Farms.com Risk Management gearing up for Great Ontario Yield Tour

Aug 09, 2016

Tour will take place from August 15-26

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

Coming off the heels of the 5^th annual U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour, Farms.com Risk Management Chief Commodity Strategist Moe Agostino is touring Ontario in the 2016 Great Ontario Yield Tour.

Accompanied by Greg Stewart, Agronomy Expert with Maizex, the tour will kick off on August 15 and finish August 26. It will make its way across different regions in the province to determine corn and soybean yield potential.

“We’ll go south, west, central, east and north to evaluate what the weather has done to our yield potential in 2016,” Stewart said.

The tour will also include interviews with farmers to get an on-field account by the people with their boots on the ground.

By getting a firsthand look at crop conditions throughout the province, Agostino said it can give farmers a better understanding of where the markets may be.

“Besides the good agronomy we’re going to learn, we’ll know the market size and the impact it’s going to have on prices,” said Stewart.

Farmers who wish to have the tour stop at their farm can register to be part of the tour.

Use the hashtag #ONyield16 to follow the tour on social media.

A full schedule of tour stops and information on the two wrap-up events can be found online.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.