Biological products, such as inoculants for pulses and soybeans, have been around a very long time, but the ever-expanding world of biological products now means that growers have options for hundreds of products that are supposed to do everything from stimulating root growth, to helping plants recover from hail, to fixing nitrogen. To help evaluate... Read More
Category: Features
Cover crops are not magic. It's important to first understand the goal of using a cover crop and then measuring up each species and season to see if it's a match. Farmers from east to west are using cover crops to accomplish several things: reducing erosion, cycling nutrients, fixing nitrogen, and fighting weeds, but that... Read More
When it comes to machinery shops, most farmers like to build them in their yard from the ground up. But farmers are also innovators and some just can't resist looking for alternative ways to get the job done. That's certainly the case for Dresden, Ont., grain farmer Mark Richards who in 2015 came up with... Read More
Canola is an elastic, amazingly resilient plant, but it starts as a very tiny seed and emerges under threat of certain death by very hungry flea beetles. Setting up this crop for great yield is the typical combination of establishment, nutrition, and crop protection, but in this episode of The Agronomists, we dig in to... Read More
It's a tough lesson in farming and ranching: learning lessons on what doesn't work can be expensive and time consuming. That's why knowledge transfer, peer-to-peer sharing, and mentorship can have a huge positive impact on those trying something new. For Grant Lastiwka, rancher at Innisfail, Alta., the Grazing Mentorship Program supported by Farmers for Climate... Read More
What drives maximum corn yield? We kick off a new season of The Agronomists talking about the king of them all — corn. To tackle the topics of hybrid selection, the planting pass, disease considerations, and fertility, host Lyndsey Smith is joined by Paul Sullivan of Sullivan Agro, Mark Foster of Jockbrae Farms, and Nicole... Read More
Jason Deveau, application technology specialist with Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and Tom Wolf, co-founder of Agrimetrix — and both of Sprayers 101 — are BACK for this episode of Exploding Sprayer Myths! If you're cleared to fly a drone, spraying product with a drone is easy peasy, right? Actually, that's a... Read More
A practical design that immediately improves efficiency on the farm is usually a top priority when building a new shop, but ideally, that building will continue providing value for the next thirty-plus years, across multiple generations. Walter Smith would still fall into the category of "young" farmer, but after ten years of running a seed... Read More
It's time to wrap up this season of The Agronomists, tackling the top agronomy lessons of the year. From extreme dryness in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan, to a mixed season in Manitoba, and a dry-to-very-wet season in Ontario, we've got three agronomists to unpack the worst and the wins of 2023. For this episode... Read More