A proposed fee increase to register pesticides in Canada won’t have a significant impact on pesticide prices, says a representative of CropLife Canada. Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency collects fees from crop protection companies when they want to register a new pesticide or register an existing product for a different use. The PMRA introduced […] Read more
Crop Management — page 525
Industry accepts fee hike
Stripe rust in Alberta winter wheat
Stripe rust has been found in some winter wheat crops in the Alberta counties of Cardston, Lethbridge, Lacombe and Warner. Alberta Agriculture plant pathologist Mike Harding confirmed the existence of the fungal disease in southern Alberta today. There may also be stripe rust in the Edmonton area, but that is not yet confirmed. Harding said […] Read more
Extreme events rise with temperatures
A longer growing season may come with more regular droughts and heat waves, says researcher
The jet stream and storm paths are becoming loopier and lazier, resulting in more extreme weather over the Prairies and Great Plains as the planet warms. Despite having what felt like colder winters and summers in the past few years, Western Canada is warming. The region’s frost free days have jumped by about a month […] Read more
Oil patch borrows precision technology from agriculture
The same technology that manages overlap and application rates in agriculture has found a home in the oil and gas sector. The industry has long dealt with its non-toxic drilling waste by spreading it on farmland, but that often resulted in material pooling near field headlands or at the edges of pastures. As well, application […] Read more
Why calm air causes spray drift
The farmer is behind on spraying. It’s dead calm. Leaves are still. The sprayer is filled, ready to go. He climbs down from the cab and heads to the house for a nap. Something’s wrong with this scene. There’s spraying to be done and conditions couldn’t be better, so what is going on? Government extension […] Read more
Avoid the inversion: what producers can do
Knowing inversion conditions is the first step to avoiding pesticide misapplication. “The bad news: we have a thermal inversion to some degree just about every day during spray season,” said Jason Deveau of Ontario’s agriculture department. “When we have that very still air, or stagnation as they call it in the States, that’s a thermal […] Read more
Oat buyer says no glyphosate pre-harvest
Grain Millers, a major oat buyer in Western Canada, will no longer purchase oats if the crop has been desiccated with glyphosate. In an April 20 memo to Prairie oat growers, Grain Millers said the new policy was “driven by functional performance attributes of finished products manufactured from oats known to have been treated with […] Read more
Give seed the treatment it deserves
Small and diseased seed and tough conditions can compromise results in many crops. Proper seed treatment can mitigate these issues, say agrologists. This spring has the potential to be as normal as many prairie producers have seen in several years. Snow has left the fields and frost is mainly out of the ground, which means […] Read more
Using variable rates on the farm
Major changes in farming practices always take time, and precision agriculture is no exception. Zero till first caught producers’ attention in the late 1970s, but it took more than 20 years to become mainstream. Despite the obvious benefits of satellite guidance and autosteer, it took a decade for that technology to become mainstream. Farmers began […] Read more
Experts fear ergot may become perennial problem
No products are registered for control and ergot resistant wheat varieties are not on the horizon
Ergot is creating larger financial losses than ever on western Canadian farms. Jim Menzies, a phytopathologist with Agriculture Canada, said the fungal disease, which infects rye, wheat and other cereal crops, has been showing up more frequently during the past 15 years in mainstream crops such as spring wheat and durum. As the disease’s prominence […] Read more
