To quote Peter Johnson, we are back, baby! That's right, Agronomic Monday, we're back. We took a week off and it was glorious, let me tell you. Some fantastic trips were had by the team here at Real Agriculture. Most importantly though, plenty of harvest got done, plenty of harvest got started out west, and on today's Agronomic Monday, brought to you by FMC Canada, we're going to talk harvest management, We're going to talk about wheat midge showing up in Ontario and really taking a bite out of wheat yields. See what I did there? We'll also talk about COVID crops, winter canola, and other fall-seeded crops all on today's show. Cheque it out. RealAg Radio goes at 4:30 Eastern on SiriusXM or download it wherever you get your audio.
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All right, hello and welcome to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio, Channel 147 SiriusXM. It is August 10th, it is Agronomic Monday, and today's show brought to you by FMC Canada. Welcome back everybody. We had, well, most of us had a week off from recording this show, from, but not from Wheat Pete's Word. No, Peter Wheat Pete Johnson is here with me and he was so committed, you guys, still did the word last week. still manage to cover all your questions. So welcome here, Pete. How was your week?
My week was awesome, Lyndsey. It seems like the work never ends. And by the way, I did the word for last week because I just love doing it. There's so many questions that come in, and we as humans, we need a break. And good for RealAg to take the week off, but the crops don't stop growing and the weather doesn't stop happening. And so there's just Yeah, it's just so much fun, lots going on, and yeah, it's cool.
It is, yeah, and I will— we had, you know, an interesting week, as you mentioned, weather-wise. We started off, I think, with the same weather system hit you over the weekend. We got it sort of end of the long weekend. 5 inches of rain fell, quite a bit of the wheat was done, but it did definitely stall out some things that have now sort of caught up, so that's interesting. But oh my gosh, that's a lot of water, and then there's other areas, Pete, that are kind of hurting for moisture in Ontario.
Yeah, it's absolutely this weather thing. Why can there be no equity, Lyndsey? And so you are 100% right. My home farm had the last good rain was June 18th. Through July, I had 2, count them, 2 2-millimeter rains My corn crop, my beautiful corn crop just got decimated because the soil is variable all, and then on July 31st, because you know we're still in July, on July 31st I got 3.5 inches of rain. So for July my rainfall was above average, but the corn crop does not think so, baby.
No.
So it is, yes, it's, I mean, Fingle got I mean, a 1 in 100 year storm, 2 days later a 1 in 250 year storm, a state of emergency, water in fields that never gets water, and meanwhile my brother up at Tara, Port Elgin, Bruce County, they are crying for moisture. They are dry, dry, dry, crops are going backwards. It just, it's such a dichotomy, it is too bad. that we couldn't even that out because it just, yeah, and for your area, you were just nicely getting started at wheat harvest and all of a sudden the rains happened and so now there's the growers that jumped on winter wheat and said, we're taking it off at 18% moisture if we can at all, they got it out of the field. The growers that said, ah, we're waiting, there is sprouted soft red wheat in your area, there is low test weight wheat in your area, Nothing good happens to wheat. We've talked about this, Lyndsey, but nothing good happens to wheat once it goes below 30% moisture. If you can get it out of the field, get it out of the field.
Pete, I'm so glad you mentioned this because this is one of those things that I'm driving around watching and looking at the forecast and thinking, oh gosh, finding that window because you know that every time it rains, every time, right? So It's been a challenging harvest for wheat, I will give our farmers that. Now I do want to touch on though, that brings us to one of our topics we need to cover today. We do have some of the trial data available for winter wheat and for winter barley here in Ontario, just for Area 1, not yet Area 2, but what do we have available so far? Does it tell you anything interesting?
It always tells you interesting things, Lyndsey, absolutely. And so for winter barley, it's the whole provincial data set because we don't have that many sites It was actually available in July, which— growers can go to gocrops.ca or just the Grain Farmers of Ontario website and look for that. Yes, the cereal crop committee, the winter barley data there, some new varieties that look like they have good potential, better potential than some of the older varieties. We really have to focus in on barley yellow dwarf virus for the winter barley crop. That continues to be a challenge and needs to be a focus. Focus here. Not sure, you know, that's not a short-term solution, but for sure we need to keep that in mind. So some great data around yield, around barley yellow dwarf as well. Then we get to the winter wheat, and we have never, Lyndsey, never ever managed to have any of our performance trials up in July, and we didn't quite hit July, but we hit August 2nd. Area 1 data was up August 2nd, and my comment is that's almost July. the earliest ever, some really interesting data there as well, and so have a look there. There's some new varieties that look quite exciting, and you can really pick out some nice winning varieties and some notes, so be careful. We haven't had a bad Fusarium year in a few years, but we do that testing, and it's just a matter of time, Lyndsey, one of these days we will get Fusarium in the wheat crop. Every year that it doesn't happen, Wheat Pete goes, We dodged another bullet. So pay attention to that, and also test weight, you know, test weight is often an issue. This year in many fields in southwestern Ontario, test weights were incredible, but then we go to your area and because harvest got delayed, and if you have a variety that starts with low test weight and then gets a couple of rains, all of a sudden you get downgraded from test weight. So lots of incredibly valuable information there, just go to that website. Yeah, site and you can start to see. And we hope Area 2 will be up very soon, and Area 3 of course will come as well. But Area 3, your area, you know, a little bit challenged on harvest. We can't put the data up till we get the plots off.
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, those rains, that's what's going to pull down that test weight. Anyway, well, we'll see if this is a trigger for maybe changing to that, taking it off and drying it.
We'll see.
But I did want to touch on, while we're still on wheat and talking about yields and trials, etc., wheat midge, which I, up until now, Pete, I've sort of always thought is like a western problem. And certainly there are major hotspots in western Canada for wheat midge. There's, you know, we've got the varietal blends to battle wheat midge. It's actually causing a problem here in Ontario. What do we need to know about wheat midge?
So, Lyndsey, wheat midge has been in Ontario for years and years and years, and we've always just sort of ignored it because it never got to epidemic proportions, and we are not sure why this year is different, but we have had 2 very snowy winters in a row. Again, we've had other, you know, in the history of Ontario, we've had 3 or 4 or 5 snowy winters in a row and never really seen wheat midge developed, but something has changed because we have identified wheat midge in fields at very high levels, not at anthesis, not at pollination when we could have done something about it, but growers are getting to the field, they're seeing all these black heads that are standing straight up and they're going like, what is wrong with this variety, with this field? And then they pull the combine in and instead of a 120-bushel crop, which is what it looks like, they're getting 80, 85, maybe 90, so we're losing 25 to 35% in yield and we're quite convinced now that it's virtually all wheat midge. And so it is going to be something, it's interesting, wheat midge is a big problem in the UK as well. I have great contacts there and I was chatting with one of them and they have resistant varieties in the UK as well, but we are going to have to start looking at At what is happening from that perspective. I find it incredibly interesting that certain varieties seem to be more attractive to the wheat midge. We're quite convinced we have zero resistance bred into our winter wheat varieties here in the province, and yet some varieties are getting hit worse than others. So whether that's a heading date thing, it seems to be worse as we move north. And it seems to be worse typically in the hard red winter wheats, which head a little bit later, and it's also timed with rainfall. So if you get a rainfall right around heading date, that seems to make the wheat midge more prolific or more likely to attack that wheat head or lay their eggs on that wheat head. But yeah, it's a huge problem this year. I talked to one grower actually yesterday down at Port Burwell, if you can imagine, and he's a grower from Bruce County and he said, Pete, like, I can't believe it. He typically will be well over 100 bushels per acre average. His average this year is 85 bushels per acre and there's no good reason for it other than likely wheat midge. In hindsight, Lyndsey, we can't say for sure, but we have found it enough times that we know there's lots of it out there.
So, and that, I guess, is my follow-up question is, you know, here we are, we're into August, we're planning for that winter wheat crop going in. If there are no— so there are no resistant varieties that are sort of in the mix in Ontario? None at all?
No, no, none have the SM1 gene. None of our wheat varieties. That's varietal difference thing, like, sure, the preference seems to be real, but we have no resistance.
Okay, so if that's the case, if farmers were hard hit by it, what advice would you give them coming into next year? We may not be able to manage much, but is this something we should be putting on the scouting radar? What do we do sort of going into next year if we don't have resistance in our varieties?
So one of the things I always used to think, Lyndsey, was that we got away from having many midge problems because it was winter wheat, it headed out early, and typically the midge was a little bit delayed compared to our wheat development. And in Western Canada, There is some nice research that said if you can get earlier varieties, they tend to get damaged less, although not always, but that was a trend. That's what I thought was going on. Certainly, I would say to growers, whatever you do, just set yourself up for maximum wheat yield, plant on time, use starter phosphorus, get it in the ground at the proper depth, do all those things. Over the winter, we're going to be doing a lot of digging. We'll watch how much snow cover we get. We really do think that snow cover is involved with their ability to survive the winter. And next spring, next late May, early June, mid-June, depending on where you are at, we are going to have to scout, scout, scout for midge, and we may well have to end up, you know, using control measures if we get over threshold for midge. We don't know that, but that's the strategy at this point. Don't back away from anything that you would normally do to get high-yield wheat because of midge, because at this point we just don't have the answers.
Okay, all right, we'll leave it there for now. We're going to take a break here from Agronomic Monday, but we'll be back with more of Peter Wheat Pete Johnson right here on RealAg Radio on this Agronomic Monday brought to you Fertiliser by FMC Canada.
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Welcome back to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio Channel 147 SiriusXM, and of course, wherever you get your audio. Joining me, of course, Peter Wheat Pete Johnson for this Agronomic Monday brought to you by FMC Canada. Shout out to FMC. All right, Pete, it is a busy time of year in the next few weeks as we get that winter wheat done, but before we know it, we were just talking about choosing varieties, etc., winter canola for the areas that grow it, it is an earlier seeding date than winter wheat. What sort of prep can farmers be doing or should be doing ahead of getting winter canola in the ground?
Yeah, so Lyndsey, absolutely, this is one of those things which it's a fairly new crop to us, winter canola, and acreage just seems to double every year, and it's doubling because it is making economic sense. We have a good market at Windsor, they're looking for canola to crush and they're looking for it, you know, kind of early in the season when we would be harvesting winter canola, and yields have been very, very good. But you really do have to prepare the ground appropriately. And so before I was Wheat Pete, do you know what my nickname was, Lyndsey, before I was Wheat Pete?
I can only imagine, Pete, I'll be honest.
Yeah, so, well, actually, the students that I taught at Centennial had a totally different moniker for me. We aren't going to say that on air. But before I was Wheat Pete, I was Peter No-Till.
Oh.
Because I was a big no-till proponent, and I still am a big minimum, like the least amount of tillage possible, because every time you till the ground, it's negative to soil health. We know that, it's just part of the deal, but we can't always be pure no-till, and winter canola is a perfect example of that. If you leave your wheat stubble, because most of us are planting winter canola after winter wheat, it makes perfect Makes perfect sense. We want to plant that winter canola, you know, the last few days of August, the first week of September. It depends a little bit on your geography for sure, but it's really interesting that now with winter canola we can plant it in places like Essex County that first 10 days of September, and we can do the same thing in Bruce County, kind of the last few days of August, first few days. We want to be a little earlier in Bruce, but it used to be if we planted that early and we got an open fall, the stupid stuff would bolt and then it was dead. Well, with our new varieties, that doesn't happen, and so we get this opportunity, and you would say, great, I'm gonna combine my winter wheat, I'll spray it clean with glyphosate, 2,4-D, something like that, and I'll just no-till in the winter canola. If you do that, Lyndsey, you will have an unmitigated disaster 90% of the time. Because slugs are so detrimental to that winter canola, they will annihilate it just basically 100%. And so what winter canola does in the rotation is really gives us an opportunity to say, okay, I have to get rid of the wheat straw, even if I bale it off, there's still too much stubble, so I need to do some tillage even though Peter no-till says as little as possible. But for many growers, over time fields get unlevel, if that's a word, like they get rough, and so a really good chance to go through there, level things up. If you're Warren Schneckenberger in Eastern Ontario or if you're Adam Pfeffer at St. Thomas and you want to level that and really go in there and take out the micro dips and This is interesting because you can also do tile drainage now between the winter wheat crop and the winter canola crop. It's another great opportunity, but Warren would say that tile drainage is a really important part of crop production, but that levelling that field so you don't get those micro depressions that hold the water, that that's a really important part as well. So this gives us that opportunity. It also is a great time to For weed control, we have different weed control options. We can get manure applied on the field. All of these things can happen and it's a benefit because it means there's no residue there, the slugs don't become a problem, and you can get really good seedbed prepared for winter canola. Be careful though, if you dry that soil profile totally out and don't get rain, we've had this problem 2 years in a row in areas of the province. We're seeding canola 3/4 of an inch deep, so just We have to be careful drying out the profile if you're in a droughted area.
It is a teeny tiny little seed, guys. We cannot plant it to moisture if it's 3 inches down. It just— bad things happen to good people. Okay, so yeah, it's— Peter, I'm glad you covered some of that because I think this is one of those conversations that gets very layered and nuanced, is when you add a crop into rotation, what does it allow you to do But also what does it potentially cause, and so a slug issue is one of those that you really need to be aware of, but there are all sorts of good reasons why we would put a winter canola in the mix, which is pretty cool. My follow-up question though, because, and this is sort of when I had Phil Needham was on The Agronomist a couple weeks ago, who we love having Phil on, he's fantastic, but he was talking about the Kentucky rotation is the winter wheat goes after the corn, Because the winter wheat comes off early enough that then they put in soybeans, so they get 3 crops in 2 years, right? That's the mix. But if we're doing winter wheat into winter canola, do the soybeans go in after canola and sort of same idea, or what goes in after winter canola?
Well, so every grower is going to be different, Lyndsey. I mean, if you're Chad Anderson, my great friend Chad Anderson from the breadbasket of Ontario, Lambton County, would say no, no, no, Lyndsey, Lindsay, we plant winter wheat after the soybeans because we can do that, and it'd be better to plant it earlier, but it works. Then the canola goes in, and then you plant winter barley after the winter canola, and the winter barley comes off first. It's 10 days ahead of winter wheat or winter canola, and that's when the double crop soybeans go in.
Right.
Having said that, Elgin soil and crop tour last week, horse boner, Horst is much more upbeat, much more positive on double crop soybeans after canola, after wheat than he was a year or 2 ago because of the high yield potential of the super short season soybeans.
Right.
And so he's saying, man, you know, if you have a triple zero, that even at Elora on the 20th of July, you could maybe plant soybeans and have a shot at 30 or 40 bushels per If you have moisture, that's the trick. But for most growers, they are planting the winter canola after the winter wheat, and they are double cropping the soybeans into the canola because you have to plant something after this, the canola, or, or the canola does not support the mycorrhizae in the soil, and then the corn crop suffers. So it's either oats or soybeans after the canola to get the soil bugs working the way we want them again before we go back to corn.
Okay, so that makes sense to me. Canola into soybeans does make me nervous because I'm in a white mould area. However, I see where we're going with this, so everybody make your choices based on those risk factors and let us know how it goes. That's the important part.
Canola often doesn't get a lot of white mould, typically because maybe it's early enough that the temperatures don't quite line up. But don't say Pete says canola doesn't get white mould because we know canola does. Winter canola in Ontario often escapes white mould But never say never, okay? I agree with you, Lyndsey, it is just a little worrisome.
Okay, all right, we're gonna take a quick break here on RealAg Radio and we'll be back with more of Agronomic Monday brought to you by FMC Canada right after this.
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I'm Lyndsey Smith, host of The Agronomist, and I wanna thank you for tuning in for over 200 episodes of our beloved little programme. Join me Monday nights, 8 PM Eastern on YouTube for our live and interactive agronomy Q&A. Each week, our guest panel will handle some of your toughest agronomic questions live streaming on YouTube, Facebook, X, and RealAgriculture.com. Tune in Monday nights or go to RealAgriculture.com/agronomist and sign up for our email notifications and don't miss an episode. Welcome back to RealAg Radio. Here on Rural Radio, Channel 147 SiriusXM. I am your host for the day, Lyndsey Smith. It is Agronomic Monday, brought to you by FMC Canada, and with FMC Canada, I've got Brian O'Hara. He's a product manager. We're going to talk Precision Pack today. Brian, what do we need to know about FH20 herbicide?
Good morning, Lyndsey. FH20 is a brand new active for us at FMC here. It's a new Group 14 pre-harvest aid from FMC containing saflufenacil. So used with glyphosate, really helps dry down the crop and green weeds for a more consistent and efficient harvest. Key crops it's registered on: canola, field peas, red lentils, soybeans, and wheat. So we're timely, just rolling into harvest here. I just started combining lentils this weekend, So it's perfect timing here.
Yeah, I was just gonna say, this is a wonderful time of year to be talking about our options for when it comes to harvest management and just rolling into lentils. So I hope it's all going well as we work our way through here through August. It is a question though, right, of, you know, that harvest efficiency part that, you know, when I guess is something like FH FH20 herbicide, how does it make it more efficient? When does a farmer choose to use it?
Those are great questions. 2026 started out pretty rocky across Western Canada. It was cold, it was dry in a lot of areas, some areas were too wet, so getting the crop in was tough and germination was really, really uneven. Trying to increase your efficiency at harvest time, this is the perfect year. Uneven crop maturity, green stems, late season weeds with that slow crop establishment this spring, it all slows down harvest. FH20 herbicides can help dry down the green plant material more uniformly, improving harvestability and reducing the chance of weed growth. That's really vital for— if we can control the weeds before harvest, it's going to help conserve moisture and nutrients for the next season. That fall Fall herbicide application is really important. I've learned that the last number of years, that really helps set up 2027 the right way, not only making it efficient for harvest this year, it'll help for next spring.
Yeah, absolutely. I think more and more we talk about, you know, outside of that sort of spring burn-off or in-crop, what can we do later in the season and into fall to set us up for the next year, which is just so important now. But it also brings up the question of, you mentioned, you green stems or late flushing weeds. How do we know when the crop is ready for a pass like this? Because there are some considerations.
Timing is really critical with the HarvestAid products and it really depends on the crop. Canola is kind of our main focus. In canola, you got to open the pods, cheque the seeds rather than just relying on the pod colour. The pods can get sunburnt, kind of, So it can really be deceiving. You want to make sure that you're opening them and actually checking the seed colour change. For canola, we want to apply when 80% of the seeds have changed colour. Field peas, we want to shoot for that 70 to 80%. If you're using it in wheat, you want to be at that hard dough stage with less than 30% seed moisture. You always want to look at the label just to confirm the crop-specific timings.
Yeah, super important. Read that label, understand that label, and know because these are big questions that farmers have. So super important by crop type to get it right, that we know. Now, for those who have maybe questions about what is Precision Pack, because this is a Precision Pack, how is Precision Pack different than maybe what growers are used to?
The nice thing with the FH20, you can get it in your customised bag sizes, so it's pre-made for whatever tank sizes you're spraying, which really makes it convenient in the fall. The other benefit of FH20 is growers can use whichever MSO they want with it. Some guys have preferences of which one they use, so it makes it really convenient and flexible.
For those who of course have maybe questions on exactly that setup or want to order product or just have some follow-up questions, where can they go for more information?
They can contact their local rep or local retailer. We're equipping them with all the knowledge right now, or you can visit our website at ag.fmc.com/ca.
All right, that's always good info. Get to that person that you need to talk to, get it ordered, and make harvest easier.
This year, exactly.
Yeah, all right, Brian, and good luck to you as you continue harvest. I hope yields are good. Thanks so much for joining me on the show.
Appreciate it, Lyndsey.
All right, we're going to take a quick break and I'll be back with more RealAg Radio brought to you by FMC Canada right after this.
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Welcome back to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio, Channel 147 SiriusXM, or of course if you're watching on YouTube or listening to us on your favourite podcast app, welcome here. It is Agronomic Monday brought to you by FMC Canada. Just heard from Brian, but we're back here with Peter Johnson. Pete, we do— I want to talk cover crops, or service crops as I would like to start calling them, as you mentioned, as others have mentioned. I think it's important that service is in there because they should do a job. But there's always questions about what do you put in the ground, at what rate do you feed it, all those sorts of things. So what questions are you getting as far as cover crop establishment right now?
Ah, so Lyndsey, that's a great question, I love it. And I talked about a super cool study out of, I believe it was Minnesota, and Rodrigo Worley wrote about it, but they're looking at cereal rye as a cover crop and they have seeding rate trials in there as well as termination dates, and we've talked before about the concern of allelopathy coming out of that cereal rye crop and how tough it is to plant corn after that, and Jake Munro here in Ontario has done some really cool work with cereal rye ahead of next year's soybeans, and he's found that you typically will get 20% less stand establishment when you do it after cereal rye. But in the Minnesota stuff, it actually— it's Wisconsin, sorry, it's Wisconsin study, bad on me, I have to— I read so many research reports it's hard to remember where they all come from.
That's alright, Pete.
But they seeded from— yeah, thank you, thank you so much. They seeded different rates from 27 pounds per acre of cereal rye All the way up to 134 pounds per acre of cereal rye, and you would go like, wowzers, like there's got to be a massive difference. Yeah, you know what, at the end of the day, the biomass produced, the impact on the subsequent crop, it didn't matter. 27 pounds was as good as 134 pounds, and there, there was no sweet spot that it kind of went up and came back down. 27 pounds was enough. And so I talked about that and immediately I get, I don't know, 5 or 6 emails, texts, calls, and it adds up over time and everybody's saying, well Pete, that's rye, what about my oat cover crop because I plant oats after my wheat as a cover crop, is 25 pounds of oats enough? And the answer is absolutely, and if you are after a forage crop, Then the data that Shane and I did way back in, I don't know, 2010, we did from 30, 60, right up to 120 pounds, I think, per acre. For a forage crop, we need 60 pounds of seed. 30 isn't quite enough, but in cover crop territory where all I'm looking for is root growth, right, 25 pounds. Wheat Pete seeds his cover crop oats. at 25 pounds per acre. Pardon me, his service crop.
Thank you.
Yeah.
25 pounds per acre. The service it's providing is to harvest the sun, to put roots in the soil, to support the mycorrhizae, the biology in that soil. But what's really interesting, Lyndsey, is that if all I do is 25 pounds of oats and I stop there, I really miss the boat and I talked about this when, I mean, you talk double crop soybeans, I was in Illinois and talked to the Illinois wheat growers and they double crop all the time, they're like Phil Needham territory, but man, if all you do is 25 pounds of rye or of oat and you stop there, we don't maximise the production. And so the work that Shane and I did from a forage oat standpoint, if I want that, if I want to get my woolly pigs out there and harvest that forage as pasture, okay, I need 60 pounds or 50 pounds of oat, but I need at least 50 pounds of nitrogen. And actually, from a forage crop, I want maybe 90 or 100 pounds of nitrogen because the nitrogen makes more difference than the seeding rate. But what's intriguing Is that even as a cover crop, if I just plant the oat crop and I've had a massive wheat crop because I followed what Wheat Pete said to do and it used all the nitrogen, I'll get these little oats that grow 5 or 6 inches tall and they'll all go yellow because they're starving. And you really think that that's a very good service crop? And the answer is no. So work done by Dave Hooker, Manish Rizhida from University of Guelph 50 pounds of nitrogen on that service crop oat crop and we at least double the amount of above-ground biomass, what is that service crop supposed to do? It's supposed to harvest the sun, it's supposed to put roots in the soil, stimulate that soil biology. Well, if I double the above-ground biomass, I double the amount of root growth beneath, and so realistically, Keep the seeding rate down, don't forget about the nitrogen because it's really the combination of the two that are going to maximise what that service crop does for you.
Now there's also disservice if we have service, and the question when we talk about service crops or we talk about especially with the advent of drones, right, so we can seed And we've done this, we've put rye into standing soybeans and taken it as a cut the next spring. It's worked exceedingly well in some situations. It's not always a slam dunk, won't lie, but it can work. But of course that does bring up, you know, what else could we be doing? Should we be putting it— could we put something into standing corn? When do you think we've sort of jumped the shark on some of these things? When are we not necessarily helping ourselves out? with some of the COVID crop ideas out there.
Yeah, absolutely, and super question, and I've had this question as well. Bruce County corn planted June 1st because it was too— I mean, talk about the kind of dilemma you get into. Too wet in the spring, can't plant the corn timely, fighting wet soils, finally get a chance, jam it in on June 1st, which is pretty late for Bruce County. Now it's super dry, but the question was Okay, Pete, in September I'm going to drone in oats into my corn crop. Okay, wait a minute, if you drone in cereal rye as you do, Lyndsey, in September into standing soys and the soybeans drop their leaves fairly early, hopefully they drop them on top of the rye and you get a decent stand established and you're not looking to harvest it in the fall because you don't have enough time.
That's right.
Right, but in the spring, if the rye is established, it will grow quickly, and again, if you add a little nitrogen, it's going to even grow better, and we can get a cut of forage, or we can get a good shot at grazing that, whatever, whatever the plan is. Let's back up and say oat. Does oat generally overwinter in Ontario, Lyndsey?
No.
When does corn planted June 1st in Bruce County actually let sunlight down to the oat crop?
December?
Yes, okay, I was going to say the 1st of November, but oh yeah, so the answer is if you can't have 6 weeks of reasonable growth, our thought process is that the chances of you really stimulating soil biology are extremely slim. And so in Ontario, if that cover crop, if you want oats as a cover crop, if you don't have it seeded by September the 15th to get 6 weeks, now that's that's growing right through all of October, right up till, you know, October 31st. Boy, October doesn't get a lot of growth, so that's sort of the cutoff date, September 15th, September 20th, maybe later in Essex County, maybe it's September the 10th for oat in the Ottawa Valley, but think about what you're doing with that service crop, harvesting the sun, and is there actually sunshine and length of season to make that work?
Yeah.
And it's the dilemma in Western Canada, it's why Western Canada doesn't do as many cover crops because there's no season left by the time they harvest that wheat crop or that canola crop many years.
And I mean, to that point, a calendar day in mid-August is not equivalent to a calendar day in mid-October. They are night and day difference.
I think I heard you on Farmer Rapid Fire talking with that, with I think Kevin from a dairy farmer, I think from Ontario. I'm not sure, I can— it's a week or two ago, I can't remember exactly when, but yes, that day in October, pardon me, in August, more sunshine hours, warmer soils, warmer temperatures, one day in August, I actually talk about that in seeding wheat, one day in September can be worth 2 or even 3 days in October.
Yeah.
So this whole concept of does it matter if I get it seeded on August 5th or August 15th, ah, shouldn't matter. It matters.
Huge difference. Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn't mean it's not worth it, it's just you have to— that is, it works into the equation of what are you going to do with this, right? So like in our circumstance, if we're trying to either take a cut of, let's say, for feed, there is a cutoff in August where it's just not worth it anymore. It's either going to be grazed or left until spring, but you're not getting cut. So that changes what you might choose to put down and of course what you plan to do with it. So keep the end in mind when you're deciding on what you're doing right now. Very important. Okay, we do have time, very, um, we have a couple minutes that I do want to touch on this because it's kind of everywhere, Pete. It's artificial intelligence, it's ChatGPT, it's Gemini, it's all whatever you want to call We know that, you know, even when we search now on Google, we no longer get, you know, search results, we get an AI-generated summary of our question. So what are, as an agronomist, how are you sort of navigating what AI spits out versus what is good information?
Yeah, and Lyndsey, great question. And I got caught, right? I did the AI, I looked at the Google search on controlling sow thistle and it said that Lontrell— pardon me, it wasn't sow thistle, I can't even remember now, but I got caught. I just remember I got asked the question and I said, well, I did that AI search and the artificial intelligence was wrong and I put it on the word and Mike Kolber said, Pete, it's not what the science actually says. So herein lies the crux of the issue.
You.
And it comes down to this critical thinking and actually digging into the details. So I've had growers send me Gemini searches about starter fertiliser on wheat and looking at biologicals, and the problem is that when you delve into what the AI looks at, they are not looking at, is that a pay-for-publication journal? Is that just what we would call a questionable journal? Versus a true peer-reviewed scientific literature, well-researched, good data publication? Do they put the same weight on a RealAg article, which may or may not have as much data, you know, dug into? We hope it does here at RealAg, we really try, but there are lots of journal articles. Does AI put as much on that where it could just be a farmer testimonial? And that farmer testimonial does not have the rigorous science behind it that something else does. And so I'm just, as I look at these things that farmers are sending me, and I learned because Pete screwed up, he listened, he didn't do enough digging. I dig through and it's like, wait a minute, when I look at that article, when I look at that summary, well, we only have 2 journal articles quoted and one really isn't related that much and the other one is from a very questionable journal And the data, the research was done by the company promoting the product. And no offence to the researchers, but come on, we have to have that peer-reviewed science. And so AI is great, but take it with a grain of salt.
Well, and I think this is the, this is the part that we, we, we want a quick answer, especially when we have like just a very specific question. What I think sometimes we forget is that AI will give you an answer. Even if it doesn't, even if there isn't one, it will make one up. So AI doesn't have the same sort of like, is this a good answer? It'll just say, here is an answer. And it will, it will well and truly make things up. And you're right, Pete, it will use sources that are potentially entirely questionable because it fits the question that you asked. That's just how it works. So is it— I mean, AI can do amazing things and smarter searches is great and all, but It doesn't— I just, I hope everybody who gets that either cheque where the sources are and go to the sources and do your own reading, cheque in exactly that with myCOBRA, that we have books that will tell you what's on label, what's not on label, they're online, you can verify it, and use it as a leaping off point, maybe not as the last word. That's really maybe I think where we are at with especially agronomic advice.
Yeah, 100%. It was wild carrot, and the Google search said that clopyralid was good on wild carrot, mix it with your glyphosate, and Mike Cobra said no, the research data does not support that. So yes, do the digging, and yeah, because dang, it hurts when you get caught, baby.
Well, and I mean, you got caught in sort of that discussion imagine if you went and tank mixed it, went out there, and then you spent all that money and time and it didn't work. Or worse, it hurt a crop that you didn't want it to hurt. So I mean, there are very real consequences to getting it wrong, right? So these are important things. Okay, Pete, we gotta leave it there. All the rest of the— we have many more topics, everybody, so cheque out Wheat Pete's Word. It goes up every Wednesday. It's on YouTube, it's on the podcast apps, it's on wheatpete.com. Cheque it out because what we don't get to Pete almost always gets to you on the word. So yes, have a wonderful day, Pete. Thanks so much for joining me here on the show.
Always fun, Lyndsey, and keep chasing those woolly pigs.
Yeah, I will. Okay, we do have one more segment though on the show, so stick around. This Agronomic Monday brought to you by FMC Canada.
I'll be back with more right after this.
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Hi, I'm Bernard Tobin, host of the Soybean School on RealAgriculture.com. Throughout the year on the Soybean School, we'll bring you timely agronomic video content from planting to harvest, from the latest agronomic research to the latest in production technology. Cheque out our massive video library on YouTube, RealAgriculture.com, or download the audio podcast versions wherever you get your podcasts. The Soybean School is brought to you by Maizex Seeds and Lallemand Plant Care.
Hey everyone, welcome back to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio, Channel 147, SiriusXM, or of course wherever you get your audio, or maybe you're watching us on YouTube. Thanks for that, this is my mug. Alright, I am of course Lyndsey Smith. Today's show brought to you by FMC Canada. Huge shout out, thank you to FMC for sponsoring today's show. I hope that Brian made you think about harvest efficiency and what you may want to do as a pre-harvest pass to make harvest faster, more manageable, maybe get ahead of some of those weeds that always cause issues, let's face it, come late summer or fall. I did want to touch on a few things before we round up the show here today. Thanks, of course, to Pete He's got Wheat Pete's Word on Wednesday, but normally Mondays we also have the agronomists. However, we don't have a show tonight, so next week, so that's August 17th, 8 PM Eastern, we will have the return of the agronomists and we're going to be talking about stagey canola. So this all ties in with today's discussion on that harvest management. We really, we've got some challenges out there, let's face it, when it comes to this crop. A tough start, as you heard Brian talk about today, a tough start to the crop, some really hot weather, we've got some drown-out spots, we've got a lot we have to think about when it comes to harvest management. Every year there are questions about do you swath, do you let it stand. If you've got a pod shatter variety, you might still want to swath it depending on what it looks like or what you're up against. So next week, that's August 17th, on The Agronomist, we're going to talk about managing managing stagy canola. As always, if you've got ideas of topics you want us to cover here on Agronomic Monday or of course on The Agronomist, you can let me know,
[email protected], or you can call that feedback line 1-855-776-6147. You can text that line as well because if you're like me, you don't like making phone calls. I did want to also though take a moment— we were off last week as we mentioned, and for those of you who have been missing the download every day, here we are, we're back, and we missed But during that time, we got some sad news. Todd Lewis, a farmer from Saskatchewan, a familiar voice here. He was just on just a couple weeks ago from the show from AIM, senator of course as well, and he passed away very suddenly July 31st. It was just as we were headed off on holidays. We did of course put a post up on RealAgriculture.com if you want to read about his life there. We've also Connected to the obituary there, but Todd was someone who made a huge impact on so many of us. And, you know, it was a year and a half into the senator gig, and there are so many of us that will miss him very much. His big booming voice, big smile, and just always up for a discussion on farming and policy. And of course, he worked with APAS for years. He served at a municipal level as well, but he just loved to farm and that was the most important thing for him. So to his family and of course his friends and his colleagues, our condolences go to all of you. We remember him fondly here at Real Agriculture as well. All right, we're going to wrap up today's show. We've got a great week ahead of us. We'd love to know where you're at in the farm cycle right now. So as you heard, Definitely some lentil acres starting to get harvested, some other early crops coming in in Western Canada. Here in the east, we're well into and really wrapping up winter wheat harvest, which of course makes us start to think about those service crops, those covers, and maybe looking at what we're going to do into the fall as well to set up for next year. I did want to mention that will be in September, about mid-September, We will have an agronomist episode on winter wheat, and we will make sure that we've got some balance of west and east, because you know what, I would love for Western Canada to put in more fall-seeded crops, whether they're wheat, rye, what have you. And I know it's a challenge, but putting a crop in in the fall just makes so many other things so much easier, like weed management and other things. And I know Everyone's going to tell me it doesn't always work. I know it doesn't always work, but I think we can probably get a few more acres in if we can squeak them in. I think there's some good things that can happen there as well, so I think that's important. So yeah, cheque that out. That'll be mid-September as well. Thanks so much for downloading the podcast if that's what you did, also for making us part of your day here on Rural Radio. We also appreciate it. Drop us a follow across social media. We always love to hear from you. Chase has been busy with our TikTok and our Instagram accounts. Cheque those out as well. We really appreciate it. I'll be back Friday for the issues panel. Cheers everybody, have a great week.
Thank you.