Seeding rates may need to be increased when seeding at a later seeding date, when high average temperatures or low precipitation are observed before seeding, or expected after seeding.

The Canola Council of Canada recommends targeting a canola plant population of five to eight plants per square foot to balance yield potential and economics.

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“They’re here to stay,” said Jarrett Beatty, an exporter with Parrish & Heimbecker, during the Canola Council of Canada’s Canola Utilization Forum earlier this year.

“Unless they have an environmental issue, they’re going to continue to be a bit of a thorn in our side in terms of capturing market share.”

Australia is expected to export 4.4 million tonnes of the oilseed this year, down from 5.87 million tonnes last year and 5.91 million tonnes the year before that. Those figures are about double the annual volumes it historically shipped out.

Beatty said Australian canola is selling at a C$50-$60 per tonne discount in markets such as Mexico and Japan. The discount was as high as $100 per tonne last year when Australian growers harvested an eye-popping 8.27 million tonnes of the crop.

“The fact that Japan took any seed from Canada (that year) is a testament to their loyalty and their love of our product,” he said.

However, there is one market where Canada still rules due to a phytosanitary constraint.

“We have been more competitive in China because of their dockage regulations of one per cent and Australia’s inability to meet those regulations,” said Beatty.

Canadian exporters have long complained about having to clean to one per cent dockage to access the Chinese market.

“It has actually ironically given us a great advantage into China,” Beatty said.

Australia does not typically clean its canola, as its dockage off the combine is lower than Canada’s. It would have to invest in port cleaning facilities to access the Chinese market.

Beatty forecasts that China will buy 4.07 million tonnes of Canadian canola in 2023-24, which would be 61 per cent of total sales for the year. Exports to other markets, such as Japan, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, the United States and the European Union, are well below normal volumes.

“We are not competitive on prices (versus) Australia into those marketplaces,” he said.

Poor export performance is why the trade believes Canada’s ending stocks will be 3.74 million tonnes, almost double the two million tonnes Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is forecasting.

“Growers were slow to engage as the prices were coming down and China was slow to ramp up,” Beatty said. “And again, we had this major pressure from Australia.”

The good news is domestic crushers are usurping more of the canola supply, consuming an estimated 10.93 million tonnes of the crop in 2023-24 compared to 6.67 million tonnes of exports.

Beatty said Richardson International’s new plant in Yorkton was recently commissioned and is now processing canola. Cargill’s plant is expected to open in 2025 and the Louis Dreyfus plant will follow in 2026.

Each of those facilities is capable of consuming 1.12 million tonnes of the oilseed annually, potentially spiking crush volumes in the next few years.

Jeff Pleskach, a trader with Cargill, said that will reduce Canada’s seed exports, while canola meal exports will rise.

China will be the target market for what is expected to be about three million tonnes of additional Canadian canola meal production. The country has a rapidly expanding aquaculture industry and canola meal has been underused in its dairy sector, the trader said.

There is also an anticipated drop in Chinese canola crushing as that capacity relocates to Canada.

Canola meal sales into the United States, however, will face stiff competition from expanded U.S. soymeal production, at least in hog and poultry rations.

Canola quality

Beatty was asked how Australia’s canola stacks up to Canadian canola on oil content.

It typically higher, he responded; in the range of 46-47 per cent compared to Canada’s 43-44 per cent, since it is grown as a winter crop in Australia. That makes Australian canola even more competitive, especially in the past few years when Canada’s oil content has been lower than normal.

Curtis Rempel, vice-president of crop production and innovation with the Canola Council of Canada, said the Western Canada Canola/Rapeseed Recommending Committee sent a signal to breeders a while ago to increase protein content.

That has come at the cost of oil content. If the industry wants the focus to shift back to oil, it needs to inform breeders.

“They can’t do it on a dime, but certainly over a five-year period, they can start edging levels up,” he said.

Rempel also noted that genomics research shows it is possible to increase both oil and protein at the expense of fibre.

The post Australian canola a ‘thorn in our side’ appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Excitement around biofuels has been high in both Canada and the U.S., with organizations like the Canola Council of Canada flagging the fledgling market as a potential major driver of demand in coming years.

Biofuels “seem to be taking the front-and-centre space for the oilseed sector, at least in Western Canada,” the council’s vice-president of crop production and innovation, Curtis Rempel, said in early November during an event at Winnipeg’s Richardson Centre for Food Technology and Research.

The same event saw Rempel expound on the council’s research priorities to develop Canadian canola for the biofuel market, including improvements to processing technology. He also linked the emerging market with the council’s continuing quest to improve yields.

Canadian oilseed sectors have been monitoring the U.S. conversation about renewable fuel standards and sustainable aviation fuel, anticipating that it might be their next big market.

They might be getting ahead of themselves, based on information presented at a late-2023 Farm Assets Conference.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule in June 2023 establishing a mandate for four to 4.5 billion gallons of renewable diesel and biodiesel by 2025. In the meantime, the U.S. biofuel industry has announced plans for six billion gallons of capacity by 2025 and 7.4 billion gallons in the years that follow.

“Something has got to give,” said Scott Irwin, agricultural economist at the University of Illinois and one of the conference’s speakers.

Either some of those renewable diesel plants will not get built, or they will operate well below capacity, or existing biodiesel plants will be driven out of business.

“Trust me, I have had some interesting conversations with investment bankers who have been putting money into this sector,” he said. “Some of them get very heated when I make my argument.”

They refuse to believe the math, he said, but they have no counter argument.

Irwin thinks the investors fail to comprehend that the EPA’s renewable volume obligations (RVOs) created both a minimum and a maximum mandate for the fuel.

That is because there is a “yawning gap” between biodiesel and conventional diesel prices. Biodiesel sells at a premium that averages between US$1.50 and $2 per gallon. That gap has recently been as high as $5 per gallon.

“This stuff is expensive to make,” he said.

Market forces

Irwin argues that biodiesel and renewable diesel are simply uncompetitive fuels if regular market forces are at work. It is a market solely driven by government policy, and that policy is dictating no more than four to 4.5 billion gallons of annual demand by 2025.

“That is what all the investment bankers missed,” said Irwin.

The only other plausible explanation, according to the economist, is that oil companies that are building these massive renewable diesel plants are content incurring huge losses until the EPA unveils the next round of RVOs for 2026 and beyond, in the hopes that new mandates will better match the capacity under construction.

That is a huge gamble for a company like Phillips 66, which is building a US$1.25 billion plant in Rodeo, California, that will be capable of producing 800 million gallons per year when it opens in the first quarter of 2024.

Farm impacts

The fate of the renewable diesel industry has big ramifications for soybeans and other feedstocks like canola. U.S. soybean crush alone is set to expand by one-third in response to the announced renewable diesel capacity.

Critics who say Irwin is being overly bearish on renewable diesel’s outlook argue that, even if production capacity doesn’t reach its potential, they can rely on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) demand to make up the difference.

Irwin believes SAF is the true future for the biofuel sector and will ultimately be the driver of grain and oilseed prices. But it is in its infancy.

“We have hardly even gotten to the starting line,” he said. “It is not going to be a large impact on our agricultural markets certainly for five years and it may take 10 years.”

Farmers and farm sectors that pin their hopes on biofuel got good news Dec. 15, when the U.S. Department of Treasury announced that it will use an updated model of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model to calculate SAF tax credits. That ensures crop-based SAF will be eligible to claim the credit, which ranges from US$1.25 to $1.75 per gallon.

“With this guidance supporting soy and other plant-based feedstocks going into sustainable aviation fuel, the sky truly is the limit for soy,” Josh Gackle, president of the American Soybean Association, said in a press release.

– With files from Don Norman.

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Pre-seed burnoff is the first tool in the fight against baby kochia, said an agronomist with the Canola Council of Canada.

“Kochia is easier to control when it’s smaller so it’s a matter of the earlier, the better, to get control of it,” said Shawn Senko.

An appropriate tank mix is crucial to effective pre-seed burnoff. Glyphosate alone is not a good idea. Using two modes of action improves weed control, particularly for cleavers and kochia.

“If you’re using glyphosate, make sure you’ve got something else in there,” said Senko. According to the canola council, effective tank mix options ahead of canola include Group 6 bromoxynil and Group 27 topramezone.

Chemical choices are limited for kochia. Group 9 resistance is now so widespread in Western Canada that experts recommend that producers assume any kochia in their fields already has it.

Group 2 resistance has been found all over the Prairies, while Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has also confirmed populations of Group 4 and Group 14 resistance.

In-crop, the only herbicide option said to work on Group 2 and Group 9 resistant kochia is an early (prior to canola’s two-leaf stage) application of Liberty on Liberty Link cultivars.

“Group 10 glufosinate in Liberty will control all resistant populations as long as plants are not too large to kill at the time of spraying,” said Senko.

Producers using Roundup Ready or TruFlex canola systems may also benefit from cultivars with “stacked” systems such as a combination of TruFlex and Liberty Link.

“That way, if you have kochia, you’ve got Liberty to come back in and clean up the kochia problem.”

The first post-burnoff step is scouting for surviving kochia plants. However, wait long enough to make sure the herbicide has had time to work, said Senko.

Scouting will show which controls were effective and which weren’t, so tactics can be altered in the following year.

“There’s an option to go back in there and do something to control (kochia) this year. But you also know you’ve got resistance to whatever chemistry you were using for future years, so you’re going to have to have a different strategy next time you come in there,” he said.

If there are patches where kochia is dominant and canola is unlikely to grow, mow or hand-weed before the plants set seed.

“Mowing it out stops seeds on that patch for the season,” said Senko. “Hand-weeding could be worthwhile in areas where individual resistant (or likely resistant) plants are present.”

Although new to Western Canada, a combine-mounted weed seed destroyer can be an invaluable killer of kochia at harvest, said Senko.

These Australian-developed devices pulverize at least 90 per cent of kochia seed in chaff coming out of the combine, rendering it unable to produce new plants.

“They’re fairly new,” he said. “They’re really common in Australia due to some of their resistance issues presenting no other options for controlling some of the weeds.”

A fall application of Group 3 ethalfluralin (commonly known as Edge) can help control soil-borne kochia in fields earmarked for canola the following spring.

Although Edge can also be applied in spring before planting, fall application is usually a better option, said Senko.

“It needs some time and some moisture to activate. There is an option for spring applying but it needs to be before seeding and a lot of times we’re pretty ground down during the spring.”

Be aware that Edge application is not intended to control mature, growing kochia.

“It’s for any flushes coming after the application,” Senko said.  

Growers may also want to consider long-term, non-chemical management strategies. For example, patches of high-salt soil are very kochia-friendly. Planting salt-tolerant grass may provide the competition needed to drown it out.

“Kochia is really good at handling drought and is very salt-tolerant. If you have a field where nothing else will grow, kochia can thrive, produce a lot of plants and a lot of seed that spreads over the rest of the field,” said Senko.

“You could seed kochia-infested areas to salt-tolerant perennial forage rather than continue to throw inputs at acres with no hope of profitability.”

Other options include diversifying crop rotations with early- and late-seeded crops (winter cereals and forages, for example) to kickstart early season competition, he said.

Tile drainage can help tackle salinity problems by draining water that isn’t flowing naturally.

More information on kochia control is available on the Canola Encyclopedia and Canola Watch websites.

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“I like to think I’m pretty good at agronomy,” said Jurke, agronomy director for the Canola Council of Canada and farmer from Lloydminster, Sask. “I scout, follow labels’ rates, set targets. I’m such a nerd that I test drinking water from my well annually. But have I ever tested the water we use in the sprayer? Even just once? Nope.”

Although his weed control has seemingly done the job, he humoured his colleague anyway, and sent a sample from the local municipal well that he taps for his spray tank.

As it turns out, his water is overrun with cations.

Feral cations to watch for in sprayer water include calcium, magnesium and sodium, as well as iron and potassium. These positively-charged ions bond with negatively-charged herbicide molecules, making the latter molecules useless for weed control. The more cations, the more herbicide molecules lost.

“The most sensitive chemical is glyphosate,” said sprayer specialist Tom Wolf, owner of Agrimetrix Research & Training in Saskatoon.

Cations can also affect Group 10 glufosinate as well as Group 1 (“-dim”) chemistries, Group 4 (2,4-D amine) and Group 27 products.

WinField United has conducted thousands of water quality tests across the Prairies. Martin Carr, the company’s agronomy manager for Western Canada, said the Prairies, in general, have a problem with water hardness. Hard water is high in the cations calcium and magnesium.

Water conductivity, as shown on test results, is a general indicator of salt content, including the cation sodium. High-conductivity water is especially common in east-central Alberta and west-central Saskatchewan, according to Carr.

Chemistry class in session

Using the example of calcium and glyphosate, calcium has a plus-two charge, while glyphosate has a negative-one charge. Thus, every calcium cation in hard water can bond with two glyphosate molecules. This creates a new molecule called calcium glyphosate.

“Calcium glyphosate is essentially a rock,” Carr said. “Plants can’t take it in. Plants can’t eat rocks.”

Jurke’s water test showed overall conductivity of 2,246 microSiemens per centimetre (µS/cm) and hardness of 778 milligrams per litre of calcium carbonate equivalent. Both results are high. Water with conductivity over 500 µS/cm could start to affect herbicide performance.

“If conductivity is below 500 µS/cm, the water is probably good for spraying. If the value is around 1,000 to 2,000, further investigation is necessary,” Wolf wrote in his article, “How to interpret a water quality test result,” published on sprayers101.com.

As for hardness, Carr says that “once you’re in that 150 to 300 ppm (parts per million) range, that’s when we start to see tie-up with pesticides. The more you have, the worse it gets.”

Neuter the cations

Farmers could test water from a few local sources to find one with lower cations.

Well water is fairly consistent over time, but if wells close together tap into different water sources, their cation content can vary. Dugout water quality can vary wildly. After spring runoff, it can be clean, “especially if drawn out with a good filter and the operator doesn’t drag the pipe along the bottom stirring up cation-containing mud,” Carr said.

After a hot summer’s worth of evaporation, dugout cations are more concentrated.

“The best and worst water test results I’ve seen have been from dugouts,” Carr added.

High label rates of herbicide can reduce the effect of cations on weed control. Glyphosate at the low rate of 180 grams of active ingredient per acre could see a big drop in efficacy if sprayer water has high cation content.

“At the high rate of 360 grams per acre, farmers may see good response in the field even if half of the molecules are tied up,” Carr said. “However, adding higher and higher rates of glyphosate isn’t good stewardship with regard to resistance.”

He’d rather see farmers focus on multiple modes of action working together to kill a weed and look at the common recommendation to treat water — ammonium sulphate.

It dissolves in water to form ammonium and sulphate. The negatively-charged sulphate ions bond with the cations so they can’t interact with the herbicide molecules. The positively-charged ammonium ions bond with glyphosate to create ammonium-glyphosate, an effective herbicide.

“Plants pull it in thinking they’re getting a shot of ammonium, so there is no reduction in control,” Carr said.

There’s an exception, however, with 2,4-D amine. When spraying it with hard water, materials published by the Saskatchewan government recommend a non-ionic surfactant (such as Agral 90, AgSurf or Companion) at a rate of one litre of surfactant per 1,000 litres of water. The same material says ammonium sulphate has not been shown to work for 2,4-D amine.

Treatment

Mixing order is critical when adding conditioner to treat sprayer water. The conditioner goes in first to tie up the cations. The herbicide follows.

WinField United tests so much water because it sells a lot of water conditioner, Carr acknowledged. It has a proprietary ammonium sulphate product called Crimson NG.

Any input supplier will often have ammonium sulphate in stock.

Agriculture labs that test sprayer water will recommend how much ammonium sulphate to add to counteract cation content. If farms already have water test results from a provincial lab, private agriculture labs can provide conditioner recommendations based on those results.

Carr ran Jurke’s water analysis through the WinField United calculator, which has an “antagonism coefficient” for each cation. It recommended that Jurke add 4.55 litres of ammonium sulphate (34 per cent solution) per 100 U.S. gallons of sprayer water.

If spraying in dusty conditions, Carr would add another 2.83 litres per 100 gallons (0.75 per cent volume per volume) to counter any weed control loss on the foliar level. Dust on leaf surfaces will also have cations, which can tie up glyphosate molecules before they enter the leaf.

“Often, right behind sprayer, where the sprayer kicks up more dust, you’ll find less-dead weeds,” Carr said.

With the extra volume for dusty conditions, the total recommendation is 7.38 litres of ammonium sulphate per 100 gallons, or nine 10-litre jugs for a 1,200-gallon sprayer tank. Using Crimson NG’s suggested retail price, the cost to condition each tank would come out to about $441.

Other options

Other methods to reduce the effect of high-cation water include lower water volumes, urea ammonium nitrate and acidifiers. None of these is as good as switching water sources or adding ammonium sulphate.

Lower water volume reduces the ratio of water cations to glyphosate molecules, but Carr doesn’t recommend this.

“Days of spraying straight glyphosate are probably over, with glyphosate resistance becoming more and more of a problem. Cutting water volume is not considered acceptable for the tank mix partners,” he said.

Most herbicides need coverage to work properly. With lower water volumes, the tank mix is less effective.

Urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) supplies ammonium that can bind with glyphosate to maintain performance, but it doesn’t contain the sulphate that bonds with the cations.

Acidifiers to lower water pH neutralizes the herbicide charge, making them less likely to bond with cations, but this comes at a risk.

“Certain herbicides commonly tank mixed with glyphosate can fall out of solution and at times plug a sprayer if the pH gets too low,” Carr warned.

Jurke opted for ammonium sulphate after receiving his water results, although perhaps not in every tank until he sees clear benefits. He’ll likely start in fields with kochia.

“It would be great if conditioners would help with kochia control,” he said.

They might. Sub-lethal herbicide performance can be a factor in selecting for higher and higher levels of glyphosate resistance in kochia. However, water conditioners can’t fix glyphosate results if the kochia is already resistant.

Jay Whetter is a communications manager with the Canola Council of Canada.

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The Canola Council of Canada is setting up research it hopes will drive sustainable canola growth in the brown soil zones of the Palliser Triangle, one of the hottest, driest regions of the Prairies.

With canola crush capacity in the midst of doubling, these efforts have never been more important, says a senior official with the council.

“There’s $2 billion in capital going into building those new crush plants in southern Saskatchewan,” said Curtis Rempel, the group’s vice-president of crop production and innovation. “That’s a lot of capital investment that’s going to increase our crush capacity around 50 per cent.”

That’s prompting a new look at the Palliser Triangle, which stretches from Lethbridge to Oyen in the north to just past Moose Jaw. It was infamously deemed too arid for settlement by Captain John Palliser during his survey of the West in the mid 1800s.

Growing canola in that brown soil zone can be an uphill battle, Rempel acknowledges.

“It’s the lack of moisture and the timeliness of moisture compounded by the fact you can have some very high temperatures during flowering. Also, you have to plant canola so shallow — you can’t plant it down into moisture like you could with a larger-seeded pulse or cereal.

“It makes it a risky proposition.”

Less disease pressure

Nevertheless, canola can be grown successfully in the region. The irrigated parts are a hub for hybrid canola seed production, and in years when moisture is plentiful, dryland canola crops can be outstanding.

“If you look at some of the regional yield data, when moisture has not been limiting, the brown soil zones are some of our highest-yielding areas in Western Canada,” said Rempel. “That’s maybe because they don’t have all the disease pressure we have in our higher-moisture black zones.”

Joseph McKee, who farms southeast of Lethbridge, confirms this.

“In our wet years canola can be our biggest money maker.”

There’s a surprising amount of dryland canola in his region, said McKee, who grows the crop on both dry and irrigated land.

“It’s quite common down here. The yields are definitely pathetic compared to outside the Palliser Triangle. The odd year it can still be a good money maker and typically it’s still a good performer.”

The yield differences between his dryland and irrigated acres can be stark, however.

“This past year the canola was two-and-a-half times better on irrigation compared to the dryland,” said McKee. “It shows the potential we have but also the intense variability. The five-year average is closer to the crappy field, unfortunately.”

Local varieties?

Part of the canola council’s investigation is whether there are varieties better suited to the brown soil zone.

“That’s part of the discovery piece,” said Rempel. “Are there varieties that tolerate higher temperatures at flowering?”

Shorter season varieties may have potential, but there are tradeoffs, he added

“You’re giving up some yield potential with a shorter-season variety, but you may beat the heat at flowering,” he said. “You might have to plant them a little bit later to get moisture. Less yield but more consistency versus higher yield and less consistency is the tradeoff.”

McKee says he typically uses longer-season varieties.

“As far as actually coping with heat, there’s no particular variety that does really, really well. A heat blast in July or August when the canola’s flowering and the day is 35 to 38 degrees is very hard on it.”

Brassica juncea canola (a new oilseed developed from Brassica juncea mustard) might present another opportunity because it can tolerate higher temperatures.

“Of course that will have to be vetted against the yield gains we can maybe make with just breeding brassica napus (regular canola) for higher temperature tolerance,” said Rempel.

“I think the big (question) is ‘can I consistently get 40 bushels per acre year after year growing canola when I’m typically in a moisture-deficit mode for a chunk of my growing season.’”

Resist seeding deep

One of the biggest reasons canola struggles on dryland is because it must be planted at a shallow depth, ideally a half-inch to one inch.

However, topsoil tends to dry out early in the Palliser Triangle, so growers may be tempted to plant deeper. Rempel doesn’t recommend this.

“Canola doesn’t do well if you’re planting it two-and-a-half inches deep like wheat. The energy reserves are just depleted so massively and quickly and the seed has to germinate from that far down and push its way up through the soil.”

McKee targets three-quarters of an inch to an inch deep on his dryland acres.

“We often have to chase moisture a little bit more. You can’t always count on a spring shower to moisten the topsoil,” he said.

Canola growers and researchers know a lot about what not to do in these regions, but what they really need are solid numbers and best management practices to help them get productive crops consistently.

Those are coming, said Rempel.

The canola council and its partners are releasing research protocols to get the best results out of trials. The hope is that this research will drive best management practices for producers growing canola in these conditions. A lot of the research will be conducted by farmers themselves with support from academics, seed companies and agronomists.

“There are no big AAFC (AgCanada) or university research stations left in the brown soil zones. This is going to be done from the ground up on the farm,” said Rempel.

“We’ll certainly get academics and AAFC researchers involved… but it’s going to be different than canola research in the past where we have been able to rely on research sites to do some of the plot and discovery work.”

Establishing an optimal plant stand is one of the biggest challenges McKee faces on dryland. Although he shoots for the industry standard of five to eight plants per square foot, his yield is variable.

“There will be a low spot that will have 100 per cent emergence and then we’ll get to a dry, sandy hill that will have one plant per square foot,” he said. “But some springs we don’t have a problem and we get a really nice stand. It’s just variable year to year.”

The post Palliser Triangle: It’s hot and dry — and the next frontier for canola appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The funding (from Ottawa’s On-Farm Climate Action Fund) will reimburse growers for up to 85 per cent of their costs in four areas: soil testing, enhanced efficiency fertilizers, preferred application and field zone mapping.

Growers will need a 4R Nutrient Stewardship plan certified by a crop adviser or professional agrologist with a 4R designation from Fertilizer Canada, the council said.

“These BMPs (best management practices) … are effective ways to use fertilizer efficiently and get more return from that investment,” said Alberta Canola chair Roger Chevraux.

For more info, go to canolacouncil.org.

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The joint farm-industry organization released an updated “innovation strategy” last month to support it’s ‘Keep It Coming — 26 by 2025’ initiative. The strategy report has a long list of where gains might be made (including better genetics, agronomic practices, and fertilizer use), all focused on pushing up per-acre yields.

“The 26-million-tonne goal will depend primarily on yield increases (52 bushels/acre) achieved through sustainable intensification so as not to increase land use in support of crop rotation, disease management, farm economic risk management and biodiversity,” the document states.

But that quote sits just under a graph that starkly illustrates the challenge.

The graph below shows the rapid gains in production during the first 13 years of this century were mirrored by a rise in acres. But the area seeded to canola has more or less flatlined since then and production peaked in 2017 at just under 21.5 million tonnes. It then slipped in the following three years: 20.7 million in 2018, 19.9 million in 2019, and 19.5 million in 2020. (Last year was an outlier, as drought hammered crops, pushing production to 12.6 million tonnes, the lowest level since 2007.)

Nevertheless, the canola-processing sector seems convinced that challenge can be met.

While canola crush capacity has been relatively steady at around 11 million tonnes in recent years, the report projects it will approach 18 million tonnes by 2025 (with about 16 million tonnes being crushed that year).

“With the announcements in 2021 and early 2022 of five new processing plants in Saskatchewan and the doubling of another, canola has opportunity to increase its place among the major growth sectors in the Canadian economy and play a key part in the post-COVID recovery,” the report states.

Although many items on the report’s wish list (more oil content, improved disease resistance), are long standing, there is an evolution of language.

For example, changes in climate are spoken of in the present tense: “Climate change is impacting production, which means canola agronomic practices and genetics will need to adapt to weather variability, including warmer, drier conditions primarily, but also excess water in some years and areas.”

In addition to calling for more efficient fertilizer use, the document also states greenhouse gas emissions from canola production must be reduced.

“A clear goal is to harness innovation to produce and process canola with the lowest carbon footprint of any oilseed grown,” it states before going on to say, “We need to know the current nitrogen use efficiency for canola in Canada, how much is lost during production and why, and how to reduce losses and improve N efficiency.”

The report calls for more research in a number of areas, and backs “research on smart farms and ‘Living Labs’ to address canola-specific issues and to develop a model for on-farm testing by industry and growers to evaluate new management practices and products.”

And while new and improved crop protection products need to be developed, the strategy also supports non-chemical ways to deal with pests.

“Encourage ways to improve biodiversity in rural Western Canada,” it states. “This includes understanding of beneficial insects and their economic value, and an appreciation for non-farmed spaces. This could include putting lower productivity areas back into perennial grass habitat.”

The strategy can be found at the the council’s website at Canola Innovation Strategy.

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“Hopefully in two or three years, we’ll have a better recommendation and strategy for these things, but right now, it feels like there are more questions than answers,” said Mike Gretzinger, research co-ordinator at Farming Smarter.

The recent buzz around biostimulants — a variety of products that boost plant growth — has farmers across Alberta wondering if they are more miracle cure or snake oil. But for most growers, their results will likely depend on their conditions, Gretzinger said at Farming Smarter’s virtual field school in late June.

“Everybody’s situation is going to be different,” he said. “The recommendations are going to be different for every farmer for every different crop that they might be doing and for every condition they might face.”

Biostimulants began to hit the market following regulatory changes in 2013, when the federal government removed the efficacy requirements for many new product registrations. The regulations were changed mainly to address the five- to 10-year backlog in registrations for products that were already registered in the United States.

But it also created a lot of questions about whether bio-stimulants provide a worthwhile benefit, said Gretzinger.

So the Canola Council of Canada launched its Ultimate Canola Challenge to help producers identify the management practices and products that would boost their yield. That study showed higher yields from the treatments — but it was more of a “shotgun approach.”

“This is throwing every possible thing you can out there and seeing what happens — what works, what doesn’t,” said Gretzinger.

Farming Smarter’s three-year biostimulant project hopes to be able to refine those results and quantify the direct impact of biostimulants on crop yields. But it can be hard for farmers to see the benefits of biostimulant products that offer other claims, such as a longer growing season, improved soil health, or improved plant health.

One year into the project, though, the results seem promising.

“When it comes to biostimulants, what we see quite a bit is improved vigour in the plants, as well as improved rooting,” he said. “Those are a lot of the claims put forward, and I’m impressed to see some improvement in the root development and the vigour.”

For producers who have already optimized their fertility and their pest management, biostimulants might be their next step to getting another few bushels an acre. That may not sound like much, but if you’re using an $11-an-acre product on a $15-a-bushel canola crop, you’re seeing a four-to-one return, he said.

However, it’s important for producers to adjust their expectations, especially in a year with poor growing conditions. In 2018, for example, very few products had a return on investment because of drought conditions — although that doesn’t mean the product won’t work under the right conditions.

“You need to recognize that if you tried something in 2018 or 2019 and it didn’t work, it probably wasn’t the product’s fault,” said Gretzinger. “But if you’ve been doing something for four to six years under great conditions and it’s not working, then maybe it’s time to rethink what you’re doing.”

For many, biostimulants may be something they only use in the right conditions rather than every year. But for now, a definitive answer on what those right conditions are is still a ways away.

“I can’t give you a definitive this works or this doesn’t work right now,” said Gretzinger. “But I think a really important perspective is just to look at your overall conditions and your overall situation and make an evaluation based on that.”

The post Marvel or foo-foo dust? No verdict yet on biostimulants appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Based on the average yearly price, a farmer seeding canola at five pounds per acre will incur a per-acre seed cost of $63 to $71 depending on the herbicide system,” Ryan Furtas said in a release.

“This makes seed the second-highest operating expense after fertilizer, which ranges from $65 to $90 per canola acre seeded, and is well ahead of chemical at $30 per acre.”

The price for both Roundup Ready and Liberty Link seed (which account for 95 per cent of acres) went up last year — Roundup Ready by 29 cents per pound and Liberty Link by 27 cents per pound.

According to a chart in the release, Roundup Ready seed has gone from just over $9 a pound in 2015 to just over $12 last year while Liberty Link seed has gone from just under $12 a pound to just over $14 last year.

“Looking at the average growth rate of Alberta canola seed prices, the Liberty Link price increase amounted to 1.96 per cent and Roundup Ready increased by 2.36 per cent,” said Furtas.

“Annual price increases for canola seed have been a trend for some time. However, the 2020 increases were more comparable to 2016 and 2017 versus the larger increases seen in 2018 and 2019.”

Alberta Agriculture’s numbers are similar to those put out by its counterpart in Manitoba, which predicts the cost of canola seed and treatment will be $67.50 an acre in 2021.

Aside from corn and soybeans (which cost $93 to $96 an acre for seed), the next most expensive per-acre seed cost is for peas ($50.49) followed by hard red spring wheat ($29) and northern hard red wheat ($27) with barley and oats under $20 an acre, according to Manitoba Agriculture.

Ag officials there put the operating costs (that is, not counting land and machinery costs) for growing canola in 2021 at $273 an acre. Its figures for the other major crops are: corn ($389), northern hard red ($249), hard red spring ($240), barley ($224), soybeans ($216), oats ($197), and peas ($193). Peas are the cheapest because that crop has very low fertilizer requirements. Somewhat higher nutrient costs make northern hard red more expensive to grow than hard red spring, while higher pesticide bills push the costs for growing barley higher than for oats.

Manitoba Agriculture’s figures can be found at www.gov.mb.ca (search for ‘cost of production’ and follow the links) while provincial figures an be found at www.alberta.ca (search for ‘farm financial statistics’ and follow the links).

Canola has been a good money-maker for producers thanks largely to high yields and “relatively strong market prices in recent years,” the Alberta Ag release states. But if this is a good year, seed prices may jump again.

“If canola prices continue to be strong into the fall of 2021, canola seed prices could be poised for further increases,” said Furtas.

The post It takes money to make money certainly holds true for canola appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.