Blain Hjertaas takes attendees through the carbon and hydrological cycle during a March 14 workshop on agriculture and climate change in Pipestone.

Confronting climate change through the power of plants

Carbon sequestration was front and centre as producers gathered in Pipestone to ponder how agriculture could change the conversation around climate change

Blain Hjertaas insists farmers already have the key to solving climate change. It’s growing in their fields. Ground should never be bare, the holistic management instructor argued in Pipestone March 14, part of an event dissecting agriculture’s role in climate change. Hjertaas argued that conventional annual cropping leaves gaps in early spring and in fall

Jeanette Gaultier, BASF senior technical service specialist, explores variety selection and soybean management during the 2018 BASF Knowledge Harvest 
in Brandon.

Temperature can give insight on water mould risk in soybeans

Soil temperature and disease pressure combine when targeting early-season water mould problems

Keep an eye on the soil temperature this spring to gain some insight into soybean water mould risks. Michael Wunsch, a professor at North Dakota State University, says having some idea of where temperatures are and what the near-term weather may hold is key to understanding the issue. He was speaking at the recent 2018


The Stanley Soil Management Association has created a site in the RM of Stanley to demonstrate the merits of pruning and thinning windbreaks rather than removing them.

Renovated windbreak for farmer education

The Stanley Soil Management Association has established a demo site to help landowners evaluate methods for renovating rather than removal of these sites

One of the few remaining soil associations in Manitoba has created a windbreak demo site in hopes of showing more landowners there’s more to be gained from renovating shelterbelts than removing them. The Stanley Soil Management Association received a small grant from the federal Environment and Climate Change Canada program and used the money to

Dr. Tom Jensen of the International Plant Nutrition Institute presents in Brandon 
during one of several soil fertility updates in the last month.

Different nutrient, different strategy

The nutrient in question, its source, and a host of other variables determine the right path

All nutrients are not created equal, and their management strategies should reflect that. That’s been a core message from soil and fertility specialists this winter during a round of soil fertility updates held in late January and early February. In recent years fertility and extension specialists have concentrated on the 4R message: right source at


One grain on eroded land

No such thing as ‘unprecedented’ weather, delegates at ARBI conference told

Delegates with the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative (ARBI) met in Regina February 14 and 15

If 1930s seems like the worst drought we could ever have, scientific records show pre-settlement dry spells lasted far longer. Likewise, there were wet spells on the Prairies much more intense than events like 2011’s — a flood we tended to call “unprecedented.” Neither are unprecedented, say Saskatchewan scientists. Both extremes have occurred before on

Low, high or in the middle, soil pH affects your farm

Low, high or in the middle, soil pH affects your farm

Acidic or alkaline soils can have a big effect on soil nutrition, but while farmers with acidic soil 
can turn to lime, fixing alkaline soils may be more of a challenge

Alkaline soils are a common problem in Manitoba, but farmers may not have an easy fix. Amir Farooq, crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and one of the speakers at a soil fertility update in Brandon Jan. 30-31, argued that high pH soils would need a prohibitively expensive amount of elemental sulphur to lower levels. The


A combination of snow covered in dirt is colloquially known as “snirt” and it’s a common sight around Manitoba this year, including here, east of Winkler.

Erosion lessons learned… and forgotten

The dust-covered snow of this winter suggests there’s a soil erosion 
problem brewing, MSSS speaker says

Disappearing shelterbelts and blackened fields have some wondering if the soil conservation lessons learned during the ‘Dirty ’30s’ dust bowl are being forgotten. “From the edge of Fargo to the edge of Winnipeg I did not see one flake of white snow on my way up yesterday (Jan. 31),” Daryl Ritchison, interim director of the

Just what does the term ‘soil health’ mean? A lot of different things, it turns out.

Ag Days speakers banter on soil health

Soil health is a hot topic, but there’s no clear definition of what it is and how to improve it

What’s soil health? Ask five people that question and you might get five different answers — even among Ag Days experts. Soil health and soil degradation are getting plenty of time in the headlines, with coverage of last year’s Summit of Canadian Soil Health in Guelph, soil tests looking beyond nutrients and into microbiology and


Don Campbell relays the peaks and valleys he had to navigate while starting up an emerging aerial application company using drones. Campbell was one of several speakers during a precision agriculture workshop in Southport.

Precision agriculture takes to wing at Southport

Precision agriculture has both sky-high potential and some very down-to-earth obstacles

When it comes to precision agriculture, there is no such thing as too much quality data — assuming you have the software and internet connection to process it. Southport hosted a precision ag discussion and drew farm consultants, service providers and producers Dec. 12 for its second workshop. “It’s gone from satellite, really huge zones,

Dr. David Lobb puts a price tag on cumulative soil degradation in the kickoff event to the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve Soil Health
Committee.

Tillage questions posed for Manitoba

David Lobb with the University of Manitoba is researching the cost of soil degradation

What does soil degradation cost you? Dr. David Lobb hopes the answer to that question will get producers looking more closely at what’s happening under their feet. The University of Manitoba researcher spoke Nov. 15 in Dauphin at the “Soil Health and Your Bottom Line” workshop, hosted by the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve. Lobb estimates