Lessons from Alberta | Farmers pushed rotations for financial reasons and paid the price
BRANDON — Dangerous rotations were one of the two main causes of the mass outbreak of clubroot in the Edmonton area a decade ago, those close to the situation say.
However, it’s hard for farmers to always follow the recommended rotations when they have to stay in business.
“When it comes to rotating it, it’s easy to talk about, but if you’ve got bills to pay … it puts you between a rock and a hard spot,” said central Alberta farmer Richard Petherbridge, recalling the early 2000s.
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Petherbridge saw his fields ruined by clubroot, a disaster for thousands of central Alberta farmers who lost the ability to grow their best money-making crop for years.
A lot of heavy harrowing and discing takes place in the heavy soil of that region, mixing it up and allowing clubroot spores to spread wide and deep.
No resistant varieties were available at the time and canola rotations were too short. As a result, the spore load ran rampant, and the Alberta outbreak was devastating.
Dan Orchard, a Canola Council of Canada agronomist in the Edmonton area, said most farmers grew canola every second year, while 10 to 20 percent grew the crop two out of every three years.
Only a small percentage grew canola every third or fourth year, which is the recommended frequency. However, they were the ones who survived.
“It’s the guys who grew it every third or fourth year that weren’t finding those large patches on their field,” said Orchard.
Those farmers eventually saw patches of clubroot-crippled canola but not entire ruined fields like those with shorter rotations.
“It never got to the point that they lost a crop from it,” said Orchard.
“I think that intense rotation combined with excessive tillage was probably your main culprit.”
Petherbridge said everyone knew too-short rotations were dangerous, but farmers found it often impossible to make any money in farming those days. As a result, they became convinced that growing canola back to back or every two years was financially necessary.
He said he remembers $1.65 per bushel barley and $3.50 wheat from that time but much better prices for canola. It is what drove local farmers to seed canola again and again.
Orchard recalls a friend worrying about losing out on good canola prices if he stuck to a four year rotation.
“It’s so much about economics,” said Orchard.
However, even though it can be hard to grow a less-returning crop than canola, farmers need to realize the dangers they’re playing with if they don’t stick to good rotations.
Orchard said only a couple of clubroot-resistant families of canola are available, and those will lose their resistance if they’re not rotated.
Farmers also probably don’t want to choose from only a handful of varieties, which is their fate if they become heavily clubroot-infected.
Keeping fields to only low levels of clubroot spores leaves farmers with a wide range of seed choices, but heavily infected fields force farmers to grow nothing but resistant varieties.
