While sunflowers often pencil out well, concerns about quality and yield risk at the end of the year are all-too-common when it comes to growing them. "It's a high value crop and if you treat it that way, it's going to pay," says Troy Turner, agronomist for the National Sunflower Association of Canada, in the... Read More
Category: Western Canada
Anybody thinking of growing lentils or peas in Western Canada this year? Syngenta is introducing a new fungicide to help growers protect pulses from foliar diseases such as anthracnose, ascochyta blight, mycosphaerella blight and powdery mildew. Elatus features two modes of action — a combination of Syngenta's new Group 7 fungicide known as Solatenol (benzovindiflupyr)... Read More
In this episode of the Corn School, Real Agriculture resident agronomist Peter Johnson goes cover crop crazy. Standing in a residue-covered cornfield, Johnson sounds off on growers who insist on chopping corn stalks: “What a labour intensive, fuel expensive, ridiculous thing to do – it makes no sense whatsoever.” What makes better sense for growers,…Read More
Evidence is adding up to show Western Canada really did grow a big canola crop last year, despite the drought. A combination of ample supplies, expanded crush capacity and the lower Canadian dollar are driving a rapid pace in canola consumption this year, both domestically and through exports. Canadian canola crush is up 12 percent... Read More
During Techtour LIVE last week I had a farmer come up to me and say, "Shaun, you are so lucky." I replied curiously, "why?" The farmer replied, "Well, because you get to hang out with people like Peter Johnson and Tom Wolf, such inspirational and intelligent people to share ideas with." Do you ever lecture... Read More
Farmers are dealt a hand of cards each year. There are cards of fortune and cards of misfortune. Maybe it's a wet spring or corn prices below $4/bu or skyrocketing fertilizer costs. Maybe you get all three in the same hand. A farmer can't always choose what they're dealt, but they can choose how to... Read More
Placing fertilizer where it needs to go can prove challenging, especially along roads, fencerows and bending contours of a field. But navigating fields and hitting the spot should be easier with the new Javelin sectional spreader from Salford BBI. “It’s the first precision spreader on the North American market to achieve a true 120-foot spread... Read More
A lot of focus in the market last week was on the wheat market as warm weather from Kiev to Kansas is pushing fall-seeded crops out of dormancy much earlier than usual. After last week’s best weekly gain for wheat since October, investors' focus will now turn to weather forecasts and the stocks and acreage... Read More
Do you know which fields make you money and which ones don't? At what point in the year do you sit down and determine what your breakeven costs are for a specific piece of land? The FieldValues app was designed to help farmers keep information about costs and break-even prices current throughout the growing season.... Read More
A year ago we ran a post describing the grandparent wisdom you should never forget on the farm. This list of five things was very popular, even inspiring several additions to the list through reader emails, twitter and Facebook. All things are not golden though — it's time to release the list of the things... Read More