An Agriculture Canada weed scientist is praising farmers two years after a new herbicide resistant weed was discovered in Western Canada. However, while Hugh Beckie said many growers are taking the necessary steps to delay the spread of herbicide resistant weeds, some may want to rethink how they employ chem-fallow fields in their cropping systems. […] Read more
Stories by Dan Yates
Crowding may encourage migration
Migratory birds may be fleeing for reasons other than frigid temperatures when they fly south for the winter. So says Veronique Boucher-Lalonde of the University of Ottawa, a re-searcher who studies species richness, which is the number of species that exist in a given place. She wanted to know why populations of migratory birds around […] Read more
2013 weather was one for the books
Last year’s weather events are likely to live long in the minds of western Canadians, if not the record books. It was a year highlighted by a long winter and a cold spring that culminated with bumper crops in the fall, However, it also saw the most expensive disaster in Canadian history. “We are seeing […] Read more
Now: New winter wheats offer feed, milling potential; Then: New winter wheat for use in northwest
NOW: The two million acres of prairie farmland seeded to winter wheat this fall pale in comparison to the tens of millions of acres dedicated to the crop in the United States. However, the number shows significant growth from a few decades ago, when a few hundred thousand acres were grown in Canada, mostly for […] Read more
Agriculture ranks high forU of S funding
Agricultural research figured prominently in the shortest category of a recent report ranking programs at the University of Saskatchewan: those recommended for increased funding. “We’re not jumping up and down about all of these things, but basically I think the college came out with pretty good rankings,” said Mary Buhr, dean of the agriculture college. […] Read more
Aspirations lead to innovation
Producers with the largest farm receipts aren’t necessarily the most innovative. Rather, it’s the farmers and livestock operators who are starting or expanding their businesses who are most likely to adopt new products and production, marketing and management techniques, says Eric Micheels of the University of Sask-atchewan. Micheels, a professor in the university’s department of […] Read more
University agricultural college ranking may help it to avoid cuts
Agricultural research figured prominently in the shortest category of a recent report ranking programs at the University of Saskatchewan: those recommended for increased funding. “We’re not jumping up and down about all of these things, but basically I think the college came out with pretty good rankings,” said Mary Buhr, dean of the university’s agriculture […] Read more
Trouble looms with shorter canola rotation, warns expert
An Agriculture Canada researcher issued a cautionary message last week to an audience of canola industry members. Neil Harker said the two-year canola rotation that dominates the Prairies comes with inherent risks that threaten future production of the crop: increased levels of disease and pests and the breakdown of variety resistance. “I think we’re at […] Read more
Big harvest, big rail delays
Straining to keep up | Delays inevitable as rail companies swamped with orders
A big haul by western Canadian farmers has helped boost crop exports, says the Canadian Grain Commission. The industry had exported 5.1 million tonnes of wheat and 2.3 million tonnes of canola as of Nov. 24, the commission reported last week. It’s up from the five-year averages for that time period of 3.9 million tonnes […] Read moreNative grasslands offer benefits, few financial rewards
Producer profits Programs that would pay for ecological benefits already offered by grasslands could benefit beef sector
Native grasslands offer a multitude of environmental benefits, such as housing wildlife, filtering water and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Paying ranchers for those services could boost their bottom lines more than the traditional gains in beef production, says Edward Bork, a rangeland ecology and management researcher with the University of Alberta. He used better sanfoin […] Read more
