Worries about pushing lentil and canola rotations too far are among the many reasons for greater public investment into variety research and market development for western Canadian crops, particularly wheat and barley.
The Saskatchewan Pulse Growers is warning growers not to let the temptation of high lentil prices make them forget sound agronomic crop rotations.
In the late 1980s, farmers grew lentils too often on the same fields, causing fungal disease to build, overwhelming resistance in varieties and causing cropping disasters in some years. It forced a major investment in breeding to develop new resistant varieties.
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Crop planning spreadsheets suggest canola is another crop likely to see increased sown area this spring, but again, growers are worried about planting the moneymaker too often for fear of spreading clubroot and other diseases.
Canola and lentils are attractive because the traditional cereal mainstays of western Canadian farming, wheat and barley, don’t pay the bills like they used to.
Wheat and barley prices are often unattractive and there is less chance with these crops that high yields will offset poor prices.
As a result, they are increasingly seen as rotational crops, grown only to give a break between more profitable options.
But if allowed to become less financially attractive, their role in the rotation will be reduced, putting the profitable crops at risk from disease.
More effort is needed in agronomic and market development to ensure all prairie crops are profitable.
Corn offers an example of how variety and market development can together keep a crop profitable for farmers and create economic gains for the whole country.
In 1960, average corn yields were double average wheat yields. Today, they are 3.5 times greater than wheat yields.
Increasing corn yield was easier because it was hybridized, a challenge yet to be fully accomplished in wheat. But if the tools of biotechnology are brought fully to bear on wheat and barley, yields can be increased.
To consume all that extra corn, vast new industries were created that process corn into its constituent parts to be used in an array of foods, industrial products and fuel. These industries help to support corn prices and made enormous contributions to the economies of U.S. Midwestern states.
This happened in part because private research focused on corn due to its vast acreages and hybridization that requires seed to be bought yearly. Crops without those attributes, which include most of the crops grown in Western Canada, get little private sector investment and rely on a comparatively small amount of farmer check-off and public funding.
Canada’s federal government faces a large deficit after the 2009 recession and is planning to control spending in its next budget. But agricultural research is one area where spending should increase, not shrink.
Farmers carried more than their fair burden during the last round of deficit fighting in the mid 1990s.
As the coalition of Farmers for Investment in Agriculture notes, public funding for agronomic research in Canada is still 40 percent less than it was in 1994 after adjusting for inflation.
This robs the Canadian economy of needed stimulus because every dollar spent on agricultural research and development yields an estimated $10 in economic benefit.
Even modest investments can pay huge dividends. Witness Saskatchewan Pulse Growers’ project showing Indian consumers that dehulled Canadian green lentils can be substituted for domestically grown peas. That created 300,000 tonnes of potential new demand worth millions of dollars to Canadian farmers.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
