13th annual Great Lakes Grain crop assessment tour dates set

Jun 16, 2022

Great Lakes Grain’s 13th annual crop assessment tour for corn and soybean farmers set for August 29-September 9, 2022.

By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com; Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Great Lakes Grain Inc. based in Chatham, Ontario, has announced that it has scheduled its 13th annual Great Lakes Grain Crop Assessment Tour for August 29 to September 9, 2022.

It is during this tour that Great Lakes Grain staff and partners from AGRIS Co-operative Ltd., FS PARTNERS (a division of GROWMARK, Inc.), and Coop Embrun will scout corn and soybean fields with farmers who sign up for the tour.

The team will conduct yield estimates, gauge crop progress and evaluate the overall health of Ontario corn and soybean crops.

The assessment of the fields helps the team work with crop producers to determine if there are additional opportunities to market their grain.

Interested producers can have their fields assessed by registering through the Great Lakes Grain website using this link: www.greatlakesgrain.com/2022-Crop-assessment-request-form

Great Lakes Grain stated that by having a better understanding of the overall corn and soybean crop health and yield for farmer participants, exporters, and end-users, all parties will be able to make better agronomic, economic, and handling decisions for the 2022-2023 crop.

Great Lakes Grain also said that it encourages the participation of industry end-users to accompany the tour.

“County yield results will be released at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show at Woodstock, Ontario, on September 13, 2022,” explained Don Kabbes, General Manager with Great Lake Grain. “We are truly looking forward to visiting with our producers and their families to share the results of the tour.

“We’re excited with our continued support of COFS this fall, under the FS Ontario System.”

Supporting the tour are sponsors Bayer Crop Science and DEKALB.

Great Lakes Grain is one of the largest operators of Ontario country elevators and represents over 20 million bushels of storage capacity with total marketing of over 50 million bushels. It serves farmers out of 27 AGRIS Co-operative, FS PARTNERS, and Coop Embrun branded locations spanning Windsor through to Ottawa and north to Georgian Bay.

For more information visit www.greatlakesgrain.com.

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”