The proceedings are available Manitoba Agronomists Conference 2010 Proceedings if you want the full text.
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.
