1. On the better soil, the crops are good or at least better than expected.
2. On the lighter or poorer crop ground, we see half of the crop on better soil.

This all goes to water retention or the ability of the soil to capture and hold moisture in the soil. Certain regions received rain earlier than others, and some types of soil have a limited capacity for retaining moisture. But, we can fix this by adding organic matter. The simplest way to do this is by grazing bales in the lighter soil.

On our farm this year, we have a patchwork of green oasis amid a sea of dried-up forages. It goes to prove the adage that water is the first and most important of the nutrients required for growing plants. You can have all the other nutrients balanced for the plants to grow and be healthy, but we need the right amount of water first.

As producers, it’s easy for us to become focused on the little things that influence our environment. Sometimes, we need to stop and look over the horizon.

Tariffs and farm profit

I follow producers from all around the world online. I enjoy seeing how producers in other areas of the world deal with the same problems we deal with. There is always more than one way to solve a problem.

So far, the new tariffs introduced in the United States haven’t had much impact on us at our farm and others in my network. Hopefully, that remains the case. But, from my take, it has been six months of confusion for nothing.

I recently met and talked with a group of regenerative producers from Australia (they were touring regen ag practicing operations in Western Canada) and they too could not understand the tariff goal on their country. It was one more thing we had in common.

Now, with abundant supply of crops, the price has dropped off the charts and below the cost of production. It is hard for any producer to forward market their next crop for a loss; they are dreaming of locking in a break-even price.

The U.S. can make payments to their crop producers this year to keep them in business, but the crop inventory surplus is still there and still needs marketing, thereby kicking the can down the road.

In Canada, the main cash crop for annual production has been canola; now dealing with tariffs from China. In the last few years, canola has been paying the bills and paying to grow a rotation crop (wheat, oats, barley) to reduce disease pressure. When I sit back and think about the market price on canola, I am pleasantly surprised that it has not dropped further than it has.

There has been talk about using canola and soybeans for biofuel. We already use corn and wheat for ethanol to mix into gasoline. Biofuel is planned to be incorporated into or used as a substitute for diesel fuel. I do have to question the ethics of “Food for Fuel” … do we no longer have hungry people to feed? Do we change the mantra from “farmers feed the world” to “farmers power the world?”

Another question I have about these practices is about the best use of energy: calories of energy going into a product versus calories of energy out of a product. How many calories of energy go into producing canola, to produce biofuel and, in turn, how many calories of energy will that biofuel produce? In my view, diesel fuel will produce cheaper calories of energy. We as Canadians need to have this discussion before we start putting our own and government money into these projects.

The science is out there, but no one is talking about this. I am not against value adding, I believe we as a producers should be encouraging value adding and making use of the byproducts in every way we can. Up-valuing all we can keeps money here in Canada.

Long-term beef planning

The livestock market is hot and getting hotter every day. Now is the time to plan how to stay in the beef business when it cycles back to falling markets, like the annual crop production is now.

All ag products run on cycles of supply and demand, high production and low production, profit and loss. Producers will often say when the returns are high, “this time it will be different” and when it crashes back down will say “Please give me one more chance at a high price and I will not spend it all on new equipment.”

When we look at the beef cycle, we see that we have finished the consolidation phase and have now entered the expansion stage of the cycle.

The demand for beef has been holding out well and should remain strong as long as the economy holds on. If consumers restrict their beef purchases because of personal finances, we will see a new reality.

From my conversations with ag lenders in the area, they are lending to a few young producers for cattle purchases. All these new producers are coming in with cattle experience from home and are adding to the family operation. Overall, we are still seeing many older producers leaving the industry and few producers stepping up to replace them.

Despite the beef market boom, over last five years we have seen many pastures and hay fields broken up for annual crop production. I strongly believe that 20 to 30 per cent of these acres should be put back into forages, primarily to maintain the cow herds and improve soil health, reduce disease and weed pressure. Of course, that raises the other side of the equation: if that put back were to occur, would there be enough forage seeds to plant 20 per cent of annual crop land to forage?

Now is the time to sit down with paper and pencils and work out how you are going to make your operation more profitable and survive the current crop market downturn. Remember that no one has the right answer for your operation, but by reaching out to leading producers in your area, government agencies like Manitoba Agriculture, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada or Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation, and research groups like universities or the Beef Cattle Research Council, you can improve your own knowledge. If you are facing challenges, you cannot expect better results by doing the same thing repeatedly, as many producers tend to do. We must be proactive in our surroundings, not reactive. We need to take charge of our world.

At our local grazing club out of Lenore, the farm tour is always the highlight each year. We travel around our area to see what local producers are doing and trying out. We also visit with neighbours and, of course, consume a few barley pops to avoid dehydration.

A few years ago, I met a no-till producer who, after 25 years, was not happy with his soil health journey. He wanted to see bigger soil health gains and he thought that he needed to add a legume forage to his rotation.

He has since been happy with the soil’s response to an approach where he seeds once and harvests for the next three crops. In his mix he has 30 pounds an acre of fall rye, five pounds of hairy vetch, 20 pounds of oats, three to five pounds of millet, two to three pounds each of meadow bromegrass and orchard grass and three to five pounds of alfalfa.

On the first year, he does a chemical burnoff of spring growth and direct-seeds the blend in with a starter fertilizer. Late July or early August, a neighbour cuts and bales the crop, or cuts it for silage (silage seems to work better). In the second year, rye and hairy vetch are harvested for feed or seed in early July. After three to four years, hay is cut in July, then a chemical burn down is used before planting the following spring when the land returns to rotation. This has been a win-win deal for the annual no-till cropper and the cow-calf producer next door.

Please remember to reach out to others in this busy season and ask how they are doing. If you need to talk to someone, please reach out to the groups in the province that have farmer hot lines. You are not alone dealing with it all.

I hope to see you all at the 2025 Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association Regen Ag Conference Nov. 12-13 at the Victoria Inn in Brandon. It looks like another awesome agenda and the MFGA conference is always a great venue and opportunity for discussions and catch up with farmers interested in learning more about things you want to learn more about.

Larry Wegner is a former board member of the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association and MFGA Wall of Fame inductee. This article first appeared as a blog post published by the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association.

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This topic came up a few weeks ago when a Manitoba producer asked a grazing group on Facebook: “How do I take the alfalfa out of a hay stand so I can graze it?”

All the answers were right. Where they varied depended on the context of the owner’s property. Suggestions ranged from chemical use to grazing the forage stand with the alfalfa left in. My thought was, if the alfalfa is removed, what is left in the stand to be grazed?

That was followed by a deeper thought. What will come up to fill the stand because nature abhors bare ground?

On our farm, we try to have 15-30 per cent of the stand as legumes. That’s a guide, not a hard number.

Through grazing management, I can increase or decrease the amount of alfalfa in the stand. By letting plants go to seed, I have increased the number of seeds in the soil seed bank. If I feel the alfalfa percentage is too high, I will graze the paddock hard in August and early September and then graze it hard again in mid-to-late September. This will reduce the alfalfa root reserves, so the following season has less alfalfa potential.

I am attempting to increase other legume species like yellow clover (sweet clover) and black medic. Both are short-lived legumes and come and go in the stands.

Plants do communicate with each other, although we’re not totally sure whether the mechanisms are above or below ground. Things like quorum sensing have come up, with plant root systems transferring nutrients from one plant to another through soil life (microbes).

Thinking back 25 years, researchers said there was no proof that plants can and do communicate to each other. Now it is accepted that plants can communicate in species and among other species in the plant community. Through this communication, they will come and go through the life cycle of the stand, as nitrogen fixation is required for the soil and plant health.

Through management (and the fact I prefer to not spend money for improvement) we have increased alsike and red clover and birds foot trefoil in some paddocks and we are trying to increase the spread of seed to other paddocks through livestock.

We let the cattle graze plants that have gone to seed, then move them to a new paddock to spread their manure 24 hours after grazing the seeds. Dung beetles then bury it into the soil for next year. I must admit that wild deer have done a better job of spreading legume seed.

In dry years, the clovers and trefoil will dry off and die. But in a wet spring, seeds will germinate from the seed bank and renew the stand. Letting the plants set seed every few years is the best way to ensure a healthy and diverse forage stand for the future.

We are now watching cicer milkvetch slowly establish on our property. The adage is to plant the seed and check it five years later. It is deep rooted and does well in dry years. The leaves stay on the plant longer into fall, which bodes well for late-season grazing.

Some producers familiar with this plant have cautioned that it may become invasive in the forage stand as the stand gets older. I am holding out judgment until I get more benchmarks and my own observations over time.

Grasses should make up 50-70 per cent of the forage stand. All grasses are good for grazing. Cool season, warm season, bunch grasses and stem grasses should all be in the forage blend.

The percentage of each is determined by management. No two forage production years are the same, and no two forage paddocks will be the same, and that is a good thing.

Some factors are consistent, though. When was the timing of spring rains? How and when was the pasture grazed? How much forage was removed? Did the grass go to seed? Were there fall rains? How much cover is left to cover the ground and catch snow?

Changing when a paddock is grazed each year encourages different grasses to grow the next year. No paddock should be grazed at the same time each year. This will cause plant selection by the herd, causing overgrazing of some plants and undergrazing of others.

Over time, this routine will create a monoculture that will survive being grazed at that one time of the year. What’s often left behind is a stand of grasses that the herd does not want to graze.

On the other side of the coin, not grazing the forages may cause the stand to die or degrade over time. It is a balancing act.

To monitor the pasture in real time, the manager needs to physically be in the paddock. Select areas of the paddock to stop and put your head down to really see what is happening in the forage stand. You cannot check the quality of a pasture by driving by. You must explore the paddock, paying special attention to what is being grazed and what is not being grazed.

Remember to manage for what you want in the stand, not what you do not want. It is often too easy to see and fight what you don’t want. It is much tougher to identify what you do want and encourage it to grow.

Truthfully, many of us do not know exactly what we want in our paddocks until we see it in someone else’s pasture. That is a great way to learn from others.

The remaining 20 per cent of the forage stand should be forbs. This is where we categorize dock, plantain, dandelion, the thistle family, crocus, snowberry, wolf willow and many other plants. Having forbs is a healthy indicator, as they will grow at different depths in the soil and different heights in the paddock.

Some forbs are higher in certain minerals and are required as diet to balance livestock health. They will bloom at different times early and later in the season, providing a staged food source for insects. As managers, we have to start thinking of the wildlife we are feeding as we create a healthy ecosystem for all.

Moderation is the key when evaluating forb population. Too many forbs, and you will have a problem with bare ground, soil compaction and the associated potential of under or overgrazing. If you monitor the percentage of forbs in the forage stand, you will have a great handle on the the health of the whole paddock.

If you have an area with too many forbs, you have to think about what may be done to correct the issue. In some cases of winter bale grazing, we’ve seen a surge in thistles, often as a result of soil compaction in the feeding area. Normally, within a couple of years, the thistle is gone or reduced as the soil issue resolves.

In these scenarios, it is important to look at the big picture for cause and effect. Sometimes, we must stand back and look at the whole area.

Additionally, we must remember that there is no one forage that will do everything we ask in a pasture, just as there is no one food you need to live on. Humans and livestock require a diverse supply of food sources to maintain a healthy body and mind.

I once watched a whitetail doe eat all the flowering heads off a patch of sow thistle and wondered why. I never figured it out, but it was a fine example of selective grazing.

It’s important to remember that there is not one belle of the ball when it comes to different types of forages. I have seen grazers who successfully managed single species stands. You must be a high-level manager to graze a pure stand of alfalfa, cicer milkvetch, meadow foxtail, meadow brome or orchard grass.

I have found a diverse blend of legumes, grasses and forbs to be far more forgiving and consistently allow a longer grazing season. There’s power in timing and variety.

The post What do we want to grow in our pastures? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

As ag producers, we all will, at some point and time, have a black swan event that puts us to the test and challenges us to overcome.

My wife Rosemary and I had our personal black swan event after moving to Manitoba in 2003. Three weeks after taking possession of our new farm, a case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) was declared in Alberta. The fallout from that was earth shattering for producers like us. The residual impacts are still being felt today, 21 years later.

In hindsight, while I would never wish another BSE crisis on anyone, anywhere, regardless of country, it made me become a better and more adaptive manager of our farm.

But it was not easy.

Our sons, Herb and Max, have now taken over management of our cattle operation.

When we did our pregnancy check last December, it was a wreck. All through fall we had heard rumours of poor breed-up, but you could have knocked us over with a feather when 40 per cent of our herd ended up in the open pen.

We had pulled and marketed the old and the lame, skinny and ugly ones before we checked the herd. We normally have five to 10 per cent in the open pen. We believe that if we are doing a good job running our herd, our breeding replacement heifer will be better quality than any cows we have. In most years we have 75-85 per cent bred for the first cycle. This year, very few were bred after the first cycle.

Now we must ask ourselves: what happened? After two months reaching out to others in the industry, we have developed a leading theory, but are still not 100 per cent sure of the cause.

We did not restock after the 2022 season, as I was not confident that we had broken the drought cycle. We had enough forage for the year and grazed until the day we pregnancy checked in late December. We move cows every day or every second day to fresh forage. Our cows and calves were always full when they were moved.

We even did some hay and haylage for winter feed. All cattle were well looked after with mineral and salt. They never seemed to satisfy their requirements and we always had the tubs cleaned out a few days later.

We had lots of bull power. We had each bull with a group of females (five herds) to see what worked for calf quality. The new bulls to the herd were semen checked and had passed. After the first cycle, we started to combine herds. At the end of the second cycle, we pulled the two oldest bulls so the younger bulls had a chance. Those younger bulls stayed with the cows until late fall. Every cow was exposed to three different bulls over the season.

We hired a beef consulting company to do liver biopsy and feed tests. All levels were good, including copper, but selenium was high. We reached out again to my beef industry network in Western Canada and asked what they have heard or seen in their areas. They had all heard about low breeding success in their areas, ranging from just above normal to terrible. We were not alone in this boat and the boat seemed to be growing bigger the more we heard from others.

There was no common link between us, other than the dry conditions we all faced. There seemed to be hot spots for poor conception, and then all around those hot spots would be reports of normal rates. I heard a video blog market analysis from Iowa about the high open rate in the northern states. There are diseases that could be a factor but I have yet to narrow it down.

What have we learned?

It seems to affect those who calve in the second quarter of the year. The early calvers were not affected as much. Copper has been a suspect in many cases, but in ours it was at a good level.

I have participated in a Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives/ Manitoba Beef Producers three-part presentation series on what might be causes and what to look for (currently posted on MBFI web page). The worst levels seem aligned with areas with poor water quality. We were fine with our water. The only thing that comes up as a common point among my own network outreach and questions is drought.

What do we do if the drought does not break this spring? Will we face this again next year, or will things get worse? What else can we do to be proactive?

I am writing this to remind you that we all have things that come out of left field and keep us humble.

Talking to other producers and being open about what we are dealing with is part of life. While some people are private about what has happened to them, we all deal with life issues in our own way. I am hoping that by talking about our issue, others can learn from us.

Before the disappointing pregnancy check, Max and Herb planned on expanding the breeding herd. After that day in December, they are now trying to hang on and hope it does not repeat this year. They will keep their young open cows/heifers (they will not get any more chances after this) and sell all the mature open cows, so the herd is now younger than before.

As we look back through our herd books and take a high-level view, we may have been too hard on the cows last winter. The later and cooler spring did not help. Although the cows calved, cleaned and mothered well, we did have a few granny cows that expired on us.

We did have both bulls in the heifer mob go lame just after they were turned out; we lost most of the first cycle on those heifers in 2022. In 2023, we had less time for the heifers to recover from calving and flesh up for rebreeding and a few more than normal came back open.

On the other side, we had a late cow calve who had only three weeks from calving till breeding, and she caught on the first cycle and stayed bred. Go figure.

These reflections from our operation are no different than most other producer operations. For some reason, for us, something is out of line.

Like I told my sons, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. If you get tired of lemonade, make a lemon pie or lemon tarts.

Maybe this is Mother Nature’s way of surviving these dry times. We hear and see that the local deer population had lower fawn births this year. Nature does not care about production, but rather about being adaptable. Nature is survival of the fittest.

These are the cards we are dealt, and we have to work with them or fold up and go get a new job in town. All we can do is do our very best work today and plan for tomorrow.

The post Moving on from a preg check wreck appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But we at the Wegner house still find time to meet with fellow producers to learn what is new and exciting in agriculture on and off the farm.

I have spent a lot of time this winter reading and listening to presentations, trying to get a handle on carbon markets and understand what a carbon footprint is, and more so, what is net zero by 2050. Here are a few of my takeaways.:

• All life on Earth is carbon based.
• There is no new carbon on the planet. There’s no more or less than there was 100,000 years ago; it is in different forms and locations.
• We have changed (carbon) forms and locations over the last 1,000 years and yes, we can change it back to a stable form. It may take 1,000 years to do it, but it can be done.
• In spring 2020, as COVID shut the world down, the Northern Hemisphere, where the majority of the world’s plants were rapidly growing, was pulling carbon dioxide from the air and putting carbon into the plant and soils.
• The CO2 level has been monitored on top of a mountain in Hawaii for the last 60 years and the level has been steadily rising. Looking back over the COVID shut down, there was no difference.
• It has been said that methane is more damaging than CO2 but there has been little work done on how much methane is broken down by metatrope bacteria in the soil.

Our federal government has called for proposals around carbon storage, including the storage capacity of carbonate reservoirs, with the aim of opening new potential storage sites in Canada.

This will require large storage capacity as CO2 is a bulky gas. These systems have potential to cost billions of dollars to build and operate the CO2 capture system on an ongoing basis.

If only this process could be done cheaper and with less infrastructure.

Plant growth will do that as part of its life cycle, and with deep roots, the carbon is stored in a stable form. As a bonus, we have oxygen to survive.

A few weeks ago, I joined a Zoom call, organized by the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association, with a Saskatchewan-based beef producer who for the last five years has recorded benchmarks of his soil. The producer has been doing planned grazing of pastures over the time period and has increased the soil organic matter from 2.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent. That is an amazing result.

The farmer then calculated the amount of carbon he has captured in the soil, giving him a carbon negative footprint. That’s not only on his property but also for the feed yard to feed and fatten the calf crop. It includes processing the fats and all the trucking, including to the retailer.

All in all, it was a great call to open my mind as to what can be done with a few basic numbers, key soil health practices and a calculator. The carbon built has added resilience to his ranch. For every unit of carbon he has in the soil, he now has storage for seven units of water and four units of nutrients stored for crop production.

He has a natural buffer for drought, wind and floods by having healthy soil and healthy roots in the soil that provide structure and water infiltration abilities. The ranch production has also gone up via days grazed and harvested animal units per acre.

I have seen the same increase in soil organic matter on our farm, but I have taken longer to get there, about 15 years. I felt I had not been as good of a manager as the speaker was.

When I talked to another producer, he laughed at me when I explained that I was not as productive as I thought I had been. My colleague kindly pointed out that I am working with very poor soil and we have done great with what we started with.

Sometimes we need to be less self-absorbed and need to stand back and look at our little piece of Earth. We can live a life where we do everything in a positive light and make a difference at home.

If we do not share what we have learned and share experiences with family, friends and other producers, have we really made a difference?

– Larry Wegner is MFGA’s producer relations lead. He farms near Virden, Man. This is a condensed version of a blog posting from MFGA’s website.

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