Grainswest - Winter 2024

Winter 2024 grainswest.com 35 THE SPRING Coming this January to a mailbox near you! Looking for a specific variety? Use our online Find Seed search too l www.seed.ab.ca/seed-for-search/ On his 3,500-acre farm near Olds, Ellis grows pedigreed wheat, barley, peas, lupins, fava beans and commercial canola. “We also need to ensure that as seed dealers we have no surprises. If we go ahead and clean all our seed lots, take orders, wait to do seed testing in the spring and find issues, it leaves customers scrambling for other options, and that’s not good for our business or for our customers’ spring planning.” As a further complication, dealers who cannot meet the minimum standards for pedigreed seed must dispose of those seed lots into the commercial system, providing them less revenue for seeds that are very expensive to produce. To affix a pedigreed seed tag, a germination test is mandatory as prescribed by the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association. While additional tests are not required, Ellis joins others in advising vigour, disease and TKW testing. “You only get to plant once per year, so you want to give yourself the best chance of success, and seed testing is a big part of that,” said Ellis. “At one time it was legislated that if you planted your own seed, you had to have a Fusarium test done,” added Ellis. “Although that’s no longer the case, I hope growers who got in the habit keep testing for that.” From the farmer viewpoint, Hartzler is a big proponent of testing and encourages others to follow his lead, even when it might seem less than urgent. He has learned the hard way to avoid cutting corners. “We’ve sent samples away for testing for a long time now,” he said. “At first, we only did the germination and vigour testing before we cleaned our seeds. Last year, though, we got caught with field peas that were under 50 per cent germination, so now we test after cleaning as well.” “When I was a kid, dad did his own test by counting out 100 seeds, putting them in a jar in the dark and getting them to sprout,” said Hartzler. “Nowadays, testing labs are easy to access and give you a wealth of information to support your business.” Given the clear benefits, why not test? In farming, where costs always seem to increase, testing is also available at a bargain. Hartzler gave an example. “I pay $28 per bin for my durum and $31 for peas, so I have no complaints about the price.” As farm size increases, the case for testing escalates. “As farms become larger and more progressive, why would they jeopardize a multi-million-dollar operation to save $200 on testing?” said Ellis. “It just doesn’t make sense.”