Grainswest - Winter 2022

Winter 2022 grainswest.com 29 encouraging farmers to soil test to see what they’ve got. That’s really important to save them money and understand what they have going into 2022 so they don’t over-fertilize.” If a soil test shows a higher-than-expected fertility rate due to non-existent nitrogen mineralization, farmers can consider in-crop applications to spread out risk, suggested Stryhorst. “People might be surprised with what they find.” Farmers considering an abrupt change in rotation must be watchful for herbicide carryover. Owing to dryness, the soil likely holds an above average amount of herbicide that has not broken down. “That limits pulse, canola and durum wheat options,” she said. “We really want people to think about rotations.” Products have various breakdown periods and if an area received less than 150 millimetres of rainfall between June and September, Strydhorst said there is definite carryover risk, specifically for Group 2 and 3 products. FARMER PERSPECTIVES Spring seeding was “beautiful” for Kirriemuir area farmers Craig and Jinel Ference, who planted barley, canola and corn while raising 8,000 feeder cows. Their soil moisture profile was lower than normal and dugouts didn’t fill up by springtime. Nonetheless, there were no warning signs early on. “We were as efficient as you possibly could be,” said Craig. “We seeded deeper to try to hit that moisture and had good germination. We had a normal year up until July 1.” Like many farmers, the Ferences endured about five straight weeks of scorching daytime highs starting in late June. “That hit and then we were just going backwards,” he said. “We started getting rain at the end of August and all that did was affect payouts on rainfall insurance.” He is thankful their corn performed the best, with yields that ranged from just grazable to eight tonnes per acre. Both their barley and canola crops did not hit the break-even point. The farm’s silage pit contains somewhere between a two- and three-year feed supply for the cows, but Craig expects to use anywhere between one and two years’ worth just to get his animals through winter and spring. “I can only do it one more time,” he said of dipping into the pit. He said it’s not even possible to bring in the 350 tonnes per day required to feed the animals. The farm will be able to absorb this year’s brutal conditions but not again in 2022. “We are going to start to have long-term damage to pastures and native grass if this goes another year,” he said, and added a harsh winter will finish off many cow-calf producers. Ference said in 2022 they will up their corn from 75 to 90 per cent of total acres to help replenish their feed supply. For Warner area cattleman and farmer Jacob Bueckert, his 2021 was equally tough, especially in the fall. With sky-high barley prices, Bueckert began to import DDGs and corn from the U.S., but even that backfired. The Sweetgrass rail stop that runs closest to his yard broke down in mid-October. What was supposed to be a three-day interruption lasted more than 20 days. Bueckert had 2,500 tonnes of DDGs sitting in those cars and was forced to buy locally to keep his animals fed with about 150 tonnes per day. He found it necessary to import corn given high domestic feed prices. “I bought cattle six months ago that are arriving now and I thought we’d use $300 per tonne barley,” he said in late October. “Now it’s $400. We can’t continue to run cattle at these prices.” Bueckert’s corn pencilled out to a savings of about $120/ head. He was pleased with this as his yields on dryland silage were two tonnes per acre, whereas in a normal year, it fluctuates between six and 10. “Between COVID and the drought, it’s really thrown a whole other set of challenges at us,” he said. “We need four times the feed.” His winter wheat received much-needed moisture in early November, which leads him to believe it will at least sprout and grow. Despite this, Bueckert said he is nowhere close to comfortable with the situation. Depending what spring and summer bring, this year could be mild compared to next year,” he said. “We’re a long way from having a good year next year, but you have to start somewhere.” WHAT ABOUT BUGS? The pest report of 2021 is a mixed bag that differs by crop. Tyler Wist, a federal government entomologist based in Saskatoon, SK, said the drought brought a mixed outlook for pest pressures this year. While early 2021 seemed to lay the groundwork for wheat midge to thrive as the pest favours wetter, cooler weather, nature had other plans. The hot and dry conditions proved to be an unlikely ally, wiping out the majority of populations. Similarly, the brutal weather halted pea and cereal aphid populations. “When the weather hit 36 C to 37 C, it exceeded the upper thermal tolerance limit for aphid species,” said Wist. “The population never really took off like it typically does under more temperate conditions. Insects develop on degree days, but they seemed to be held back because of the hot weather.” Typically, between 26 C and 30 C is the upper limit for most aphids. Because crops senesced so early, he added, the aphid lifecycle was out of sync with crop maturation, which gave the insects little chance to cause damage. In certain regions, striped flea beetles were also scarce. This included Wist’s home turf of Saskatoon. He needed to collect the overwintering generation of striped flea beetles for a research project in late August and early September and simply “couldn’t find them at our research farms.”