Agronomist Notes

Last week saw a tremendous run on harvest with weather finally cooperating. I’d say the majority of producers are 90% complete but a few areas near Calgary only 60%. Producers have begun their post-harvest spray applications and some are planning to anhydrous or band urea in the near future. Soil temperatures have been hovering around 10oC so the time is right for fall banding.

Let’s ponder this year’s yields for a moment. In one word, I’d call them phenomenal, especially west of Highway 21. I’ve had AC Harvest near Airdrie go 102 bushels an acre. I’ve seen 300 acre fields of InVigour 5440 average 70 bushels an acre and a field of CDC Go run 112 bushels an acre. Now I’m sure there is a fare share of 40 bushel wheat crops out there, as you’ll read about in this newsletter, but it’s always nice to hear the success stories.

This week we’ll look at a troublesome field of wheat, a 40 bushel crop mercilessly robbed by severe compaction. Next we’ll look at whether grain dryers could actually replace a combine by allowing harvest to begin earlier. Finally, we’ll talk briefly about post-harvest spraying and the results of one of my VRT projects. International crop weather rounds out the finish but I suppose weather won’t matter for a while as nobody in the market place is looking at fundamentals. It’s gonna get ugly here in the short term.  

Agronomy

 

Diagnosing soil compaction from wheat kernels

My brother-in-law Mitch purchased a half-section of heavy clay last winter, a piece of ground you could tell was not well looked after but had loads of potential. In fact, you could barely see the canola stubble for the wild oats and the 230 acres of cultivated land was farmed in five fields, two of which were cultivated summer fallow. We knew the history on these fields was one of low fertilizer inputs with the straw baled annually for the last 7 years.

After a pleasant 60 bushel average on the wheat we had previously been harvesting, we were very disappointed when we started into the 40 bushel crop. When I looked at the sample, I saw shriveled kernels that looked like frost damage. After counting the number of effected kernels, roughly 20% of them were frost damaged and shriveled up and the other 80% were a nice red, number one grade with only a touch of bran frost. How could this be? How could frost affect only 20% of the seeds and leave the other 80% virtually unaffected? The very thing I harp about in my newsletters had happened to us—soil compaction of the worst kind!

In the picture to the right, you can see the frost damage kernels on the left and the relatively untouched kernels on the right. The picture below shows the wheel tracks from the 4WD at seeding time. Added to the 4WD tracks are the ones from the high clearance sprayer. Now, as I counted before, roughly 20% of the sample was severely frost damaged right?

Let’s do the math:
4WD: 20.5 inch tires × 4 tires = 82 inches ÷ 12 inches per foot = 6.83 feet ÷ 40 foot wide drill = 17% wheel track coverage
Sprayer: 18 inch tires × 2 tires = 36 inches ÷ 12 inches per foot = 3 feet ÷ 90 foot boom = 3% wheel track coverage

So, between the two machines we’ve got 20% of the field with serious compaction issues. Coincidentally, 20% of the kernels in this field are severely frost damaged. You would have thought we’d have noticed this in crop, but you really couldn’t see a big difference in height or maturity across the field. I believe the plants in the wheel tracks ran out of oxygen and moisture before maturity, while the compaction set the crop back enough for the late frost to finish the kernels off. The kernels inside the wheel tracks were shriveled while the kernels outside the wheel tracks were fine.

Why the compaction was was so severe?

Firstly, the dominant soil type in this field is clay with very little tilth left from years of residue removal. Secondly, we had wet soils during seeding. Thirdly, the four outside tires had very little tread left causing excess slippage.  

Wheel slippage is a killer! The drill was hard pull in that soil with poor tilth. The cultivated summer fallow was not as bad for wheel tracks because the drill pulled smoothly through those areas and less slippage occurred. In the end we suspect we suffered a 20% yield loss and downgrade to feed, provided we can’t clean it to bring the grade up. This example is on the extreme end of yield loss from compaction. What are you losing from all the traffic you run across your fields?  SL

Managing green seed in the swath

If you have green seed in the swath, your best option may be to leave it in the field a little bit longer. It’s still early enough in the harvest season for canola with moderate to high green seed counts in the swath to cure and potentially be taken off as No. 1.

The enzymes responsible for removing chlorophyll in canola are only active at temperatures above 5°C and at seed moisture contents above 20%. For this reason canola harvested and put in the bin at the recommended moisture level of 8% or lower will show virtually no seed colour change.
 
If weather has been warm and dry for several days, green seed clearing in the swath may have stopped completely. Swaths will have to get dampened by either rain or pivot irrigation, where available, to re-activate chlorophyll clearing enzymes in the seed. The optimal situation is to clear sufficient chlorophyll in the swath in order to get top grade canola.

If canola receives frost while standing or within two to three days of swathing, cells can desiccate rapidly and the enzymes that clear chlorophyll can be damaged. In this situation, green seed clearing in the swath will be slowed dramatically even if temperature and moisture requirements are met simply because the enzymes will not work properly. It is likely best to get the crop off and capture the yield that is there since the odds of a grade improvement by leaving it in the field are low. In this situation consider binning the canola separately and monitor closely for heating.

For more information on understanding the maturing canola seed and the impact of frost go to: http://www.canolacouncil.org/canola_resources/product39.aspx

Source: Canola Council of Canada

Could a grain dryer replace a combine?

If I had a nickel for every time I heard a farmer say, “My wheat just won’t dry down, the weather’s nice but everything’s still tough”, I’d be rich, or at least have a lot of loose change. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching your crops sit out in the field when you know you could lose quality or yield any day and snow could be around the corner. So what are the options to get grain in the bin quicker?

1. Become more efficient with the harvest equipment you already own.
2. Purchase another combine or grain cart with trucks and labour to match.
3. Keep the same number of combines but upgrade to Class 9 high capacity machines.
4. Change your crop rotation to include peas or winter wheat to begin harvest earlier.
5. Buy a grain dryer and keep the equipment you have.

For those looking to purchase or rent another combine to speed up harvest, I wonder if a grain dryer could replace another combine.

Let’s run some numbers. The average number of separating hours per year on a combine is roughly 150. The cost of renting a combine is $180 an hour, plus $90 an hour for fuel (20 gal/hr) and $20 an hour for labour. The total cost of running a rented combine is $290 an hour or $43,500 per year. The cost of running a new combine is about $55,000 including financing, fuel, labour, insurance and maintenance.

You can pick up a used grain dryer for $8,000 to $48,000, depending on the age of the unit. The average used grain dryer sold at a Ritchie Brothers Auction is worth $20,000. In this example, we’ll use the Vertec 5600 dryer rated at 334 bu/hr using 112 litres of diesel per hour (24.6 gal/hr) in wheat. Wheat is typically the crop we’d like to start earlier on so we’ll use it in this example.

With an hourly cost of $114 hr (112 L/hr X $1.02L), drying 334 bu/hr, 12 hours a day for ten days, you could theoretically dry 40,000 bushels, depending on how tough the grain is. The cost to operate the grain dryer for ten days is roughly $0.34 a bushel or $13,600 per year. The first year cost would be $33,600 for the initial investment plus operating costs, a difference of $9,900 to $19,000 versus the rental or purchase of a new combine.

However, a combine running 12 hours a day covering 10 acres per hour on a 60 bushel an acre wheat crop will harvest 72,000 bushels. A dryer can only do 40,000 bushels in that time at 12 hours a day. Either you must run the grain dryer for 21 hours a day or find a grain dyer with higher drying capacity, a difficult task.

In the end, a grain dryer with enough capacity might help you begin harvest earlier by drying tough grain. In our example using the Vertec 5600, you’d have to run it 21 hours a day to keep up to a 60 bushel wheat crop. The cost of running the dryer 21 hours a day to dry that amount of grain, if it could, would cost $23,940 per year. So, perhaps a grain dryer might actually be able to replace a combine. SL 

To check out an evaluation of grain dryers brands see: http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/eng3043

Post harvest spraying timing is here

If you haven’t started your post-harvest spraying already, now is the time to start. I’ve seen decent re-growth on most thistles and grasses to warrant a spray application and plenty of seedling flixweed, narrow-leaved hawk’s beard and dandelion. Of course, I recommend you check your own fields to see if re-growth is ample.

Right now I’m recommending we spray the fields that require only glyphosate, such as cereal stubble. The fields slotted for Pre-Pass, which is mainly canola stubble, will be sprayed when the soil temperatures drop below 10oC, ideally between 5 and 7 oC. Pre-Pass is soil active so the idea is to reduce the amount of herbicide breakdown before spring. The florasulam component will work on leaf contact as will the glyphosate, but I want to preserve as much soil activity for next spring as we can. I’m topping up the Pre-Pass this fall with ½ L/ac of glyphosate equivalent.

Remember, Pre-Pass contains isopropylamine salt so only glyphosates with that salt formulation should be tank mixed. SL

See http://www.beyondagronomy.com/newsletter/15_4_2008.htm for a list of glyphosate salt formulations.

Variable rate fertilizer project results

The results are in from my VRT experiment with clients Albert and Alfred Neufeld from Acme. We took an 85 acre field and created five management zones, soil sampling each zone separately and applying fertilizer accordingly. The field had a long history of lodging in certain areas from previous manure applications. Previously, my strategy was to include 30 lbs/ac of potassium to help reduce the lodging, even though the soil test didn’t call for it. Our main goal was to try and reduce lodging in selected areas and to reduce the environmental hazards by over-applying fertilizer to areas we knew had high fertility. Take a look at the soil fertility results from each zone. You’ll notice that Zone 5 has 249 pounds of available nitrogen.

The total cost of the VRT service to my client was $10.00 an acre and included support services through Farmers Edge. It took a number of attempts to get the GPS to talk to the rate controller in the spring, but with phone support from Farmers Edge and a little patience, we solved the problem and the VRT process was a snap. My clients already had a variable rate cart, so the upgrade to the rate controller including hardware was $2,500. 

The Results:

In the end we reduced our total nitrogen by six pounds an acre and our potash by 30 pounds an acre for a total savings of $15.84. After VRT service costs, the savings were $5.84 and we produced 100 bu/ac barley crop measured by weigh scale and yield map. The best news of all was the chronic lodging we experienced in the past had disappeared. Our introductory experiment with VRT has been worthwhile and I’ll have more examples in future issues. SL

Market News

International Crop Weather Highlights

United States: In the West, temperatures are starting to rebound, following the weekend passage of the season’s first significant storm. Isolated showers linger in the Northwest, and moisture has been beneficial in many areas of the West for pastures, rangeland, and winter grains. On the Plains, showers and thunderstorms—heaviest from the eastern Dakotas southward into central Texas—are slowing fieldwork but boosting soil moisture reserves for winter wheat establishment. In the Corn Belt, showers are confined to northern areas, stretching from the Dakotas to Michigan. Warm, dry weather elsewhere is promoting summer crop maturation and early-season harvesting. Producers in Wisconsin and Michigan are monitoring immature summer crops for possible yield losses, following Saturday’s light freeze, although most corn was dented and most soybeans were dropping leaves.

Europe: Dry weather in Western Europe promotes small grain harvesting and winter rapeseed planting. Heavy showers in the Balkans alleviate drought but hamper summer crop harvesting and winter crop planting.

Former Soviet Union: In Ukraine, early-week rain maintains wet soils, hampering fieldwork for corn, sunflower, and sugar beet harvesting and winter wheat planting. In Russia, showers cause brief interruptions in summer crop harvesting and winter grain planting in the Southern District, while dry weather aids spring wheat harvesting in the Siberia District. In Kazakhstan, dry weather allows spring wheat harvesting to near completion.

East Asia: Dry weather in Manchuria aids corn and soybean maturation and harvesting. Drier weather on the North China Plain benefits cotton harvesting nearing completion. Typhoon Hagupit brings high winds and flooding to sugarcane in southern China.

Southeast Asia: Drier weather in Thailand and southern Vietnam eases wetness and provides more favorable conditions for corn. Typhoon Hagupit causes some damage to corn in the northern Philippines.

South Asia: Drier weather in central and northern crop areas favors reproductive to filling summer crops, following last week’s unseasonably heavy downpours.

Middle East: Showers in Turkey provide moisture for winter crop planting and ease long-term drought.

Australia: In Western Australia, soaking rains provide a welcomed boost in topsoil moisture for reproductive winter grains, but a recent freeze may at least partially offset the benefits of the wet weather. In southern Australia, mostly dry weather limits moisture for reproductive winter grains. In New South Wales and Queensland, widespread showers favor reproductive to filling winter grains.

South America: Recent showers bring some much-needed drought relief to winter wheat areas of central Argentina. In Brazil, rain increases moisture for flowering coffee and the upcoming planting of soybeans and other summer crops. Cold, damp conditions are untimely, however, for maturing winter wheat.

Canada: Dry weather favors harvesting of spring grains and oilseeds in most major production areas.

Mexico: Rain increases reservoir levels in Veracruz and many other important winter farming areas.