General observation suggests more farmers have been using some degree of tillage in recent years. It’s not a landslide movement toward full-tilt conventional tillage, nor the season-long black dirt of summer fallow days, but farmers are looking at various tillage operations to fix certain field problems such as smoothing ruts, managing heavy crop residue, controlling weeds and breaking up compacted soil.

New crop missions form the practical foundation of Canada’s strategic wheat marketing efforts. And they have proven invaluable in developing and maintaining markets. Forming the delegations that carry out these postharvest sojourns, Cereals Canada, the Canadian International Grains Institute (Cigi), the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) as well as grain companies and farmer representatives work together to cultivate and sustain relationships with traditional and emerging customers.

Modern farming in Alberta is based on a thin sliver of soil with a thick history. The story of every field in Alberta begins over 180 million years ago when the province sat, smooth and flat, inside a geological plate that began slowly crashing into islands and belts of land to its west. The collision, which ended about 50 million years ago, lifted the mountains of B.C. and Alberta and tilted this province down to the east. Since then, sand, silt and gravel poured down the slopes and laid the bedrock basement beneath our rubber boots.

When it comes to gambling with nature, irrigation may be a Prairie farmer’s ace in the hole. While competition for water resources between users is increasing, innovation in irrigation technology is
providing new tools to help farmers stack the deck in their favour.

In an age of precision farming and mobile management apps, farmers have become increasingly aware that security and protection of the massive amount of data they generate is a crucial aspect of handling that information.