First there were strobilurins, then came triazoles, and now we have succinate dehydrogenase inhibitors or SDHIs. That can be a bit of tongue twister, but it also adds up to three classes of fungicides and multiple modes of action that more growers are stacking up to bring stronger disease protection to their cornfields. That's the... Read More
Category: Crop Schools
During planting season, Kearney Planters service manager Shaun Dilliott gets plenty of calls from growers asking for seed meter management advice. Most of those calls come from soybean growers looking for tips on two types of meters — a John Deere radial meter or a Kinze brush meter. On this episode of RealAgriculture's Soybean School,... Read More
When Bloomfield, Ont. farmer Tyler Lester started planting cover crops, the goal was to help keep livestock out of pea crops to address food safety concerns raised by vegetable crop customers. With a healthy deer and wild turkey population that too often ventured into the crops, Lester and his family hatched a strategy to plant... Read More
Have you noticed doubles and skips in your corn fields? Poor-performing meters on planter row units are the likely culprits and they're costing you money. With the 2020 planting season quickly approaching, we asked Kearney Planters service manager Shaun Dilliott to share some tips on meter maintenance and testing. Dilliott and his team work on... Read More
What's the yield potential for winter wheat in Ontario? If you see 150 bu/ac pop up on a well-calibrated yield combine monitor in part of a field, that's likely your upper-end yield potential, says agronomist Phil Needham of Needham AG Technologies. Typically, however, your monitor will flirt with that big yield number for only moments... Read More
Knowing your soil and accepting your climatic challenges for what they are is key to choosing the right crops, cover crops, and soil amendments that will perform best. That said, sometimes it takes a major event to push for significant changes to the current status quo. Jenn Doelman farms at Douglas, Ont., and is a... Read More
Tar spot, a new corn leaf disease, has moved through the U.S. Midwest, into Michigan and Wisconsin, and now sits at the doorstep of Ontario's corn growing region. Characterized by tar-like speckling on the upper surface of corn leaves, the fungal pathogen has been delivering yield hits ranging from 20 to 60 bushels per acre... Read More
Could fungicide resistance develop on your farm? The answer to that question really depends on how you deploy fungicides in your fields, says Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research scientist Kelly Turkington. On this episode of RealAgriculture's Resistance Management School, Turkington explains that fungicide resistance really is a numbers game. He notes that a barley or... Read More
The man who wrote the book on wheat production in the United Kingdom says it's time to throw away that production guide and adopt a new approach to higher wheat yields. Roger Sylvester-Bradley, who leads the crop performance research team at ADAS Consulting, believes researchers need to learn from the tremendous yield variability they see... Read More
United Kingdom farmers have a strong yen for higher wheat yields, and they're turning to yield enhancement networks (YEN) to help them satisfy their craving. YENs are the brainchild of the research scientists at ADAS, a UK-based independent agricultural and environmental consultancy. "It's kind of a competition, but the main focus is sharing information between... Read More