When it comes to which crops to grow, and which varieties within a particular crop type, the choices are extensive for farmers on the Canadian Prairies.
Certainly a primary factor is the potential for profit, and that starts with price signals.
That is the reason we see expanded acres of lentils this year, with those acres encroaching into regions not generally thought of as prime for the crop’s production. Market signals we’re strong, and with those signals in play farmers responded with additional acres.
But there are of course other reasons for growing a crop, beyond trying to capture the occasional market high.
A farm covers many acres, and a mono-culture approach to cropping is not viable long term because of things such as insect and disease build-ups and pressures.
That means a need for cropping rotations.
Those rotations are now somewhat more complicated than even a couple of decades ago.
While others crops generally do well following pulse crops because of their ability to fix nitrogen from the air leaving more of it in the soil for subsequent crops, certain crops do not follow others well.
That can be a matter of the amount of crop residue left for new crops to deal with in spring, to the difficulty in cleaning volunteer seed from a previous year for new crop production, to the residual effects of certain herbicides, save for some crops, but not all.
So what is grown, and when it has to fit in to cropping rotations which are sustainable.
And that brings the farmer back to a rather long list of possible crops, one which is actually getting longer.
Quinoa, for example, is become more established as a niche market crop than it was a year ago.
As canary seed pushes into human consumption markets, demand and interest will grow.
New varieties have grown the areas in which soybeans and seed corn can viably be produced.
So what farmers need today is knowledge to base cropping decisions on.
While ideally farmers might try a few acres of everything to self-determine variability that is not generally possible. There are too many factors in play, starting with rather different soil types even within a single farm.
But farmers still need practical data to work with.
Universities, for one, can do a good job of development of new varieties and of studying new crops, they tend to do their research on very small plots which does not always correlate directly to large scale farming.
That is where partnerships like those between Parkland College and the East Central Research Foundation (ECRF) is so important.
The College and ECRF have a long-term plan to carry out agriculture research activities in the Yorkton area. The partnership has enabled Parkland College to become the first regional college in Saskatchewan to undertake an applied research program to serve regional economic development. The College also uses the field research site to provide hands-on training to students enrolled in agriculture programs.
The resulting data is something farmers can access to make informed decisions on untried crops, and new varieties.
That is what drew more than 50 farmers, agriculture professionals, and industry representatives to fourth annual research farm field day recently near Yorkton. The event highlighted the agriculture applied research of the partnership.
The data collected on site throughout the growing season will be shared with the research community, agricultural industry, and local producers at www.ecrf.ca
The partnership, and resulting research, is a great example of how to create reliable, regionally relevant data, which can only be an asset to aid good on-farm cropping decisions in the years ahead, and is a model which would seem to be one which should be replicated in other regions across the Prairies.
Calvin Daniels is Assistant Editor with Yorkton This Week.
