The yield monitor had done a slow dance between 83 and 125 bushels for two consecutive days as Dennis Bulani and invited witnesses watched the John Deere 9760 combine swallow big swaths.
It would have been no big deal if it had been winter wheat in Kansas or Germany, but this was a 90 bu. spring wheat crop on a farm near Biggar, Sask.
Bulani seeded Osler and Splendor in the spring of 2009. Cold, wet conditions early in the growing season were a setback for most crops last year, so he had low expectations.
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However, he managed the crop in strict accordance with the agronomic program he developed, so he was optimistic about how it would compare with neighbouring crops.
The situation looked better by midsummer when Bulani and his team of 10 agronomists toured the fields. Based on plant counts, they estimated the wheat might go as high as 75 or 80 bu. per acre if the weather cooperated.
Bulani owns and operates Rack Petroleum, with its nine bulk fertilizer and petroleum outlets.
The agronomist also farms a section of land, which he refers to as his private research farm. It was there that he developed the all-encompassing agronomic program he now calls Ultimate Yield.
Last Nov. 10-11, the certified weigh wagon documented that the crop delivered 86 to 92 bu. per acre, averaging 17 percent moisture.
“It was a shock to us,” Bulani said.
“We would have never expected that crazy of a result. It’s as if one plus one equals six.”
He said it started with correct management at seeding time.
While many farmers may put in 60 to 80 pounds of seed per acre, Bulani put in 114 pounds, nearly two bushels to the acre. He said that’s probably quite a bit higher than the 600 heads per sq. yard normally found on most farms.
“We do this because seed is the first factor we address in the program. If you want a top yield, you’ve got to score high on seed selection and plant population.
“If you screw up with seed, there’s absolutely nothing you can do the rest of the growing season to make up for it. Nothing.”
Bulani said Ultimate Yield addresses seven management areas, each rated on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the top score.
Each category has as many as a dozen sub-categories.
“This is the first agronomic program I know of that really pulls all the components together in a single plan,” Bulani said.
“Farmers have a problem in that the ag industry is so compartmentalized. Each discipline just looks at their specific area. Nobody takes the time to pull it all together into one single plan.”
He said seed companies focus only on breeding, fertilizer companies look only at nutrition, crop protection companies deal only with disease, weeds and insects while implement manufacturers focus only on iron.
Bulani’s main categories are seed quality, time of seeding, seedbed preparation, depth control, weather, nutrition and pest control.
It’s critical to use the highest quality seed. In wheat, that means plump, high protein and uniform, he said.
“If you start with high protein seed, then your plants are stronger when they’re hit by stress. And that stress can come from weather or disease or insects or anything.
“That’s exactly the situation on my farm last year when we grew that 90 bu. crop. The weather was against us. It was very stressful on the plants, but we started with the plumpest, highest protein seed we could find.”
He tried to practice what he preaches, but only scored a nine in seed quality because he couldn’t find seed with 15 percent protein.
Bulani said there’s no excuse for scoring lower than nine in the seed quality category because there’s enough high quality seed available.
“The difference between top scoring seed and poor seed is maybe $2 or $3 a bushel. It’s well worth the extra money.
“The standards for certified seed in Western Canada are not high enough for our farm … and we’re a lot more fussy about the variability in the 1,000 kernel weight.”
Seed purity is another issue.
Bulani said yield drag occurs past the third generation when farmers grow their own seed.
Quantity is the next issue.
For winter wheat and spring wheat, Bulani puts down enough seed to produce at least 600 heads per sq. yard, assuming there will be 2.5 tillers per plant.
“Let’s pretend you’re a seed and you can think,” Bulani said.
“Do you really care about the price of fertilizer? No. All you care about are simple things like soil temperature, soil moisture and getting enough nitrogen, phosphate and all those other nutrients.”
Bulani said many farmers have their own seeding deadline in mind. For example, they may think it has to be done by May 22 or it will be too late and then what will the neighbours say.
He tells producers to forget about that imaginary deadline and instead start thinking like a seed. As far as seeds are concerns, he said, optimal seeding time is whenever soil temperature is 10 C to 14 C.
Bulani said waiting for those conditions will always result in a higher yield.
However, while that’s possible on a one-section farm, it isn’t once a farm reaches 2,000 acres.
“When it comes to the seeding date, the reality is that most western Canadian farmers can only score four,” he said.
“That’s why we have to strive for high scores in the other categories. Also, we can mitigate the seeding date shortfall with things like seed primers, phosphate fertilizer and seed treatments.”
Seedbed preparation is the most difficult category to judge because of the high number of variables.
Bulani recommended the same things farmers usually strive for: firm seedbed, good seed-to-soil contact, correct crop rotation, consideration of field history and herbicide residues.
For his area of Saskatchewan, he recommended a typical four-year rotation of cereal-pulse-cereal-oil-seed.
He said his crop rotation guru, Dwayne Beck of the University of South Dakota, has as many as 10 crops in some of his rotations.
Beck’s research has shown that sticking to the plan is more profitable than chasing commodity prices.
Bulani agreed, but also conceded that the Canadian climate saddles prairie growers with not much more than a four crop rotation.
“We urge growers on (the program) to put wheat on pulse stubble. Because of the markets this year, a lot of them ignored my advice.
“So the guys who did that got a bad score on their rotation. And now they’re kicking themselves.… Wheat markets are taking off.”
Although Bulani’s program is officially only two years old, he said he has diligently followed a strict rotation since 1984, which has reaped the long-term financial benefits Beck talks about.
Field history is also important.
“You really need to study the history of every field. For instance, the book says you can spray Express or Expresser. That’s fine.
“My question is what are the subclinical impacts of the minute amounts of residue when you have high moisture, drenching, seed too deep or any of the other things that go wrong? We try to withdraw any residual herbicides as quickly as possible.
“With canola following wheat, we try to look for a non-residual herbicide in the wheat year. For example, Refine breaks down very quickly. We almost never see a Refine residue.”
He said scouting and field mapping is also essential. Although he has done soil analysis for herbicide residue, it’s expensive and not always accurate. Field symptoms are more relevant.
Another typical scenario is Pre-Pass as a burn down followed by Frontline and then another application of Pre-Pass.
“We think that’s detrimental to crop potential. That field will score a lot lower in seedbed preparation.”
Fall trash management is another sub-factor. Growers should be able to score high in this category in normal conditions, Bulani said.
However, wet harvests lead directly to low scores on seedbed preparation. If fall trash is overwhelming, spring fieldwork is one way to raise the score in this category.
However, sometimes there are too many factors beyond a farmer’s control, Bulani admitted.
Seed-to-soil contact is an area where farmers question his premise that most good management doesn’t cost more money. Farmers say that the best seed-to-soil contact is only possible with the latest high-tech, high-dollar drills.
“There is something to that, I agree,” he said.
“If you want the best seed-to-soil contact, then you need the expensive drills with all the parallel linkage and stuff. But once you’ve bought it, you’ve got it forever. And your crops will benefit from it for many years.”
Bulani said seed buried three-quarters of an inch deep earns a top score of 10.
“Growers don’t seem to understand that modern spring wheat varieties have been selected for a short coleoptile,” he said.
“If you go deeper than an inch and a half, well that’s about as long as the coleoptile is.… If you seed at two inches looking for moisture, then you get a bad score on seed depth. That crop will not reach full potential.”
These factors cost money, but the saving grace is that most of the fertilizer and crop protection expenditure can be delayed until the grower is able to assess the potential of the young crop.
Mother Nature is a management factor, despite farmers not having control over it.
“It’s true, you can’t control the weather, but you can measure it and score it on your crop,” said agronomist Shannon Friesen.
“If you rate the weather against the other six management areas you have controlled, you’ll see how your crop stands up to stress.
“A healthy crop tolerates bad weather and stress better than a poor crop.”
For more information, contact Bulani at 306-948-1800 or dennis. therack@sasktel.net
