Behind the Lines - June/July 2015
Friday, June 5, 2015
Cereal crops aren't scheduled to appear on an endangered list anywhere in Ontario yet, but the statistics are definitely pointing downward. March planting intentions indicated less than 800,000 acres will be used for cereals out of five million in the province. Thirty years go winter wheat made up nearly one third of the crops that were planted in the province. This suggests more soil degradation as fields are left bare over the winter and ultimately lower yields in the future.
Adding wheat to that two-crop rotation hardly seems innovative, but it is. Add another crop as well and you've got a new trend in Ontario, one that field editor Mary Baxter reveals in our cover story starting on page 10. As it turns out, there are increasing acreages in Ontario, particularly in the southwest, where wheat is rarely planted. Soybeans follow corn and vice-versa. And, ironically, those acres are often fields where livestock manure is never applied. According to some economic models, the corn-soybean combination is the most profitable, a conclusion that is hotly disputed by some agronomists.
Continuing with the cover crop theme, columnist Pat Lynch warns that cover crops should be grown for the right reasons, which is to reduce erosion. That's on page 29.
And in this issue we introduce crops writer Dale Cowan to the pages of Better Farming. Dale is a certified crop advisor with AGRIS Co-operative and Wanstead Farmers' Co-operative in southwestern Ontario. He has a long history of innovation in Ontario, having co-owned Guelph-based Ontario Agri-Food Laboratories at a time when soil testing was being privatized. Dale writes this month about how to use test strips in fields to try out new ideas and technologies in a practical manner on a commercial farm with technology the farmer already owns.
Mink farmer Robert Ritchie never thought he would have to worry about geopolitics when marketing his farm's output, but the plunge in the price of oil and the crisis in Ukraine changed his mind. Writer Mike Beaudin looks at the challenges faced by the mink industry, and they involve more than just the ups and downs in North American fashion and attacks by activists. That story can be found on page 25.
"It's great to be part of a growth industry, but it's really changing," says egg farmer Harry Eisses, who has invested in a new barn to house his 23,000 hens. Concerns about cholesterol are in the past; now, it's housing for happy hens eating a "vegetarian" diet that is top of consumers' minds. Mike Beaudin's story on this Simcoe County farming operation begins on page 38.
Anyone who has travelled in northern Ontario in spring or early summer will be familiar with lupins, those beautiful wild flowers that provide such startling displays of colour. In his regular Letter From Europe column, Norman Dunn describes renewed interest in lupins as a low-cost protein crop for livestock. It can be grown for silage or grain. See page 48. BF
ROBERT IRWIN & DON STONEMAN