Understand that straight cutting canola will mean taking a look at how the entire combine operates.

Different harvest, different combine settings

Those combine settings may not be doing you any favours if you’re aiming for straight cut and they’re still set to swath

First-time canola straight cutters might want to take another look at their combine settings. “When we’re comparing picking up a windrow to straight cutting, we, again, want to kind of treat this like a different crop,” Angela Brackenreed of the Canola Council of Canada stressed during a recent Manitoba Agriculture webinar. “The same combine setting

Soybeans have long been rolled in Manitoba, but researchers are starting to question if it should be a blanket recommendation.

Are you rolling soybeans for the sake of rolling?

Rolling soybeans has some benefits, but also a downside

To roll or not to roll? For soybean growers, ‘tis the question. It’s become the standard strategy to keep dirt and rocks out of the combine come harvest, but Manitoba Agriculture says it may be time to take a second look at the practice. “We want to reduce earth tag,” Terry Buss, pulse specialist with


Dr. Bernie Zebarth of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada explores drone use during the 2018 Manitoba Potato Production Days in Brandon earlier this year.

Mapping a new frontier: Potatoes and precision agriculture

The root crop has a number of quirks that make it both a prime candidate for 
precision agriculture and a little different than other crops

Potatoes may, in many ways, be the perfect candidate for precision agriculture. They’re a high-volume, high-value and high-input crop and the industry has already invested more than other sectors in soil and drainage mapping, variable rate technology and management zones, according to one agronomist who works closely with potato growers. Trevor Thornton’s Crop Care Consulting

Harvey Chorney presents PAMI study results.  

Study suggests ways to reduce soybean harvest losses

Going slow and using an air reel are two important techniques

Soybean growers can avoid major seed losses at harvest time by using air reels and driving combines no faster than four miles per hour, a new study says. Air reels significantly decrease header losses, and between two and four miles an hour is the optimal ground speed for harvesting soybeans, says the study by the

Andy Martin (l) of Providence College discusses cattail biomass with Dimple Roy (c) and Richard Grosshans (r) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. IISD and the college, along with several Hutterite colonies are proving biomass heating to be practical.

Hutterite colonies leading the masses with biomass heating

IISD, colonies and Providence College are proving biomass heating technology to be viable

Manitoba’s Hutterite colonies are leading a made-in-Manitoba farm heating movement. “With the provincial ban on the use of coal for space heating in Manitoba, a good number of Manitoba’s Hutterite colonies have recently upgraded or converted their heating systems from aging coal-burning systems to cleaner biomass boiler heating systems,” says Richard Grosshans, bioeconomy lead for


Cooling canola as quickly as possible, using aeration fans and other techniques, will be important to successfully storing late-harvested canola.

Warm weather enables significant canola progress

Much of the late harvest is coming off quite wet, making storage the next big challenge

A run of unseasonably warm weather has the Manitoba canola crop down to the last few thousand acres left to harvest, after a wet fall had disaster looming. “We’ve made a pile of headway in the last few days,” said Anastasia Kubinec, Manitoba Agriculture oilseed specialist, during a Nov. 18 interview. Before the weather turned,

Phosphorus-laden solids separated from hog manure in a storage shed on Lauren Wiebe’s farm near St. Malo.

Manure separation could be key to P accumulation issue

Removing phosphorus-rich solids from nitrogen-rich liquid allows both 
local use and economical transportation to other farms

A unique method of separating nutrients in hog manure, based on European technology, may give livestock producers another way to deal with excess soil phosphorus in southeastern Manitoba’s livestock alley. The method involves separating out the solids in manure from the liquid, using an automated conveyor belt system. Solids in hog manure are high in

Bigger bins make for bigger challenges for maintaining condition.

Grain-drying systems: larger bins, more grain, more air

Natural air drying needs 10 times the airflow rate compared to aeration

The yields are getting larger, the machinery bigger. It stands to reason that grain storage bins have had to get bigger as well. Smaller bins and their effective grain-drying systems in place for years are being replaced by larger bins and more intricate drying needs to handle the larger contents. “There are larger bins in


La Salle Redboine Conservation District manager Justin Reid spoke to municipal and conservation officials during the latest phase of the large-scale water-retention project south of Holland last week.

Pelly’s Lake watershed management project complete

Officials visit site to see the gates opened on the now complete Pelly’s Lake Watershed Management Project

Conservation and municipal officials opened the gates here June 16 to release water that had been held back through the spring as part of a water control project expected to bring multiple benefits to the area. The June opening of the gates on the Pelly’s Lake dam built last year is the latest phase of

Producers urged to take part in Growing Forward consultations

The province of Manitoba is asking farmers and farm organizations for input into Growing Forward II, which is currently being negotiated with the federal government. “The more input Manitoba industry stakeholders provide through the consultations, the more influence they will have on the future content and direction of the next generation of Growing Forward programs,”