Behind the Lines - January 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
High fertilizer costs are driving innovation in the farm community. The high cost of landfilling garbage is driving innovation in the urban community. The result may be a new soil amendment that has a place on your farm.
Green-bin composting programs, the recycling of vegetable waste on a municipal scale, are catching on across the province. It's doing for kitchen waste what blue boxes did for plastic and metal containers and newspapers, giving the stuff that used to end up in landfills a new life. But sometimes it becomes a question of which comes first – the demand or the product. Writer Mike Mulhern describes how this fits into Ontario's agriculture as fertilizer costs rise and livestock manure becomes both more valuable and harder to come by. His story starts on page 10.
On a raw January morning when the temperature is near freezing and it's a prime temperature for spoilage in your soybean bins, wouldn't it be nice to just check your grain bin temperatures and turn the fans on or off from your comfortable home, your pickup truck miles away or maybe even from a beach in the south? There's a new "app," a short form for application, for your smart phone that will do that, and a bunch of other things too. Is your desk top computer a "fossil" taking up space? Some futuristic-minded farm folks think so. That story starts on page 20.
Terry Daynard has a long history in agriculture from his days as a farm boy in the south end of Perth County to a professorship in crop science at the University of Guelph, the founding of the Ontario Corn Producers Association and its executive directorship, to a career as a consultant. With age and experience comes perspective. Starting on page 30, Terry looks at the concept of "sustainable development" from its initial definition 25 years ago and several machinations since to its current state and what that means to agriculture here in Ontario. His message? Be proactive and tell others about it.
For years, Ontario was the largest provincial farm economy in Canada, as measured by sales. But that number one status has slipped for two years straight. Ontario is third now, behind Saskatchewan and Quebec. There are a number of reasons for this and Barry Wilson reviews these in his regular column, The Hill, starting on page 40.
Over the years, we've followed the developments with biochar, a product known to boost nutrient levels in some areas like the tropics. Could it do the same in Ontario? With high crop prices, any product that can boost yields deserves a look. In his Seedbed column on page 34 in this issue, Keith Reid looks at the strengths and weaknesses of biochar and finds it's a waste of money for Ontario growers at current prices. BF
ROBERT IRWIN & DON STONEMAN