The appearance of Asian rust in the United States hasn’t shocked Manitoba soybean growers.
“It’s just another disease we’ll have to manage,” said Grosse Isle, Man., soybean grower Rick Rutherford. “Disease is nothing new for the Red River Valley.”
Carman, Man., grower Ulrich Menold said Asian rust will become a fact of life sooner than he expected, but he’s glad it’s a warm-zone disease that will show up far south of the border before it becomes a problem in Manitoba.
“We can watch how (American authorities) track it to see whether we are going to have a problem,” said Menold.
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Neither Menold nor Rutherford think Canadian growers will shy from soybeans because of the disease, but Menold said he hopes federal authorities do all they can to approve required fungicides.
Asian rust is a yield-damaging disease that has been spreading rapidly through South American soybean crops for a few years. No major soybean growing area in Brazil is free of the disease, which, if left unchecked, can devastate a crop.
To control the disease’s impact, Brazilian farmers often have to spray fungicides three times during the growing season.
American farmers have been anxiously watching the spread of the disease, knowing that it would likely appear in U.S. fields within a few years.
But most are stunned at how fast it has made the jump from the southern hemisphere to the northern.
“I never thought we would have it this year,” said Jim Call, chair of the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, who toured Brazilian farms in January. “But then we had the hurricanes.”
A number of analysts believe that Asian rust likely spread to the United States when spores were picked up by Hurricane Ivan off the coast of Venezuela and blown north.
Most experts say the disease cannot survive bitterly cold weather such as that experienced in Minnesota and Canada, but it is able to survive the warmer climes of the U.S. south, forming a permanent reservoir.
That means that Asian rust, like other rusts in wheat and oats, will likely be a problem in summers when strong winds blow spores north.
Call said some Minnesota growers are already worried that southern U.S. farmers may use up all the country’s supply of fungicide early in the season and that Minnesota growers may not have any when they need it.
“Will there be product available if they need it? Some guys are switching acres to corn.”
Rutherford expects to see Asian rust behave like the other rusts in Canada: it will come late in the season and not overwinter.
“The farther north you are, the better,” said Rutherford.
Some farmers think the disease gives northern growers a competitive advantage, because southern U.S. farmers may have to spray three times for the disease, but northern growers may have to spray only once, if at all.
