High input costs and slumping grain prices are prompting some producers to reconsider a traditional farming technique no longer in vogue.
Prairie farmers have cut their summerfallow acres in half over the past decade but a few grain growers will be bucking that trend in 2004.
“With the economics the way they are in grain farming now, I just don’t feel that I can keep trying to produce every acre to the maximum. We’re just going to try to take a passive way of managing our farm,” said Spiritwood, Sask., farmer Don Voss.
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He plans to chemfallow 40 percent of his 1,750 cultivated acres this spring.
“There are a number of factors why we want to go to summerfallow and the first one is to cut down our input costs.”
Next on the list is poor commodity prices.
Voss harvested a good barley crop last fall that he will store on the farm to feed his cattle.
“The market price is so low if I was to sell last year’s crop it wouldn’t cover my input costs of planting it again. I don’t see the logic in doing that.”
Feed barley is one of many crops showing negative returns in Saskatchewan Agriculture’s 2004 crop planning guide for the black soil zone where Voss farms.
The only crops expected to cover farmers’ fixed and variable costs in that zone are canola, flax, Canada Prairie Spring wheat and canaryseed. It’s a similar story in other zones and provinces where oilseeds seem to be the only consistent safe bet.
With poor moisture reserves on his farm, Voss isn’t willing to risk taking a financial beating on all his cropland in 2004.
“How far do you want to stick your neck out to grow a crop? At my stage of the game, after the number of years that I’ve put in, my neck is getting shorter,” said Voss, who has been farming for nearly 40 years.
A good portion of the 700 acres he plans to chemfallow this summer will be seeded to winter wheat later in the fall. Voss likes the fact that he doesn’t have to wait for harvest to finish to seed his winter wheat and that he is guaranteed adequate moisture for germination.
He considers winter wheat a good choice because it allows him to scrimp on chemical costs since wild oats are not an issue with the fall-seeded crop.
Voss is doing anything he can to reduce input costs, which have been “inching up” year after year. In the past he has summerfallowed 100 acres of land every other year, so his 2004 plans to idle 700 acres represent a big departure from normal.
But if recent history is any indication, it doesn’t appear as though the majority of farmers will be following his lead. Prairie summerfallow acreage has steadily declined over the past decade, falling to 8.9 million acres in 2003 from 17.6 million in 1993.
Statistics Canada is predicting a further 4.5 percent decline in summerfallow acreage in 2004. That jibes with what one commodity group is saying.
Dave Wilkins, director of communications for the Canola Council of Canada, said seed sales have been strong to date.
“I’ve heard no reports of farmers en masse moving to summerfallow.”
He would be surprised to see a shift in the tendency toward fewer summerfallow acres, especially considering the tough economic times farmers have been facing.
“Undoubtedly some might be considering not growing a crop this year, but it’s not in their interest to do that. They need revenue,” said Wilkins.
Voss said he may be “swimming against the current” but given his particular circumstances it’s a matter of curtailing losses rather than enhancing revenues.
“We’re just trying to figure out a survival strategy. We’re certainly not going to prosper in this environment.”
