Forage U-Pick Seed Calculator is a valuable tool for producers

May 07, 2024

The moisture over the last few weeks is a welcome sight for farmers and ranchers as they focus on seeding this year's crop.

The additional precipitation will help to replenish soil moisture and dugouts while helping to boost pasture growth.

For producers looking at seeding forages this spring, the Forage U-Pick Seed Rate Calculator is a valuable tool available through your provincial forage associations or the Beef Research Council website.

Producers select their zone or province and then determine what forages are suited to their field, the seeding rate and forage weed management.

When selecting what forages are suited for your area, it provides a soil zone map and walks you through a series of questions looking at the priorities for the field.

Examples include: Will it be hay or pasture land? When will it be used? What type of plants are you looking at? ( tame, native, grass or legume varieties) and then How long are you looking at keeping the stand? What type of soil are you working with?

The ideal time for seeding forages is generally in the spring, when moisture is more readily available and weed pressure may be limited.

Seeding rates should be adjusted when seeding into low-quality seedbeds, or areas with high or low moisture.

When it comes to evaluating that forage stand it is important to measure the number of seedlings in a given area, check several locations and
look for uniformity in the field. Producers may need to look at re-seeding if they don't get the establishment they want.

Source : Pembinavalley online

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators