Frustration had become entrenched by late May on Dale Thorenson’s farm near Newberg, North Dakota.
Thorenson and his son and nephew thought they wouldn’t seed a crop on their fields because the land was saturated following a late snow melt and heavy rain in May.
Unwilling to give up, they decided to aerial seed 1,300 acres with canola in early June.
The act of desperation paid off as the crop produced a near record yield for their farm.
“They (yields) were in the 2,500 pound (50 bushel) range,” said Thorenson, assistant director of the U.S. Canola Association.
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“For canola, I’d say that would match the highest yield we ever had.”
Thorenson said his son and nephew, who basically run the farm, decided to seed with an airplane.
They chose to aerial seed, a first for the Thorenson farm, because they wanted something in the ground to soak up the excess moisture.
“They knew they weren’t going to get all of the land seeded but they wanted something growing on it. So this seemed the most plausible (crop) to get going,” he said.
“They didn’t expect it to turn out as well as it did.”
The cousins incorporated the canola into the soil immediately after seeding with a coulter and a harrow and then applied fertilizer when the crop emerged.
Thorenson said neighbours thought they were nuts, but the canola re-sponded despite the unorthodox start.
Canola plants covered every acre of the field when it came time to harvest in late September, even areas with large rocks.
“The one field (with) rock piles, they had trouble harvesting because they couldn’t see where the rock piles were,” Thorenson said.
“All of the sudden they’d be on top of a rock pile that was (hidden by) canola.”
He said climate change and the two decade stretch of wet weather on the northern Plains could make aerial seeding more common.
“Sure we have crop insurance, but crop insurance is more designed for producing a crop, not preventive planting,” he said.
“You really need to grow a crop … whether it’s aerial seeding or an air system that’s put on a coulter that you can float over the ground.”
Brian Jenks, a North Dakota State University extension specialist in Minot, N.D., said aerial seeding remains rare in the state.
He said everything had to work perfectly in the Thorenson experiment to achieve yields of 50 bu. per acre.
As a result, he’s not ready to recommend aerial seeding to canola growers in North Dakota.
