Winter canola is becoming more popular with farmers on the southern U.S. Plains.
Gene Neuens, canola representative for the Producer Co-operative Oil Mill in Oklahoma, said farmers will likely plant more than 300,000 acres of winter canola on the southern Great Plains this fall, compared to 170,000 acres last year.
“The main reason we brought canola down here is for weed control in wheat,” Neuens said.
“We’ve had continuous wheat for 100 years in western Oklahoma, Texas Panhandle, southwest Kansas, and we needed something to rotate with it.”
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Dave Charne, research director with Pioneer Hi-Bred, said Canadian farmers have nothing to fear.
He doesn’t expect the crop’s new found popularity in the United States to threaten Canadian producers because global demand is growing faster than supply.
“That’s not going to be a high producing area, nothing close to the scale of Western Canada,” he said.
“Lots of that canola will be consumed locally, for biodiesel and that kind of thing.”
Charne said 20 million acres of winter canola is grown in Europe, which is roughly equivalent to the canola crop in Western Canada, but he does not expect the crop to become a significant part of the crop rotations in Canada in the near future.
“Most winter canola is grown in USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) winter hardiness Zone 6 or higher. There is a little bit grown in five in places like the Ukraine, but most is in 6 ,7 or 8,” Charne said.
“In Western Canada, there are a few pockets of Zone 5, but most are four or lower — the majority is in Zone 3 or even Zone 2. Winter canola is well beyond its safe zone of adaptation with that kind of winter climate.”
Winter hardiness zones are defined by the mean minimum winter temperatures and available on the USDA website.
Farmers who grow winter canola are able to take advantage of spring moisture and move up flowering dates by about two weeks to avoid the plants flowering during excessive heat spells. As well, the crop can help farmers who want to include a fall seeded crop rotation. But it doesn’t help distribute the workload because seeding winter canola conflicts with harvest time for spring planted crops.
In Oklahoma, Neuens said he expects winter canola acres to continue to increase there. Millions of acres are suitable for a wheat and winter canola rotation, he added.
“Our insurance allows you to plant canola every other year,” Neuens said.
“When we first started, we had Monsanto and Oklahoma State involved, and we didn’t want to get some of the root diseases started down here like blackleg and sclerotinia. Also, wheat is our major crop down here and we didn’t want to be involved in taking that out, either.”
Wheat yields increase 10 to 20 percent on fields where canola had grown the previous year, Neuens said. There was also less dockage.
Winter canola depends on fall precipitation for moisture, and recent rain across the southern Plains has given many farmers the green light to plant the crop.
Seeding time is critical. The plant needs to establish its taproot and crown and ideally reach the eight to 10 leaf stage before it freezes and goes into dormancy, Neuens said.
In the spring, the plant puts on new leaves and then bolts.
