Bells and whistles won't make money
By KEITH REID, Special to Farm & Country
With all the talk about yield monitors and satellite beacons, we've ignored the key to site-specific farming.All the technology in the world is useless unless we can use it to grow more bushels at a lower cost of production.
Somehow, we have to learn how to use site-specific information to make better farming decisions.
We aren't there yet, but we are getting closer. Here are some of the main obstacles, and how they may be overcome. But first, don't get stuck on the idea that farmers who are already using the technology are wasting their time. When we get more answers on how to start site-specific management, they'll be set to go. The rest of us will have to collect our field information first.
MANAGEMENT MAPS
The goal of site-specific farming is to create a management map. Unfortunately, it's the most difficult part of the whole process.It may be best to think of drawing a management map as a two-step process. First we have to draw lines between areas of the field that should get different management, and then we have to decide what the management practices should be inside each area.
Deciding where to draw a line is never easy. It implies a sharp boundary, when in fact there is usually a gradual transition from one area to another.
Even worse, many of the criteria we are most interested in aren't visible, so we can't always look at the ground and relate it to what our yield maps are telling us.
The lines also depend on our goals. Think about nitrogen, for example. Many fields will have areas that show a tremendous response to applied N. Close by, however, other areas will show almost no response. In between will be an area with intermediate response that will often be too small to manage on its own.
The question then is, where do you draw the line? If your goal is maximum yield, the map will lump the intermediate area in with the high-response area. If your goal is minimum crop inputs, you'd put more of the intermediate zone in with the no-response area.
The lines should be drawn so we can see where to make changes when working the field. For instance, we might use topography or soil colour or even crop growth.
Remote sensing, which uses 'pictures' from satellites or airplanes, could also help. Taking a digital image at a specific wavelength can provide a lot of information about soil moisture or crop stress, even when the differences aren't visible from the tractor cab. Remote sensing shows a lot of promise, although the technology still needs verification in the field.
Many farmers may also use grid soil sampling to draw their field maps. There are some limitations. Grids may be set up in a rectangular pattern, while the variability in your field may follow curves. If we start by looking at the amount of variation in the field, and then set up our sampling pattern to capture that variation, point sampling may give us an accurate representation of the field.
Combine yield monitors will also help draw maps. A word of caution, however, is that yields are largely determined by one or two factors. If the crop in part of the field is choked with weeds, for instance, the yield monitor isn't going to tell you a lot about your starter fertilizer.
OPTIMUM INPUTS
If site-specific farming is to have any chance of succeeding, we'll have to find out how to obtain the optimum crop response for each input.It won't be easy, but if we don't, there won't be any extra net return to justify the cost of setting up the site-specific program.
One approach is to plant check strips, so we can see the amount of yield we get in plots with and without a nutrient. By comparing the strips, we can find which areas will give the greatest yield response to an applied nutrient, so they will get heavier rates. Other areas may not need any of the nutrient at all. This method is still in the development stages, but you can be sure you'll hear more about it in future.
Soil tests will also remain an important part of site-specific management, especially by helping us sleuth out the causes of the yield variations that our yield monitors tell us about. The way we take soil samples, however, will be refined as time goes on. We'll also get better at using soil sampling as an early warning system to alert us to problems before they affect crop yields.
Site-specific management has a lot of questions to answer. I'm confident, however, that the answers are worth finding. Site-specific management will change the way that all of us farm.
Keith Reid is soil and crops adviser for the provincial agriculture ministry at Walkerton.
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Tree-friendly publishing no pulp fiction
Some trees in Dryden gave their lives for the paper you're holding but Ridgetown college's Gordon Scheifele says there are alternatives to wood pulp for paper making. By RALPH PEARCE, Special to Farm & Country
With recent soaring newsprint prices, and dwindling forests, newspaper publishers may soon be looking for an alternative. While prices have softened lately, newsprint prices rose US$420 per tonne in 1994 to US$750 in 1995, an increase of 78.6 per cent.
According to news reports last June, 1993 harvesting from Canadian forests outpaced replanting by more than two to one: 2.4 million acres versus 1.1 million.
Scheifele is the first to concede the road to change in the paper industry would be a long and difficult one. Years of tradition and a supply of natural resources perceived as endless would slow the rate of change to a snail's crawl. Yet Scheifele insists change must take place, sooner and not later. He points to forests in Europe, long since depleted and now protected as 'reserves'. Modern-day reliance on paper is putting a growing strain on its long-standing supply of pulp, he says.
At the top of Scheifele's list of alternatives being researched at Ridgetown are plants such as elephant grass, switch grass and Austrian willows. Elephant grass, first developed as a fuel source, was later found to have an excellent supply of high-quality long fibres. Originally grown as a quick wind break, then as a fuel source, Austrian willows are now being explored as a viable source of pulp for paper production.
Switch grass, like many of the Prairie grasses, is also readily acceptable source of fibre for paper. Much the same as the Austrian willow and elephant grass, it is drought-tolerant and grows well in marginal soil.
Richard Glandon, director of paper and paper products with Natural Resources Canada, cites tests conducted on wheat straw at a pulp and paper plant in Beauharnois, Quebec, and other federal research on wood pulp alternatives, including future tests on flax straw.
"If we can find a way of using it [wheat or flax straw] at a cost which is comparable or cheaper than wood, then to me, we'd be [foolish] not to do that," says Glandon.
Scheifele says hemp also has promise. "We've shown back in the 1930s, before the Second World War, that it grew very well in Ontario," he says.
But others disagree. According to Bob Roy, a researcher at Agriculture Canada's research centre near Delhi, the varieties of hemp grown today are different from those grown 60 years ago, not to mention the issue of legalization. Even if hemp were legalized, there is confusion over fertility, weed control, harvesting, baling and storage, Roy says. A sudden price drop would be hard to absorb by a small number of farmers growing industrial hemp, he says.
"You need to know the long-term production history," says Roy. "That if you grow variety 'x', it will yield 'y' number of tonnes dry matter per acre, based on a three-year growing season."
That information base would assure processors of a reasonable return on their investment. But it takes time and continuing research, and farmers growing fibre hemp are closely monitored.
Farmer trades dairy cows for tomatoes
By TRUDI BELROSE, Special to Farm & Country
Some people buy a Porsche when they hit a mid-life crisis. Jack Vanderkooy built a greenhouse.After graduating from the University of Guelph in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science in agriculture, Vanderkooy took over his dad's Simcoe-area dairy farm. Seventeen years later, he sold the 150 head of cattle and began searching for a new challenge.
His search took him as far away as Holland, while back home he supported his family on cash crops from a farm he owned a few kilometres from the dairy farm. Vanderkooy finally settled on growing greenhouse tomatoes and called his new business Sun Choice Produce.
The decision to get out of dairy farming was much more difficult than Vanderkooy had anticipated. A key factor was his loss of enthusiasm for dealing with supply management in the dairy business and its restrictive regulations.
Another major factor was his participation in the Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program in 1992-1993. Vanderkooy says it gave him the confidence to consider options beyond the traditional.
Two years after starting Sun Choice Produce, Vanderkooy, 44, is pleased he didn't simply expand the dairy farm. Sun Choice dovetailed well with the existing cash crop operation.
Vanderkooy knew starting Sun Choice would cause little displacement and upheaval in the family as they wouldn't have to move. He'll still cash crop the farm as a sideline, but with a custom operator.
The cash crop farm also provided an excellent location to set up the greenhouse. It had a convenient highway location and easy access to natural gas and municipal water as a back up to the main supply from a pond formed by runoff from the greenhouse roof.
After making contacts in the industry, networking with knowledgeable people, and spending a week in Holland discussing the possibilities of the business and what equipment was best, Vanderkooy built a double-poly (plastic), environmentally-controlled greenhouse covering one acre. A computer designed in British Columbia constantly monitors the climate of the greenhouse and automatically lifts and lowers half the roof to allow air in and out. It also monitors the nutrient level of the water.
The hydroponics system keeps a constant stream of water flowing into the high end of the tomato rows. From there, it runs down hill where it is collected by gutters in the middle of the rows, to be recycled. If the recycled water lacks nutrients, the computer automatically adds concentrated potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen and micro nutrients.
The greenhouse is hot water-heated through pipe rails that run along the rows of tomatoes. The system uses two giant natural gas-fueled industrial hot water boilers. The employees can also use the rails to run electric trolleys along the rows. Vanderkooy hires a crop consultant who comes in every two weeks.
Marigolds and eggplants act as forms of early pest detection of white flies and thrips. The staff checks for signs of white flies where they will first be attracted, the eggplants. If workers find flies, they bring in packets of eggs from the white flies' natural predator, a small wasp, which eats the white fly larvae, acting as a natural pesticide. Vanderkooy also rents hives of bumble bees to pollinate the tomato blossoms.
He has teamed up with two other growers to package and market their tomatoes under the name Lynn River. The other growers bring their tomatoes to the Sun Choice production area, attached to the greenhouse, to have them graded and packaged. The grading system, which came from Holland, uses a water entry system to avoid bruising and punctures from tomatoes bumping against each other.
Vanderkooy has decided to expand the greenhouse to one hectare (2.5 acres), and spread the overhead cost over a larger area. In his first full year, he produced approximately 375,000 pounds of tomatoes. In a capital-intensive enterprise, such as tomatoes, not having to worry about quota costs is a major consideration. "I've proven to myself that half the capital investment in this industry offers me the same gross return as in the dairy industry," he says.
All his attention to detail seems to have paid off. At his roadside booth, which works on the honor system with a slot for change, a woman, in the uniform of a large supermarket chain, picks through the bags of produce. After hearing about Sun Choice through customers at work, she bought a bag one day, and is back for eight more bags today.
She raves about the home garden taste of the tomatoes: "You wouldn't want to buy a tomato in the store when you can get them here."
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