In an article on the seed regulation review in the Nov. 1 edition of this paper (‘Seed regulatory review reveals industry split‘), Seeds Canada’s policy director Lorne Hadley suggested farmers don’t need a well-regulated seed variety registration and certification system. He said they can simply deal directly with the seed companies if a seed lot or variety does not live up to their expectations. Hadley suggested that farmers will tweet if a variety is poor. So seed companies will protect their reputation by only bringing excellent varieties to market.

Now I like Twitter as much as the next person, but anecdotal data is simply not a replacement for the rigorous testing that seed varieties undergo in order to be registered in Canada.

Nor do I believe that standardized third-party seed crop inspections and licensed seed graders following publicly available standards can be replaced by a patchwork of commercial regulatory systems.

Seeds Canada suggests that instead of a single seed regulator — currently the Canadian Seed Growers Association — there should be a competitive marketplace of seed-certifying bodies in the Canadian seed industry.

What this means in practice is different companies could develop their own regulatory standards that they monitor in house.

While these standards may not necessarily be lower than the current Canadian Seed Growers Association standards, it will no longer be as easy for farmers or end-use customers to know what standards govern a particular seed lot. Currently there are publicly available Seed Tables that anyone can look up online. The seed growers’ association’s policy manual for seed crop inspections is also available online. I doubt many farmers avail themselves of these resources, but they are there and standard across the country nonetheless.

There’s a book called The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey. I haven’t read it but read about it and I love the idea that when there’s trust we can do things quickly. I’ve been in business situations where there is low trust and all parties spend a lot of time making sure that roles and responsibilities are well defined in as many specific scenarios as possible.

Sometimes low-trust situations can turn into high-trust situations over time, but if trust remains low then there is always going to be ponderous poring over of accounts. In contrast, in high-trust situations people can move quickly and make decisions because they trust the system and the people involved.

I would describe Canada’s current seed regulatory environment as a high-trust system.

Farmers, grain end-users and international customers all know that varieties only get registered in Canada if they have undergone trials and meet certain standards. The blue certified seed tag means that the seed a farmer is buying has been inspected in field and after seed cleaning, and meets a minimum standard of purity and germination.

Farmers already spend time researching which crop types and varieties to grow. Without this high-trust seed system, farmers will also have to muddle through and figure out what standards these varieties meet.

Is there room for improvement in Canada’s seed regulatory system? Absolutely.

Technology has changed how we grow, process and certify grain and seed, and the system needs to be flexible and move more quickly.

However, lowering the bar for registering seed varieties or muddying the regulatory waters with numerous sets of standards will ultimately lower trust and slow down the ability of farmers and their customers to make clear-eyed decisions.

Sarah Weigum is a grain farmer and manager of Alect Seeds near Three Hills.

The post Comment: A seed regulatory system that inspires trust shouldn’t be undermined appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“I’ve heard it said that 80 to 90 per cent of successful weed elimination comes from a competitive crop,” said Matt Gosling, an agronomist in the Strathmore area. “This year we didn’t have a lot of competitive crops and I saw a lot of dirtier-than-normal fields.”

Canada thistle thrived in the dry weeks of May and June and winter annuals were also prevalent in fields across the province.

Pre-harvest glyphosate applications are favoured by many farmers for its two-for-one desiccation and weed control benefits, but it may not be the best way to control stubborn weeds this year.

“In most circumstances, we have good staging for spraying weeds now, but it makes me nervous that we have so many days before weeds go into dormancy,” said Gosling.

This year, applying herbicide after harvest may be the better option as it gives perennial and winter annual weeds less time to grow through the chemical application and survive the winter. A post-harvest application also offers more flexibility for tank mixing various herbicides with the glyphosate — an industry-recommended strategy for reducing herbicide-resistant weeds.

His customers have plenty of time to control weeds after harvest, said Gosling.

“We’re already into harvest a month earlier than normal so we’ve got maybe 50 days before long-term frost patterns set in. The most successful perennial weed control I’ve seen is in early October.”

An early harvest also gives farmers another weed control option that does not increase selection pressure for herbicide-resistant weeds such as wild oats. Winter cereals — while a “logistically challenging crop to get in” — provides the early-spring competition necessary to keep many weeds in check.

“Every time I’ve ever grown winter wheat, I can’t remember spraying for wild oats,” said Gosling. “Every time we don’t spray we buy ourselves one more year of resistance.”

Gosling actually recommended not spraying for wild oats in some of his clients’ spring-seeded crops this year. Where dry spring conditions made for tight budgets and very low wild oat presence, Gosling thought it was worth cutting out a year of herbicide tolerance selection pressure, even if it meant a few wild oats went to seed.

Wheatland County farmer Jay Schultz feels he isn’t sure whether skipping a spray is the right choice. He understands the principle behind decreasing selection pressure, but his goal is to “overall decrease (the) number of weeds for the long term.”

Schultz faces a challenge in a field of peas where lab tests confirmed Group 1- and Group 2-resistant wild oats this year. He sprayed the crop with glyphosate before harvest and since the wild oats were still green, he hopes the chemical they take up will reduce the vigour of the seed. After harvest he plans to pull out a heavy harrow with Valmar to spread granular wild oat herbicides like Treflan and Avadex which are from herbicide Groups 3 and 8.

Unlike the clichéd advice, “If it’s not broke don’t fix it,” Schultz’s mantra on herbicides is, “If something works, change it.”

He has read about farmers in Australia and the United Kingdom who are spending more than $100 per acre to control various herbicide-resistant weeds.

Along with diverse herbicides, Schultz hopes to mix up his crop rotation. He’s considering planting winter wheat in a couple of years and after that may look at various forage crops that local livestock owners could cut for feed or graze cattle on.

It takes extra planning and logistics to make this multi-pronged weed control strategy work, but for Schultz it’s worth it.

“We don’t want to abuse what we have.”

The post A bad year for crops has been a good one for weeds appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Sometimes, however, the best farm decisions are aided by a perspective from higher up.

Drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in agriculture are making headlines, and for a couple of thousand dollars — and some remote control practice — any farmer can now get a view of his land that was once reserved for those with access to an airplane.

Brandon Gibb, who farms near Pincher Creek, purchased a quadcopter for around $1,500 this spring. His system includes a high-definition camera that can take video or still pictures and a GPS that guides the drone back to its starting position.

In mid-June, Gibb’s fields were being hit by a deluge of rain and once the rain stopped, he had plans for his drone.

“After the big rain I’ll spend the whole day flying around to see where there’s not enough run-off and what areas we can work on in the fall,” said Gibb.

As a farmer in an irrigation district, Gibb knows the value of bringing water to the land, but now he says he needs to concentrate on moving it away. Low spots that drown out or cannot be seeded in time cost money, so he is considering surface and tile drainage to help the water flow through rather than sit on his land.

Gibb discovered the benefits of a view from above while doing a university internship in Michigan.

“We’d rent a helicopter twice a year to get aerial imagery. It was expensive, but it paid for itself,” he said.

To Gibb, a bird’s-eye view is worth $1,000 per minute and a drone is cheaper than a biannual helicopter ride.

• From the Manitoba Co-operator: Got the drone, but how about your permit to fly it?

As a drone operator zips the device over the field, the video shows up on a hand-held display, revealing things missed by simply walking through the field.

“If you have plugged irrigation nozzles you’ll see striping in your field,” explained Gibb. “You can’t see it from the ground, but from the air it sticks out like a sore thumb.”

He has even used the drone-derived images to show his irrigation district that their pipeline left a ridge up to 24 inches high that was impeding the natural drainage in his field.

“They’ve agreed to come in and fix it at their cost,” said Gibb, adding that the drone paid for itself 10 times over in one flight.

He said he hopes the aerial images can help him more effectively apply soil amendments to improve the quality and uniformity of his land.

“If we can see a pattern through the growing season then we can go in there and figure out what’s going on and try to even up the field without spending a lot of money on variable-rate applications.”

It took some practice for Gibb to master operating the drone and he suggests new users practise in an open field without trees or buildings. His UAV comes with some handy user-friendly features, such as an automatic return to home if the battery is dying or the drone gets out of range.

If Gibb is on the do-it-yourself end of the UAV spectrum, then Owen Brown of Isis Geomatics in Lethbridge is on the other.

Brown and business partner Steve Myshak started the company in 2011 with the goal to gather and distil data for both the agriculture and energy sectors. They have spent at least a hundred times what Gibb has on UAVs and sensing technology. With their combined expertise in remote sensing and surveying, Brown and Myshak provide their clients not only with raw images but also usable data.

“Farmers can have their own drones, but what do you do with the data afterwards?” said Brown. “That’s where our expertise lies — in extracting information from data after we’ve collected it.”

Use real-time kinematic (RTK) navigation — a more precise form of GPS — to produce survey-grade drainage maps that can be used for installing tile drainage. The best drainage map Isis Geomatics can create would cost a little over $11 per acre, said Brown. Other data they can provide include plant health mapping, and both cattle and silage inventories for beef producers.

Isis Geomatics is fully certified by Transport Canada to operate anywhere in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

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