If conditions are right, Sturgeon County farmers could be in for some swarms of grasshoppers later this year, says a provincial bug specialist.
Alberta Agriculture recently released its 2012 crop bug update. The update, which collects data from hundreds of sample sites across the province, tries to predict what insects will be bugging Alberta farmers during the coming year.
The big bugaboo in Sturgeon County this year will likely be grasshoppers, predicted Scott Meers, insect specialist with Alberta Agriculture.
“Grasshoppers are fairly low, [but] there are enough there that if we have ideal conditions that they could give us trouble by the end of the year.”
The forecast predicts an increased risk of economically significant numbers of grasshoppers throughout central Alberta and the Peace region. While Sturgeon County could have a light population of hoppers, parts of nearby Barrhead and Lac Ste. Anne counties will likely have severe levels of them.
The size of any outbreak will be determined by the weather this May and June, Meers said. Grasshoppers thrive in warm, dry conditions, so a wet and cold summer could keep their numbers in check.
County farmers might also want to watch for bertha armyworm, Meers said. Bertha armyworms are small pale green worms with a yellowish stripe on their side that eat holes in the undersides of leaves.
“We saw a significant build-up in numbers throughout the province” last year, he noted, which means we could be due for a surge in their population. “It happens quickly when it happens.”
Farmers should keep a close eye on the province’s weekly pest updates in the months ahead, Meers said, and scout their fields regularly. “There’s no substitute for individual field scouting.”
The bug forecast can be found under the maps section of www.agric.gov.ab.ca.
The end to the Canadian Wheat Board single desk marketing could mean better profits for some farmers, says a crop analyst, but only if big grain companies don’t squeeze small ones off the tracks.
John De Pape, an analyst who has worked in the Canadian grain industry for 30 years and runs the CWB Monitor blog, spoke about the future of grain marketing last week to several hundred people at the 2012 FarmTech conference in Edmonton.
The federal government has vowed to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly on wheat and barley sales in western Canada by Aug. 1, a move that would give farmers a choice between selling their grain to buyers directly or through a new voluntary Canadian Wheat Board pool.
This should save farmers plenty of money, De Pape said. Under the old system, big grain companies like Viterra had a guaranteed supply of grain since there was only one grain seller — the wheat board. This discouraged competition, he said, and allowed the companies to charge handling fees up to three times higher than they did for non-board crops like canola. Now that there are many sellers, these companies will have to compete for their grain, which should mean lower fees.
It also means new opportunities. The board has always favoured quality over quantity in its sales, De Pape said, which didn’t match up with the demands of customers like China, who simply want lots of grain. “The Australians figured this out,” he said, which is one reason why they now supply about 80 per cent of China’s malt barley imports compared to Canada’s 10 per cent. The end of the single desk creates a new opportunity here for sellers of lower-quality grain, he said.
And it means more flexibility.
“The wheat board would not sell offshore unless it knew it had a market,” De Pape said, which meant it could not respond swiftly to price fluctuations. “The best values [were] missed.”
Independent sellers will be able to jump on these changes and reap the benefits.
The one big risk ahead is how the Cargills and Viterras of the world will handle the transition, De Pape said. If they use their influence to deny smaller grain companies space on rail lines, as many single-desk supporters have predicted, they could knock them out of business.
“I don’t favour regulated [rail] access … but it’s one area we need to watch.”
