While imports of other companies’ off-patent brands of glyphosate may buffer the immediate shock, the long-term implications could reshape weed management across the Prairies.

Hugh Beckie, a former Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada weed scientist, explored this very scenario in 2019. At the time, he was based at the University of Western Australia, so his modelling focused on Australian farming systems. But while the crops may differ, both Australia and Canada depend heavily on glyphosate-based weed control, making many of his findings relevant here.

Beckie’s work laid out not just the impacts of losing glyphosate, but the sweeping, system-wide changes farmers would need to adopt in its absence.

To understand what that shift might look like on the ground, Glacier FarmMedia spoke with Kim Brown, provincial weed extension specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, about the tools, trade-offs and decisions farmers may face if glyphosate were to disappear from the weed control toolbox.

Brown says Canadian farmers have already been working to reduce their reliance on glyphosate due to the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds.

“We’ve already been going down that road where glyphosate for certain weeds just has not been working,” Brown says.

“We’ve had to find alternative methods for weed control.”

That said, a full loss of glyphosate would escalate the challenge considerably, especially given that weed pressure is a constant in Prairie fields.

“There are weed seeds in the soil. The weed seed bank is vast,” she says.

“Every single year there will be weeds.”

That tracks with what Troy LaForge, who farms in the brown soil zone near Cadillac, Sask., about 65 km south of Swift Current, predicted when we asked him to consider what his fields would look like if glyphosate were to someday disappear from the market.

“What we would probably see is a progression in winter annual and perennial weeds, and from that perspective, we may have to change up to some different oilseeds where we can use actives like clopyralid (the Group 4 active in products such as Lontrel and Curtail) and some of the graminicides (Groups 1 and 2) that are more effective on perennial grasses like quackgrass and foxtail barley,” he says.

“We’d have to change to some different crops, and I honestly don’t know what those would be at this moment, but we may have to change because we just don’t have means of keeping weeds under control otherwise.”

Southwestern Saskatchewan is not generous with the rainfall and not typically canola country, but if glyphosate were to go away, “it might mean that we’ve got to start growing canola more continuously to use a product like glufosinate (the Group 10 active in Liberty) for example.”

Brown concurs there are other herbicide options, even in glyphosate-tolerant systems, thanks to stacked traits — but those alternatives likely won’t cover the same broad weed spectrum that glyphosate does.

“We will have alternatives,” she said.

“But it’s going to get a lot more complicated, and it’s definitely going to get more expensive.”

READ ALSO: Glyphosate class action moves forward in Canada

Farmers may also need to revisit herbicide products they aren’t currently using and some they haven’t used in years. Brown said some older chemistries may play a bigger role again, particularly in rotation or in tank mixes.

However, product availability, crop safety and regional fit will be key considerations.

“To me, as a no-tiller, the No. 1 issue is going to be what we replace it with, and at this point, the actives that are registered are going to increase our costs significantly,” LaForge says.

“And it’s probably going to mean that we’ve got to bring back some active ingredients that we haven’t had for a while and just have higher levels of toxicity at the end of the day.”

Losing glyphosate would also push integrated weed management (IWM) to the forefront.

“Those tools have always been there,” Brown says.

“In the past, we haven’t used those tools as effectively as we could. But we’re going to have to now because we won’t have a choice.”

Brown stresses the value of crop competition: adjusting seeding dates, seeding rates, row spacing and cultivar selection all help. But the biggest lever, she says, is crop rotation.

“Crop diversity is probably the single biggest thing we need to do when it comes to weed control.”

Life cycle diversity — mixing annuals and perennials, or at least spring and fall crops — can help break weed cycles and reduce reliance on any single product or practice.

Beckie’s paper indicates how Canadian farmers may have a leg up over their Australian counterparts when it comes to managing glyphosate resistance.

In Western Canada, about 40 per cent of canola acres are planted to herbicide-resistant varieties, but resistance hasn’t taken off the way it has in Australia. That’s largely thanks to the widespread use of glufosinate-tolerant cultivars and more diverse crop rotations.

Still, Beckie warns, losing glyphosate as a pre-harvest option would hit hard in pulse crops, where there are few good alternatives for controlling tough perennial weeds.

Harvest weed seed control (HWSC) is another tool Brown mentioned, and it also played a central role in Beckie’s post-glyphosate scenario. Originally developed in Australia — where herbicide resistance evolved faster and hit harder — HWSC focuses on capturing or destroying weed seeds at harvest to prevent them from replenishing the seed bank.

Beckie’s modelling leaned heavily on this strategy, especially in the absence of effective pre-harvest herbicides.

HWSC has also been gaining traction in Canada and could become more relevant as farmers look for non-chemical ways to keep weed populations in check.

“You want to destroy the weed seeds, or you want to move them, or take them off the field and not let them add to the weed seed bank,” Brown says.

Tillage remains an option, and Brown notes it’s something most farms already have the equipment to do — but bringing tillage back as a primary weed control tool comes with consequences.

Brown points out that glyphosate was instrumental in the widespread adoption of minimum- or zero-till systems, and that if it’s no longer available, it could set things back significantly.

“There’s going to be many negative consequences with that,” she says, “including soil degradation, increased greenhouse gases and even just fuel consumption.”

Hence at LaForge’s farm, for example, tillage is just not an option.

“If we have to go back to tillage in this part of the world, we (would) probably decrease our yields instantly by 30 to 40 per cent,” given the amount of soil moisture that would be lost in the process, he says.

The availability of glyphosate has increased the diversity and productivity of the farm’s rotations and “created a whole new level of soil conservation in this area.”

There’s some hope on the horizon.

Brown points to emerging technologies such as laser weeding, electrocution, steam weeding and the potential for new herbicides or non-traditional weed control products. Much of this innovation, she said, is being driven by the urgency of the current situation.

“There’s a lot of research being done because of the very situation that we’re in right now,” she says.

Extension specialists such as Brown will play a key role in helping farmers adjust. She said the core message around integrated weed management isn’t changing, but the urgency and scope of that message are growing.

“We’re just going to have to get a lot more educated on some of these products that are out there that we need to be using,” she says.

“We have to raise that level of comfort, because that will be new territory for many farmers.”

The post What would happen if Roundup disappeared? appeared first on Grainews.

“It means more products; it means a lot more management,” Manitoba Agriculture weed extension specialist Kim Brown says. “Realistically, the sooner we get out in front of this, the better.”

Kochia is a fast-spreading tumbleweed that has become a major problem for farmers in the plains regions on both sides of the border. It thrives in dry conditions, emerges early in the season and produces large numbers of seeds.

Group 14 herbicides, such as Authority, Heat and Valtera, target the protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO) enzyme and cause rapid desiccation by disrupting a plant’s chlorophyll production.

Dose-response study

Group 14 resistance in kochia is a recent development. It was first discovered on a farm near Kindersley, Sask. in 2021. The following year, it was independently discovered at two different locations in North Dakota. At that point, researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada began working with researchers from North Dakota State University to develop a cross-border dose-response study, which released its results in March this year.

Researchers tested kochia from Saskatchewan and North Dakota, including herbicide-resistant and susceptible plants, under controlled greenhouse conditions. They sprayed them with two Group 14 herbicides at various doses to see how well they worked.

The study confirmed what everyone suspected: those kochia populations were highly resistant to the Group 14 herbicides tested (saflufenacil and carfentrazone). In Saskatchewan, resistant plants from Kindersley had 57- to 87-fold resistance, meaning they needed 57 to 87 times more saflufenacil to get the same effect as normal susceptible plants.

The same pattern held with carfentrazone. Kindersley plants needed up to 120 times the normal dose for similar control. In North Dakota, even the highest herbicide rates weren’t enough — 50 to 76 per cent of plants still survived.

How resistance spreads

Charles Geddes, an AAFC research scientist and lead researcher on the dose-response study, says that so far in Canada, group 14-resistant kochia has only been confirmed in two fields: the original one in Saskatchewan and another in Alberta, confirmed in 2023.

But based on preliminary data from the latest Prairie-wide kochia survey, which began last fall, he suspects the issue is now present in multiple fields in Saskatchewan. And given how quickly glyphosate resistance spread in kochia, he expects it will soon be confirmed in other regions as well.

“We suspect, just given the history, that this type of resistance will likely spread quickly as well,” Geddes says.

Geddes, who works out of AAFC’s Lethbridge research centre, says they’ve done some yet-to-be-published research into the mechanisms behind how the resistance spreads.

Resistance in kochia can show up in more than one way, he says. Sometimes, it evolves independently — a random mutation in a single plant lets it survive a herbicide spray. If that plant sets seed and similar products keep getting used, resistant plants gradually take over.

But resistance doesn’t just develop on its own. It can also spread from field to field. Kochia is a tumbleweed, so when mature plants break off and roll across the landscape, they scatter seeds — including those carrying resistance traits. On top of that, kochia can cross-pollinate with other plants. A resistant plant flowering near a susceptible one can pass resistance through pollen.

That’s why Geddes says farmers across the Prairies could soon see Group 14-resistant kochia in their fields.

“Farmers should keep an eye out for it when they’re scouting,” Geddes warns. “If they notice a lack of control, I would encourage them to collect a sample and get it tested for resistance so they know what they’re dealing with.”

The problem for no-till operations

Researchers did dose-response work on both soil-applied and foliar-applied Group 14s. While Geddes points out that the resistance is stronger for foliar-applied, it’s still present for the soil-applied. And that is why it’s a big concern for no-till operations across the prairies.

Geddes explains that no-till and min-till growers have relied heavily on glyphosate as a preemergent burn-down product for kochia. With kochia quickly developing resistance to glyphosate, the strategy became to add in another mode of action. Often, those products were Group 14s.

“Pre-plant burndown herbicide options become limited when glyphosate resistance and Group 14 resistance are present in a kochia population,” Geddes says. “Since tillage is effective for kochia management, one concern could be a reversion to more tillage-intensive systems in areas that have made a lot of progress with no-till.”

In fact, one reason Geddes says Manitoba, sandwiched between Saskatchewan and North Dakota, has yet to discover Group 14 resistance in kochia is that farms in the province rely less on no-till strategies, particularly in the Red River Valley.

“Tillage actually works quite well against kochia, because it can’t emerge from very deep in the seed bank, but it still germinates,” Geddes says. “So if it germinates when it’s buried, then the seed just doesn’t survive.”

But Brown says Manitoba farmers shouldn’t assume they’re in the clear. In fact, she fully suspects the resistance is already in Manitoba—it just hasn’t been confirmed yet.

“We use tillage a lot less than some places in Saskatchewan, so we are less reliant on some pre-emerge herbicides. But we do use those products, and we have a lot of kochia,” notes Brown. “I would be very shocked if we didn’t have any here.”

Integrated weed management

Since the discovery of kochia’s Group 14 resistance, Brown says, she’s been working hard to raise awareness of the issue. And when she’s asked when the issue will become serious enough for farmers make changes to their weed management strategies, she says waiting isn’t an option; regardless of which province they’re in. It’s the same story with any herbicide-resistance issue.

“You need to assume it’s here now,” she says. “We needed to start changing things years ago.”

Brown says farmers can still use Group 14 products but will need to start adding different groups, stop relying heavily on groups where resistance is growing and start thinking about integrated weed management strategies.

“We need to make changes before it becomes a problem,” she says. “If we do everything we can to reduce weeds, not through the spray tank, but through everything else, we can get cleaner, less weedy fields and have less to spray.”

Some cultural control options the Manitoba Agriculture website lists for kochia include delayed seeding, or pre-seeding tillage because kochia germinates early in the season. It also suggests rotating between early- and late-seeded crops, or switching up seeding dates year to year to keep populations in check. Since most kochia seeds don’t last more than a year, even stopping seed set for a single season can make a real difference. Cutting for feed or mowing can be effective too, as long as it’s done before the plant goes to seed.

With no new herbicide modes of action on the horizon, Brown says it’s important to extend the effectiveness of the ones that are still available — and the way to do that is to use them less.

“If we start doing all those things, it’ll help these herbicides last longer.” she says.

If those sprayless strategies do involve incorporating tillage, Brown emphasizes it must be strategic and appropriate tillage, acknowledging there are negative consequences for tillage — but if used properly, it’s a very effective tool.

“We need to use it in the right place at the right time,” Brown says. “Even in the drier areas, where they’ve been full-blown no-till or minimum till, there are times when tillage is the right tool.”

Looking ahead

Geddes says researchers are now working on a quick genetic test that would allow farmers to submit leaf tissue samples to find out whether the resistance trait is present in their kochia populations.

His team is also studying cross-resistance to see which other Group 14 herbicides are affected. The next step, says Geddes, is finding alternatives.

“We’re figuring out what alternative management practices can be used when it comes to managing kochia — and specifically at that pre-plant window, where these Group 14 products are used most,” he says.

The post Kochia’s expanding herbicide resistance puts pressure on no-till systems  appeared first on Grainews.

Among the newest unfamiliar names to appear on these shores: the Equalizer no-till drill. It was developed in South Africa and is just now beginning field trials in Western Canada ahead of a full product launch sometime in the next couple of years.

The Equalizer firm was recently acquired by Lemken, and the German firm expects to soon retail Equalizer drills through its Canadian dealer network. But it doesn’t want to get ahead of itself with full-scale sales until it’s sure the drill can handle the various soils in this part of the world. So the company is looking for farmers to host the drill on their land and let it do some seeding as part of a large-scale field-testing program.

“There is definitely a higher percentage of black clay soils (here), which is not too common where the drills were developed,” Gideon Schreuder, managing director of Equalizer and that company’s founder, explains.

Field trials, he says, are “our main purpose now for fall. We’re bringing in some more machines for the spring of next year to get broader exposure to more soil conditions. So this is a learning process for us.”

To be clear, this isn’t a test of a brand-new design — the drill, as it is, has been in production for more than two decades and popular with farmers in South Africa.

“This is a mature product that’s been in the market for the better part of 25 years,” Schreuder says. “It’s very durable, hard-wearing, and it’s precise.

“We developed the drill as a single-pass system about 23 years ago. At that time most of the farmers were still cultivating. No- or reduced-tillage systems were still quite young. Today we’re the market leader in South Africa for precision planting. We’ve had a lot of success with the same single-pass system.”

The Equalizer drill was designed primarily to work with small grains. It uses a parallel-link opener design for seed placement. That’s typical of most shank drill designs Canadian farmers have seen, but that’s where the similarity ends.

While most typical Canadian-built drills place fertilizer slightly below and to the side of the seed trench, the Equalizer places it differently.

The lead shank places the fertilizer, and it can dig down to six inches deep, placing fertilizer well below the seed trench in what the company describes as a “vertical band.” The opener then closes that furrow and places the seed above it. Fertilizer depth placement is controlled by the frame height, while seed depth is controlled by adjusting the rear packer wheel, so growers can choose the exact placement for each independently. Seed depth and downforce can be individually controlled on each opener. And the rear packer wheel pivots to follow the seed trench more accurately during turns.

But working at that depth means there will need to be a few more ponies hitched to the front of the drill.

“Horsepower requirements will be a little bit higher, because we go deeper in (for fertilizer placement),” Schreuder says. “I would say we are about 20 per cent more.”

The drill is available with either of two row spacings: 10.5 inches or just under 12 inches.

“We work on metric, that’s why it’s just under 12 inches,” he adds.

Someone looking at the openers might notice their steel thickness seems to be a little lighter-gauge than most drills might use, but he says not to be misled by that. They use a high-strength steel alloy.

“Although this unit looks lightly built, it’s all made out of special steels,” he explains, referring to plates made from steel produced by Swedish firm SSAB. “It’s all 700 Mpa (megapascals) tensile strength. That’s a spring-like type of steel. It’s very durable and flexible. And we choose that to make the unit as light as possible, but also as strong as possible.”

When the Equalizer drill is released to the market here, it will be available in 40-, 50-, 60- and 80-foot working widths. The brand offers both tow-behind and tow-between carts to supply the drills with seed and inputs.

“What is unique on our drills is the metering systems,” Schreuder says. “We have a self-cleaning metering roller with a brush on it. It’s a very unique shape of roller. The brush is constantly cleaning that metering roller, so the shape of it doesn’t change over time with buildup, of fertilizer specifically. From a consistency point of view, you will go far to find anything better than that. For durability, everything is made of stainless steel on the casing. The roller is polyurethane, so its longevity is exceptional.”

Lemken showed the first Equalizer drill to arrive in Canada at the Ag in Motion farm show at Langham, Sask. in July, and it was displayed with a mounted product tank. That unique configuration was created specifically for ease of transportation, as the drill moves around the countryside for field trials in multiple locations. The drills eventually hitting the market will work with the typical tow-between or tow-behind carts.

“This configuration was made for ease of moving about,” Schreuder. “We want to get to as many farmers as possible in a short period of time to get first-hand experience in different soil conditions and show what the unit can or may not be able to do.”

If the drill is found to have problems in any of the typical soil conditions, the company will modify it to sort those out before a commercial release.

Schreuder believes there may be some limited retail sales in 2024 but expects sales will really begin the following year.

“2024 is going to be limited numbers still,” he says. “We’re looking forward to 2025, if everything goes according to plan. We foresee we might have to make some modifications to better handle the heavy clay soils.”

Manufacturing, even for those drills bound for North America, will continue to be done at the company’s South African facility.

At Equalizer, Schreuder says, “we are very focused on seeding and planting equipment. We don’t develop anything else. We have a strong development team of 16 designers. And we have a philosophy of constant improvement, which has made our machines great over time.”

Anyone interested in having the Equalizer come to their farm for field trials can contact their local Lemken dealer to arrange it. Meanwhile, you can take a video look at the drill at AgDealer.com.

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The coastline in this part of Australia is exquisitely beautiful with white powder sandy beaches and turquoise blue water. This beautiful white sand is also what makes this area so challenging to farm. The sand is perfectly eroded by water to be a round particle, so it not only compacts easily but also has become non-wetting, especially in the top layer.

Non-wetting soils occur when organic matter decomposes and forms a hydrophobic layer around each soil particle. As a result, following precipitation, water is repelled by the soil and runs off rather than infiltrating into the profile.

I visited with Laura Bennett, junior assistant manager at Lobethal Farm, a 13,000-hectare property east of Esperance.

The land around Esperance is some of the last to be converted into cropland. It was originally thought that this land was only suitable for sheep farming. In the past, some who have tried to farm this land abandoned it due to high winter rainfall, minimal summer rainfall and low-productivity pastures. In the past 15 years, a change in mindset has resulted in a change in farming practices in the area, resulting in the amelioration of the soils. What was once deemed to be “livestock only” country has started producing some amazing crops.

The Lobethal farm

At Lobethal, crops grown include wheat, barley and canola, with some legumes such as lupins, field peas and faba beans included in the rotation recently. Legumes have been included to limit diseases that were arising due to the previous continuous wheat-canola rotation. The typical current rotation is a five-year sequence of a legume followed by canola-wheat-canola-barley.

Blackleg in canola has been the biggest disease issue at Lobethal. Australia is the first place in the world where agronomists have seen blackleg in the upper canopy, on leaves and pods post-flowering. Other diseases in the area are crown rot and take-all in wheat, net blotches in barley and sclerotinia in canola. Given that this is only the 10th crop that has been grown on some of this land, the high level of disease pressure is a concern. An increase in the number of break crops in the rotation was inevitable.

This is one of very few “crop only” farms in the area, where owners do not use the land to feed livestock for a few years to decrease disease pressure.

Another challenge apparent on my visit at harvest time was barley heads snapping at the neck. This phenomenon is known as “brackling,” and is due to strong sea breezes.

Because the area is very sandy, the soils are severely deficient in potassium, which means crops have difficulty dealing with heat stress in spring due to the lack of stomatal control.

In Western Australia, the non-wetting soil is mostly in the top layer. Techniques that invert the soil layer result in significant increases in yield potential. Lobethal has started implementing soil-inversion technology techniques including spading and deep ripping as well as the VRT application of lime and gypsum to improve soil structure against compaction and pH. Out of the 13,000 hectares in this block, most have been deep-ripped in the past five years. Around 3,000 hectares have been ripped twice and 9,000 hectares have been spaded. Trials are being conducted to see how many years the benefits in extremely sandy soils like this will last. They are expecting the benefits will last about five years.

The other challenge with soils like this is compaction. The hard compaction layer in this area is around 20 centimetres deep. Lobethal has implemented controlled traffic farming with all of its equipment. Currently, everything is set up on three-metre centres. This practice has benefits in terms of weed germination. Weeds germinate evenly so they can be sprayed at the appropriate timing. And, in the wheel tracks there is so much compaction that weeds do not grow and are not a problem even if the soil is bare. The majority of weed seeds are also confined to the wheel tracks as all combines are fitted with “chaff decks” which lay the chaff only on the wheel tracks during harvest.

Bennett manages multiple fertility trials every year, as well as variety trials, soil amelioration trials and general agronomy trials. Due to soils being inherently low in fertility, every nutrient required for plant growth must be applied in the right amount, in the right place at the right time. Nitrogen is applied via direct drill at seeding and then spread broadacre twice during the season. Phosphorous is also applied at seeding at a flat rate, while potassium is applied with VRT at seeding. Gypsum is applied at variable rates for both soil compaction and to meet sulphur requirements. Areas that do not need gypsum that grow canola will get sulphur in the first broadacre spread of nitrogen. Trace minerals including zinc, copper, magnesium and manganese are applied foliar with fungicides.

For Lobethal, this has been one of the driest years on record with only 350 millilitres of precipitation. So far average canola yields are 2.5 tonnes per hectare, with wheat and barley coming in at 5.5 tonnes per hectare.

The post Non-wetting soils down under appeared first on Grainews.

Let’s start by looking at the advantages of no-till systems. Right off the bat, they’re great for soil and moisture conservation — particularly when you’re working on lighter, sandier soils.

Growers that are direct seeding also save fuel because fewer passes are needed. Because you’re not working up and distributing soil, there’s less risk of spreading around weed seed, which may lead to fewer flushing weeds.

When we look at managing diseases, such as clubroot, no-till systems help minimize the spread of disease spores in the soil profile. You’re also not actively moving contaminated soil within or between fields.

Some drawbacks of no-till systems include potentially higher level of root disease such as common seedling root rots in cooler soil temperatures. Insects like striped and crucifer flea beetles can pose a greater threat by laying undetected in leftover straw and stubble and then feeding on canola seedlings that are slower growing in cooler, straw-covered soils.

One advantage of minimum-till systems is that you blacken the soil, which warms it up and allows you to seed sooner. Working up the top of the soil profile can provide better germination performance and faster-growing seedlings.

Keep in mind, though, that warmer soils provide weeds with a better environment to germinate. Insects also tend to gravitate to warmer soils, especially when weeds and crops are actively growing.

From a disease management standpoint, a minimum-till system lets you break down disease inoculum that can build up on heavy straw and impact next season’s crop.

Working up soil in the fall can also help with dispersing straw and creating a better seed bed for next spring. But with drier soils in the fall, the risk of spreading clubroot spores by dust is higher. That’s why any tillage of known clubroot fields (and areas where you don’t yet have clubroot) should be performed in the spring.

The post Tillage systems’ impact on weeds and disease appeared first on Grainews.

A: Crop establishment can be impacted by soil moisture and temperature, especially in areas where more warm-season crops such as soybeans and corn are grown. High soil residue levels act as an insulating layer to the soil and reduce the rate of soil temperature increase. Growers often see an increase in spring frost damage on newly emerged crops where crop residue levels are high. A tillage operation may be considered to reduce residue cover and speed soil warming; however, we may see increased potential for evaporative water loss.

Tillage operations that incorporate a great deal of high carbon-to-nitrogen ratio residue, such as cereal straw in the soil, may lead to short-term tie-up (immobilization) of nitrogen. However, this may also be overcome with increased mineralization due to the tillage operation. With most systems, we will see an advantage to placing fertilizer in a concentrated band below the crop residue layer to reduce any potential immobilization.

As with all things in agriculture, end results may differ for growers depending on many factors such as soil and environment. When considering a strategic tillage operation, consider soil moisture impact and any potential erosion considerations to determine timing and aggressiveness of the operation.

Scott Anderson, P. Ag, CCA, is a Manager of Agronomic Services with Nutrien Ag Solutions in northwest Saskatchewan.

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Whitaker, who was at the Shelbourne Reynolds display at the Agritechnica machinery show in Germany last November, explained how the stripper header works and what advantages it offers.

Stripper headers have a rearward-rotating rotor fitted in front of the header. The rotor has eight rows of stripping fingers that strip grain from the crop. As the combine moves the head forward, the rotor spins backwards. Stripped grain is moved into a conventional auger and pan by a series of deflectors.

“The rotor spins in an upward direction, so it’s actually combing through the crop and stripping the grain off the heads, leaving the straw behind as it goes,” Whitaker explained. “It runs at 600 to 650 rpm.”

Benefits include increased harvest capacity, energy savings and improved soil conditions. “You increase harvesting capacity because you’re not processing tonnes of straw,” said Whitaker.

“But it also leaves all of the straw standing, so it provides a good no-till environment,” he continued. “If you’re looking to retain moisture and catch snow, then that standing straw helps with that. It works very well in a no-till program in areas that typically have low rainfall.”

Alberta grain farmer Kevin Auch agrees. He’s has been in no-till since 1998 and adopted the stripper header a few years ago after seeing his neighbor using it on his farm. Auch grows 5,700 acres wheat, durum and barley, as well as yellow peas and canola. He says the stripper header is a good fit on his farm because he’s got sandier soils that don’t hold water well, which makes them subject to erosion.

“Anything we can do to help hold that water in the soil is a good thing for productivity,” he said. “With our stripper header we leave all that stubble on the ground, which keeps the wind and the sun off the soil.”

Auch said other benefits include ease of use, quicker harvest times and lower energy consumption. “You can harvest faster because you’re not taking whole plants in,” he said. “You do more acres per hour, so that’s definitely an advantage. And then when you’re doing that, you’re burning less fuel per acre.”

Ultimately, Auch feels the stripper header has improved his crops, mostly because of improved moisture.

“I don’t think I’d ever want to go back to the old way that our fathers and grandfathers farmed,” he said. “I think it’s better for everything – bottom line, production, the environment.”

The post Stripper headers an alternative for dry regions appeared first on Grainews.

“I’m a third-generation farmer and our family just received the century award for 100 years in the business,” says Derek.

As a self-described “typical farm kid,” Derek took a two-year Farm and Ranch Management program at Olds College and went home to work the farm in Minton, Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, Tannis studied education at the University of Regina with a biology major that “turned out to be quite helpful.” In the midst of it all, the pair found time to get married in 2002.

“It was business as usual for us until 2006 when we decided to buy a disc drill to reduce disturbance and increase moisture savings,” says Derek.

Since the local machinery dealer had no interest in bringing one in, the couple wound up in Gettysburg, South Dakota, where they bought their drill and had a life-changing encounter in the process.

It was there that they met Dwayne Beck, the research manager at Dakota Lakes Research Farm in Pierre, South Dakota. And it was there that Derrick says everything changed for the couple.

“Dr. Beck was one of the first guys to push no till, low disturbance farming with high diversity rotations. His approach involved little or no herbicides or fungicides, and he was the first we had heard talking about cover crops,” says Derek. “When we saw the good yields he was producing and the huge improvements in soil under dry land and irrigation, we were hooked.”

When the Axtens headed home to run Derek’s family farm with daughter Kate (now 13), son Brock (now 11) and Derek’s father, they did so with the confidence to try these practices for themselves, and they haven’t looked back.

“Since then we have significantly reduced the amount of synthetic fertilizer we use and haven’t employed insecticides in six years,” he says. “We’ve gone from being focused solely on the plants to really addressing the soil and what it needs. If you take care of the soil, it will take care of your plants.”

The Axten’s tell their children that it’s OK to try new things and be different from others, and have taken this to heart in their farming operation. With cost of production and the soil’s health as their key focus, they have now incorporated intercrops (seeding one or more crops together), cover crops, controlled traffic farming (using same track for all operations), compost extract and compost teas into their operation. It has been a real change in mindset for the Saskatchewan farmers.

What resonates most for them, however, is that farming is fun again.

“Before it felt like just a job and a lot of number crunching,” says Derek.

And those numbers weren’t good, as the Axtens found themselves making little money while costs continued to rise. As Derek put it, “something had to change.” And change it did, as their new farming practices led to improved yields and significantly reduced input costs. Even their accountant was impressed, to the extent that he nominated them for the OYF award. The Axtens will be among seven regional finalists from across Canada competing for national OYF honours in Penticton later in November.

“We were shocked and pleasantly surprised to win because what we do isn’t typical,” says Tannis. “It’s not organic or conventional, so sometimes we think we may sound crazy. This award gives us a platform to share what we do and hopefully inspire others to follow suit.”

While they have no plans for big changes in what they do, they want to start using short perennial sequences and try to get their cover crops established sooner so they make the most of every minute.

And of course, they’ll keep on daring to be different. Hey, if they can do it while enriching their soul and their bank account at the same time, who can blame them?

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In April 2013, Dr. Brady Deaton, Karthik Nadella, and Alfons Weersink of the University of Guelph, together with Chad Lawley of the University of Manitoba surveyed a random sample of 810 farmers in southwestern Ontario and Manitoba to try and understand whether tenure status, production practices, technology and other factors influence the way farmers treat rented and owned land.

Survey participants were answered questions about their type of land rental agreement, crop rotation, tillage practices, use of cover crops, manure applications and use of variable rate input applicators on land they own and rent.

Fixed cash contracts are the most prevalent form of rental agreements among farmers surveyed, although most in southwest Ontario are oral contracts, while in Manitoba, 47 per cent had written contracts. Only a very small number of contracts had any stipulations from the landlord about specific management practices expected of the tenant. Of those that did, type of tillage practice a renter could use was the most common.

Fifty-three per cent of these farmers perceived that some farmers take better care of the land they own than comparable land they rent. A majority agreed that farmers would use more manure or fertilizer and complex crop rotations on land they own rather than land they rent.

• Read more: What’s influencing land rental rates?

What stood out from the study data is the significant difference in manure applications, with 31 per cent of farmers applying manure on rented land compared to 53 per cent on owned land. Farmers were also more likely to use cover crops on owned than rented land (18 per cent to 26 per cent).

“Research shows that most leases are one year in length, they’re handshake agreements, and they’re ‘what will you pay me?’” says Bruce Kelly, program manager with Farm & Food Care Ontario. “Everything else in agriculture is long term. In Ontario we have a lot of livestock, and the application of manure is considered a multi-year investment in nutrients but why would a farmer put any more fertilizer on than he needs to when another farmer down the road might outbid him next year?”

Conservation practices move with farmers

The study also showed that there were not significant differences in farmers using minimum or no-till and precision agriculture on rented and owned land. This makes sense given the fact that farmers who have already this equipment are going to use it on all the land they farm. It also makes their investment in no-till, precision seeding or variable rate technology more economical by spreading the capital cost over more acres.

But, Deaton cautioned in a recent interview, the reasons that farmers use certain management practices are highly nuanced, and there are a number of other complex factors that are not brought out in this study, and which require further research to understand.

“Our results wouldn’t justify a broad sweeping generalization like ‘farmers treat owned land better than rented land’ because it’s more nuanced than that,” Deaton says. “We found some differences that depend on the type of conservation action that you’re looking at. There are a lot of reasons and situations where they would or they wouldn’t do that. It could depend on the length and return associated with the investment.”

It’s important to note that 39 per cent of farmers disagreed with the notion that farmers treat rented and owned land differently, and cited maintaining their reputation in the community, taking care of the environment and meeting the requirements of the rental contract as reasons why.

Security is an issue

So, if some farmers are more inclined to treat their own land better than rented land, what are the reasons? No. 1 seems to be lack of security. Seventy-three per cent of the farmers surveyed said having a secure rental contract for the following year was the biggest factor in how they would treat rented land.

“Many farmers don’t have any stability when they rent because landowners are not willing to rent for more than one year at a time in case someone comes along and offers them more rent,” says Larry Davis, who grows soybeans, corn, wheat and hay near Burford, Ontario and speaks from experience. He lost land he had been renting to a vegetable farmer who offered the landowner three or four times the rent he was able to pay. The kicker is, the landowner came back to Davis a few years later asking him to rent the badly abused land again, when he couldn’t find another renter. “There were washouts 15 feet wide and six feet deep through that farm,” he says. Davis finally agreed to repair the washouts and farm the land rent-free until he brought back the soil health and productivity, which took several years. “This happens quite often,” says Davis. “I like to maintain good soil structure, so after a farm has been destroyed a bit, the landowners call me.”

Farmers have little incentive to use expensive inputs or fertilizers on land they can only rent year by year, adds Davis. “I put lime on another farm that I rented and when I went to work it the next year, the farmer told me he had rented it to somebody else,” he says. “There went $7,000 worth of lime and I had no way to get that back.”

Innovative approaches

Davis, at 66, has seen just about every situation when it comes to renting land, but says helping to educate landowners about the value of having a renter who is taking good care of the land pays off in the long run. In one case, Davis began renting land from a retired farmer, who was so impressed with the way he managed the land and his commitment to building better soil health, that he turned down higher rental offers to keep Davis doing what he is doing.

Sharing the crop is another approach that Davis likes to use, and which, he says, benefits everyone in the end. “If I grow a crop, I’ll try to get the landowner to take 25 per cent of the value of the crop when I harvest it, or 30 per cent if I can put on things like manure and biosolids,” he says. “That means they also share some of the risk, and it teaches them a responsibility to watch the land and make sure that I farm it right. It’s beneficial for both parties to make sure that land stays productive for the long term.”

The concern over maintaining soil health is prompting other innovative and collaborative approaches too, especially in Ontario, which is losing 175 acres of farmland a day to development.

Some vegetable growers are partnering with corn and soybean growers so that they can rotate their crops. “You have the landowner, and you have the person renting it, but every other year he’s renting it to somebody else, but that maintains a healthy crop rotation,” says Davis. “The corn or soybean crop can make use of the nutrients that have been put down for the vegetable crops because they sometimes aren’t all used, and no nutrients are wasted.”

The post Farm it like you’re ‘just’ renting it? appeared first on Grainews.

This spring he published a research paper demonstrating that fractal aggregation is a promising method for assessing soil quality.

“There are different characteristics of the soil, and this specific method has the advantage of integrating several aspects of soil quality,” he says. “It’s very consistent and robust, and can separate good management from less beneficial management.”

Over the past three years, Hernandez’ graduate students have led four projects looking at soil quality across Alberta. Their main focus was the impact on soil quality of converting native grassland into annual cropland. Their findings showed, unsurprisingly, that native grassland has superior soil quality to cultivated croplands.

The fractal aggregation method puts a number on soil quality, Hernandez says, “and with that number we can assess how far along we are in a trajectory and whether we can recover.”

Hernandez’ students’ work looked at soil benefits of controlled traffic farming (CTF), a management tool used to minimize the impact of heavy equipment in fields.

Kris Guenette, Hernandez’ graduate student, worked with Controlled Traffic Farming Alberta, a network of eight producers scattered around Alberta, each of whom compared random traffic to CTF.

Controlled traffic farming keeps movement of heavy equipment confined to permanent tracks — reducing tracking to 15 per cent of the field or less, versus the typical 50 per cent seen with random equipment movement, according to Peter Gamache, project lead at Controlled Traffic Farming Alberta.

It’s a system that’s been widely adopted in Australia by producers looking to minimize impacts of drought on soil quality. While only a handful of Alberta producers have adopted CTF, they have noticed improvements in water infiltration and soil quality.

“You retain those large pores and allow water and air to move,” says Gamache, “and you have a better environment for root growth.”

“Recurring compaction from equipment is a common factor in reducing soil health,” says Hernandez. Using the fractal aggregation soil test and other metrics, Guenette was able to demonstrate a significant difference between compacted soils in control fields and soils in CTF fields.

The tests showed improved porosity and hydroconductivity in the latter, says Hernandez.

Steve Larocque, a private agronomist and owner of a small grain farm near Calgary, was the first producer to sign on to CTF Alberta more than seven years ago. His interest was piqued, he says, after he did a Nuffield scholarship tour in England, New Zealand and Australia.

“You can’t just bolt on CTF and expect miracles,” he cautions. “Like no-till it takes years to see the benefits. With no-till we saw them quickly because we cut back on diesel, labour and power. With CTF we’re already fairly efficient, so it’s about improving soil structure and health.”

But Larocque believes there are significant benefits to CTF. His operation has close to 70 per cent soil porosity, he says, and holds a lot of moisture — “way more” than it did before.

In side-by-side trials looking at how quickly rainfall washes down in CTF versus non-CTF fields, Larocque notes that his CTF fields can handle about six inches of rain in under two minutes; one inch of rain can absorb in six seconds.

“It takes time for your soil to repair and to figure out what benefits you can achieve. For us the biggest one is timeliness,” he says. “How do you put a number on timeliness, getting onto the field when you want to? It could mean an application of fungicide for fusarium when you need it.”

Larocque believes more data is needed on CTF in Western Canada before more producers will sign on. GN

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