Crop Report-May 31, 2024
Weekly Crop Report
Crop conditions and weather
Seeding is wrapping up in the area. The rains this month have caused some seeding delays but overall the moisture has been welcomed to help recharge the land during this dry cycle.
Early seeded crops such as wheat have started to emerge. With the soils warming up and moisture being adequate, it won’t be long until the other crops will emerge as well.
What's going on in the field
Two Variable Rate (VR) Fertilizer trials has been seeded on Mistawasis and Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. These trials will demonstrate the use of VR fertilizer application in which different rates of nitrogen (N) fertilizer will be applied to different areas of the field. In order to determine which rate of N should be applied, extensive soil sampling and field mapping was done in the fall to collect data on soil factors (texture, organic matter, salinity), water (dry and wet areas), and topography (low spots, mid-slopes, hilltops). Researchers from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) then pulled all of this data together in order to generate a field map that divides the field up into zones, from most productive areas to least productive areas. Each zone will have a different rate of N fertilizer applied to it, with the most productive areas of the field receiving the highest amount of N and the least productive areas receiving the lowest amount of N. This way, the farmer is not over-applying N fertilizer to areas of the field where the crop will never be able to use all of that nitrogen. As a result, there will not be excess N in the soil that can be lost to the environment, and the farmer is not wasting money on expensive nitrogen that the crop cannot use. Variable rate also allows the farmer to apply more N to the most productive areas of the field in order to maximize crop yield.
In addition to VR, these fertilizer trials will also measure the impact of an Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizer (EEF) product called SuperU. SuperU is a specific type of N fertilizer that comes treated with products that help reduce N losses to the environment when the fertilizer breaks down into plant available N in the soil. These N losses can be in the form of a gas lost to the atmosphere and/or as nitrate leached below the rooting zone of the crop and potentially into the ground water. In order to measure N lost to the atmosphere, AAFC researchers have installed devices into the soil to capture and measure greenhouse gas emissions to determine the differences in N loss from SuperU compared to urea (the most common source of dry N fertilizer used in crop production). The VR trials on these fields will be repeated for two more years, for a total of 3 years (9 site-years) of data.
Two weather stations have also been installed (one on each First Nation).
Farmer's focus: insights for the week ahead
Seeding is arguably the most important part of growing a crop. There’s a saying that goes, “Well-sown, half-grown”. Out of all of the factors that cannot be controlled in growing a crop (precipitation, temperature, frost, hail, etc), seeding is one of the times that a farmer has an important influence on the success of the crop. Farmers are paying careful attention to soil moisture levels, soil type, seeding depth, seeding rate, and fertilizer and seeding equipment settings in order to get their crops planted in a way that gets the seeds germinating and the plants emerging from the soil in a timely manner. After months and months of planning, now is the time to execute those plans and tweak them as needed.
Author
Jennifer Bogdan
Agronomist
Bridge to Land Water Sky Living Lab