To ease your mind, this column has nothing to do with cardiovascular health (or lack thereof). It is just the ramblings of an old farm boy and a long-time, somewhat, most-days retired agricultural writer.

Hart Attacks and my name might be new to some of you while others are saying “oh, that guy again.” The fact is, I have been writing a Hart Attacks column for most of the past 50 years. And if over the past three decades you flipped through Country Guide magazine or Grainews, you might have seen my name and this column.

Yes, my retirement in 2022 was widely noted — thanks to both of you for sending best wishes. But you know that feeling you get deep in your gut that says you still have something important to contribute to life? Well, me neither. But when the editor of Alberta Farmer Express said they’d pay me a few bucks for a column, I was all over that idea. So here we go. Turns out the editor of Grainews wants to pick it up occasionally too!

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I need the money. I met with my financial advisor yesterday and he said I can live comfortably in retirement until next Thursday. So things are golden on that front.

I’m not sure what this Hart Attacks column will be about. I thought I might focus on politics and religion — but I figured there’s a high probability of running out of material. Are they doing anything worth talking about?

And what about that new Pope — who saw that coming? Or what about those Flames, or what about those Oilers? Do the Elks really think they can outmanoeuvre the Stampeders’ Vernon Adams Jr. this year? Truth is I don’t follow sports close enough to comment on anything. I do like watching curling and golf — they are easy to nap through.

And speaking of golf, as of this writing I will have been out twice so far this year. A flat tire on my pull cart is slowing me down. If anyone sees my scorecard they might think it’s the final score of an NBA game rather than nine holes of golf.

I did not come from a family of golfers; we were dairy farmers and there was no time for fun. I was born and raised on a dairy farm in eastern Ontario back in the day when a 25-head milking herd was a pretty typical-sized dairy operation. My dad had a new dairy barn built in 1963, and as I recall, it had 30 stanchions, which as I look back was a pretty big herd for our road in Williamsburg Township of Dundas County.

No, there was no fun in my childhood — milk cows, feed the pigs, bale hay, kill a chicken for supper, sleep and then get up and do it all over again. It was like a work camp! But seriously, there was a lot of fun and good times for me growing up. You can’t beat life on a farm, that’s why I chose a career in journalism.

I started out as a writer and editor for newspapers, and then discovered and was drawn to the glamorous, high-paying life of an agricultural writer. I’m still waiting for my ship to come in, however. So far all I’ve seen is a 12-foot rowboat with one oar.

I often think about the changes in agriculture since I was a boy on the farm, and I compare it to the difference between riding in a stagecoach and a SpaceX launch. There might have been a week or so over my career where I thought I could keep pace with changes in ag technology, but I realize I was just kidding myself.

So that’s it for this column. They don’t pay me overtime, and also I see a nap in my future. With this column I say hello. And say that if you’re interested in lifelong learning, and making the best use of your reading time, I’m sure I can find someone to help you.

The post Lee Hart: Out of the ashes of retirement appeared first on Grainews.

The subject of his article, Walter Schwabe, spoke on that topic to farmers at the CrossRoads conference in Calgary, explaining why it’s time for them to get on board with AI before the technology leaves them behind. And I’ve got to agree: AI will be, and in some cases already is, a boon to farmers and the agrifood sector — especially those in labour-intensive sectors who until now have had to rely on an educated eye to tell good apples from bad apples, and to tell apples from tennis balls, and so on.

The way Lee and Mr. Schwabe explain it, AI grants machines the capacity to analyze data and situations the way we do. We carbon-based life forms do tend to look for correlations and patterns to try and predict future happenings — or to deduce what’s happening in the present. Anyone who visits some of the more depressing corners of the internet will tell you that we people often find correlations and patterns even where none actually exist.

With that in mind, Lee quotes Schwabe as saying it’s now “absolutely critical that we align AI with human values” and I couldn’t agree more. I also agree that to reach a global consensus on human ethics and values — and to make sure that everyone with access to AI sticks to that consensus — will be like trying to herd cats.

See, as cynical as I want you all to think I am, I do believe — or want to believe — people are actually good. We try to be good. We try to be kind. We try to do the good thing. Even when we as people do wrong or horrible things, I think or I hope that we actually believe we’re doing something good, or we do those things because it makes more sense to us in a moment of madness than trying to do the ethical thing. I do think even the people we all consider to be evil somehow came to believe they were operating from a position of what’s good or right or fair, when to any objective observer they clearly weren’t.

But even if we all want to be good and we can all agree on our shared human values, I’ve also spent enough time on the internet to now believe we — collectively, as a species — will be lousy at explaining them to machines.

Past that, I think I became terrified by Lee’s article because I’ve seen far too many old movies. In my experience with computers, I’d always believed they’re only capable of doing exactly what a programmer or operator tells them to do — and if they deviate at all from those instructions, it’s either been the result of faulty programming, faulty or incomplete user requests or electrical or mechanical failures, so those movies always seemed very far-fetched. Not so much now.

That early scene in Runaway where Tom Selleck, as a human law enforcement officer who specializes in stopping rogue robots, has to chase down a farm robot destroying a crop? Well, we already have machines that can tell weeds apart from desirable plants, so let’s hope a machine tasked with killing volunteer canola knows what not to do if it ever accidentally finds itself in a canola field.

Those chilling scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey where HAL, the super-computer, kills most of his ship’s human crew and is only stopped when Keir Dullea’s character physically disconnects him? As I understand the movie and Arthur C. Clarke’s books, that happened because HAL was fed diametrically opposite instructions by separate human programmers, which caused him to develop the machine equivalent of paranoia. Not so implausible now, right?

I could go on. Short Circuit, Electric Dreams, WarGames, Blade Runner, Tron? They all seemed implausible at the time and still are, but as Schwabe says, it’s possible to program AI to act badly out of self-preservation, as the machine characters in those films do. Even Star Trek: The Motion Picture, itself informed by an old TV series where so many episodes featured rogue computers doing horrible things while bent on their own self-preservation, had a villain who (spoiler alert) turns out to just be an old Voyager space probe suffering from the open-ended instructions of its human programmers.

And let’s not forget the greatest rogue-computer film franchise ever. The big bad in the Terminator movies isn’t actually the stone-cold killer androids played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick et al. It’s Skynet, a computer system that becomes self-aware and acts against humankind despite the best intentions of — you guessed it — its human programmers.

I don’t claim to know enough about programming to offer a solution to this problem. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to have AI binge-watch The Good Place, which today stands out as a great effort to explain ethics to a network television viewing audience.

And if all else fails, when our new AI overlords have taken over and find this column somewhere on the internet, just remember me as that carbon-based meat puppet who thought your intentions were good.

The post Editor’s Rant: All hail Skynet appeared first on Grainews.

That’s not an absolute statement. COP information from producers across the country over the past couple of years shows that some smaller operators with various-sized animals can be profitable as well.

But on average, the farms or ranches with 200 to 300 or more head running smaller-framed cows — between 1,200 and 1,300 pounds — tended to be the most profitable. The key is these larger operations tended to have higher returns and lower costs than smaller operators — generally the economies of scale improved profits.

Creating benchmarks

Farm profitability and cow size are part of the information being collected through a three-year project known as the Canadian Cow-calf Cost of Production Network, says Canfax executive director Brenna Grant.

“It is important for producers, particularly when making marketing decisions, to know their cost of production and also know how their operations compare with other beef operations. So we were hoping as we collect this information it will provide producers with a useful benchmarking tool.”

Collecting data for the COP network is heading into the final year of the initial three-year project. The deadline for producers to join the program and provide data from their farms was the end of November, but as of early December, anyone interested in being part of the project in 2023 can contact Canfax by email at: crs@canfax.ca to see if there are still time or room to join. The COP network can offer participating producers a $500 honorarium funded by the Beef Cattle Research Council. The three-year project wraps up in 2023, but it’s hoped funding will be available to extend it.

As of 2022, the COP Network was comprised of 46 benchmark cow-calf farms and three dairy-beef farms, with data collected from 186 participants across Canada. (Note: information collected from participating farms in 2022 was based on 2021 production information. Many parts of the country 2021 experienced a very dry growing season).

Comparing similar operations

Canfax research analyst Huiting Huang explains that the information provided by the 186 farms from across Canada was analyzed to determine similarities between production practices. Farms with similar production practices were combined to create a benchmark.

For example, one of the Alberta benchmarks is described as: “a cow-calf operation in the Aspen Parkland region of Alberta, Canada. This operation keeps Hereford and Angus animals, with a beef cow herd of 152 head. The cow-calf enterprise is located on 2,622 ac, in a semi-arid climate with chernozemic and gleysolic soils. Mean annual temperature is 1.5 C, and mean annual precipitation is 450mm with the majority of precipitation falling May-June.”

Another benchmark for Saskatchewan is described as: “a cow-calf and yearling grasser operation located in the boreal transition ecoregion of Saskatchewan, Canada. This farm keeps Angus/Hereford cross animals, and maintains a beef cow herd of 350 head. The cow-calf enterprise is located on 3,083 ac. with predominantly black soils. Mean annual temperature is 1 C, and mean annual precipitation is 500mm.”

So again, from the information collected from 186 farms, they created 46 benchmark cow-calf operations. Anyone interested can log into the Canfax website, click on COP analysis and then find one of the benchmark farms that most closely resembles their operation. Producers can see how their production costs and returns compare with a similar benchmark operation.

More smaller cows

While the COP network covers a range of herd sizes, within provinces and nationally, Huang says data from these benchmark farms for the 2021 production year show that higher-profit farms tended to have more cows, smaller cows and lower costs per cow.

Herd sizes ranged from 35 head of beef cows to 950 head. Among the 46 benchmark cow-calf farms, 19 had fewer than 100 cows, 10 farms were in the 100-200 cow range, nine farms had between 201 and 300 and eight farms had more than 300.

The 2021 results indicated that farms with a larger herd were more likely to cover their cash and depreciation costs. In part, this refers to the operators being able to pay themselves a wage as well as being able to set money aside for capital costs such as machinery replacement.

For the two groups that had fewer than 100 or between 100-200 cows, only 47 and 50 per cent respectively were covering their cash and depreciation costs in 2021. Once the herd size gets over 200 head, the percentage of farms covering these costs increased to 75 to 89 per cent.

The major driving factor behind this pattern was the economies of scale, as larger herd operations were able to spread overhead costs over more cows. Grant says it doesn’t mean that smaller operations are necessarily going broke. It just indicates that smaller farms likely relied on other sources of income other than beef cattle — they either had cropping operations, diversified into some other enterprise or worked off-farm.

Cow size does matter

It was interesting to note that smaller cows played an important role in farm profitability.

Mature cow weights on the benchmark farms ranged from 1,200 lbs. to 1,540 lbs. with an average of 1,355 lbs. This is similar to the average mature cow weight reported in the 2017 western Canadian Cow-Calf Survey (1,374 lb.).

When all the benchmark farms were divided into three groups (namely low-, medium-, or high-profitable) based on net income, the high-profitable group in 2021 tended to have lighter mature cow weights — not by a huge amount, but enough to make a difference.

Looking at all benchmark farms, mature cow weights in the high-profitable group were an average of 47 lbs. lighter than the low-profitable group. Within the benchmark farms with fewer than 100 cows, the difference was even greater. Average mature cow weights in the high-profitable group were about 78 lbs. lighter than the low-profitable group.

For the farms with more than 100 cows, the medium-profitable group had the heaviest average mature cow weights, while the high-profitable group was about 20 lbs. lighter than the low-profitable group.

Figures show that smaller cows did result in fewer pounds of calf weaned and fewer pounds sold. As mature cow weights declined from the low- to high-profitable group, weaning weights also declined by 19 lbs. between the two groups. However, weaning weight as a percentage of mature cow weights was steady at around 41 per cent across the three groups.

Even though smaller calves meant fewer pounds of beef marketed, Huang says the lower costs of maintaining smaller cows appeared to offset the lower revenue on lighter calves and improved profitability. This may be particularly true for the drought-affected farms in 2021 given the skyrocketed feed prices and relatively stable cattle prices — it took less feed to maintain smaller cows.

Grant says information collected through the COP network sheds light on some of the commonalities of the profitable farms. The results showed that profitability did not relate to a specific production system, farm structure or region. Each operation had a unique approach to achieving financial success.

For more information on the Cost of Production Network visit the Canfax website at: https://www.canfax.ca and click on the “resources” button.

The post How does your farm stack up? appeared first on Grainews.

October 20 is my birthday. I will be turning 71 (where the heck did that number come from?) and I have decided it is a good day to wrap up this full-time writing career. I am so looking forward to the morning of October 21, waking up and saying, “I have nothing to do today — there is no deadline looming out there waiting to be met.” That warm fuzzy feeling may only last for a day, but at least I will have that.

I have been a writer and editor with Grainews and previously Country Guide (same company) for more than 30 years. I was a writer with Alberta Agriculture in Edmonton for a couple of years before signing on with Country Guide in Calgary in 1987. I joined Grainews as a field editor in 2005.

And it has been a great run. I have learned enough over these past three decades that I may just go farming myself and get rich. Why not? How hard could it be? On the other hand, have I learned nothing from farm retirement/succession specialists such as Merle Good — get out while you can still walk, or some advice similar to that.

But seriously, it has been a great career. I started out working as a newspaper reporter in about 1970, and then in the mid-1980s switched over to writing about agriculture. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an agricultural writer, but the idea caught my attention.

My humble beginning into agricultural writing began while I was a reporter with the Lethbridge Herald. Somehow, I connected with Tom Bradley, publisher with Farm Light and Power in Regina. I agreed to do a freelance article for that publication. Obviously, this is seared into my memory. I believe the first article I did was a feature story with farmer Don Opp at Claresholm, about an hour north of Lethbridge, talking to him about this new concept in the early 1980s of conservation farming. I didn’t have a clue.

So what is an air seeder, what is a cultivator, what do you mean by “keep your stubble up”? I had grown up on a dairy farm in eastern Ontario, but I was painfully ignorant about anything to do with grain farming and Prairie agriculture. Somehow we got through it.

Thirty-some years later, I’m still lost when they talk about building algorithms to do facial recognition to track livestock, or who can manage field crops without georeferenced data collection that includes field imagery collected and analyzed but may or may not be integrated fully into decision making. And the GPS resolution, at a minimum, is assisted by the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). You know me, I’m all over that stuff.

October 20 I’m retired, but I’m not planning to disappear from writing entirely. I know a few other fossils still active in the agriculture industry. I’m thinking if they are still at it, and as long as my mind holds out, I will see where I can fit in the occasional writing project.

If asked what’s been great about this career, it wasn’t the crops and livestock. It is terribly cliche but I have been so fortunate to work for, to work with, and to meet and interview just an amazing group of people. There has been the odd pain in the ass, but the vast majority have been the finest people I’d ever care to meet.

The one thing that’s a bit alarming the longer I’m in this business — I’ve talked to people when they first started their career, some of them are now retired. And in other circumstances, I remember talking to young farmers in the 1980s, now I am talking to their children as they continue the family farm, and if I hang in there it won’t be long before I’ll be talking to the grandchildren — the third generation. Yikes. I can see me getting out to a barley field somewhere and these young whippersnappers decide to hide my walker … and then where will I be?

The post Time for the ‘Big R’ has come appeared first on Grainews.

We’re in the middle of strategic planning for Grainews. And do you know what’s guiding us through this process? You. You are our inspiration. Your farming communities are our inspiration. For you, we’re breaking new ground. What I’m specifically talking about are innovations we can implement that will serve you better. We’re thinking about ways we can improve how we deliver the information you need to support and increase profitability on your farms.

We’re not going to blindly apply something new without doing our homework, gathering reliable information and testing the ground before we move ahead with something we think is innovative. It’s like we’re doing our own strip trials.

For example, we’re testing an idea right now about another way for you to access the information in Grainews. If you’re a farmer, you’re a pretty good multi-tasker, I’ll bet. And when you’re spending those long hours in the combine, truck or tractor, you probably want to accomplish other tasks as well — like listening to crop production tips in Grainews, rather than reading them. What we’ve done is we’ve turned some of our most popular Grainews stories into audio files, so you have the option to listen to them. But we’re running our strip trials first before we roll it out completely (and it is exciting)! If it serves you better, we’ll know it.

Here’s how we’re testing it. In this Grainews issue (and the last one), there is a QR code on the top left-hand corner of the cover. Use the camera on your cellphone and point it at the QR code. A little tab will pop up that says grainews.ca. Click that tab and it will take you to a spot on our website where you can listen to the current cover stories as well as some of our most popular stories from the past year. While there, you can let us know what you think of this innovation.

We’ve already collected a lot of your feedback (and it appears you really like this option to listen to our features). As we come up with more ideas, we’ll test them also and gather your feedback. To find out what we’re doing that’s new, look for that QR code at the top of the front page of Grainews.

And, who better to know what you need and want than you? You’re probably full of great ideas and opinions on how you’d like to engage with Grainews and the information we can provide you. Please email me with any input or ideas you have to make Grainews even better. Also, if you come across one of our surveys, please let us know what you think. We’re listening.

Best wishes for Lee Hart

Now, this next bit of news I’m about to tell you I didn’t want to happen, but those winds of change, they will blow. Lee Hart has decided to retire. I know. It’s going to be hard to imagine Grainews without Lee. However, there is some good news … it’s semi-retirement. Lee, who has always had a special interest in beef and livestock production, will be continuing as the editor of Cattleman’s Corner, which is such an important part of Grainews.

Lee has been writing for more than 50 years, and he has lived and breathed agriculture as a reporter and editor for about 35 years, which is an incredible legacy. Lee has been writing for Grainews since the summer of 2005 and before that Country Guide since 1987. Lee was born and raised on a farm, so he’s always been interested in agriculture, he says. And as a writer and editor at Grainews he liked being part of something informative, something sometimes entertaining and what he hopes has been useful to western Canadian farmers.

I have had the pleasure of working with Lee since February 2020. It’s not often you get to work with someone you admire and respect — and they live up to that pedestal you’ve put them on. Lee is a first-rate reporter and editor but what is so special about his work is he explains complex topics so that anyone can understand them — and with wit, insight, humility and humour. I have always thought of Lee as the W.O. Mitchell of ag reporters (Mitchell was the writer of the iconic Canadian Prairie novel Who Has Seen the Wind, one of my personal all-time fiction favourites). I think Lee’s curiosity, willingness to learn something new and ability to make strong connections with the people around him is part of his magic as a reporter.

I recently asked Lee about what (semi-) retirement looks like for him and he says he’s going to spend some time with his almost-four-year-old grandson, maybe get in a bit of golf and some travelling, once travelling isn’t so complicated. He’s also looking forward to walks, guilt-free naps anytime he wants and to explore new territory on a recently purchased electric bike. But if you want to hear about his retirement in his own words, I encourage you to read his column on page 18. He is planning on some contract writing work. I’m hoping he will still grace the pages of Grainews as a guest columnist or contributor.

I also asked Lee what he was most looking forward to and what he was least looking forward to. In typical Lee fashion, he said, as a writer and editor for 50 years, he’s hoping to have stretches of time where he doesn’t have to think about deadlines (that is every writer’s dream) and he’s least looking forward to not being able to claim lunches as a work expense. “If I’m not careful, I may lose weight.” I’m going to greatly miss Lee’s sense of humour.

With Lee’s impending retirement, we were left with a vacancy for a writer. However, we have been working on this since Lee’s announcement to us earlier this year. I am very excited to let you know that Jim Timlick, who many of you may already know from his work as a Manitoba reporter for many publications, has joined our Grainews team.

Jim has worked as a writer for more than 20 years and has won several Manitoba Community Newspapers Association (MCNA) awards during that time. He has also worked in the communications field, including a stint as communications manager for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers football club (2005-08). Jim is passionate about food and cooking, and he has a strong interest in food security, which led him, about a decade ago, to the agriculture industry as a writer and editor. He has written for a number of different ag publications over that time, including work as a contributor for Grainews.

Jim starts with us this month. Please join me in welcoming him to our Grainews community.

As the Chinese proverb goes, “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.” We’re building those windmills and harnessing that kinetic energy at Grainews this fall.

Take care,

Kari

The post Editor’s Column: Winds of change appeared first on Grainews.

Maybe it’s been happening for a half million years or so of evolution, but it seems just about every day someone is excited about something artificial being better than “real.”

Take food for example. Meat and potatoes (with vegetables in season) kept humans running for thousands of years (the menu was probably a bit more complex than that, but I’m trying to keep the point simple).

Today it seems a growing number of consumers (along with food service companies) are falling over themselves trying to build and later enjoy artificial meat.

Some companies have devoted themselves to actually growing protein tissue in a lab to produce meat without animals. In another stream the focus is on producing products that look and taste like meat but they are really plant based. Beyond Meat produces plant-based products. Why is it called Beyond Meat? Beyond Meat makes me think of a galaxy far, far away, or at least another level above meat. It would make sense, for example, to call brandy Beyond Wine since it is made from distilled wine.

But Beyond Meat has nothing to do with meat. And why dress it up to look so much like a good old beef burger? If you really want to get away from the horrifying image of a dead cow burger, make plant-based patties green, white or tan coloured.

And on another point, too bad somebody doesn’t have a patent on what defines a hamburger or beef burger. The dairy industry got up in arms a few years ago when soy milk and other products that contained no dairy were actually in the dairy case at the grocery store. So now consumers have to look for soy or almond beverage products (its not called milk) and a block of Velveeta is a few feet away in the “we’re not sure what it is” grocery aisle.

A & W and Tim Hortons are all over this artificial food fad or trend. I was reading an article with a picture of a happy and healthy young Ontario family with a baby, just so glad that they had found Tim Horton’s new meatless and eggless breakfast sandwiches made from plants. I can see the marketing campaign now — “Pork sausage and a real hen’s egg isn’t good for you so try our new mung bean protein-isolate products on our real freshly baked, gluten-free, almond flour English muffin.” That’s a catchy message with a “real” ring to it.

Another so-called new area that seems to have people avoiding reality, particularly over the past year, is the interest in marijuana (let’s say drugs in general). I’m no old prude planning to launch a 2019 temperance league. Go ahead. Enjoy a few drinks or smoke a few joints, relax and mellow out, there is nothing wrong with that. But there just seems to be an importance or urgency among certain people to have cannabis as accessible as possible. I somehow read into that urgency a message that says “I need this stuff because otherwise how will I cope with my day.” I might be wrong.

On a similar but different level, there is the opioid crisis which continues to take a daily human toll across this country. Are all the opioid and other drug users essentially collateral damage from prescription painkillers handed out to deal with real physical pain? I think there is a certain percentage of the addicted who were looking to take the edge off reality and got snagged by addiction.

It is a costly business. The most recent figures from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use estimate substance use (or abuse) in Canada (that’s booze, drugs and tobacco) costs the Canadian economy nearly $40 billion per year, representing a cost of $1,100 to every man, woman and child in the country, and resulting in nearly 68,000 deaths.

I was trying to find similar statistics on the economic toll of people eating and dying from the effects of real, whole food, like meat and potatoes and vegetables in season but it’s just not showing up. The numbers must be too staggering to contemplate.

The post Hart Attacks: What happened to the “reality check”? appeared first on Grainews.

Rob Graf, based at the Lethbridge Research Centre says producers in all parts of the prairies should be watching for a new line called AAC Elevate for good yield, especially under dry conditions and it also has an improved disease resistance package.

AAC Wildfire is another of the newer Canadian Western Red Winter Wheat lines with probably a better fit for the western prairies, says Graf. It was a breakthrough variety in terms of yield — much higher yield than AC Radiant.

And another new line, AAC Goldrush, which was registered in 2016 does “okay” in Alberta says Graf, but may have a better fit in Saskatchewan. Graf spoke with producers attending a recent crop walk field day sponsored by the applied research association Farming Smarter. If producers liked CDC Buteo they will like AAC Goldrush with its improvements in yield and disease resistance.

And a little further down the road, Graf told producers to watch for the first of its kind hard white winter wheat, now just in experimental lines.

As he gave an overview of the some of the best new lines developed at the Lethbridge Research Centre, Graf says finding that one line that meets all requirements for improved yield, disease resistance and quality is easily a 10- to 15-year process. Agronomics and yield is always important but his breeding program places a real emphasis on improve disease resistance and milling quality. As Graf spoke to producers he stood in front of a field of about 16,000 crop rows of new winter wheat lines in early evaluation.

“There aren’t any copies of these,” says Graf, noting “if the great white combine” happened to roll through this summer several years of winter wheat development would be lost.

Assuming there is no disaster, he will evaluate the 16,000 single rows which represent about 1,300 preliminary lines of winter wheat this fall and winter. That 1,300 will be whittled down to about 120 lines to be carried forward in replicated plots at five sites across Western Canada next year.

Those 120 lines will be narrowed down to 30 or 40 promising lines that will be replicated at nine sites across Western Canada, two years from now. And from there it will be pared down to five or eight lines that actually go into registration trials for three years. And hopefully after those three years one new variety to be registered.

“It is a 10- to 12-year process just to evaluate these new lines through to registration and then with two or three years to develop seed, the total process is 12 to 15 years,” says Graf.

The varieties

AAC Elevate, licensed to SeCan has a short, strong straw, about six to seven per cent higher yield than AC Radiant, and improved protein. The variety does have some disease resistance to rust and fusarium head blight, although that seems to have slipped from a moderate resistance rating to a moderate susceptibility rating due to a changes in some of the disease strains. Graf says although he had no biomass or feeding data, he also noted that because AAC Elevate is a very leafy variety it might also be an excellent feed-type winter wheat.

AAC Wildfire, also licenced to SeCan, is a couple days later in maturity, but took a huge 14 to 17 per cent yield jump over AC Radiant, says Graf. It has good straw strength, excellent lodging resistance, resistance to stripe rust, moderate resistance to fusarium head blight, and although not quite as important as once thought a few years ago, it is also has resistant to Russian wheat aphid.

AAC Goldrush has considerably higher yield that CDC Buteo, good winter hardiness, good lodging resistance, and a decent disease resistance package to most rusts and fusarium head blight. It is susceptible to bunt.

The post Winter wheats get better and better appeared first on Grainews.

As I drove out past a storage area last Thursday, I figured a person could do all right just with the contract to haul away (and then cash in) all the beer, pop and water bottle empties. I’ve got to get my name in early for that job next year.

Jeff Just of Yorkton, SK (Just Acre Farms) is one of the show staff members who will be staying around for a few days after the show to wrap things up. Just and his family raise a few purebred Hereford cattle at Yorkton. He joins the setup team about a week before the event and then stays for a few days to help with the clean up and tear down. Any time you get nearly 30,000 people walking through your yard it’s going to need some attention.

Just says it takes a lot of organizing to schedule the move-in by some 400 exhibitors — a few need only a table and a few chairs, while others show up with a few million dollars worth of machinery that’s 80 feet wide.

Free tire gauge almost as good as pen

I may be biased (I did snag a free tire gauge) but it is a very good show. There is always lots to see at events such as Farm Progress Show in Regina and Agri-Trade in Red Deer, for example, but at Ag In Motion you REALLY get to see it. There’s about 100 acres of crop plot demonstrations alone with another large area of field scale equipment demonstrations.

And along with that a person can wander the “streets and avenues” of the central show area. If you’re interested in just about any aspect of crop and livestock production, and farm management there are dozens of information booths, service providers and vendors to answer your questions — show and maybe even sell you a product.

I talked to Merle Hoffman of AIM Industries (no relation to the AIM show) based in Regina and they make one of the best grain bin hopper bottoms in the world. It’s not going to twist or torque or puncture if you have to move it around. Visit aimind.ca.

And if you’re feeding cattle, Jasmine Brodziak with Agrimatics in Saskatoon says her company has developed an excellent controller for the mixer wagon. They earlier developed the Libra controller for grain carts. Now this Libra TMR (total mixed ration) device weighs and measures all beef or dairy ration combinations. Once you get it programmed you can daydream while you’re feeding cattle — it will provide you with the alerts you need. Visit: www.agrimatics.com

Don’t make eye contact

I try not to make eye contact with some of the exhibitors…I could end up buying something. Brent Geransky of Premium Power Packs is a very compelling marketer for a portable power pack that will boost a vehicle battery at least a dozen times before the power pack itself needs to be charged. (God, he was good. He had me at “hello”.)

But wait, there is more. The power pack comes with a number of adaptors so it can also be used to power your laptop and cell phone and it lasts for hours. But wait there is more. And the power pack even has a built in flashlight so you can actually see where you are going and what you are doing if you do need to charge something. And all this power in a convenient, durable case that isn’t much larger than your average paperback novel. But wait, there is more. If you look up the charger on Geransky’s website at www.premiumpowerpacks.com you can even buy one and have it mailed out.

Watch out for the snow cone abusers

Never mind the fact that Dow Agro Sciences has a great line of crop protection products, but if you’re passing their booth next year you can also get a free snow cone and choose from about 40 different flavors. They’ll also sell you a few tonnes of Nexera canola seed if you need it, but the snow cones are free. And you can keep getting back in the snow cone line at least 30 times before they call security and have you escorted out — or so I have been told. Like, anyone would consider that on a 30 C day.

I am always impressed with the cattle handling equipment…this is heavy duty stuff from a number of leading manufacturers. Not only will this equipment not break, but these systems now feature more gates, sliding and hinged panels making it possible to reach any part of the animal without fighting with bars.

And if I ever go into the silage business here is something I need that I had not seen before — a silage fluffer. That’s what the Dairyland Agro guy called it. It’s a large 10 foot wide roller type tool that fits on the front of a larger 500 hp tractor. The roller has a series of knotched fins across and around it — that’s on the front of the tractor. And on the back of this tractor is a row of steel drums for packing (they resemble the wheels on a train). The idea is that after you dump the silage, use the silage spreader (fluffer) on the front to spread it and even it out, and then along comes the big packer tool at the back to pack it all in. It provides up to 40 per cent more compaction. Visit: www.dairylandagro.com

If only I needed it

There was a lot of great stuff at AIM that I don’t really need. Sundog Solar was there with a complete line of solar watering systems (www.sundogsolarwind.com), and Derek Verhelst who has just taken over the Kelln Solar watering business was also demonstrating their long established product line. Verhelst demonstrated a solar powered waterer that’s activated with a motion sensor. As soon as an animal sticks its nose in the trough the water starts bubbling up. Another great idea. Visit www.kellnsolar.com

I have to admit on my final day at Ag In Motion I did eat “The Best Beef In The World”. This was at the Norpac Beef booth. Norpac is a family owned beef producing and meat processing plant in Norwich, ON owned by the Heleniak family. They featured some beef-on-a-bun products. They prefer Limousin and Belgian Blue cattle for their meat program. Everything is corn finished and hormone and antibiotic free.

Animals are processed and the carcasses are shrouded (wrapped with a cloth) and dry aged — more shrink, but better quality, more flavour etc. And their beef on a bun sandwiches were very good. I think Norpac came up with The Best Beef in the World slogan. I haven’t tried all the different beef breeds in the world, so I can’t endorse that claim. I just know that at that moment last Thursday when I sat down for lunch, it was very good beef. Visit: www.norpacbeef.ca

So AIM #3 is in the history books. It’s getting bigger every year. Maybe by July 2018 I will have bought cropland and/or cattle so I can be an official Ag In Motion tire kicker. I’ll have to go back to show anyway, for sure, to ask a few questions. I can’t find the instructions for this tire gauge anywhere.

Lee Hart’s article was originally published on the Grainews Blog.

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

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That was my take home message from Day 2 (Wednesday) at the Ag In Motion (AIM) farm show near at Langham, Sask. The lineup at the ice cream vendor next to the Grainews booth never stopped all day. Although when your company name is “The Mean Green Ice Cream Machine,” who can resist? Don’t think I go to these shows and only care about food, but obviously it is important to a lot of AIM goers as well. On a sunny, 30 C day ice cream is a pretty good idea.

The longer you are there, the more you realize just how big this farm show is. I don’t think I ran into one person who didn’t say “Boy, there is lots to see here.” One of my loyal readers, Don Gibson, who farms near Sangudo, Alta. (just northwest of Edmonton) stopped by to claim a Grainews ball cap. He brought the RV unit and parked it near the show. He knew there would be too much to see in a day, so he and his travelling companions were spending the night at AIM.

By my rough but experienced estimate I figured there were nearly one million visitors to Ag in Motion Wednesday. I could be wrong. But I’m guessing about half of those were from western Canadian Hutterite colonies — Warner, Rosetown, Kyle, Blaine Lake, Kindersley, Swift Current, Moose Jaw and many others.

It’s always good to talk to these producers. I always learn something. John Walter from the Greenleaf Colony at Blaine Lake was telling me about what sounds like a very nice and very busy provincially inspected meat processing plant they have on their farm. They processed about 200 head of elk and deer last fall, process about 15 hogs per week and custom kill, cut and wrap beef on a regular basis, poultry, you name it — it’s just a very busy place. They also have a retail area at the plant and supply meat — including burgers and sausage — to local retailers. I’d like to have a look at that someday.

The Grainews booth oasis

The Grainews booth/tent was a bit like an oasis, may be even like Lourdes at times. They came with their canes and walkers, young and old, to sit for a while on the shaded picnic tables to take a break. There was one couple farming near Moose Jaw who stopped by with their Red Fox Lab pup… they said the pup needed a break; I think they did too. They took a break, got an ice cream from Mean Green Machine — and yes, the pup did have a nap — and then headed on their way.

I spoke to a young fella from Ukraine who is working on a grain farm near Borden, Sask. this summer. He did work for a big corporate farm at home — a grain operation covering about 250,000 acres — but he said while the owners did OK, the workers weren’t paid very well. He also worked for a while in Denmark and then thought he would like to try Canada. He loves it. He was a farm kid at home and likes the feel of farming in Saskatchewan. He was interested to see if he could stay.

Dry growing conditions across most of Saskatchewan was the story of the day according to producers. The only farmer who said too much moisture was still a concern came from the Vegreville area of northeastern Alberta. Crops were looking pretty good in that area, but they weren’t far from being at the saturation point.

Loaders, pumps and mixers

Aside from a couple people who came to the booth with canes and walkers, one young fella drove up with a small loader. John Stoop, with Steqcan equipment, a dealer for the Giant brand of loaders, forklifts and telehandlers, dropped off his card. He’s a good Ottawa valley boy from Westmeath, west of Ottawa. He had a booth at the show introducing western farmers to their line of equipment. He mentioned that Westmeath is near Arnprior, which immediately took me down memory lane. I told John I knew Arnprior very well. The first job I ever had as a reporter was at the Arnprior Chronicle. That was many years ago now. It pained me to tell John, “I worked there probably long before you were born.”

Mikhail Sorokin is with Fireball Equipment over in the livestock area. If you need a pump for any reason Fireball has it. Their products aren’t specific to livestock — that’s just where their booth was located — but whether you have a 45-gallon barrel, a fuel tank in the back or your truck, or are filling a container ship with a million gallons of diesel fuel, Fireball has a pump for you.

And if you are feeding cattle at total mixed ration — whether it be beef or dairy — have a talk with Jasmine Brodziak at Agrimatics of Saskatoon. They’ve developed the Libra line of controllers and weighing software. Their first product was developed to weigh and measure products going into grain carts. Now they’ve developed the Libra equipment for preparing Total Mixed Rations in mixer wagons — “a revolutionary ration weighing and data management solution.”

I haven’t even mentioned the acres upon acres of red, green, blue and yellow farm machinery for both crops and livestock, or large plots of canola, cereals, soybeans, corn, pulse crops and all the support products that go along with machinery and crop production. Maybe if the lineup at the ice cream stand wasn’t so long I’d have more time to look at this stuff. A person has to set their priorities.

— Lee Hart is a field editor with Grainews based in Calgary. Check out his regular blog HERE.

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This climatological fact was among the many things I learned at the first day of the 2017 Ag In Motion (AIM) farm show near Langham, Sask. Tuesday (about 20 minutes from Saskatoon — the show is still running Wednesday and Thursday, so plan to attend).

Charles Schmidt and his wife Elli and family farmed at Chinook for many years in the often desert like conditions of Eastern Alberta in a region known as the Special Areas — it was termed “special” for a reason.

Although there were some great growing seasons over the years, the Schmidts got tired of waiting for rain, so about a year ago bought a farm near Davidson, Sask., about half way between Regina and Saskatoon.

According to a long-time Davidson area farmer, Gerrid Gust, in many recent years it never stops raining at Davidson. That was until the Schmidts showed up.

Charles, who was checking out the sights at AIM with farming colleague Dennis Reimer of Hudson Bay, Sask., says he no sooner got the crops in the ground and it stopped raining.

“I left Alberta to get away from the dry conditions, “Schmidt says. “And now it has followed me. We’ve only had about two-10ths’ rain all season. It is amazing how good the crops look, despite it being so dry.”

And that wasn’t an isolated story either, most of Saskatchewan could use some moisture. Les Lehman of North Battleford said it was dry over to the west. Dennis Reimer says it is fairly dry at Hudson Bay (northeast of Saskatoon near the Manitoba border). One of the farmers from the Sunny Dale Hutterite Colony at Arelee, Sask., northwest of Saskatoon, says it is dry out their way. And others reports suggest it gets dryer still the further south from Saskatoon you go.

Schmidt says he really doesn’t believe it is a curse that is following him, but he admits he has heard some suggestions that he now move to Manitoba where some areas could use a good drying out.

Great pulled pork

After several rigorous conversation with farmers as I manned an information booth at AIM, the beauty of the fact the information booth was located right next to a mobile food truck selling barbecued pulled pork sandwiches was not lost on me.

If you make it to AIM or anytime you are in Saskatoon check out Schryers Smoked BBQ Shack. They have a sit-down restaurant on Millar Avenue in Saskatoon where you will no doubt find the same great fare as AIM visitors are at the food truck. The pork is smoked and slow cooked for about 12 hours, Jon Schryer tells me, and then topped off with a special barbecue sauce. At AIM you can get pulled pork on a bun or something a little different it also comes in a bag — shredded pork on top of nacho chips — now that’s a great combination. It can get a bit messy but don’t let that hold you back. Jon Schryer and co-workers Shay Grylls and Travis Lad served up hundreds during the first day.

Because of my expertise in providing valuable information to AIM goers I couldn’t wander too far, but hopefully I will get to try out some of the other great food vendors at the show — that Soom Soom Mediterranean cuisine was among those that caught my eye.

Back to AIM business

Rob Skorlatowski of Industrial Truck Service in Saskatoon says he is getting more interest from farmers looking to buy a forklift for the farm. Skorlatowski, who sells both Toyota and Crown forklifts, was at the show sizing up prospective opportunities. He says more and more producers are needing to move tote bags and other bulk crop protection products and a fork lift works so much better than many telehandlers.

Jim Anderson of Frostfree Nose Pumps stopped by the info booth and invited all livestock producers to have a look at their display — and it is worth checking out. These nose pumps, that are powered by the animal’s muzzle, can simply and reliably pump water from a well 100 to 200 feet deep for a few hundred head of cattle — year-round.

Anderson says he was impressed with the set up of the livestock area at Ag In Motion show. There are daily presentations on feeding cattle and forage production. Curt Pate is providing presentation on low stress cattle handling and there are also fencing demonstrations. Check out the expanded livestock area.

One of the most important visitors at the show Tuesday was, as I mentioned earlier, Les Lehman who farms at North Battleford. He had read my July Grainews column where I mentioned I had a few Grainews ball caps to give away to the first people who found me and said hello at either an information booth or the Grainews booth, and he did. So Les is now the envy of the greater North Battleford area with a sporty-looking Grainews cap… I still have a few left.

Wear good shoes

What else? Aside from the food and livestock and collectors’-edition Grainews ball caps there appears to also be some crops and machinery stuff at AIM too. OK, let’s face it… there is tonnes of crops and machinery stuff. I hardly saw any of it yet, due to the high demand on me to provide reliable information to AIM goers but Wednesday I will have a better look.

Despite my advice to scale the show back and have all displays within 50 feet of the parking lot, the organizers went ahead and made the show bigger. So wear good shoes, or hire six or eight neighbourhood lads to tote you around like an Egyptian pharaoh or queen, that would work too. There are regular shuttles running all day around the grounds, so you don’t have to walk every inch. And… and… there is a company renting golf carts to AIM goers this year, so you might want to check out that mode of transportation.

— Lee Hart is a field editor with Grainews based in Calgary. Check out his regular blog posts here.

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