A dozen years ago, Devon Walker officially began farming alongside his dad Donald on the family farm in northwest Saskatchewan near the Alberta border. Like many young farmers, Walker was eager to put his stamp on the farm by adopting new management practices he believed would “shed risk.” After evaluating the farm’s fertility plan, he suggested they put partial fertility down at planting and then top up with a foliar application later in the season when the crop needed it most. “Applying foliar is like rubbing a sandwich on your arm when you’re hungry,” advised Donald.

Those orange and red, blob-like areas on insect survey maps are a farmer’s cue to action. Fields seeded with certain crops and located in and around these hotspots may require individual assessment and population control. Among cereal farmers, the most anticipated of these maps are those for grasshoppers, wheat stem sawfly and wheat midge.

Ontario senator Rob Black admitted he is not a soil scientist. Even so, when he was appointed to the Senate in 2018, he began pushing for a national soil study.

Findings from a recent University of Missouri (MU) study seem to suggest farmers visit the seasoning aisle of their local grocery store for an unexpected remedy to crop stress.

TR19655. No, it’s not the name of a robot from the latest Star Wars movie. Rather, it’s the newest two-row malting barley variety developed by the Field Crop Development Centre (FCDC) at Olds College.

Many farmers celebrate the end of a long growing season with a well-earned sunny getaway. For very different reasons, Canadian cereal breeders also frequently head south, or at least ship their breeding material to foreign locales. The work carried out in international destinations allows them to develop new high-quality crop varieties in a timely manner.

There is growing interest among farmers on the use of biostimulants to boost crop yield and quality. But with curiosity comes skepticism, as limited data on their effectiveness is available. To dispel some of the mystery around these potentially powerful tools, we spoke with companies now developing biostimulants, researchers who aim to quantify their efficacy and farmers who have adopted them in crop management systems.

“Is it really necessary to spray in all cases?” It’s a question posed by Brent Puchalski, a molecular plant pathologist. Up to 75 per cent of all fungicide application is either off target or worse, has no target, he warned.

The smart agriculture and small plot crop research teams at Olds College of Agriculture and Technology have worked on an optical spot spraying project for the last three seasons. Carried out by the Olds College Centre for Innovation (OCCI), it aimed to assess the equipment and field performance of the WEED-IT Quadro system.

When fertilizer prices hit all-time highs and availability became a serious concern this past growing season, it naturally forced farmers to question whether they apply their primary input as efficiently as possible.