Have you started or finished your Ontario wheat harvest?

Jul 06, 2016

How are the yields this year?

A month ago experts were predicting an early winter wheat harvest. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs predicted that the wheat harvest would be as many as ten days early in 2016. Recently, the debate as to whether or not the wheat harvest is well under way in Ontario has been hotly debated in the Farms.com news room.

Wheat Bale Ontario

Armchair farmers, such as this reporter, relied on rural drives through the countryside and Twitter to demonstrate that the harvest had begun. The hashtag #wheatharvest16 revealed a number of Ontario farmers had begun harvesting their 2016 winter wheat. Farmers like Don Smith, @dsmitty11, of Thorold, Ontario, posted a photo on July 5 saying harvest was “underway” with the photo below.

Wheat harvest underway in niagara

Barstow, @barstowmiller, a cattle farmer on Manitoulin Island, wondered if Ontario farmers are pleased with their yields this year. Over Canada Day weekend Maurice Chauvin @moechauvin in Pointe-aux-Roches, Ontario, showed combines running through the wheat fields in the early evening.

To end the debate, the Farms.com news team is looking for reports from farmers. Never mind government experts or armchair farmers (in the farms.com newsroom). We are looking for feedback from farmers in the fields across Ontario.

Let us know what percentage of your 2016 winter wheat crop has already been harvested thus far by completing the following survey: Ontario Wheat Harvest, or by tweeting your percentage harvested using the hashtag #wheatharvest16.

Please note, while reporter Denise Faguy is an armchair farmer, a number of her colleagues at Farms.com are active farmers in Ontario. Denise normally relies on these farming colleagues for accurate agriculture information. In a rare moment that she will savour for years to come, she was aware of the beginning of wheat harvest before some of her colleagues.

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.