Agronomic strategies that maximize fertilizer efficiency should be good for a farm's financial bottom line and the environment, but specific decisions about how fertilizer is applied should be made with the overall outcome in mind, stresses Marla Riekman, soil management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture. The 4Rs — the right source at the right rate, right... Read More
Category: Agronomy
How low can you go? When it comes to silage, a lower harvest height can add real tonnage to the final yield tally. Kayla Slind, acting general manager with the Western Applied Research Corporation (WARC), says that harvesting close to the ground requires land rolling to protect the harvester from damage due to picking up... Read More
Is it efficient to use autonomous vehicle in row crop agriculture in southwestern Ontario? That's a question cash crop farmer Mark Richards is wrestling with on his Dresden, Ont. farm. In 2022, he used a solar-powered FarmDroid robot to plant sugar beets. That machine found it challenging to adapt to the widespread use of strip... Read More
Ontario will be home to the first of three new Living Laboratory initiatives beginning this year. Led by Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association, the Ontario living lab project will receive up to $9.2 million over five years from the federal government under the Agricultural Climate Solutions (ACS) – Living Labs program. This living lab... Read More
Early season pest pressure can be a huge drag on canola seedling survivability and producers' pocket books. A seed treatment can be a useful tool in protecting tiny plants, and BASF is launching new treatment treatment stack options in the 2024 Invigor line up. Farmers growing InVigor hybrid canola likely noticed the shift in '23... Read More
What happens when a soil-applied herbicide application is followed by severe weather? For many herbicides it is business as usual, but in some cases a heavy rain can cause a typically safe product to injure the plant. On this episode of RealAgriculture's Corn School, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs weed specialist Mike... Read More
Nothing good happens to mature wheat left in the field, and Peter Johnson is pretty thankful that some elevators are taking wheat at 17 per cent moisture to keep combines rolling. It takes a village, sometimes. For this week's episode of Wheat Pete's Word, Johnson also discusses compaction, rescue nitrogen on corn and beans, why... Read More
Is there a yield and quality advantage to using biological nitrogen fixation products? This is a question the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (Sask Wheat) is aiming to answer in a trial at Scott, Saskatchewan. Carmen Prang, agronomy research specialist with Sask Wheat, says there are different fertility treatments the trial is targeting: a low, medium,... Read More
Soybeans will pop out of warm spring soil a few days after planting, but they often sit for weeks before breaking the surface when planted early in cool, no-till environments. On this episode of the RealAgriculture Soybean School, host Bernard Tobin and Abhi Deora, head of Syngenta Canada's Seedcare Institute, look at how soil temperatures... Read More
Wet, humid conditions can cause corn diseases to advance quickly. The usual suspects are always a concern: Northern corn leaf blight, gibberella ear rot, and more, but a new-to-Ontario disease, tar spot, has been harder to predict when it comes to threat level. In 2022, early indications showed the disease was present but a dry... Read More