GrainsWest Spring 2020

Spring 2020 Grains West 22 eather patterns over the last decade have been reliably unreliable at best. And while insurance does provide some reprieve when fall crops remain in the field until spring, farmers are contemplating management decisions they hope will diminish the risk. REACTING TO TOUGH CONDITIONS Grain farmer and Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC) region 2 representative Devin Hartzler farms 4,000 acres near Carstairs. Although weather permitted him to plant much earlier than usual in 2019, a cool, wet summer meant his crop didn’t get the heat it needed. As a result, it never fully matured. His wheat was still green when he harvested in October. Some wheat remains in the field as bad weather shut his harvest down in October. His peas were harvested a whole month behind schedule. Snow fell in September, which seems to be the new norm, he said. Hartzler left 1,500 acres of canola, wheat and barley under the white stuff last fall. “It would be nice to say that we could buy a dryer and everything would turn out differently, but in our area, we just had maturity issues,” said Hartzler. “That was our biggest problem, and unfortunately, that’s not something we can change. The biggest frustration in our area is that there’s not really anything we could have done differently,” he said. Hartzler said he might look into earlier maturing varieties, and he is also considering adding a dryer to his operation. He’s not sure whether or not either response will make much difference. More importantly, he doesn’t want to make decisions in reaction to something that may not be the new norm after all. “This is the first time it’s happened that we didn’t get our crop in,” he said. Hartzler is a pedigreed seed grower, which makes marketing somewhat less of an issue, although he usually would have sold more than he had by early January. W ESSENTIAL CALCULATIONS Agronomic practices evolve with variable weather BY MELANIE EPP • PHOTO: iSTOCK FEATURE