New wheat varieties for 1997
The soybeans may not be ready, but the seed companies are certainly geared up for wheat planting.Wheat growers will have a number of new red and white varieties to try, including:
25W33, a bearded soft white from Pioneer that the company says will match the yields of soft reds. Pioneer says the variety has strong sprouting resistance, good fusarium tolerance, and high test weight;
Huron soft white wheat will be available, although supplies will be limited. Bred by Michigan State University, and sold in the U.S. as Bavaria, Huron is a tall variety that in Ontario's Area I trials is matching the best soft reds. WG Thompsons has marketing rights for Ontario, although at press time, it was unclear whether the company would sub-license sales through other groups;
Hanover is a new hard red that appears to be especially well suited to Area II, where it nearly matches Fundulea for yield while providing milling quality closer to Karat. As with Fundulea, it will take a combination of weather and nitrogen management to achieve high protein;
2540 is a short-strawed soft red from Pioneer with better powdery mildew resistance than 2510, and yields that are similar, and perhaps higher, especially under drought stress;
Mendon is a soft red bred by Michigan State University that provides strong yields in Area I and southern Area II. Mendon is distributed in Ontario by WG Thompsons. Seed supply is limited.
Board balks at bin-run
Wheat growers with Freedom or 2510 in their bins are being warned against planting that wheat if they want to sell next year's harvest as full-priced soft red instead of discount-priced common red.For the 1997 harvest, Pool E soft red wheat grown from certified seed is expected to return $4.56 per bushel, about 26 cents per bushel above the Pool F common red wheat price. In 1996, Pool E earned $4.84 per bushel to the grower, 37 cents more than Pool F.
With a 70-bushel-per-acre yield, the average difference is $22 per acre, although the board warns the spread could get even higher if growers ship larger volumes of common red wheat, forcing the board to scramble for markets.
Ken Nixon, Middlesex wheat grower and board vice chairman, says the first thing many elevators do when they get a wagon load of wheat grown from certified 2510 is mix it with their bin of Freedom.
At last year's wheat board annual meeting, angry growers passed a resolution demanding the wheat board drop the certified seed requirement, so growers could plant their own soft red seed.
At this year's meeting, Nixon told growers the board feels it can't agree. The system isn't designed to help mills segregate Freedom from 2510, Nixon said; it's designed to ensure soft red bins aren't contaminated with other red types, including hard reds and feed reds.
"Soft red varieties can't be visually distinguished from Fundulea, Ruby, Hanover, AC Morley and others," Nixon says. - TB
By TOM BUTTON
Pigweed that's resistant to Pursuit has been found on 10 Ontario soybean farms this summer, spread across seven counties from Lambton to Wellington.Weed experts are testing the weeds to confirm that they are resistant to Pursuit, and that the Pursuit wasn't simply misapplied. They will also test the weeds for resistance to other ALS-inhibiting Group II herbicides, including the sulfonyl urea Pinnacle, and the Broadstrike family of herbicides.
Yet weed specialist Hugh Martin, crops specialist for the Ontario agriculture ministry at London, suspects that soybean farmers throughout the southwest are nursing new populations of herbicide-resistant pigweed. "There's a good chance of finding it on a lot of farms that have grown continuous soybeans," Martin says.
"We're all amazed how fast it's happened," says Ridgetown college weed scientist Peter Sikkema. "We knew it could happen, but we didn't dream it could happen this fast."
Pursuit has only been on the Ontario market seven years. In almost all the fields where researchers believe pigweed has developed resistance, the growers planted four or five straight years of soybeans, and sprayed Pursuit every year without tank-mixing with products such as metribuzin or linuron.
Weed researchers offer these tips to help farmers who see pigweed in their soybean crops this fall figure out whether to suspect resistance:
- Make sure it's pigweed. A new weed called three-seeded mercury has made major inroads into Ontario's soybean belt this year. In the early stages, it closely resembles pigweed, but unlike pigweed, it is not controlled by Pursuit or other Group II herbicides;
- Check if pigweed is the only escape. If other weeds, especially lamb's- quarters, are also present, the problem is likely due to a poor spray job or a lack of activating rainfall instead of resistance;
- Review the field's herbicide history. If the field has been in continuous soybeans with Pursuit, resistance is possible. Resistance is also possible if the field has been rotated to corn sprayed with Ultim or Elim, or to wheat sprayed with Refine Extra, since those are also Group II herbicides. Resistance is also possible if, while in soybeans, the grower rotated Pursuit with Pinnacle for pigweed control;
- Check if pigweed escaped only in a pocket where the combine enters the field. If so, they could be resistant weeds that can be traced back to seeds carried from the last field that the combine harvested.
Martin says growers who suspect resistance should get in touch with their local provincial government crops adviser.
Suspect plants should also be carried out of the field and burned.
Martin warns against putting potentially resistant pigweed through the combine. A single plant produces 30,000 to 40,000 seeds, he points out.
Nevin McDougall, soybean product manager for Cyanamid, which makes Pursuit, says weed resistance is a potential for pigweed, but doesn't have to be inevitable. "Weed management makes all the difference," says McDougall. A combination of crop rotation with a rotation of herbicide groups will let growers get good pigweed control from Pursuit for years to come, he says.
Martin says Pursuit and Group II herbicides give good control of a wide spectrum of difficult weeds.
Growers with resistant pigweed will need to tank-mix with metribuzin or linuron, or possibly plan a sequential follow-up with a post-emerge spray of Reflex or Blazer, although Blazer's control drops off if the pigweed gets large, he says.
Gag rule silences wheat board backers
By TOM BUTTON
Even the province's agriculture minister, Noble Villeneuve, is upset that it will only take a third of the votes in this fall's wheat referendum to strip the wheat board of its single-desk marketing powers.But like everyone else who is angry about the ruling, there's nothing Villeneuve can do about it.
Villeneuve's spokesman Jon Hamilton describes his boss as "surprised" and "disappointed". Villeneuve had expected the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission-which he appoints, and which reports to him-to rule that it would take a two-thirds majority to overturn the pools, not to save them.
Under provincial law, however, there's nothing Villeneuve can do about it, Hamilton says. "The commission is a quasi-judicial body," he explains. "This decision cannot be appealed."
Jim Wheeler, the agriculture ministry employee who chairs the commission, makes it clear the commission is unlikely to reverse the decision on its own.
Wheeler told the provincial wheat board's recent annual meeting in Stratford that growers could pass resolutions calling for different rules for the vote if they wanted to, but "we've taken into account most of the points you would make."
Wheeler said that all nine members of the commission, including its five farmer members, have voted in favour of the two-thirds hurdle to save the board's single-desk powers. Wheeler also said the commission had re- examined the ruling at two extra meetings over the summer, and re- confirmed it both times.
The reason, Wheeler said, is that the commission must decide what the issue is: whether it is reasonable for the board to have a power, such as pooling, or whether it is wise to change the status quo.
And from that point of view, he said, the main concern is about the farmers who would be forced against their will to sell their wheat through the wheat pools. If the commission had ruled that a two-thirds majority would be needed to eliminate the board's single-desk powers, then two- thirds of the province's farmers could be compelled to sell their crop through a pool system that only one-third of growers supported.
The decision has raised alarms through Ontario's marketing boards. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture is supporting a bid to challenge the legality of the two-thirds ruling, after hearing complaints last month from chicken, white bean, tobacco, and sheep board representatives.
Ordinarily, the OFA would steer clear of involving itself in an issue over a single commodity, in this case wheat. But Ray Baptie, president of the Wellington county federation, urges OFA directors to support the challenge because the two-thirds ruling affects all orderly marketing boards, not just wheat.
"If this motion carries and sets a precedent for other marketing boards, one-third plus one could get rid of current marketing boards," Baptie says. "Under our international agreements, they could never be brought back."
Chicken board representative John Maaskant says farm leaders must make it clear the province "can't make it this easy to get rid of a marketing structure that the majority of farmers may support."
At the wheat board meeting, Huron county farmer and elevator owner Bev Hill and OFA president Tony Morris challenged Wheeler to cite any precedent for stripping powers away from a board based on a one-third vote. Wheeler admitted there are none.
But Wheeler countered saying the rules for the 1997 vote are the same as imposed in 1973, when wheat growers needed a two-thirds majority to set up the pools. "It's the same situation."
Wheat board directors, who have been ordered by the commission to stay out of the debate, are livid about the ruling, but most feel there is no hope for getting it changed.
"You bet I'm angry," Pickering director Jim McWilliam told Farm & Country. "I don't see how anyone can say this is fair."
Quick Vote Facts
-The exact question is still to be drafted, but it is intended to ask only whether Ontario's wheat crop should be sold through a single desk.- The vote will not take effect until the marketing of the 1999 harvest. Next year's crop will be sold through the current pools.
- Ballots and information packages will be mailed early October to all Ontario farmers who sold wheat harvested starting the summer of 1993.
- The mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 21 in order to count.
- Corporations and formal partnerships get one vote. A farmer, however, who grows wheat as part of a corporation and also independently can vote twice.
- Each ballot will consist of two envelopes. The farmer checkmarks the ballot and seals it in the first envelope, then fills out a page with personal identification plus acreage and volume of sales, and seals that sheet plus the first envelope in a second envelope.
- To ensure confidentiality, one set of commission staff will open the outer envelopes, check the farmer's name and sales figures against wheat board records, and write the sales volume on the outside of the inner envelope. The inner envelope will then go to a second group of employees to be opened and tallied.
- The sales volumes will not influence the number of votes needed to keep or dismantle the pools. Instead, the statistics are intended to help the board and agency figure out how to adapt to the vote outcome.
- The vote results will be announced before Christ-mas. - TB
Mildew takes a powder
Wheat growers who think they'll be hit with powdery mildew next spring can strike the first blow by treating their seed this fall with recently registered Baytan fungicide.Year in and year out, powdery mildew losses are highest in fields near the Great Lakes and in similar cool, damp locations. Losses are also heavier with varieties such as the soft red 2510 that have lower than average tolerance.
Still, if May is wet and cool, most varieties and most fields can suffer minor to moderate losses, says Art Schaafsma, disease expert at Ridgetown college.
Until the introduction of Baytan seed treatment, the only way growers could keep mildew out of their crops was to choose varieties with the best tolerance, and then scout the fields throughout the spring to see whether they should be spraying one or two broadcast sprays of Tilt at $13 per application.
"Those are still good options," Schaafsma says. Baytan can help, however, especially through mid to late May. The fungicide enters the plant, offering systemic protection against the disease.
"Powdery mildew is always a risk if you're growing a variety without good tolerance and if you're planting into a field where the disease has historically been a risk," Schaafsma says.
In those scenarios, Baytan may be a good investment, he says, not paying off every year, but some years either saving the cost of a Tilt application or putting extra bushels in the bin.
Marketed in Canada by Gustafson, Baytan costs $10 per acre, four to five times as much as Vitaflo 280, the seed treatment currently used on an estimated 90 per cent of Ontario's winter wheat acres.
In many cases, Baytan will be piggybacked on top of Vitaflo, predicts Tim Moyes, seed treatment specialist for Gustafson.
Baytan also offers protection against take-all, a disease that affects wheat planted on wheat, and can also show up more in some no-till situations where it survives in surface wheat residues.
Gustafson is only selling Baytan to seed processors. Growers won't be able to treat in the barn or in the hopper, Moyes says.
The powdery mildew requires the chemical to persist through winter and into late May or early June. If every seed isn't treated with the recommended rate, there won't be enough of the fungicide to protect the plant, Moyes says.
As well, Baytan at excessive rates can hurt crop performance. Even at recommended rates, it can delay emergence and hurt seedling vigour, especially in cold, wet falls, the company warns. The company advises against using Baytan for seed planted late. "Baytan is a product for growers who have specific problems," Moyes says. "We don't see it going on every bag of seed, but if you've got problems with powdery mildew, or if you're planting wheat on wheat, we think it makes a lot of sense." - TB