Growers in the east and west can both attest to the truth in Luke Bryan's lyrics about rain and corn this year, but for different reasons. While drought-stressed corn plants in parts of Ontario have failed to produce cobs, the crop has benefited from plenty of moisture on the prairies. "I've always jokingly said —... Read More
Category: Crop Production
It'll be a few weeks before we actually know how this year's soybeans are going to yield, but we can get a pretty good idea now, especially if we're willing to put some time into building a good sample size for making an estimate. Dieter Schwarz, the new market development manager for corn and soybeans... Read More
Many farms have bought basic drones capable of taking high resolution pictures from the sky over the last year or two. For $2,000 or less, you can buy a decent quadcopter with a regular RGB colour camera. But the RGB camera is just the beginning when it comes to collecting data with a drone, explains... Read More
Harvest is ramping up across Western Canada, with combines rolling — and some getting stuck due to wet conditions — in cereal and pea fields. Saskatchewan's Ministry of Agriculture issued its first yield estimates in its weekly crop report on Thursday. The ballpark expectations for most crops are above 2015 yields, as well as higher... Read More
It's been a long time since the last public research was conducted to support nitrogen fertilizer recommendations for wheat on the eastern side of the prairies. "The last time we did publicly-funded research on wheat yields and nitrogen fertilizer recommendations was actually about 45 years ago, so we were dealing with lower yielding wheat varieties... Read More
After weeks of talking about drought, much of Ontario is celebrating. Peter Johnson, resident agronomist at RealAgriculture, and host of the Word, discusses the recent rains, and what management shifts producers will have to consider, plus: spider mites, the pros and cons of tillage, and strip-tilling fertilizer. Listen or download below! And of course, if... Read More
With two-thirds of Canada's irrigated land located in Alberta, Lethbridge College is boosting its capacity for irrigation research. Willemijn Appels has joined the school as its first Mueller Applied Research Chair in Irrigation Science — a position made possible with a $3.1 million gift from Lloyd and Dorothy Mueller announced in 2014. "Producers, businesses, irrigation... Read More
Leaf disease can strike anywhere on a corn plant, but where does it take the biggest bite out of corn yield? In this Real Agriculture Corn School episode, OMAFRA plant pathologist Albert Tenuta explains that diseases such as northern corn leaf blight (NCLB) and grey leaf spot typically take root in field residue where pathogens... Read More
One of the pillars of Canada's National Beef Strategy — a strategic plan released in early January, 2015 — is connectivity. Saskatchewan's Livestock and Forage Centre of Excellence fits nicely with this goal, by "bringing together every link of the livestock production chain." Plans for the Centre were announced in July of 2015, when it... Read More
Many farms have purchased entry level drones over the last few years with the aim of using them to make more informed crop management decisions (okay, and maybe also to take some nice farm yard photos and epic Facebook videos of machinery in action). But as Brunel Sabourin of Antara Agronomy explains in this video,... Read More