SOMERSET, Man. – When May arrives, the Sierens family is going to do
what tens of thousands of other farm families across the Prairies will
do.
“We’re going to plant a crop and hope that the markets recover,” said
Chris Sierens as he organized sales and shipments in the office that
sits beside his farm’s weigh scale and grain bins.
While many farmers in Saskatchewan and Alberta are desperately short of
rain and may radically change their seeding plans depending on whether
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they get any, the Sierens farm has enough moisture to germinate crops.
That’s a common situation in central and eastern Manitoba, where rain
hasn’t been a problem. Last spring the Red River Valley, east of where
the Sierens farm, had too much moisture.
But the problem in this part of Manitoba is fusarium head blight, and
that won’t be washed away by a few good rains.
It’s a problem that has bedevilled eastern Manitoba for years and is
spreading. So far it isn’t a big problem near the Sierens farm, and
they hope it stays that way. Marcel Sierens, Chris’s father, says
they’re keeping an eye out for it.
In fact, the Sierens hope to be part of the solution to the fusarium
problem. They are seed growers and this year plan to grow about 100
acres of Alsen wheat.
It is expected to have relatively high resistance to fusarium head
blight and could mean a lot fewer fusarium problems for Red River
Valley farmers if it gets full registration next year. North Dakota
farmers are already growing it this year.
But the Sierens don’t know if they will be able to get the Alsen seed
in time for planting. It has received interim registration, but can’t
yet be sold commercially.
If they don’t get the Alsen, they’ll seed Domain.
Every spring is a bit of a guessing game for seed growers, as they try
to figure out what varieties farmers will want to grow the following
year. Guessing wrong can be expensive, Marcel said.
“If it doesn’t catch on, we lose, because we’ve bought expensive seed
that’s hard to sell,” he said.
“Fifty percent of the time a new variety will catch on and we’ll carry
on with it next year.”
Chris said some commercial growers think seed growers have an easier
time making money, but in fact they have been squeezed by the
increasing royalty fees charged by private variety developers.
The federal government used to produce most varieties of most crops, so
there weren’t large royalty charges attached. But now that the
government has backed out of much of the breeding, royalties are more
common.
That’s bad for seed growers, Chris said, because most farmers are only
willing to pay a small premium to get pedigreed seed compared to
bin-run seed.
He said farmers will stop buying the seed if royalties raise the price
too much, so seed growers have maintained sales by cutting their own
margins.
