The largest living terrestrial being on Earth isn’t a whale, elephant or giant sequoya. It’s a 9,000-year old mushroom that measures 5.5 kilometres across and eats fir trees. There’s a total of 10 trillion or more types of soil bacteria. There can be more than a million in a teaspoon of soil. When we narrow this general branch of soil bacteria down to soil fungi only, we still have a list of 100 billion types. One single big parasite in particular, called the honey fungus or honey mushroom, Armillaria solidipes, has a strong population in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, according to Jesse Morrison, a forage plant breeder at Mississippi State University.
The law of the jungle says “you eat it before it eats you.” Loggers in the Pacific Northwest probably feel that way about the honey mushroom because of the fact that it has an appetite for fir trees. The fungus feeds on the very trees needed by the lumber industry, making it a very unpopular part of the local ecology. It gained notoriety in the late 1990s as the secret killer attacking fir trees on the West Coast. Fir is considered to be the best of the softwood lumber species. The natural action of the fungus has led to widespread die-off in stands of fir.
According to the Soil Science Society of America, honey mushrooms grow to such a tremendous size because individual mushrooms can fuse together into larger mushrooms when they touch. Morrison said these characteristics of the fungi could be put to good use by plant breeders, once they’re understood. “When mycelia from different individual honey fungus bodies meet, either down in the soil or up on the surface, they attempt to fuse to each other,” Morrison said. “The fungi must be genetically identical. When the mycelia successfully fuse to each other, they link very large fungal bodies together. This, in turn, changes extensive networks of fungal ‘clones’ into a single giant individual.” Mushrooms typically grow on moist logs or saturated soil with wet rotting vegetation. The fungi break down decaying plant material into nutrients that other plants then access to grow.
However, parasites can damage their host organisms. In the case of honey mushrooms, they grow in individual networks called mycelia, which function like plant roots. They draw water and nutrients from the soil to feed the fungus. If there are weakened or stressed trees, the mushroom robs enough water and nutrient to kill them. The larger the mycelia grow, the hungrier it becomes. However, there is one positive aspect of the underground network of mycelia of all fungi. They help hold soil particles together. Just like plant roots, mycelia work to prevent soil erosion from wind and water. This is especially important in the Pacific Northwest because of the predominance of steeply sloped landscapes. Morrison said the underground structures are generally not found very deep in the soil. Honey fungi are aerobic organisms, meaning they must have access to oxygen in order to survive. The extent to which they’re found is completely dependent on soil structure and texture. As you dig deeper in the soil profile, you encounter increasingly compact layers of soil, generally too low in oxygen to support fungi. In the deepest forest soils of the Pacific Northwest, they occur as deep as 1.5 meters. However, they can colonize around roots of infected trees, so you could potentially find them at depths up to 3.5 metres.
Morrison, who specializes in forage agronomy and plant breeding, said there’s an obvious positive aspect of the honey fungus and associated research. In an email interview, he said that understanding how it can develop a massive mycelia system that extends for miles may be the key to breakthroughs in health and agriculture. “As a plant breeder, I see two types of potential benefits. This is a parasitic fungus, which is generally something we avoid in agriculture. But the traits that make it so effective at taking over individuals such as large trees could be useful in the future of agriculture,” he said. “Geneticists are looking for ways to combat toxic fungi in human food crops. If they can identify and harness the genes responsible for the aggressive nature of honey fungus, it could be of particular benefit in fighting crop diseases. “Also, these fungi are remarkably adept at breaking down organic compounds, both beneficial and non-beneficial. The opportunities to test honey fungus as a potential candidate in ‘myco-remediation’ are always present and worth a shot, I think. Perhaps one day, research discoveries about honey fungus could lead to a new medicine or new ways to grow food. The possibilities are endless.”
Tight supplies of canola in Western Canada and unattractive crush margins for the commodity likely caused some processors in Eastern Canada to switch over to soybeans, said oilseed analyst Chris Beckman of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s market analysis division in Winnipeg. Beckman forecasts the country’s total soybean crush in 2012-13 at 1.4 million tonnes, but said that number would likely end up larger as the switch to processing more soybeans should continue through the crop year.
Contrary to popular belief, honey fungus is not named for flavour. It’s anything but sweet. It’s named for the honey-like colour of its cap, said Morrison. “It’s mildly poisonous to humans in raw form, but it’s edible when fully cooked,” he said. “Honey fungus is widely regarded in wild food foraging circles as a highly prized find. Across several European countries, honey fungus is not only considered edible but is held in high regard with a flavour exceeding that of morels and chanterelles. A famous Italian chef, Antonio Carluccio, says it’s delicious with spaghetti and red chili.” However, it’s not likely that human demand will consume enough of the fungus to solve the fir tree problem in the Pacific Northwest.
When weighed for sustainability, the purported benefits and costs of organic agriculture can actually “vary heavily” from case to case, a new University of British Columbia study finds. The UBC study, titled “Many shades of gray: The context-dependent performance of organic agriculture,” published Friday in the U.S. journal Science Advances, sets out to “systematically review the scientific literature on the environmental and socioeconomic performance of organic farming.” The study led by Verena Seufert of UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and Navin Ramankutty, UBC’s Canada research chair in global environmental change and food security was meant to assess “where previous studies agree and disagree,” and to identify “the conditions leading to good or bad performance of organic agriculture.” Organic agriculture shows “many potential benefits,” the study said, as well as “many potential costs including lower yields and higher consumer prices.” However, the study added, “numerous important dimensions have high uncertainty, particularly the environmental performance when controlling for lower organic yields, but also yield stability, soil erosion, water use, and labour conditions.”
“Organic is often proposed a Holy Grail solution to current environmental and food scarcity problems, but we found that the costs and benefits will vary heavily depending on the context,” Seufert said. For example, the report’s authors suggest, in countries such as Canada “where pesticide regulations are stringent and diets are rich in micronutrients, the health benefits of choosing organic may be marginal.” “But in a developing country where pesticide use is not carefully regulated and people are micronutrient-deficient, we think that the benefits for consumer and farm worker health may be much higher,” Ramankutty said in a UBC release.
Another important measure for a farming system’s sustainability, for another example, is the yield of a crop. Most studies so far have compared the costs and benefits of organic and conventional farms of the same size, the UBC researchers said, “which does not account for differences in yield.”
On average, according to previous research, the yield of an organic crop is 19 to 25 per cent lower than under conventional management, the study says, suggesting “many of the environmental benefits of organic agriculture diminish once lower yields are accounted for.” “While an organic farm may be better for things like biodiversity, farmers will need more land to grow the same amount of food,” said Seufert. “And land conversion for agriculture is the leading contributor to habitat loss and climate change.”
While organic farms typically consume less energy and produce lower greenhouse gas emissions than their conventional neighbours, a farm’s greenhouse gas emissions “might actually be higher under organic management” when its lower yields are taken into account. On the matter of water quality, an organic field has, on average, lower nitrogen loss and lower pesticide leaching than a conventional farm, the UBC study said. Organic agriculture also uses more recycled nitrogen and phosphorus, introducing less new nitrogen and phosphorus into water systems. However, once the organic farm’s lower yields are taken into account, the nitrogen loss per unit food produced “might actually be higher.” Also, the study said, organic farms where large amounts of animal manure are applied would have a “stronger negative impact on water quality” compared to organic farms that use nitrogen-fixing crops as fertilizers.
Organic’s benefits to biodiversity also may not be as clear as they seem, the study suggested. On average, organic management results in a 40 to 50 per cent increase in organism abundance in agricultural fields. Plants and bees have been shown to benefit the most, while “other arthropods and birds benefit to a smaller degree.” However, the study said, “we don’t know whether organic agriculture provides any benefits for biodiversity if lower organic yields (and thus probably more land to produce food) are taken into account.” In terms of producing a sustainable livelihood for farmers and farm workers, the study notes organic agriculture is “typically more profitable than conventional agriculture” — but in regions with high labour costs, those margins may shrink for organic operations, which are generally more labour-dependent. Furthermore, the study said, “organic farmers in low-income countries are usually dependent on export markets and exporting agents and therefore lose some of their autonomy.”
On organic operations, the study noted, farm workers benefit from reduced exposure to “toxic agrochemicals” and from increased employment opportunities in regions with high rural unemployment. On the other hand, “organic farm workers are likely exploited in similar ways to conventional farm workers.” Though the study suggests organic alone can’t create a sustainable food future, it still has an important role to play. For consumers, buying organic gives them control over and knowledge of how their food is produced, “since it is the only farming system regulated in law.” “We need to stop thinking of organic and conventional agriculture as two ends of the spectrum,” Seufert said in UBC’s release. “Instead, consumers should demand better practices for both, so that we can achieve the world’s food needs in a sustainable way.”
If you want to eke out a profit growing soybeans in 2018, high-oleic varieties may be a way to do it. That’s because farmers can garner a premium ranging from 20¢ to 60¢ per bushel above conventional soybeans, depending on market conditions. There’s some work involved, as farmers must segregate the crop from conventional soybeans at harvest. Farmers must also combine high-oleic soybeans at specific moistures. Still, high-oleic varieties can give farmers an edge during tough economic times. “That can give farmers a $25- to $30-per-acre incentive to plant them,” says Russ Sanders, DuPont Pioneer food and industry markets director. There’s another perk, too. “Vistive Gold (Monsanto’s high-oleic soybean) is one of the first biotech traits with benefits to consumers,” says Lisa Streck, Monsanto’s North American soybean launch lead. That’s because they’re a healthier soybean for food ingredients and cooking oil. In 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) moved to label foods containing trans fats. This morphed into an FDA ruling – effective July 2018 – that bans partially hydrogenated oils that contain artificial trans fats in food products.
This negatively impacts commodity soybean oil. To create stability or lasting power, it has to be hydrogenated. Unfortunately, the process creates trans fats that are linked to heightened coronary heart disease risk. Due to the FDA move, palm oil and high-oleic canola oil sliced soybean oil’s share of the baking and frying fats market. The United Soybean Board (USB) estimates the soybean industry lost 4 billion pounds of soy oil demand annually since the trans fat level law took effect in 2006.
High-oleic soybeans can turn the tide for soybeans, though. As an example, DuPont Pioneer’s Plenish soybeans contain: Zero trans fats. 20% less saturated fat than commodity soybean oil. An oleic content of more than 75%. This level is similar to olive oil, which is the darling of dieticians. A linoleic content of less than 3%. The lower the linoleic content, the better the oil is for cooking.
Benefits like these appeal to restaurants and food manufacturers, says Sanders. High-oleic soybean oil can also be used for nonfood industrial uses, too. Thus, the USB estimates 18 million acres of varieties with relative maturities between Group 1 and Group 5 will be planted by 2023. That’s up from 2017 plantings of 625,000 acres. (For comparison, U.S. farmers planted 89.5 million acres to soybeans in 2017.) This will make high-oleic soybeans the fourth-largest crop behind corn, conventional soybeans, and wheat, says Sanders. High-oleic soybeans from Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer use transgenic technology to create high-oleic varieties. So far, though, there’s been no pushback from consumers regarding them, says Sanders. “The consumer benefits of high-oleic soybeans have outweighed any concerns about GMOs,” he says.
This tactic is similar to rotating weed chemicals to prevent resistance development. With Bt corn, there are now second- and soon-to-be third-generation Bt modes of action that work in different ways than the original Bt. Thus, a rootworm that resists one Bt mode is susceptible to another. If you are rotating crops and soil insecticides where possible, Hibbard advises also rotating the type of Bt corn that comes in your seed package. The goal is to keep rootworm one step behind you in its fight for survival.High-oleic soybeans are making inroads in the food service industry. “It is the clear choice for our restaurant customers,” says Mike Seidel, director of category/management for Performance Foodservice, a Richmond, Virginia, firm. Performance Foodservice picked Plenish high-oleic soybean oil to be the main component in its Brilliance Premium Oils brand. One reason is because high-oleic soybean oil has two to three times longer the fry and shelf life that commodity soybean oil has. “It keeps products viable longer,” says Sanders. High-oleic soybeans also have a tasteless flavor. “Having no flavor enables the flavor of the food to come out,” says Seidel. Premium oil like high-oleic soybean oil also reduces labor in restaurants, compared with a conventional soybean or equivalent oil, says Seidel. Normally, fryers must be cleaned weekly with conventional soybean oil. Premium oil stretches out cleanout to a biweekly basis, says Seidel. Restaurant owners also like high-oleic oil from a safety factor, says Sanders. “Conventional soybean oil can break down and give a gummy feel,” he says. “That can make it slippery on surfaces. It can also reduce the likelihood of a fire, because grease is not as likely to build up as does conventional oil.”
Niche markets have always struggled with the Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? scenario. “Processors want enough soybeans to make the switch, and farmers question if they can grow it that much,” says Sanders. “You have to sell the farmer first.” To do that, processors offer premiums to grow them. They can vary from year to year but can range between 20¢ to 60¢ per bushel. When more acres are pulled into a niche market, there’s always the chance premiums will go by the wayside as the product becomes a commodity. Sanders thinks that won’t occur, though, because the market basis will be higher due to the increased demand for all types of soybean oil. “When market prices are challenging, we think high-oleic soybeans can make the difference between black and red ink for farmers,” Sanders says.
High-oleic soybeans have no yield drag when compared with conventional ones, say Lawrence Onweller, a Delta, Ohio, farmer who plants Plenish soybeans. To garner a premium, though, Onweller runs his combine empty when moving between conventional and high-oleic soybean fields during harvest. This helps segregate the two soybean types. He also harvests Plenish soybeans below 14% or less moisture. That’s the standard processors specify in order to gain the most oil out of soybeans. “If Plenish soybeans are over 14% moisture, I could potentially lose the premium,” says Onweller. The moisture limitations exist because the amount of high-oleic soybeans grown is so small that blending with higher-moisture soybeans cannot be done. Still, blending may be possible as more are grown, says Russ Sanders, DuPont Pioneer food and industry markets director.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada cut its all-wheat forecast by 1.1 million metric tons to 27.3 million metric tons, which represents a five-year low. This forecast is ahead of the Aug. 31 Stats Canada official release of Production of Principal Field Crops. The estimate also cut durum production to a five-year low at 5 million metric tons, down 700,000 tons. AAFC also increased its Canadian export forecast of durum by 9 percent, primarily due to the poor northern U.S. crop and cited the poor quality of last year's durum crop as reasons for the expected increase. The report also lowered expected Canadian prices by $10 per ton, primarily from the higher Russian yield estimates and more worldwide competition. Pro Zerno, a private firm, came out with higher Russian wheat yields, which pressured the market early week. Their estimate is 80 million metric tons versus the U.S. Department of Agriculture's September estimate of 77.5 million metric tons. The Russian news agency TASS estimates Russian wheat production at 81 million metric tons. This is 1.1 million metric tons higher than SovEcon's estimate of 78.9 million metric tons. With the large estimates of Russian/ FSU-12 wheat production, Black Sea Region wheat export prices have dropped to $183 per metric ton, the lowest since early June. The International Grains Council raised their 2017-18 ending wheat stocks by 7 million metric tons to 248 million metric tons due to expected increases in Black Seas Region production. Technically, the wheat complex is extremely oversold as we have seen sharp declines in the month of August. Minneapolis is down 10.1 percent or 85.5 cents, Chicago is down 13.1 percent or 65.25 cents, and Kansas City is down 13.7 percent or 68.75 cents. Aug. 24 appeared to bring a daily upside reversal. We would expect about a 20-cent recovery short term in the Chicago market to get closer to 100- and 200-day moving averages.
Corn futures traded to new contract lows this week and are quietly losing a few cents every day. For the week ending Aug. 24, September corn was down 10 cents and December corn was down 9.5 cents. The bears are in control, and the Pro Farmer Crop Tour didn't show the bullish yield news that producers were hoping for and needed to see. What they did show is that yields are very variable, but far from a disaster. There were quite a few examples of corn with tip back and poor population counts, but they also showed some decent yields in areas that received timely rains. There was a large range in yields, even on farms 10 mile from each other. The Pro Farmer tour is estimating Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska and Ohio to come in less than USDA August estimates. Minnesota and South Dakota are expected to come in higher. The "I" states are showing a lot of variability, which makes sense if you have been paying attention to the Drought Monitor maps. One day a tour route in Indiana showed a range of 106 to 257 bushels per acre. Minnesota looks like the golden child this year. There are more good fields than not in Minnesota, but the question is if they will make it all the way to maturity. The one thing they all can agree on is that there is a lot of corn that is behind normal and needs a late fall to mature. Much of Minnesota is 300 growing degree units behind last year. Option expiration on Aug. 25 and first notice for September futures Aug. 31 put pressure on these markets. Prices were also not helped by the fact that most basis fixed and priced later contracts cannot be rolled anymore and will get priced by the end of the month. In the week that ended Aug. 15, funds liquidated 27,000 net long corn contracts to around 40,000 contracts, down from the 67,000 net long the week prior. Funds will probably be back to net short this week.
Soybeans found support as cool weather is starting to cause concern and soybeans are lagging in development. It will take a month to get some of the soybeans to full maturity in central Minnesota. The Pro Farmer Tour didn't give the market many surprises but did show that this year's crop is all over the board in the Midwest. For the week ending Aug. 24, September soybeans were up 3.75 cents and November 2017 soybeans were up 8.75 cents. Even though the crop tour didn't help corn prices, the bean market did find some support with lower than average pod counts. There's a lot of variability out there, with some fields looking uniform with good pod counts and other areas that are showing stress because of lack of moisture earlier this summer and less than ideal planting conditions this spring. Other areas had rains show up just in time for many of the dry areas to avert a disaster. Pod counts only go so far to the actual ending yield, but it is giving farmers and bulls hope that the country is not looking at record yields this year. There was mixed news on the soybean front this week. The U.S. Commerce Department announced that it was applying sizable duties on biodiesel imports from Argentina and Indonesia that would also be applied to imports over the past 90 days. This could price Argentine biodiesel exports out of the U.S. market. Brazil's government approved taxing ethanol imports for the first time in a move to protect local producers from growing shipments coming from the U.S. There was also mixed news on the export side as the USDA announced a few new crop soybean sales this week, headlined by 10.4 million bushels of new crop, but then they announced that China cancelled 23.6 million bushels (640,970 metric tons) of old crop U.S. soybean sales.
For the week ending Aug. 24, November canola futures in Winnipeg were down $1.70 Canadian at $504.70 Canadian per metric ton. The Canadian dollar traded .0029 higher to .7983. This brings the U.S. price to $18.28 per hundredweight. • Velva, N.D., $17.72 per hundredweight. New crop at $17.18. • Enderlin, N.D., $18.27 per hundredweight. New crop at $18.16. • Hallock, Minn., $17.75 per hundredweight. New crop at $17.75. • Fargo, N.D., $18.45 per hundredweight. New crop at $18.20. Stats Canada will release its production of principal field crops report Aug. 31. The average estimates for this year's Canadian crop is 18.1 million metric tons versus 18.4 million metric tons last year. Guesses range from 17.5 million metric tons to 19.5 million metric tons.
Cash feed barley bids in Minneapolis were at $2.10, while malting barley received no quote. Berthold, N.D., bid is $2 and CHS Southwest New Salem, N.D., bids were at $2.50. Durum Cash bids for milling quality durum are $7.25 in Berthold and at $7.25 in Dickinson, N.D.
Cash sunflower bids in Fargo were at $17.60. Bids for October-November were at $16.60. For the week ending Aug. 24, soybean oil was up $1.07 at $34.80 on the September contract.
In a bid to contain clubroot, some counties will spray down canola if a grower grows the crop on a field known to be infected. Photo: Jennifer Blair Some Alberta counties are taking a zero-tolerance approach to clubroot and canola growers are learning the hard way that they mean business. “Our policy basically states that if you have clubroot, you cannot seed that land back to canola for four years,” said Steve Upham, reeve for the County of St. Paul. “We were given this duty by the Weed and Pest Control Act to enforce this and make sure that agriculture stays healthy and is a vibrant part of the Alberta economy.
We take that responsibility very seriously.” In fact, one producer who refused to adhere to the policy had two quarters of canola sprayed down this year. The county introduced its clubroot policy in 2016 after the disease started to snake its way north, said Upham, who also farms near Spedden.“We had been reasonably successful at keeping clubroot at bay,” he said. “But the way things have been financially around farms the last few years, farmers have tried to tighten their rotations. So we’ve had some issues with clubroot starting to surface.” Under the policy, fields in the county suspected of having clubroot are tested, and once clubroot is confirmed, the landowner receives a pest notice, which prohibits him or her from growing canola and other cruciferous crops for three years (and only clubroot-resistant varieties in the fourth year.) The landowner must also control volunteer canola and sanitize his equipment when leaving the field. The county tests every single quarter seeded to canola, and when the first infested field was found, the owner acted “very responsibly,” seeding the next crop down to hay. “There are some great producers who have had some issues with clubroot, but they realize that the risk is high, and bit by bit, they clean it. They do their due diligence and get rid of it,” said Upham. “But you’ve got to be on it every day.”
Counties that enforce clubroot policies generally have reduced disease severity, said canola council agronomist Dan Orchard. But earlier this spring, another farmer called the county’s bluff after receiving his pest notice. After seeding one infected quarter to canola, the farmer was warned he was in contravention of the policy and that the county would have to spray the crop down if he didn’t do it himself. “He seeded one quarter and then came to council to appeal to us to not do anything about it. We said that the policy stood and we were going to act on it, and then a few days later, he seeded another quarter,” said Upham, adding the county got a court order to access the land and spray the crop down. “We sprayed it off, and it just sat there fallow for the summer. Farmers know what it costs to seed a quarter of canola. He had two quarters sprayed off. That’s considerable.” The producer “wasn’t very happy,” but as a farmer himself, Upham wasn’t very happy either. “It’s very frustrating. This industry is so vitally important to the economy of Alberta, and we have due diligence to protect it if we see the need,” he said. “Especially the production of canola. If producers lose that, they have a major impediment to their bottom line.”
As clubroot continues its spread across Alberta, the first confirmed case in the Peace region was found this summer producers need to “think responsibly” about their rotations and “not risk canola’s future.” “It’s spreading so uncontrollably. And if it isn’t nipped in the bud, it can kill you,” said Upham. “Sure it’s going to cost a little bit, but that’s the cost of doing business. It’s far cheaper than the consequences.” But right now, many producers are more worried about short-term cash flow than long-term consequences, said Cody McIntosh, acting agricultural manager for Red Deer County. “It’s really an economic decision that they’re making,” said McIntosh. “They know, in the long term, it’s not good for the health of the land. But there’s large land rental payments and large equipment costs. So the tendency is to underutilize rotation.” Red Deer County — which has had a clubroot policy since 2008 previously mapped all fields with canola and extrapolated rotations based on the inventory numbers. The results were alarming. “More than half were following at least a one-in-three-year or a one-in-four-year canola rotation, which is good,” said McIntosh. “But we were seeing about 25 per cent that were canola every other year. That’s alarming 25 percent of crops are going shorter than recommended. “Then there was a small percentage under 10 percent that were back to back. We assume we have an average of about 1,000 canola fields in Red Deer County, so 100 of those were back to back. That’s pretty significant. ”But because clubroot hasn’t caused any “absolute wrecks” in Red Deer County, producers haven’t got serious about extending their rotations, he added. “We’re not there yet as far as the severity of clubroot, so people don’t see the other side of the coin,” he said. “It still pays to push the rotation.”
Red Deer County initially took a hard-line approach to managing clubroot through a zero-tolerance policy, and McIntosh believes that helped the county slow the spread of clubroot. “Speaking to municipalities that had clubroot before us, they said, ‘You cannot be firm enough on the first few cases. It all buys time. The more restrictions you have before you get clubroot, the better,’” said McIntosh. “What we managed to do in Red Deer County was slow the spread of clubroot down so that the awareness and education component were in place before we had any wrecks in fields.” That’s a trend that other counties have noticed as well, said Canola Council of Canada agronomist Dan Orchard. “There aren’t a lot of counties that don’t regulate, but certainly, there have been anecdotal and survey data that suggests that counties that don’t regulate and have high levels of infestation have the most severe infestations as well,” said Orchard. Leduc County — where Alberta’s first case of clubroot was found in 2003 — has been a “flagship” when it comes to managing the disease, said Orchard. “Leduc County was the first to really scout every single canola field every year, host all sorts of information sessions, regulate it, and enforce measures if need be,” he said. “Their county still has significant levels of clubroot because it was pretty bad before we had resistant varieties and other management measures. They have lots of fields that are infested, but they have very low levels compared to other counties that aren’t taking these measures.”
Even so, Red Deer County’s policy was adjusted in 2015 to build in a tolerance. “Putting a five-year prohibition on the growth of canola when we were finding one per cent clubroot infestation was pretty severe,” said McIntosh. “We knew our neighbours — especially those to the north, in Camrose, Westaskiwin, Leduc, and Lacombe — all had dozens of clubroot cases and they weren’t handling them as sternly as we were.” Red Deer County determines how severe the infestation is — minor, moderate, or severe — and bases management decisions on that, he said. A minor infestation is managed by the producer on his own, but moderately or severely infested fields might be barred from canola for up to five years. And like the County of St. Paul, Red Deer County has the right to destroy a crop that contravenes the policy. “I don’t want somebody to put in $20,000 worth of seed and then have us kill it down, but the Alberta Pest Act and our policy say that, if we have to destroy a crop, we could,” said McIntosh, adding it’s never got to that point. “I want to work with them and come to an understanding of using best management practices to curb the disease rather than using a heavy hammer. “We’re here to help these guys farm — not prevent them from farming.” Ultimately, it’s better for producers to work with their counties than it is to hide clubroot in their fields, said Orchard, adding “that’s been a problem in the past.” “Often farmers are reluctant to work hand in hand with their counties because they feel that the county is dictating their farming practices,” he said. “But farmers will have to manage this somehow. The management protocols from counties that do have regulations are quite in line with what farmers should do and would end up doing anyway. “These counties aren’t enforcing anything that’s unrealistic.”
Glyphosate-resistant weeds garner lots of the headlines when it comes to resistance. It’s important to remember, though, that herbicide resistance isn’t just limited to glyphosate, says Dane Bowers, herbicide technical product lead for Syngenta. “Herbicide resistance is a biological process,” he says. Steps like repeated use of any single herbicide site of action can eventually lead to resistant weeds. At last week’s Commodity Classic in San Antonio, Texas, Bowers noted that weeds topping the resistant list include Palmer amaranth and water hemp. “Ragweeds are also quite problematic across the country,” he adds. With no new herbicide sites of action coming down the pike, it’s important that farmers use existing strategies to forestall herbicide resistance, say weed-control specialists. “The best weed control doesn’t allow weeds to get out of the ground,” says Dawn Refsell, Valent USA field market development specialist. Overlapping residual herbicide strategies can help farmers achieve this.
An overlapping residual plan is one in which a pre-emergence residual herbicide is applied. This is followed by an in-crop application of another residual herbicide usually made at the same time as another nonselective herbicide in herbicide-tolerant systems like Roundup Ready or Liberty Link. Extending residual control is one way to help keep weeds at bay. A mix of tactics is also important, adds Bowers. “It’s not just about using different herbicides,” he says. “It’s also about using tillage when appropriate, maybe using cover crops, or planting narrow rows. It’s about anything you can do to make the crop more competitive against weeds.”
A dinner plate piled high with food from plants might not deliver the same nutrition toward the end of this century as it does today. Climate change could shrink the mineral and protein content of wheat, rice and other staple crops, mounting evidence suggests. Selenium, a trace element essential for human health, already falls short in diets of one in seven people worldwide. Studies link low selenium with such troubles as weak immune systems and cognitive decline. And in severely selenium-starved spots in China, children’s bones don’t grow to normal size or shape. This vital element could become sparser in soils of major agricultural regions as the climate changes, an international research group announced online February 21 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Likewise, zinc and iron deficiencies could grow as micronutrients dwindle in major crops worldwide, Harvard University colleagues Samuel Myers and Peter Huybers and collaborators warned in a paper published online January 6 in the Annual Review of Public Health. Futuristic field experiments on wheat and other major crops predict that more people will slip into nutritional deficits late in this century because of dips in protein content, Myers reported February 16 at the Climate and Health Meeting held in Atlanta. “If we’d sat down 10 years ago and tried to think what the effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions might be on human health, none of us would have anticipated that one effect would be to make our food less nutritious,” Myers said. “But we can’t fundamentally disrupt and reconfigure most of the natural systems around our planet without encountering unintended consequences.” Figuring out those unintended nutrient consequences isn’t easy. For selenium, scientists have only a rough idea of the element’s global movements. It’s unclear what proportions erode out of rocks or waft onto land from sea, says biogeochemist Lenny Winkel of ETH Zurich and the Swiss aquatic research group Eawag in Dübendorf. She was the principal investigator for the selenium in soils project in the new Proceedings paper. As far as she knows, it presents the first global look at selenium concentrations in soils and what basic factors influence what’s there. This scale, she says, was “a bit bold.” Starting with more than 33,000 data points from other sources, Winkel and colleagues pieced together a map of selenium concentrations in soils across much of the globe. Climate popped out as one of the more important predictors of selenium content in soil, a link that hadn’t shown up in small studies. Places where climate turns land arid generally have lower selenium, but soil character matters, too. Places with high organic carbon, as in a woodland rich with fallen leaves, as well as places with abundant clay, tend to do better at retaining selenium. Soil concentrations of the element selenium, essential for human life, could change by the end of the 21st century, according to computer simulations based on an intermediate scenario for climate change. The analysis identified what influences soil selenium now including precipitation and concentrations of organic carbon in soil and predicted future concentrations based on those influences.
By the end of the century, about two-thirds of heavily cultivated agricultural land would probably lose selenium under an intermediate scenario of climate change, Winkel and colleagues conclude. With a projected average end-century warming of 2.2 degrees Celsius compared with 1986 to 2005, selenium drops in breadbasket regions in the study by an average of 8.7 percent. Only 19 percent of croplands seem likely to gain selenium. The new map “is worrisome,” says plant physiologist Philip White of the James Hutton Institute in Invergowrie, Scotland. White, who studies agricultural plants, has published on selenium but was not part of the new study. As a rule of thumb, he says, natural selenium concentrations in soil “are directly related to the selenium available in plants.” That may be a rule of thumb. But Winkel says that to refine predictions, scientists need to consider how plant species vary in building up selenium in their tissues. Brazil nuts, for instance, accumulate so much selenium that extreme and persistent fans can develop signs of overdosing. One sign of excess: otherwise unexplained garlic breath. Excess can be an issue because the healthful ranges of selenium are narrow. “You can quickly get too much or too little,” Winkel says. This Goldilocks problem complicates planning for what to do about shortages: What boosts health among the nutrient-poor might not be so good for well-fed people with varied sources of selenium. Zinc and iron concentrations in crops, too, will probably shift as climate changes, Myers and colleagues reported in Nature in 2014. They analyzed harvest samples from a total of 41 cultivated varieties of major crops (wheat, rice, field peas, soybeans, maize and sorghum) grown with the expensive and elaborate experimental protocol known as FACE, for Free-Air CO2 Enrichment. In Australia, Japan and the United States, test crops grew in outdoor fields within futuristic Stonehenge circles of skinny ducts blowing extra carbon dioxide to mimic mid- to late-century atmospheres. Sites varied, but at the time, researchers reported their baseline CO2 as 363 to 386 parts per million and pushed their pipes to deliver 546 to 586 ppm.
Multiple varieties of major crops showed some nutrient changes when grown outdoors with extra carbon dioxide blown over them (ranging from 546 to 586 ppm) in seven spots scattered across Australia, Japan and the United States. Sorghum and maize, plants capturing carbon with what’s called a C4 pathway, may be better at preserving nutrients in a future carbon-enriched atmosphere than most crops. Phytate, not a nutrient but a compound that can sabotage zinc uptake in humans, decreased only in wheat. The phytate dip might help compensate for declining zinc, but researchers note that zinc decreased even more than phytate content did. Just what these declines mean depends on how many people draw a substantial part of particular nutrients from a particular crop, calculations later papers are starting to address.
Based on samples from these far-flung experiments, the researchers found iron concentrations in wheat dropped an average of 5 percent. Zinc levels fell 9 percent. Most other crops showed a tendency toward declines too, although maize and sorghum, which use what’s called the C4 pathway for carbon capture, showed signs of possible resilience. Then Myers asked: “So what?” Figuring that out wasn’t easy. A major plant source of the minerals for Ethiopia might not matter much for England with its meat-rich diet. Myers and colleagues put together an epic database of how much of 95 foods people eat in 188 countries around the world, and then calculated where the relatively modest downturns of zinc would put people at risk in the future. Nutrient changes by 2050 would push about 138 million more people into zinc deficiency, the researchers reported in 2015. And for more than 2 billion people already zinc deficient, future crop declines could make their health problems even worse. The shortfall could be especially hard on women and children. Too little zinc raises pregnant women’s risks of premature delivery and can doom children to poor weight gain and growth. A robust immune system needs adequate zinc, and public health specialists blame 100,000 child deaths a year on immune responses so enfeebled by skimpy zinc that children couldn’t fight off pneumonia or diarrhea. Livestock also may have to contend with plant nutrition changes. There will be complex interactions among CO2, temperature and water, which we don’t fully understand yet, says Jerry Hatfield. He’s a plant physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, Iowa. Some of the best evidence so far for effects of CO2 enhancement comes from FACE experiments in rangeland grasses, he says. Rising CO2 spurred rapid growth but weakened the grasses’ ability to take up nitrogen. Grass short on nitrogen didn’t have the raw materials for the usual protein content of livestock forage. Just how the soaring CO2 lowers nutrient content remains under debate. The prevailing hypothesis has been that extra carbon in the atmosphere lets plants bulk up with carbohydrates, in a sense diluting anything that isn’t a carbohydrate, plant micronutrients included. Not so, says plant physiologist Arnold Bloom of the University of California, Davis, a coauthor of the 2014 paper in Nature. A wide range of experimental results show that although most nutrients go down, some do not and some even go up. That doesn’t fit with a general pattern of low, “diluted” concentrations, concentrations of the various noncarbohydrates scattered all over the place. With nutrient concentrations going down, it might seem that people could solve the problem just by eating more. But there may not be more. Early studies raised hopes that extra CO2 might give plants’ carbon-trapping machinery extra raw material for growth spurts and bonanza yields. But sustained growth now looks elusive. Experiments tracking growth over years suggest that plants may not sustain initial surges, and theoretical predictions that build in such nonminor details as pests and water supplies are not encouraging. The 2014 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that crop yields are more likely to decrease than soar and agriculture will have to change to try to compensate. “Global demand for food is rising more steeply than ever before in human history,” Myers said in Atlanta. In 40 years, agriculture will have to produce 70 percent more food than it does today just to keep even as Earth’s population grows by several billion people. Yet in this time of growing need, human activities are transforming the climate in ways that could make farming even more of a challenge.
Corn genetically engineered to make ninjalike molecules can launch an attack on invading fungi, stopping the production of carcinogenic toxins. These specialized RNA molecules lie in wait until they detect Aspergillus, a mold that can turn grains and beans into health hazards. Then the molecules pounce, stopping the mold from producing a key protein responsible for making aflatoxins, researchers report March 10 in Science Advances. With aflatoxins and other fungal toxins affecting up to 25 percent of crops worldwide, the finding could help boost global food safety, the researchers conclude. Bottom of Form “If there’s no protein, no toxin,” says study coauthor Monica Schmidt, a plant geneticist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Schmidt and colleagues used a technique called RNA interference, which takes advantage of a natural defense mechanism organisms use to protect against viruses. The researchers modified corn to make it produce short pieces of RNA that match up to sections of an RNA in the fungus made from the aflC gene. That gene encodes a key step of a biochemical pathway that the fungus uses to make the toxins. When the corn’s modified RNAs match up with those of the fungus, that triggers Aspergillus to chop up its own RNA, preventing a key protein, and thus the toxin, from being made. Then, the team infected both engineered and not-tweaked corn with A. flavus, an Aspergillus species that releases the most potent aflatoxins. After allowing the corn — and fungus — to grow for a month, the researchers were unable to detect aflatoxins in the engineered corn. But they consistently measured more than 1,000 parts per billion of aflatoxin in the unmodified corn, and sometimes as much as 200,000 ppb, Schmidt says. In the United States, crops intended for human consumption are used for animal feed or destroyed if they have more than 20 ppb. Contaminated crops unsuitable for humans or animals cost $270 million each year. In countries that don’t screen for toxins, people eat the infected corn. That can cause vomiting, abdominal pain and even induce coma at higher levels. Long-term exposure to lower levels of these aflatoxins may stunt child development and cause liver cancer. “It’s not just an economic issue, it’s a health issue,” Schmidt says. Charles Woloshuk, a plant pathologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, says allowing A. flavus to grow and focusing on preventing it from making the toxin is a good approach. In the past, researchers have unsuccessfully tried to breed fungus-resistant crops to combat aflatoxins. But targeting the fungus that way may drive fungus mutations that allow it to keep infecting crops, Woloshuk says. RNA interference isn’t without danger either. The specially engineered RNA may go rogue and do things they weren’t intended to do, such as affect kernel development or plant growth. But an analysis of the genetically engineered corn showed that the RNA are sticking to the script. “That’s a good piece of data,” Woloshuk says. Other current infection prevention methods focus on airtight storage of harvested corn to keep Aspergillus out. But that’s not effective if corn is infected before it’s picked. Coupling genetically engineered corn, which protects the crop as it is growing in the field, with post-harvest storage techniques would be the best way to prevent Aspergillus from contaminating the corn, Schmidt says. “This is the first step of showing feasibility, but really it’s about getting it onto consumer plates,” she adds. “I realize that’s a long way down the road, but I hope somebody wants to move it forward.”
A few years ago, high corn prices pushed this widely grown grass crop into traditional sorghum growing areas.
However, receding corn prices are causing farmers in these areas to reconsider sorghum, another grass crop that’s grown worldwide. Here are four sorghum facts, courtesy of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The Danforth Center has a number of sorghum initiatives, particularly in bioenergy. Most varieties of this worldwide grass crop tolerate both drought and heat. Its adaptability to diverse environments, low fertilizer requirements, high biomass potential, and compatibility with row-crop production are prompting it to become a leading U.S. bioenergy crop, say Danforth Center officials. The new sorghum bioenergy belt will span east Texas, the Mississippi Valley, the Gulf Coast, and the southern Atlantic Coast. In the U.S. in 2016, 6,456,000 acres of sorghum were harvested for grain, according to USDA. Many of the world’s most food-insecure people depend on sorghum as their main food source. That’s especially true in Africa, where sorghum originated.
Kevin Bradley was puzzled. Back in 2017, the University of Missouri (MU) Extension weed scientist could not determine why parties involved in that summer’s off-target dicamba dilemma differed in opinions regarding dicamba-tolerant technology.
To better understand it, Bradley started reading behavioral science journal articles. One such article profiled radiologists who scan lung tissue slides for cancer. Unknown to the radiologists, an attention researcher at Harvard Medical School superimposed a gorilla shaking its fist on a slide. Surprisingly, 83% of the radiologists missed the angry ape that was in plain sight. This phenomenon – called inattentional blindness – explains why people miss the obvious because they focus solely on one matter. In this case, radiologists who intensely searched for cancer nodules missed seeing the gorilla.
Bradley observed back in 2017 that inattentional blindness occurred when it came to dicamba volatility between industry officials and university weed scientists. Volatility results when a herbicide converts to a gas. When this happens, the herbicide in a gaseous form can leave the application site and damage plants where it lands. Volatility occurs due to the high vapor pressure of dicamba and other Group 4 auxin-based herbicides like dicamba (2,4-D and Tordon are others). This can trigger off-target movement even when an applicator uses appropriate application practices. Dicamba – like almost all other postemergence herbicides – is a weak acid, explains Bob Hartzler, Iowa State University Extension weed specialist. Chemists refer to them as parent acids. In this state, a hydrogen ion is held to the dicamba molecule due to opposite charges of the two molecules. Most herbicide formulations substitute a salt for a hydrogen ion on the parent acid to boost compatibility with hard water and tank -mix partners. This also reduces dicamba volatility. "The degree of (dicamba) volatility reduction depends on the salt, the pH of the spray solution, and the pH of the spray droplet residue,” says William Abraham, Bayer Crop Science director of formulations and delivery technology. Dimethylamine (DMA) salt is used in older and more volatile Banvel formulations. The diglycolamine (DGA) salt used in Clarity reduces volatility more when compared to Banvel's DMA salt. Further reducing volatility is the BAPMA salt in BASF’s Engenia formulation. DGA is still the salt in Bayer's Xtend with VaporGrip technology and DowDuPont’s FeXapan herbicide Plus VaporGrip herbicide. Accompanying it, though, is the VaporGrip technology that works by reducing the association of hydrogen ions with dicamba. Bayer scientists say this minimizes its volatility potential and helps reduce off-target movement. Companies manufacturing Engenia, Xtend, and FeXapan started marketing the dicamba formulations advertised as being low in volatility in 2017.
Parent acid disassociation can still occur, says Hartzler. “Anytime there is free moisture, disassociation can occur,” he says. This can occur anytime in the spraying process – from the time the dicamba strikes water in the spray tank to contacting moisture on the leaves of the crop on which dicamba is sprayed. “The best analogy I heard about dicamba was from a chemist,” Hartzler says. “He said dicamba is a lot like nitroglycerine. It is a great explosive, but you never know when it will explode. With dicamba, you never know when it (the formulations) will disassociate and convert to the parent acid. Once that happens, it returns to a highly volatile form.”
Bayer officials say testing for volatility on its XtendiMax product included testing over 1,200 GLP (Good Laboratory Practices) studies over 25 geographies. Bayer officials say studies showed consistent findings supporting low-volatility claims of XtendiMax between controlled environments and field studies in various geographies. Officials for BASF, Engenia’s manufacturer, concur. “From a number of field investigations we have had, we identified multiple contributing factors, and we didn't believe volatility is one of those driving factors,” says Chad Asmus, BASF technical market manager. An example of this occurred in 2017, when BASF field reps investigated 787 soybean symptomology claims. BASF officials say had no impact on yield. However, in a few isolated cases, BASF officials say yield may have been affected where the terminal growth was inhibited. Main causes include: Incorrect nozzle and/or boom height Wind speed or direction Insufficient buffer Spray system contamination Use of unregistered product To help steward the product, BASF took steps like training 26,000 applicators since December 2017 and reimbursing growrs for buying and installing a hooded spray boom. Off-target dicamba damage to soybeans and other crops did occur in 2018. However, it was down from 2017, according to Bayer Crop Science officials. In 2017, inquiries regarding off-target dicamba in the Roundup Ready 2 Xtend system tallied 99 inquiries per 1 million acres. This year, it decreased to 13 per million acres, and most revolved around weed-control issues, says Brett Begemann, Bayer Crop Science chief operating officer. Xtend soybean acreage is up, though, having doubled from last year’s 25 million acres to this year’s nearly 50 million acres.
University weed scientists agree that sound spraying practices can help nix off-target dicamba movement. “Trust me, if you don’t have all of those things checked off – such as having the right tips, the right boom height, the right wind speed – you will see a problem with dicamba moving off target,” says Bradley. However, they disagree with industry’s take on volatility, noting it's akin to radiologists missing the gorilla in the laboratory slide. Even with the new formulations, the potential for dicamba volatility still exists, says Aaron Hager, University of Illinois (U of I) Extension weed specialist. Hager cites a statement in a 1967 Illinois Customer Spray Operators Training School proceedings: Unfortunately, Banvel-D (a dicamba formulation) produces a more severe reaction in soybeans than 2,4-D does, and there is a possibility that volatility may be a serious threat. “So, what have we learned about soybeans and dicamba that hasn’t been known for 50 years?” Hager asks. “Volatility can occur when spray solution settles on-site, changes to a vapor, and is then carried off-site by wind."When I see a product that’s labeled as low in volatility, that tells me everything I need to know about the volatility," Hager says. “We know it can happen. The only unknown is the scale of what will happen.”
Temperature inversions can fuel off-target dicamba movement. During the daytime, warm air rises when sunlight hits the ground. Meanwhile, cool air comes down, hitting the warm air. When this happens, wind results, which keys air circulation. At night, air patterns flip-flop, with cool air at the bottom and warm air on the top. This creates a stable environment that traps any pesticide particles in a suspended air mass. When this air mass encounters a horizontal wind, those particles move someplace. At its worst, the trapped pesticide can land in the middle of a multithousand-dollar-per-acre field of fruits or vegetables. Inversions are common, occurring anywhere sun hits the surface of the soil, says Mandy Bish, University of Missouri (MU) senior research specialist. MU researchers have found inversions setting up at 5 or 6 p.m., a time when many applicators are still spraying. Bish says factors associated with inversions include: Clear night skies No wind Morning dew or frost Low-lying fog, which is an indicator of an inversion. “If you spray the night before you see the fog, it is not the best indicator,” Bish says. Though not foolproof, smoke bombs are one way to detect temperature inversions. Smoke bombs set off at 4 p.m. by MU scientists showed fairly rapid dispersal. Ones set off at 7:30 p.m. lingered approximately 50 seconds, which indicates inversion presence, she says.
Screwworms, the first pest to be eliminated on a large scale by the use of the sterile male technique, have shown an alarming increase, according to U.S. and Mexican officials…. The screwworm fly lays its eggs in open wounds on cattle. The maggots live on the flesh of their host, causing damage and death, and economic losses of many millions of dollars.
Though eradicated in the United States in 1966, screwworms reemerged two years later, probably coming up from Mexico. Outbreaks in southern U.S. states in 1972 and in Florida in 2016 were both handled with the sterile male technique, considered one of the most successful approaches for pest control. Males are sterilized with radiation, then released into a population to breed with wild counterparts; no offspring result. The method has been used with other pests, such as mosquitoes, which were dropped by drones over Brazil this year as a test before the technology is used against outbreaks like the Zika virus.
Strip-till has been lurking on the fringe of Ontario agriculture since the provincial agriculture ministry and universities began promoting the practice through research in the 1980s. In the 1980s and 1990s “there was some grower up-take, but certainly not a large amount. But I think nowadays with some of the newer machines … like having GPS guidance, makes it a lot simpler and more attractive to look at than in the past,” said Ben Rosser of Ontario Agriculture. During Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock this year, the ministry was promoting strip-tillage with live tillage demonstrations, its own demonstration plot and a producer panel discussion. “It’s kind of a happy medium between no tillage and conventional tillage. Obviously we like the things that no-till delivers, but it can be a bit of a hard sell for some producers, depending on soil type or fertility, manure, things like that,” Rosser said.
“Certainly strip-till brings some opinions to the table. You maybe could overcome some of those issues but still get the benefit of reduced tillage in the growers’ system.” Warren Schneckenburger of Cedar Lodge Farms in Morrisburg, Ont., told farmers at COFS about his experience with the practice. His farm started the transition to strip-tillage in 2011 after Schneckenburger and his father attended the national no-till conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. The turning point occurred when Schneckenburger saw a picture of a strip-tillage operation seeding in wet conditions, while neighbouring farmers were unable to get into their fields that were completely tilled.The strip-tilled field had much more crop residue on the surface and that absorbed the moisture. “In 2011 and previous we were primarily corn on corn with a lot of mouldboard plowing, which goes well with corn on corn,” Schneckenburger said. The farm now targets a more diverse rotation and uses no-till for winter wheat and soybeans, while strip-tillage is used for corn and edible beans. He said the major reason they use strip tillage is because it makes the farm more money than conventional tillage did. “You get a lot more done for your iron dollar than with conventional tillage, and a lot of that’s labour,” Schneckenburger said. He said strip-tillage has greatly reduced the farm’s labour needs, which is fortunate because labour is difficult to find in his area. Until three years ago the farm needed four people preparing the seed bed ahead of two planters when planting corn. “We had two big Steigers doing tillage and a big tractor spreading fertilizer because to stay ahead of two big cultivators you have to drive fast. And we had at least one guy full time all day picking stones,” Schneckenburger said. “This was an efficient system that worked very well, but it is an expensive system. You had four guys just preparing the seed bed. They didn’t have to work as long as the planters, but it’s still work.” Their current system has a 16-row Soil Warrior capable of preparing the seed bed ahead of the two planters while putting down the spring fertilizer program. “This year, really my wife and I planted the bulk of the corn by ourselves. She stripped and I planted behind her, and I sprayed as well. It’s worked extremely well,” Schneckenburger said. “The fuel company doesn’t like it with 390 horsepower instead of a little over 1,300 running to do the exact same job.” He said the farm saves at least $45 per acre since moving to strip-tillage for its corn crop. A big part of the savings comes from leaving the many stones under the farm’s soil undisturbed because the Soil Warrior is a disc strip-tiller that uses parallel linkage to connect the row units. “We don’t recognize our fields any more, largely because the strip tiller just bounces over the stones. It doesn’t bring them up and it’s been a game changer for us,” Schneckenburger said. Some operations use one tillage pass to prepare the soil for the spring planting, but Schneckenburger uses a spring and fall strip-till pass. In the fall he runs the Soil Warrior five inches deep. “We’re running quite quick. So 40 feet at nine m.p.h. gets a heck of a lot more done than a 21 foot disk ripper did at six m.p.h.,” Schneckenburger said. “The fuel savings, even in the fall when we’re running deep and quite quick, it’s about a half litre per acre of fuel. … versus the big Steiger burning about 2.5 liters per acre. It’s a big deal.” In the fall, he said, he wants to see chunky soil in the strip with some plant residue in it. “I don’t want to throw the entire residue out (with the row cleaners), I want to see some. We seem to be getting a lot of big rains in January, February on frozen ground. There is some serious erosion in the winter that is hard to address with any tillage system, and strip-tillage is not immune to this,” Schneckenburger said. He said growers should try to achieve a berm two-inches high with their strip-tillage implement. “The berm is in direct proportion to how much air you added to the soil. By spring it had better be flat again. If you have a ridge, you’re throwing the soil out,” he said. “If you have a hill you’re probably pulling too much soil in, and these are going to give you some erosion issues.” Placing fertilizer in the fall for the following year has helped Schneckenburger for two reasons: the nutrients placed in a band are less likely to be lost to the environment compared to a spring broadcast application and it takes the pressure off the spring work. “A good thing about switching to fertilizing in the fall is there is no lineup at the fertilizer plant in October or November,” Schneckenburger said. “I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to be out there strip-tilling and you’re not putting down fertilizer, don’t bother. The fertilizer is really what makes the whole system work.” The spring pass is performed to clean up crop residue from the rows, which was brought in by winter runoff. For the spring pass the strip-tiller is run at a high speed nine to 11 m.p.h. at about 2.5 to three inches deep while applying some nitrogen and sulfur. Schneckenburger prefers to see a residue-free soil similar to potting soil after the spring tillage pass. After the spring tillage pass, he tries to plant the corn within six hours to reduce soil moisture losses. Schneckenburger said using strip-till in a corn-on-corn rotation is the most difficult situation to use it in, but it’s also the most rewarding. It’s difficult because knifing in nitrogen in-season is hard to do because of the intact plant residue in between the rows. This is why he now uses a 120-foot sprayer equipped with Y-drop tubes to place liquid fertilizer in season at the base of the corn. This is just one of the changes Schneckenburger had to make to his operation in order to use strip-till. Moving to strip-till “is a management decision, it’s not just a tillage decision. You can’t just go strip-tilling, you have to change your entire outlook on how you’re going to farm,” he said. For instance, his weed management program changed once strip-till was introduced because the weed spectrum on his fields has changed and more perennial weeds are now present. “We’re seeing more no-till weeds like fleabane, we’re seeing more dandelion pressure for sure. But then you also have that nice tilled zone where grasses are going to come, lambs quarter is going to come, and it’s giving us a bit of an issue,” Schneckenburger said. The biggest changes to the farm’s weed control program is that Roundup is now included in the first pass. He said yellow foxtail had historically been the farm’s most troublesome weed because tillage is a good way to drag it around the field and propagate it. However, since switching to strip-tillage it’s not a serious issue. “Over the last two season our incidence of having to do a rescue spray in our corn is about 40 percent lower than our conventional tillage acres. Not sure why it is, but it seems likely the higher residues shade the soils, giving less in-season weed emergence,” he said.
It wasn't a good season for wild rice producers in northern Saskatchewan who weren’t able to harvest crops due to bad weather conditions. “The wild rice was there, but people weren’t able to harvest it because of the weather and high winds,” Northern Lights Food owner Jean Poirier said. “Too many days were lost to the weather.”
While northern Saskatchewan and part of Manitoba is capable of producing 2.5 million pounds of wild rice in a bumper year, the average yield is about one million pounds. This year Poirier expects the harvest to be 700,000 pounds or less and he noted the quality isn’t great. The wild rice Poirier purchased from growers is currently drying at a processing plant in La Ronge and he noted he’s yet to ship orders to customers as he doesn’t know how much finished product he’ll have available. The wild rice harvest traditionally begins mid-August and runs to the end of September. Some days in October can also sometimes be used, but Poirier said by then there’s a big risk for frost. Of the total amount harvested, he said Northern Lights Food buys about one-third of the crop and two other companies purchase the remainder. “I don’t see any of us three who buy wild rice [falling] apart, but on the other hand, there will be sacrifices somewhere on prices,” Poirier said. “I think the qualities will be a little low and prices will be difficult.” Poirier bought wild rice since 2012 and he said some years are much better than others. He added rice tends to follow a 10-year cycle, noting producers plan for a bumper crop for at least two of those years. Northern Lights Foods also markets wild rice around the world, which includes customers in China.
Greg Paranich of Performance Seeds in Blackfalds describes some of the advantages of cover crops. Clearwater County has started experimenting with cover crops, and outlined some of their benefits during its recent West County Ag Tour. “It’s a great year to talk about cover crops because in order to maintain our moisture in the soil, we are going to need organic matter, which cover crops build. We are going to need cover on the soil to stop the run-off,” said Anne-Marie Bertagnolli, supervisor of the county’s community and agriculture production services.
The county seeded 12 varieties of cover crop on June 20 and over the next few years will be seeing how they affect nutrients, grazing regrowth, and the need for soil amendments. County officials also plan to test different ‘cocktails’ for cover crop blends. “Historically in agriculture, we’ve become very cognizant of soil physics and soil chemistry,” said Ken Ziegler, a retired provincial beef specialist. “We have not spent a whole lot of time and effort understanding soil microbes and the whole biology that is down there.” Understanding soil biology is critical to sustainably managing soils, he said. “What we are doing from a soil cover perspective will invariably enhance soil biology,” said Ziegler. “We know it does, so which crops can we use that will do that well for us, and that we can harvest for our personal benefits?” Whether land is used for annual crops, pastures, or forestry, there needs to be “a living ecosystem beneath our feet,” said Greg Paranich of Performance Seeds. “For maximum soil health, you want to have maximum soil cover and crop residues,” he said. “That’s to lower soil surface temperatures. Keep it cooler and a more hospitable environment for all those micro-organisms we want to promote.” This can be accomplished by planned rotational grazing and integrated pest management, as well as proper selections of plants. “There’s not just one linear type of solution,” said Paranich. “One hectare of soil contains about 20 pounds of healthy micro-organisms.” Cover crops also reduce erosion; increase soil structure and organic matter; boost water infiltration and water-holding capacity; and capture nutrients. But the mix of cover crop species matters a lot, he said. “Some plants have nitrogen fixation, some have nitrogen scavenging. Some cover crops suppress weeds for weed control. Others reduce compaction.” Other cover crops can be used to create livestock feed, and habitat for wildlife. “The biggest thing is the increased crop yields year after year,” said Paranich. “We can increase that and actually increase soil health.” Cover cropping is a system, where plants are grown in non-growth periods between crops to capture sunlight, feed the soil organisms, and sequester carbon. “You want to capture the nutrients that are farther down and bring them up to the surface, making better use of resources,” said Paranich. Cover crops include grasses (both warm- and cool-season varieties), brassicas (such as turnips, kales and collards), and legumes — but there’s no simple recipe for which blend to use.
Some of the varieties of cover crops that have been planted at a plot at Clearwater County. photo: Alexis Keinlen “The neat part about some of the cover crops that are coming to Western Canada is that they are annual legumes,” he said. “They’re annual covers that give you the benefit of a legume without having to have a permanent cover on it.” The county is starting small in its cover crop trials and is aiming at a two- or three-year rotational plan to begin with. “If you’re going to do something, let’s do it right, let’s do it well, but maybe not do it over 500 acres,” said Paranich. Producers may want to have fields of different cover crop mixes, he added. “Ideally, having a mixture of all of them together can give you a mixture of different benefits and bring it into your soil health. The definition of that is to increase and create as much life below ground as we see above ground.”
In an effort to increase private-sector investment in cereals research, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have tabled two possible strategies designed to promote better returns for plant breeders. Private-sector investment in wheat and barley remains low in comparison to higher value crops such as corn, soybeans, and canola.
New strategies to encourage more research and varietal development in cereals could include changes to plant breeders’ rights and allowances for developers to charge new royalties. This could impact seed costs. AAFC said only eight per cent of private sector seed investments are committed to research and variety development in cereals. Instead, plant breeding for major cereals is funded primarily by tax dollars and producer contributions. After consultations with the Grains Roundtable, a group comprising industry representatives and policy makers, AAFC and CFIA identified the ability of farmers to save seed from year to year, and the declining profitability and acreage of cereals, as two major barriers to increase private sector investment in cereal breeding. Two strategies to address these barriers have been proposed, both of which focus on establishing more concrete rules around contract royalties for new cereal varieties.
A royalty payable on all harvested material that is collected where grain is sold or delivered, such as grain elevators.
This option allows for contracts where producers agree to conditions of use for farm-saved seed, like those existing for corn or soybeans. The Canadian Seed Growers Association, Canadian Seed Trade Association, and CropLife Canada have announced their support for strategy two in a news release released Nov. 15. As consultations between government, farmers, and other industry professionals continue others have yet to take a formal position Dave Carey, executive director of the Canadian Seed Trade Association, says the need to develop better cereal varieties and increase the competitiveness of Canada’s cereal sector was flagged as an issue more than a decade ago. The end point royalties option, he says, would involve elevator operators determining which variety a farmer is delivering, the royalty payment for those bushels, and processing the transaction. This is not ideal because the option is inherently more complex, and elevator operators do not want to act as the middleman for royalty transactions, he says. Royalties established through upfront contracts for registered cereal varieties would be more practical. “It’s the small- and medium-sized companies that are saying they want to compete. This would benefit public and private breeders,” says Carey. “We definitely don’t want the government to remove any funding they are committing to. What this would do is top that up. The breeder, regardless of where they work, would benefit from their right to that revenue stream….” He adds that farmers who prefer to save seed, or those who don’t anticipate a favourable cost-to-benefit ratio, would be able to plant varieties not restricted by user contracts.
Royalties from seed user agreements can already be used under Canada’s current contract law. However, Carey says it’s “cost-prohibitive” for smaller and public breeders. “There would be a plethora of contract types out there with no group to assist in oversight or collection of the fees,” he says. “Changes to the regulations allows for a concerted dialogue with producers and gives small breeders the additional support of the use of contracts supported by federal regulation.” “It also makes the whole thing much more transparent to have government involvement.” Lorne Hadley, executive director of the Canadian Plant Technology Agency, a nonprofit organization supporting intellectual property rights within the seed industry, says legal clarification is also needed for current regulations pertaining to breeder rights and what’s called “farmer’s privilege.” Farmer’s privilege is an exception within plant breeders’ rights regulations that allow farmers to save seed from registered crop varieties indefinitely, unless precluded by contract. Hadley says the current language may lead people to believe they can act in a way that the contract would restrict. “The language has to be edited a bit so farmers can understand it,” he says. “What goes on in other countries gets brought up a lot…. We have a totally different regulatory system in Canada. What we’re seeking is a made-in-Canada solution, based on the system we have today.”
Crosby Devitt, vice-president of strategic development for Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO), says his organization has been discussing this issue for some time and continues to be open to options that will support cereal growers. He agrees that many producer groups, like GFO, are already investing in cereal development, but the level of investment doesn’t match what the private sector can do. “If we invest more in cereals the more we get out of it in the end. It’s a numbers game. We’re always in support of new innovation,” said Devitt. “GFO doesn’t have a position on either proposal at this point. We’re holding consultations with delegates during a policy day in December to try and formulate a position.” Many other producer associations also continue to deliberate the merits of both value proposals, as well as the status quo.
Food production has fallen this year in isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Rice and maize are the North's main staples, but rice output was expected to be below average because of erratic rains and low irrigation supplies, the FAO said in its quarterly Crop Prospects and Food Situation report. Unfavourable weather conditions also diminished maize yields, it added.
N Korean soldier defects across border: South's military As a result the country would need to import 641,000 tonnes of food in the coming year, up from 456,000 tonnes this year, when it bought 390,000 tonnes and received 66,000 tonnes in food aid. There was a widespread lack of access to food in the North, it said in the document. "Food insecurity continues to remain a key concern, with conditions aggravated by the below-average 2018 main season output," it said. Agricultural production is chronically poor in the North, which only has a limited supply of arable land. The country has periodically been hit by famine, and hundreds of thousands of people died - estimates range into the millions - in the mid-1990s. Koreas verify removal of frontline bunkers. North Korea was one of 40 countries - 31 of them in Africa - listed as in need of external assistance for food in the report. UN agencies estimate that 10.3 million people in the North need humanitarian assistance. But donor funding has dried up in the face of political tensions over its weapons programmes, with critics saying that the provision of aid encourages Pyongyang to prioritise its military ambitions over adequately providing for its people. David Beasley, the head of the UN's World Food Programme, said in May that there was undoubtedly a hunger problem in North Korea but it was not on the scale of the 1990s famine.
Crop rotation doesn’t just deter the continuous corn yield penalty or pests like soybean cyst nematode and corn rootworm. University of Illinois (U of I) scientists have found further evidence it also lowers greenhouse gas emissions compared with continuous corn or soybean, according to an article written by Lauren Quinn, a media and communications specialist for the U of I’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
“I think farmers in today’s world are looking for reasons to avoid growing in a monoculture. They’re looking to diversify and rotate their systems. If they’re doing that partially out of a concern for the environment, well, it lowers greenhouse gasses. And it could potentially result in a substantial yield increase,” says Gevan Behnke, research specialist and doctoral candidate in Maria Villamil’s research group in the U of I’s department of crop sciences.
There are other studies out there looking at the link between crop rotation and greenhouse gas emissions, but Behnke’s study is unique in two ways. First and most significantly, he sampled greenhouse gas emissions from fields that had been maintained as continuous corn, continuous soybean, rotated corn-soybean, or rotated corn-soybean-wheat, under tillage and no-till management for 20 years. “These long-term plots are very stable systems. Sometimes you don’t see the impacts of rotation or tillage for years after those practices are imposed. That’s one of the highlights of this study,” Behnke says. Comparing the corn phase of a corn-soybean rotation to continuous corn showed an average yield benefit of more than 20% and a cumulative reduction in nitrous oxide emissions of approximately 35%. Nitrous oxide is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential—how much heat a greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere almost 300 times higher than carbon dioxide. It is a byproduct of the process of denitrification, during which bacteria in the soil break nitrates down into inert nitrogen gas. Not surprisingly, nitrous oxide emissions are tied to the rate and timing of nitrogen fertilizer application. “Nitrous oxide levels were high at the beginning of the season and lower at the end. Farmers usually apply fertilizer in the spring, and it gets taken up by the crop throughout the season,” Behnke says. “A typical farmer would expect these results.” For soybean, which doesn’t get fertilized, rotation did not affect nitrous oxide emissions compared with continuous soybean. Rotation did increase soybean yield by about 7%, however. Tillage did not impact greenhouse gas emissions, but the practice gave corn an edge of about 15 bushels per acre over corn in no-till management. Behnke says that effect may not apply to farms outside the study area, however. That’s because of the other unique aspect of the research: the location. The study was conducted at the Northwestern Illinois Agricultural Research and Demonstration Center near Monmouth. With some of the most productive soils in the world, Behnke says corn yields are higher there than almost anywhere else. And greater yields mean more surface residue. “If you talk to people who work at the Monmouth research center, they’ll say it’s sometimes difficult to plant into the long-term no-till. It’s like planting into thick mulch,” Behnke says. “Other places aren’t as blessed when it comes to biomass and organic matter return to the soil.” He adds that other studies comparing tillage and no-till management in corn don’t typically show large differences in terms of yield.
The waters may be receding in southwest Minnesota after the heavy rains and flooding in June. However, damage in the state of Minnesota is still being assessed by government officials and farmers are seeing the impact in lost yield potential in this year's crop. Warren Jansma farms near Ellsworth and says in his area farmers received almost half of their annual rainfall in the month of June. Crop conditions in his area have dropped from the start of the season. "This is due to fields with a lot of flooded areas, washed out corn that got covered up with corn stalks and a lot of potholes," he says. As a result, Jansma and area farmers have many fields with corn and soybeans that are short and yellow. There is also an outright loss of crop where the plants were killed due to the lack of oxygen with the standing water. Jansma was optimistic about the yield potential on his corn early this season. Even though they got the crop planted late, around Memorial Day, it caught up quickly. However, he says with the significant nitrogen loss he expects a yield hit on his corn. "We are going to do a little side dressing of nitrogen in our operation now, but I do not feel we are going to have as good a crop as last year. I feel there is just too many spots that are just drowned out and we're going to have too many lost spots," he says. He normally averages around 170 to 190 bushels per acre, depending on the location. Adam Blume farms west of Worthington and says towards the end of June they received around 12 inches of rain in just a two-week time period. He says the water has receded in many areas, but there are still wet pockets and he has one field with 15 acres that was completely drowned out. Blume thinks those areas will be a total loss and drag down the yield on his farm to just average. "I think you should be pretty happy with that with the amount of water we had. The rolling areas do have some tremendous looking crop, but that isn't going to make up for the other areas. Right now, I would say if we had 180-bushel corn and 50-bushel beans, I probably better be pretty happy," he says. Blume is a little more optimistic about corn versus soybeans because the corn was tall enough to handle the water. He also believes the soybeans are more susceptible to disease due to the excessive moisture, which may cut production potential. He says they need some dry weather and heat units in southwest Minnesota to help the crop snapback. Near Beaver Creek, Jim Willers received another three inches of rain on his farm last week and that's on top of 7 inch and 4 inch rains in late June. The water is receding around Beaver Creek which was out of its banks and left behind a path of destruction. "Fields near creeks and rivers, and if you're in a good flat field, yes, some of those stood under water too long and they got starved for oxygen. Some of those are gone or they're very yellow, so we'll see how they turn out," he says. Willers says about 10 percent of the acres on his farm are yellow so he anticipates some yield loss. "Actually, some of my better land where it's flatter probably looks poorer than the hillier ground. I think my corn crop will be fine across the board. I think my soybeans could have a 10 percent yield loss," he says. Joe Martin, executive director of the Minnesota Farm Service Agency, says they do not have a total dollar assessment of the crop damage from the storms, as not all the damage reports have been received from the counties. Beyond crop loss, he says there was structural damage to rural roads, bridges and fences. He encourages farmers to keep good records, document and report all their losses to the county FSA office so they can get an accurate report compiled for the state.
Applying pesticides to crops is inevitable to keep insects, weeds, and disease at bay. But pesticide drift is not so predictable, as factors like temperature, wind conditions, and pesticide droplet size can all contribute to particles drifting from their target. And if you think chemical drift will only affect your crop yield, you are wrong.
Both pesticide applicators and their neighbors are at risk for a slew of negative effects of pesticide drift. According to Michelle Wiesbrook, University of Illinois pesticide safety educator, this is the most important time of year to form good relationships with your neighbor. Whether you are an applicator, a grower or a neighbor of either, the UI Extension Department of griculture suggests thinking about pesticide drift from the other’s viewpoint. “Growers don’t want their pesticide products to land on your plants any more than you do,” Wiesbrook says.
As an applicator, the obvious side effect of pesticide drift is a potential decrease in yield due to your crop not getting the full amount of pesticide it requires. But a secondary risk has a more blatant price tag: some instances of pesticide drift that severely damage neighbor’s property can be legally filed. Penalties for a violation of pesticide application range from warning letters to monetary fines of $750 to $10,000, higher insurance premiums, a damaged reputation in the business and revocation of the applicator’s license. Pesticide drift has the potential of environmental consequences that should be of concern to applicators and growers of all crops. For example, plants that have been unintentionally exposed to an insecticide yet rely on bees for pollination, can have disastrous results for both bees and plants, according to the UI Department of Agriculture’s website. If pesticide residue and human exposure due to pesticide drift is an increasing problem, the EPA may choose to limit or eliminate that pesticide’s registration. Careless pesticide applicators can lose useful pest control tools for the entire agriculture industry.
. Choose equipment and nozzles with the correct droplet spectrum and pressure range. . When pesticide labels give a droplet size spectrum, choose the larger droplet size and higher application rate to better stay in your target. . Keep the spray boom height set only high enough to provide adequate nozzle pattern overlap. . Avoid applications in winds over 10 mph and windless days. However, this isn’t always possible, so consider wind direction and distance of neighboring areas as well. . Avoid spraying during the heat of the day when evaporation is more likely. Using pesticides that aren’t as volatile will help. . Choose low-volatility formulas that have less impact on neighboring crops and the environment. . Use additives that reduce droplet size sparingly.
Perhaps specialty growers have the most to lose with pesticide drift. Products like fruit and flowers in which appearance is important can have entire crops wiped out from small amounts of pesticides. Similarly, organic crops have a large investment in attaining certification by keeping their fields pesticide-free for a consecutive three years. While the presence of pesticide residue alone doesn’t automatically void the grower’s organic certification, any carry-over damage to the next growing season could. This is especially true for organic livestock being fed silage containing pesticide residue. Neighbors of crop producers have lawns, gardens and their families to keep protected from pesticide drift. “If you are concerned about the health of your plants or that of your family, share your concerns [with neighbor producers],” Wiesbrook said. “If you know ‘what’ will be sprayed ‘when,’ you can plan accordingly by covering your garden with old blankets, making sure the windows are shut, or keeping the kids out of the yard during that time.”
If you suspect your plants are chemically injured, first compare them with another plant database like the UI’s herbicide injury website. General symptoms of pesticide injury include stunted plants, leaf discoloration, spotting, twisting and slow plant death. Will your plants die? “That is the million-dollar question,” Wiesbrook said. The type and amount of chemical your plant was subjected to, as well as the time of year and growth stage, all influence the resiliency of your plants. Wiesbrook suggests talking to your neighbors about the timing of pesticide application with decline in health of your plants, weather conditions at the time they applied and so forth. Filing a complaint with your local Department of Agriculture should be the last resort if an applicator is not willing to reimburse your losses.
Fields of hemp might become a late-season pollen bonanza for bees. Industrial hemp plants, the no-high varieties of cannabis, are becoming a more familiar sight for American bees as states create pilot programs for legal growing. Neither hemp nor the other strains of the Cannabis sativa species grown for recreational or medicinal uses offer insects any nectar, and all rely on wind to spread pollen. Still, a wide variety of bees showed up in two experimental hemp plots during a one-month trapping survey by entomology student Colton O’Brien of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Bottom of Form Bees in 23 out of the 66 genera known to live in Colorado tumbled into O’Brien’s traps, he reported November 11 at Entomology 18, the annual meeting of the U.S. and two Canadian entomological societies. O’Brien and his adviser, Arathi Seshadri, think this is the first survey of bees in cannabis fields. “You walk through fields and you hear buzzing everywhere,” O’Brien said. He caught big bumblebees, tiny metallic-green sweat bees and many others clambering around in the abundant greenish-yellow pollen shed by the male flowers.
A bicolored striped sweat bee visits a variety of flowers but was among the kinds caught in a hemp field. Bees need pollen to feed their young, and during the trap survey in August 2016, there weren’t a lot of other flowers blooming. Hardly anything is known about the nutritional qualities of hemp pollen for larval bees. Yet, commercial hemp plots may end up as rare food sources for pollinators in stressful times, O’Brien said. Honeybee health has faltered in recent years, and conservationists also worry about the fates of the many, less-studied wild bees. O’Brien urged crop scientists now developing the pest fighting strategies for outdoor hemp to be mindful of bee health. Pest management techniques for hemp are still a work in progress. There are even questions about which insects are truly hemp pests, said entomologist Whitney Cranshaw, also of Colorado State. New potential menaces have arrived since the early 20th century, when farmers were growing hemp with very low concentrations of the psychoactive compound THC as a crop for fiber and other practical uses. Anti-drug legislation eventually made growing any cannabis forms illegal for decades in the United States. The 2014 U.S. Farm Bill, however, differentiated between hemp with less than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight, and high-THC cannabis varieties of interest for recreational and medical use. This distinction has allowed states such as Colorado and Kentucky to set up programs for regulated legal growing in a push to revive the potentially valuable crop. But there are a lot of new questions about old plants.
Lime, often thought of as a cure for phosphorus deficient soil, may not be as effective as previously assumed, according to researchers. However, without phosphorus, plants wither and die. Although plants require phosphorus, there is often a “withdrawal limit” on how much their roots can extract from the soil. Soil-bound phosphorus is often in a form plants can’t absorb. This obviously has a negative impact on the plant.
Soil scientists have long known that a soil’s pH level affects how well the plant can access phosphorus. If soil is too acidic, phosphorus reacts with iron and aluminum and becomes unavailable. On the other hand, if soil is too alkaline, phosphorus reacts with calcium and also becomes inaccessible. “Phosphorus is most available to plants when soil is at a Goldilocks zone of acidity,” says University of Illinois researcher Andrew Margenot. There are ways to make soil-bound phosphorus available to plants. For example, American farmers often add calcium hydroxide in the form of lime. This reduces soil acidity and unlocks phosphorus that was previously unavailable. “Liming is a bread-and-butter tool for agriculture,” Margenot said. However, liming influences other paths by which phosphorus becomes available. Enzymes called phosphatases also influence the amount of phosphorus that is available to plants. Margenot, along with his colleagues and predecessors, have been conducting experiments in western Kenya, a region with acidic, worn-out, weathered soil. The project, which started in 2003, has added varying amounts of lime to the long-term experimental plots. As a check, one set of plots has been unfertilized. Another set received cow manure and a third one received mineral nitrogen and phosphorus. Twenty-seven days after liming, the researchers measured phosphatase activity and how much phosphorus was available to plants. They were surprised to find no clear relationship between soil acidity levels changed by liming and phosphatase activity. “This was unexpected,” Margenot said. “We know that phosphatases are sensitive to soil acidity levels. These findings show that it’s more complicated than just soil acidity when it comes to these enzymes.” More surprisingly, the researchers saw that changes in phosphatase activities after liming depended on the soil’s history. This suggests that the sources of these enzymes, which are microbes and plant roots, could have responded to different fertilization histories by changing the amount or type of phosphatases that were secreted. “In all cases, the increases in phosphorus availability were relatively small. Lime alone was not enough to be meaningful to crops and thus to farmers. Lime needs to be combined with added phosphorus to meet crop needs in these soils.” Margenot is now working to extend this study, according to a news release from the Soil Science Societies of America. With colleagues from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture and the German Society for International Cooperation, he will study western Kenyan farms to see if using lime at rates realistic for growers will have soil health trade-offs in these weathered soils.
Despite mother nature’s best attempts to interfere, Saskatchewan farmerrs continue to make some good gain in the fields. Seventy-three per cent of the crop is now in the bin according to this week’s crop report from the Ministry of Agriculture. That’s slightly behind the five-year (2013-17) average of 78 per cent for this time of year. Twenty per cent of the crop is swathed or ready to straight-cut. Frequent snow and rain have delayed progress in many areas and fields remain wet. Warm, dry and windy days will be needed in the coming weeks to allow producers to return to the field. Harvest is most advanced in the southwestern region, where 90 per cent of the crop is now combined. The southeastern region has 89 per cent combined, the west-central region 62 per cent and the east-central region 61 per cent. The northeastern region has 45 per cent combined, while the northwestern region has 33 per cent combined.
Yield estimates at this time remain about average overall, although they vary greatly across the province depending on the moisture received throughout the season. The upside to the rain and snow is that topsoil moisture conditions continue to improve. Cropland topsoil moisture is rated as three per cent surplus, 64 per cent adequate, 27 per cent short and six per cent very short. Hay land and pasture topsoil moisture is rated as one per cent surplus, 51 per cent adequate, 34 per cent short and 14 per cent very short.
Not having a refuge for wheat midge in a midge-tolerant crop could quickly cost growers resistance that saves them $60 million annually. Planting saved soft white spring wheat that’s tolerant to wheat midge comes with a multimillion-dollar risk. If tolerance is lost, it could cost growers $60 million annually and up to $36 per acre, said Mike Espeseth, co-chair of the communications committee of the Midge Tolerant Wheat Stewardship Team. A single gene, called Sm1, provides midge tolerance. First identified in soft red winter wheat varieties, it took breeders more than 15 years to cross the naturally occurring trait into red spring wheat, with the first varieties released in 2010. But it was recently found the Sm1 gene is naturally occurring in the majority of soft white spring wheat varieties. And that’s a problem because some midges are naturally tolerant to the Sm1. “The Sm1 gene is the only known source of midge tolerance,” said Espeseth, whose organization is a broad coalition of breeders, government, seed growers, and producer groups. “We all know that stewardship is important. We want the growers to know that we’ve got to protect that Sm1 gene because it’s all we’ve got for tolerance for midge.”
To avoid that scenario, farmers seeding midge-tolerant wheat need to adhere to a critical stewardship practice. “Anybody who buys midge-tolerant wheat is required to sign a stewardship agreement saying they won’t use farm-saved seed one generation past certified. And that’s to keep the refuge at that 90/10 level,” said Espeseth. All midge-tolerant wheat is sold as a varietal blend composed of 90 per cent that is tolerant and 10 per cent that isn’t. “It’s called an inter-dispersed refuge system and that disrupts the midge’s ability to produce resilient offspring. Eventually the midge will be able to overcome that resistance. Having it sold at 90/10 split is thought to extend the life of the Sm1 gene for that much longer.” A short video explaining how a refuge leads to resistant midge population can be found at www.midgetolerantwheat.ca. The website also has a list of resistant varieties, which includes soft white spring varieties such as AAC Chiffon, AAC Indus, AC Sadash and AAC Paramount as well as Canada western general purpose varieties such as AAC Awesome. “All the growers who were growing those varieties were asked to start following stewardship practices and get soft white seed with the refuge added,” said Espeseth. Producers can either source certified seed with the refuge added or add a refuge variety, AC Andrew, to their existing supply. One bushel of AC Andrew to every nine bushels of tolerant soft white spring variety provides the necessary refuge. Farmers unable to source seed or add the refuge should spray insecticide to eliminate the possibility of resistant midge. The website also has a tool for seed distributors and seed retailers. “All the midge-tolerant agreements are now online and they are evergreen, which means that you just have to sign it once,” said Espeseth. Farmers should go to the website and talk to their seed growers about midge-tolerant wheat, he said. “It’s on the whole industry to protect this tool,” he said. Alberta Agriculture’s 2018 wheat midge forecast says the risk is low in the Peace region and the south, with a higher concern for parts of central Alberta. But farmers need to “assess their risk based on indicators specific to their farm,” said the department’s website. “Specifically, producers should pay attention to midge downgrading in their wheat samples and use this as an indication of midge risk in their fields,” it states.