THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2016
VOL. 94 | NO. 46 | $4.25
Drone school Farmers learn how to use drones on the farm. | Page 24
Canso restoration SERVING WESTERN CANADIAN FARM FAMILIES SINCE 1923
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Northern Alberta farmers restore a Second World War airplane. | Page 38
WORKING THE PHONES
AGRONOMY FORUM
Preaching about canola rotations falls on deaf ears Growers weigh options of growing riskier crops with need to manage blackleg disease BY ROBERT ARNASON BRANDON BUREAU
Service tech Nicholas Heffner with JayDee AgTech in Unity, Sask., adjusts the chain on the retracting tine drum on a MacDon FD75 FlexDraper 45 foot straight cut header while talking on the phone to line up more parts Nov. 12 on Brad Heidt’s farm near Kerrobert, Sask. Meanwhile, service tech Eddie Knorr was helping another customer by phone with his harvest issues. | WILLIAM DEKAY PHOTO HARVEST WEATHER
Farmers frantic to beat snow u|xhHEEJBy00001pzYv/:' A miserable October has put some harvest up to a month behind WILLIAM DEKAY SASKATOON NEWSROOM
GREG SEKULIC AGRONOMIST
“In light of the fact that rotations became what they were, over the bulk of the Prairies anyway… we decided it would be better for us to help mitigate the risk of these type of rotations, than to insist on a practice that 80 percent our growers weren’t following anyway,” said Sekulic, who leads the sustainability file with the council. SEE PREACHING ROTATIONS, PAGE 5
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Harvest dust once again hangs heavy over prairie fields as warmer weather finally arrived in November, allowing producers to get their combines rolling. “Usually October is the harvest month,” said Alberta crop specialist Harry Brook. “The whole of October, I would call a washout.” Brook said this year’s harvest season has been a one-in-50-year event for cold temperatures and moisture. “It’s been a long, long, long time since we’ve had such miserable weather in October, and unremittingly too,” he said. However, only 81 percent of the harvest in Alberta is in the bin, which means many producers need at least another week of favourable weather as they hurry to get crops off. “Most producers, if they can get
out on their fields, are harvesting either wet or damp or tough, just getting it off because the risks economically to leaving it out over
If there’s one swath left around each slough I don’t care. You’re either going to slide into the slough or you’re going to be in the muskrat runs and you’re going to sink out of sight. MARIE GLOVER CENTRAL ALBERTA FARMER
winter are just too high, especially with the canola,” he said. Marie Glover and her husband, Ron have always finished harvest by Halloween during their 36 years of farming near Nevis, in central Alberta. She said many farmers never worried during September’s wet
weather because they figured October would clear up. “No combines turned here for us in October,” she said. They were able to get combining again Nov. 3. “The wheat was 20 percent moisture. We’re aerating it with an in-line heater and we managed in 36 hours to get it down to 14.7 C because it warmed up again,” she said. Because of the excess moisture in many fields, the Glovers are carefully selecting where they combine. “We have more sloughs now than we did in the spring. The little potholes are full, whereas every fall they’re usually dry,” she said. Like most farmers, they’re steering wide of the sloughs by at least two rounds until the fields are complete. “With an empty combine we will go in light and stay up high and work our way in,” she said. SEE FARMERS FRANTIC, PAGE 4
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NOVEMBER 17, 2016 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Box 2500, Stn. Main, Saskatoon, SK. S7K 2C4 The Western Producer is published in Saskatoon by Western Producer Publications, which is owned by GVIC Communications Corp. Publisher: Shaun Jessome Publications Mail Agreement No. 40069240
Question: How do you get a canola grower to roll his eyes? Answer: Start talking about threeor four-year canola rotations. In October, the Canola Council of Canada hosted an agronomy forum in Winnipeg. In one session agronomists and scientists discussed for about two hours the challenge of managing blackleg, a fungal disease. During 120 minutes, it was seldom mentioned that tight crop rotations, like canola-wheatcanola or canola-canola-canola, amplify the risk and effects of blackleg. Moving to a three-year or fouryear canola rotation wasn’t discussed in the session, despite research showing it reduces blackleg incidence and severity. Greg Sekulic, a canola council agronomist in Alberta, said the council hasn’t pushed longer rotations for a couple years because growers show little interest in the message. In fact, in some cases it ends conversations between agronomists and producers.