Danish forage and turf seed firm DLF announced Oct. 6 it has “unified its brand and business” under that name, dropping the “DLF Pickseed” moniker it had used in North America since acquiring Canadian firm Pickseed in 2013.

DLF said it’s also moving its business structure from geographical divisions to “functional groups” and creating “leadership-by-function to bond its teams together versus dividing them by country.”

That new structure “allows for collaboration across operations and shared services that are foundational to sustainable growth and customer success,” the company said in a release.

The announcement follows DLF’s adoption in September of a new logo and “corporate visual identity” (CVI), which it described at the time as “a step in direction of a more uniform and united appearance.”

“This evolution synchronizes the influence of DLF’s highly recognized regional brands into a common, stronger identity,” Neil Douglas, executive vice-president for DLF North America, said Oct. 6. “As DLF, our North American voice becomes amplified, empowered, and important on the global seed stage.”

That said, the Pickseed brand “has a strong legacy in several of the markets we serve, and we will continue to honour it as we evolve,” he added.

Founded in 1947 as Otto Pick Agricultural Service, Pickseed at first focused on direct sales of improved forage seed to southern Ontario livestock producers, based on the then-relatively-new concept of “permanent pasture.”

Otto Pick’s sons and wife took over the business following his death in 1959, expanding into turfgrass products and expanding both west and east with a Manitoba seed production unit, a processing plant in Winnipeg and a distribution site at St-Hyacinthe, Que.

The company later expanded into the U.S. in the 1970s through Oregon-based Pickseed West, and took over one of Canada’s biggest forage and turfgrass seed businesses, the seed division of Maple Leaf Mills, in 1981.

The Pickseed Companies Group was then fully taken over in 2013 by what was then known as DLF-Trifolium. DLF is majority-owned by a Danish grass seed farmers’ co-operative and at the time was already considered the world’s biggest producer of grass and clover seed.

The Pickseed deal gave DLF its toehold in North America, with “access to research and development and production and distribution channels in Canada as well as opportunities the within the U.S. market.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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DSV (Deutsche Saatveredelung) announced last week it has reached a deal in early April to buy up all shares of Northstar Seed, which is based at Neepawa, Man. with an Alberta office at Okotoks.

Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close “within the coming months,” were not disclosed.

DSV, based at Lippstadt, east of Dortmund, said in a release April 26 it will be “able to enrich our portfolio with new genetics, including alfalfa, to serve our customers worldwide even better.”

DSV is already a joint owner with another German seed firm, NPZ-Lembke, in Manitoba-based canola and pea seed breeding firm DL Seeds.

“Through this acquisition, DSV will not only be managing (its) own seed multiplication areas in Canada and North America, but also gaining access to the Canadian as well as the North and South American retail market, thus enlarging its footprint into the Americas significantly,” the company said.

Northstar founders Don Pollock and Rob Wolfe said in the same release that under DSV’s ownership “we are certain that we can expand our business worldwide — a true win-win situation for both companies.”

Founded by alfalfa seed growers in 1982, privately-held Northstar today produces, sells and distributes Canadian-grown forage, turf, cover crop and native grass seed, as well as leafcutter bees and equipment.

Northstar has said it “continues to expand its activities” selling into markets in North and South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. It also takes part in research and development programs internationally “to ensure that we remain on the cutting edge of plant breeding and genetics.”

DSV, meanwhile, bills itself as one of Germany’s leading plant breeding and seed companies, with gross revenues of over 210 million euros (C$284 million) per year.

DSV, which produces seed for grasses, corn, cereals, oilseed rape and cover crops, has stakes in “well-known” companies in the seed industry in Germany and elsewhere, as well as its own subsidiaries in Denmark, the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Poland, Argentina and Ukraine. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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“Environmental stewardship is simply a way of protecting the environment and our investment at the same time,” Elan Lees, business manager of Soderglen Ranches South, said in an email interview.

“If we do it right, we may be here for a very long time, and if we don’t…”

Lees ranches with husband Scott and the couple’s three managers: Roger Gerard, Jeff Demarni, and Ross Howey, who are each responsible for their own land base and cattle.

The operation has two ranches — at Cardston and Fort Macleod, both in the foothills fescue subregion and comprised mainly of native grassland with numerous wetland basins. They run about 1,500 Charolais, Red and Black Simmental, and Red and Black MAX (Soderglen’s own line of modified Simmental genetics).

The ranch’s management goals are to continue to improve the grasslands for the cattle and wildlife, said Lees.

“Ranchers and farmers are the custodians of the land,” she said. “Well-managed lands have a positive value to both the owner as well as the public.

“For instance, we create and provide habitat for virtually every species of animal and plant in the food chain. A healthy environment makes for a productive ranch.”

Soderglen South has been involved with Ducks Unlimited Canada for more than 30 years, and leases more than 2,400 acres the wildlife organization owns next to its Cardston operation.

“We believe our goals and that of Ducks Unlimited fit exceptionally well with those of cow-calf producers in southern Alberta,” said Lees.

Soderglen South and Ducks Unlimited Canada also work with the Nature Conservancy of Canada on weed control, riparian area protection and reseeding of tame and native species of grass on cultivated acres. The operation has a conservation agreement to maintain native prairie and wetland habitat, and will be converting some cropland to perennial forage cover on the Fort Macleod Ranch. The ranch will also restore previously drained wetlands and protect existing ones, and convert some cropland to perennial forage cover on the Cardston ranch.

Soderglen South also works with Pheasants Forever Calgary, and has set aside land for pheasant habitat.

Cattle are discouraged from watering at wetlands and dugouts to improve water quality and riparian health. The operation uses both static and portable watering systems, and the ranches have more than four miles of pipeline to service the portable troughs needed for rotational grazing.

“This grazing strategy maintains healthy and productive grasslands, which support wildlife/waterfowl habitat and consistent weight gain among the livestock,” said Lees.

Hay is cut after July 1, in order to minimize disturbance to nesting waterfowl, and to improve grass cover for other wildlife. Rotational grazing and haying have given the tame pastures more longevity and profitability while reducing inputs.

The pipeline water systems, solar systems and reduction of riparian grazing have increased overall grass production by moving the cattle away from the St. Mary River, which goes through the middle of the ranch, said Lees.

Their property has a large wildlife population including deer, elk, grizzly bears, and a wide variety of birds including sandhill cranes, burrowing owls, horned owls, hawks and eagles.

Lees said they are grateful to be recognized by the award, adding stewardship will continue to be part and parcel of the ranch.

“The efforts we have made in building this ranch will continue long after we are gone,” Lees said.

“Some of our conservation agreements with the Nature Conservancy of Canada as well as Ducks Unlimited will continue to protect these lands from development in the future.”

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“What a range health assessment does is provides a measure of how well rangelands are performing key functions,” said Ross Adams, range management specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks. “It would be difficult and expensive to go out and measure those functions directly, so the assessments are based on more easily observed indicators that can be rapidly evaluated.”

Healthy rangelands (whether native grasslands or tame pastures) may look different based on where they’re located, but they share something in common — long-term stability in all of their key functions, whether that’s producing forage, protecting the soil, capturing water, storing carbon, or supporting biodiversity.

So an assessment is really comparing the current state of the site to its potential, Adams said during a Cows and Fish webinar last month.

That potential depends on climate, soil, and landscape, but a provincial range health assessment guide outlines baseline parameters for different regions and sub-regions across the province. Once you know where the gaps are in your operation, you can evaluate whether your management practices are working effectively, said Adams.

“It provides a quicker and easier method than going out and trying to measure functions directly,” he said.

And that starts with training the eye so you can quickly see “the different components of rangelands and what their potential is.”

Site selection and plant communities

Start by choosing a representative site (or several if sites differ considerably).

“Some site types may show radically different vegetation or response to disturbance than others, so it’s helpful to evaluate them separately,” said Adams.

While it can be a fairly involved process to differentiate between site types, each will have a ‘reference plant community,’ or the plant community that can be found under light disturbance.

Rangeland plants typically fall into the categories of ‘decreasers,’ which are highly productive but decrease with disturbance, and ‘increasers,’ which are more tolerant of disturbance but less productive. Increaser plant species begin to invade the rangeland when decreasers become less dominant on the landscape.

“Under light grazing, the plant community is basically at its reference condition, and the score decreases as you see that shift from decreaser-dominated to increaser- and invader-dominated plant communities,” said Adams.

“Those are sites where communities have become so disturbed that they become invaded by non-native vegetation, and in many cases, those plant communities may not be able to revert back to reference conditions under realistic management.”

So the first step is simply taking a walk and making note of the most abundant plant species.

“If the plant community closely resembles the reference plant community, the site will receive a high score,” he said. “But as that site becomes more disturbed and decreaser species are beginning to be replaced by increasers and invaders, the score will be reduced.”

Layers, litter, and soil loss

Next, look at the physical structure of the plant community — “the layers the plants fit into and whether all of the expected layers are present on the site.”

Those layers are above and below ground, ideally including both shallow- and deep-rooted plants, as well as above-ground vegetation of different heights. Diversity above ground allows more efficient capture of energy and nutrients while different depths of root systems mean “they’re not all competing for the same nutrients.”

This measurement of range health is scored much like the first — take a walk and take a look. But instead of looking at individual species, look for different layers: Short grasses, tall grasses, forbs and shrubs, moss and lichen, even trees.

“The changes can be fairly subtle in grasslands — there’s not as many functional layers — but tall grasses tend to be the first to drop out under disturbance, and then we see a shift toward lower-statured plant communities with very little structure,” said Adams.

Next take stock of how much litter is on the soil surface.

To determine if you have enough litter, rake up all the dead plant material on the soil surface of a 50×50-centimetre plot. Then use the guide (available at www.alberta.ca/range-health.aspx) to see if your site has enough litter based on your region. More litter is usually better.

“It helps to shade and cool the soil surface, which helps to retain soil moisture and enhance forage production during dry periods,” he said. “It also protects soil from raindrop impacts, enhances infiltration, and reduces run-off, so erosion is less likely to happen where there’s adequate litter. It also contributes organic matter directly into the soil.”

Next, look for evidence of human-caused erosion or bare soil — emphasis on human caused.

“Especially in grasslands, there can be sites that are naturally unstable or have naturally occurring bare soil simply because they are in a topographic position or have some chemical characteristic that limits plant growth.

“In that case, instability or bare soil is not an indicator of human-caused disturbance, but rather just a natural characteristic of the site.”

Things such as soil loss, compaction, bare soil, and erosion are indicators that the site isn’t healthy or stable, so you’ll want to make note of these problems.

“The more widespread and severe the issue, the lower the score will be.”

Training the eye

Finally, look for noxious weeds.

“Weeds are an indicator that the plant community on the site has become stressed and is less able to compete with incoming invasive plants, which can be time consuming and costly to manage,” said Adams.

“It’s much easier to manage weeds if they’re in a couple of localized patches rather than spread out throughout the pasture. As weeds become higher in coverage or more widespread throughout the pasture, that will lead to a reduced score.”

Having done the assessment, think about what, if anything, you need to change in your management.

“Looking at those individual indicators can help to diagnose the specific management issue that’s causing the decline and will suggest how to address it,” he said.

“It’s worth looking at where in the indicators (that) the numbers are coming down. Is it an issue where the plant community is looking good but there are noxious weeds? Is there too little litter? Or are there broader-scale issues that are causing the plant community to shift?”

On most operations, conducting a formal health assessment — complete with guidebook and checklists — won’t be necessary every time you want a snapshot of your rangeland health. But when you’re starting out, these tools can help you train the eye.

“As time goes on and you have more experience, you can almost start doing these in your head. You’ll just know where to look and what you’re keeping track of.”

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The Irricana rancher also has a rough plan for all of his 2,000 acres of pasture for the rest of spring and into summer — but Mother Nature always gets the final say on his grazing plan.

“The big thing is the adaptive part,” said Wray. “When it doesn’t rain, your plans start to change. And when it does rain, your plans start to change.”

The goal, after all, is maximizing the amount of grass — something Wray started focusing on 20 years ago.

“It started with attending a Jim Bauer Pasture School followed by Ranching for Profit one winter,” said Wray. “Coming out of that, you’re pretty much convinced that’s the pathway forward.” That path led him out of mixed farming and towards a new goal.

“I wanted to make strides and pro­gress in management, skills, and ideas as opposed to input costs.”

Having a grazing plan is the foundation of that.

Obviously, you need some sort of plan to manage several dozen paddocks, but what are key aspects of a grazing plan?

Flexibility is key, said Wray, a nationally known grazing advocate who helped found the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association and was its longtime chair.

You should not only make changes if something isn’t working but also constantly try new things to see if you can improve things that are.

“You don’t get stuck in that same rut which becomes part of declining productivity.”

Proper record-keeping is also essential so you can see what was done in previous years, what was successful, and what didn’t work so great. ‘Analyze and adapt’ is Wray’s method. Early on he said his biggest criticism of himself was, “I should have moved those cattle quicker.”

Having photos can be a lot of help, and so can maps.

“I’m a visual person, and we write (our cattle moves) on the map,” said Wray, noting grazing apps are useful tools for keeping and organizing your records.

Attitude also affects how well your grazing plan is going to work for you.

Wray’s attitude is that he needs to manage his grassland as intensively or better than his neighbours manage their grain. Don’t think grass productivity can’t keep up with grain productivity, he said.

“But it’s managing it with that same intensity to get all you can out of it, like the canola and wheat acres are managed.”

That starts before you turn the cows out.

“This time of year, the biggest question is, ‘How soon can we get out there?’” Wray said in an interview just prior to this spring’s quick melt.

But producers really need to look at what condition the pasture is in first, he said. Wray deliberately manages some paddocks for early-season grazing (which is usually early to mid-May).

“We turn out onto something that hasn’t been grazed since early to mid-August,” he said. “It has some growth going into winter. When (the cattle) get into the green growth that’s coming, they’re taking half a mouthful that’s green and half that’s old growth. It creates a nice transition from dried feed to lush green grass.”

Pasture priorities

Calving date is another key piece.

“Strategically, we’re breeding to calve May 1,” he said.

Part of his herd calves while they are still feeding hay or swath grazing. Once calving is in full swing, the cows are calving on pasture and green grass. This has benefits for both cow and calf — matching forage availability to the cows’ milk production, and providing clean calving grounds to minimize scours.

“We’ve got our whole production system lined up to maximize our days grazing and minimize the days we’re feeding,” said Wray.

The most obvious benefactor of a grazing plan is the pasture.

In Wray’s paddocks he has some old stands of grass-legume mixed pastures which he says “is not normal.” But the way he manages his pastures contributes to the longevity of this mix.

“We intensive graze for two or three days, give the paddock a month and a half off, do it again, and then another rest, and maybe capture a little more in the dormant season, as fall closes in. This has been very good for those pastures.”

To maintain productivity, he only grazes — never hays — them. And pastures aren’t old hayfields.

“(With haying) you haul away all that initial burst of energy. When the productivity starts to decline, you turn it into a pasture, and I think you compromise the long-run productivity by doing that. We planned them to be pastures and managed them as such right from the start.”

Monitoring soil moisture levels is also essential.

Wray tracks moisture and this not only gives him an idea of how much rainfall to expect (on average), but allows him to predict future growth of grass.

“I’ve got 20 years of rainfall records, just by reading a rain gauge,” Wray said. “We’re getting a pretty good sense of what rain will bring us given the condition of our pastures and where we are going forward.”

Think long term

While the end goal is producing beef, Wray doesn’t take shortcuts.

“We’re not a 300-cow ranch come hell or high water — if we don’t have the grass, we’re going to change that number to match the grass,” he said. “We do everything we can to protect the health of those pastures, especially through drought.”

Two decades of working on his grazing plan has given Wray a different perspective.

He talks of how “the grass really likes” long rest periods between the two or three quick and intensive grazing periods each season. He likes to cover all his paddocks one time before the end of June to take advantage of the quick early growth of the cool-season grasses.

“The second pass tends to be a little slower, but we’re through it by the end of September, at least. The third time will depend upon the regrowth in the fall.”

Smaller paddocks and short grazing periods give him a more accurate read. For example, if he puts 250 to 300 pairs on 20 acres and they last two days, that’s quite a bit different than three days. Either way, it’s easy to do the math on how long the recovery period should be.

“You have a really accurate sense where you are — as opposed to turning those same 300 cows into a section of grass, and trying to figure out how long it might last.”

Wray has some suggestions for those new to developing a grazing plan or producers wanting to revamp an existing one.

First, take advantage of tours and workshops. He said there is a lot of talk these days about soil health and carbon sequestering, having grazing animals is critical to that area.

Second, find a mentor. “Find someone who is doing it whom you know and trust and then have conversations with them. Try and learn what they know,” he said. “Have someone you can phone up and say, ‘This is what I’m seeing, what do you think?’”

Third, remember range management is both a science and an art. Training your eye to recognize utilization levels and knowing different plant stages takes time.

“I walked around with a pasture stick (a measurement tool to determine utilization and height of plants) for the first three or four years,” said Wray. “I was constantly sticking it on the ground and thinking to myself, ‘I’ve got this much height and I think we’ve got this much left to graze.’

“Just kind of training my eye.”

Finally, remember there’s a reward for knowing your grass — and all that moving of cattle.

“It is a way to make the land more productive and the cattle more productive along with it. That’s something people need to consider. There is money to be made by doing it.”

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“The rain has been a huge help,” said Karin Lindquist, forage specialist with Alberta’s Ag-Info Centre in Stettler. “There are still some areas that could use a bit more, but so far so good. Knock on wood.”

Although the rain has helped Alberta crops, grasses are shorter than previous years, she said, and have grown only six inches tall instead of the usual 10 inches by this time of year.

“That’s not going to be good for a first-take crop, but if the producers clip a little earlier it will certainly help get in a second, better crop,” Lindquist said.

Saskatchewan forage crops also had a rough start to the season.

“A lot of the springtime growth wasn’t there, crops and pastures were fairly short and starting to burn off… especially in lighter soils where there wasn’t a lot of moisture retention,” said Daphne Cruise, cropping management specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture in Moose Jaw.

Despite shorter growth, Cruise remains optimistic.

“There is still plenty of time to get the crops going and pull off a fairly decent crop. If we keep getting the rains we’ve been getting, that will definitely help,” she said.

In 2015, the southwest and west-central areas of Saskatchewan were incredibly dry, she said, but this year these areas are getting the most moisture in the province.

“It’s a relief for the guys in those regions, I think. They had a lot to deal with — a lack of forage growth and forage production last year, both in hay crops and in pastures.”

Forage crops across Manitoba are also progressing well after the recent rainfall, according to the latest crop report from Manitoba Agriculture.

Cattle are being hauled to pasture in northwestern Manitoba and the Interlake, where forage crops are being rated in good to excellent condition.

Other areas of the province are showing quick growth and adequate livestock water supplies.

— Erin DeBooy writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow her at @erindebooy on Twitter.

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