Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne made the announcement March 17.

“Agriculture is without a doubt one of the most important and investable sectors in our economy,” said federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald in a news release.

“The pace of technological advancement we’ve seen across the industry in recent years has been impressive, and investments like this will continue to accelerate innovation.”

The federal cash is part of an $50 million equity commitment alongside Idealist Capital to support the next phase of Solugen’s growth and commercial expansion.

Solugen produces and commercializes Azogen, a fast-release liquid ammoniacal nitrogen fertilizer derived from hog manure.

The investment will allow Solugen to expand capacity at its existing plant in St-Patrice-de-Beaurivage, Que. and construct a second facility in the province.

Solugen was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Lévis, Que. Its Azogen is produced through a fully circular process. By converting manure into high-performance fertilizer, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional fertilizers, the news release said.

The funding comes through the Canada Growth Fund, a $15 billion, arm’s length public investment vehicle launched by the federal government to attract private capital and invest in Canadian projects and businesses.

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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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Deanne Fulawka, a researcher from the University of Manitoba, presented her team’s findings at the Manitoba Sustainable Protein Research Symposium in Winnipeg July 7.

A main point of the study was to get local projections on how implants could impact emissions on Canadian cow-calf operations.

The study modelled scenarios for 130 calves. Under the simulated exercise, calves would have received hormonal implants at 30 days old. Results were then compared with 130 simulated unimplanted calves.

Local farm conditions across south-central, southwestern and Parkland regions of the province were plugged into the model. Fulawka’s team estimated greenhouse gas emissions for the three regions using Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Holos model.

Ammonia projections were based on simulated manure outputs using Canadian research on beef feed intake, manure practices, body weight and temperature. Regional crop yields, estimated dry matter intake and water needs were taken into account.

The hypothetical revenue producers would get from those cattle was based on prices at local auction marts.

Numbers for birth and weaning weights and average daily gain were based on a 2015 South Dakota State University study, which used Angus and Angus-Limousin cross bull calves. It found that when calves born in March and April received their implants in May, their weaning weight increased by an average of 29 pounds compared to untreated calves. The calves from mature cows gained more than calves from younger cows.

Based on a price of $616 per hundredweight, the Manitoba study estimated that revenue at weaning for its hypothetical calves was $135.80 greater per implanted calf compared to untreated calves.

Total emissions were similar between implanted and non-implanted calves. For example, ammonia emissions for implanted calves were only 0.04 per cent lower.

However, due to the higher weight of implanted calves, the greenhouse gas intensity, measured as kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of live weight was 3.72 per cent lower when implants were used.

Implants didn’t change how much land was needed for production of feed (including pasture) or water. Again, however, landuse intensity (hectare per kilogram of live weight) and water use (litre per kilogram of live weight) decreased by 3.92 per cent due to higher live weight when calves were marketed.

“There is an economic benefit to the producer, but we also want to send home that message that there is also environmental impact,” said Fulawka.

Fulawka noted that South Dakota researchers compared calves implanted at 30 days to calves implanted at weaning, which is when many producers would be implanting their calves. They found that later-implanted calves caught up to those implanted at 30 days and finished at similar weights.

She said Canadian beef producers have set a goal to reduce emissions, adding that every best management practice that is added will get the sector closer to that goal.

The Canadian Cattle Association has set a target to reduce primary production greenhouse gas emission intensity by 33 per cent by 2030, according to its website.

It’s estimated that fewer than 30 per cent of producers in the cow-calf sector use implants, which makes this an area of significant opportunity to improve economic and environmental outcomes, Fulawka’s report said.

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A draft update to Canada’s organic standards proposes allowing struvite, a fertilizer created by crystallizing phosphorus from wastewater, as an approved input on organic farms. The change would open the door for producers to use struvite sourced from municipal water treatment systems, provided it meets strict purity criteria.

“This has been changed to allow struvite as a phosphorus input on organic farms and for farms like my own in western Manitoba, where we don’t have manure readily available,” said Manitoba Organics executive director Marika Dewar-Norosky. “It’s going to be a game changer in being able to buy a renewable source of phosphorus.”

The Canadian General Standards Board leads the review process, drawing from recommendations by a technical committee made up of industry stakeholders. Part of the process includes a 60-day consultation period, which just ended on July 29. The committee will review any suggestions and make any necessary amendments based on the consultation process. Current organic farming rules allow struvite, just not when sourced from municipal wastewater. However, a March 2025 Canadian Organic Standards backgrounder noted there were no commercially available sources of manure-derived struvite in Canada.

The proposed changes would add municipal wastewater to the list of allowed struvite sources — something previously barred.

—> WATCH: What the heck is struvite?

“The hope is that struvite from multiple sources will eventually become available,” it read. “Permitting struvite from municipal waste water provides a source of phosphorus, which is greatly needed for alkaline P-deficient soils.”

Furthermore, the document noted, struvite from municipal waste water is already approved in the European Union.

“This decision was made after extensive study by the Expert Group for Technical Advice on Organic Production and the EU general fertilizer commission, which found this form of struvite to be safe for humans, animals and the environment (subject to purity restrictions),” the document read.

It will also benefit adjacent water bodies, Dewar-Noroski noted.

“This is essentially taking phosphorus out of our waste system that is contributing to things like algae blooms in Lake Winnipeg and allowing farmers to use it in their fields as fertilizer.”

Last year, the City of Winnipeg and fertilizer company Ostara announced that the city waste-water plant upgrades would include nutrient reclaiming technology to generate struvite agricultural fertilizer.

The announcement was pitched as good news for nutrient overloaded Lake Winnipeg, which is a perennial hot button topic in the province and an often-cited schism between agriculture and environmental policy.

Most organic farmers in Manitoba approve of the change in direction, but there is still some hesitation based on possible negative consumer reaction and international trade implications.

“We’re doing a lot of work to really reinforce the education around this being allowed,” said Dewar-Norosky.

Ian Cushon with the Moose Creek Organic Farm Partnership in Oxbow, Sask., is the producer who first proposed bringing struvite to the table. There’s “very little opposition” to this amendment, particularly in parts of Western Canada where low soil phosphorus is a problem, he said.

“There is some concern (about struvite) from Quebec, where there is lots of animal manure available and less issues with low P,” Cushon said via email.

“Quebec and Ontario are unlike the Prairies, where we have a shortage of animal manure for the relatively large amount of organic acres. Of course, that depends on the region and where the organic acres are.”

Prairie soils have abundant phosphorus in some places, but much is unavailable to plants for a number of reasons, he wrote, “and it is a relatively slow process to make P more available without the addition of manure or other outside sources.”

He also pointed to phosphorus trials done in co-operation with the University of Manitoba. Those included struvite, and the fertilizer performed well, he said.

Treated fenceposts to be greenlit

In another proposed change, treated wood fence posts would be allowed as perimeter fencing to keep out wildlife and non-organic livestock. This was previously disallowed based on the toxicity of older wood treatments.

That’s changed somewhat, said Dewar-Norosky. Modern treatments are “far less caustic” than they used to be, and there are also few alternatives for farmers.

“It’s really prohibitive in the Prairies to get non-treated posts such as metal, plastic and concrete,” she said.

“This has been under review for a few years, and this year, (the technical committee) decided that there’s enough evidence to support that fence posts that are treated are allowed as perimeter fencing.… (It’s) going to make installing fencing on organic acres significantly easier.”

The change would only go as far as the perimeter, however. Treated posts would not be allowed for cross-fencing.

Under the draft standards, treated fence posts still cannot come into contact with organic crops, including roots.

“Realistically, your machinery is not going close enough to your fence posts that any contamination in the direct soil won’t be touching your crops,” Dewar-Norosky said.

A slide presented during the virtual Q&A noted that some wood perservatives are still toxic, although less so than the old products.

However, “due to the importance of livestock on an organic farm, and the fact that many organic farms don’t certify their livestock, the allowance for perimeter fencing was made under certain conditions.”

Longer transition period cracks down on organic ‘flip-flopping’

Another amendment increases allowed time for a producer to go back to organic farming after shifting to conventional — from 36 months to five years.

Those who have accidentally broken some organic rules still have 36 months before they can transition back to organic.

“The goal of the system is to have sustainable organic farms that are trying to farm with good, healthy crop rotations — not just gaming the system essentially and threading in and out,” said Dewar-Norosky.

The amendment is intended to make it “a little more difficult” for producers who have gone conventional to regain their organic-certified status, she said.

There are exceptions in cases of accidental non-compliance. Dewar-Norosky would have been among those looking for that exemption at one point.

”I, as a farmer, lost our certification because we were accidentally sprayed. That’s an exception where we waited 36 months. We still had to do the full process, but there was no further penalty. If you intentionally take your crops out of organic, you can’t just wait 36 months and go back to organic.”

The draft copy of the new standards forbids alternating between organic and non-organic management, but with exceptions for “catastrophic” or “uncontrollable factors.”

In these cases, “the operator may take land out of organic management, provided that … the operator submits written notice to the certification body of the intent to alternate and justification of why organic status cannot be maintained, and receives conditional approval prior to the use of substances or methods prohibited by this standard.”

Approval will be based on a written action plan. It must include details of substances and practices to be used, a timeline for transitioning the land back to organic management and a description of how the organic plan will be amended to avoid the issue from happening again, if possible. It also calls for compliance with requirements to transition land back to organic standards.

According to a survey on the exception put out by the Organic Federation of Canada, 59 per cent felt it should be allowed “only in certain situations.” Five per cent thought it should be allowed once and 23 per cent thought it should never be allowed.

Only 12 per cent felt organic farmers should be allowed to switch back and forth between conventional and organic production with a 36-month window in between.

“So generally, the producers that responded to surveys felt strongly that people shouldn’t be moving in and out of organic production,” said Dewar-Norosky.

While the consultation period is over, the draft regulations are available at the Organic Federation of Canada website.

“It goes over all of the changes in another column with rationale explaining why this change was made for every single change,” Dewar-Norosky said.

She also feels consumers and conventional farmers don’t understand how much work and oversight goes into becoming — and remaining — organic producers.

“It includes a field inspection, a grain truck inspection, a signed affidavit that the truck is properly cleaned out by a certified organic holder, so anyone that is holding organic grain also has to be inspected and certified to a processor that is inspected and certified,” she said.

“Every step of the way, everyone that touches that grain has to be inspected and certified to ensure there’s no cross-contamination within our food chain.”

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A team of researchers from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and Canadian universities want to help solve this problem, and they’re looking for a dairy farmer in Alberta to lend a hand.

Audrey Murray, an AAFC research scientist based in Charlottetown, is collaborating with Marico Arlos from the University of Alberta and Anne Laarman from the University of Waterloo in Ontario on a five-year study, which started this spring. The researchers are examining how wastewater from dairy operations can be naturally treated through constructed wetlands to produce water for irrigating cattle feed crops.

To do this, Murray has assembled a series of pilot-scale wetlands at the Harrington research farm in P.E.I. to test different design variables for a dairy wastewater treatment system that can be put into practice on dairy farms.

Murray is currently seeking a volunteer dairy farmer in Alberta to partner with her team so a full-scale version of the system can be set up in that province later on in the project.

“We hope to find one as soon as possible, partly because we want it to be a co-development project. We would also like input from the producer, so they can let us know what they want. We want something that works for farmers, not just something that works technically. If it doesn’t work in a way that is helping them to run their farm, then it doesn’t necessarily meet our goals,” says Murray.

Once the project is completed, it’s hoped progressive early-adopters interested in this technology will have a tried-and-tested model for building such a system on their own dairy farms.

—> READ MORE: Floating islands could help filter cattle feedlot storm ponds

Murray and her team hope to have an Alberta producer-partner recruited by next summer, so they can begin initial work on wastewater lagoon sampling and wetland design.

The researchers hope to hear from producers with 100 to 150 head of cattle and who also irrigate and grow feed crops, and they are getting the word out through farm conferences in Alberta and through Alberta Milk, the province’s dairy producers’ association. Those interested in participating in the study can contact AAFC at 1-855-773-0241 or by email.

Murray’s replicated experiments in P.E.I. are aimed at ironing out design parameters for effective wastewater treatment before a full-scale version of the system is set up in Alberta.

Once that’s up and running, likely by the third year of the project, farmers will be encouraged to check it out and familiarize themselves with this nature-based solution to water shortages.

“We’ve had calls from farmers in different parts of Canada who are thinking about wetlands on their property. Farmers are smart people, and a lot of them read research or are interested in this type of thing already. We’re basically just providing an opportunity,” Murray says.

She adds the goal is to provide dairy producers in Alberta with a clear roadmap for treating wastewater naturally and provide them with an extra irrigation source at a time when it’s most needed.

“This is what farmers are looking for. They need some direction,” Murray says. “One of our deliverables is to produce design guidance for this specific purpose in Alberta (and) find something that works well.”

She notes one reason researchers chose Alberta for the project was because that’s where they saw the greatest need for this kind of water treatment and re-use solution. “It’s important especially in an Alberta agricultural context. It might be a slightly harder sell in P.E.I., I think.

“They have water shortages in Alberta, and at the time we wrote this proposal, they were experiencing severe drought and had been told that they would get half the water allotments they usually get. If you’re a farmer in that position, you have to then find ways to make the best use of the water that you have, and water re-use could be a part of that.”

Murray has conducted other wetland studies in P.E.I., researching how constructed wetlands on potato farms can naturally filter water from field runoff before it enters nearby streams and rivers. As she points out, wetlands also provide natural habitats for many species of plants, animals and insects, and they can even help capture carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Murray views her current wetlands project as one more application of her previous research, which she maintains hasn’t been explored for dairy farms in Canada up to now.

The middle layer

Here’s how the plan is envisioned to work in Alberta. Many dairy farms there have holding lagoons where wastewater from manure, used animal bedding and dairy production practices such as milk-house rinsing is stored. Farmers will often mix the contents of the lagoon in the spring, producing a nutrient-rich slurry that can be applied to crop fields as a natural fertilizer before planting.

Prior to mixing, the wastewater in these holding lagoons separates into layers, with a top layer that is thick and fatty and a bottom layer where much of the solids settle. There’s also a middle layer that contains the cleanest liquid — which is the basis of Murray’s constructed wetlands research. The treatment system starts with extracting this middle layer of liquid from unstirred holding lagoons.

“The ideal scenario is to build a wetland sightly downhill from the holding lagoon. A pipe is placed into the right location of the holding lagoon, connecting it to the wetland, and then gravity does the rest. This engineering solution is very common in municipal wastewater treatment plants,” Murray says.

As the water flows through the wetland, its quality is improved through physical and biological processes. It then enters a final mixing pond, where it is diluted with clean pond water and brought to quality standards required for use as a supplementary source of irrigation water.

“The wastewater is produced on site and the irrigation infrastructure is already there, so it’s just about tapping into that extra water source. It’s very efficient,” Murray says. She adds the end product may contain a bit more nutrients than regular pond water, but stresses it’s not meant to be used for fertigation purposes.

Murray is building her mini-version of this system using wastewater provided by local P.E.I. dairy farmers and mesocosms — that is, controlled outdoor experiments designed to simulate natural ecosystems. Various mesocosms consisting of different wetland soils and plants are being used to determine which are most effective in treating the wastewater.

Researchers are testing the output water quality from each mesocosm, and determining the ideal design concept and projected cost for the entire system, before moving forward with the full-scale design in Alberta.

Murray sees more possibilities for treating waste streams from other agricultural operations such as hog barns or feedlots this way, and she says she’d be interested in continuing her wastewater treatment and re-use research in this area.

“This is beyond the scope of this project, but I can see that there are many potential applications and a lack of clear design guidance for farmers who are interested in these technologies,” Murray says. “Hopefully there’ll be a continued appetite for this kind of research in the future. I think there might be.”

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The good news is, we can test for the usual cattle parasites — and if thresholds are passed, then those herds or pens are treated.

Work done a few years ago by a pharmaceutical company with which I was involved found that we could put most beef herds into low, medium and high categories for internal worms, and only the medium and high herds would need to be dewormed.

The best time to check is after cattle have been on grassy pasture later in the summer when burdens increase.

Cattle are generally pretty low shedders of eggs because of low infestation, but late summer is the best time to check. Yearlings generally have higher counts, followed by calves. The cows are most resistant.

Fresh manure is needed when doing a manure test. The modified Wisconsin test is the most accurate test for cattle.

It’s possible to pool samples instead of doing a group of 10. This should save time and money and be just as accurate if done properly. This should save the clinic time.

We all need to test more before treating the entire herd.

Managing ivermectin resistance

It has been found that ivermectin resistance is increasing, which reduces effectiveness. Resistance varies greatly from herd to herd.

Check to see if your herd veterinarian does parasite testing in-house, at their clinic, or sends them out.

The problem here is the number of tests that are needed as well as the cost and time.

Some producers complain about spending money on tests, only to have to deworm the herd anyway. Their response is that they might as well have just dewormed them in the first place.

This response is understandable, and quicker chute-side tests need to be developed to reduce this problem. I am sure some researcher will develop a quick, lower-cost method.

Another class of parasite treatment is the benzimidazoles, including products such as Safeguard and Valbazen. The problem is that only internal worms are treated, and the products don’t include treatment for lice.

Until the last decade or so, ivermectin products accomplished both parasite and lice control. They came on the market when my generation of veterinarians (baby boomers) were practicing, and everything was treated.

Lice were most visible, while internal worms rarely got bad enough in Canada to cause outward clinical disease.

However, this is changing.

Now, veterinarians must help producers fine-tune their entire parasite treatment program as well as their fly control program.

Internal parasites, such as liver flukes, and external ones, such as ticks, may also be showing up in slightly increasing frequency.

These parasite problems are in more specific geographic regions, and they can have complicated life cycles, so they may even show up in specific years under specific conditions.

Again, your herd veterinarian can help with specific treatments and monitoring if either liver flukes or ticks become prevalent in your area.

Fly control

For fly control, there are fewer and fewer products to use, and they are all similar chemically with no new ones on the horizon. Many have actually been taken away from us.

Treatments must be used only when fly numbers get high enough. If oilers are used, they can only be charged with product when necessary. This saves product and cost and slows down the development of resistance.

Canadian winter slows down the transmission of internal parasites, killing the eggs and reducing the survivability of larvae.

Rotational grazing, with a long time between pastures, allows more larvae to desiccate and die.

Producers should be able to keep parasites in check with selective and timely use of products, specific management changes and checking for eggs in the manure. It might also be a good idea to cull cows that are identified as lice carriers.

Parasites evolve and have been survivors, which means constant research is needed in this field so we are aware of new developments and products.

Most research is species-specific, but transmission can occur between similar species, such as bison and cattle or horses and donkeys.

Ticks, on the other hand, can involve several different species in their life cycle, as do liver flukes.

It’s a complicated world when it comes to parasite management, and herd management needs to be reviewed from time to time.

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Amy Charkowski, a professor of plant pathology and research associate dean at Colorado State University, spoke to an audience at Manitoba Potato Production Days in Brandon in late January about the disease and the challenges it presents.

“It’s different from a lot of soil-based pathogens,” Charkowski says.

Powdery scab, caused by Spongospora subterranea, thrives in cool, moist conditions and can significantly impact potato crops by forming lesions on tubers and galls on roots.

Tubers infected with powdery scab initially show purplish-brown, sunken lesions on tubers, followed by brown, raised pustules filled with spores. According to Ontario’s provincial agriculture website, powdery scab lesions can look remarkably similar to common scab. Pustules can enlarge up to five millimetres in diameter, and as they mature, the pustules release spores.

Small necrotic spots develop into white galls from one to 10 mm in diameter on roots and stolons. These galls turn a dark brown upon maturity, and then slowly break down, releasing powdery spores into soil, where they can survive for many years as resting spores.

Powdery scab attacks roots, stolons, young shoots and tubers, and is spread by planting infected seed tubers, moving infested soil or spreading contaminated cattle manure.

READ MORE: Potatoes Prairie-wide

As potato roots grow, they stimulate resting spores to germinate, which release swimming spores that attack roots, root hairs, stolons, young shoots or tubers. Galls are formed, and a fungal mass grows inside infected tissue and releases secondary swimming spores, which further spread the disease. With ideal conditions, several generations of secondary spores are then produced and release, continuing the problem.

Despite its favourite conditions, powdery scab can still develop in warm, dry weather, in low-lying or shaded areas of fields that have heavy spore infestation.

However, powdery scab has a weak spot in the swimming spore, Charkowski says.

“Swimming spores don’t last very long. That’s an area that some researchers are working on, trying to understand if they can make these spores germinate without the potatoes around.”

While powdery scab does not spread in storage, its lesions can lead to secondary issues, making tubers more difficult to store and market. In addition, it can transmit potato mop-top virus (PMTV), which affects tuber quality and can cause symptoms such as spraing.

However, visible foliar symptoms of PMTV are rare, Charkowski says. “I’ve seen it two times, once in the field…and then once in our greenhouse.”

To check for powdery scab, the province of Ontario recommends digging up tubers at random from mid- to late season, especially in low spots and spots with poor drainage.

Powdery scab is a disease that’s particularly difficult to study, Charkowski says. “We can’t grow it without the plant being present…it makes it much harder to study in a lab.”

In Charkowski’s research in south-central Colorado’s San Luis Valley, soil inoculum levels vary widely across farms, and factors such as irrigation practices influence disease severity.

Crop rotation alone is not a sufficient solution, as the pathogen remains in soil for extended periods.

“We’ve tried, I think, 18 or 19 different rotation crops,” Charkowski says.

Her research also revealed challenges in seed potato production. Powdery scab can persist in greenhouse potting mixes. Heat treatment of soil, a common sterilization method, unexpectedly worsened the issue by eliminating beneficial microbes such as trichoderma, which may help suppress the disease.

“When we looked at the literature, we saw that indeed, trichoderma in greenhouse experiments has been shown to provide some control over some of those for us, and so we’re trialing this right now in the field in Colorado.”

While there is an overlap between pathogen, susceptible plant and environment to create the disease, that can prove useful to researchers and producers.

“If you can reduce that overlap, you can reduce the disease,” Charkowski says.

A team in the U.S. is also developing rapid diagnostic tools for detecting viruses, including PMTV. The goal is to streamline sample processing and improve early detection.

“We have trained people who work at Colorado Parks how to do this, but as you know, finding labour in the fall is really hard. That’s still an issue,” Charkowski says.

Managing powdery scab requires an integrated approach. Using certified clean seed, monitoring soil inoculum levels, adjusting irrigation practices, and selecting resistant varieties can help mitigate the disease’s impact.

“It’s worth really understanding your local varieties and how they increase soil inoculum, so that you at least are not making the problem worse,” Charkowski says.

Biosecurity is always important when talking about diseases, including powdery scab, Charkowski says. In addition to planting powdery scab-free seed, the Ontario agriculture department suggests producers abstain from using manure from farm animals that have eaten potatoes infected with powdery scab.

It’s also a good idea to avoid moving farm equipment from contaminated fields to healthy ones.

“I fully understand how difficult this is,” Charkowski told the producers at Manitoba Potato Days. “Thinking about biosecurity and sanitation is going to help you with many, many diseases.”

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Better long-term solutions are created by looking from both sides of the fence at a problem. These create win-win situations, where both sides of a deal, trade or working relationship do well.

If we use cattle health as an example, feed producers can do things that benefit animal health. A cow or other ruminant is a great way to use up or get some value out of damaged, spoiled or poor-quality feeds. I wish more grain farmers worked with cattle producers.

Straw is the one repetitive area of overlap. Frozen, flooded and drought-damaged crops are the other areas where we can see the potential for good connections between crop producers and cow-calf or feedlot operators.

A long-term relationship is the most desirable, so in the event of a crop failure or extremely hail-damaged crop, there is benefit on either side. In straw production, there must be the trust from the grain producer that the straw, if left as a swath out the back of the combine, is baled up right away and taken off the field and, most importantly, that broken bales are removed and cleaned up.

There is always the argument that a grain producer should be putting that organic matter back onto the land, but if the crop carries too much straw or if the crop is damaged by hail, removing it can be a good thing. Setting a fair price, to avoid fluctuations when straw prices go too high or too low, is also good.

Producers in many cases are composting manure, so the quality and consistency of the fertilizer is good. One must take into account transportation of manure, bales or even moving cows home. I have seen situations where fencing a quarter (either permanent or temporary good electric) very close to home will yield benefits.

For grain land, the field edges and sloughs could get pastured and the stubble grazed. This works extremely well for silaged land, whether cereal or corn silage. We need to see more of these win-win situations between cattle producers and grain producers going forward.

Hail-damaged crops are one example where a producer may need to test for nitrates and make sure there will not likely be grain overloads, to protect the cattle side.

Temporary fences can be set up relatively easily with electric fencing. One must make sure a water supply can be looked after. Like harvested grain land before cattle are turned out, one needs to check for hazards such as spilled grain piles or areas where cattle could get injured, such as open culverts or spots with open excavations.

In sharing and communicating ahead of time, concerns or potential problems are brought up.

Cattlemen must have their cattle vaccinated for common diseases in the area. Clostridial spores are around and if your cattle pick up blackleg from pasturing a neighbour’s grain stubble, that definitely isn’t the neighbour’s fault.

If any cattle do happen to die, they need to be autopsied to find out the cause, and then removed, as grain producers are not set up for that task, nor do they want to be.

If you custom bale, you may want to look into the future with the biodegradable and essentially edible net wraps and twines being developed — and if they cost more, use them and charge for them. They will be a boon in the cattle industry, preventing twine impactions or twine wrapped around just about anything.

Anytime we can have magnets or metal detector-type safeties on our equipment helps everyone. Since cattle are prone to hardware disease and are indiscriminate eaters, anytime we can remove metal from any food source, whether it be ultimately for human or animal, is a good thing.

I just toured a massive french fry plant in Europe. The cull potato peelings are used in cattle feed and any waste finished fries are also eaten by cattle.

In several steps on the assembly line, and especially right at the packaging point, metal detectors will reject product. This is of course the same at meat packing plants as well. These metal detectors are triggered only rarely, but it does happen. What the public should know, contrary to what many people think, is that only even more rarely does the metal found in meat turn out to be a broken needle; usually it is buckshot. The buckshot may have been in the animal for years before it is butchered — and even this is a very rare occurrence.

If in doubt about any of these shared procedures, talk to your local veterinarian, agrologist and/or nutritionist, especially ones that work and live in your local area.

Other things to consider, when trading grazing, include any presence of potentially poisonous weeds. Also, if a dugout has been unused for years, water quality may need to be checked.

Even when it comes to heated grain, or crops with potential mould or mycotoxins, tests can be done ahead of time and the feedstuff diluted. When I think of the risk involved, I put the pregnant cow at the top of the list, then the young calf and lastly the yearling or feedlot animal. The feedlot is where blending of feed can happen more accurately if that’s what’s necessary.

Alternative feeds, such as brewers’ grains, are used more. In the east of Canada, there are numerous cereals and corn husks; out west there are more cull potatoes, sugar beets and everything in-between.

Make sure rations are balanced and these situations can be a win-win for both the cattleman and the food processor. Processors face costs and disposal fees if their product or byproduct can’t be used by livestock. Sometimes it’s even just the cost of hauling it away they are looking for. Here’s to many win-wins between the crop side and livestock side of our industry. May both prosper going forward.

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On the poultry side, broiler farms number 2,400, turkey outfits at 250 and egg farms at 2,000 or more. Prairie Canada has a total of just over 80,000 individual farms with 41,500 in Alberta, 34,100 in Saskatchewan and 14,700 in Manitoba. The Canadian total is 190,000 farms with many of them horticultural enterprises in British Columbia and Eastern Canada.

Farmed land in Canada totals 160 million acres (65 million hectares) using up 6.3 per cent of Canada’s total land base. Prairie livestock farms produce major amounts of compost along with cities such as Edmonton, Winnipeg and Calgary (organic waste foods) in the hundreds of thousands of tons annually.

I provided these farmland statistics for an overall view of “manure production” in the whole country but with particular emphasis on Prairie Canada. I made the mistake a few years ago of promoting peat compost for garden soils at a horticultural meeting. Several members of the audience said that Canada was running out of peat. That was until I told them that we had 250,000,000 acres of peat land or 21 per cent of the world supply. They had been reading information from the U.K. where they were running out of peat. I also informed them that peatlands in Canada in drought situations can catch fire and burn for years — wasting millions of dollars of useful peat. Peat is harvested in Canada at one-sixtieth of the rate that it accumulates.

The nutrients in manure, whether nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), sulphur (S) or micronutrients are no different from bagged fertilizers. Commercial fertilizers are merely concentrations of natural nutrients processed into convenient forms. What manure does over and above its nutrient content is to provide organic carbon matter, which does wonders for all soils. If you need these answers, read the Grainews story “Sixteen reasons why grain growers should never sell crop residues.” I have now upped that total to 20 reasons.

In my field crop disease diagnostic days, I would come across fields of canola that had lodged very badly and were often devastated by sclerotinia. Many of these lodged canola crops were grown on land that was frequently and heavily manured. The heavily manured land was usually owned by dairy farmers or feedlot owners. It seemed that they believed their cropland could be improved with this copious manure without much thought given to soil testing.

The nutrient levels in the tables shown below, in liquid or solid manures, are just broad averages. Storage, animal feed quality and water volume or moisture levels greatly influence nutrient content. If you follow a routine procedure, you can have your liquid or solid manures analyzed for plant nutrient content from which you can use to calibrate your given crop’s target yield requirements.

Those lodged canola crops that I mentioned earlier look very well at the pre-bloom stage — green with a very dense canopy. In one specific field, I estimated that it would go to 80 bushels. At harvest, this quarter field was totally lodged and after combining yielded a measly 27 bushels of canola with masses of black sclerotinia sclerotes.

When canola crops lodge in dense canopies, this white mould fungus easily moves from stem to stem through touching in the lodged canopy as well as in the drying swath. At the top of this fully lodged field there was around five acres of the canola crop that had been heavily damaged by manure trucks. The canola plants that survived the truck wheels were, perhaps, one per square metre or square yard or so. These canola plants grew eight feet tall and bushed out as much as five to six feet in diameter. There was no disease or lodging.

I did not get the final exact result, but this area was said to go 50 to 60 bushels with no disease. What was the problem with this field? Soil analysis showed around 600 pounds of available nitrogen in the top 24 inches. A classic example of overfertilization that had accumulated over many years.

Cereal crops and manure

When it comes to cereal crops and manure, I have seen a completely different story. The fact-finder took lots of time to prove with much help from colleagues to get the right answers.

Take cropland, especially sandy soil types, and put on 10 tons an acre of feedlot or dairy manure in the fall. You then seed this land to wheat or barley the following spring. You did not do a soil test, but you guessed that you added about 70 to 100 pounds of nitrogen as well as the phosphorus, potassium and sulphur in the manure.

Your wheat looks good in June but by late July it’s hopelessly lodged. You and your neighbours say that it’s too much nitrogen. Wrong. What has likely happened is had you done a soil test you would have had about 10 to 20 pounds of available nitrogen and at four per cent organic likely up to 40 pounds more nitrogen in the season. The elephant in the room is the 10 tons of carbohydrate in the manure. When this manure is added to your cropland, billions of starving fungi, bacteria and other micro-organisms feed on this carbohydrate source.

They get first dibs on the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur and micronutrients. Up to 30 per cent of Prairie soils are low to deficient in copper. What has copper got to do with this? The soil micro-organisms also grab up the soil micronutrients, especially the available copper. The wheat or barley plants cannot now make stem lignin that holds up the plant. The result? Severe lodging and major yield loss. Copper is essential for lignin formation for stem strength, especially in wheat and barley. I know this may confuse or contradict your beliefs but it’s fact. You will also see ergots, another sign of copper deficiency.

You could have prevented lodging in that 10-ton-per-acre feedlot manure application by doing the following:

1. Add about 80 to 100 pounds of nitrogen that spring for a 50- to 60-bushel wheat crop.
2. Apply around five pounds an acre of actual copper in the form of sulphate (good for 10 years).
3. Apply foliar copper at early wheat stem elongation and again at the flag leaf stage.

I would love to debate these facts on manure and wheat lodging anytime, anyplace.

Lodging is a lot worse in wet growing conditions than in dry years since under wet conditions the crop roots stay near the soil surface where micronutrients are most deficient. In dry years, cereal roots go down into the soil three feet (one metre) or more where micronutrients are much more available, thus preventing lodging.

If wheat or barley had been planted on that first field with 600 pounds of available nitrogen per acre, they would have now lodged from excessive nitrogen for sure. Very heavy nitrogen rates do interfere with lignification. So says Horst Marschner in his famous textbook, Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants.

Please download and read Alberta Agriculture’s Agri-Facts fact sheet “Copper Deficiency: Diagnosis and Correction,” Agdex 532-3.

Some food for thought: I have learned that when individuals chose to ignore the facts it does not change the facts.

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The government said protocols for four other sectors including agriculture and forest management are now being developed. It will also start developing protocols for carbon capture technology, which Canada’s high-polluting oil industry is betting on to slash its emissions, this summer.

For agriculture, the federal offset protocols now under development for future launch include “enhanced soil organic carbon” and “livestock feed management.”

As those and other protocols are completed, work on protocols including “livestock manure management” and “anaerobic digestion” will begin, the government said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has pledged to cut climate-warming emissions 40-45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Greenhouse gas emissions from waste, including landfills, make up seven per cent of Canada’s total carbon output.

The greenhouse gas offset credit system is intended to support a domestic carbon offset trading market, and the government said it will create new economic opportunities for companies and municipalities reducing emissions.

Participants can register projects and generate one tradeable offset credit for each tonne of emissions reduced or removed from the atmosphere, providing their projects follow the federal offset protocols that set out exactly which activities are eligible.

Credits can then be sold to others, such as heavy industrial emitters obliged to limit carbon pollution, or to companies wanting to voluntarily offset their emissions.

“Starting with landfills, we’re putting in place a market-based mechanism to incentivize businesses and municipalities to invest in the technologies and innovations that cut pollution,” Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a statement.

Once adopted, the livestock feed management protocol will credit methane reductions from livestock, the government said, while the enhanced soil organic carbon protocol would allow eligible farmers to generate offset credits by adopting “sustainable agricultural land management activities.”

The exact ag practices that can be followed to generate offset credits are to be determined during the protocol development process, the government said. Public comment periods will take place for future draft protocols, and “technical expert teams” have been set up to advise on “the latest science.”

Farmers “have made significant gains in reducing the GHG emissions intensity of the sector in recent years,” Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said Wednesday in a statement. “We look forward to the development of specific details on how the agriculture sector can benefit under the federal offset credit system.”

The government expects the price of credits to broadly track Canada’s price on carbon — which is currently set at $50 a tonne and is scheduled to ramp up to $170 a tonne by 2030.

However, environmental groups warned allowing polluters to purchase offset credits instead of cutting their own emissions risked undermining climate goals.

“Offsetting doesn’t stop carbon from entering the atmosphere and warming our world, it just keeps it off the books of big polluters responsible,” said Greenpeace Canada spokesman Shane Moffatt.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nia Williams. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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