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O C T O B E R 2 0 13 E D I T I O N

PLANNING THE NEXT CROP — AND BEYOND

FOCUS ON

INSECTS Bee kills could be a big deal for agriculture Tiny parasitoids check pest populations

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CROPS GUIDE

EVERY ISSUE

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Editor’s note

Having an impartial referee is a good thing for the grain industry here and at home.

Gleanings

Notes from all over about the grain industry.

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Crop protection

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More than 1,000 words

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Markets

FEATURES

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Where are prices headed with a new crop?

Branded

One key international customer says you’ve got a great brand.

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Not so fast

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The search for more durable rust resistance

Should your fields be squeaky clean or clean enough?

Taking a look behind the scenes at official grain inspection.

OCTOBER 2013

High-frequency trading study says nothing to see here.

WGRF has approved a project to find more durable rust resistance.

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Fall weed control on fields planned for canola Now is the best time to tame some really tough weeds.

FOCUS ON INSECTS 10 BUSY BEES

There have been a lot of headlines lately about bees dying in large numbers. This is an important issue for agriculture, but there are likely a lot of complex reasons it’s happening, rather than one silver bullet solution.

13 ATTACK OF THE KILLER WASPS

Like something out of a horror film, tiny wasps lay eggs inside crop pests, where they hatch, develop and consume the host, and then emerge from its corpse. Gruesome?

Perhaps, but also really valuable free pest control.

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CROPS GUIDE

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EDITOR’S NOTE

PL A N NIN G T HE NE X T CRO P — A ND BE YO ND

www.agcanada.com

Impartial arbiter

A

f ew years ago the Canadian Wheat Board hired a brand manager to develop and enhance the Canadian wheat and barley brand.

At the time, the announcement was met with just a bit of skepticism out on the farm.

No doubt it was a handy political football during the ongoing political debate surrounding the CWB and single-desk selling.

There was also likely a bit of the old “no man is an authority on anything in his hometown” mentality at work too. However, in the light of the end of the single desk, it might be time to take a closer look at this concept.

In this issue we speak to Seyed Moineddin Ahmadi, a wheat trader with Al Ghurair Resources, based in Dubai (see story page 17).

You’ll have to read the whole article to fully understand his views, but let there be no doubt — he firmly believes there’s a Canadian brand, and it’s worth protecting.

An enormous — and unfortunately not well understood — part of this brand is our uniquely Canadian quality-assurance system. To understand this, you have to understand that generally, grain sales are a lot like buying a pig in a poke. You’re never really sure what you’ve got.

In this environment, having some assurances of grades and standards is a welcome departure. One of our major competitors Australia used to have a very similar system. Unfortunately for the growers Down Under, that’s no longer the case.

During their own grain market deregulation and move away from single-desk selling, they lost this system. In retrospect, it’s easy to understand why it happened. The grading system was part and parcel of the Australian Wheat Board.

When that system was deregulated, the AWB had to quickly rationalize its operations to ensure it could compete with other private entities.

That meant anything without a commercial basis was quickly jettisoned. The grading and quality-assurance system made sense when the AWB was the only seller of the products, but didn’t make sense in an environment where it would basically be performing a valuable service for the competition for free.

The results were predictable as well. While Australian wheat and barley remain formidable competitors, the global brand appears to be tarnished in the eyes of more than a few global customers.

Here in Canada, we’ve been spared this experience so far. In no small part that’s because the single desk and the quality-assurance system were never bound together in the same way. The grade standards and export certificates were always the responsibility of the Canadian Grain Commission, a regulatory agency of the Canadian government with no commercial interest in the grain trade.

Certainly there’s been some adjustments around the edges. For example, some duplicate inspections have been eliminated. There’s also been some utility classes created for wheat intended for less quality-conscious markets. But the basic framework of government inspection continues.

Since I don’t grow or sell grain, whether or not this system remains intact is largely a moot point for me personally. Therefore I’m loath to give any unsolicited advice to farmers about anything that impacts their business.

I will say this, however: it’s probably worth your while to at least understand what you’ve got and what the possible implications are as the CGC’s mandate continues to evolve and change. ■

G O R D G I L M O U R gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com

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Gleanings g r a i n

i n d u s t r y

n e w s

Industry Notes NDP’s CWB critic shuffled to public works Late this summer, while you were probably pondering your ripening crops, the federal New Democrat opposition quietly turned a page, formally closing their critic portfolio for the Canadian Wheat Board.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair did it while announcing a mini-shuffle of critic responsibilities in his shadow cabinet, in which he reassigned Pat Martin, MP for the riding of Winnipeg Centre, as critic for public works and government services.

The irascible Martin has attracted criticism over the years for an attitude many find bellicose, and he’s never been widely popular in rural Western Canada.

Martin had been the NDP’s critic specifically on the wheat board since May 2011 and previously its associate critic on the CWB file from September 2007.

The Conservative government stripped the board of its single-desk marketing powers for Prairie wheat and barley effective Aug. 1 last year.

The Winnipeg-based CWB remains a crop-marketing and -pooling agency but is on a five-year track toward privatization and has been rebranded simply as “CWB.” The NDP’s agriculture portfolio remains in the hands of Malcolm Allen, the Ontario MP for Welland and the party’s ag critic since 2011. Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the Quebec NDP MP for BerthierMaskinonge, remains deputy ag critic.

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Monsanto to spend $100M on Prairie corn over 10 years REUTERS

Monsanto will spend $100 million over the next 10 years on breeding corn for Western Canada — a move it said might change the crop makeup in a fertile region that produces big harvests of spring wheat and canola.

Monsanto said it would focus on producing corn that matures earlier than current varieties, making it a seeding option for an area of Western Canada spanning 26 million acres.

Factoring in farmers’ crop rotations, corn may annually occupy eight million to 10 million acres of Western Canada by 2025, Monsanto said.

Western Canada farmers grow grain corn for use in ethanol plants and livestock rations on a relatively small area of 300,000 to 400,000 acres, nearly all of those in southern Manitoba.

Corn prices are attractive to Canadian farmers, but the relatively short growing season in parts of Western Canada, particularly in the top grain-growing province of Saskatchewan, has led to a focus on wheat, canola, barley, oats and niche crops such as mustard and lentils.

If corn catches on in Western Canada, it would continue the crop’s northwestern migration from traditional growing areas in the U.S. Midwest. Corn has already changed the mix in the U.S. northern Plains states of North Dakota and South Dakota, thanks to a mix of better seed varieties, long-term warming trends and soaring profits.

Monsanto will aim to breed corn varieties that mature in 70 to 85 days. Currently, the earliest-maturing variety in Monsanto’s Dekalb brand needs 76 days.

“But if you’re able to drive down to 74, and then 72 and even 70 and maybe lower, that opens up quite a large western Canadian geography,” spokeswoman Trish Jordan said.

Monsanto’s rival DuPont Pioneer also sees a bright future for corn in Western Canada, likely at the expense of other feed grains like barley and wheat.

“When farmers want to try corn, they’re trying it in a very significant way. They’re going out to buy equipment to plant a lot of acres,” said Greg Stokke, DuPont’s business director for Western Canada.

Last year, southeastern Saskatchewan saw more corn planted than usual, leading to a bountiful harvest that other farmers noticed, Stokke said.

“It felt like you were in Iowa. That’s a glimpse of what’s going to come.”

Farmers who are wary of growing corn for the first time tend to be concerned about risk, Stokke said. Growing corn requires farmers to acquire some new equipment, while frost before the plant reaches the right maturity level leads to a discount in corn prices.

Saltcoats, Sask. farmer Kevin Elmy, who grows crops for seed to sell to other farmers, has also seen the interest in corn grow. But he said he remains cautious about its potential because Saskatchewan lacks the heat of traditional corn-growing areas, putting the onus on corn that can mature more quickly.

“If we ever get a good grain variety, there’s huge potential,” he said. “Because when you look at the gross dollars from corn, it’s very attractive.”

Potential markets for more corn already exist in Western Canada. Husky Energy owns a large ethanol plant at Minnedosa, Man. and currently imports some of its corn feedstock from the U.S., Jordan said. The western provinces also have large cattle sectors.

Monsanto’s increased budget for breeding corn suitable for Western Canada places it in the company’s top three Canadian spending priorities, behind canola and soybeans.

Stomach trouble disputed in GM hog feed study

Storing grain using tarps and bags? Prepare the ground in advance

By Lisa Guenther

Tarping dry grain on the ground is OK for a day or a week, Chelladurai Vellaichamy says, but not any longer.

Chelladurai Vellaichamy is a PhD student in biosystems engineering at the University of Manitoba. Vellaichamy and his colleagues have been researching canola storage in grain bags for three years, with support from the Canola Council of Canada and Growing Forward.

Vellaichamy says tarping highmoisture grain is likely to cause mould growth and other problems. Humidity can also be high during harvest. “So that also makes it a difficult case if we just store it after harvesting right onto the ground.”

High-moisture grain can be stored in grain bags for a few weeks maximum.

Ground preparation is an important fact for both tarps and grain bags, says Vellaichamy. Here are five tips to help keep your grain safe.

• Make sure the site has good drainage.

• C lean the ground, removing any sharp objects, such as rocks, that might pierce the bag or tarp.

• Pack the ground really well. Pressure needs to be applied while loading grain bags, so it won’t work well if the ground is soft.

• Cut grass to keep rodents away.

• A pply lime to the ground before placing the bag, and around the bag once it’s in place. Vellaichamy says they didn’t see a single rodent after using lime.

The colour of a slaughtered hog’s stomach lining shouldn’t be taken as a sign that feed made with genetically modified (GM) crops gave the live hog a bellyache, an Ontario veterinary professor warns.

Dr. Robert Friendship, a swine health management specialist at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College, was responding recently to a paper by an Australian-led team studying a U.S. hog herd in this month’s issue of the Journal of Organic Systems.

The study, which involved 168 weanling hogs fed in a commercial barn in Iowa, alleged a higher rate (32 per cent) of “severe” stomach inflammation in a group fed a ration incorporating GM corn and soy, compared to 12 per cent of those fed a nonGM diet.

Friendship, on the blog of former Ontario Corn Producers Association vicepresident Terry Daynard, wrote that it was incorrect for the researchers in the JOS report to conclude one group of hogs had more stomach inflammation than the other, “because the researchers did not examine stomach inflammation.”

Rather, he wrote, the team led by Australian biochemist Judy Carman “did a visual scoring of the colour of the lining of the stomach of pigs at the abattoir and misinterpreted redness to indicate evidence of inflammation. It does not.”

There is no relationship, Friendship said, between the colour of the stomach in a “dead, bled-out pig at a slaughter plant” and inflammation.

To diagnose inflammation, he said, the authors of the JOS paper should have included a veterinary pathologist on their team, taken tissue samples, prepared slides and looked for “evidence of inflammatory response, such as white blood cell infiltration and other changes.”

Friendship also critiqued the Carman study’s claim that uteri of GM-fed pigs were 25 per cent heavier than those of nonGM-fed pigs.

The Carman paper, Friendship said, “did not admit the weaknesses of the study design and caution readers that there may be many reasons for a difference in uterine weight. Unfortunately, instead of presenting a fair discussion they made wild speculation about the weight difference such as the heavier weight might indicate cancer.”

Treatment, he said, was applied at the pen level in the Carman study while the statistical analysis was done at the individual animal level.

The Carman team, he said, did not suggest the heavier uterine weight “might be a result of some of the pigs in one pen of 42 pigs reaching puberty, which would be a

reasonable possibility, or that there may be estrogen-like substances in the feed at low levels” produced by mycotoxins.

Grain Farmers of Ontario last week also ripped the Carman study, saying the JOS “is funded by anti-GM groups and is strongly biased.”

The organization said “numerous independent studies conducted over the past 15 years have found no difference between animals fed GM or non-GM diets.”

Seed biotech and ag chem firm Monsanto, writing last week on a company blog, also criticized the study for its affiliations, saying the study’s release was announced through GM Watch and Sustainable Pulse, “two advocacy organizations opposed to GM food.” Carman’s own website, Monsanto said, “is devoted to anti-GM food reports.”

The Carman study, the company said, is “likely more advocacy science, with the emphasis on the advocacy and not on the science.”

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7

GLEANINGS

Bayer working to find answers to bee deaths

By Ralph Pearce

Bayer CropScience says it’s working to address concerns that its neonicotinoid insecticide seed treatments are contributing to bee mortality.

During a recent grower information day at the company’s Rockwood, Ont., research farm, Bayer representatives Greig Zamecnik and Luc Bourgeois said company researchers and advisers are working on several different levels, including tests on a new dry lubricant as well as studying the habits and behaviour of bees in close proximity to farming practices.

Bayer has placed beehives at its Rockwood research farm, and is consulting with a technician-adviser who’s familiar with the bees’ behavioural aspects.

The dry lubricant issue has garnered more attention this past growing season. There have been concerns that bee mortality is associated with dust escaping from the planting process rather than contact with the treated seed.

Researchers are trying to determine if it has anything to do with dust particles generated from planting or whether airflow from the planter units is adversely

affecting the environment around the rows, and subsequently with neighbouring hives. University of Guelph researchers and Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food advisers are also involved in a major study this year to determine whether conventional agricultural practices are having an impact.

Last spring, a provincial specialist with OMAF told a gathering of crop advisers that the use of talc or a talcgraphite blend in planter boxes is vague, to say the least.

The general rule of thumb, said the specialist, was that if “one glove (full) is good, then two must be better.” Yet the specialist also noted that in conversations with technicians from John Deere, he learned that most of the calls they handle during the planting season come as a result of planters that are clogged with the lubricant.

In response, Bayer is studying the benefits of a waxbased lubricant which still provides sufficient coating without affecting seed singulation. The lubricant also does not adversely affect the seed treatment itself, which can be a problem with the microscopic particles of the mineral-based graphite, and can act as an abrasive to the insecticide treatment on the seed coat.

Give us your input If you have a milestone you feel should be noted in our regular Gleanings column, please send the information, along with an electronic photo of any individual noted in the item, to Crops Guide editor Gord Gilmour at: gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com.

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focus on

Insects

Busy bees Lately there’s been a real panic over declining bee populations. Some of it is just sound and fury — but don’t ever doubt the importance of them to agriculture everywhere BY gord leathers

B

ees are really important to agriculture.

Don’t ever doubt that. Consider an average breakfast.

It’s true, not everything on the breakfast table is dependent on insect pollination.

Take the old standard of oatmeal with raisins. Both these crops are wind pollinated so they’ll set seed on their own without the aid of insects.

But if you like a little variety in the morning, you might prefer blueberry pancakes with a fruit smoothie or cream of wheat with apples and cinnamon. Like most fruit crops, those blueberries and apples won’t produce without an insect pollinator and bees are the vectors of choice. This could be trouble if the reports of falling bee populations are true.

“Agriculture requires bees and we can all help increase bee populations by considering their needs,” is how Ontario cattle rancher Bryan Gilvesy puts it. “We need them so we’d better be concerned about what they need as well.”

Gilvesy, who is playing host to a bee research project on his ranch, is on to something. Most flowering plants need bees and that’s a relationship even older than farming itself. They evolved together and a multitude of different flowers developed to accommodate a multitude of different bees. The bees collect the pollen for protein and the nectar for energy and, in exchange, they carry pollen from one flower to another so the plants can cross-pollinate. This outcrossing, as it’s called, gives genetic variability to the world’s flowering plants and, for agriculture those pollinated flowers tend to yield more seeds and better fruit.

The first farmers figured this out. The cereal grains were wind pollinators so they produced well with10 CROPS GUIDE

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out help but the broadleaf crops were different. One of the earlier partnerships came about when farmers convinced the honey hunters to set the newly domesticated hives up in their fields and apiculture was born.

There are depictions of Egyptian beekeepers going back almost 5,000 years while apiculture arose independently in parts of Europe, China and Central America as well.

That partnership still holds and today’s canola farmer knows that the yields are better if there are bees involved. Fruit and nut farmers to the south absolutely must have the services of bees so part of the price of running an orchard is contracting a travelling apiarist to bring in the bees to work the blossoms. Forage farmers growing alfalfa or clover also employ different species of bees to pollinate the plants. The plants get the needed pollination and, in the case of clover, there is a sweet bonus of honey for the breakfast toast.

“If you look at their contribution to pollination it’s probably about 10 times the actual value of the honey that’s produced by those bees,” says University of Manitoba entomologist Rob Currie. “For example, the bees are essential for seed production and you need an insect vector to move pollen from a male line onto a female line. Additionally, the presence of honeybees on canola will increase the yield anywhere from 10 to 30 per cent.”

That pivotal relationship may be in jeopardy because the number of bees, both domestic and native, appears to be dropping. The professional apiarist uses very few bee species, among them the bumblebee and the leafcutter, but the front-line tame pollinator is the western honeybee.

Like many of the foundation stones of agriculture, exactly how it arose is a bit of an open question. We think the honeybee first rose in southeast Asia and spread to parts of Europe and Africa approximately 40

million years ago. They’re highly social, forming colonies around the wax combs where they rear their larva and store large amounts of honey. A few thousand years ago humans recognized their economic value, and the domestication process began.

“The European honeybee overwinters as a colony and they remain active all winter long,” Currie says.

“They need a fair bit of food in order to do that so they collect the honey and use it as their carbohydrate source. That allows them to survive throughout the summer and last through the cold European winter.”

Our sweet-toothed ancestors developed a taste for honey and it was our principal sweetener until we started growing sugar cane. Nowadays, we have huge international trade in bees and, as a consequence we have an equally huge accidental trade in parasites and diseases of bees. In fact, honeybees are frequently in the news these days with stories of colony collapse disorder (CCD) in the U.S. It might make for overwrought headlines, but scratch the surface of this situation and a whole lot more complex picture quickly begins to emerge, and it becomes apparent that not everything going on with bees can be attributed to this latest crisis.

“Colony collapse disorder is a very specific set of symp-

toms that was originally described by some of the folks down in the U.S. but in terms of those specific symptoms we don’t think we see them in association with colony collapse here,” Currie says. “But we certainly see some things very similar to that and it’s caused by verroa mites, viruses and possibly nosema, a form of a fungus.”

Varroa is a parasitic mite that attacks both larval and adult honeybees. It attaches itself and feeds on the body fluids, much like a wood tick does with us, but in this case the tick would be the size of a dinner plate. It also weakens the bee’s immune system and introduces a number of viruses. The mite was first discovered in Java early in the 20th century but now it’s found all over the world. They’ve been implicated in CCD and are probably the biggest problem facing apiculture.

“These mites have become resistant to the products that beekeepers have been using to control them so that’s one of the huge issues facing the beekeeping industry right now,” Currie says.

There are also a number of other stresses affecting the bees. Over the course of the season they’re put on trucks and moved all over the continent, pollinating the fruit

Continued on page 12 CROPS GUIDE

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We all know a bee when we see one. But there are bees and there are bees The sleek honeybee plies the flowers, moving methodically from blossom to blossom, collecting nectar for energy and pollen for protein. Next past is the bumblebee, robust and rugged, a three-ton cube van of an insect rumbling into the florets for food. Then a leafcutter follows; square, solid and striped.

These are bees and we recognize them instantly.

Over in the ditch there’s a small patch of milkweed and there among the tiny purple flowers are tiny little bees, no bigger then a pencil lead. It’s one of several members of genus Lasioglossum. If you take the trouble to look you can find several different species of bees in quite a variety of sizes and colours.

“Bees are wasps that turned to pollen as a protein source instead of other living organisms,” explains Laurence Packer of York University. “The wasps that the bees evolved from were quite diverse themselves and they ate all sorts of different animals, mostly insects and spiders.”

Packer is the author of the book Keeping the Bees, and in one chapter he talks about bee evolution. They’re members of the order Hymenoptera, insects with four membranous wings and includes wasps, ants and sawflies. Of the 130,000 species within the order a full 20,000 of them are bees and they range in size from Megachile pluto, a giant Indonesian leaf-cutter so big that two of them could park nose to nose on the back of your hand and leave no room for a third, to the two-milimetre Trigona minima.

According to Packer bees branched off from their wasp forebears about 100 million years ago, about the same time as the angiosperm or flowering plants arose. Wasps, as we know now, are effective hunters and scavengers, subsisting on a meat diet. Around the end of the Cretaceous period certain wasps started foraging in the first flowers for the protein-rich pollen and became gatherers instead.

So began a partnership in evolution where flowers developed nectaries, a gland within the flower that entices the bees in for a sip of a sugary drink high in energy. The bee gets covered in pollen and transports it to the next flower.

Since then flowers have developed structures like landing pads for bees and elaborate signs that show up under ultraviolet light. Bees are sensitive to UV and this directs them to the nectaries and pollen chambers.

Although we always associate bees with the highly social honeybee, the vast majority of them are solitary. They’re all pollinators and farmers who provide habitat for bees may reap the benefit of having on-farm pollinators for broadleaf flowering crops like canola, sunflower or various fruit crops like sour cherry, blueberry or haskap.

“There are many bee species that nest in holes in wood; that’s their normal nesting spot so they would use old woodboring beetle holes to nest in or basically any little cavity that they can find,” says Cory Sheffield of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. “We know from my past research and the research of others that by putting out nesting blocks, that is blocks of wood with holes drilled into it, we are providing those bees with nesting sites.”

There are other things farmers can do to encourage nesting bees. They like woodlots and shelterbelts where there is stable habitat and different flowers for food. They like rock piles and other set-aside habitat with lots of cavities where they can nest.

“Lots of studies have shown that with agricultural crops close to these set aside habitats which provide nests and other food plants for bees, you get more bees and you get better crop pollination for many things just because you’re supporting the bee populations there,” Sheffield says.

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Continued from page 11 crops throughout the U.S. and Canada. Laurence Packer, an entomologist at Toronto’s York University says this might make economic sense, but it’s hard on bees.

“They move just about every hive in the country down to California for the almonds, then they head east to high-bush blueberries and then north for the apples so you’re feeding them almonds one month, blueberries the next and then apples on the third,” Packer says. “So they get stressed nutritionally. You’re crowding them all together on semi trailers and driving them for hours between places.

They’ve been exposed to everything that’s out there in different parts of the country. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

This is another variation on a larger problem with agriculture.

The industry expects huge amounts of production from too few species placed too close together. Although this can be very productive with good management and a measure of good luck, any farmer who’s watched a crop fall over from white mould or sclerotinia can sympathize with the beekeeper wrestling with nosema or varroa. We have to find ways to protect these bees from their natural enemies or we have to find other species that can help with the pollination.

“Food production isn’t pollinator limited at the moment but it’s going to be soon because the number of honeybee colonies is going down but the area of crops requiring pollination is going up,” Packer says The varroa problem is a vexing one and there are a number of research programs aimed at fixing it. So far there have been promising results with drone brood trapping, that is to say separating the drone larvae, the preferred quarry of the mites, from the hive and destroying the infested bees. Other methods include biopesticides and development of resistant stocks. The more we learn about the biology of the mite and its relationship with honeybees, the better we’ll be able to manage them in future.

We also understand the value of variety in a foraging bee’s diet. For example, dandelions are one of the first flowers out in the spring so dandelion pollen is very abundant. The bees have an early feast but there are a few amino acids missing in dandelion.

The bees need something else to fill in the cracks. We’re learning more about the spectrum of different flowers the bees need in order to get a full and balanced diet. A well-fed bee is a healthier bee that endures stress better.

The other thing we can do is find

a way to sustain the native pollinators so they can pick up the slack.

Cory Sheffield is a research scientist specializing in bees at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina.

Before that he worked with Nova Scotia apple growers. One of their more important pollinators is a solitary bee, Osmia Lignaria but there was a problem with the bee’s life cycle timed against the apple’s flowering period.

“These solitary bees will live for five to six weeks but the apples flower for a week to 10 days,” he says. “You have that other three or four weeks when there’s not a lot of food so providing additional food plants after the crop has finished flowering is important.”

What he found was that apple farmers could plant bigleaf lupines in the orchard. The lupines flowered right after the apples and gave the bees another pollen source and this helped them finish up their life cycle.

The consequence was a larger population of bees the following year and better pollination.

“I was able to double the egglaying capacity of the bees that were used in that habitat versus an area of the orchard where there was only apple,” he says.

This shows the potential of native pollinators. For the cost of providing habitat the bees provide economic return in the quality of the crop. The good news here is that bees are especially plentiful in hot, dry places like deserts and prairies. There are an estimated 800 species of bees in Canada with many of them living in agricultural areas. If we can provide them with the living space and the floral diversity they need, they can provide us with pollination.

That’s what’s going on down in Ontario’s Norfolk County on the Y U Ranch. Gilvesy’s neighbours and a number of scientists from the University of Guelph are watching what’s going on in his pastures. With some help from the Alternate Land Use Services Program (ALUS) they’re working on how farmers can take advantage of what nature can offer.

“We’ve got a couple of farmers in the county who don’t pay for honeybees anymore because they hold enough native bees on their naturalized site and that’s the sort of stuff we’re learning about now,” Gilvesy says. “They’ve discovered that you can actually have a percentage of your land set aside for bees but have more crop yield because of better pollination services. You’re doing something that’s good for the environment, good for the people around you and it doesn’t have to be painful. In fact, you might have a better farm.” n

ATTACK OF THE KILLER WASPS Parasitoids like wasps which colonize hosts as larvae and then kill them off while maturing to adulthood play an unsung role in keeping pest levels down.

Parasitoid activity is a real boon to farmers, even though you’ve probably never heard of it

B

ack in 1979 audiences of the movie “Alien” were horrified when the infant alien creature bursts through one character’s chest, killing him outright before it runs off into the shadowy hold of a space freighter. From there it grows, picking off the crew and eating them one by one.

What’s really horrifying is that this sort of thing is happening all the time right here on Earth. Fortunately for us, however, the usual targets for these attacks are caterpillars, aphids and other insects that parasitoids find tasty. Farmers should be happy to learn that many of the victims are major crop pests.

“There’s not enough information or recognition of the role that these insects play out there,” says Jordan Bannerman of the University of Manitoba. “Since the hosts they’re attacking are often pests these insects are providing a valuable economic service.”

“They often get overlooked because they’re not recognized when people are out field scouting,” Manitoba Agriculture entomologist John Gavloski says. “Many of them are tiny little parasitic wasps and flies but if the pest levels are well below the economic threshold, those parasitoids are probably the reason why.”

Farmers know about predators, the ladybird beetles and lacewings that eat the aphids as well as some of the rove beetles and large wasps that make meals out of caterpillars and root maggots. Predators abound in the fields and as long as they’re showing up in the scouting reports farmers know they have friends out there doing valuable work for them.

The parasitoids, most of which are wasps, are not as well known even though they’re very common. Because of this they have a significant impact on crop production by keeping the number of pests below the level where they can do real economic damage. Since farmers may not be aware of how many friends they really have out there, an introduction to the parasitoids may be in order.

Most people know the word parasite and have a good idea of what one is and what it does. The leech that

BY GORD LEATHERS attaches itself to another animal so it can suck its blood, the flea that lives on the dog or the tapeworm that hooks itself in the gut where it absorbs the already digested food are all parasites. They make a living off the avails of another animal but they don’t tend to kill it. Killing the host means losing your home and food source.

On the other hand, a parasitoid has no such qualms. In this case the female lays eggs on an unfortunate caterpillar and the larva hatches, digs in and starts feeding. In some cases they work from the outside but, as often as not, they chew away on the inside of the victim.

“I worked with an aphid parasitoid,” Bannerman says. “The larvae keep the aphid alive but they actually consumed the entire interior until the point where all the aphid is doing is sucking the nutrients out of the plant and those are just going straight to the parasitoid.”

It sounds ghastly but this life cycle works very well for the parasitoid because it has a steady supply of fresh meat. Because of the nutritional density of animal protein the larva grows quickly until it’s ready to pupate at which point some emerge and spin a cocoon while others will actually pupate inside the host. The fully formed adult emerges from the husk leaving a mummified corpse of what was once a crop pest and flies off to mate and start the next round.

“It’s an incredibly effective strategy and we’ve seen it arise in several groups of insects such as beetles or flies and there’s even a parasitic type of butterfly,” Bannerman says.

“But the parasitoid wasps have taken that to another level and a lot of the species have specialized on hosts, mostly insects.”

A full three-quarters of the order Hymenoptera is made up of parasitoid wasps. This means that if you add up all the species of ants, bees and wasps the vast majority of them are parasitoid wasps. It’s a staggering large number. Consequently parasitoid wasps come in a tremendous variety of sizes from the giant ichneumon, a

Continued on page 16 CROPS GUIDE

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OCTOBER 2013 13

*Source: 2012 Canola Performance Trials Always follow grain marketing and all other stewardship practices and pesticide label directions. Details of these requirements can be found in the Trait Stewardship Responsibilities Notice to Farmers printed in this publication. Š2013 Monsanto Canada, Inc.

It’s all tied up.

When it comes to yield supremacy, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other.

It’s been talked about, debated, and argued amongst growers across the prairies. When it’s all said and done, according to yield trials, Genuity® Roundup Ready® hybrids yield on par with the competition.* Like all contests this close, the debate rages on... for now.

focus on

Insects

Continued from page 13

Carefully protecting and nurturing existing parasitoid populations, or even introducing new ones, has paid dividends to growers in the past, keeping pests like wheat midge below economic levels.

16 CROPS GUIDE

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good three inches in length, that hunts for grubs in tree bark to the specks that farmers find in their sweepnets.

In spite of the difference in size, the form is similar throughout. They’re a slim insect with a sharp, triangular head, long thin legs and an equally long thin body. Coming out the back are two whip-like structures that may be almost as long as the insect itself and, in the case of the giant ichneumon, it makes the wasp look truly formidable. These structures are not a stinger as some people may think but are an ovipositor, the long thin tube that the egg comes out of.

“There are a number of different ways in which the parasitoids and hosts interact and most parasitoids actually keep their hosts alive until the larva is ready to become an adult,” Bannerman says. “In many cases the parasitoid actually modifies the host’s behaviour. For example some aphid parasitoids actually make the aphids move away from the colony so that they’re less likely to be consumed by something else. This way the parasitoid can complete its life cycle without being eaten by another aphid predator.”

So farmers take note. You have friends out there but they might not be obvious. If you take a sweepnet to your crop and you find a number of flies that look like common houseflies only with more hair, you may have a net full of tachinid parasitoid flies. That means their larvae are in your field and working for you. Even more important, those little black pepper-like specks that zip off when you empty the net are probably parasitoid wasps of some kind.

“I think it’s important to know that these insects are there. They’re not obvious and they’re not well known,” Bannerman says. “The recognition is important because it’s hard to make that leap, relying on something that’s not visible all the time.”

One reason it’s important to better understand parasitoids is because of the way crop mixes change over time.

Most of our crop species don’t come from around here so when we import a plant, like wheat or oats, we also import its predators along with it.

A crop-eating insect may suddenly find itself in a dream situation where it has abundant food and no natural enemies and then it becomes a major crop pest. Sometimes, as luck would have it, when we import a crop pest its natural enemies stow away with it.

Consider one example from right here at home. The wheat midge is a tiny orange fly from Europe that lays its eggs on wheat heads. The larvae find the seeds toothsome

OCTOBER 2013

so when they hatch they crawl into the floret and feed on the kernel. As time passes they either destroy the wheat in the head or lower the quality of the grain and the value to the farmer. The first ones probably came to North America in the late 1800s but the first major outbreak in Western Canada came in the early 1980s.

“There was one insect parasitoid of the wheat midge that actually tagged along and fortunately the scientists who were researching that issue caught wind of this fairly quickly,” says Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research scientist Owen Olfert. “They identified it and developed a method to work out pesticide regimes and other controls that would compliment and preserve as many parasitoids as possible.”

It’s a tiny wasp, less then two millimetres long. In the old country it lays an egg inside the egg of a wheat midge.

The midge spends the summer eating and it drops into the soil in the fall to pupate. In the spring the wasp larva hatches and devours the midge pupa. Although this won’t stop a heavy infestation until the next spring under most conditions it will keep the midge counts low enough to avoid economic damage.

Currently this wasp inflicts parasitism levels to an average rate of 45 per cent with some levels as high as 80 per cent in some fields. It’s been estimated that the reduction of insecticide control costs for Saskatchewan alone totalled $248.3 million in the 1990s. They didn’t stop there, a second wasp was introduced in 2003 to improve biological control of the midge even further.

“So now we have two parasitoid species working on wheat midge and on average in Saskatchewan we get between 30 to 40 per cent control and that’s very good,” Olfert says. “In many cases it’s up around 80 and 90 per cent. It’s not enough to eliminate all of the wheat midge in a given area but it drops the number below the economic threshold. It’s still there but it doesn’t cause an economic problem anymore.”

Another example is the cereal leaf beetle. Originally from Europe and Asia it was first seen in the United States in the mid-1960s and it’s found its way into Western Canada.

“This is an insect that we think has been moved around by humans because it seems to be making these big jumps across the Prairies,” says Gavloski. “It’s quite possible that people moving hay or straw could have brought it and it could be something as simple as somebody taking animals to a country fair, dumping the straw afterwards and there’s cereal leaf beetles in it. The reality is that we don’t know.”

The good news is that they’ve brought a parasitoid wasp with them and Tetrastichus julis is on the job.

“If the parasite arrives with them, the populations generally don’t take off so they stay at sub-economic levels,” Gavloski says. “But if the parasite’s not there, they can really start climbing. The parasite can be very valuable and we want to make sure we get it in as quickly as possible so they don’t get a chance to get up to those higher levels.”

Right now Gavloski is collecting the larvae when he finds them and sending them off to Lethbridge where a colleague either dissects them or grows them out. The idea is to see if the samples are harbouring the parasites and from there they can estimate the baseline population level.

The next part of the project is to release these wasps in areas where cereal leaf beetle populations are high but the wasps are low.

“What I’m doing is I’m taking them to fields where we know the parasite level is zero but we know we have the larva,” Gavloski says. “We’re releasing them because we want to make sure we can keep these things from becoming an economic pest.” n

market insight

Branded

Canadian wheat has long been the brand leader of wheat globally — but can that reputation survive the new reality?

By Gord Gilmour

T

en floors above Winnipeg’s bustling Main Street, Seyed Moineddin Ahmadi sits in a boardroom in the offices of Cigi (the newly rebranded Canadian International Grains Institute) and warms to a topic of some importance to him professionally.

Moin, as he’s more commonly known, is a wheat trader with Al Ghurair Resources, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. That name might not mean a lot to someone on a farm in Western Canada, but it certainly means something to anyone in the food business in the Middle East.

It’s a division of Al Ghurair Investment, a diversified industrial group with interests ranging from food and agriculture to energy, property management, printing and publishing, regional retail chains and educational institutions.

The resource division he works for owns and operates several mills in the region, as well as supplying key ingredients like grains to other milling operations in the area.

His topic today is your wheat. Specifically high-quality Canadian milling wheat, something he said has become the gold standard in the region over the past three decades.

“We started using it about 30 years ago,” he explained.

“Prior to that we were using Australian wheat, and in a lot of ways that made sense. It’s close to us geographically, and they produce very good-quality wheat too.”

But back in the early 1980s the Australians ran into some quality control problems, leading to some production problems at mills in the region. For millers, Moin said, raw material consistency is the key. It determines how efficiently their mills run, how much flour they can extract from their grist and ultimately how profitable they’ll be. Trouble with the top end wheat spelled trouble all the way down the line.

“We use it to improve our grain mix prior to milling,” Moin explained.

That means the best milling wheat is carefully rationed and deployed as needed to ensure the resulting flour is the right type for the right job. For example, a risen bread requires one type of flour, high in the proteins that create gluten. A noodle or unleavened pita bread is another thing entirely.

Variability in this top-quality milling wheat is something to be avoided at all costs, and faced with problems from their original supplier, they began exploring other options. Enter Team Canada.

At the time, the only supplier of Canadian wheat to export markets was the Canadian Wheat Board, and that’s where Al Ghurair went, initially agreeing to try some small lots to test quality. They liked what they saw, and began expanding their orders, slowly bringing other skeptical millers over to the new product.

“We were the first in the region to try it, and we convinced others,” Moin said. Slowly, mill by mill, the entire region was won over. Winning these markets takes time, but once it happens they become very stable customers, Moin said, precisely because they want the predictability that comes from a single reliable supplier.

We were the first in the region to try it, and we convinced others.

— SEYED MOINEDDIN AHMADI, AL GHURAIR RESOURCES It’s also why protecting the image of Canadian wheat is a vital interest for Canadian growers and grain merchants, he says, scoffing at any question of whether brand-building activities should be a priority.

“Canadian wheat is very well thought of by millers and customers — it’s very important that it stays that way,” he said.

Down the hallway in the office of Dave Burrows, that’s the sort of statement that’s very well received. He’s Cigi’s director of client relations and communications, and is the former manager of branding for the Canadian Wheat Board. He came to the grain industry a few years ago from the confectionery industry, where he managed household-name-type brands, like Lifesavers. It might seem like a bit of a leap to the world of wheat, but Burrows says it’s smaller than it might at first seem.

“I don’t think there’s any question as to whether the brand exists and its value to the industry,” he said. “But it’s a brand with a lot of moving parts, and they all contribute to the brand.”

Continued on page 18

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market insight

Continued from page 17 For example, along with the quality of wheat itself, there’s the country and its international reputation. Like it or not, we’re frequently seen as having a bit of the boy scout in us. We’re trusted as honest brokers who do what they say.

Then there’s the regulatory system, and how it ensures quality control in shipments leaving the nation’s shores.

Buying grain from other destinations always leaves more than a few lingering questions about just what you’re going to get when you open up that ship’s hold, Moin said.

“You can buy high-quality wheat from other locations, such as Russia or Ukraine out of the Black Sea,” Moin says. “But there simply isn’t the same consistency or guarantee. There’s a lot of peace of mind that comes with get-

ting that certificate from a government agency that says exactly what you’re getting, then opening the ship and finding you’ve gotten it every time.”

This brand, built on these many parts, didn’t evolve overnight. It’s the result of a century of evolution, beginning with the creation of the Canadian Grain Commission’s earliest form in 1912, and through the formation of the Canadian Wheat Board.

It has existed in a form most would recognize for more than 70 years, and is in the process of undergoing a major evolution with the removal of the Canadian Wheat Board’s single-desk sales powers just over a year ago.

Burrows describes it as a crossroads, and a time for the industry to evaluate the direction it should take, since it now involves far more players than ever before.

“We talk about brands needing a champion, and I

B:18” T:18”

BayerCropScience.ca/InVigor or 1 888-283-6847 or contact your Bayer CropScience representative.

Always read and follow label directions. InVigor® is a registered trademark of the Bayer Group. Bayer CropScience is a member of CropLife Canada.

18 CROPS GUIDE

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FS:8.625” F:9”

9-4-2013 4:02 PM CALMCL-DMX8127

SBC13114.InVigor.Brand Cyan,

Magenta,

Yellow,

Black

think now that champion is the industry as a whole,” Burrows said. “That means exactly what the brand will be is something the industry itself will have to determine.”

That means there could be calls for a move away from the highest-quality wheat model towards something a bit more middle of the market.

“You don’t always have to be the Lexus,” Burrows said.

“The industry may decide there’s value in being seen as a bit more workmanlike, yet still a reliable supplier with good quality assurance and excellent after-sales service.”

Regardless what the business decides the Canadian wheat brand should be, it would be a mistake to just leave it to chance, he said. For example, the widespread view that Black Sea wheat isn’t particularly high quality or reliable is itself a brand — though not one most would aspire to.

“It’s a mistake to think the decision is you’ll have a

B:18” T:18”

There’s no stronger tie than the family who works together on the same land. For them, farming’s a tradition.

And although each new generation has their own ideas, there are some things they will be reluctant to change, the things that have consistently performed for them, the things that aren’t broken.

InVigor® – proud to be part of your family farm for over 17 years.

Prosko Family, ROSE VALLEY, SK

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F:9”

Yellow,

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SBC1314.InVigorBrand.10.4C Crops Guide, 2/3 page spread Insertion Date: October 1, 2013

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brand or you won’t have a brand,” Burrows said. “You’ll have a brand if you do nothing at all.”

This reality is why Burrows stresses that the industry, and farmers through the currently developing provincial wheat commissions, should understand what they’ve got and how it might evolve. He suggested Cigi’s website and representatives of the grain companies dealing with international customers as excellent resources for those looking to familiarize themselves with the issue.

While he stresses the decision is one to be made by the industry as a whole, when pressed Burrows did concede that as someone with a fair bit of experience in branding, he did have a personal preference.

“Personally I think there’s still a lot of value in pursuing the high-value brand,” Burrows said. “But again, that’s a decision the industry as a whole needs to make.” n

CROP PROTECTION

Do you need squeaky clean fields?

T

Warren libby President of Savvy Farmer

h e re a re d i v e rg e n t theories of what constitutes good weed control. For some, it’s a perfectly clean field at harvest. For others, it’s just controlling enough weeds so that yield and

harvest ability aren’t impacted. Both strategies can be defended.

Personally, I am an advocate of the “clean field” strategy. While a few weeds at harvest may not impact yield, they will certainly replenish the seed bank, contribut-

So called super-weeds, like the glyphosate-resistant giant ragweed shown here, are one of the most persuasive arguments for maintaining a clean field strategy, rather than a clean enough strategy.

20 CROPS GUIDE

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OCTOBER 2013

ing to an even nastier problem in following years. For instance, one lamb’s quarter escape can produce 40,000 seeds, one pigweed over 100,000 seeds, while each wild oat plant produces about 250 seeds.

Fortunately, not all these seeds survive to the next year. Soil fungi and bacteria as well as soil insects consume a good number. Others get buried too deep to germinate. But 10 per cent of these seeds can easily germinate the following year and for several years in the future.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument to aim for a clean field is to prevent the invasion or spread of herbicide-resistant weeds. We are already challenged with glyphosateresistant giant ragweed (pictured) and Canada fleabane, as well as Group 2-resistant kochia, chickweed and cleavers to name just a few. If only a few of these herbicide-resistant biotypes escape, you could be setting yourself up for decades of even more challenging weed control. Giant ragweed produces about 5,000 seeds/plant, Canada fleabane over 200,000 and each Kochia escape produces up to 15,000. What might look like just a few escapes per acre can add millions of tough-to-control herbicide-resistant seeds added to your seed bank.

Weed seeds can never be totally eliminated from a field, but we can get ahead of them. There is good evidence that by using a variety of chemical, mechanical, and cultural practices to achieve near-perfect weed control, you can over time (10+ years) dramatically reduce the soil’s seed bank. In the long run this can result in the need to use less total herbicide. If this strategy has some appeal for you, it requires good record-keeping, careful planning of the appropriate herbicide strategy, and of course meticulous implementation.

Imagine trying to choose the best fishing lure without knowing what species of fish are in the lake. You could be lucky and pick a winner the first time, or like me, you may spend all day switching lures until you find one that works. The same logic applies to weed control. Without knowing exactly all the weed species in each field, you are just

shooting in the dark. You might be lucky and choose the perfect herbicide treatment, but equally likely, you may choose one that misses certain weed species. More often though you may simply apply a broad-spectrum but overly expensive treatment that controls everything you have and a lot more.

This last scenario has become a common one in recent years as growers become less sensitive to the cost of weed control due to attractive commodity prices. But it isn’t difficult to spend $5 per acre more than is necessary. Multiply this by the number of acres you farm and it soon adds up to a new pickup.

Keeping weed control records isn’t a barrel of fun but most of us can’t rely on our memories. Each of us should maintain an annual record of what weeds are in each field, what herbicides were used each year, and what the overall results were. In the immortal words of philosopher George Santayana, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

To make this process a bit less painful, a handy and free field weed inventory checklist (pictured) can be found at www.savvyfarmerlite.com. Just download the checklist and make copies for each field. Try to complete the checklists while the information is still fresh in your mind and file them in a binder.

With completed checklists in hand, creating customized weed control strategies for each field for 2014 will be a lot easier. The four options for planning cost-effective treatments that will make every field a “clean field” in 2014 are: Spend an afternoon with your provincial crop protection guide and identify what product(s) are capable of controlling your particular weed situations. All the information you need is there, although it can be quite a chore to nail down exactly what treatment will control all the weed challenges in each field. Unfortunately these guides typically do not include the newest products since they must be printed far in advance of the season. On the other hand, the price is right.

Hire the services of an experienced agronomist who can prepare customized recommendations for each field. The advantage here is that a local agronomist should have experience of what typically works best in your area, that is, with your soil and weather conditions. He/she may also know of what new weeds are in the area even if they are not yet on your farm.

If you have a favourite pesticide manufacturer, ask to have their field representative visit you at home and prepare recommendations. Of course, that rep will have a bias to recommend mainly his/her company’s products. However, the real industry professionals will keep your best interests top of mind and will recommend competitive products where appropriate.

Buy a subscription to one of the webbased crop protection software products.

Most allow you to choose the exact range of weeds you have in each field and will create a list of all registered product combinations that will control those weeds.

You can then choose one of the treatments or review the list with your local retailer to determine which is most cost effective or which other local growers have had good experience with. These software products require a bit of work at first, but are far easier than poring through a government guide, tend to be more up to date, and will provide more treatment options than other methods.

After that, it’s simply a matter of implementation, updating your records, and doing it all over again next year. Over time, you should see cleaner fields with fewer surprises, lower herbicide costs, and if Mother Nature co-operates, higher yields. ■ Warren Libby is president of Savvy Farmer, a web-based service for farmers and crop protection dealers. He previously held leadership positions in several crop protection companies and is the former chairman of CropLife Canada.

FIELD WEED INVENTORY CHECKLIST Field:

Farm:

ANNUAL & BIENNIAL BROADLEAF WEEDS Bladder Campion Bluebur Chickweed, Common Chickweed (Grp 2 Resist.)

Cleavers Cleavers (Grp 2 Resist.)

Cocklebur Corn Spurry Cow Cockle False Flax Fleabane, Canada Fleabane, Canada (Glyp. Resist.)

Fleabane (Daisy) Flixweed Goat's-beard Goosefoot, Oak-leaf Groundsel, Common Hairy Galinsoga Hempnettle Knotweed Kochia Kochia (Grp 2 Resist.)

ANNUAL GRASSES Barnyardgrass Bluegrass, Annual Brome, Downy Brome, Japanese Foxtail, Green Foxtail, Yellow PERENNIAL WEEDS Alfalfa Bindweed, Field Bindweed, Hedge Bull Thistle Burdock Canada Thistle Herbicides Used

Year:

Lady's-thumb Lamb's-quarters Mallow, Round-leaf Mustard, Ball Mustard, Dog Mustard, Tansy Mustard, Wild Mustard, Wormseed Narrow-leaved hawk's-beard Night-flowering Catchfly Nightshade, American Nightshade, Eastern black Peppergrass Pigweed, Prostrate Pigweed, Redroot Pigweed, Tumble Pineappleweed Plantain, Common Prickly Lettuce Purslane Ragweed, Common Ragweed, Giant

Ragweed, Giant (Glyp. Resist.)

Russian Thistle Scentless Chamomile Shepherd's-purse Smartweed, Green Smartweed, Pale Sow-thistle, Annual Spurge, Thyme-leaved Stinging Nettle Stinkweed Stork's-bill Sunflower, Annual Sweet Clover Velvetleaf Volunteer Canola Vol. Canola (Glyph Resist) Vol. Canola (Clearfield) Wild Buckwheat Wild Radish Wild Sunflower

Old Witchgrass Persian Darnel Proso Millet Voluntary Canaryseed Volunteer Barley Volunteer Corn

Volunteer Wheat Wild Oats Wild Oats (Grp 1 Resist.)

Wild Oats (Grp 2 Resist.)

Chickweed, Mouse-ear Curked Dock Dandelion Foxtail Barley Horsetail Milkweed

Quackgrass Sow-thistle, Perennial Toadflax Vetch Yellow Nutsedge Rate

Application Timing

Results

additional copies available at www.savvyfarmerlite.com or www.savvyfarmer.com

Do you have a crop protection issue you’d like Warren to write about?

Send any suggestions to gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com.

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NEWS

Crop rotation — it works; scientists now say why

Cargill to buy Viterra’s Australian maltster Commodity giant Glencore Xstrata plans to shed another piece of its grain firm Viterra, this time Australia’s largest maltster.

Glencore announced recently it will sell Joe White Maltings to Cargill for an undisclosed sum and expects to close the deal before the end of this year.

Viterra has owned Joe White since 2009, when the Regina-based grain handler bought its way into Australian agribusiness through a takeover of ABB Grain.

Joe White, founded at the inland community of Ballarat in the 1850s, was merged with Adelaide Malting Co. in a takeover by AusBulk in 2002, before AusBulk’s merger into ABB in 2004.

Minneapolis-based agribusiness Cargill already runs malting facilities in Europe and the Americas but noted Monday it “does not have a presence in the Australian malting market.”

Joe White now runs seven plants and supplies brewers across Southeast Asia as well as in Australia.

“The addition of Joe White Malting will complete Cargill’s global footprint in all key barley production areas and enable us to better serve our global and leading regional brewers in the region,” Doug Eden, president of Cargill’s global malt business, said in the company’s release.

“We look forward to bringing our malt industry expertise and additional capital to Joe White Maltings to continue to grow the business,” Philippa Purser, Cargill Australia’s managing director, said in the same release.

Glencore, which completed its takeover of Viterra last year, has already sold a number of the Prairie grain firm’s assets to Canadian firms Agrium and Richardson International and U.S. fertilizer company CF Industries.

The Reuters news agency last month reported Glencore is also seeking a buyer for Viterra’s U.S. pasta-processing operation, Dakota Growers Pasta Co., valued at US$300 million to $400 million. — AGCanada.com Network.

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Crop rotation has been used since Roman times to improve plant nutrition and to control the spread of disease. A new study to be published in Nature’s ‘The ISME Journal’ reveals the profound effect it has on enriching soil with bacteria, fungi and protozoa.

“Changing the crop species massively changes the content of microbes in the soil, which in turn helps the plant to acquire nutrients, regulate growth and protect itself against pests and diseases, boosting yield,” said Professor Philip Poole from the John Innes Centre.

Soil was collected from a field near Norwich and planted with wheat, oats and peas.

After growing wheat, it remained largely unchanged and the microbes in it were mostly bacteria. However, growing oat and pea in the same sample caused a huge shift towards protozoa and nematode worms. Soil grown with peas was highly enriched for fungi.

snapshot can be taken of the active bacteria, fungi, protozoa and other microbes in the soil. The research was carried out in collaboration with the University of East Anglia and The Genome Analysis Centre on Norwich Research Park.

“By sequencing RNA, we can look at the big picture of active microbes in the soil,” said PhD student Tom Turner from the John Innes Centre.

“This also allows us to work out what they are doing there, including how they might be helping the plants out.”

“Our work helps explain the experience of farmers in the field,” said Poole.

“The best seed needs to be combined with the best agronomic practices to get the full potential benefits.

“While continued planting of one species in monoculture pulls the soil in one direction, rotating to a different one benefits soil health.”

“ Peas and oats reset the diversity of microbes.”

— Prof. Philip Poole, John Innes Centre

“The soil around the roots was similar before and after growing wheat, but peas and oats reset the diversity of microbes,” said Professor Poole.

All organisms on our planet can be divided between prokaryotes (which include bacteria) and eukaryotes (which include humans, plants and animals as well as fungi). After only four weeks of growth, the soil surrounding wheat contained about three per cent eukaryotes. This went up to 12 to 15 per cent for oat and pea. The change of balance is likely to be even more marked in the field where crops are grown for months rather than weeks.

Analysis has previously relied on amplifying DNA samples. This limits scientists to analyzing one taxonomic group at a time such as bacteria. It also means that everything present in that group is analyzed rather than what is playing an active role.

Every gram of soil contains over 50,000 species of bacteria so the task is enormous.

There are relatively fewer actively expressed genes, or RNA. It is now possible to sequence RNA across kingdoms so a full

Seeds can be inoculated with bacteria before planting out, just like humans taking a dose of friendly bacteria. But this does not achieve the diversity or quantity of microbes found in this study.

The scientists also grew an oat variety unable to produce normal levels of avenacin, a compound that protects roots from fungal pathogens. They expected the soil to contain higher levels of fungi as a result, but instead found it contained a greater diversity of other eukaryotes such as protozoa.

The findings of the study could be used to develop plant varieties that encourage beneficial microbes in the soil. John Innes Centre scientists are already investigating the possibility of engineering cereal crops able to associate with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria normally associated with peas.

“Small changes in plant genotype can have complex and unexpected effects on soil microbes surrounding the roots,” said Professor Poole.

“Scientists, breeders and farmers can make the most of these effects not only with what they grow but how they grow it.”

NEWS

UGANDAN WHEAT STEM RUST RESISTANCE RELEASED FBC STAFF

A Kenyan university, supported by a multinational effort involving the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently debuted the first wheat seeds resistant to the new and virulent Ug99 wheat stem rust strain.

Eldoret University, in western Kenya, made the announcement during a two-day agricultural fair attended by thousands of Kenyan farmers.

Wheat rust devastated the North American Wheat Belt in the 1950s, and caused major problems in Africa until the early 1970s. It was under control until 1999, when a new strain was discovered in neighbouring Uganda, and it migrated swiftly to Kenya.

The new wheat stem rust has since spread to Iran, Yemen and South Africa and threatens crops as far away as India as spores are carried by wind. Parasitic rusts threaten global wheat production, reducing plant growth and crop yields. The disease can destroy up to 70 to 100 per cent of the yield of wheat crops if not prevented.

Supporting the development of the new varieties were the IAEA’s Technical Cooperation Department and the Joint FAO/IAEA Programme of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture.

In 2009, Miriam Kinyua, a Kenyan plant breeder, sent 10 kilograms of five varieties of wheat seed to the FAO/ IAEA laboratories in Seibersdorf, south of Vienna, Austria where they were irradiated for mutation breeding.

These seeds were returned to Kenya where they were planted in a hot spot for the disease for screening and selection. Kinyua and her colleagues at the University of Eldoret’s Biotechnology Department identified eight lines resistant to Ug99. Four of these lines were submitted to Kenyan national performance trials, and two were officially approved as varieties by the national committee of the Ministry of Agriculture.

FAO director general Jose Graziano da Silva lauded the milestone in a media release.

“Wheat rusts, particularly the Ug99 strain, are a major threat to food security because rust epidemics can result in devastating yield losses. This international project involving affected countries, plant scientists and breeders and international organizations is a major breakthrough. It clearly shows the benefits of FAO/ IAEA collaboration and that working together we can overcome the challenges we face,” he said.

About six tonnes of seeds of the new varieties will be made available this month for the next planting season in Kenya.

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CROPS GUIDE

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NEWS

StatsCan may use satellites, not farmers, to measure crop size

Trait Stewardship Responsibilities Notice to Farmers

REUTERS

Monsanto Company is a member of Excellence Through Stewardship® (ETS). Monsanto products are commercialized in accordance with ETS Product Launch Stewardship Guidance, and in compliance with Monsanto’s Policy for Commercialization of Biotechnology-Derived Plant Products in Commodity Crops. This product has been approved for import into key export markets with functioning regulatory systems. Any crop or material produced from this product can only be exported to, or used, processed or sold in countries where all necessary regulatory approvals have been granted. It is a violation of national and international law to move material containing biotech traits across boundaries into nations where import is not permitted. Growers should talk to their grain handler or product purchaser to confirm their buying position for this product.

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10801A-Gen Legal Trait Stewardship-CropsGuide.indd 1

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7/29/13 3:54 PM

Statistics Canada may scrap one of its annual farmer surveys on crop yields in favour of a report that uses satellite data to estimate production.

StatsCan, the national statistical agency, said the satellite data was producing increasingly similar results to its September farmer survey on yields of wheat, canola and other crops, and the change would help meet cost-cutting goals.

“We’ve been comparing (satellite data) over the last couple of years and they’re getting quite close to what we release in September estimates,” said Yves Gilbert, head of StatsCan’s field crop-reporting unit.

The agency’s Crop Condition Assessment Program has typically released data on vegetation conditions on a weekly basis late in the growing season.

Axing the September farmer survey would be the latest in a series of changes to how the Canadian government calculates data for the agricultural sector in Canada, which is the world’s biggest canola grower and No. 6 wheat producer.

It would also save $50,000 to $75,000 per year, and relieve farmers of the hassle of dealing with StatsCan phone calls during harvest, Gilbert said.

But Derek Squair, whose company AgriTrend Marketing helps farmers decide when and where to sell their crops, said switching to a less trusted source of information on supplies will make it harder for farmers to market their crops.

“To the producer, it should be a concern.

That data is pretty important,” he said.

StatsCan is currently conducting this year ’s September survey and will release the data in its Oct. 4 yield and production report.

The agency would drop the September survey starting next year, but would keep two other crop production reports that are based on farmer surveys, Gilbert said.

StatsCan has already cut some lowerprofile agriculture-related reports on hogs and fruits and vegetables.

The government said last year that it planned to cut StatsCan’s budget by seven per cent as of 2014-15 as it seeks to balance the federal budget. Chief statistician Wayne Smith said the cutbacks meant the volume and detail of information available would be “sharply reduced.”

The government foresees a federal deficit of $18.7 billion in the 2013-14 fiscal year, dropping to $6.6 billion next year, and a return to a small surplus the year after that.

The grain industry is also adjusting to changes to another widely watched government source of crop information: the Grain Statistics Weekly publication from the Canadian Grain Commission.

Some grain analysts expressed concern when the non-profit Canadian Ports Clearance Association wound down last year, marking the end of its regular freight reports. They said loss of these reports made grain movement less transparent.

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Crops Guide.indd 1

9/13/2013 9:51:03 AM

markets

Not so fast

Study finds high-frequency trading not raising futures volatility, but regulators remain concerned

V

o l a t i l i t y i n f u t u re s c o n t r a c t s h a s remained largely stable in the face of increased participation from high-speed and algorithmic traders often blamed for roiling markets, according to a recent report by the Reuters news service.

They cited a study, released by the Futures Industry Association, examined volatility from roughly 2006 to 2011 in 15 futures contracts traded on platforms run by CME Group, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), Deutsche Boerse AG’s Eurex, and NYSE Euronext’s Liffe. The exchange operators sponsored the study.

It found there is “no evidence to suggest that realized return volatility in electronically traded futures markets has changed through time.”

“ High-frequency trading accounted for more than 60 per cent of all futures volume in 2012…”

High-frequency traders are often blamed for increasing volatility because they use computer algorithms to dart in and out of markets faster than the blink of an eye.

“We now have empirical evidence that volatility in the futures markets has neither increased nor decreased once the effects of macro-economic shocks are removed,” said Walt Lukken, CEO of the futures association.

The association would not disclose the cost of the study.

Conducted by two professors from Vanderbilt University, its release comes as the prevalence of highfrequency trading is fuelling concerns about the fairness of markets.

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High-frequency trading accounted for more than 60 per cent of all futures volume in 2012 on U.S. exchanges, according to New York industry researcher The Tabb Group.

Risks associated with the practice first drew wide attention after the stock market’s “flash crash” of 2010, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 700 points within minutes. The fall was exacerbated by high-frequency traders unloading their inventory of securities at the depth of the plunge.

CME Group, which owns the Chicago Board of Trade and New York Mercantile Exchange, said the study showed the benefits of high-frequency trading.

“This is an important study demonstrating, as many others have already done, that high-frequency trading does not increase volatility, but rather serves as an important provider of liquidity for the marketplace,” CME spokeswoman Laurie Bischel said.

Representatives for the ICE and NYSE declined to comment. A spokesman for the Eurex could not immediately be reached.

The study used two benchmarks to assess intraday volatility in the 15 futures contracts, which included seven interest rate contracts, five equity index contracts, two crude oil contracts and one sugar contract.

The study does not draw a definitive connection between the rise of high-frequency trading, known as HFT, and steady volatility in the contracts, said Charles Jones, a finance professor at Columbia University’s business school.

It was “not really looking at HFT per se, but just looking at the broad arc in terms of the behaviour over time,” he said. “What they’re saying is, taken together, all the changes we’ve seen in markets haven’t increased volatility.”

The most natural conclusion is that the increase in high-frequency and algorithmic trading did not impact volatility, said Terrence Hendershott, an associate professor at the University of California at Berkley.

“If HFTs caused a big problem, you would expect to see a lot of ready evidence of it. And they don’t find it,” he added.

At the same time, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced it is seeking public comment on further proposals to curb high-speed derivatives trading.

The watchdog has compiled a list of 100 questions for market participants addressing all aspects of trading, from pre- and post-trade risk controls, to the design, testing and supervision of automated trading systems, the news service Finextra reported.

In the report, the commission is said that this list of questions or its own version of a “Concept Release” is driven by U.S. derivatives markets’ transition from human-centred trading venues to highly automated and interconnected trading environments.

The Securities and Exchange Commission released its own Concept Release in January 14, 2010, to address market structure concerns, which included automated trading and high-speed trading.

“The operational centres of modern markets now reside in a combination of ATSs and electronic trading platforms that can execute repetitive tasks at speeds orders of magnitude greater than any human equivalent,” the CFTC said in a statement. “Traditional risk controls and safeguards that relied on human judgment and speeds must be reevaluated in light of new market structures.”

The document is being issued in the wake of a series of market mishaps and technical glitches that have cast doubt on the ability of financial markets to keep pace with the speed of modern trading technology.

CFTC commissioner Bart Chilton said: “In general, those involved in financial markets seem to have blindly accepted that technology is almost always a good thing… But it doesn’t work well enough if we continue to see aberrations.”

The new mode of trading has also been under the microscope in Europe in recent days.

Italy introduced a levy on high-frequency and equity derivative trades in early September, the second stage of a process started earlier this year to tax financial transactions in the country.

The tax — which will apply regardless of where the transaction is executed — follows an introductory scheme launched in March in the country which taxed both exchange-based and over-the-counter share trading.

The new levy will subject high-frequency trading (HFT) to a 0.02 per cent tax on trades occurring every 0.5 seconds or faster.

Italy is not alone in the move to tax transactions, with France initiating its own in August 2012. Both moves are part of a grander European Commission project.

The EU wants to ensure that the financial sector makes a fair and substantial contribution to public finances and to discourage financial transactions which do not contribute to the efficiency of financial markets.

The idea has gained traction with 11 EU countries, also including Germany, Greece, and Spain, planning B:10.5” to introduce a pan-European financial transaction tax T:10” in January 2014 which will affect most equity, debt and S:9” derivative transactions. n

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Unsung hero.

WGRF RESEARCH UPDATE Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF) is a farmer-funded and -directed non-profit organization investing primarily in wheat and barley variety development to the benefit of western Canadian producers. Through investments of over $57 million, WGRF has assisted in the development and release of more than 100 new wheat and barley varieties over the past decade and a half, many of which are today seeded to large portions of the cropland in Western Canada. WGRF also invests in research on other western Canadian crops through the Endowment Fund. In fact, since 1981 the WGRF Endowment Fund has supported a wealth of innovation across Western Canada, providing over $26 million in funding for over 230 diverse research projects.

The search for more durable rust resistance

BY CLARE STANFIELD

C The University of Alberta’s Dean Spaner (centre front) and a team of students are working on building a better rust resistance model.

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anadian wheat producers have always relied on winter.

Prolonged cold weather has always been the backstop against rust diseases that blow over the 49th parallel every spring as unwelcome house guests. And winter can usually be relied upon to kill off any residual inoculum — usually.

The fact is that stripe rust has successfully overwintered in Canada in recent years, and epidemic levels of the disease in U.S. wheat-growing states do not bode well for the future.

Resistant cultivars are one solution, but the problem is that resistance tends to be short lived — disease simply

OCTOBER 2013

adapts too quickly. It’s why the Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF) recently approved a three-year project to look at “pyramiding” stripe, stem and leaf rust genes into bread wheats in an effort to build more durable, stable resistance that farmers can count on.

“All wheats have susceptibility to stripe rust,” says Dean Spaner, professor and wheat breeder at the University of Alberta, who is heading up this research project.

“Durums are better, but Canadian winter wheat has a fair bit of susceptibility, and the disease is spreading in winter wheats in Canada because it has started to overwinter here, as well as blow up from the western part of the U.S.” Stripe, leaf and stem rust are all caused by different

pathogens and research on all three has been ongoing for years, resulting in a wealth of knowledge that Spaner’s project aims to build on.

“We intend to use information we have gathered over the last number of years on stripe rust resistance in spring wheat to pool multiple resistance to stripe, leaf and stem rusts, as well as other diseases,” he says.

To date, over 60 leaf rust (Lr), 40 stripe rust (Yr) and 35 stem rust (Sr) genes have been identified and catalogued.

Most of these, however, appear to be race specific, which means they have a short shelf life when it comes to using them in resistant cultivars.

It’s a simple case of more is more, explains Spaner. “If you have one gene making a plant resistant to a disease, the disease can break that resistance quickly,” he says. “If you have many genes making the plant resistant, it will take the disease longer to break that down.”

By the same token, some of these identified and catalogued genes are already known to have quite effective resistance characteristics by themselves, and when strong links are found between them, that resistance becomes even more robust.

For example, Lr34, a leaf rust gene is among the most durable to be found in current wheat varieties. It has a known, strong link to Yr18, a stripe rust gene, and both have a strong link to pm38, which confers resistance to powdery mildew. Together, they make a powerful resistance package. It is in those linkages, says Spaner, where durable resistance is to be found.

The study is designed to find those linkages, as well as find markers associated with as yet unknown genes that

All wheats have susceptibility to stripe rust.”

— DEAN SPANER, UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

confer stripe rust resistance, then systematically pyramid four or more rust genes into stable germplasm.

While there are many known rust genes to work with, the unknown genes play an important role in this research. “We know that Lr34 and Yr18 gives durable resistance and that there are a few, or some, cultivars with this type of resistance,” says Spaner. “But you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, so it’s important to find other types of resistance so that when one breaks down, farmers have other options.”

And that’s what’s driving this project. Some of the more virulent rust infections can cause up to 40 per cent yield loss, which is a significant monetary hit to growers, not to mention the cost of fungicides to control the problem.

“Effectively, we are looking to characterize resistance genes and also develop resistant varieties of wheat,” says Spaner. “That’s important for farmers so they don’t have to spray and pay, or lose money because of yield loss.”

This new WGRF-funded project is the newest chapter in Spaner’s work on rust resistance. Indeed, he and his team released two stripe rust-resistant CWRS cultivars already this year. “We are trying to provide farmers with better options,” he says. ■

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2013-09-12 8:34 AM

MORE THAN 1,000 WORDS

Official grain grading T

o many farmers, the Canadian Grain Commission is a regulatory black box. It has an important role in the Canadian grain industry, but until they need it, few consider what it really is and what it does.

From a producer perspective, the two most important functions are likely the bonding of grain buyers which helps ensure payment in the event the company experiences financial difficulty, and the CGC’s role in establishing standards for grain grading and acting and an impartial arbiter in the event of a dispute.

CROPS GUIDE recently had the opportunity to visit the CGC in the organization’s Winnipeg headquarters and document the official grain-grading process. We’ll concede right off the hop that it’s a very complex process, too complex to show you much more than the highlights here, and we recommend for a complete understanding of the process you visit their online grain-grading guide: http://www.grainscanada.gc.ca/oggg-gocg/ggg-gcg-eng.htm.

One thing is certain however — it might be in your best interests to become familiar with these protocols. In many cases grading standards are subjective and inexperience can make for errors.

And as some grain industry observers will state in a candid moment, you don’t have to get too far into the oilpatch before you find younger — and less experienced — staff buying grain.

1 T he single most important thing

5

at any grain-grading station isn’t a piece of equipment, it’s a person.

In this case inspection specialist James Dunlop was kind enough to let us watch him at work. In many cases the grading is subjective and requires a seasoned eye, as well as a rigorous adherence to protocol.

There’s simply no shortcut for the knowledge of an experienced grader with a few years under his or her belt.

3 I f you’ve ever been in an elevator, you’ve seen hand-sieving. But what you might not realize is that there’s a very specific system to do it properly.

Obviously the right-size sieves is very important, but it gets even more involved, right down to the number of times they’re shaken.

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7a

7B

2 D unlop’s first chore is taking a large sample — generally about 20 pounds — and creating a smaller yet still representative sample for the various grading protocols which would be impossible to perform in the larger sample. This specialized divider ensures an accurately representative subsample.

1

6

2

3

4

8 4 S ieving takes out the smaller weed seeds, chaff and smalls from a sample, but that’s just a single step in the grading process.

5 D unlop then hand-picks the larger foreign material and weed seeds from the sample.

6 N ext a standard-size cup and a funnel (not shown) are used to measure bulk density.

7 A & B At this stage, a number

9

of visual comparisons are made, for everything from frost damage to sample colour.

8 I f there’s a specific problem, at times the inspector will hand-pick the entire sample. It may be a bit time consuming, but it’s the best way to determine the level of certain quality issues.

9 A t times things get put under a magnifying glass, especially when it’s time to determine the exact cause of kernel damage.

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canola

Fall weed control on fields planned for canola Canola is a poor competitor early in the season, so fall weed control of perennials and winter annuals is a good step to prepare canola fields for 2014. However, canola is also highly sensitive to herbicide carry-over. Choose your fall herbicide carefully B Y j ay w h e t t e r

C

ontrol of perennial and winter annual weeds can be more effective in the fall than at any other time of year.

Perennials such as Canada thistle, dandelion and quack grass are moving sugars to below-ground tissues. Spraying perennials after strong regrowth but before a heavy killing frost takes advantage of this downward flow of nutrients, as weeds take herbicide directly into their crowns or storage roots. Winter annuals such as narrow-leaved hawk’s beard, stork’s bill, sow thistle and cleavers are best controlled later in the fall to get all that have emerged.

“Fall weed control is especially effective for fields planned for canola in 2014. Canola is not highly competitive in the first few weeks after seeding, so fall control of perennials and winter annuals is a great way to manage this early-season competition,” says Angela Brackenreed, agronomy specialist for the Canola Council of Canada.

Fall control of perennials and winter annuals is a great way to manage this early-season competition.

— Angela Brackenreed, Canola Council of Canada

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However, young canola plants are also very sensitive to residual herbicide carry-over. “Most residual products are not suitable for use in the fall ahead of canola,” Brackenreed says.

Canola injury can occur from exposure to low soil concentrations of several Group 2 herbicides, plus some Group 4, 5 and 14 herbicides. Most of these products are not registered for use in the fall ahead of canola.

Applications made earlier in the season can also make fields unsafe for canola next year if normal breakdown of herbicides is inhibited by drought, low organic matter and pH. Soils with higher organic matter are at reduced risk of herbicide carry-over because they tend to have more microbial activity, more moisture and temporary binding sites to draw herbicides away from sensitive plant roots.

Soil pH effect depends on the herbicide. Certain Group 2 sulfonylureas and certain Group 5 herbicides break down slower in high pH (alkali) soils and Group 2 IMI herbicides break down slower in low pH (acidic) soils.

Glyphosate is one of the most popular fall applications, and there is no risk of carry-over damage to canola from straight glyphosate. But growers have to take care to choose appropriate mix partners for glyphosate (purchased either as pre-packs or tank mixes).

“A combination of active ingredients is good resistance management stewardship, especially with glyphosate-resistant kochia now on the Prairies,” says Clark Brenzil, provincial specialist in weed control with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture. “But many of the active ingredients in glyphosate pre-packs and tank mixes present a carry-over risk for next year’s canola.”

Glyphosate with tribenuron is an example of one fall tank mix option that can work ahead of canola. But DuPont recommends that its tribenuron product Express SG be applied in early fall and no later than mid-October on land planned for canola.

“Check with your herbicide retailer or a representative from the herbicide company for canola restrictions for the product you want to use,” Brackenreed says. “It will also help to describe your soil moisture, pH and organic matter, and the date you plan to spray, to see if they have any further concerns regarding carry-over.”

Phenoxies 2,4-D and MCPA should be used with caution in the fall on fields planned for canola. Some research suggests that low-rate applications made before mid-October are acceptable from a canola safety point of view. However, consider the target weeds. “The target of phenoxy herbicides applied in the fall is winter annual broadleaf weeds, and AAFC research found that to be effective for this use, phenoxies should be applied just prior to freeze-up,” Brenzil says. “When applied at this time, no breakdown will occur until after the soils warm up the following spring, putting canola at risk of phenoxy carry-over damage.”

Dandelions are a tough weed to control, but with proper management they’re relatively vulnerable in the fall.

For best results Before spraying, assess if there is a significant population of weeds to warrant a spray, and whether they are annuals, winter annuals or perennials. While fall is a good time to hit perennials, biennials and winter annuals, targeting annuals only makes sense if it looks like they’ll produce mature seeds before freeze-up. Canola volunteers, for example, that emerge following harvest in the fall are unlikely to last the winter and do not need to be sprayed.

Next, make sure the plants are actively growing with sufficient leaf area to uptake adequate herbicide to do the job. Even with several weeks of regrowth, the amount of leaf area in the fall is only one-third of what was there before harvest at best. For this reason, herbicide rates should also be higher in the fall. “In October, simple math says you’ll need at least three times the rate of glyphosate used at the pre-harvest timing to get the same level of glyphosate into the plant if you only have one-third of the leaf area to hit,” Brenzil says.

If frost is predicted or has occurred, avoid application until leaf condition of the target weeds can be evaluated.

Spraying after a killing frost can be effective, but take time to assess the weeds and make sure they have enough healthy living tissue to take up the herbicide. Frost-dam-

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aged leaves may look green but they’re not healthy and will not take up herbicide. Leaf tissues that are blackened, browned or dark green yet brittle are all symptoms of cold-temperature damage. Leaves should be vibrant green, shiny and pliable.

“Control can still be obtained if more than 60 per cent of the original leaf tissue remains undamaged,” Brenzil says.

Finally, spray on a relatively warm, sunny day. These days may be rare in October, but it sure improves efficacy when they come along. “Ideally, you want to apply when temperatures are above 10 C and rising and the forecast high is at least 15 C,” Brenzil says. “If the high won’t hit 15 C, then bright sunshine is absolutely critical.” Sunny conditions are ideal for moving herbicides to the roots where they will have the most impact next year. Spray from mid-morning to mid-afternoons when temperatures are warmer, the sun is brightest and heavy dew is off the plant to allow the herbicide to move quickly into the plant. n Jay Whetter is communications manager with the Canola Council of Canada. For more on this topic, see the weeds chapter in the new Canola Encyclopedia at www.canolacouncil.org/canolaencyclopedia. Sign up for the CCC’s free and timely Canola Watch agronomy updates at www.canolawatch.org.

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CROPS GUIDE

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OCTOBER 2013 33

MARKETs

With record crops in the making — what’s the outlook for prices?

T

By David Drozd Senior analyst and president, Ag-Chieve Corporation

2005 and soybeans and canola were $5 per bushel, wheat was $3 and corn was $2, they would rely on the long-term (monthly) charts to help determine this.

If someone was deciding when to sell a weather rally, they would fine tune their analysis using the daily and weekly charts, as these will more quickly generate a sell signal to act upon.

Soybean meal has led soybeans higher, which in turn has spilled over to provide underlying support to other markets, such as canola even though it’s anticipated Canada will produce a record crop of canola this year.

However, there is more to price discovery than simply focusing on production.

There are two sides to analyzing the fundamentals, supply and demand. USDA estimates 2013-14 global soybean production could be record high at 281.72 million tonnes.

However, a record crop isn’t necessarily negative to prices, if the world needs it.

Global demand for meal, vegetable oil and soybeans has never been higher. China is a major importer of soybeans, as they only produce 15.8 per cent of their requirements. Their domestic usage is projected to be 79 million tonnes and USDA estimates they will import 69 million tonnes in 2013-14, which would the largest amount ever. China’s soybean imports have increased a staggering 557 per cent since 2001.

The world population continues to consume ever-larger crops at an

he current market environment makes me think back to the article I wrote in the March 2013 issue of Crops Guide. One of the questions I addressed was, “Will the grain markets go back down and stay down at a lower level for an extended period of time?”

Similarly, farmers have been asking questions about whether the price of grain is returning to lower levels. One has to appreciate the answer is relative to the farmer ’s perspective. Is it in the context of days, weeks, months, or years?

For that I turn to the charts. A market consists of major trends, and within the major trend are intermediate and minor trends.

The major trend in soybeans is up, with the market putting in higher highs and higher lows since 2006. The major trend will turn down when prices break below the major line of support at $12.71.

The intermediate trend has been down since prices peaked at a historical high of $17.94 -3/4 in September 2012. This is evident by the lower lows and lower highs on a weekly nearby chart.

The short-term trend has been up since August 8, 2013. That’s the day a two-day reversal materialized giving a buy signal on the November 2013 futures contract. Since then, the market has rallied $2.47 per bushel.

All are invaluable in determining price direction. If someone wanted to know if prices were going back down to when the rally began in

CBOT Soybean Monthly Nearby Chart as of September 5, 2013

Double Top B

A Area of Resistance Objective

Support

Area of Support

34 CROPS GUIDE

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amazing pace. Although USDA is forecasting record global production of soybeans and wheat in 2013-14, consumption of both commodities is also anticipated to be record high. As a result, USDA is forecasting world wheat ending stocks will be drawn down for the fourth consecutive year and global soybean ending stocks will have a marginal increase.

With the world producing and consuming a record amount of soybeans and wheat you can count on the market to be extremely volatile from one growing season to the next, as the fundamentals can and often do change substantially every six months based on production prospects for the Southern and Northern hemispheres.

Other factors can also be considered in determining price direction, such as the logistical difficulty Brazil has in getting soybeans to port. Brazil relies on the same infrastructure moving an 85-million-tonne crop, as they did at the turn of the century when they handled a 40-milliontonne crop. Therefore, China finds the U.S. is a much more reliable supplier, which keeps the demand coming back to the United States even though South America produces more soybeans than the United States and Brazil alone now exports more soybeans than the U.S. In the big picture, I don’t expect prices to go back down to the lower areas of support witnessed from 1975-2005 because similar to the early 1970s, prices realigned to a new higher trading range in 2008.

From a technical aspect, what used to be the highs (resistance) from 1975-2005, will now prove be the lows (support). These areas are defined by the horizontal lines in the accompanying chart.

Keep in mind, marketing is all about managing risk and taking advantage of the volatility. Don’t throw a blind eye to the markets believing there is no downside due to the hot and dry conditions in the western Midwest.

Weather rallies don’t last and the seasonal tendency is for grain and oilseed markets such as soybeans, canola, corn and oats to decline as harvest picks up, which is why it is important to follow a disciplined marketing plan. n

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Monsanto Company is a member of Excellence Through Stewardship® (ETS). Monsanto products are commercialized in accordance with ETS Product Launch Stewardship Guidance, and in compliance with Monsanto’s Policy for Commercialization of Biotechnology-Derived Plant Products in Commodity Crops. This product has been approved for import into key export markets with functioning regulatory systems. Any crop or material produced from this product can only be exported to, or used, processed or sold in countries where all necessary regulatory approvals have been granted. It is a violation of national and international law to move material containing biotech traits across boundaries into nations where import is not permitted. Growers should talk to their grain handler or product purchaser to confirm their buying position for this product. Excellence Through Stewardship® is a registered trademark of Excellence Through Stewardship. ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. Roundup Ready® crops contain genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides. Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides will kill crops that are not tolerant to glyphosate. Genuity and Design®, Genuity®, Roundup Ready® and Roundup® are registered trademarks of Monsanto Technology LLC, Monsanto Canada, Inc. licensee. ©2013 Monsanto Canada Inc.

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Only Ares takes out the toughest flushing weeds and keeps them out. Including wild buckwheat, lamb’s quarters, cleavers—even volunteer canola from other systems. Ares also makes herbicide rotation easier, because it uses a different mode of action. You’ll be so impressed with its performance you’ll want to tell every canola grower you know. And almost anyone else who’ll stand still long enough. For the latest buzz visit agsolutions.ca/clearfieldcanola or contact AgSolutions® Customer Care at 1-877-371-BASF (2273).

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