A new course by the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association (CFGA) delves into all these components and more.

“The High-Performance Forage course will be available early in 2026 to producers, agronomists and technical teams interested in improving the quality of Canadian forage available for market both domestically and internationally,” according to CFGA communications and knowledge technology transfer logistics manager Kaylee Healy.

WHY IT MATTERS: Producing the best feed goes a long way to maximizing beef cattle performance in Western Canada.

The course covers a range of topics designed to give participants in-depth knowledge on the different aspects of growing high-performance forage across Canada, including examining regional challenges.

This 12-module course is designed for producers who are already growing forage and who are ready to take their product to the next level to take advantage of existing and new markets. Participants can expect to walk away with an in-depth understanding of forage production and practical next steps to improve the quality of forage produced by their operations.

The course is being developed with the help of forage specialist Dan Undersander from the University of Wisconsin who brings knowledge of more than five decades of advancing forage production. His expertise spans all aspects of forage management, including production and harvesting methods for hay, haylage, baleage and silage, as well as forage analysis and grazing. His work is supported by other subject matter experts from across Canada and the United States.

“We’ve been building this information for the last three years with Dr. Undersander,” Healy said. “It’s building on a series of workshops held back in the early 2000s. They were in-person workshops geared towards agronomists and technical experts in forage to help develop higher-quality forage across Canada.”

Course content

The course takes a ground-up approach starting with planning growing systems, defining the rations and yield potential. Planning the system helps identify goals, determine labour and management costs and determine crop goals; it is the foundation for the rest of the course and includes elements to help producers track and assess performance.

It’s important to understand the seed mix, including seed genetics, which will grow best in a producer’s region based on climate, soil fertility and other growing conditions. The module also looks at seeding rates and seeding strategies. Fertility is an important component of growing quality forage. It begins with understanding the nutrients and density required to match the seed selection made. Emphasis on soil testing illustrates the need to understand soil pH and existing nutrients, plus soil additives including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, calcium and magnesium. This module also explores the use of liquid and solid manure and touches on the impact of salinity.

Seed management looks at different tillage systems designed to facilitate proper seed placement and other seedbed preparation considerations while weed control covers important topics including assessing weed pressures and challenges. It specifically looks at when weeds cause a problem, how to manage weeds through pre-seeding and post-seeding, mechanical needs for weed control and when spraying may be required.

Disease and pest management dives into understanding the pressures on crops by these problems. The module looks at how to identify problems and manage them.

The course offers a diverse look at harvesting and harvest systems beginning with targeted harvesting time. This is a natural segue into matching forage quality to animal requirements and targeting moisture levels at harvest. The harvest module also looks at minimizing field losses, selecting the best mower for your operation, the use of conditioning systems, racking, preservation and making baleage.

Making forage is only part of the equation. The course also features modules on storage including packing density, bunk filling rates and other storage considerations to minimize loss.

Producers feeding out forage will appreciate the module on feed-out management which touches on topics such as maintaining a fresh bunk face, designing storage systems and engaging your nutritionist. It closes with tracking forage quality and building rations.

As the course winds down, participants will gain a better understanding of tracking and performance including what records to keep, why you should keep them and how to inventory quantity and quality in storage.

The initial plan, the tracking and the records help producers better understand the cost of production for an operation. Producers walk away from training with a template to develop the cost of production for their own operation, looking at the cost of harvest and storage losses and the overall cost of forage production.

The course closes with discussion on sustainable management, greenhouse gas impacts and management strategies to help producers with soil carbon sequestering and determining manure storage and application methods for their operations.

Producers will complete training with a plan on how they can improve the quality of forage they produce.

“The course presents information using a combination of written and video materials and provides resources and action items so producers can take the techniques and strategies outlined in the material and apply them to their farm,” said Healy.

Why now?

The CFGA has been working with Undersander and other experts for several years to create this training series based on the demand from producers and extension specialists to improve the quality of forage produced in Canada. It has been long recognized that forages are essential to maintaining the health of cropping systems in addition to being an important crop on its own.

Growers face a number of challenges regionally including disease, pests, drought, excessive moisture and varying rates of soil fertility.

A pilot, three-day workshop offered in March 2025 in Manitoba, underlined the desire for knowledge and the need to build new supports and connections for growers.

“With experts planning retirement or moving into other roles, the CFGA recognized the opportunity to capture this knowledge now and assist with transferring it to the next generation of producers, agronomists and technicians who are looking to improve Canadian forage,” Healy said. “This free online course will be available through the CFGA’s learning management system in both English and French early in 2026.”

The new High-Performance Forage course joins other online educational opportunities provided by the CFGA, including Advanced Grazing Systems with sub-courses on dairy and brown soil zones. The CFGA is committed to forage growers across Canada by supplying education, training and skills development through collaboration with regional forage partners and provincial forage associations to provide regional growing content and collaboration.

For additional information visit the CFGA Advanced Grazing Systems webpage or contact the course co-ordinators via email.

The post New high-performance forage training program to launch in 2026 appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Jeff Schoenau, a soil science professor with the University of Saskatchewan, is among those fielding questions, although he says the amount of visible salinity in his province is “normal” for April.

“I think probably folks are more interested in salinity and addressing it in farm fields because the value of farmland has gone up, including rental rates, and so people want to more than ever improve the productivity of every acre that they’ve got.”

Why it matters: Salinity is a water problem, not a salt problem, and the multi-year dry spell on the Prairies has offered a prime environment for it to raise its ugly head.

Marla Riekman, soil specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, has also heard inquiries and has repeatedly been called to speak about it.

“We’ve definitely had a fair bit of concern around it and a lot of questions around how to manage it, how to live with it and what we might be able to do to manage it,” she said.

Salinity not about the salt, but rather about variability in the water table. Dissolved salts are brought up and then left higher in the soil profile as water levels rise and fall. Evaporation during dry periods leaves visible salt on the surface, and there is not enough rain to leach it back underground.

There’s no quick fix but management is key.

Crop choice is one often-noted tactic. Seeding saline areas to salt-tolerant forages rather than high-profit, sensitive crops like soybeans is a popular choice. But high salinity is kind of like a mice infestation. By the time you see it, you’re already fighting an uphill battle.

If the situation is bad enough to leave visible salt deposits on the surface, even a salt-tolerant forage will have a hard time getting established.

“We need to be thinking about trying to get the forage established in a year where the salts aren’t as bad, when you have a bit more moisture to seed into and get that little seedling germinated and growing,” Riekman said.

Choosing seed

Choice of salt tolerant forage depends on the salinity level. For highly saline areas, Riekman recommended strongly tolerant crops such as alkaline grasses, Russian wild rye and AC Saltlander, a green wheatgrass marketed specifically for saline areas.

For lower-level saline soils, there are other options. Soil testing is recommended before making decisions.

“If you are looking at targeting or changing your management in a specific area, getting a soil test done in that area can give you an idea of how saline it is, and then you can start to match the salt tolerance level of the forage with the salt that exists in that patch or that area.”

Test comprehension

Soil tests produce a number based on electrical conductivity in a soil solution. The higher the number, the more salt.

There are two types of soil tests. Most producers use a commercially available, inexpensive and relatively quick one-to-one soil test. Paste soil tests are the other option. This method uses the same amount of soil in the solution as the one-to-one test, but just enough water to create a paste-like consistency.

Primarily a lab tool, that test is comparatively expensive and needs more time and space, making it unpopular for commercial application. It does have one advantage, Riekman noted: it indicates how much salt is in the soil around the root.

Results from a saturated paste test are approximately two times higher than one-to-one results, Riekman warned. Producers can therefore translate commercial test results into what a saturated paste test would offer.

“You take your one-to-one soil test number that you get from your commercial testing lab and multiply that by two in order to compare it to those research numbers,” said Riekman.

Knowing the difference is also key for choosing a salt-tolerant forage. AC Saltlander, for instance, is tolerant up to about 16 deciSiemens per metre (deciSiemen is a unit of electrical conductivity), but that number is drawn from paste test results. Producers would have to divide that by two to properly compare it to whatever number they received from their commercial soil test.

“When you are trying to target or determine what kind of salt-tolerant forage to plant in an area, it is good to do that rough calculation,” Riekman said.

Establishing salt tolerant forages can take years, but patience can pay off, said Schoenau, pointing to his team’s research on salt-tolerant green wheatgrass in both saline and non-saline plots.

“Initially, the grass was a little bit slow to establish compared to where it was seeded in a non-saline area,” he said.

“But over a five-year period, the yields got better and better over the years until finally, in the last couple of years, the yield of that green wheatgrass actually was exceeding the yield we were seeing in the non-saline plots.”

The post Soil tests and salinity  appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

That may be a challenge to wrap your head around at first as people naturally think of salt when they hear the word ‘salinity.’ But when the subject is soil salinity, Marla Riekman, soil management specialist  with Manitoba Agriculture, wants you to think about it differently.

“It is a water problem,” says Riekman. “When we talk about salinity we always think about salt because that’s the name right? But really the problem is the water that’s bringing the salt up from the deeper groundwater up to the surface.”

How that water is flowing is going to determine whether or not you have a salt problem, she adds, and areas with high water tables or poor drainage are where problems begin.

This was at the core of her presentation, ‘The Science of Soil Salinity,’ at Manitoba Ag Days earlier this year. Afterwards, we caught up with Riekman to ask how farmers can manage saline soils, which crops are more sensitive to soil salinity, and more. Have a listen in the four audio clips below.

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