Damaged patches of soybeans around Manitoba this year could be due to a combination of stresses, says Manitoba Agriculture plant pathologist Holly Derksen. “It’s a tricky year for diagnosing these problems,” Derksen said Wednesday during the Crop Talk Westman webinar. “When multiple stressors are present often the soybean plants may respond differently. Not all plants,
Stressors pile up for Manitoba soybeans
A new day for grain transportation?
With record port throughput occurring twice in the crop years following the 2013-14 shipping backlog it ‘feels’ that way
The great grain backlog of 2013-14 was a disaster, costing western Canadian farmers billions, but there’s a silver lining: since then, grain movement has never been better. “I think it really was a wake-up call for a lot of parties, especially governments, and people who aren’t necessarily as close to the (grain transportation) issue,” Wade
New grain system priorities: data collection, infrastructure
The next two big priorities concerning grain movement are data collection and infrastructure, says Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA). “Any time you have a supply chain you have a bottleneck somewhere,” he said in an interview Aug. 23. WGEA members welcome the longer trains CN and CP Rail are
VIDEO: When mixing glyphosate, all water is not created equal
Crop Diagnostic School: It doesn't hurt to check your water source if you think your herbicide is underperforming
With the amount of time and expense producers put into spraying glyphosate, they need to know that their efforts will be rewarded with dead weeds as much as possible. But did you know there could be minerals hiding in your water source that can reduce glyphosate’s effectiveness? At the recent Crop Diagnostic School, Allan Dawson
Pasmo in flax every year, but severity varies
That makes decisions about applying a fungicide to protect the crop challenging sometimes
If you grow flax in Manitoba, it will have pasmo. The fungal disease, also known as Septoria linicola, can be found in every western Canadian flax field, every year. But the severity varies, making it tricky for farmers to decide whether to apply a fungicide, says Rachel Evans, the Flax Council of Canada’s extension agronomist.
VIDEO: Getting down to your roots
Crop Diagnostic School offered a cutaway view of how crop roots move through soil
Along with her colleagues, Marla Riekman, land management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, took up a shovel last month at Crop Diagnostic School to help show what’s going on underground with roots. Allan Dawson met up with Riekman to learn about the types of root systems in crops, how they extract nutrients from the soil, the effects of
Get scouting, soybean aphids showing up in fields
When populations hit 250 and are still rising consider applying an insecticide, but don’t forget to take beneficial insects into account. There’s an app for that
Soybean aphids can now be found in many Manitoba fields and farmers should be scouting for them, John Gavloski, Manitoba Agriculture’s extension entomologist, said in an interview July 27. As of last week populations were generally well below the economic threshold, but some higher populations did exist, he said. Some spraying was going on in
New record set for Prairie grain throughput in 2016-17
Western Canada’s grain industry moved a record volume of grain in the 2016-17 crop year that ended July 31 and is gearing up to ship this year’s crop, expected to be the smallest in four years. Export terminals at Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Thunder Bay put through 35.945 million tonnes of grain last crop year,
VIDEO: Hi-tech cultivator cuts weeds down to size
Inter-row cultivator uses a camera and computer to get rid of weeds
Mechanical weed control was one of the features at Crop Diagnostic School last month in Carman. Here, Katherine Stanley of the University of Manitoba explains some of the technology the Garford cultivator uses that allow it to remove weeds from your crop without damaging it in the process. Video editing by Greg Berg.
Heat LQ, OK for pre-harvest application on wheat, durum and barley
Maximum Residue Limits have been set for Heat LQ applied on wheat, durum and barley
BASF’s Heat LQ herbicide can now be used pre-harvest in Canada on wheat, durum and barley without potentially hurting export markets, BASF Canada said in a news release Aug. 17. Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) for Heat LQ as a harvest aid in cereals has been set by the CODEX Alimentarius Commission (CAC), a United Nation’s