It’s been a good news week for Grain Farmers of Ontario chair Mark Brock. But he’s unsure how positive reports on the impacts neonicotinoid seed treatments have on pollinators will affect provincial grain farmers. Earlier this week, reports from Health Canada and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) delivered a one-two punch supporting the embattled... Read More
Category: Agronomy
If farmers want to supersize their corn yields, they have to challenge conventional thinking and become students of the crop. That was the main message National Corn Growers Association yield contest champion Randy Dowdy shared with hundreds of farmers at the 2016 SouthWest Agricultural Conference in Ridgetown, Ontario earlier this week. In 2014, Dowdy set... Read More
An international group of scientists working on mapping the genetic code for wheat say they've reached a major milestone that will help them reach their goal several years earlier than expected. The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium project, which is co-led by two Canadians and partly funded by Canadian farmers, announced yesterday it has produced... Read More
7 to 10 plants per square foot is still the target plant population when seeding canola. That hasn't changed, but some of the practices used and the way we think about achieving an ideal plant stand might need to be re-evaluated. For example, research has shown that stand establishment is generally higher with a lower... Read More
The application of “big data” in farming makes sense in theory. More data enables better decision-making, but at the individual farm level it can be difficult to accumulate a large enough sample size for actionable agronomic analysis. Variety XYZ performed well on one field last year, so should you grow more of that variety next... Read More
Real Agriculture’s resident agronomist Peter Johnson has found yet another reason to grow wheat. In this episode of Wheat School, our intrepid WheatPete turns reporter as he interviews Dr. Tom Bruulsema, the International Plant Nutrition Institute’s Phosphorus Program Director, on how farmers can better manage phosphorus application by including wheat in the rotation. Bruulsema notes... Read More
Soybean Cyst nematode (SCN) was first identified in Ontario in 1998. Since then the pest has slowly and methodically trekked across the province and can now be found in most parts of Ontario. In this episode of Soybean School, Syngenta agronomist Shawn Brenneman and field biologist Marijke Van Andel discuss findings from a research survey... Read More
Individual nozzle control is becoming a reality, or at least an option, when it comes to applying pesticides with precision. Although they don’t have a major presence in Canada, Italian spraying technology manufacturer Arag has been selling its Seletron control system for several years. With individual nozzles that are automatically activated by a GPS-linked controller... Read More
This week’s Word starts off with comments and feedback from last week’s rant on tillage. Peter Johnson, resident agronomist for RealAgriculture and host of this weekly podcast, discusses tillage, late nitrogen on corn, and so much more. Have a question for Wheat Pete? Call 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet (@wheatpete), or email him at peter.johnson@bell.net.... Read More
For most of us, seed testing is something to be done during or immediately after harvest, and right before seeding. But, there might be a reason or two to put the egg nog back in the fridge and hit the bins for a sample. For those relatively new to seed testing, Sydney Vos with BioVision... Read More