Ont. growers wrapping up soybean harvest

Oct 23, 2018

Poor weather slowed down progress for days

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Mother Nature may cooperate with Ontario growers to give them a window to combine their grain.

Field conditions could improve after long stretches of wet weather and cool conditions.

In Middlesex County, for example, temperatures are hovering around 8 C with light showers, the Weather Network says. The next seven days will bring temperatures between 7 and 9 C with chances of precipitation ranging from 20 per cent to 70 per cent.

Growers aren’t wasting any time using the good weather to their advantage.

“I just finished soybean harvest and will be starting corn soon,” Ann Lamont, a cash crop producer from Middlesex County, told Farms.com. “The weather hasn’t been too kind to us lately, so we’ve got to do as much as we can.”

Lamont is happy with how her beans looked during harvest. She estimates her yield is somewhere “in the mid-60s” bushels per acre.

Farmers in Kawartha Lakes are also making use of favourable harvest conditions.

“We finished soybean harvest a few days ago,” Ed Lewis told Farms.com. “We don’t have all the paperwork in yet, but I would guess we harvested about 40 bushels per acre.

“The weather always plays a factor because you never know what you’re going to get. I think we would’ve liked to see larger yields but sometimes that’s out of your control.”

The temperature in Kawartha Lakes is around 6 C, the Weather Network says. Temperatures will range between 4 and 6 C for the next week.

Growers are happy to see the change in weather.

“We’d be out harvesting for a day, but then we’d get rained out for two or three after that,” Doug Virtue, a cash crop farmer from Bruce County, told Farms.com. “You go through that cycle two or three times and it starts to get very frustrating.”

He has finished about 90 per cent done of his soybean harvest, he said.

Virtue also produces winter wheat, so the recent rains have helped that crop, he added.

“We finished planting the crop at the end of last week, so the moisture was helpful,” he said. “I’ll have to check the field soon to see if any of the crop has emerged.”

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.