County farmers are gearing up for near-perfect seeding conditions this week, but one local observer says many may be planting a risky amount of canola.
County farmers traditionally start seeding crops around the last week of April or the first week of May, according to Robert Tappauf, who farms just west of St. Albert.
"The moisture conditions are perfect right now," he says, but the fields are actually a bit too wet to drive equipment over yet.
Most farmers should be well into seeding their crops later this week, Tappauf predicts.
"We don't need more rain right now, just heat," he said.
André Montpetit, manager of Sturgeon Valley Fertilizer, says he's been hearing the same sentiments from farmers across the county.
"The seeding conditions are near perfect," he said.
Soil moisture levels were considered moderately low to near normal throughout Sturgeon County as of April 22, according to Alberta Agriculture's AgroClimatic Information Service. Unlike this time last year, most of the county is now snow-free.
Sturgeon County got about twice as much precipitation last month as it would normally get, says Ralph Wright, provincial soil moisture specialist.
We needed every drop, given the dry winter we had, he said.
"We went from a one in 12-year [moisture] low to a one in 25-year high," he said, and the wet months are still ahead.
Most farmers will be going full-tilt with their seed drills for the next three weeks to get their crops in the ground, Tappauf said, with many working hectic 18-hour days.
Too much canola?
Most of those farmers will be planting plenty of canola, according to Statistics Canada's most recent principal field crops report. It predicted that Canadians would plant about 20.4 million acres of canola this year, or eight per cent more than they did last year. If that holds, it would be the sixth year in a row that farmers set a new record for canola acreage.
It's easy to understand why, according to Montpetit – canola is now selling for about $14 a bushel, which is a very attractive price.
"There's a love affair with canola right now," he said, and he expected the already canola-heavy county to have even more of the gold stuff this year.
Canola is the big money-maker right now, said Tappauf, who plans to seed about 60 per cent of his fields with it. Some farmers were even breaking up their pastures to have more room for the crop.
But many farmers are starting to cheat on their crop rotations, Montpetit said, planting canola year after year on the same field. That raises the chance that soil-borne disease like clubroot will strike.
The Canola Council of Canada recommends giving fields a three-year break between canola crops, Montpetit said. We may have clubroot-resistant canola, but that resistance could fade if we plant it too frequently, he said.
"Agronomically, the right thing to do is to not grow canola on canola," he said.
New wheat market
Spring wheat acreage in Alberta was set to fall about 2.3 per cent to 5.9 million acres, according to Stats Canada.
Farmers will be able to sell that wheat in whole new ways come Aug. 1. That's when the Canadian Wheat Board's single-desk system for wheat sales is scheduled to end.
Tappauf said the shift hasn't changed what he plans to grow, but has given him new ways to sell it. He currently plans to sell his malt barley directly to China and Japan, for example, instead of pooling it through the board and letting them pick the customer.
"You skip out on the wheat board and make that profit yourself," he said.
You have to pay for transportation, he added, but you also get to sell to local markets.
The latest principal field crops report can be found at statcan.gc.ca.
