One-stop
Prized purées
shopping Under streamlined cash advance program » Pg 18
Nominated for award » Pg 2
April 16, 2015
SERVING MANITOBA FARMERS SINCE 1925 | Vol. 73, No. 16
Faller, Prosper receive threeyear interim registration
|
$1.75
manitobacooperator.ca
Wetland count begins in southwestern Manitoba
The Canadian Grain Commission hopes to assign them to a wheat class before harvest
Project will reveal distribution and interaction of wetlands in agro-Manitoba
By Allan Dawson
By Lorraine Stevenson
co-operator staff
co-operator staff
F
armers have been given the go-ahead to plant American Dark Northern Sp r i n g w h e a t s Fa l l e r a n d Prosper this spring after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency granted the varieties three-year interim registrations April 2. But it’s not yet clear which quality class they’ll be placed in. The Canadian Grain
Publication Mail Agreement 40069240
See SPRING WHEATS on page 7 »
W
ater and land managers will soon have a precise picture of the state of wetlands in southwestern Manitoba as staff with the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corp. begin a mapping and classification project this spring. We t l a n d s a s s m a l l a s a quarter of an acre will be included in the study designed to help farmers and drainage regulators implement the new provincial surface water management strategy. Similar work has been underway in eastern and northern regions of the province since 2013 to provide data to inform decisionmaking around peat extraction licensing, said MHHC program development manager Stephen Carlyle. This new focus on agroManitoba to similarly map and classify wetland areas results in a spacial database that shows not only where wetlands are and how they interact, but where they used to be, Carlyle said. The information will help farmers, municipalities, planning districts, biomass industries and regulatory agencies make water man-
Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation mapping technicians Godwin Chan and Gabrielle Leo view high-resolution satellite imagery that enables them to identify wetland areas as small as a quarter of an acre. PHOTO: MANITOBA HABITAT HERITAGE CORPORATION
agement decisions at local and watershed-level scales. “It’s such fundamental data for all kinds of decisionmaking processes whether individual, or political, and for research, and from our perspective conservation,” he said. The data will be gathered by three MHHC technicians working full time on the
project to count and classify agro-Manitoba’s wetlands according to whether they are fens, bogs, marshes, shallow open water and swampland. They’ll also be able to identify drained, or partially drained areas, as well as constructed wet areas such as dugouts, and infield drains. This new initiative builds on past efforts. The
SPRAY
WHEN YOU WANT IN THE CONDITIONS YOU’VE GOT.
It’s GO time — visit dowagro.ca
Canadian Wetland Inventory (CWI) partnership between conservation organizations and the federal government began creating digital maps in 2002. That work has continued on an ad hoc basis as funding has been available. There has also been work done by Ducks Unlimited See WETLAND on page 6 »
GO Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow. 0115-41246-2 MC TM