It’s always blamed on excessive nitrogen causing excessive growth. Many growers in such wet seasons try various growth regulators, often with little or no effect, hoping to prevent crop lodging.

Let’s get to the real reason why wheat lodges in wet or rainy seasons.

Soils most prone to wheat lodging in wet seasons are:

• sandy,
• sandy/loam,
• sandy/high organic matter,
• heavy in cattle manure applications, and/or
• silt soils along old river courses.

What do these soils have in common? They’re usually very low in available copper in the top six to eight inches, often of the order of 0.2 to 0.5 parts per million (ppm).

Testing, treating for soil copper

Potato growers favour sandy, silty soils. They’re the best soil types for clean, mud-free potato production.

What do potato growers do when they rent such sandy fields from neighbouring grain growers? They perform extensive soil tests — not only for macronutrients, but for micronutrients as well. They may add several pounds of manganese, zinc, copper and boron if necessary per acre. If copper levels are low (below one ppm) in sandy soils, potato growers will add three pounds of copper (12 pounds of bluestone) per acre to bring the copper level up to two ppm.

What happens when farmers plant a wheat crop following potatoes in the rotation? They usually brag about the big jump in wheat yield. They ascribe the yield increase to leftover nitrogen or phosphate from the potato crop. I do not agree.

I live in an area of many potato growers and lots of sandy cropland. I am pretty convinced the jump in the wheat yield following a potato crop is due to copper. To further prove my point, I will show what happened to two adjacent wheat quarters I followed in 2025 on the east and west side of Range Road 272 to the west of Edmonton.

I selected two fields sown to wheat. Both were sandy loam soil types seeded in late April. Both fields looked good in June and were headed out in early July. During late June, July and early August, the wheat field areas got around one inch of rain almost once a week, to a total of eight or more inches. All crops in the area looked good. In sandy soil, an inch of rain may move eight to 10 inches down, but not much deeper.

The field to the west had grown potatoes the year previously. The field to the east, to my knowledge, had never grown potatoes. By late August, the west field looked to be in excellent shape. I estimated an 80-plus bushel crop of possibly No. 1 or No. 2 wheat.

The field to the east, meanwhile, was very badly lodged and the crop itself was perhaps 10 days to two weeks behind in maturity. My simple diagnosis is that the field to the west had adequate soil copper reserves, whereas the soil to the east was copper-starved or deficient.

Copper’s function in production

There’s also the matter of disease. In the same wet weather, lodging can be accompanied by significant ergot infection of the grain heads, particularly in wheat and sometimes in barley.

Copper is essential for pollen fertility and for ergot prevention.

Two — yes, two — copper-based enzymes are needed for lignin biosynthesis that results in stem strength. Lignin is the “rod” that holds up the wheat stem, according to Horst Marschner’s book, Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants.

Farmers have been removing crops from Prairie cropland for 100 to 150 years or more. As they deplete macronutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphate, potash and sulphur, they have soil tested and replaced them. What about the micronutrients every crop or cow also removes? Production draws down on micronutrient reserves. Can farmers accept that, in many soil types, their copper or perhaps zinc or manganese is critically low?

Minnesota potato grower recommendations state that for soils not in vegetable production within two years or where micronutrients are known to be low, farmers should put down five pounds an acre of manganese, three of zinc, four of iron, three of copper and 1.5 of boron.

“Use soil testing to monitor micronutrient status every two years to avoid micronutrient toxicity, because some micronutrients can build up in the soil,” the resource warns.

Now that you know you have been draining on-soil micronutrient reserves in grams per year as you harvest your crops, you must replace these missing reserves.

Most unfarmed sandy soils have one to two pounds of copper available in the top six inches of soil per acre and about two to three pounds of zinc. A 60-bushel crop of wheat will remove up to half an ounce of copper. How many cereal crops can you take off your cropland before you deplete your micronutrient reserves in your topsoil?

Livestock’s leavings and lodging

A common way to lodge a cereal crop is to place 15 to 25 tons of cattle manure onto sandy soil in particular. What usually happens, and I have heard it repeated many times, is that the cereal crop — especially wheat — has taken up too much nitrogen. I disagree.

The carbon:nitrogen ratio of such manure is about 30:1. Wheat straw is about 80:1. Thus, when manure is applied to cropland, it has a severe deficiency of nitrogen.

What really happens is that cropland soil per gram or ounce has billions of microorganisms such as fungi and bacteria. These microorganisms seize on the limited nitrogen, as well as other nutrients in the soil (potassium, phosphorus and sulphur) and including micronutrients such as boron, copper, zinc and manganese. The real cause of the lodging is the fact that the micronutrients take up the limited soil copper, depriving the wheat plants. Copper enzymes being essential for wheat stem strength, the result is crop lodging.

If you manure sandy soil, in particular, and your soil copper level is below 0.5 ppm, you must add copper to prevent lodging at around five lb. an acre (20 pounds of bluestone) and up your nitrogen (depending on existing soil nitrogen) by 60 to 100 pounds per acre.

I examined a sandy field of wheat in the Camrose, Alta., area that went 20 bushels an acre after a very heavy application of manure. The next year, the farmer applied, with a Valmar spreader, about four pounds of copper per acre (16 pounds of bluestone), drilled in some 60 pounds of nitrogen and seeded again to wheat. With the added copper and nitrogen, the field went 70 bushels an acre of No. 2 wheat.

Cereal growers must think like potato growers. Give the crop the optimum macro- and micronutrients in order to get an optimum target yield for your area.

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In this section we’re referring to wheat, barley, oats, rye and triticale. I have traveled from Quebec to the B.C. lowlands many, many times and in the event of violent wind storms, often during thunderstorms, especially accompanied by heavy rain, crop lodging at close to maturity is expected. You can see the bent or broken stems caused by the force of the wind and weight of the rain. Hail damage is another matter.

Losses in yield and quality from lodging can be high. This kind of weather damage is beyond our control and a good reason for crop insurance. Cereal crop lodging in a good, moist, calm growing season is the problem I will explain, in terms that can be understood. In moist growing seasons, cereal roots remain near the soil surface.

Minimum-till and zero tillage have, or seem to have, reduced the amount and number of cereal crops I used to see plainly and heavily lodged in early August, particularly across the Prairies, during good growing seasons. There is an explanation — and it is not shorter-stemmed cereal crops or growth regulators.

Why would we have lodging of seemingly well-growing crops during grain formation in good moist growing seasons, in the absence of significant winds, but little or no lodging in dry or drought conditions? Here is the most likely cause — and the only one that seems to elude soil and crop specialists. Soil microbes, or living soil biomass, are the primary culprit.

In good cereal cropland, with around two to five per cent organic levels, are teeming masses of living organisms, especially in mid-summer. In a gram of soil (there are about 28 grams to an ounce) there are 10 billion bacteria or more. These are made up of thousands of bacterial species, all living, multiplying and dying. This soil also includes algae, fungi, protozoa, insects, earthworms and many other microscopic organisms.

These soil organisms have a biomass that could range from 50 to 500 actual grams per square metre (or yard). Now, put this into context: let us say in an average No. 2 Prairie soil with a biomass of 250 grams per square metre or half a pound per square yard approximately, that half-pound per square yard (4,840 square yards an acre) gives you around 2,420 lbs. of bacteria. That is the weight of just about two cows an acre. This mass of two cows is just the bacteria portion. Now, if you add the fungi, insects, worms, nematodes et cetera, you have got another two cow equivalents. So, you now have in good cropland about four cows equivalent per acre chomping on the organic matter in a good healthy moist soil in mid-summer. This “four-cow” mass of soil microorganisms, bugs, fungi and worms wake up as soon as the Prairie soils thaw out and warm up in April of each year.

Now, if this soil is high in crop residue, and particularly if the grower has applied 10-20 tons of cattle manure and worked it into the cropland along with the crop residue, think — this grower has now provided a massive bonanza of organic carbohydrate in the form of crop residue and manure (hog, poultry or cattle) to soil macro and microorganisms. Now the grower sows a wheat crop and also applies the amounts of N, P, K and S needed for a 60-bushel crop of wheat. Then it depends on the crop growing season. Is the soil going to stay warm and moist, or is it going to stay relatively dry all summer?

If the top six to eight inches (15-20 cm) stay relatively dry, the wheat crop will pick up the required N, P, K and S and the roots may move two to four feet (90-120 cm) into the subsoil, the cropland delivers and the target yield of 60 bushels will be attained.

If, on the other hand, it’s a wet summer, the soil bacteria and other microflora and fauna in the top foot or so will just go “hog wild” with the added manure and crop residues. In the form of manure and crop residues, bacteria and associated organisms have all the carbohydrates (food) they need, but in many soils they may be short of nutrients, particularly micronutrients. These micronutrients, particularly copper and zinc, have been removed over 100 years or more in past crop growing seasons.

So, what happens? Were the soil micronutrients “tied up” in the organic residue? Not so — they were just picked up first by the microflora and microfauna, that is, the four cow equivalents or more per acre of soil. Those four cows’ worth of microflora grabbed up all of the already-low soil copper levels in the top eight inches of soil. No copper, no lignin formation, no stem strength — or no pollen formation, then ergots. The lack of copper causes the cereal crops to lodge, with wheat at its most susceptible.

Look up the YouTube video “Lodging Wheat Rescue with Dr. Copper.” There the maturing wheat is growing on roadside soil, low in organic matter and high in available copper. The lodged crop is growing on well-manured soil loaded with actively growing micro-organisms. These organisms have grabbed up the available copper levels that have been drawn down in over 100 years of micronutrient removal.

The wheat, starved of copper, cannot form lignin for stem strength or pollen in some instances for seed set and the wheat heads either have blanks, stray pollen pollination or ergot infection.

If you have any doubts about copper’s importance in organic soils, I will quote this information from Ontario’s Agronomy Guide for Field Crops, page 35: “When black highly organic soils are first brought into cultivation copper should be applied to the soil at 14 kg/ha (12.5 lbs./ac.); that’s 50 lbs. of copper sulphate at 25 per cent copper for each of the first three years.”

Why is it that horticultural specialists are so far ahead of agricultural crop specialists? Such levels of copper are applied to such high-organic matter soils — for example, Brandford Marsh, north of Toronto, or the organic soils of Michigan or Florida. Now, when you manure cropland on the Prairies, I am not suggesting such huge amounts of expensive copper. What I recommend is that if you have cropland prone to lodging, and low yields at the very least, treat a few acres with four to six pounds of actual copper (16-24 lbs. of copper sulphate) and check the results. That level of copper is good for 10-20 years or more. When you get positive results, plan your anti-lodging strategy for your cereal crops — especially wheat and barley — after you have soil-tested for copper levels in particular.

Peas

Peas do not grow on stems but vines, with tendrils that enable them to climb up and over other plants. In nature peas have huge advantages over most competing plants in that they, like other legumes, fix their own nitrogen. When I first grew peas, they were eight-foot climbing vines that grew on six-foot sticks or brushwood in the garden. Ontario in fact had a major industry 150 years ago growing thousands of acres of green peas on rows of canes for export to the U.K.

When I moved to Ontario in 1969, I grew peas in the trial plots and saw them grow six feet tall or more, then collapse on themselves and become heavily rotted. The variety I grew was “Trapper.” Back in 1962 when I visited the U.K. Cambridge Crop Research Station, I remember seeing its prize plots of leafless green peas, which it had obtained via California.

Not until I moved to Alberta in 1974 did I see my first leafless pea crops: all tendrils and few leaves. Pea vines need support, and as a field crop, that support to “stand up” comes from producing more tendrils than leaves, and a shorter stature. The answer to reduce or prevent lodging is following recommended row spacing and seeding heavy-tendril dwarf types that can stand up to windy or rainy weather. These peas may not be the best yielders, but they can be reliable for quality grain. Peas are excellent scavengers of soil-available copper and do not give any response to added copper on mineral soils — probably due to deeper rooting than cereals.

Canola

With the exception of windstorms, lodging in canola is related to seeding density, high fertility and sclerotinia infection. On heavily-manured fertile soils, at high seeding rates of six pounds per acre, and in humid summers, weather lodging can be severe. In soils that are fertilized for target yields in the 50- to 60-bushel range for the canola crop, seeding rates of four to six lbs. seem to be most effective.

Unfortunately, in very highly manured soils, where the soil nitrogen levels may exceed 200 lbs./ac., lighter seeding rates of three to four lbs. or less are recommended. High fertilizer rates (N, P, K, S), particularly of N, encourage very rapid dense canopies under good moisture conditions. These dense canopies at normal seeding rates favour sclerotinia infection in moist weather in July, causing weakened stems and crop lodging. At the higher fertility rates, it may be advisable to reduce seeding rates to three lbs. or even less per acre, to encourage better-standing multiple-branching canola plants less prone to sclerotinia infection and lodging. Canola, with its deeper rooting system of three to four feet, has shown little need for any micronutrient requirement — except perhaps for boron under dry weather conditions.

Flax

At seed set, flax always seems to be on the verge of lodging or sometimes lodged. Our research at Alberta Agriculture in the ’90s showed flax responds very well in many instances to additional zinc and copper micronutrients. Research at a few locations in Alberta on specific sandy-type soils showed significant yield increases when copper in particular was included in the fertilizer inputs. In one instance, upping the N, P, K and S at one central Alberta location, together with a few pounds per acre of both copper and zinc, took an expected flax yields of some 20 bushels to almost 40 bushels an acre. The copper amendment in particular reduces or prevents lodging in flax crops by greatly increasing straw strength.

My father’s opinion: ‘If you are not the lead horse, the scenery never changes.’

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Grain Millers and Paterson Grain, which operate oat mills in Yorkton and Winnipeg, say chlormequat has limited agronomic value and might disrupt demand for Canadian oats.

Some farmers in Western Canada use chlormequat, sold under the brand Manipulator, to reduce the height of oat plants and minimize the risk of lodging.

On Feb. 28, Grain Millers sent an email to its oat suppliers, including farmers, asking them to think twice before using Manipulator this year.

“We have seen no agronomic value in the use of Manipulator on oats…. In some cases, it has even been shown to reduce grain yield and quality as well as potentially lengthening maturity,” Grain Millers said.

Lorne Boundy, a merchandiser with Paterson Grain and a farmer in Manitoba, shared a similar message in an interview with The Western Producer.

“It’s efficacy on oats is hit and miss,” Boundy said.

“It works very well on wheat. It works decently on barley. It’s mediocre on oats, at best…. It doesn’t do a lot (for oats).”

A spokesperson for Belchim Crop Protection Canada, which markets and distributes Manipulator, said its efficacy does vary, depending on variety.

“Yes, it is true that there are differences in oat varietal responses to chlormequat. Overall, the product provides a positive benefit when used on oats in terms of helping to maximize yield, preserving quality and improving harvest efficiency,” said Cade Morse.

“Our experience shows that growers use products that provide them with a good return on investment.”

The discussion around the efficacy of Manipulator is connected to a U.S. report on chlormequat, released in mid-February.

An American non-profit, the Environmental Working Group, studied the presence of chlormequat in urine and oat food.

EWG scientists found traces of chlormequat in 77 out of 96 urine samples, or 80 percent of cases.

The urine came from adults in Florida, South Carolina and Missouri.

The high rate of positive tests should raise “alarm bells,” the EWG said, because the “chemical is linked to reproductive and developmental problems in animal studies, suggesting the potential for similar harm to humans.”

The EWG also tested oat-based food that was purchased in May 2023 and the summer of 2022. The researchers tested 25 samples of food made from conventional oats and detected traces of chlormequat 23 times. or 92 percent of samples.

“These findings and chlormequat toxicity data raise concerns about current exposure levels and warrant more expansive toxicity testing, food monitoring and epidemiological studies to assess health effects of chlormequat exposures in humans,” say the authors of the EWG study, published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology

In its report, the EWG says the source of the chlormequat is likely Canadian farms because American growers aren’t allowed to apply the plant growth regulator to cereal crops.

How much chlormequat?

The amount detected in oat foodswas well below the maximum residue level (MRL) for chlormequat.

In conventional oat food purchased in 2022 and 2023, the EWG found:

• A median amount of 114 parts per billion in 2023 and 90 p.p.b .in 2022.
• So, 104 ppb for the 25 samples of oat foods
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has an MRL for chlormequat in oat grains of 40 parts per million and 10 p.p.m. for oat bran.

Put another way, the amount found in oats was 104 p.p.b. and the maximum allowable amount is 40,000 p.p.b. The MRL is 384 times more than the amount detected in oats.

“In my opinion, and POGA’s opinion, is that this is a good news story, if anything,” said Brad Boettger, chair of the Prairie Oat Growers Association and a farmer in Alberta, east of Edmonton.

“The fact that we’re 350 times lower than the maximum allowable, I would characterize it as kind of making a story where there isn’t one.”

Boundy used more direct language.

He described the EWG report as “crap.” However, he acknowledged that public perception of chlormequat in oats “could become an issue.”

The data and evidence may be on the side of Canadian growers, but major media outlets in the United States picked up the EWG study, including CBS News, Forbes, People magazine and USA Today.

“Chemical That May Cause Infertility Found in Cheerios, Quaker Oats … 80% of Americans tested were found to have been exposed to chlormequat,” said an alarming headline from people.com.

If consumers think oats are unsafe because of a Facebook post or something they saw on Instagram, it creates a massive risk for the oat industry.

That’s why Canadian oat growers are being asked, politely, to avoid using Manipulator.

“Grain Millers, Inc. has not prohibited the use of Manipulator on contracted oats but does discourage its use based on the data, the risk of future trade barriers and developing consumer concerns related to this product,” says its email to growers. “It is recommended that growers use careful consideration before using this product.”

Paterson Grain is also taking a subtle approach.

Boundy is encouraging growers to use other tactics to prevent lodging instead of applying chlormequat.

“You shouldn’t be starting your planning … with ‘yes, I’m going to use it (Manipulator),’ ” he said.

“Start with your variety. Pick a good, standing variety, tailor your fertility program to help it stand and go from there.”

—Robert Arnason writes for the Western Producer from Manitoba.

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Excessively wet conditions in the region this month have already slowed fieldwork and hurt spring wheat quality on both sides of the border.

Snow is expected to fall from Saturday night through Monday, dumping 10 to 30 cm broadly across southern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan. A few areas close to the U.S. border are likely to receive 18 inches through Monday, said Nick Vita, a meteorologist with the Commodity Weather Group.

“We’re thinking about 10 to 15 per cent of the Canadian spring wheat and canola is at risk to see five to 10 per cent losses due to lodging from the snow,” said Vita.

Lodging occurs when plants get knocked over, making them difficult to harvest.

Montana’s spring wheat harvest was 80 per cent complete by Sunday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said, limiting the amount of crops still vulnerable to the weather there.

The harvest is less advanced in Canada. Farmers had gathered 31 per cent of Saskatchewan’s spring wheat and 17 per cent of its canola as of Monday, the province said in a weekly report. Harvest progress for all crops in the province totaled 39 per cent, well behind the five-year average pace of 62 per cent.

“We are expecting drier weather to return no later than the middle of next week,” Vita said. “So the snow should melt … But harvest will be slow to recover,” he said.

— Julie Ingwersen is a commodities correspondent for Reuters in Chicago.

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This year’s heavy and unusually early snowfalls in September and early October were unavoidable and destructive of crop quality.

Aside from wet snowfalls, severe windstorms and driving rains, crop lodging can be effectively avoided in many instances through crop fertility and management.

Lodging in crops like canola and sunflowers can be caused by diseases such as sclerotinia white mould. In peas, by a lack of support tendrils and such causes as temporary flooding and of course windstorms and snow as we saw this year.

In small grain cereals there is a lot of folklore and mythology about crop lodging which generally focuses on the fable of “too much nitrogen.”

I read several publications and articles on the role of nitrogen put out by the Prairie provinces’ provincial governments, but none made any factual sense. There were zero answers as to why nitrogen was the cause of lodging, no facts just opinions and waffle.

Sandy soil and cattle manure

There is also the fairy tale of sandy soil and cattle manure.

So, you apply 10 tons of cattle manure in the fall to your sandy cropland quarter that produced only 30 bushels of canola that year, because you have heard that manure is good for sandy soil, especially for water holding and release of nutrients.

You reckon that you should seed to spring wheat and expect a 40- to 60-bushel crop at harvest. You have been told at the coffee shop that cattle manure is a good source of nitrogen. Many manures may have excessive straw or even wood shavings. Wheat straw has an 80:1 carbon (C) to nitrogen (N) ratio; good cattle manure can be 20:1 or even up to 40:1 C to N ratio. Just because you were told that cattle manure has 10 to 12 pounds of nitrogen per ton, doesn’t mean that you have applied 120 pounds of nitrogen to your wheat crop, not counting the two per cent organic fraction of the sandy soil. in most years this cattle manure will only release perhaps 35 per cent of its nitrogen, not the whole 120 lbs.

Thus:

• 10 tons of cattle manure with lots of straw has about 120 pounds of N.
• Release of N in the first year from this manure is about 35 per cent, giving up 40 pounds of nitrogen.
• The two per cent of the organic fraction of the sandy soil at best will give up 20 pounds of N.

Conclusion: You now have just over 60 pounds of available N, even if your phosphate, potash and sulphur are adequate. The previous 30-bushel canola straw will release additional N but only 10 pounds at best. Your total is now 70 pounds of available N.

What sort of wheat yield do you get? Probably around 40 bushels of wheat and your whole crop lodged to boot.

What did the coffee shop crowd tell you? Your crop lodged because of too much nitrogen

That answer is speculative nonsense.

What likely happened is that the ten tons of manure provides a huge source of carbohydrate (straw) energy — good for the soil fungi, bacteria and other biological life. These micro and macro-organisms all need micronutrients such as copper, which is in short supply (deficient), and is denied to the wheat crop. As a consequence, the wheat crop becomes super deficient in copper and lodges. The wheat may also show melanosis (browning) and the presence of ergots, further proof of severe copper deficiency.

Other evidence

Am I alone in this factual account? No not by a long way. I can quote from Horst Marschner, one of the most eminent of soil scientists, in his text book Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants:

• “Impaired lignification of cell walls is the most typical anatomical change induced by copper deficiency.” Lignification is the process that strengthens the plant’s body.
• “An increase in the lodging susceptibility of cereals.”
• “a decrease in lignification occurs even with mild copper deficiency.”
• “Lignification responds rapidly to copper supply.”

There are at least two copper enzymes in lignin biosynthesis. Smell the coffee please! We have removed about a half ounce of copper (15 grams) from every acre every time we remove grain, hay or cattle annually from our croplands. So, if you have been farming this land for 100 to 300 years do the math on copper removed. Over 100 years you have removed 50 ounces of copper which amounts to about three pounds per acre. How much copper was there to begin with in the top six inches of soil? Just a few pounds on average. Sandy or light, loamy soils are the first to run out of copper. Peaty soils also sequester (tie-up) copper.

Why do we supplement the diet of every pig, poultry, sheep, cow, horse or bison with copper? It’s because the amount of Cu in prairie feedstock is too low to meet their needs. Has the “penny” dropped yet?

Copper and lodging

When you look at a partially lodged field why does the cereal crop lodge in the low spots but not on the higher, better drained spots? Wind does not do this. Its due to the fact that in the lower spots there is better moisture and shallow rooting. In the dryer areas the cereal roots go deeper and pick up sufficient copper several feet down. In the low spots the cereal roots stay shallow and end up in the top six to 12 inches that has become copper deficient. In years of drought we see very little cereal crop lodging. That is because the roots have to move deep into the subsoil for moisture and pick up adequate copper.

The next time that you see a lodged crop of wheat or barley, go to the turns or low spots and pick up some plants. The stems have not bent or broken, they just buckled like a piece of rope that you tried to stand up. Lack of lignification is due to a lack of copper and the result is lodging. We used to aim for 30 bushels of wheat now its 120 bushels, four times the yield which needs four times as much copper. Do the math.

Many growers create an imbalance of nitrogen, another factor that increases the lodging susceptibility, by interfering with copper metabolism and stem strength and lignin formation. It’s the lignin produced by copper-based enzymes that makes all cereal crop stems firm and resistant to lodging.

Creating an imbalance

Soil tests calculate the amount of N, P, K and S required to produce a 70-bushel crop of wheat or a 100-bushel crop of barley.

The problem is that the N and S (sulphate) requirements are easily calculated but the P and K (phosphorus and potassium) are another matter. If the crop requires 30 pounds of P and perhaps 60 pounds of K remember that both these fertilizers are only partially available to the cereal crops in the years of application, perhaps only 15 to 20 per cent at most. What often happens is that the P in particular is still deficient as perhaps is the K, but the N and S are fully available.

What results is a surplus of N (too much nitrogen) and too little P and K. This N surplus, coupled with the soil-available N, is unbalanced and can interfere with copper uptake and metabolism in the plant. This results in poor lignification of the cereal stems, resulting in crop lodging.

So, if you have frequent problems with crop lodging not related to unbalanced N or weather factors try a few acres of copper application, particularly if you farm sandy soil, peatland or soil high in organic matter.

Herbicides, especially Group 1s (fops), can cause severe lodging of wheat especially, if the cropland is low or deficient in copper. When you see wheat standing in the wheel tracks following herbicide application and lodging in the rest of the field you have a prime example of herbicide interference in wheat stem lignification. During herbicide application, the wheels crush the wheat seedlings, resulting in a much-reduced uptake of herbicide by the wheat seedlings in the wheel tracks. The lower levels of herbicide in these seedlings are not enough to interfere with the copper-based enzymes that form lignin and give the wheat plants good stem strength. The herbicide is telling you that your crop is low-to-deficient in copper

I would suggest that if you have frequent crop lodging on the Prairies that you apply some 40 pounds of bluestone (use a Valmar spreader) to about five to 10 acres of your problem fields — that’s about 10 pounds of actual copper. You will get cereal crop standability significantly increased or absent, increased yields and an absence of ergots. That copper application of 10 pounds per acre is good for 15 to 20 years or more. You will get your money back and more in cereal yield and quality in just a couple of years.

In summation, I can categorically say that I have provided you with a definitive and factual cause of crop lodging in cereals. I am dealing with facts, not fictional opinions that are all too common in agriculture circles, often by so-called experts.

Remember, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man or woman is king or queen.

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Lloydminster, Estevan and Carrot River were just a few of the communities hit hardest by the precipitation.

In some cases, areas in eastern and southern regions received over 100 millimetres of rain in just a few hours. Crops in those area have suffered lodging, wind and hail damage or been placed under standing water.

Leaf spot and root rot are already issues and the water is also raising the potential for disease pressures, according to one official.

Topsoil moisture is rated as 33 per cent surplus, 66 per cent adequate and one per cent short. Hay land and pasture topsoil moisture is rated as 18 per cent surplus, 81 per cent adequate and two per cent short.

Haying progress is at a standstill due to wet fields and high humidity. Saskatchewan livestock producers now have 19 per cent of the hay crop cut and 20 per cent baled or put into silage. Hay quality is rated as nine per cent excellent, 70 per cent good, 18 per cent fair and three per cent poor.

According to the report, 51 per cent of fall cereals, 69 per cent of oilseeds and 70 per cent of spring cereals and pulses are at normal developmental stages for this time of year.

— Dave Sims writes for Commodity News Service Canada in Winnipeg.

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Regionally, producers in the southwest are furthest advanced, having 61 per cent of the crop combined. Producers in the southeast have 59 per cent combined. Thirty-three per cent of the crop is combined in the west-central region; 22 per cent in both the east-central northwestern regions, and 20 per cent in the northeast.

Heavy rain over the weekend has delayed producers in many parts of the province. Warm and dry weather will be needed to help fields dry. Rainfall ranged from small amounts to over four inches in some southeastern areas.

Provincially, topsoil moisture conditions on cropland are rated as 16 per cent surplus, 76 per cent adequate, seven per cent short and one per cent very short. Hay land and pasture topsoil moisture conditions are rated as six per cent surplus, 80 per cent adequate, 12 per cent short and two per cent very short.

Strong winds and heavy rain have lodged some crops and quality is a concern in areas. Yields vary greatly across the province, but overall are estimated to be close to average. Winter cereals are being seeded as time allows.

The Ministry of Agriculture has a Forage, Feed and Custom Service listing for producers to advertise and source feed products.

To read the full report, with a complete breakdown of crop districts, visit the Government of Saskatchewan website.

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