Download is no till finished?

SEPTEMBER 2014
IS NO TILL
FINISHED?
NO WAY, SAYS BLAKE VINCE.
FOR 2015, HE SEES NO TILL
PAYING BETTER THAN EVER
PHILIP SHAW SAYS: WATCH
JANUARY USDA REPORT
COMING SOON? 10 MILLION
ACRES OF PRAIRIE CORN
PICTURE
PERFECT
YIELDS
Your hard work throughout the growing season
is focused on One goal, Higher Yields. And One
feeling as you harvest, PRIDE. Picture perfect
yields start with PRIDE Seeds.
PRIDESEEDS.COM/SELFIES
#PRIDESeedsSelfie
Ask us about the PRIDE Seeds lineup of Genuity®
RIB Complete® products – One bag yield solutions.
Complete contest details available at www.prideseeds.com/selfie. PRIDE is a registered trademark of Limagrain Genetics
Inc. Used under license. P & design is a registered trademark of AgReliant Genetics Inc. All orders and sales are
subject to the terms and conditions of sale of PRIDE Seeds, including without limitation as set out on the PRIDE Seeds’
order form and on the bags and tags of the products (including the Limitation of Warranty and Remedy). Genuity and
Design®, Genuity Icons, Genuity®, RIB Complete and Design®, RIB Complete®, are trademarks of Monsanto Technology
LLC. ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Always follow grain marketing and all other
stewardship practices and pesticide label directions. Details of these requirements can be found in the Trait Stewardship
Responsibilities Notice to Farmers printed in this publication. GoPro is a registered trademark of GoPro Inc.
Tell us your
PRIDE Seeds
harvest story
and send us your
corn or soybean
selfie for a
chance to win
GoPro® Camera
SEPTEMBER 2014
PAGE
Corn in the ‘real’ east
Saying yes to no till
Watch the market’s timing
Exploding in the West
A market for your cobs
Conservation versus vertical tillage
4
8
13
17
20
26
What the world doesn’t know
W
e really should nickname it the
impossible crop, because it’s
impossible to imagine the
shape of Ontario agriculture today if this
wild Mexican grass hadn’t been tamed and
traded by hundreds of generations of
native farmers, or if it hadn’t been hybridized in the 1930s.
Will it soon be impossible to imagine
the Prairies without corn as well? And the
Maritimes?
The productivity of corn — and of the
farmers who grow it — is nothing short of
stunning. Consumers don’t understand
this. When they think of farmers, ideas of
productivity and efficiency don’t come
even remotely to mind.
But think of just a few examples. Consider
for example, how North America’s farmers
now send as many bushels to ethanol plants
as they grow for feed, and how they do this
without shorting any other markets.
Consider also how farmers rebounded from
the worst drought in a century in two short
years, and have built up surplus stocks again.
Consider too how breeders have built
astonishing yields into today’s seed, and
then consider how a business-smart company like Monsanto can bet that Western
Canada’s farmers will be growing eight
million to 10 million acres within 10 years.
Corn Guide, September 2014
Consider as well how corn farmers
saved consumers from the food inflation
that the world’s media foretold just last
year, and consider how corn — and the
livestock that will be grown from it — is
the core meaning of progress for China’s
rising middle class.
Then consider that, as they read this,
Canada’s corn farmers are heading out to
the Outdoor Farm Show, they’re getting
ready to monitor corn yields, and they’re
planning a winter full of research and
investment all so they can do an even more
productive job of growing corn next year.
Who could ever have dreamed that corn
farmers could achieve this much?
It isn’t only China’s economic hopefuls. The entire world doesn’t know that it
has decided to rely on corn and on the
farmers who produce it. Nor would they
believe us even if we showed them incontrovertible numbers and a mile-thick
stack of studies.
But the world did somehow decide to
build its future on corn, and it did decide to
pin its collective hopes on the skill and the
dedication of its corn growers.
And it turns out, the world was right.
How utterly, impossibly crazy is that?
Tom Button, CG Editor
[email protected]
3
Cornguide
Corn in the
‘real’ east
Farmers like Nicholas de Graaf are why
Nova Scotia is a happening place these days
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
M
aps might show the way our country actually is, but
not the way we think about it. To many grain and oilseed farmers in Ontario, for example, Canada might as
well stop at the far Quebec border, where la belle province butts
up against the Maritimes.
Heck, to be honest, many Ontario farmers wonder if their
kind of agriculture doesn't actually stop at the near border, where
Quebec and Ontario meet (or fail to meet, as the case may be).
And make no mistake, their myopia can seem justifiable. After
all, most of Eastern Canada’s highest-yielding and most-intensively farmed operations are in southern Ontario, as are most of
Eastern Canada’s agribusinesses, and the lion’s share of its
research spend, including at the University of Guelph.
And of course, if Ontario thinks agriculture stops at Quebec,
that’s nothing compared to Western Canada, which is inclined
to ask if agriculture survives east of Winnipeg at all.
The problem is, those old stereotypes can blind the rest of the
country to some of the very interesting things going on in some
quite unexpected places, including a quiet corner of Nova Scotia.
A grain and oilseed awakening is underway in parts of the
Maritimes. Since the mid- to late 2000s, potato farmers on Prince
Edward Island have been boosting their soybean acreages, and an
increasing number of farmers in Nova Scotia have been adding
corn and soybeans to their operations. According to Statistics
Canada figures from 2011, corn acres in Nova Scotia have
increased 77.4 per cent since 2006. Soybeans were three times
their 2006 level.
Of course, that still left corn at a mere 13,701 acres, and soybeans
at 8,776. But those numbers can be deceiving, as you’ll see.
Why wait for infrastructure?
It’s in this setting that Nicholas de Graaf, who farms in the
Annapolis Valley, west of Halifax, is forging his own path. For
roughly seven years, de Graaf has been growing a three-crop rotation of corn, soybeans and wheat, moving closer to self-sufficiency for the feed his operation needs while also building a
reputation as an innovator and early adapter.
De Graaf works his home farm of 150 acres near Canning and
also owns land near Centreville and the surrounding area, for a
total of roughly 480 acres. On top of that he rents nearly 800
acres dotting the region as far away as Blomidon to the northeast,
and Billtown to the west.
4 Corn Guide, September 2014
Not surprisingly, his soil types vary
almost as much as the different terrains
he manages, from some sandy loam on
his home farm to the heavier clays on
some of his rented ground.
“Originally, we were a poultry farm —
chickens and turkeys — and when I came
home to the farm, I decided that I wanted
to build a feed mill,” says de Graaf, who
returned to the farm after earning his
degree in agricultural economics from
Nova Scotia Agricultural College.
“Once I built the feed mill,” he continues, “it became pretty evident that I
should be growing some crops to put into
the feed mill, so I’m self-sufficient for all
of my production in corn.”
To add to that initiative, de Graaf put
in a soybean extruder to enable him to
feed his own soybeans without first having to take them off farm. Today, he estimates he’s between 55 and 60 per cent
self-sufficient with his soybeans. As for his
wheat, since he’s self-sufficient with the
other two, he grows wheat primarily as a
rotation crop, selling the harvested grain
while keeping the straw for bedding.
Photo: light and lens
With his average yields approaching
150 bu./ac. thanks to new genetics,
corn has earned the right to be a permanent part of his diverse operation,
de Graaf says. “It’s a whole different
world now.”
Corn Guide, September 2014 “At first, I just started growing wheat
before I even had the feed mill, putting it
into a commercial ration and diluting it,”
says de Graaf, adding that such a practice
was commonplace 10 years ago or longer,
and is still used on some poultry farms
today. “Then once I built the feed mill and
realized I could actually use the ingredients directly, I started into corn and then
soybeans after that.”
For the 2014 growing season, de Graaf
has 790 acres of corn, 520 acres of soybeans and 150 acres of wheat. Again, his
corn production means he has self-sufficiency for his poultry operation, but he
could grow up to 700 acres of soybeans to
reach self-sufficiency on that crop. He’s
also constructed enough storage capacity
that he can store the entire year’s crop
needs for the poultry operation —
roughly 3,000 tonnes.
Continued on page 6
5
Continued from page 5
All he needs now is some more land.
That level of self-sufficiency means de
Graaf hasn’t had to wait for the fledgling
grain infrastructure around the Maritimes to
size up, although in 2009, as more growers
showed interest in growing soybeans, processing facilities began to pop up, including
sites at Belle River, P.E.I., Sussex, New
Brunswick and Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia.
But just as soybean and corn production has been slow to increase in the northern Ontario districts of New Liskeard or
Thunder Bay, it’s that lack of processing
facilities, compounded by high shipping
costs that has stemmed any big jump in
corn and soybean acres farther east.
It’s beginning to change, but whether
they’re located on P.E.I. or in New
Liskeard, the farms that are planting corn
and soybeans still tend to be operations
that can feed what they grow, the same as
de Graaf.
The eastward migration of corn and
soybeans, however, has been made all the
easier by the development of shorter-season varieties and hybrids and the lowering of heat unit requirements. That shift,
says de Graaf, has helped drive the profitability of his own operation.
Yet there is one aspect of Maritime corn
and soybean production that lags behind
Ontario, Quebec and the West. It’s crop
insurance, which de Graaf does not purchase. Simply put, Nova Scotia’s government
is far behind on its yield averages — two
tonnes per acre for corn, or about 75 bu./ac.
For de Graaf, whose average corn yield is
3.73 tonnes per acre (147 bu./ac.), roughly
half his crop would have to fail before he’d
be able to collect on a claim.
“So it makes no sense at all for me to
do anything as far as insurance goes,” de
Graaf says. “But that’s the reality. When
people used to grow corn, there wasn’t a
lot of grain corn anyway, and when they
did grow it, that two tonnes per acre was
their expected yield 15 years ago. It’s a
whole different world now.”
Early adapter
and innovator
Although de Graaf doesn’t see himself
as an innovator, he has cer tainly
embraced many of the modern tools
employed in other parts of the country.
He relies on Barry and Paul Raymer of
Practical Precision in Tavistock, Ont., for
agronomic advice and has adopted both
GPS and GreenSeeker technologies.
“When I started farming crops, my
6 “I don’t consider myself
innovative, but everyone
tells me I am.”
— Nick de Graaf
father was a chicken farmer and he just
rented out the land for 30 years, and I
really had no one in the family to draw
from as far as cropping experience went,”
says de Graaf, adding that his first tractor
was equipped with a computer. “But that
was recording all the time that was spent,
and basically, it was to get costing, not
use the GPS for driving. And I’ve continued that right until today — at any given
time, I can tell you exactly how much I’ve
spent on my crop this year, and I can go
back to last year and figure out how
much I’ve made.”
The adoption of the GreenSeeker
technology has been a little more problematic. He doesn’t spray-apply his fertilizer, he broadcasts it dry, and he has the
sensors on his GreenSeeker set at the
front of his tractor, requiring a programbased offset to compensate for the
40-foot distance between the sensor and
the point at which his fertilizer is spread.
But the variability in his fields has been
too great, so he’s suspended his use of the
GreenSeeker unit until he can get the offset issue corrected.
De Graaf was also the first grower in
his region to purchase a Geringhoff head
for chopping cornstalks at harvest (now
there are three or four with these heads).
And he was one of the first with a Case IH
Patriot self-propelled sprayer in the
region, and he was the first in Nova Scotia
to have Aim Command on the unit.
What’s also innovative about de Graaf
is his willingness to take on and remediate
fields that others might consider too big a
drain on their time or management.
“When I first got into cropping, even
before the boom from the corn price,
there were a lot of fields that I would see
driving around at night that looked overgrown,” says de Graaf. He would return
home, figure out who owned it and then
go ask the owner if he could rent it. “Over
the years, I’ve probably had between five
and 10 different fields — and some of
them I’m still using today — where the
alders were starting to grow.”
With so many potato acres in the
Maritimes, de Graaf notes there were a lot
of growers under contract with Hostess,
with some working good parcels of land
and others on not-so-good soils. But
when the snack food manufacturer
stopped buying locally in the region, a lot
of the lesser-quality land was left behind,
and that’s where he came in, renting it,
remediating it and using it to grow corn
and, later, adding soybeans too.
“I don’t consider myself innovative, I
guess, but everyone tells me I am,” says de
Graaf. “I seem to be the first to do things,
and then the next year, everyone else is
doing what I’m doing.” CG
Corn Guide, September 2014
S:7”
ALL OF OUR SEED IS FIELD-TESTED.
JUST LIKE OUR REPS.
S:10”
P7632HR NEW
2200 heat units
• High yielding Pioneer® brand
corn with very good drought
tolerance
• Stands well for ease of harvest
Your Pioneer Hi-Bred sales representative is out there every day, working
the same ground you are. Which gives them the unique expertise needed to
recommend the right seed for your acres. They know your weather, your soil
conditions and your challenges because they’ve faced them too. It’s this
type of deep knowledge that makes the DuPont Pioneer team both industry
leaders and trusted local advisors. Talk to your local Pioneer Hi-Bred sales
representative or visit pioneer.com for more information.
Our experts are grown locally
Always follow grain marketing, stewardship practices and pesticide label directions. Roundup Ready® crops contain genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate,
the active ingredient in Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides. Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides will kill crops that are not tolerant to glyphosate.
Roundup®, Roundup Ready® and Roundup Ready 2 Yield® are registered trademarks of Monsanto Technology LLC used under license. Liberty®, LibertyLink®
and the Water Droplet Design are trademarks of Bayer. Herculex® I insect protection technology by Dow AgroSciences and Pioneer Hi-Bred. Herculex® and
the HX logo are trademarks of Dow AgroSciences LLC.
Pioneer® brand products are provided subject to the terms and conditions of purchase which are part of the labeling and purchase documents.
The DuPont Oval Logo is a registered trademark of DuPont.
®
, ™, SM Trademarks and service marks licensed to Pioneer Hi-Bred Limited. © 2014, PHL.
@PioneerWCanada
Cornguide
Saying yes
to no till
Blake Vince (r) and Bob McIntosh are
convinced no-till corn is the right way to go,
even if there can be growing pain
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
On the one hand, there’s hope. On the other hand,
there’s reality, so although Canada’s corn growers commonly say that their goal is no till, they often get stumped
by the transition. Sometimes it’s because of cornstalks.
Sometimes it’s because of equipment issues, and sometimes it’s simply because growers are hoping someone will
develop a one-size-fits-all, silver-bullet type of solution to all
their soil challenges.
Whatever the reason, a number of growers are standing by their no-till management strategies, insisting that
with a little time, effort, research and patience, profitability
and productivity can be enhanced by no till, not sacrificed.
That number includes Bob McIntosh and Blake Vince,
who believe it’s never been a better time to convert to notill. Try it, they say. You’ll grow to be a believer too.
Blake Vince: “It’s the end of the year that counts”
K
eeping the water clean and his soils healthy are
primary goals of Blake Vince, who farms with
his father, Elwin and his uncle, Tom Vince on 1,300
acres north of Merlin, Ont.
The other goal, of course, is farming profitably.
The farm is on Brookston clay, but despite his
tough soils, Vince states with pride that in his lifetime,
he has never used a mouldboard plow — thanks in
large part to the early work of his dad and uncle.
Vince is currently working on the second and final
year of his Nuffield Scholarship, and the subject of his
paper is “Conserving farmland with cover crops and
the importance of biodiversity.”
8 Vince’s father and uncles were early adopters,
beginning work on no till in the early 1980s. At the
time, John Deere’s 750 drill had yet to hit the market,
so the Vince brothers started with a Tye grain drill
and Great Plains coulter cart, combined with a threecoulter Ray Rawson system, all configured on a John
Deere corn planter.
“Those were the days when interest rates were
through the roof and commodity prices were through
the floor,” says Vince. “And that was their catalyst to
change, and that’s why other types of farming take
place — there’s a catalyst to change. Today, for those
who’ve gone away from no till, the catalyst to change
Corn Guide, September 2014
has been higher commodity prices, so
there’s been an influx of capital and guys
have gone out and bought a tractor. And
the best thing to make the tractor work is
to put some kind of tillage tool behind it
to see how it performs.”
That term “catalyst to change” plays a
prominent role in Vince’s explanation of
why no till in corn is such a tough sell. He
theorizes that change is the biggest obstacle on the farm, just as nobody likes
change in any facet of society. When corn
prices are high, the tendency for many
farmers is to plow more, with a sense of
trying to capitalize on physical bushels
Corn Guide, September 2014 and a strong market. The ultimate goal is
tied to the belief that it’s possible to add
bushels through tillage.
“And you very well may get additional
bushels in the short term, because what
you’ve done is you’ve burned off that
accumulated soil carbon that you’ve built
up in the past few years of no till,” says
Vince. “The analogy is that you’ve burnt down
the house to roast a hotdog, and that’s from
Ray Archuleta, who works for the NRCS
(National Research Conservation Service,
for the USDA).”
In Vince's view, the best catalyst today is
the price of fuel. In 2005, he was doing
cash flow analysis on winter wheat straw
management, and at the time it was costing him more than $60 an acre to manage
his winter wheat straw following harvest.
That was at a time when diesel was about
60 cents a litre. Now, with the price of diesel nearly twice that 2005 level, it’s pushed
that per-acre management to a point
where it’s no longer economically viable.
Vince adds that too often, farmers also
get caught up in the physical appearance of
their crops. They might scout soybeans in
July and believe the way they look then will
Continued on page 10
9
Continued from page 9
equate to how they’ll yield two months
later. But what really matters is how they
yield in late September or early October.
“So every year in July, people look at notill soybeans in cornstalks, specifically, and
they complain about how they look, at
times lacklustre compared to those that
have been conventionally tilled,” says Vince.
“But it’s the end of the year that counts.”
Soil is the medium
That end-of-season performance is tied
more to the health of the soils, which is why
Vince is involved in research into a multispecies cover crop mix. Not only is he a dedicated no-till grower with a three-crop
rotation, he’s also a huge advocate of healthy
soils, including the reminder that in a teaspoon of such soil, there are more organisms than there are people on the planet.
There’s no scientific reason for tilling our
soils the way we do, Vince says. He
believes it’s simply time to stop.
Like other growers, Vince has held to
the practice of frost-seeding red clover
into his winter wheat for many years. And
in the days when there was more mixed
farming with livestock operations, people
grew more cover crops to feed their animals. But as farming has embraced morespecialized management (crops versus
livestock, not both), the trend has been
towards scaling back on covers, and even
in those cases where farmers are including
a cover crop, it’s often a single-species
variety, such as red clover.
“What I’m striving for is utilizing a
multiple-species approach, because if we
look at the outset at how these soils originated, they weren’t covered by a single
species of tree or grass,” says Vince. “If
you’re walking across a prairie, you have
an abundant array of plants, and that’s
what we’re trying to emulate.”
Since the Second World War, he adds,
the tendency for agriculture has been to
rely on chemical-based synthetic fertilizers instead of cover crops. The belief was
that in order to push yields, chemical fertilizers were the answer. But Vince contends
that when agriculture had more of the
diversity of mixed farming — no 100-percent-grain production or 100-per-cent-livestock production — the soil benefited
greatly. Complicating matters was the
advent of herbicides and fungicides to the
mix, reducing the number of beneficial
organisms in the soil.
Vince also echoes many of the sentiments of Bob McIntosh when he reminds
people that compared to years ago, when no
till was just getting started, the tools of today
make things that much easier. Heavy-duty
coulters and systems with down-pressure
sensors make it simpler to shift away from
more-aggressive tillage tools.
“It confuses me to no end why guys
continue to think that they need to till,”
says Vince, who gets most of his phone
calls regarding his management practices
from growers more than 100 miles away.
“There is no scientific evidence that supports tillage, but to think that tillage is
going to go away tomorrow, we’re just
fooling ourselves.”
Healthy soils = healthy
watercourses
Vince is also working on the Nuffield
Scholarship because of his ongoing concern
with pollution in the Great Lakes (another
shared sentiment with McIntosh). In spite
of a newspaper report in August 2013 citing Windsor and London as the two worst
10 urban polluters in southern Ontario,
Vince maintains that agriculture needs to
get its nutrient house in order — fast. He
believes the agri-food industry is having a
major impact on the health of the Great
Lakes, and Lake Erie in particular. He also
sees his farming colleagues in Ohio,
Indiana and Michigan, who appear to be
more proactive in managing soils with an
eye on cleaner water.
Regardless of the pollution from cities,
the fact is he sees water flowing into Lake
St. Clair from the Thames River that is the
colour of chocolate milk, and much of the
problem there is soil erosion following
major rain events. The recent water ban
in Toledo, Ohio, in late July was another
indication of problems with the overall
management system. In that case, media
reports mentioned sewage and farm runoff as the main culprits.
“I don’t see the same urgency happening here in Ontario,” says Vince. “And
that’s what motivated me to do the scholarship, to see if we can figure out a better
way than what we’re doing presently.”
Soil linked to civilization
Ultimately, Vince believes that North
American agriculture and the health of
our civilization are closely linked.
According to popular belief, North
America is the standard for excellence in
agriculture, as well as life in general. It’s
seemingly where people from around the
world want to be.
“But we take that with such nonchalance, especially how we manage our soil,
and we just disregard it,” says Vince, adding that he read David Montgomery’s
book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations,
which links soil management to the viability of a society. “We look at soil as the
medium which we use to support plants,”
says Vince. “But the soil needs to be
viewed as much more than the support
mechanism; it needs to be viewed as the
substance that gives the crop life.”
When farmers ignore that, he believes,
they end up looking for what he refers to as
“the next magical elixir” for their crop, or
they look for a piece of equipment that will
somehow solve all their compaction woes.
“That’s where we are today in North
America — we’re on a real slippery slope,”
says Vince, whose Twitter handle is #rootsnotiron. “Don’t think for a second that
this all can’t come to an end.”
The future, says Vince, is all in the soil.
Continued on page 12
Corn Guide, September 2014
Driven by your success.
At Mycogen Seeds, we are 100% committed to
getting it right the first time. We stand behind
every product and recommendation we make.
We have a proven record of bringing leading
edge technology to the market first, backed
by the resources of Dow AgroSciences.
Mycogen is one of few Canadian seed
brands built on proprietary genetics,
committed to silage specific corn, grain
corn and soybeans.
We know we can help every customer
become more successful.
Contact your local sales representative
at 1-877-Mycogen or visit
www.mycogen.ca
® TM
Trademarks of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow.
©2014 Dow AgroSciences LLC.
Bob McIntosh: “It takes five years”
I
n the early 2000s, Bob McIntosh made
a presentation at the annual meeting of
the Innovative Farmers Association of
Ontario. The take-home message that day
was that if you’re a grower looking to
enhance your soils — and ultimately your
bottom line — and if you’re hoping that
no till will do that for you in one or two
years, be prepared for disappointment.
It takes a minimum of five years of
strict no-till management before you’ll
start to see significant improvement of
any kind, McIntosh told his audience,
before adding, 10 years is even better.
Nearly a dozen years later, McIntosh,
who farms about 1,200 acres outside of
St. Marys, Ont., is holding to the same
line. But he’s also still insisting that no
till in corn is doable, and it is viable. In
fact, he just doesn’t believe there’s
much to justify plowing and discing,
especially across much of southern
Ontario.
“There are a few things that you can
and can’t do with no till,” McIntosh
agrees. “Rotation’s pretty important. I
don’t think it’s going to work very well
with corn on corn — I’m pretty much
100 per cent corn on soybeans.”
McIntosh has had arguments in the
past about how no till is defined, and
Eric Kaiser, another staunch defender of
no-till production, draws different comments about the “aggressive nature” of
his coulter-and-planter setup.
McIntosh concedes that he’ll do some
discing following wheat in late summer
— to deal with the strip of chaff left
behind the combine. But his definition
of no till is that he’s not doing any kind
of tillage the year he plants a crop.
“So we’re doing some things in the fall
before, and getting ready, so that when I
go to the field in the spring, I’ve probably
sprayed the field, but other than that,
nothing’s touched that field that year,”
says McIntosh, adding that he hasn’t done
any plowing on his land for years.
Big changes from
then to now
Since he talked to that IFAO meeting,
no-till trends and technologies have
changed. For instance, new corn hybrids
and elite germplasm are pushing yields
higher, but their tough stalks are also
challenging no-tillers as never before.
Yet McIntosh notes that as plant
breeding has improved productivity,
12 enhanced technologies are also helping
those growers who want to avoid disturbing the soil.
“Our planter has a totally different
setup than it was when we started,”
McIntosh says. “We had the multiple
coulters — I would think somewhat similar to what Eric (Kaiser) has, and we
needed that initially because some of this
ground was so hard from all the tillage
and things that had been done to it, that
that’s the only way we could get a reasonable seedbed at all. Now we have no
coulters on the planter, just trash whippers, and not even a coulter in front of
the row unit, and we don’t seem to have
any trouble penetrating that and getting
the seed at the depth we want. So the
soil’s changed a lot.”
Then, he repeats, “But we’ve been at it
for more than 10 years now.”
“We’re trying to get all of
our wheat ground into
some kind of cover crop,
and we’re looking at
options on how we can
get cover crops to follow
our corn and soybeans.”
As for the question of whether the
hybrids are better today than in years
past, McIntosh isn’t convinced that
they’ve improved so much, it’s just that
there’s likely a larger pool of good-quality hybrids to choose from.
The breeders and seed companies
have done a better job in the past 15
years of ensuring there are fewer “duds,”
he belie ves. But that also means
McIntosh is planting hybrids based more
on the trial results he can find and the
recommendations of seed company representatives, than relying on planting a
test plot on his own farm.
Another change for McIntosh is that
he’s working more often with cover crops.
“We’re trying to get all of our wheat
ground into some kind of a cover crop,
and we’re looking at options on how we
can get cover crops to follow our corn
and soybeans,” says McIntosh. “But that’s
a little more difficult because of the late-
fall harvest and when you can get it on.
We have little trials here with some
Italian ryegrass into standing corn, to see
how that works, but we’re just in the initial stages.”
McIntosh is sold on what he calls the
“huge benefits” of cover crops, and
wishes he’d hopped on the bandwagon
years ago. By the time he figures out how
to make it work, he quips, he’ll be ready
to step down from farming.
By land and by water
The no-till management system lends
itself to other on-farm practices that can
have significant benefits. There’s the
impact of cover crops but McIntosh
refers to another component that is gaining more and more attention: the effects
of erosion.
In the summer of 2014, the ClintonSeaforth area had more issues with
excessive rains, including ponded sections in fields.
So although it can take years for
freeze-thaw cycles coupled with the use
of cover crops to loosen plow-pans, it’s
something McIntosh believes in firmly,
and it’s one of the reasons he’s added
berms and Hickenbottom drains to his
operation.
“It’s definitely a long-term perspective, and one thing that I see is the erosion, and we’re on relatively flat ground
here, but we can have pretty major erosion, too,” McIntosh says.
“That’s what convinced me years ago
that we had to do something like this,
because you get one major rain event,
you can have all kinds of damage that
will take years to correct. Every time it
rains, those areas will have water in them
again, because they tend to seal off. It’ll
take a winter with some frost to open
that up again, even if there’s tile right
under it.”
On land that he rents, he’s seen where
the tiles are 60 feet apart, yet it rained so
much that between the tile lines the
water ponded in a couple of spots and
was there all year with each rain event.
With soil erosion, he adds, it only takes
one event and even if it comes once
every five or six years, it’s still devastating
if you’re unprepared.
The addition of the berms and the
Hickenbottoms have made an observable
difference; when there is run-off, the water
is cleaner coming off a no-till field. CG
Corn Guide, September 2014
Cornguide
Watch the
market’s timing
B
We got here with our eyes
wide open. That’s how we’ll
survive this year’s market
downturn too
By Philip Shaw
Corn Guide, September 2014 y mid-August, new corn cash
prices in Eastern Canada had hit
some of their lowest levels in several years. The lesson is clear. No one
should ever underestimate the production
capacity of modern-day agriculture.
Although it was only a few years ago
that the world was doubting whether
farmers could ever produce enough corn
to satisfy the burgeoning demand from
biofuels and a hungry public, by adding
some new technology into the mix and
the sweat of farmers worldwide, we got
our answer.
Huge supplies of corn now weigh on
our market, and looking ahead, farmers
will have to manoeuvre through this new
market landscape.
The July 2014 USDA report set yield
expectations at 13.935 billion bushels of
corn on 91.64 million acres. This might
seem like a large crop of corn, but it is
also important to remember that it is
coming from the smallest corn acreage
since 2010.
The USDA was using a yield estimate
of 165.3 bushels per acre, but this may
change as we go through the fall season
and the effects of late-summer weather
hit the combine.
There is also the corn on hand to con-
sider as another part of the supply-anddemand equation. The old-crop ending
stocks as of July 11 were pegged at 1.246
billion bushels with a stocks-to-use ratio
of 9.2 per cent.
The new-crop situation in 2014 is
much more telling with the expected
ending stocks figure projected at 1.801
billion bushels. In other words, depending
on weather as the 2014 crop goes into the
bin, new-crop corn ending stocks are
approaching the two-billion-bushel mark
— and end-users can see that.
Traders have reacted accordingly,
which explains futures prices dropping to
the $3.60/bushel range by early August.
It is not like we have never been here
before.
Agricultural commodities are constantly dogged by the economics of
inelastic demand, which often leads to
overproduction. Although the corn stocks
figures are onerous as we look ahead, corn
demand has been near record levels, with
the USDA forecasting corn demand at
13.335 billion bushels for the 2014-15
new-crop season.
The two largest demand components
of this are feed at 5.2 billion bushels and
Continued on page 16
13
You can’t
change the
weather.
But you can be
ready for it.
More stations, more data, more forecast tools for farmers
Weatherfarm gives you the tools
to stay constantly informed
about the weather on your
farm – and in your region.
WeatherFarm is supplied by a growing dedicated
network of more than 1,100 professionally maintained
monitoring stations, most owned by farmers, with
current conditions updated throughout the day.
WeatherFarm gives you a full set of accurate weathermonitoring tools that show you detailed forecasts,
current conditions and historical comparisons. Detailed
local weather maps can show accumulated rain,
maximum temperature and minimum temperature for a
specific day, week or month.
WeatherFarm’s exclusive Analyze Weather function
allows you to view a growing set of data points over a
wider area to see where the most rain fell, where it’s the
hottest and more.
WeatherFarm is dedicated to the Canadian farming
community. Our focus is on growing and improving our
weather services based on the feedback we get from our
network of farmers who own stations... and from you.
OVER 1,100
REPORTING
STATIONS
For more information on WeatherFarm or
purchasing a weather station please call:
1-855-999-8858
Email: [email protected]
www.weatherfarm.com
An extensive,
live-updating
network that gives
you current and
7 day forecasted
weather data
for your farm or
surrounding area
Continued from page 13
ethanol at 5.05 billion bushels. That means
demand has essentially gained back everything it
lost from the $8 corn period of two years ago.
This year’s price decline has been mainly based on
the huge production potential in U.S. fields in 2014,
with the December 2014 corn contract in the lower 13
per cent of the market’s five-year distribution range.
For farmers in Eastern Canada who have corn
in the field, all of this is a huge concern going forward. What will the corn price do next? That question is on everybody’s mind and cannot be really
answered except with the proverbial “nobody
knows” answer.
That applies to pessimists too. They don’t have a
lock on being right. Just because the corn market is
down doesn’t mean it will stay that way.
Don’t be surprised by limit move
price reactions to the USDA
January report
Grain prices are fluid and react to many factors
and over time they go up and down. If we want
insight into which way they’re likely to go, we
need to ask questions like, what market factors are
ahead that may affect the timing of a future major
price movement? What other places in the world
impact the world price for corn? What is the timing of future USDA reports and how may they
impact market direction? How will the Ontario
and Quebec cash markets react in 2015, and what
will be the timing within that market structure?
These are only some of the questions that producers will be asking themselves going into 2015.
Timing of USDA reports is always critical.
There is much debate on how much these reports
affect prices, as some traders would argue that
futures spreads among months give better clues
on price direction. However, USDA reports do
usually serve as flashpoints in market timing.
Large price moves often come off USDA report
dates and it is critical to keep that in mind as you
plan your corn marketing.
Each month, USDA releases reports on myriad
market factors. The October 2014 USDA report
will begin to show actual yields of corn in U.S.
fields. The January 2015 USDA report will show
final yields reported in USDA fields.
The January USDA report often sees limit move
price action. Timing marketing of corn based on
these report dates can often provide rewards.
The market factors that will influence price
going into the fall of 2014 have much to do with
the weather for the rest of the summer and fall. The
cool summer of 2014 will manifest itself in some
16 unknown way with regard to yield. USDA reports
will give clues to that. Of course, there is always the
prospect of frost in the fall that can affect corn
yield in a negative way. The market always trades
this until the frost scare passes. As we move into fall
these factors will be weighing on the market.
Critical to corn marketing in Eastern Canada is
understanding the nature of our corn market
structure. In Ontario over the last two years, we
have produced more corn than we could use, so
exports out of the province have been the norm.
However, historically this has not been the case
and we export out of the province during fall harvest and import back in to Ontario when our cash
price approaches U.S. replacement values.
The production litmus test for this is two million Ontario corn acres with a yield of approximately 150 to 160 bushels per acre. Any
production over two million acres with good
yields leads to exporting corn most of the year
(lower cash prices). Any production year of less
than two million acres with lower yields will garner spring import pricing (higher cash prices).
Price transparency is not as good in Quebec, but
with their proximity to salt water ports, export
pricing can take place depending on crop size and
the local demand conditions.
October and November will bring corn planting once again to Brazil and Argentina. This timing will also be critical for the corn market as
acres and development will be important to move
price. Brazil also plants a second crop of corn in
February, which adds to the supply equation. The
market will be watching this South American production and producers need to key on this as well.
With lower prices there will be less incentive to
plant corn both in South America and Ukraine.
Eastern Canadian cash corn prices are always
affected by the value of the Canadian dollar, but
not as much as soybeans and wheat. By midAugust the Canadian dollar was fairly flat in the
91-cent U.S. range, providing a stimulus for better
cash basis versus the futures prices. Timing for
this is always an additional judgment to make in
our marketing decisions.
There is a strong carry in the series of futures
spreads between December 2014 and July 2014
corn prices. This means that the market is incredibly comfortable with the corn supply going forward. There is no premium being offered for the
new corn now. Of course weather can change, the
one great constant in our corn markets.
So we move ahead with hope, but hope is not a
marketing plan. A black swan might fly by (totally
unexpected event to affect markets), but it’s getting late in the game with the fall harvest starting
up in earnest later in September.
We got here with our eyes wide open. The
challenge for eastern Canadian corn producers is
to stay the course. There will be corn-marketing
opportunities ahead. Getting a timeline on market
variables will surely help in that process. CG
Corn Guide, September 2014
Cornguide
Exploding in the West
The seed industry is betting the West’s corn crop
will soon soar to eight million to 10 million acres
By Andrea Hilderman
I
f corn used to seem like a fairy tale crop in
Western Canada, there are all sorts of Prince
Charmings lining up these days in hopes of
bringing her to life.
In the past decade, the West’s grain corn crop
has grown fourfold, reaching a high of 405,000 in
2013. And if the pundits are right, that’s just a start.
New forecasts are for a crop 10 to 20 times
that size.
“The desire of farmers to grow corn in the West
is real,” says Greg Stokke, DuPont Pioneer’s business director for Western Canada and a farmer
himself at Watrous, Saskatchewan. “Maturity is the
linchpin that will drive adoption of corn. If growers
can grow corn with less risk, they will.”
It’s true that 2014 saw a decline of 75,000 acres,
but that was mainly because a cold, wet spring
made timely seeding impossible in many areas.
For the record, though, Manitoba still leads the
way with over 85 per cent of the regional crop,
after taking a big jump in 2012 and 2013 when
farmers responded to corn prices, indicating their
willingness to grow corn if the returns are there.
Interest is growing in Saskatchewan, however,
and also in Alberta, where corn has been grown
for over a decade, although acres still hover near
the 30,000 mark.
Continued on page 18
Photo : allan dawson
“Buying a corn header, even a
used one, is expensive,”
Mazinki cautions. ”And with
corn, you have to have access
to a grain dryer.”
Corn Guide, September 2014 17
Continued from page 17
Ray Mazinki farms with his brothers at Morris,
Man., in the heart of the Red River Valley and the
original corn-growing area of the province.
“We’ve dabbled in corn for maybe 15 years,” says
Mazinki. “The last few years more so. We have a
pretty diversified rotation and we have found that
not only does corn have good returns, it helps us
draw out our seeding and harvesting operations,
which is important as the farm grows.”
Mazinki has also found that corn takes hog
manure really well, not lodging as other cereals might.
“Growing corn and soybeans is like night and
day when it comes to equipment,” says Maazinki.
“We also grow sunflowers and soybeans on our
farm, so our planter gets plenty of use. But buying
a corn header, even a used one, is expensive. And
with corn you have to have access to a grain dryer
— we have our own, but lots of guys might not.”
Unlike soybeans, corn has to be seeded with a
planter to get the correct row spacings and, depending
on the equipment, to ensure uniform depth control.
Corn has found popularity in the Red River
Valley because the area has the heat to bring corn
to maturity, and also because many farmers have
their own grain dryers. It is not unusual for harvest
to be drawn out and many crops besides corn may
need drying.
”We want every grower to
experience success the very first
time they try corn on their farm,“
says Monsanto‘s
Dan Wright
“An additional advantage we see with corn is it
keeps its quality better than wheat in wet years,” says
Mazinki. “While corn may harbour fusarium, it
rarely shows up on the kernels and corn is a cereal
which is important in the rotation on our farm.”
Stokke believes more farmers are eyeing those
advantages, and he believes that the extra research
push going into corn for Prairie maturities will
mean more growers will have hybrids that they
can expect to mature.
Once corn is seeded, it is a relatively easy crop to
grow, says Stokke. “Corn is a crop you can plant,
and then really forget about save for a couple of
weed applications and some insect scouting.”
“By harvest, the yields are huge and the returns
can be very lucrative.”
DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto certainly see a
future for corn in the West, and both companies
are making big investments to ensure their vision
comes to fruition.
18 DuPont Pioneer recently announced its intention to build a 22,500-square-foot multimilliondollar corn-breeding and -testing facility in
Lethbridge, Alta. “This facility is a concrete testament to the opportunity we see for corn in
Western Canada,” says Stokke. “Our commitment
is long term and speaks to our belief that we can
develop the sorts of hybrids that will drive corn
acres here in the West.”
Monsanto Canada launched its Canada Corn
Expansion Project in 2013. The project will see
$100 million invested over the next decade to
develop corn hybrids with earlier relative maturities that will be suitable for Western Canada.
Monsanto sees the potential for eight million to 10
million acres of corn planted on the Prairies by 2025.
“We made our first big breeding and testing push into
Western Canada in 2013,” says Dan Wright, trait
launch lead for Monsanto Canada. “The team was
very pleased with the maturities of the hybrids and
with what they learned agronomically.”
Wright says Monsanto will test hybrids extensively in local geographies all across the Prairies to
be sure which hybrids will work best in which
areas. “To that end, we have thousands of small
and larger-scale plots at 65 sites,” says Wright. “It’s
our opinion that it’s Monsanto’s job to test the
hybrids for local adaptability, not the grower’s.”
It’s not just a brand position, it’s also a business strategy.
“We want every grower to experience success
the very first time they try corn on their farm,”
Wright says.
The driver of corn in Western Canada will be a
combination of hybrids with 70-day relative
maturity, give or take, and yields of 100 to 110
bushels per acre. Once such hybrids hit the market with testing for local adaptation and agronomic suitability — assuming grain markets are
attractive — the Monsanto view is farmers will
grow corn.
With the right genetics, corn may also have a
useful fit in the rotations in Western Canada.
Corn can provide additional diversity in the rotation allowing for more integrated weed and pest
management strategies.
Maturity isn’t the only barrier to successfully
growing corn though. There are some special
equipment requirements needed for corn. Unlike
soybeans, farmers can’t get their feet wet with
corn using their existing machinery.
“To grow corn, farmers need planters, corn headers for the combine and probably some access to
drying capacity,” says Stokke. “That said, some farmers who are growing soybeans are starting to up their
game with that crop by purchasing planters. We will
see corn follow soybeans to a large extent… they are
a good fit together in the rotation.” CG
Corn Guide, September 2014
A SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH IN EVERY SEED
When it comes to trait technology, you’re looking for leadership and innovation. Hyland™ Seeds is
powered by Dow AgroSciences outstanding research and development. Balance that with exemplary
customer service and you have a combination of performance and profitability that is pure genius.
Farming Forward.
hylandseeds.com
®™Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow 07/14-37905-1
37905_01 HYL EinsteinAd_8.125x10.75_CGEast.indd 1
2014-08-01 1:46 PM
Cornguide
A market for your cobs
Research is showing we can start harvesting some of
our stover for cellulosic ethanol… if we do it right
By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor
T
he allure of harvesting corncobs and stover
for sale is getting harder to resist, and with
the downturn in the grain market, the possibility may seem more tantalizing than ever. Even so,
while the speculation grows about where and when
a cellulosic plant will get built, the question is still
hanging in the air: Can you have your cake and eat it
too? Or, to put it in a more agricultural context, can
you sell your corn residue and still keep your soil
healthy enough to grow a great grain crop?
“The bottom line on this comes
back to how well the soils have
been managed.”
— Adam Hayes, OMAFRA
20 That question is getting more complicated, with
two separate schools of thought.
One school says that the research has been done.
Stover harvesting is viable and sustainable, and it’s
time for the innovators and entrepreneurs to jump
in, building the long-term collection and storage
infrastructure that the cellulosic ethanol industry
would need in order to begin production of the new
biofuel. For many in the industry, this idea is a matter of “when” it can be done, not “if.”
But the other school says the jury is still out.
Even with well-researched standards for residue
removal, this school says, there’s a concern that
growers might get carried away — almost literally
— and that our grain yields and the health of our
farms will suffer as a result.
In truth, firmer guidelines for the removal of
corn stover (and other residues) have been the
focus of considerable research in recent years. In
November 2010, reports on two separate studies
were released, one by a group of University of
Guelph researchers and another by a team from
Western University at London, Ont. Both teams
looked into using corn residues for energy or heat
generation, although both also made several observations that applied to biofuels. A third study,
released in August 2012, was prepared for the
Ontario Federation of Agriculture based on the
Western University research, and it addressed biomass crop residues and their availability for bioprocessing, specifically in Ontario.
The University of Guelph study with Drs. Hilda
Kludze and Bill Deen as lead authors looked partly
at short-term economics, beginning with the idea
that the net price for the crop residue would need to
be higher than the value of nutrients that would be
removed, hard as that might be to calculate.
Then the Guelph study also tackled the question
of sustainability. Soil organic matter, the study
found, is critical for soil health, contributing to the
soil’s resistance to soil erosion and crusting, its ability to form aggregates, and its cation exchange
capacity (CEC).
The conclusion comes out in favour of cob harvesting, which the study called an “environmentally
Corn Guide, September 2014
sustainable and economic alternative feedstock” for
the bioenergy industry.
The Guelph study said there are three key reasons
for promoting their use in Ontario: 1. cobs are
abundant, and can be gathered in all counties in
which corn is grown; 2. the level of nutrients in cobs
is insignificant, and 3. cobs make up only 16 per
cent of stover. A fourth reason cited the low sulphur
and ash content in corncobs, making it an ideal
feedstock for generating heat and electricity. Its use
in biofuel processing was not mentioned.
Soil organic matter
In the 2010 Western University study and the subsequent OFA-Western report of 2012, both of which
saw Dr. Aung Oo as a primary contributor, the
importance of soil organic matter was also highlighted. At the same time, both projects attempted to
quantify the removal of small amounts of residues,
recognizing the added value for growers, but also the
minimal impact on soil health and its properties. The
initial UWO study mentioned soil erosion due to
water run-off as a factor to consider when removing
residues.
The OFA-Western University report made extensive recommendations for removing crop residues,
including specific observations about corn residues
and the creation of bioprocessing industries using
crop residues in Ontario.
Corn Guide, September 2014 In its general summary, the study found that the
total quantity of sustainably harvestable crop residues in Ontario to be 3.12 million tonnes per year.
That constitutes roughly 20 per cent of the province’s total crop residues produced in a year. The
recommendations also said that the quantity of sustainably harvestable residues would be farm specific,
and it would depend on a blend of factors including
crop rotation, application of organic materials such
as manure, cover crop management, topography and
tillage practices.
It should be noted that a similar study conducted in
the U.S. by biofuels manufacturer Poet came up with a
similar 20 per cent base removal rate for corn stover. Its
2013 report was a response to a project by Purdue
University which warned against stover removal, citing
environmental concerns such as erosion and greenhouse gas emissions. The Poet study stated its findings
were in the 20 to 25 per cent removal rates, not the 38
to 52 per cent levels in the Purdue study.
According to
research in 2010,
soybean residues
are not an option
for removal.
Stage is set
In summary, the research is showing that as long
as it’s done with an eye to sustainability, cob harvesting makes sense.
“We’ve been working on cellulosic ethanol since
2007,” says Mark Schwartz, business development manContinued on page 22
21
Corncobs have
been identified as
the better source
of carbon and
the smallest
component of
stover, meaning
fewer nutrients
to replace.
22 Continued from page 21
ager for GreenField Specialty Alcohols, based in
Brampton, Ont. “We actually worked with corn stover a
couple of years later, and I know we’ve done some corn
stover studies. But we started with wood, and then we
started adding things from there. After that, we got into
corncobs, which have the highest level of carbon.”
Schwartz has worked with an Illinois farmer
who’s been gathering cobs and stover for nearly a
decade. His combine has been modified to haul a
cart behind the combine almost at ground level. The
combine travels at a lower speed, and the cart collects cobs and stover. In fact, this farmer stopped
harvesting one day when the auger for the biomass
broke. He reasoned that it wasn’t worth the effort of
combining the corn on its own, and then going back
and gathering the stover in a separate harvest.
When the price of corn took its substantial jump
in 2009, farmers, agronomists, plant breeders and
retailers all looked for ways to drive corn production
up to and beyond the 300-bu.-ac. level. Continuous
corn practices, higher plant populations and
improved stalk strength played significant roles in
that drive. But it also meant higher residue levels,
and in many cases, a return to plowing and more
aggressive forms of tillage as a means of managing
the mat of corn stover that was left behind.
“People don’t realize that the biomass adds carbon
to the field,” says Schwartz. “When you’re spraying
nitrogen to get that crop to grow, you have too much
carbon and you have to add more nitrogen. So a lot of
these growers are getting huge crops, they’re getting
huge amounts of biomass and carbon, and a lot of
them see the benefit of pulling off some of that carbon.
Most of the growers who do the biomass (collection)
are no-till guys. They want to get rid of it.”
It’s Schwartz’s opinion that if there’s more
research to be done, the focus could be on how
much biomass should be taken off. He points to
individuals like the Illinois farmer he has worked
with in the past as pioneers, based on how they’re
making money collecting cob biomass for mushroom growers, among others.
In the meantime, GreenField is in the process of
getting its cellulosic ethanol plant (or plants) operational. It will also take about two years to gather sufficient amounts biomass in advance of the start of
processing.
“One of the biggest challenges is going to be storage and distribution,” says Schwartz, adding that in
his opinion, there’s enough research to show residue
collection can be done, sustainably and effectively.
“You can’t move the biomass that far away and you
have to store it carefully so it doesn’t rot. But once we
build the plants, we know there’ll be a lot of material.”
Continued on page 24
Corn Guide, September 2014
A World of Knowledge
in Every Bag…
Delivering Performance
in Every Field
Our line-up of Elite® grain corn and silage/grazing varieties
including Roundup Ready® Corn 2 and Genuity® VT Double
PRO® RIB Complete® corn hybrids have been selected for
their strong performance in Western Canadian conditions.
Elite’s variety selection is focused on yield, maturity, drydown,
standability and feed quality. Our priority is helping you grow.
E47A17 R
VENZA R
FUSION RR
Visit brettyoung.ca
1-800-665-5015
Elite is a registered trademark of La Coop fédérée. Genuity®, RIB Complete and Design®, Roundup Ready 2 Technology and Design®, Roundup Ready® Corn 2, and VT Double PRO® are registered trademarks
of Monsanto Technology LLC, Monsanto Canada, Inc. licensee. Always follow grain marketing and all other stewardship practices and pesticide label directions. Details of these requirements can be found in
the Trait Stewardship Responsibilities Notice to Farmers printed in this publication. BrettYoung is a trademark of BrettYoung Seeds Limited. 3823 08/14
3823_BY-Corn-FINAL-CGW.indd 1
2014-08-18 3:47 PM
An efficient
method of
collecting stover
from the back of
the combine
needs to be found
to ease the
process of
generating
sufficient
feedstocks for
cellulosic ethanol.
24 Continued from page 22
Pushing the limit
There may be a lot of material, and a lot of interest among farmers, but the concern from a provincial extension perspective is still the extent to which
farmers will push the limits on residue removal.
“There certainly is a concern that if we do come
out with a way of calculating a number of what to
remove, whether people will stick with that or push
it to 50 per cent or 100 per cent more,” says Adam
Hayes, soil management specialist for field crops
with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and
Rural Affairs (OMAFRA).
Here’s the point where it could get out of balance,
Hayes says. He points to the fact that the Guelph
research shows that the more corn you have in a rotation, the more opportunity you have to remove residue. “But the challenge with that is what is happening
at the long-term rotation plots at Ridgetown and Elora,
where the poorer rotations at those sites from a yield
and soil health perspective are the ones that have more
years of corn in them. If it’s continuous corn or the
corn-soybean rotation, they are the poorer yields.”
One strategy that might help is cover crops. Hayes
has been working for several years on multi-species
cover crops in a number of cropping scenarios, and
believes that the practice of removing residue would
be helped by growers adding a cover crop. Dr.
Shannon Osborne of the USDA’s Agricultural
Research Service (USDA-ARS), has been studying the
removal of residues in concert with cover crops where
possible to offset the loss of organic matter.
She spoke at a local Ontario Soil and Crop
Improvement Association (OSCIA) chapter’s meeting, last December.
“Depending on the rate of removal and the cover
crop program,” Hayes says, “they were able to use
cover crops to allow the removal but to offset any
negative impact on the soil.”
Hayes has seen a recent increase in interest in cover
crops among growers, not just following cereals but for
inter-seeding of cover crops into standing corn. He’s
been working on inter-seeding cover crops at the sixleaf stage, and he’s been receiving calls from growers
who are trying to seed into maturing soybean stands.
“To me, the bottom line on this (residue removal)
comes back to how well the soils have been managed,”
says Hayes. “There are soils where people have been
doing a good job of maintaining their soil organic
matter levels or even pushing them up. But there are a
lot of soils where organic matter levels are dropping
or continue to drop, so those are soils of concern. The
soils that are declining or have low levels of organic
matter are the soils where we’re seeing the loss of
aggregate stability, more potential for soil erosion,
poor soil structure and crusting — we don’t want to
be taking organic matter away from those soils.” CG
Corn Guide, September 2014
Search stories
and news from
Canada’s top
ag sources.
Network
Nobody has more daily news and
up-to-the-minute ag information
than the AgCanada Network.
Our respected titles cover all aspects
of the industry, with award-winning,
in-depth local, national and
international coverage.
SEARCH
Look for the AgCanada Network
Search button on the top right of
the AgCanada.com homepage
Weather you’re looking for a
comprehensive article on a specific
crop, or a recipe for muffins, start your
search at the AgCanada Network.
AgCanada.com Network Search
Search news. Read stories. Find insight.
Cornguide
Conservation
versus vertical tillage
Which is best, year in
and year out?
By Ralph Pearce,
CG Production Editor
26 L
ate in 2013, in the middle of a
conversation on a completely different topic, the subject of conservation tillage came up, and Pat Lynch
paused and then said, “If you ever want
to talk about conservation tillage, just let
me know.”
A lot of farmers believe conservation
tillage is just another way of saying vertical tillage, Lynch says. But he believes the
two are actually different.
Lynch’s concern may be justified. It
turns out the two are quite different, with
different uses, as well as differing considerations to maximize their respective
strengths and weaknesses.
To be fair, of course, it isn’t only Lynch
who believes that conservation tillage differs from vertical till. Growers Doug Park
and Bruce Smith hold the same impressions about the practices, albeit with a few
key differences. Park is located just outside of Sarnia while Smith farms land
near Caledonia, Ont.
Both work on heavier soils, and both
agree with Lynch’s distinction between
the two systems.
“Conservation tillage would be something that we’d always do in the fall, like
with a chisel plow or a disc ripper,” says
Park. “Vertical till is a tool that we normally use in the spring, and it’s similar to
a set of discs, but it doesn’t move as much
dirt, just loosens the top couple of inches.”
Interestingly, it’s been the change in
corn-growing practices that led Park to
alter his no-till practice. In the past 10 to
12 years he’s found, like many other farmers, that plant breeding in corn has
strengthened the stalks. Added to that are
the higher yield potential and increasing
plant densities.
“I don’t think we need to go back to
doing near the tillage we used to do, but
we need to be somewhere in between,”
says Park, noting that today’s cornstalks
are very different from those of 10 or
more years ago. “These stalks stay green
and healthy, and we’re putting fungicides
on them in the summer so they’re still
green come harvest-time. So they’re just
not breaking down like they used to.”
Last year, Park actually switched his
definitions. In the best field he has, he
used his vertical tillage tool last fall. In
fact, because it was a good crop and there
was plenty of residue, he vertical tilled the
field twice — once on an angle, and then
lengthwise, and then planted soybeans
right into that field come the spring. Into
midsummer in 2014, those were his bestlooking soybeans compared to the no-till
crop he planted, which he says was very
yellow in mid-July.
A different approach
Park also makes no apology for
employing conservation or vertical tillage; with the number of acres he manages, the window for planting is simply
too small. “There are only about three
good days of no till on our ground,” says
Park. “You can’t do it when it’s too wet,
and there are only about three good days
before it’s too dry. Certainly on loamy
soils, your options are so much better.
We could make no till work if we were
on 400 acres and got everything into that
three-day window.”
For Bruce Smith, the use of conservation tillage on his land is routine. He
farms on some heavier clay soils but also
works on what he refers to as “potato
ground.” To Smith, conservation tillage
comes down to doing a minimal amount
of tillage and leaving up to 30 to 70 per
cent residue cover depending on how it’s
broken up and what that particular field
is going to be used to grow.
Smith is reluctant to say which one
should be used in fall or spring, since he
employs both systems on his land, and
adjusts their use according to specific
conditions.
Not size but soil types
“If you’re going to go in with corn, you
want to have that area clean for the corn
planter,” says Smith, noting that some no-till
equipment will do the job under ideal conditions. “One of the biggest things we’re
finding is working ground in the spring,
and especially when you get a later spring
and drier conditions, you don’t want to lose
Corn Guide, September 2014
“I don’t think we need to go back to doing the tillage we
used to do, but we need to be somewhere in between.”
— Doug Park, Sarnia-area farmer
your moisture. And that’s where you get
into the higher residues. With the light
tillage, and then not working deep, you
can drop the seed into moisture.”
Vertical till falls along the same line,
adds Smith, mainly because it can do a
great job in the proper soil conditions,
shattering crop residues, particularly
cornstalks.
Smith works with both a Case IH 870
as his conservation tillage unit for fall practices and a Case IH 330 Turbo Till unit for
vertical tillage, typically used in the spring.
The 870’s large disc blades and parabolic
shanks help lift and disturb the soil and
incorporate corn residues in the fall.
“The disc basically does the job of
incorporating the material,” says Smith.
“And then one of the key components is
having that field very level. You want it
rough, but you want it level.”
The vertical tillage unit, he points out,
has larger tires and walking tandems and
wing-gauge wheels, so he’s not digging
deep into the denser soil zones.
Pat Lynch keeps his definition of conservation tillage to one short sentence:
tillage that maintains 30 per cent surface
residue up until the time of planting the
Corn Guide, September 2014 next crop. He says that one proviso is
important because a grower might have
30 per cent residue after tillage on winter
wheat stubble, but by the next spring
there may not be that same amount of
residue in place.
“In some cases, you need more than
30 per cent, so conservation tillage keeps
30 per cent residue cover during those
critical erosion times of early spring, up
until mid-May,” says Lynch, an independent agronomist. “We really want to conserve the soil and prevent erosion.”
Know your limitations
To Lynch, that’s the important message — to conserve soil, prevent erosion
and deal with the residues left behind by
intensive cropping practices. Some farmers get caught up in the definitions of vertical versus conservation tillage, but to
Lynch, the latter is a means of dealing primarily with the strengthened stalks in the
corn sector. He says vertical tillage, on the
other hand, is really a type of conservation tillage.
Lynch says that most farmers could
adapt their farm practices to conservation
tillage, but there are some factors that
could be challenging. For one, conservation tillage costs more, particularly from
the perspective of the added unit cost and
the horsepower requirement. But Lynch
notes it’s possible to mitigate that hurdle
by renting what you need.
Soil type and weed management also
play a part in the consideration for conservation tillage. Managing residues on
sandier soils typically doesn’t require deep
tillage. At the other end of the soil spectrum, the heavier clay soils can be damaged by an implement pulled through in a
late and wet fall. That’s why silt-loams are
a natural fit.
As for weed management, Lynch
believes he’s seen more volunteer corn in
fields that used conservation tillage on
cornstalks in 2013.
“We have seen that many times before,
where if you use conservation tillage, you
will have more volunteer corn,” Lynch
says. “Second, you tend to have more
annual weeds than if you use no till or
mouldboard plowing. Perennial weed
pressure will be less with conservation
tillage because some of the species — like
dandelion — you’re destroying. Some of
the others, like perennial sow thistle,
you’re breaking up those roots, causing
more of the dormant buds to grow, which
can make control easier. If you have a
large undisturbed root mass, many of the
buds can lay dormant until the first
growth is sprayed off in the spring.” CG
27
ADVANCING MODERN FARMING.
••••••
IT STARTS BY PROTECTING WHAT’S IMPORTANT.
Resistant and hard-to-control weeds impact the way you farm, your yields, your bottom line.
They impact your future.
Introducing Enlist™ — a new weed control system
featuring Enlist Duo™ herbicide plus innovative
traits that provide tolerance in Enlist corn and
soybeans. It’s a highly effective solution to modern
weed control challenges.
Only Enlist Duo™ herbicide, featuring Colex-D™
Technology, includes glyphosate and 2,4-D choline
for exceptional performance on hard-to-control
weeds plus two modes of action for superior
resistance management.
It’s protection of what’s important – plus advanced
flexibility, convenience and drift control.
To learn more, call the Solutions Centre
at 1-800-667-3852. Dowagro.ca
Solutions for the Growing World
Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow. Regulatory approvals are pending in other geographies for the Enlist™ herbicide solution and
crops containing Enlist herbicide tolerance traits. The information presented here is not an offer for sale. Always read and follow label directions. ©2014 Dow AgroSciences LLC.
07/14-39536-1_CGE
®™
39536-1_01 Enlist Corn8.125x10.75_CGE.indd 1
2014-08-08 10:44 AM