The Canola Council of Canada has launched a new initiative it hopes will improve the profitability of the crop for western Canadian producers.
The new Canola Agronomy Network is designed to discuss disease, insect and growing condition issues by weekly conference calls. Agronomists will then provide “how-to-deal-with-it” information to producers and agronomists within 48 hours of the Tuesday morning meeting.
Insects, weeds, weather and plant nutrition are the business of farming, and balancing these in high input crops like canola requires significant investments of money and time.
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The council said the industry needed a comprehensive analysis of current conditions that prairie producers could access throughout the growing season.
Twenty-five agronomists from the council, provincial and federal agencies as well as farmers and crop supply retailers, will pick up their phones and enter the virtual meeting on the week-by-week state of the western Canadian canola crop. Meetings will run until Sept. 15.
Reports will be e-mailed to producers who sign up for weekly updates or can be seen on the organization’s website, www.canola-coun
cil.org/production/agronomy_net.html.
John Mayko, a senior council agronomist, said cuts by provincial agriculture departments have reduced the number of extension agrologists growers can call for advice.
“Ag corporations, governments, universities have all cut. Producers have more questions and fewer people to turn to for answers,” he said.
The first report was published April 30. It provided a roundup of seeding activity, and estimated that 150,000 acres of canola remained to be harvested in Saskatchewan.
In the report, Scott Hartley of Saskatchewan Agriculture tells producers that the bugs they are finding in the oilseed crop are mould grain beetles and foreign grain beetles that attack cracked and split seeds.
He suggests running the crop though a grain-vac to remove the beetles or treating binned crop with Protect-It, Phostoxin or Gastoxin.
The report also suggests that producers have their harvested crop analyzed by a feed laboratory to determine if it has value to livestock producers.
Producers can take part in the process by filling out an on-line questionnaire about the conditions on their farms. That will enhance the agronomists’ picture of current conditions, Mayko said.
