Crop Management
Grain industry players say the legislation that modernized transportation regulations two years ago is generally working as intended. Bill C-49, formally known as the Transportation Modernization Act, passed in the spring of 2018 with the promises of more transparency from the railways, reciprocal penalties within service agreements and long-haul interswitching options, among others. Farmers applauded […] Read more
Crop Management
Turn three little puddles into one big pond
Prairie pothole consolidation has been occurring almost from the time the first farmers arrived. The concept is simple. Drain small nuisance wetlands into one large pothole to gain arable acres. Fast forward to 2020 and we see serious concerns about the impact on salinity, water tables, downstream nutrient load and actual productivity of those rehabilitated […] Read more
Harnessing the digital wave in ag
New technology is flying at farmers and industry at a stupefying rate, and the agricultural sector is struggling to keep up. EMILI (Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative) was created four years ago to prepare Manitoba’s agricultural economy to leverage digital disruption for success. EMILI’s specific focus is on digital agriculture. The not-for-profit organization works […] Read more
Jeff Penner’s sneaky snaky drainage ditch
V-Wing creates shallow ditches that farmers can farm right through, with a minimum of ditching passes
It bothers Swan River, Man., farmer Jeff Penner to see big water volumes churning and charging down a deep drainage ditch. Some farmers enjoy the sight and sound, but not Penner. All he sees and hears is soil erosion — tons and tons, inches upon inches, cubic yards by cubic yards of topsoil being removed […] Read more
Precision ag maps — what went wrong?
Farm Forum: Pretty Maps or Useful Insights? Mapping offers new ways of seeing fields, but making it profitable is the trick
The agronomic community has generated layer upon layer of precision agriculture data maps for 20 years. But fewer than five percent of farmers make profitable use of their field maps. “What went wrong?” That’s a question Aaron Breimer often asks himself. Breimer is general manager at Veritas Farm Business Management in Chatham, Ont. He posed […] Read more
Telus expands reach into ag
Some data management systems have sprung from the field and reached for the sky, but a major telecommunications provider is reaching down from the clouds to connect with the ground. Telus has launched a global agricultural data management company that will offer farmers a way to string together the streams of data that increasingly flow […] Read more
New robot mows grass and feeds cows autonomously
The number of days it can spend on Canadian fields will be limited unless it can be turned into a Zamboni
Keeping Lely’s new robot that harvests and feeds fresh grass a secret was no longer an option for the company. This is because the robot, named Exos, has moved onto a new developmental phase at testing farms in The Netherlands and it was bound to turn heads of anybody driving by. So even though the […] Read more
Cargill adopts regenerative agriculture
Cargill has jumped on the regenerative ag bandwagon. In September, the Minneapolis company said it wants to increase the amount of land farmed with cover crops, reduced tillage and diverse crop rotations. “Cargill is supporting farmer-led efforts to adopt and implement regenerative ag practices and systems on 10 million acres of cropland in North America […] Read more
Ag minister optimistic about export prospects
Marie-Claude Bibeau says an increasing middle class in Africa and Asia will increase demand for the food Canada grows
Minister of Agriculture Marie Claude Bibeau says Canadian agriculture will be the “powerhouse of the economy” as the country recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, pointing to specific opportunities for the industry to grow. During a virtual “fireside chat” at the International Economic Forum of the America’s Toronto event on Oct. 27, Bibeau expressed optimism over […] Read more
Salford puts on a Halo and tills like the devil
Tillage tools come in many forms, but the new high-speed disc with AerWay tool onboard puts a bite on the field
Salford launched a new tillage frame called the Halo that can be fit with different combinations of ground engagement tools. Two models are already available to growers. The Halo High Speed Disc (HSD) is available in five sizes from 20 to 40 feet wide, and the Halo AerWay is available in 20, 25 and 30-foot […] Read more
