Alberta Canola Growers Give Some Frosty Weather Tips

With temperatures dipping below zero in Mayerthorpe recently, the Alberta Canola Producers Commission is offering up some tips for farmers dealing with frost.

Heavy frost is considered to be temperatures below -2 Celsius and the canola growers recommend waiting four to six hours and then assessing the damage early in the afternoon.

Growers have to decide whether to swath right away and that decision will be based on the extent of the damage.

If there was heavy frost and the pods are dessicating rapidly, the commission recommends swathing right away to preserve as much yield as possible.

In the event of light frost - temperatures above -2 Celsius - growers should hold off on swathing. If there is speckling on the stern and pods, pay no attention to it as long as the plant is still alive.

The commission recommends looking for two things during daily monitoring:

• If the majority of the seeds remain turgid, delay swathing to allow for further seed maturity.

• If the pods are severely damaged and are beginning to desiccate, swath during periods of dew or high humidity to reduce the amount of pod shelling and pod drop that may occur.

Western wheat growers not impressed with plebiscite

The Western Canadian Wheat Growers rejected the results of the Canadian Wheat Board's plebiscite, calling the results "phony" in a press release.

The Wheat Growers said the low turnout - just 34 per cent of wheat producers and 29 per cent of barley growers - undermines the credibility of the vote.

"This vote was an illegitimate exercise," said Kevin Bender, the president of the wheat growers. "The results should be given no credibility whatsoever."

More than 66,000 wheat ballots were mailed out, even though Statistics Canada counts only 20,000 commercial grain farms in western Canada, the wheat growers said in a press release.

"We urge the federal government to...move full speed ahead toward giving us our grain marketing freedom," said Bender. "We are very excited about the opportunities that will be created under an open market."