In early July, Darin Egert of Cando, Sask., looked over his canola fields and could see the long-promised benefits of the fancy and expensive new varieties of canola.
“It looked great,” said Egert, president of the Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association.
As Saskatchewan canola growers slowly work their way through harvest, their eyes and the eyes of the industry will be focused on yields. This is the first real chance to see what the combination of herbicide tolerance and hybrid breeding can mean for the province’s vast canola fields.
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The yield estimates for wheat and soybeans were neutral to bullish, but these were largely a sideshow when compared with corn.
“There’s lots of hope that yields could be quite high there,” said Nolita Clyde of Ag Commodity Research. “People are waiting to see the empirical evidence about just what they can do.”
Canola yields in parts of Manitoba and Alberta have risen considerably in recent years as herbicide tolerant hybrid canola varieties have proved to be capable of producing a big harvest in good conditions.
But Saskatchewan has suffered greatly from several years of terrible weather, preventing farmers and the industry from getting a clear view of whether the hybrid herbicide tolerant varieties can live up to seed company hype.
In fact, average canola yields have fallen over the past five years in Saskatchewan, even as herbicide tolerant and hybrid varieties were coming on the market.
“It doesn’t really entice you to pay extra for it,” Clyde said.
“Since the GMOs have been introduced we really haven’t had a good growing year in Saskatchewan.”
Egert said Saskatchewan farmers think the new varieties are a big improvement, but the evidence won’t be in their bins for a few weeks.
“There are some pretty fantastic crops out there,” Egert said.
Last year in his area, some summerfallow-seeded herbicide tolerant hybrid canola crops that escaped the worst of the frost averaged 40 bushels per acre.
However, most farmers had been hit by frost and drought for several years in a row and while the new varieties seemed to be producing more, it was a case of comparing a bad crop to a really bad crop.
“They were disappointing, and you did pay more for them, but I think you still got your value out of them because I think the yields were better than they would have been,” Egert said.
“You didn’t get the potential, but you got some payback at the combine.”
Egert said he thinks hybrid breeding will be a bigger factor in increasing yields than herbicide tolerance. However, since both are now commonly packaged in the same seed, producers will probably notice simply an overall increase in yield without knowing which feature is producing the most gain.
“The hybrid technology crops were far and away above the open pollinated varieties,” he said about the way his canola looked in early July.
While many Saskatchewan farmers are harvesting canola now, Egert has up to a month to wait because hail hit his crop in mid-July. It mostly recovered and reflowered, but is delayed by weeks.
He’s hoping that he’ll be one of the Saskatchewan farmers who finally gets a chance to see the full benefits of the new varieties, ones he’s been paying for for years.
“I think we’ll get it off,” he said.
