CHATHAM, Ont. — Ontario wheat yields are highly variable and the crop contains significant levels of vomitoxin, says a senior agronomist with AGRIS Co-operative.
“Much of the wheat is Grade 2, but they could have trouble selling it to feed mills because the vomitoxin levels may be too high,” Dale Cowan said.
The province’s wheat harvest begins in the southwestern corner and moves north and east. What’s unusual is that some of the fields have relatively low levels of fus-arium head blight, which is the disease associated with vomitoxin, but still have high levels of the mycotoxin.
Read Also
Rented farmland jumps 3.4 million acres in Saskatchewan and Alberta
Farmland rented or leased in the two provinces went from 25.7 million acres in 2011 to 29.1 million in 2021, says Census of Agriculture data.
Fusarium levels range from less than one percent to more than four percent.
Cowan said he’s heard of some delivery locations imposing discounts as high as $3 per bushel and is advising farmers who plan to store wheat to test for vomitoxin even if their wheat is rated as Grade 2.
“They’ll want to know what they have,” said Cowan.
The level of vomitoxin will not increase in properly stored wheat, but neither will it drop.
“With the really ugly stuff, be-cause the wheat quality is so poor, there is not a market at the millers, so it has to be discounted to corn.”
The development of vomitoxin and other mycotoxins is associated with weather patterns. Ontario has received more than its usual share of rainfall through the first half of the growing season.
There have also been reports of late blight and other bacterial diseases in tomato and potato fields in the province.
Winter wheat remains a major crop in Ontario, although the overall acreage is down to less than 600,000 acres this year. Yields of 90 bushels per acre are not unusual, but they have been highly variable this year, with some fields yielding less than 50 bu.
More wheat is likely to be planted this fall for rotational reasons because of the trend toward soybeans and corn in Ontario.
Ontario’s corn and soybean crops appear highly variable to the casual observer, and Cowan said timely rain will be needed through August.
Ontario farmers planted 2.9 million acres of soybeans and 2.1 million acres of corn this year.
