies and no shortage of feed grain options here, it is unlikely that cash prices will keep pace with futures. At best it will be a short-lived rally like last year.

The post FarmTech update continued appeared first on Grainews.

This three-day ag information show was an early sellout once again, which shows just how popular it is. Those those attending the show are getting younger.

On the technology side there continues to be exponential development in the areas of new equipment design and improvements, seed varieties, chemistry technology, drone technology and farm management software that includes yield mapping, inventory management and monitoring systems.

All of this technology has been designed to help improve farm efficiencies and/or profits. All producers need to do decide which of these technologies will work best on their farms. Everyone’s needs are different, and “must haves” are different from “nice to haves,” which can make it very difficult for farmers to decide which is which.

The concurrent sessions covered everything from fertility management to weed, disease and pest management, market and weather outlooks, farm labour and farm and family dynamics, the future of food, management strategies and world ag trade.

I was not able to get to all of the sessions I would have liked to attend, so I chose the ones that focused on the grain markets and marketing.

Errol Anderson was the first presenter to do a market outlook and needless to say the room was packed. When a presenter starts out by saying, “Please don’t shoot the messenger,” you know it is not going to be pretty.

The markets

John DePutter also did a market review to a packed room. The two speakers were very consistent as to big concerns and what they saw as the possible outcomes for grain markets.

Both speakers talked about U.S. monetary policy around interest rates in a world of devaluating currencies. Errol Anderson believes that the projections for U.S. growth are misleading and that the U.S. dollar is going to have a day of reckoning soon!

They both noted that when the U.S. dollar starts to fall, the Canadian dollar will be pushed higher. This won’t be good for grain prices — our historically high wheat basis levels will disappear. Canola futures will come under pressure to remain competitive against U.S. soybean futures.

Another area of concern for both speakers was South America, because of the imminent harvest of another bumper bean crop. When you add that to the devaluing Peso in Argentina, farmers there have great incentive to sell into world markets, putting pressure on U.S. beans and Canadian canola futures.

Both speakers talked about canola supply and demand, and the fact that we have big supplies but demand is also very strong. But will that continue when the No. 1 buyer of oilseeds is struggling? China’s economy and the devaluation of the Yuan is likely the biggest concern.

China is the No. 1 buyer of commodities. If China pulls back on purchases, world grain ending stocks will increase, pressuring futures values lower.

Russia’s economic woes, and the collapse of the Ruble, are having an impact in the wheat markets. Russia continues to aggressively sell wheat into world markets in an effort to stimulate economic life back into the economy. This will keep world wheat prices under pressure until Russia runs out of exportable stocks, which looks to be a little while yet.

Pea and lentil markets are also at historical levels. This is due to production shortages, primarily in India. They continue to be in a hot dry spell, so prices are expected to stay strong. Anderson suggests new crop pea prices of $10/bu. or better are pricing opportunities that you should not let pass by.

World oil prices were mentioned only to say that if something should happen to drive oil prices higher this would also drive the Canadian dollar higher, which would not be the most beneficial for Canadian grain producers.

Both presenters felt that oil prices and the Canadian dollar seem to have found a bottom for now, depending on what may happen with oil supplies.

Recently, Russia and Saudia Arabia came out with a proposal to reduce oil production by five per cent in an effort to try to stabilize world oil prices. The mere mention of a reduction was enough to send crude oil prices and the Canadian dollar higher, so who knows, maybe the bottom is in in both of those markets.

So here we are back at my normal sermon: know your costs of production and your break even prices. The bigger risk this coming year is going to be the Canadian dollar. As it moves up the price for your grains is going to move lower. Be ready to act on pricing opportunities that will make you a profit!

The post Market outlooks at Farm Tech 2016 appeared first on Grainews.

Dorsey started off by pointing out that some strife between generations is normal and in fact healthy — young people need to make a space for themselves in the world and find out their capabilities and limits. What’s not normal is the increased strife we are witnessing now due to technological and societal changes. The costs of misunderstandings are being increased and threaten both family unity and the survival of family farms.

Dorsey addressed himself primarily to the parents in the audience, the baby boomers (ages 45 to 65) who are struggling to understand their millennial (ages 18 to 35) offspring. To help create better understanding and reduce friction, Dorsey asked them to keep in mind the following facts about the new generation of workers.

Entitlement

Baby boomers, Dorsey said, often complain about their children having a sense of “entitlement,” a feeling that they deserve things without working for them. He admitted that this is a real factor but says that the baby boomers have only themselves to blame; after all, they’re the ones who made the decision to be easier on their children than their parents were on them. They’re the ones who paid for college tuition and phones and first vehicles and, in many cases, are still paying their bills. It’s natural that young people who have grown up this way have higher expectations of what they deserve and lower estimates of what they need to do to earn it than their parents do.

The situation isn’t hopeless, Dorsey emphasized. It’s a matter of introducing responsibilities gradually and in a regular way. That starts with not expecting their children to have the same experience and skills they had at their age.

Starting ages

The average millennial, Dorsey said, is five years older than their parents or grandparents when they start their first job. “If your first job was at 18,” he said, “they are starting at 23, by which you had probably already had worked at three jobs.” This is because so many millennials have spent more years pursuing advanced education, education that their parents both encouraged and paid for.

The problem, Dorsey said, is that each generation bases their expectations of competence on their own experience, so baby boomer parents expect their children to be as professional and work savvy in their mid-20s as they were.

Baby boomers need to drop the expectations of competence, Dorsey said. That doesn’t mean they need to set lower standards but they need to allow their children to mature on the job and grow into their duties and responsibilities. Millennials can help, he said, by realizing that they have a lot to learn about work and that their parents are eager to help them.

Feedback

Baby boomers grew up and worked in careers where feedback was regular but very spaced out, typically an annual performance review. For farmers it may have come as a stern rebuke by their parents for their performance at the end of the growing season. They prefer to communicate their feedback in just this way to their children, with long periods between feedback but a large amount of it when it was due.

Millennials, Dorsey emphasized, have been educated in a different way: they’ve gone to schools that have cultivated their self-esteem with very regular feedback and they use social media like Twitter and Facebook which gives them constant approvals and ego boosts. The way to manage them, Dorsey says, is to communicate frequently with them about their performance, but keep the communications brief — let them know how they’re doing without overwhelming them at any one time.

Learning styles

Millennials, Dorsey emphasized, are overwhelmingly visual learners: they learn best by being shown how something is done and how it is expected to look when it is finished. “This is a generation,” Dorsey said, “that doesn’t go to Dad for help fixing their car; they go to YouTube.” Those with smartphones can help them by shooting short videos of how they want tasks done, as well as photographs of how things should look when finished.

Dorsey acknowledges these adjustments may be annoying (he admitted to the audience he had been a great frustration to his own father, a Texas farmer) but that millennials are eager learners when things are put in a way they understand. You’ll likely be surprised, he said, how quickly they come around and become valuable employees.

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After taking in three different grain market outlook sessions I came away with a broad range of information from three credible speakers.

For example their predictions as to how many acres of canola would be seeded in Western Canada this spring ranged from five per cent fewer acres to 10 per cent more acres than last year. So based on last year’s number of 20 million seeded acres, we could have between 19 and 22 million acres of canola seeded this coming spring. That, to me, seemed to be quite a wide variability so I decided to do my own informal non-scientific survey of those I talked to at Farm Tech to see what the word on the street could tell me.

As I wondered the tradeshow floor I made a mental note of the various seed distribution companies. Whenever possible I would stop and listen to conversations at those booths between company reps and farmers talking about their seeding intentions. Next, I took the bold approach of talking to producers directly — asking them what some considered to be a very personal questions: “Do you plan to seed more or less canola next year?”

What I gleaned from my eavesdropping research and my conversations with producers was that most of them were going to seed the same or fewer acres than they did last year. Those that were going to seed more were doing so because they were renting new acres and the rotation on that land allowed them to seed canola this spring.

After that information gathering I put pencil to paper to crunch the numbers and came up with my canola acreage prediction of 19.4 million acres seeded. This is a three per cent drop from last year. If I am not dead on with this acreage prediction I will be a little disappointed, but not really surprised as I have not factored in a variability coefficient like most surveys that are done today. My disclaimer: if I am wrong it is because of the limited number of responses I used to correlate the data, to get the outcome in a short period of time. This prediction is deemed to be 85 per cent accurate one out of every 100 times. That should cover me!

The weather

I attended a presentation by Drew Lerner from World Weather Inc. on what we can expect for weather across North America this coming spring and summer. For the Central Alberta region he expects the spring to be a little cooler than normal with decent precipitation, and the summer to be a little warmer and dryer, but with intermittent moisture to offset the dry periods giving us an overall good growing season.

He predicts that there will be some very dry/drought areas across the Prairies with one being along the Sask./Alta. border in the Kindersley area another in the south eastern corner of Saskatchewan through most of the lower Manitoba growing region that will carry down into the Dakotas and Montana. He also says there will be a continuing pocket of drought in Texas and that the dryness in California will continue to persist and grow through the summer.

He remarked that this continuation and growth of these dry/drought areas in the U.S. seems eerily similar to the start of the drought of 1988.

We know that trying to predict weather patterns, even with today’s advanced technology and modeling, is a very precarious job. For those who are brave enough to make a prediction about the weather, I say hats off to you as you can be proven so wrong so quickly only moments after you make your prediction if Mother Nature chooses to make you look a fool!

Regardless of how Mother Nature may treat our weather forecasters, the information they provide is still very useful when trying to plan for the coming season. We know what we may expect and we can make contingency plans to address weather changes.

The future of farming

Two things that really caught my attention at this year’s conference were the advancements in technology such as use of UAV’s (unmanned air vehicles) and the large number of what I will refer to as the Gen Y Farmers (ages 19-37, as defined by FarmTech guest speaker Jason Dorsey). I was seriously impressed to see all of the young people attending the conference as well as young couples with their children taking in seminars, babies in arms committed to learning more about the world of agriculture that they have decided is going to be their families’ livelihood. My hat is off to all of you for taking on the challenge and moving agriculture into the future.

To the organizers of FarmTech I say “job well done.” This is definitely the premier agricultural learning conference that I have attended over my 33 years in the Ag Industry.

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Australian weed researcher, Michael Walsh, recently speaking to prairie farmers at the FarmTech Conference in Edmonton, made it abundantly clear if herbicide resistance ever gets out of hand, it literally threatens the economic-life of crop production. Walsh showed a map of the country, which has 61 million acres of annual cropland, covered with red stickpins identifying farms affected by herbicide resistant weeds over the vast majority of seeded acres.

“We got to the point, after 30 years of conservation farming, and 30 years of development of herbicide resistant weeds where we had to ask ‘with so much resistance is that the end of crop production in Australia?’” says Walsh. “We couldn’t rely on herbicide control of weeds so our options were greatly diminished.”

For the past 15 to 20 years Australian farmers have been gradually clawing their way back to some manageable level, resorting to a range of mechanical weed control measures at harvest. Fire is also used to some extent to burn weed-seed laden chaff windrows and piles. Because of the risk of serious soil erosion, tillage is seen as a last-ditch option.

A wide range of tools 

Herbicide resistant weed management has become a multi- pronged approach for Australian producers — proper crop rotation, a proper rotation of herbicide chemical groups where they work, and mechanical measures that includes collecting chaff (and weed seeds) at the combine for burning, baling and removing chaff from the field, and a $240,000 unit that crushes and destroys weed seeds at the back of the combine. All these measures haven’t eliminated herbicide resistant weeds, but make the problem somewhat manageable.

“The problem developed because we had very effective and relatively low cost herbicides and farmers kept using them repeatedly,” says Walsh. As well, to reduce costs instead of spending $20 per hectare on herbicides, some producers cut the rate to $10 per hectare — a move that just hastened the selection of herbicide resistant plants. The herbicides were effective and made good economic sense for a while, but through years of regular use, herbicide resistant weeds began to appear and rapidly spread.

While they have multiple weeds resistant to herbicides, the main yield robbers are wild oats, wild radish and annual rye grass. “These weeds have adapted so well to growing conditions,” he says. “They are aggressive and often they stand above the crop canopy so there is no way to avoid them at harvest.” They found cutting a crop with a 15 inch stubble collected about 30 per cent of the weed seeds, while leaving a four inch stubble collected about 80 per cent of the weed seeds.

As farmers and weed specialists looked at the herbicide resistance issue, they realized in the absence of no or fewer in-crop weed control tools, they could perhaps tackle the problem by first reducing the amount of weed seed going back on the land to re-infect next year’s crop. “We found that 80 to 90 per cent of weed seeds could be collected in chaff by the combine, so we looked at ways to intercept weed seeds at harvest,” says Walsh.

Mechanical measures

Working with farmers, one of the earliest tools tried in the 1980s was a chaff-cart collector. They worked with all makes and models of carts, and one Australian producer, Lance Turner, built a system that included a chaff cart fed by a conveyor system from the back of the combine.

The chaff cart collected weed seeds, but the issue became what to do with the chaff piles. The chaff can be fed to livestock, but if farms had no cattle the chaff piles had to be moved. They are light, hard to pickup and trucking costs are high. Many are just burned.

In a similar vein, other producers designed a chute system for the back of the combine, which deposited chaff on the ground in a 20-inch windrow. Again, these windrows had to be burned.

“I understand that burning on this scale in Canada isn’t an option,” says Walsh. Although allowed in Australia, it is not a perfect solution. Burning conditions have to be right to avoid causing widespread stubble fires, the piles and chaff rows are slow to burn and smoulder for days, and manpower is an issue too. Under reasonable conditions, four men can set fire to chaff windrows on 1,000 acres per day.

Another option tried involved baling chaff and weed seeds directly as they came off the back of the combine. It can be done, but there is a limited market or use for baled chaff, so that option has limited appeal.

One of the better options, still with limited use, is a machine known as the Harrington Seed Destructor. It was adapted by a farmer familiar with crushing mills used to crush coal into powder. Chaff and weed seeds are fed by conveyor into the portable mill, pulled behind the combine. The mill is driven by a 200 horsepower gas engine.

While it took several modifications, Walsh says they now have a working model, worth about $240,000 per unit, which is effective in crushing and destroying 90 per cent of weed seeds collected by the combine. Straw is chopped and blown off to the side by the combine. The Harrington Seed Destructor will be demonstrated in Canada in 2014.

Making progress

Use of mechanical weed control tools isn’t perfect but it is helping, says Walsh. Studies show, on average emergence of rye grass weeds was reduced by about 57 per cent when mechanical tools are used. In extremely high weed populations it was only reduced by about 30 per cent.

In other trials they found just using herbicide alone, could leave as many as 25 herbicide resistant weeds per square metre. However with a combination of herbicides and mechanical weed seed control, resistant weed numbers could be reduced to about one plant per square metre.

Dealing with herbicide resistant weeds is an ongoing challenge, “but it is not the end of cropping, despite the widespread problem,” says Walsh.

Lee Hart is a field editor for Grainews in Calgary, Contact him at 403-592-1964 or by email at lee@fbcpublishing.com

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