WINNIPEG – A Bourgault advertising campaign proclaiming the “Fork in the Road” and “Results Are In!” has touched off a debate between researchers and the company and left farmers wondering which seeding system is best.
The campaign, which ran this winter, stated that “In a dry year, side banding has been proven to reduce canola plant stands by 67 percent and canola yield by more than 20 bushels.”
Much of the information in the campaign was based on research conducted by Guy Lafond, zero-till researcher with Agriculture Canada’s research centre at Indian Head, in conjunction with the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute and the University of Saskatchewan.
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“This isn’t right. It’s a misrepresentation of the complete picture,” said Lafond.
“When the ads first came out, I got a lot of calls from farmers. One farmer from Moosomin called to tell me, ‘I saw that ad and I just can’t believe that, so I have to talk to you. Is that really possible?’
“So I told him that, ‘no, it’s not possible’ and I proceeded to explain to him what had happened. His comment to me was, ‘do they think we’re stupid or something?’ “
Another line in the ad states, “According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, banding nitrogen fertilizer according to the old paradigm of one inch below and one inch to the side of the seed may be insufficient spacing.
A minimum of two inches below and two inches to the side is a generally acceptable distance.”
Lafond called that another misrepresentation.
“It is wrong information when they say that AAFC recommends two inch by two inch spacing. Nobody in our system ever made that recommendation. And they never talked to me about any of this.”
Garry Meier, chief agronomist for Bourgault, said he understands the problem, but doesn’t believe there is a major issue between the research and the information in the ad.
“We do have a situation where we had published a bit of an overly zealous advertisement. Our crew is very skilled at what they do, but they did pick the extreme data in the study.
“That’s a situation I don’t condone by any organization, but when we look at the data, those events (poor canola response at one site) did occur here and in some other studies to various degrees.”
Meier described Bourgault’s engineers as highly motivated and enthusiastic about their product. He said the advertising department shows the same enthusiasm.
“But, they pushed the envelope too far in this one situation.”
In response to the ads, Lafond prepared a written rebuttal, in co-operation with other prairie researchers. The list of people signing on to Lafond’s article contains prominent prairie agronomists including Jeff Schoenau, John Harapiak, Cindy Grant, Gordon Hultgreen, Adrian Johnston, Bill May, Byron Irvine, S.A. Brandt, R. Lemke and S.S. Malhi.
Lafond said he must set the record straight and provide the complete picture.
“In actual fact, there really is no difference between the two methods. They both have strengths and weaknesses. And, if you look at the wheat data, the side banding was better than the mid-row banding. So you could argue that side banding was better than mid-row banding. That’s why we put the rebuttal article together.
“The whole idea of the article is to inform people as much as possible about what is going on. When the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association heard about this, they offered us room in their newsletter to publish the report.”
The newsletter article titled Mid Row Banding or Side Banding: The great debate was published in the 2006 spring issue # 47. On the web, it can be found at www.ssca.ca.
The controversial ads were based on field studies conducted by Agriculture Canada, PAMI and the University of Saskatchewan.
A summary of those results was originally published in PAMI Research Update 761, available at www.pami.ca.
PAMI agronomist Gord Hultgreen personally conducted the plot seeding. He said the issue has grown out of a simple seeding mistake at one site, which in turn led to “selective use of results.”
“I’m a hands-on guy. I was on site and I made the seed depth adjustments too shallow, which resulted in very poor canola emergence and yield.”
Hultgreen said data from that one adjustment error was selected and used in the Bourgault ads to show a 20 bu. per acre yield difference between the two seeding systems. He said it is the consensus of the research group that this result was due to a seeding mistake and not to opener system performance differences.
“What happened is we overlaid the plots,” said Hultgreen.
“Instead of going to new land, we put the new plots directly on the previous year’s plots. In those conditions, I got the depth wrong because of last year’s wheel tracks in the wet clay soil. It’s always hard to seed in wet clay, even at the best of times. I just made a mistake by seeding too shallow with the side band opener.”
In scientific research, it’s normal to delete extreme results if there is a logical explanation for the skewed data. Hultgreen said that is the situation with the banding comparison.
“If there’s a reason for the flawed data, you can take it out. You can’t take it out just because it disrupts the averages. However, the team did document the reason for the poor emergence and yield at that one site.
“That study was done at four sites a year for three years, under a wide range of both environmental and soil conditions. To determine overall trends, it’s important to combine the results from a number of sites over a number of years and not select data from one site in one year.
“I screwed up the seeding on that one site, one year. It wasn’t an opener situation and we documented that. As a result, the research team would prefer the results from that site not be used to compare opener system performance.”
Hultgreen said the incident serves to prove what he has always maintained about seeding.
“It’s the operator that makes the significant difference, not the opener. At farmer meetings, I often say in jest that the biggest variable in doing a good job of seeding is what I call the nut behind the wheel.”
Jeff Schoenau, soil scientist at the U of S, said he put his name on Lafond’s article because he wanted to make people aware of the results.
“You look at that (ad) and raise your eyebrow and say, ‘boy they kind of picked that one out of there. And gee, here’s some other stuff and if they’d looked at it, it would have told a different story.’
“When you have a whole bunch of information, you don’t just pick select parts. It’s really all the information together that tells the story.”
Schoenau said once publicly funded ag research has been published, it becomes public domain. It belongs to everybody, so there is no control over its use.
The ad campaign debate was well under way when Meier was hired by Bourgault on Feb. 21. He pointed to his hiring as a sign of the company’s commitment.
“They (Bourgault) have realized that because of the strong link between engineering and agronomy, it has become necessary to bring in an agronomic proponent to help them better understand the research that’s out there and to essentially keep them in tune when it comes to interpreting and dealing with data,” he said.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I’ve just recently had some good conversations with Guy Lafond, Gord Hultgreen and Adrian Johnston about this situation and they feel the ads were off-side with the way the data was interpreted. But at the same time, those events (low canola performance) did occur. It reflects the risk associated with running these other (side band) openers in real life Western Canada.”
Meier said that on the eastern Prairies, farmers typically encounter higher pH levels. The risk associated with seed and nitrogen fertilizer in close proximity is higher on those soils. Further west, the pH levels decline, as does the risk.
“But that risk is not eliminated. When you look at side-band openers and then look at mid-row banders, the conclusion is that all of these openers are designed to work well somewhere.
“The difference is that in all circumstances, the mid-row concept eliminates the risk associated with placing high rates of fertilizer into the field at the same time you place the seed. This is true whether you use a mid-row system from John Deere, Morris or anybody else.”
Meier said the one set of extreme data in the PAMI-Ag Canada-U of S study shows that human error can be a bigger factor in side band than mid row.
“It’s human error and anyone can make that same mistake. And that’s our point. The plot eventually did grow, but not until after it rained.”
He added that the study also negated the common argument that a mid-row system places the nitrogen too far away from the seed. He said that similar yield results from both systems 84 percent of the time prove that plant roots can and do access the nitrogen.
Meier said the trend to wide row spacing started when nitrogen was surface broadcast. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers were pushing the row spacing up to 15 inches, with good results. Twelve inches has become a common spacing today.
But the move to one-pass, with all fertilizer going into the ground in the same pass as the seed, complicated the issue. It concentrated a high volume of fertilizer closer to the seed row. Meier said mid-row placed nitrogen solves that problem.
“On our farm, we can have soils from three different soil associations on a half mile strip. Now, what opener do you select and how do you set them for that situation? For us, a dedicated seed shank and a dedicated mid-row fertilizer shank solved the problem.”
