REGINA – Prairie farmers who get a lot of rain are finding it’s possible to save money by producing their own fertilizer and weed control with surplus solar energy and moisture.
They are doing this by underseeding a legume called medic with winter wheat.
Martin Entz, of the University of Manitoba’s plant science department, said the concept is one idea researchers and farmers are studying to try to find low cost, on-farm solutions to fertility and weed control issues.
“A lot of our research is designed to develop technology that we are selling back to farmers. What is that doing to the family farm?” Entz said.
Read Also
Land crash warning rejected
A technical analyst believes that Saskatchewan land values could be due for a correction, but land owners and FCC say supply/demand fundamentals drive land prices – not mathematical models
“We need to focus more on things that farmers can learn and then do on their own. To some extent, it’s like direct seeding, a home-grown technology that has really helped farmers’ bottom lines.”
Wasting time
Entz recently told the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association annual meeting that in many areas of the Prairies, about 25 percent of the growing season is not being used. He referred mainly to the weeks after harvest and before freezeup.
Entz has tried underseeding various legumes, such as red clover, alfalfa, Indian Head lentils and chickling vetch, with winter wheat.
“We get significant benefits from this little six week, four week, five week period of legume,” he said, noting the legumes help control weeds like wild oats and dandelions.
They also fix nitrogen, which boosts the following year’s yields.
“But you are probably thinking, ‘that’s great Martin, but I don’t want to spend the money on seed every year.’ You might not have to.”
Since 1991, a group of North Dakota farmers has successfully used an underseeded medic system with wheat, durum, flax and sunflower.
“They are happy because they have been getting much higher protein on their wheat at a lower nitrogen fertilizer rate,” he said.
“They are still fertilizing, but fertilizing less.”
Medic is an annual and a prolific seed producer. Repeated flushes of germination during the growing season are killed with herbicides.
The flush at the end of the summer is left to grow through the fall and set seed.
Entz said medic is well known in Australia where sheep graze on it after the wheat harvest.
He has brought medic varieties from Australia to begin a breeding program in Canada.
Initially, Entz thought this system would work only in high rainfall areas like Manitoba’s Red River Valley, but has since tested it in other areas of Manitoba and has heard of organic farmers using it in southern Saskatchewan.
In drier areas, moisture conservation with minimum-disturbance direct seeding would be vital to its success.
Entz also sees how precision farming technology could work into the system.
“I’m getting impatient with precision agriculture because all we are talking about is input management,” he said.
“If we take precision agriculture to its logical conclusion, we’ve got to start growing different crops in different parts of the field.”
In rolling land, it might be best to seed only in wetter, low areas.
Even in dry regions, seeding might be delayed in low spots in the field because of excess moisture. The medic would help use that moisture, he said.
The system also must be considered for its impact on weeds.
The troubling phenomenon of herbicide resistant weeds developed because farmers relied too much on a limited spectrum of chemical herbicides.
Entz thinks that while rotating among herbicide groups is important, a more vital part of the solution is non chemical weed control – designing crop and forage rotations that naturally manage weeds through competition.
He said this will prevent resistance and preserve the effectiveness of chemical herbicides.
“I think it is important to look at non-chemical control, because that will actually extend the life of chemicals.”
More information on Entz’s research is available on the University of Manitoba’s website under the extension bulletins found at www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/plant_science/.
