“We’ve had a slow start to spring,” said Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SaskPulse) executive director Carl Potts. “It’s still a bit of time before seeding would normally start across the province. If temperatures end up being around normal, then I would expect seeding to start about on time.

“But it really remains to be seen what the weather would be like over the next three weeks or so.”

Potts anticipates a 10 per cent decline in seeded area for peas, as well as a five per cent reduction for lentils, which he attributed to competition with other crops and root disease in some areas.

On the other hand, Potts expects a large rise in chickpea acres due to strong prices — “probably something (like a) 30 to 35 per cent increase in chickpea area overall,” he said.

Some pulse growers in Saskatchewan may have to wait a while until the large snowpack fully melts before hitting the fields.

“We also know that in Western Canada, growers can, with good weather, seed the vast majority of their crop in approximately three weeks’ time starting in May,” Potts said. “At this point, we don’t really have any concerns about seeding. It’s good to see the moisture and we’ll see how the next few weeks shape out.”

Despite a slowdown in pea exports, Potts believes the pulse industry in Saskatchewan is on track to meet its export estimates and demand for pulses is growing and staying strong.

“Prices have come off as they have for some of the other crops more recently, with lower prices particularly for yellow peas and other major crops like wheat and canola,” he said.

“For the most part, I think crop rotations and cropping plans will be fairly locked in. There are always some swing acres that could change depending on the spring or depending on market conditions. But farmers are pretty locked into their crop rotations overall.”

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

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Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure’s Hydrologic Forecast Centre on Wednesday projected a major risk of flooding on the Red River and low to moderate risk of flooding in most Manitoba basins in its March spring outlook. Spring flood risk largely depends on weather conditions from now until the spring melt.

At this time, the centre advises that the flood risk has increased to major on the Red River. The flood risk is low to moderate in the Interlake region along the Fisher and Icelandic rivers, and along the Assiniboine River. The risk of spring flooding is generally low along several other rivers including the Souris, Roseau, Rat and Pembina rivers. Water levels are expected to remain below community and individual flood protection levels.

There is also a low risk of flooding for most other Manitoba basins including the Saskatchewan River, Whiteshell lakes area and northern Manitoba. With the exceptions of Dauphin Lake and Lake St. Martin, most Manitoba lakes, including Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, are projected to remain within operating ranges after the spring run-off.

As in many other years, the risk of flooding could change in any of the basins depending on weather conditions between now and the spring melt.

A contractor for Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure has completed ice-cutting and breaking work along the Red and Icelandic rivers to reduce ice jam-related flooding. Ice-cutting and breaking work were not undertaken this spring on the Assiniboine River, along the Portage Diversion, due to a lower risk of ice jam-related flooding.

The centre also reports that operation of the Red River Floodway is expected this spring to reduce water levels within Winnipeg. Operation of the Portage Diversion is also anticipated to prevent ice jamming on the Assiniboine River east of Portage la Prairie and control river levels in Winnipeg and areas along the Assiniboine River downstream of Portage la Prairie.

The province, local authorities and First Nation communities are continuing to prepare for spring flooding. This includes ice-cutting and breaking on the Red and Icelandic rivers, review of existing emergency response plans, information sharing, and preparation of resources used in flood response.

The March 2023 spring flood outlook report is available online.

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Spring road restrictions set axle weight limits for vehicles moving on certain roads to reduce the damage heavier loads can cause during the spring thaw period. Grain and equipment movement can both be affected by the spring road bans, as drivers may need to find alternate routes or haul smaller loads.

The duration of the restrictions will depend on the local weather conditions, but typically last through April and into May.

In Manitoba, spring road bans are set to come into effect on Friday, March 17, according to a provincial order.

The winter weight season in neighbouring Saskatchewan is set to expire on March 14, which will reduce the tonnage allowed on roads.

Alberta has yet to report the official start of road restrictions in the province, but typically sees its first weight limits for the southern areas of the province in mid-March.

— Phil Franz-Warkentin is an associate editor/analyst with MarketsFarm in Winnipeg.

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The federal department on Tuesday issued its temperature and precipitation probabilistic forecasts, which also called for normal precipitation for most of the region.

“The forecast is really neutral for the Prairies, with ‘normal’ temperatures forecast for April, May and June,” Bruce Burnett, MarketsFarm’s director of markets and weather, said Tuesday..

Temperature-wise, ECCC projected below-normal weather for British Columbia and parts of western Alberta. To the east, much of Ontario is expected to run above normal, with most of the southern portion being normal to above normal. Growing areas of Quebec are expected to be near normal with the Maritimes to be near normal.

“The main driver of the forecast is likely the transition of the La Nina into the neutral phase over the forecast period,” Burnett said.

As for precipitation over the same time frame, ECCC has not called for any growing areas in Canada to receive any amounts above normal. However, southern Alberta and western Saskatchewan are projected to receive below-normal precipitation, as are Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick. That left the remainder of Canada’s growing areas likely to get normal levels of rain or snow over the coming months.

“The lower-than-normal precipitation probability in southern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan is a concern as this was the driest region going into the fall,” Burnett said.

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“While there have been substantial improvements to drought conditions across Western Canada since last summer (particularly in British Columbia, southern Manitoba and the northern agricultural regions of Saskatchewan and Alberta), many of these areas remain extremely vulnerable to drought going forward, as a result of low soil moisture reserves and depleted water supplies,” AAFC said in its report for the period ending March 31.

“An extended dry period this spring or summer would impact crops and pastures quicker and more severely as a result,” AAFC added.

“The main story across the Prairies for March was one of drought improvement, however degradation still took place in a few areas,” the report said. Parts of southern Alberta saw the area facing extreme drought conditions expand during the month.

However, northern areas of the Peace River region through to the southeastern corner of Manitoba saw better than normal precipitation over the winter months. Much of southern Manitoba was out of the drought zone, although western parts of the province remain dry.

Spring runoff helped alleviate dryness concerns in parts of southern Saskatchewan, according to the report. However, the region remains vulnerable.

The outlook for the next month calls for improvement across much of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, while western Alberta is forecast to see no change with worsening conditions in some pockets.

— Phil Franz-Warkentin reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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Last year, the brothers started seeding spring wheat nearly a month before their neighbours — and they plan to be “even more aggressive this year.”

“We were slow out of the gate last year but this year, we’re going to give ’er — maybe even run 24 hours a day at seeding if we can,” said Matthew, who farms with his brother and sister Zoë near Consort.

“Going forward, we’re going to pay closer attention to the conditions and the soil temperature and less to the calendar date.”

The Goulds and a few other pioneers are on the bleeding edge in adopting a practice called ultra-early seeding — something that could dramatically alter the traditional work schedules of farmers across the Prairies.

• PHOTOS: Redefining the growing season

“The earliest we ever seeded in my studies was Feb. 16 down in Lethbridge and March 29 in Edmonton, and the system works quite well,” said Graham Collier, a PhD candidate in agronomy at the University of Alberta who is researching ultra-early seeding.

“There’s a yield benefit, and there’s a growing system stability benefit for this ultra-early planting despite the cold soil and the conditions that you’re going into.”

Virtually no one got a yield bump last year but seeding ultra early may have saved some wheat growers from the worst effects of the drought.

“A lot of the growers who tried it had good establishment because there was good moisture there early, so their crops were further along when that heat really hit us badly at the end of June,” said Collier. “The severity of the drought probably overcame any yield benefits, but with ultra-early seeding, they also likely didn’t see a decrease or yield penalty.”

That was the case at Gould Ranching. Everything started out well, with the crop coming up nicely and withstanding the spring frosts but then “the heat and the drought just took over,” said Farley.

“The drought definitely put a damper on the season, but in the end, it still benefited us seeding early versus seeding later,” he said.

“It was just a really poor year overall, but we didn’t see any downside from seeding earlier,” added Matthew, noting some of their yields were “a little bit better” than their neighbours’.

“Of course it’s tough to tell with the drought, but we definitely didn’t lose any additional yield.”

That’s ultimately the point of an ultra-early seeding system that is based on targeting the optimal soil temperature rather than a traditional seeding date, said Collier. Since 2015, he has been researching ultra-early seeding systems for spring wheat on the Prairies with his supervisors, (Dean Spaner of the University of Alberta and Brian Beres of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge station).

“The trends that are being predicted are reduced consistency of precipitation — more of our precipitation coming earlier in the year — and higher average temperatures throughout the year,” said Collier. “So the whole goal of this system is shifting that planting date earlier to take advantage of that early precipitation and snowmelt, and avoid those hot days until later in the growth cycle.”

In the area where the Goulds farm, the growing season already comes 13 days earlier than it did 70 years ago, according to albertaclimaterecords.com (which has historical weather data from across the province from 1951 to 2017).

Moreover, August tends to be even hotter than July, so “the further along we can get that plant to maturity before that heat hits, the better,” said Matthew.

“The later we go, the more we risk uneven germination in our fields,” he said. “We view this early seeding as reducing our risk of yield fluctuations and combining challenges in the fall.”

The on-farm experience

The Goulds began exploring ultra-early seeding systems last year when they learned a friend from university — Collier himself — had been researching the practice.

“We have a neighbour who is closer to the Saskatchewan border who has been seeding earlier than most people for a number of years, so we combined his anecdotal evidence with Graham’s researched evidence and put the two together,” said Matthew.

The brothers got some strange looks and worried phone calls when they started seeding on April 6 last year. The earliest they had ever seeded was around April 25, with the beginning of May the more usual start date for farmers in their area.

“We had neighbours and family who were genuinely concerned about how early we were seeding, but I think things are different from the ’50s and ’60s where wheat crops were getting frozen and killed in the spring,” said Matthew. “The varieties are different and the weather is different as well. Those past experiences are very relevant, but at the same time, we have to consider the current conditions.”

Part of Collier’s research is to try to measure the financial benefits of ultra-early seeding and so far, the results have been substantial.

“The difference to a grower over the 2015 to 2018 growing seasons down in Lethbridge was $204.64 per hectare, which works out to a gross benefit of $83.66 per acre, simply by moving forward their seeding and increasing their seeding rate.”

It also helps to reduce the stress during the rush-rush planting season, say the Goulds.

“That’s part of the reason we were really aggressive with this on our wheat. It allows us to seed other crops at a more precise timing,” said Matthew. “For our lentils and canola, we’re not going to be able to push that super early, but we can be sitting there ready to seed it at the perfect time.”

Those benefits carry through into harvest.

“We were the first people combining in our area, but we were also the first people seeding by a few weeks,” he noted.

Another “big benefit” was having the crop emerge before the weeds.

“We were actually able to have the wheat out of the ground before weeds even germinated on our fields, so we didn’t do a pre-burn,” said Matthew. “It’s probably year specific — in other years, that might not be possible. But there was no point in doing a pre-burn when there weren’t any weeds growing.”

The Goulds are uncertain how far they can push the envelope, but Matthew said he expects ultra-early seeding to have a permanent place on the operation, depending on the conditions from year to year.

“It’s really field specific and farm specific — what your management strategy is, what your risk is, where your comfort level is,” he said.

Successful ultra-early seeding

But there are a few tricks to making an ultra-early seeding system work.

The first is a seed treatment to help the plant get off to a good start.

“Because the seed is going to sit in the ground longer before it germinates, we do recommend a fungicide seed treatment before it goes into that cool, wet ground,” said Collier.

But choosing the right variety is less important than you might think.

“We evaluated multiple varie­ties across all of our spring wheat classes and found no differential response among them,” he said, adding federal researchers are now studying ultra-early seeding in durum as well.

“All of those classes of spring wheat performed either the same or better when seeded ultra early.”

There wasn’t a difference in performance among the 13 different varieties they tested either.

“We discovered that we could use our conventional varie­ties that growers are using right now, and that was an important part of building the system,” said Collier. “All of the varieties performed the same. There was no need to develop cold-tolerant varieties. Everything looked good and yielded well.”

Next, you’ll need to optimize the seeding rate to ensure you have a high enough plant population to survive any weather events that kill off some plants.

“Maintaining a nice, high seeding rate when you’re planting ultra early is really, really important,” said Collier. “We looked at 200 plants per metre squared — so 20 per square foot — versus an optimal rate of 400 plants per metre squared, and the stability was improved by that higher seeding rate. That was one of the real keys to making the system increase in stability over a traditional growing system.

“Having that optimal seeding rate is super important. You can’t underestimate the value of that higher seeding rate.”

So too is the timing of seeding, and the sweet spot for optimum yields is soil temperatures between 2 and 6 C.

“If you delayed beyond six degrees, you ended up with less yield, but if you planted early, right at zero degrees, you didn’t lose any yield going early but the stability wasn’t as good,” he said. “So timing is one of the key contributors to stability and yield increase.”

To do that, you’ll need to understand how and when to take your soil temperature.

“If you’re doing it over multiple days, it should be done at the same time each day so that you get an accurate reading,” he said, adding there’s likely to be variations throughout the field. “You want to take it at about five centimetres of depth so that you aren’t being skewed by a powerful sun on the surface of the dirt that morning.”

You’ll also want to test different areas of your fields, Matthew added.

“Depending on ground cover, your soil temperature could vary greatly. We found that on our farm in different areas,” he said.

But beyond that, ultra-early seeding is “easy to do.”

“You don’t need any special equipment or anything like that. Everything you already have on your farm is part of this system,” said Collier.

And while not every wheat grower in Alberta is likely to want to get in the field as early in the season as they can, ultra-early seeding may be a good place to start thinking about adjusting these production practices as climate change continues to reshape the agricultural landscape of the Prairies, he said.

“This is about responding to our changing environment and taking advantage of being able to move our planting date earlier, while seeing a nice yield and dollar benefit out of it.”

The Alberta Climate Data website contains extensive weather data for every piece of farmland in the province. You can find a primer on how to use the site here.

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The latest seasonal forecast from the government agency, released Monday, calls for a 40-50 per cent chance of below-normal temperatures from March through May for most of the three Prairie provinces, with only a pocket of southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta expected to see normal temperatures.

That same pocket is forecast to see below-normal precipitation during the same time frame, with the majority of the Prairies to see average moisture.

The Maritimes and Quebec are also forecast to see below-normal temperatures, with most of Ontario in the normal range.

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The La Niña weather pattern, characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, has a 67 per cent chance of persisting from March through May this year, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said.

The CPC, in its monthly forecast, estimated a 51 per cent chance of a transition to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-neutral conditions during the April-June period.

ENSO-neutral conditions refer to periods in which neither El Niño nor La Niña is present, often coinciding with the transition between the two weather patterns, according to the center.

The El Niño pattern brings a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific every few years, and is the opposite of La Niña.

Earlier this week, Japan’s weather bureau said the La Nina phenomenon is continuing and that there is an 80 per cent chance it will prevail through the end of the Northern Hemisphere winter and an 80 per cent chance the conditions will end in spring.

— Reporting for Reuters by Bharat Govind Gautam in Bangalore.

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Though the winter nutrient ban has been lifted, the province cautioned producers to “assess current weather conditions and periodically check weather forecasts” if they’re applying anytime between now and April 11.

“Nutrients should not be applied in instances where the weather outlook is unfavourable,” the province said — for example, “a forecast of snow or an appreciable amount of rainfall that would result in runoff.”

All other manure management regulations are still in effect, the province added, such as the ban on applications on “sensitive lands along waterways” and on lands classified as Nutrient Management Zone N4.

Typically, the province’s ban on winter application of nitrogen and phosphorus, including manure, is in place between and including Nov. 10 of one year and April 10 the following year — with variances where conditions allow.

The regulation was put in place in 2008 as application of nutrients onto frozen or snow-covered soils “results in an increased risk of nutrient runoff” into Manitoba waterways, which in turn increases algal blooms in Lake Winnipeg and elsewhere. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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