Pioneer Hi-Bred Ltd. is hoping the burgeoning ethanol industry will encourage growers to experiment with a new crop.
“While many western Canadian farmers are unfamiliar with growing corn, our extensive corn research efforts are making it a viable new crop for many areas in the West,” said Herman VanGenderen, area sales manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred.
“Over the next few years our sales rep team will be actively promoting corn in the vicinity of the two Husky (Energy) facilities and helping innovative producers learn how to grow this exciting new crop.”
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Husky Energy spokesperson Dennis Floate said while the two 130 million litre plants the company built in Lloydminster, Sask., and Minnedosa, Man., were designed for wheat, they have been using a lot of corn lately.
“We’re using it by default rather than by design,” he said.
Half of the feedstock used in Minnedosa is Manitoba corn and the other half wheat. The ratio varies at the Lloydminster plant depending on availability, but Floate said the company has bought corn from the United States.
“We’re having a tough time right now accessing feed grain quality wheat,” he said.
“The wheat board is a strong competitor for wheat in the area. That is affecting our supplies.”
Husky is attempting to contract more feed wheat for its Lloydminster plant, offering $7 per bushel delivered last week, but farmers are still getting used to dealing with the company and have been reluctant to commit.
“We have a strong relationship with producers in the Manitoba area so that makes a big difference when you start looking for contracts,” Floate said.
Growers who contract with the Lloydminster plant will receive five percent off Refine and Triton products. Those who sign up with Minnedosa will receive 10 percent off Refine, Triton, Accent and Ultim.
Crops eligible for contracting through the program include red winter wheat, Canada Prairie spring red, Canada Prairie spring white, Canada Western soft white and corn hybrids.
Husky’s two plants consume 700,000 tonnes of feed grain annually, making the company the largest buyer of feed grain in Western Canada. Floate said the company has learned how the enzymes in corn work more effectively than those of wheat, so the plants will always use some corn.
Pioneer Hi-Bred spokesperson Rachel Faust said the ethanol sector could boost western Canadian corn acres.
“They definitely want corn. It’s a bigger kernel (than wheat) and it’s a higher energy kernel,” she said.
Growers in Manitoba and Alberta seeded 210,000 acres of corn for grain in 2007, with 95 percent of those acres planted in Manitoba.
Faust believes corn could displace some of the 10.3 million acres of barley grown in Western Canada, much of which ends up as feed.
Pioneer Hi-Bred is developing earlier maturing and stress tolerant lines of corn at its research facilities in Edmonton and Morden, Man., that would be well adapted to the Prairies.
“We are actively breeding corn hybrids in Western Canada,” she said.
Faust said it will take time to come up with a line that could be grown as far north as Lloydminster.
Pioneer Hi-Bred is stepping up its corn sales efforts, hiring more representatives for the prairie region along with trained agronomists to teach farmers how to properly grow the crop for feed or for the burgeoning ethanol sector.
“We hope that (ethanol) will be one way that people can grow more corn for profit in the (Red River) Valley or in the Lloydminster area.”
