Manitoba Crop Alliance and Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers invest in diversification centres to boost research capacity

Nov 29, 2024

Manitoba Crop Alliance (MCA) and Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers (MPSG) have committed $691,591 in funding to Manitoba Diversification Centres to increase research capacity in the province.

MCA recently commissioned a study evaluating research capacity in the province. The resulting report highlighted four main challenges to maintaining and expanding research capacity: equipment, infrastructure and land, funding programs, and human resources.

This investment is enabling the diversification centres to purchase new or specialized equipment, such as tractors and seeders. The equipment will help the centres enhance the efficiency of their current operations and expand the types of research they conduct to provide impactful results to farmers across the province.

“We identified inadequate equipment as one of the primary challenges holding back research capacity in Manitoba and this investment will help bridge that gap,” says Katherine Stanley, research program manager for special crops with MCA.

“The diversification centres conduct crucial, applied research on behalf of our farmer members, and their locations across the province ensure that regional differences in soil and climate can be studied.”

Manitoba Diversification Centres are non-profit, farmer- and industry-directed organizations that are integral to keeping the flow of applied research information to farmers alive. They host a wide range of research activities that MPSG and MCA are invested in, such as AgriScience Program cluster projects, regional variety evaluation trials, and product evaluation and comparison trials.

“Each diversification centre has a capable team that we believe in and rely on each year to carry out mainstay projects and to be agile in accommodating new research,” says Cassandra Tkachuk, research project manager with MPSG. “We are pleased to collaborate with MCA in supporting the expansion of field research capacity at the centres to continue sending value back to farmers.”

The four diversification centres in the province are at Carberry, Roblin, Arborg and Melita, covering a variety of agro-climate conditions and soil types to highlight the response of crops to different growing conditions. By accounting for unique growing conditions at each location, the centres can conduct more robust and meaningful research, while testing novel ideas such as alternative crops and agronomic practices.

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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