There is no comparing the productivity per acre for an industrialized farm to any other mode of farming. Never in history have so many been fed by so few.

The key problem right now is that agriculture requires a lot energy, particularly from fossil fuels. There are a number of hopeful possibilities to reduce agriculture’s dependence on fossil fuels, e.g. crops that can obtain their own nitrogen would cut down drastically on fossil fuel used for fertilizer.

Industrial farms are not likely to be around forever, but they are the best solutions we have at the moment. Their efficient use of resources allows us to set aside land for parks and forest while feeding the world’s population better every year. We need to look ahead come up with better solutions and not despair because our current solution isn’t perfect.

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
– Burke (1729-1797)

One of his key points was that by watching the pigs’ diets closely, they’ve cut the pigs’ P output by almost half and there is evidence that they may be able to cut it in half again. The key thing here is that this is a low to now cost solution that works over the long term.

Marc discussed manure separation options and not much has changed – centrifuges are still the system of choice unless electricity prices suddenly shoot way up.

He also provided some information on the breakdown of the carbon footprint of pig production in Quebec. Roughly half of the greenhouse gasses in hog production is from the feed, with a bit over a third attributable to manure management, Farm operations and the slaughterhouse account for the balance. Even if pigs are shipped as far away as Japan, transportation has very little impact on the overall carbon footprint (3.6%).

Gary Plohman from MAFRI spoke on manure separation in Manitoba. Something as simple as using the manure from the liquid cell on high phosphorus land and the manure from the solid cell on low P land can help with P levels. There are a number of technologies they won’t be looking at. The current MAFRI-PAMI study will evaluate Alfa Laval Centrifuge and the Fournier Rotary Press with and without flocculants under MB conditions.

Bryce Wood from Manitoba Conservation gave us a quick run through of the current Manure Management Regulations. He emphasized that the regulation have been amended about 6 times since they were first implemented in 1998. All operations must comply with the P thresholds (< 60 ppm apply on an N basis, 60-120ppm apply up to 2x crop removal of P, 120-179ppm up to 1x crop removal of P, >179 ppm no manure application). The audit program covers about 10% of MMPs in any given year, chosen randomly.

Clay Sawka from MAFRI talked about Nutrient Excretion Models. He emphasized how important it is to look at feed options and crop rotations before investing in expensive technologies. These approaches are very effective in dealing wiht P and can save you money as well – with DiCal at upwards of $700/tonne, why pour it through the pig when it’s not needed? Make sure your pigs are getting enough P and don’t overfeed. He then ran through an example nutrient excretion model and showed how an operation could cut its land base requirements by 1/3 without doing anything fancy.

H. Asgedom’s talk on Nitrogen Oxide Emissions from Urea and Dairy Manure compared nitrous oxide emissions from five treatments:  control unamended, ESN, Solid Dairy manure, Urea, SuperUrea.  Urea and SuperUrea  showed higher cumulative nitrous oxide, ESN plots had least cumulative nitrous oxide.  For manure, nitrous oxide release was triggered by fall manure application.  Yield seemed to correspond to cumulative emissions – higher nitrous oxide = higher yield.

Krista Hanis discussed Eco-system Scale Methane Flux.  Her research was up north near Churchill.  2009 spring results show a gradual increase in methane, not a burst.  2010 fall results show no big burst during freeze-up either.   Their current hypothesis is that a high water table decreases methane losses through consumption or trapping methane in bubbles.  The greatest losses were when the water table was 10cm below surface and air temperatures were warm.

Mario Tenuta asked Is it possible to create profitable Green House Gas (GHG) Neutral Agroecosystems?  Why pursue Green House Gas (GHG) Neutral Agroecosystems?  Three possible answers are: Carbon trading, improving system efficiency and profitability,  and being good neighbors and limiting atmospheric GHG.  The current Agricultural problems with GHG are problems of design: crops are poor competitors, most are annuals (not active in winter), most crops don’t fix N, N in residues is subject to losses, farmers tend to maximize useful yield/land area.  Crops will be dependent on N inputs for some time.  Alfalfa brings down net GHG, as do most other perennials.

Ikechukwu Agomoh discussed research into Coagulant/Floculant effects on swine manure separation.  The conclusion was that most of the solids settle out by 8 hours regardless of additive (including control).

Ray Bittner talked about his experience with Phosphorous Ramp Calibration strips in the Interlake.  In the Interlake all crops are dependent on supplemental P.  Extra P promoted alfalfa growth (vs. grass).  With low P soils (4-5 ppm) there was definite yield response, soil with 15 ppm or higher of P showed no yield response, and soils with around 10 ppm had some yield response.  P removal in feed was higher in high P soils.
General trend is increased soil test P with increased application.  They got two different results:  Hilbre site – never worth applying extra P; Arborg site – always worth applying P.

Waraidzo Chiyoka studied Nitrogen Uptake by Barley amended with anaerobically digested manure.  Objective: Determine uptake in anaerobically digested manure versus raw manure.  Pelletization reduces moisture wchich increases haul distance.  Nitrogen uptake increased for everything except pellets.  N availability did not differ between raw manure and separated solids.  Yield increased with increased N regardless of the form of N.

D. Ige’s talk on Use of wheat dried distillers grain with and without enzyme supplement in pig diet: effect on phosphorus solubility in manure amended soil had interesting results.  P in DDGS has been shown to be more available to animals than that in grains.  Five diets were formulated.
Feces and urine collected and applied to different MB soils.  DDGS had no effect on P solubility in coarse soils, influenced P solubility in fine soils,
Caution must be exercised in assessing effects of diets as effects can vary with soil.

Xiaopeng Gao talked about Producing Crops with Low Cadmium and High Zinc on the Canadian Prairies.  There are health concerns with excess Cd or insufficient Zn.  He studied the effects of common ag practices on Cd and Zn levels.  Cultivar and soil type has effect on CD and Zn  (lower Cd, higher Zn in Clay vs FSL).  More Cd in fertilizer = more Cd in crops.  N fertilizer increased grain Cd at all site-years. N fertilizerdecreased grain Zn at all site-years. Selection of suitable source, timing, and placement of N is important.  Effect of preceding crop depends on crop species.  Grain Zn was higher after flax than after canola, grain Cd not affected.  Either long term or immediate P fert increased grain Cd , decreased grain Zn.  Tillage had little effect on either ZN or Cd.

I love listening to Rigas Karamanos’ talks – he always has interesting stuff to report.  Updated Phosphorus Recommendations for Wheat, Barley and Canola in Manitoba.  Hi goal here is attaching economic analysis to agronomic response.  All crops have a point where yield response is unlikely.  The current figures for P removal are: Barley P removal = .4 lb/bu, Canola 0.9, CWRS =0.55.   Rigas has written a paper showing probability of response to P fert based on soil test:

Soil Test P :  Probability of Response

<5 ppm : 100%

 6-10 : 71%

11-15 : 50%

16-20 : 50%

21+  : 16%?

Net return = (crop price x yield increase) – (nutrient price x nutrient rate).  Rigas has a P rate of return calculator available.

Karimi Dehkordi spoke on Measuring the magnitude and variability of nitrate leaching using field core lysimeters.   N leaching into drinking water is health concern.  Objective is to determine influence of liquid manure, solid manure, and conventional fertilizer on N leaching.   A Lysimeter is essentially big pipe put vertically into the ground.   Two plant samples were collected: early and at harvest. Leachate was collected at 5 intervals
Leaching of N is much greater on annual crops than on perennials.  Water leaching in perennials was also less than in annuals.  Perennials had greater biomass.

S. M. Sayem discussed their research on In-situ measurement of nitrogen mineralization from manures using anion exchange resin.  The problem is that we need better measurements of nitrogen release from manures.  The study took place at Glenlea and Carman and used resin and soil analyses.  Ammonium N declined with time andapproached background levels after two weeks.  Nitrate N increased with time due to nitrification and mineralization.
Total Mineral N was 4 times greater at Carman than at Glenlea.  Anion resin worked at Carman but not at Glenlea – it appears that it works in light soils but not clays.

Daniel Rheault gave some preliminary results for Quantifying the Relationship between Soil P Measures and P Loss by Runoff for Manitoba Soils under Field Conditions: Year 1 Preliminary Results.  The study used four sites plus one baseline (Rosser).  The general trend is that higher soil P means higher runoff P.  They used Total Disolved P (TDP) rather than just Total P as it gave a slightly better relation to runoff P.    All three agronomic methods (olsen, kelowna, melich) of measuring soil P were pretty close.  Environmental methods were similar.  0-5cm gave better relationship than 0-15cm (but they are highly correlated).  They didn’t see evidence of a point at which runoff P increased greatly.  Increased residue meant decreased runoff at 3 of 4 sites (with the exception being a no-till site).  As time goes on runoff reduces.  Site is a huge factor for P runoff (soil texture, topography).

M.D. Timmerman decided to go for the long title challenge with Managing fourteen hundred-pound bundles of fertilizer bound with twine – MAFRI investigates bale grazing and other extensive fall/winter feeding practices.  Early extension in this area dealt with swath grazing.  Why not keep the cattle in the yard? Potential cost reductions, potential contamination risk reduction, soil fertility, soil quality, agronomic driver is better crop growth, better plant diversity.  Bale grazing gives lots of soil test variability (concentric rings).  Are the nutrients beter managed in the field or in the yard?  Mitchell was able to give a definite it depends.  I didn’t get to ask a question but the one that pops to mind here is how do the overwintering cattle losses from bale grazing compare to standard overwintering losses?

I.D. Amarakoon studied Chlortetracycline, sulfamethazine and tylosin losses in surface runoff following field application of beef cattle manure.  Antibiotics are powerful tools to treat and prevent disease in livestock. 75% of livestock antimicrobials are excreted, which may lead to increases in antibiotic-resistant diseases.  In this study manure from cattle given three different antibiotic treatments was broadcast or incorporated.  Broadcast versus incorporation had different effects for different antibiotics – i.e. broadcast was not always worse than incorporation or vice versa.

Lindsey Andronak looked at Urban Atmospheric Deposition of Selected Pesticides.  This study looked at bulk atmospheric deposition – rainfall and particulate matter from non-point sources.  Tests were done for 72 chemicals from May to Sept.  There was also work done on correlating amount of rainfall to deposition amounts.  In their two sites in south Winnipeg, 19 pesticides were detected.  The rainfall/pesticide correlation was decent R^2 of 0.5824. Particulate matter deposition remained a factor – on one of the few rain-free weeks they still had chemical residue deposited.  Atmospheric deposition is a mjor source of non-point contamination. There were both rural and urban sources for the chemicals.

Xuelian Bai gave us a rundown of Sorption and Degradation of 17B-Estradiol-17Sulfate in Agricultural Soils.  E2 is a natural compound from women, dairy cattle, sows.  Half life in lab is 1/2hour to a few days, in the wild seems to last longer.  Organic carbon content is a big contributor in the dissipation of E2

P. Messing presented A Regional Study on the Pesticide Concentrations in Air.  As opposed to Lindsey Andronak’s study, this one looked at chemcal traces in the air, not deposition.  They used Passive Polyurethane Foam samplers (very low flow) at seven sites in manitoba (mostly in the south).  In their northern sites, they mostly found traces of de-registered chemicals.  In the east (experimental lakes) no pesticides were found.  Spatial variablity of active ingredients is evident across the province and there are also small-scale variations.  Current pesticides seem to breakdown more quickly than older ones.

Adam Guy gave us a study of the Impacts of major flooding on an urban environment.  The flloding in Fargo had many factors: heavy Autumn precipitation, heavy winter snowfall, unfavorable melting pattern, heavy rain on melting snow, maybe urbanization, maybe land management (better drainage).  What is the effect of flooding on water quality? What is the effect of flooding on sediment contamination? They did analysis of new sediment and existing soil and concluded that sediment was generally richer in nutrients and carbon than existing soil.

Alison Murat showed the results of an early study of Germination and Early Survival of Brassica Species in Organic and Mineral Soils Contaminated with Multiple Trace Elements.  The site they were looking at had contamination due to idustrial activity and conventional remediation.  Objective: evaluate three species to germinate and survive in contaminated soils and adjust conditions to improve plant growth.  In general organic soil was more contaminated than mineral soil.  Contaminated soil negatively impacted growth of Brassica – i.e. all the plants died.   Future work will need to improve plant growth and survival – add nutrients, different species.  Their next try will be with  tufted hairgrass.  Future work – looking at multiple growth cycles and experimental factors (soil type, fertilizer tpe, EDTA rate)

Yi Zhang spoke on Soil survey data for managing soil salinity. Manitoba has 0.6 million saline acres, Sasktachewant has 3.3 million, and Alberta has 1.6 million acres.   Soil surveys evalute salinity in several ways: site observation, soil sampling, lab test, field instrument survey.  Electromagnetic induction is used to map salinity, but it has to be coupled with lab tests.  They use DUALEM with GPS and GIS to map salinity.  Salinity survey is often used with precision farming.  Electrical conductivity maps to soil textures as well as salinity.  Salinity levels correspons inversely with crop yield in many cases (there are other factors too).  In extreme cases, salinity affects Ag Capability class.

He makes a lot of good points in this presentation.

Outside advisers are needed when businesses outgrow management.  There comes a point when you just can’t do it all yourself.  There are times when calling on outside expertise can save or make you money.

One tricky part when selecting a farm adviser is knowing what you’re hiring them for.  It is best if the farmer knows exactly what objective they’re trying to reach and has detailed performance goals.  Know your adviser and their capabilities – you usually don’t want a crop adviser giving you livestock advice.

If you’re looking for independent farm advice, please give Tone Ag a call!

Kim McConnell  of Adfarm opened up with a very broad spanning talk on Meeting Customer Needs in a Changing World.  He talked about how the farm world is changing with consolidation – fewer, bigger customers means that it’s vital to retain key customers.  There’s no magical formula here, what customers want is people who understand, anticipate, and fill their needs.  For that to happen, businesses need to find, train, and retain good employees.

Kim made a comment about the huge difference between top and bottom salespeople.  Bill Gates made a similar comment many years ago about programmers: “A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.” It seems to me that we’re moving more towards a world where being great at something is key.  Either make the very cheapest acceptable product or provide something exceptional – the middle ground is slow death.

Richard Moffet talked about Monthly and Seasonal Weather – Is it Predicatable?  Over the last 22 years, weather forecasters have made roughly a 48 hour gain in predictability.  It turns out that precipitation is much more difficult to predict than temperature it.  Precipitation is also much more locally variable – you may get a half-inch in one field and a slight drizzle in a field just down the road.  It turns out that a lot of the information used in weather prediction comes from satellites, not surface stations.

Crop Profitability: Where should we focus our management efforts? by Kevin Dhuyvetter was a fun and practical talk.  From his studies, the two biggest factors in profits are size and costs – bigger farms make more money and those better at managing costs make more money.  Grain or livestock prices  matter in any given year, but not overall.  His team has developed some machinery decision tools.  One thing they’ve been looking at lately is when you should look at cutting back on fertilizer based on crop and fertilizer prices.  It turns out to be a tricky problem when considering multiple nutrients, but they have developed some economically optimal rates for Kansas.  Over time differences in profitability are driven principally by cost and yield differences.  High profit farms are low cost operators, but they do not cut costs at the expense of yields. Machinery is a major determinant of cost differences hence profit differences and current technologies offer tremendous opportunities to cut costs.

Next was a panel discussion on How Farmers are Adjusting to Change.  The three farmers were Scott Corbett, Colin Hudon, and Daniel Hacault.  One of the big themes of their discussion was that the wet weather has affected their farming practices.  Two of the farmers have hired outside consultants to assist in various areas, while the third prefers to keep track of everything himself.

Mario Tenuda’s talk on reducing soil greenhouse emissions on the farm gave some preliminary results from his grad students research projects.  The emphasis was on the patterns of emissions.  The key here is not so much the emissions themselves as the lost yield potential represented by those emisssions.

Rigas Karamanos looked at the role of anyhdrous ammonia in the 4R nutrient stewardship principle.  Soil moisture did not influence the amount of N retained by the soil.  The  lower the pH the higher the N retention.  Higher organic matter corresponded to high n retention.  Clay content of the soil  didn’t seem to have an impact on N retention.  In the field rainfall timing and amounts were major factors in N retention.

Cynthia Grant talked about Phosphorus fertilizer.  Preliminary estimates are that 30-70% of P fertilizer is wasted.  There may be come carryover to subsequent years, but P use efficiency isn’t great.  P fertilizer should be banded, period.  Banding slows tie-up of P and ensures the P is positionally available.  Two notable points about liquid P are that liquid P is going out in droplets and not a steady stream ,so spacing is still a concern and liquid P is not more plant available than dry P in Manitoba.  When it comes to orthophosphates versus polyphosphates there is  generally no difference in yield.  There’s not much data in the Prairies on Avail, but so far there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference from regular P fertilizer.  Coated P hasn’t provided any significant advantage.  Microbial products haven’t shown a significant increase in yields.  The bottom line is that all P2O5 products have performed pretty much the same – just band an adequate amount near the seedrow and you’ll be fine regardless of product.

Scott Dyck and Cliff Loewen studied variable rate liquid manure application.  The bottom line is that we’re not there yet.  There is too much P variability and application rate controls are not precise enough yet.

Curtis Cavers talked about soil compaction.  In Manitoba the three key questions are: Is it really soil compaction?, Is it reducing the yields?, Is it worth fixing?  Possible solutions are:  Do nothing, Specialized tillage, Deeper rooted cropping and Minimize area impacted by traffic.  From what he had to say I get the impression that this is a rather limited problem in Manitoba.

Tom Jensen shared some research on nitrogen sources for winter wheat.  Based on one year, one site results, the recommended practices are: broadcast ammonium nitrate in spring, broadcast urea in spring,  Super urea could be put on in fall,  ESN works well in seed row in fall.  There was no advantage to Agrotain.  The worst results were from sideband urea at planting.  Depends a lot on the weather – in drier weather you can sideband urea but it’s a terrible practice in wet weather.

Neil Harker spoke on Integrated Weed Management.  Real IWM is not tank mixing, rotating modes of action, pre and post herbicides
Real IWM is using other tools in addition to herbicides.  Some IWM practices he recommends are careful seeding, planting more competitive crops, timing of spraying,  more rotation diversity, put in winter / later seeded crops, careful harvesting and combining optimal agronomics.  This will give you weed control that lasts!

If you’re trying to maximize grain yield and grain protein in spring wheat, Jochum Wiersma has hope for tomorrow but not too much for today.   You can’t just leave N in the soil -  it is too mobile and there may be adverse effects.  Dplit applications don’t seem to work in Manitoba even though they do work in Europe.  Put in adequate pre-plant N for optimum yield.  It is possible to improve grain protein, but the cost-effectiveness of doing so is uncertain.

Michael J. Gross showed a lot of pictures of different roots and emphasized the importance of roots to plant health and productivity.  Unfortunately, I’m not a sketch artist, so I wasn’t able to record most of the information that was presented.

Next was a panel discussion on advising growers on their wet acres.  Jared Munro of MASC said that there was close to half a million acres of claims in 2010, mostly due to water .    Mike Hall of Cargill saw nutrient deficiencies due to nutrients being washed away.  Huge variation in soil test results.  Weeds sucking up N and binding it.  Probably no big changes in P and K.  Weeds: foxtail barley, canada thistle,cleavers, wild oats, possible herbicide carryover?  Diseases: More inclined to recommend seed treatments, more sclerotina and fusarium.  Crop residue: lots of talk, but too wet to get stuff done in fall, field work in spring.  Ruts compaction: mostly relying on freeze/thaw, some cover crops and cultivation
Rick Storoschuk of GJ Chemical: Less fall fertilizing due to flooding / more spring fertilizing.  Debris from flooding.  More shifting to soybeans.  Little fieldwork done in spring – direct seeding.  More wide tires to keep equipment up and minimize compaction.  Seeing more water weeds: bienial wormwood, dandelion, curled dock, yellow nutsedge.  Lots of drainage going in – getting water off the field is primary.

Pam de Rocquigny discussed the early stages of their research into the interactions of fungicides and plant genetics.   This is a three year, five location study covering 28-29 wheat varieties and 14-15 oat varieties.  There was a trend toward lower yield response to fungicide application on varieties with improved disease resistance.

R.W. Currie talked about bees and pollination.  Interestingly enough, the mosquito is a significant pollinator in the north.  The reason honeybees are our most important pollinator is because they are convenient to work with and very flexible in what they pollinate.  Manitoba beekeepers are a bit of an oddity in that they generate most of their income from honey.  Having honeybees and leafcutter bees in a field results in a very even pollination.

Dilantha Fernando talked about dealing with blackleg.  His key message was that we need a variety of resistant genes.  In places where they have relied on one powerful gene for blackleg resistance, as soon as that gene is bypassed by blackleg there is trouble everywhere.  Diversity is key!

I missed most of Winnie McNabb’s presentation on the development of sclerotinia resistance in canola hybrids due to technical problems.

The closing talk by Eric Johnson was an interesting look at the history and future of pesticides.  His talk was based on a paper on Herbicide History in the Prairies.  Glyphosate was introduced in 1976 and transformed agriculture in the prairies.  However, the point we have to get across is that glyphosate resistance is not a silver bullet – a single gene in all crops is short term gain, long term pain.  There has been no glyphosate resistance confirmed in Western Canada, however there are about 14 Group 2 resistant weeds here.  he then went through a number of new possibilities for herbicides with new modes of action.  The key thing is that we can’t expect that new modes of actions will solve problems.
Use tank mixes and multiple modes of action and integrate herbicides with good agronomy.

What I like:

• Free! This is a huge point as I don’t have much of a software budget
• Standard Windows UI controls – ArcView has a mishmash of DOS / Unix / Windows so it’s nice to get a GIS that’s consistent
• Powerful data tools. Slice and dice geographic information in a ton of ways
• Lots of support. I have managed to come up with answers to pretty much all my questions by searching.

What I dislike:

• It’s different enough from Arcview that some simple operations are now hugely complex. That’s mostly learning curve

I plan to keep experimenting with QGIS to see if I can actually use it for production at this point in its development.

Here’s what I do to use it:

1. Convert the GPS track to a table and add it to the ArcView Project
2. Add the table as an event theme to a view
3. Sketch a close approximation of the field outline as a polygon theme
4. With the field selected, I then choose the field theme, vertex, and the track point theme. I adjust the snap tolerance back and forth till I find something that works (usually around 10-20) and click Snap.
5. At this point I look at the field and the points, make necessary adjustments and repeat till I have a good outline.

Note: If you have a very clean outline, the Points to lines or polylines extension followed by the Polylines to Polygons 2.3 extensions can do the same thing even more quickly.