Agronomist Notes

The past seven days brought intermittent showers ranging from 0.25 to 1.5 inches, severe hail and cool daytime temperatures. I’m thankful for the rain but we just lost five days of maturity from weak sunlight hours and cool temperatures- and the forecast calls for more of the same this week.

Word on the street is that the price of glyphosate has come down dramatically. In fact, I heard a quote for $4.75 per litre on ClearOut 41 Plus today. With glyphosate prices dropping, it might be more economical to desiccate rather than swath this year. Fertilizer prices have remained steady with urea hovering around the $360 a tonne mark and phosphate around $470 a tonne.

This week we’ll look at the harvest challenge ahead of us. Next, for those of you who’ve experienced hail in canola, I’ll pass on some information to help you negotiate with the adjuster. Also, we’ll look at a strategy to control tough to kill late season weeds like kochia and wild buckwheat. Next, I’ll give you some tips on deciding when to control lygus bugs in canola. I’ll quickly discuss the successful control of late season annual sowthistle and volunteer Nexera canola. Bruce Love of Preferred Carbon will discuss the value of tillage offsets and why they have to change. Finally, we’ll finish with fundamental, technical and international crop and weather news.       

Crop Staging Area (Calgary to Drumheller to Three Hills) August 10, 2009

Date Seeded:	April 23-31	May 1-7	May 8-15
Wheat	medium dough	soft dough	soft dough
Canola	late pod fill	mid pod fill	early pod fill
Barley	medium dough	soft dough	soft dough
Peas	late pod fill	mid pod-fill	early pod-fill

This Week in Scouting

• Continue scouting for lygus bugs and diamond back moths in canola
• Begin swath timing early seeded canola fields.
• Check the marketplace for glyphosate prices.
• Check early seeded pea fields for pre-harvest glyphosate timing. 

Field variability will be the biggest challenge this harvest

The picture below says it all. Although this field of peas might be a worst case scenario for harvest timing, it’s not uncommon to see fields like this throughout my territory. Some might be fortunate enough to swath if their crops are tall enough but others may be forced to straight cut. If you are to straight cut, do you wait or desiccate?  

If you look at the cost to desiccate wheat or barley, you’re looking at $6.00 to $8.00 per litre of glyphosate equivalent plus $6.00 acre for application. That’s a total of $12 to $14 per acre. If time is on your side, you could apply half a litre of glyphosate per acre which will take longer to dry down but puts you in the $10 per acre range including application. Waiting for the last 25% of the crop to mature may cost you grade or two given the cool weather conditions and late staging of most crops. If you do lose a grade or two by not desiccating, it could cost you up to $23 an acre if your No.1 turns into a No.3! SL

Controlling tough weeds before harvest

The variability in crop emergence this year has allowed aggressive weeds like kochia and wild buckwheat to take hold of areas with little crop competition. To add insult to injury, these weeds are difficult to kill and dry down at harvest. Harvesting green, wet material can lead to hot spots forming in the bin resulting in downgrades to feed.

The best method of controlling these two pesky weeds at pre-harvest is to add ammonium sulphate to the spray water. Ammonium sulfate improves the performance of glyphosate by reducing tie-up with hard water ions like calcium and iron. However, spray water is not the only source of cations. Plant tissue can also produce antagonistic cations that leach onto the leaf surface when dew or rainfall wets the leaves. This may explain why the addition of AMS to glyphosate has improved control of certain weeds even when glyphosate is mixed with de-ionized water.   

When targeting wild buckwheat or kochia at pre-harvest, I like to apply 1 to 1.5 litres of glyphosate equivalent plus 1 litre per acre of ammonium sulphate. The cost of ammonium sulphate at that rate should run you about $1.00 per acre plus your glyphosate. SL

Hail damage in canola: What have you lost?

Yield loss in canola is always difficult to estimate when hail hits during flowering, especially when you're trying to come up with a fair estimate with the hail adjuster. Here are some facts to give you an idea of what to expect for crop loss after hail:

• Any leaf area destroyed will result in seed yield loss.
• Seed yield losses in canola are approximately 25% of leaf area lost. If leaf defoliation is 50%, then yield loss would be approximately 12.5%.
• Seed yield loss will depend on both percent leaves and branches lost. For example, if canola has 60% lost branches 7 days into flowering, seed yield loss is estimated at 18%, whereas 21 days into flowering, yield loss would be an estimated 60%.
• If hail strikes late, such as during pod filling or ripening, plant recovery is not possible. The time needed to develop new growth, flowers and mature is limited before a killing frost.
• If injury occurs at the ripening stage then it depends directly on the loss of branches, individual pods and seed knocked out of pods. Severe hail losses have occurred in canola swaths.

Source: Canola Council of Canada

Tips on lygus bug scouting and control 

Many canola fields are about three weeks away from swathing and lygus bug counts have climbed into the 3 to 6 per sweep range or higher in some fields. The decision to control lygus becomes cloudier the closer we get to swathing. With that, I've put together a few points to help you make the decision of whether or not to spray.

First: Identify the maturity of the lygus bugs. If you're two weeks away from swathing, you should be most concerned with the number of fifth instar and adult lygus bugs, shown in the picture above. I'm not concerned with the young lygus bugs because the seeds will firm up before they can do any harm. During your next scout, count the number of fifth instar and adult lygus bugs there are per sweep. If you count more than 3 to 4 mature lygus bugs per sweep then move on to the second step. Remember, the pre-harvest interval for insecticide is 7 days.

Second: Identify the firmness in the seeds. Lygus bugs have piercing sucking mouth parts, but they cannot pierce through firm seeds or pods. Select a few plants at each stop and open up the pods to see how firm the seeds are inside. Then, estimate the percentage of watery or translucent seeds in the plant.

Last: If the mature lygus bug counts have reached  3 to 4 per sweep, not including young lygus bugs and more than 1/3 of the seeds in the pods are watery or translucent, then control is necessary. Reversely, if more than 2/3 of the seeds are firm and the threshold level has just been reached, you're likely out of the danger zone and don't need to spray. It's such a specific judgment call so I wish you the best.

Just to point out why we're chasing lygus bugs, they will typically damage 7% of the seed at the 3 to 4 per sweep threshold. That's 2 bushels damage on a 30 bushel crop, 2.8 bushels on a 40 bushel crop and 3.5 bushels on a 50 bushel crop. Under heavy infestations, yield loss estimates have been as high as 40%. SL

Reference and photo source: Alberta Agriculture

Controlling late flushing volunteer canola and annual sowthistle in wheat

There were a number of wheat fields with late flushing annual sowthistle and volunteer canola this year. Late June rains coupled with thin crop canopies provided enough room and sunlight to trigger germination. I had one field with significant volunteer Nexera canola and annual sowthistle that germinated two weeks after our in-crop herbicide application. I watched each week as the weeds got bigger until there was enough severity to warrant control.

The crop had finished flowering for approximately ten days before we applied Buctril M at 500 ml/acre mixed with 120 ml/ac of MCPA Ester 600 sprayed at 7.5 gallons per acre. This herbicide combination is not registered for application after flag leaf but has proven to be effective on the control of annual sowthistle and volunteer canola with no harmful effects on the crop so long as the wheat has finished flowering. As you can see in the photo, the annual sowthistle is completely twisted and bent over and the canola is the same even though some plant had started to flower.

With application, it cost us $10.00 an acre for the Buctril M with MCPA. The entire field would have been in blooming yellow if we hadn’t gone in to control the weeds before harvest. As we know, drying down mature canola and sowthistle is difficult and harvesting green leaf material can lead to heated grain in the bin. I believe our $10.00 was easily justified. SL

Carbon Market News

Why Tillage Offsets Have to Change

August 10, 2009- In an earlier article we highlighted why all greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets are not created equal. In particular, the differences in data quality and accuracy were highlighted as the major determining factors for price. Another issue may now be driving all offsets, including tillage, to meet a consistent and higher standard than what is in place today in Alberta.

As Canada slowly moves toward GHG limiting policy, kicking and screaming, GHG offsets are becoming an attractive option to help industry meet substantive reduction targets. The concept is very straightforward; the atmosphere doesn’t distinguish between where a molecule of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, or any other GHG comes from as long as it is reduced. Therefore, having GHG offsets as a compliance tool makes a lot of sense when we actually have to do something. Given that the “something” may be just around the corner and leaving it to the last minute will likely leave Canada scrambling for any and all alternatives to make credible GHG reductions.

A GHG offset market in Canada that meets the demands of our trade partners may be easier said than done. As Canada sets up its offset system it will be under scrutiny not just from our trade partners, but also environmental groups seeking “real” reductions and not credit for business-as-usual (BAU). Therefore, tillage offsets could become the easy one to throw out due to low data quality and BAU arguments, or to make so difficult to create that they never enter the offset system. This would satisfy the critics and recognize the standards in other project types.

When we look around at most project types in the global GHG compliance market for offsets, they typically involve some form of direct monitoring whether it is a meter, scale tickets, or other measured volume with calibration records. The current standard in Alberta for all GHG offset projects is usually exceeded by most projects by their nature, except for tillage. Tillage offsets are largely based on modeled values and require input data derived from farm records. This data is not nearly as precise as the other project types, a farmer affidavit of seeded acres versus say a calibrated meter. You see the point.

In our opinion the data collected for a tillage offset should require significant due diligence by the aggregator to determine its accuracy. In particular, both the accuracy of seeded acreage and the amount of tillage needs to be closely examined. Yes, this will increase costs significantly, but the likelihood that tillage offsets survive in a larger and potentially higher value GHG compliance market is dramatically improved. It’s better in our opinion for the farmer to have a higher cost but credible tillage offset, than no tillage offset at all.

Reference: Bruce Love, Preferred Carbon
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author only and are not intended to represent financial advice.

International Crop Weather News

Western Canada: Cooler-than-normal temperatures persisted across the Prairies last week, continuing to delay crop development. Daily high temperatures struggled to hit 20 degrees. Beneficial rains fell in central and southern Alberta, as well as in most of Saskatchewan. The winter wheat and lentil harvest has begun in Alberta and south western Saskatchewan.

United States: In the West, warm, dry weather is promoting fieldwork and crop development. However, nearly three dozen large wildfires are scattered across the region, while scattered showers associated with an approaching cold front are overspreading the Pacific Northwest. On the Plains, warm, dry weather favors small grain harvesting across northern portions of the region. Meanwhile, scattered thunderstorms dot the central Plains, where conditions remain mostly favorable for summer crop development. In the Corn Belt, warm weather continues to promote rapid corn and soybean development. Temperatures remain low enough to prevent significant stress on reproductive summer crops, although readings will again exceed 90 degrees F in the southern Corn Belt. In the South, hot, mostly dry weather favors summer crop development, including maturation of early planted crops such as corn.

Europe: Drier weather over central and southern Europe promotes winter grain and oilseed harvesting but increases stress on reproductive corn and sunflowers. Showers in England and western France maintain soil moisture for summer crop development.

Former Soviet Union: Light to moderate showers ease stress on summer crops in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia and favour filling spring grains in north-central Kazakhstan and the Urals and Siberia Districts in Russia. Persistent heat and dryness in the Volga District in Russia hasten maturity in spring grains and stress summer crops. Generally dry weather in western Ukraine favors small grain harvesting.

East Asia: Heavy showers continue to increase soil moisture for filling summer crops and vegetative late-season rice in southern China. Drier weather eases excessive wetness for reproductive corn and soybeans in Manchuria.

Southeast Asia: Monsoon showers benefit rice and corn in Thailand. Heavy showers renew flooding in the Philippines.

South Asia: A brief round of showers in northern India provide much-needed moisture for cotton, rice, and sugarcane, although many producers are switching to shorter-season, lower-yielding varieties. Unseasonably dry weather in central and eastern India reduces soil moisture for oilseeds and cotton.

Australia: Following recent soaking rains, sunny skies in Western Australia aid wheat and barley development. In southeastern Australia, showers maintain adequate moisture supplies for winter grains and oilseeds. Dry weather persists in southern Queensland, further reducing soil moisture for jointing winter wheat.

South America: In Argentina, drier conditions favor wheat planting after last week’s rain. Lingering showers maintain moisture levels for wheat in Parana, Brazil’s largest producer.

Mexico: Drier-than-normal weather persists over most of the south, limiting moisture for corn and other rain-fed summer crops.

Source: USDA