Archive for July, 2013
Premium Ag’s 10th Crop tour made the news again this week, With a photo of Elston Solberg (Sr. Agri-coach) on the FRONT PAGE.
See below for the photos that where in the newspaper this week.
Elston Solberg Talks about Canola in the field during Premium Ag’s 10th Crop Tour. Front Page news!
Matt gosling speaks to Premium Ag clients in a wheat field during Premium Ag’s Crop tour field time
Premium Ag’s Crop Tour was featured in the local paper. See the photos below for the articles.
Premium Ag Clients attend the 10th annual crop tour and enjoy some time in a wheat field.
Premium Ag clients enjoy the 10th annual crop tour presentation. Matt Gosling speaks about important advancements in agriculture. Keeping clients up to date.
Premium Ag hosted there 10th annual Crop Tour on July 19th at Gosling Farm near Strathmore Alberta. Many distinguished Senior Agri-coaches were present to share their knowledge as well as a fair sized group of agri-coaches from around Western Canada.
The day started off with a few presentations in the shop, then included some field stops. Most notable was a wheat field with growth regulator trials.
Once back at the shop, everyone was well fed and well watered all night.
The Premium Ag team and their 10th Anniversary cake.
Matts most recent blog post was featured in the local paper.
You can find the entire article HERE.
Matt Gosling’s most recent blog post gets featured in the local paper.
July 13th, 2013
BUGS!!! Nothing gets a producer more excited than something physically moving in their crop potentially doing damage. The last few weeks airplanes and ground sprayers have been out in force protecting our food source in these good plant growing conditions, mostly from disease. However, more often than not, I hear of producers just “throwing in” insecticide. Ideally, this would be a highly informed decision from someone that has inspected their field. Not because they heard their neighbors were spraying or that a report came out with a hot-spot 60miles away. There definitely comes a point where crops have to be sprayed for insects but there’s a long list of criteria that should be walked through first. That list is always changing and is much different than it was 10 years ago, or even last season.
As farming practices progress with better technologies and ultimately higher yields, crops are able to withstand more stress. Examples of this are new insecticides that only target specific insects, or improved genetically engineered crop varieties which are able to resist more damage. It’s been proven beneficial to have moderate numbers of harmful insects in canola, alongside all the beneficial insects, as the plants kick themselves into a higher compensatory gear to recover from minor damage, therefor improving yield. These levels are not far off from what used to be the economic thresholds to spray.
One of the most important questions to ask yourself is what level of production do you consider yourself? Are you a trail blazer that considers replacement nutrition and regularly casts a shadow on your crop? Or, do you still do what Grandpa did, looks at your crops once in a while from the truck on the way to town, and considers everything a cost rather than a potential investment? If you’re happy with 25-30 bushel canola, then your insect threshold will be lower than a producer that is not happy unless 50-60+bu is falling in the hopper.
There’s no exact math saying that twice the crop potential means twice the threshold, but one excuse I’ll never ethically recommend to producers or to the environment, is to spray because “Canola is worth $12/bu”, or “it’s not that much money”.
Here’s a few tips to determine whether or not a particular field should be sprayed.
One of my life missions is to educate farmers and consumers alike on local and global agriculture issues. Follow me on Twitter to learn more.
@PremiumAg www.premiumag.ca
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