Greg Mackling and Brett Megarry co-hosts of Mackling & Megarry spoke with Harry Siemens regarding moisture [or the lack there of] and how it affects farmers and their ability to raise the food the world requires and the ability to make a living. 

Brett Magerry – David Phillips explained that from September to now, essentially, early January last year we had received 217 millimeters of precipitation. In that same time period this year, only 125 millimeters. Now the way it worked in the fall of 2016 is you may recall we had a really soggy November, in particular. That helped out.

Well let’s get our guest on and he can maybe explain that. Harry Siemens, an agriculture expert, a longtime friend of this radio station. Harry, good morning to you sir.

Harry Siemens –  Good morning. It’s a nice cold morning.

Greg Mackling – Yeah, well, cold is fine, right? We can live with that. As we mentioned David Phillips. Harry, it’s Greg Mackling speaking by the way. We’re all okay here in the city with not having to shovel the driveway and the sidewalks and whatnot. But concerned about what this may translate into in terms of benefits or a lack thereof for our friends in the agricultural sectors.

Harry Siemens – Well, right now, winter is winter. The first thing to remember is that we grow some, we call them winter wheat and fall rye. Which they get planted in the fall. They get up and germinated before the winter and right now, when you’re driving down any country road or highway, you’ll see some green fields. Those are those winter wheat or fall rye crops. They really would like to see a good cover of snow.

But the key thing is, how long does it stay cold? If it gets cold too long, some of that can get some damage. But those acres are very few. And the other thing about snow and the lack thereof, all the farmers like to see their fields covered with snow. My dad farmed, I farmed. If you can get that good cover of snow early in winter, it was good. You didn’t see blowing and you knew that you had some moisture.

But one thing to remember that the crops that grow and starting in spring, they always depend on timely rains and soil moisture. So right now people aren’t too concerned. I was at the St. Jean Farm Days yesterday, the first farm show of the season in Manitoba. The attitude among farmers was absolutely great. They are looking forward to a good year. Yes, they would like some more snow, especially the snowmobilers.

Brett Megarry – You mentioned that farmers would like to see that snow cover. It sounds like they’re maybe not getting that. What’s driving the … Glad to hear they’re optimistic. But what is driving that optimism?

Harry Siemens – The optimism is when I talked to farmers yesterday, at the show, is the looking forward. The commodity prices appear to be stable, the technology continues to drive a lot of things that are happening in agriculture. And of course, as you know, we all need to eat. The population keeps expanding. Companies keep coming up with the kind of technology, the seed varieties and those kinds of things that farmers are really excited.

The really positive thing is there are quite a few young farmers that are really looking forward to moving ahead. They’ve taken over from dad. They’ve got the education. They’ve got the management skills from dad and they’re moving forward and looking optimistically at what agriculture holds for them.

Greg Mackling – Well, we’ll leave the moisture question behind then, for now,

CropPro Consulting began in 2003…

with Cory Willness, primarily focused on Crop Management Services and on-farm research with local farmers. As one of the pioneers of independent consulting in Saskatchewan, Cory has fined tuned services and gained a lot of experience working on a large acreage base. Cory was also chair of NARF and the Project Agrologist for the Saskatchewan VRT Project from 1998-2002 with a group of leading-edge farmers in the Melfort area using variable-rate technology.

Presently, we have a great staff and also offer MAPS variable-rate services and TEC custom mapping and software. We didn’t just adopt a piece of software with a process developed somewhere else, we developed our own mapping methods and systems that match the agronomic needs of farms in Saskatchewan. We own and operate an excellent consulting software package and file sync system that keeps our field operations efficient and backed-up by the minute.

CropPro has always focused on fair prices, meat and potatoes services, low infrastructure and costs, and frank advise without bias. We treat every customer uniquely as everyone has their own approach to risk and equipment. If you want frills that come with the excess marketing, the high prices, and the cookie cutter approach that services the mass market don’t call us. If you want someone that works the dirt with low fees every day and knows what is really happening in the field, contact us.

Cory Willness – Oh, my presentation was on foundation principles for variable rates, fertilizer, and seed. Two components to that. One component is making the right zone map, number one. Number two is, once you have the right map, applying the right fertilizers to those zones.

Harry Siemens – Obviously, a lot more work goes into that.

Cory Willness – The first part is the key thing. If you don’t have a good zone map then you can’t apply the fertilizers in the right spot. I think maybe the industry’s been fairly challenged in understanding what the right zone map means. Most people want to take it from what I call the end result approach, which is building a yield potential map, which is useful, but you can’t ignore what I feel is the more important starting point, which is soil, water and topography models.

I mean, you need to know where the water is in the field. You need to know what the soil properties are. Textures and organic matters and those things all relate to how fertility’s going to vary and how yield potential’s going to vary.

Harry Siemens – You work with farmers on a regular basis.

Cory Willness – Yeah, we only work for farmers. We’re an agronomy services company. We do crop management services, variable rate fertilizer and seed for farmers. That’s it. That’s all we do.

Harry Siemens – How many of the farmers are getting the variable rates right and are really benefiting from it?

Cory Willness – Well, I guess my answer’s going to be biased because we do it significantly different than most of the industry. I feel our clientele is doing a very good job. Is the industry doing a very good job? No, I don’t think so. I guess it’s just kind of a hearsay answer, right? I mean, I think my customers are doing a good job and getting good value.

Harry Siemens – What are all the things that you do differently?

Cory Willness – Well, the primary difference is this soil potential map versus yield potential map. Anyone and everyone’s getting yield potential maps. That’s yield data and satellite imagery. Those things are giving you a good indication of what yield potent...

Hal Anderson Weekends on CJOB Radio spoke with Harry Siemens on Dec 28, 2017, about farming in Manitoba [Canada] looking back and looking forward.

Hal: So, 2017 is almost done. 2018 is coming, and I was thinking this morning, getting ready for the show, and I thought, “You know, 2017 was a pretty good year for farmers, right? Of all types, really. Producers and growers.” So I thought, “Well, let’s get Harry Siemens on.” So I called, and his cell went beep-beep-beep, I couldn’t get through, couldn’t get through. And I thought, “What’s going on? Harry is always available.” Then finally I tried again, got through. Well, he’s on the road. He’s driving to Vancouver to see his daughter and I got him in the parking lot at Lake Louise, and Harry, being the great farm reporter that he is, said, “No problem. Let’s go. Let’s talk about it!” So here’s my conversation with Manitoba farm reporter Harry Siemens about the year that is just about done, for Manitoba farmers.

Harry: 2017 has been a really good year for the majority of farmers. Obviously, because of weather conditions and market conditions and so forth, not everybody falls into that category, but we had a great crop. The hog prices are looking pretty strong going forward, Highlife at Neepawa is just finishing off their plant expansion where they’ll be doing two million hogs a year, starting in April. They’ve built two new barns at Killarney and looking forward, the hog industry is good, the cattle industry is actually pretty good, and the grain farmers right now are looking for some rallies. We’ve seen some lower prices in wheat, but we still have soybeans and canola and all in all, I would give it a 3.5, 4 star, out of 5.

Hal: Yeah, which is fantastic, really, because farmers have struggled in recent years. This past year, and there have been some people out there, some farmers, some producers that haven’t had a great year, but overall, generally speaking, 2017 was a very good year.

Harry: Yes. It was a very good year. The crops that some farmers took off the fields, I know a field that I farmed back in 1967, a record wheat crop on that field was 40 bushels an acre. My brother took 91, 92 bushels an acre off of that same field this year and really it has to do with weather, it has to do with production techniques, but there’s really nothing really that great as far as varieties are concerned, even though they have improved greatly. So it’s looking really good this year, for many guys it was just an absolutely great year.

Hal: And now let’s look ahead to 2018, Harry, because 2018 could be another good year, but there is that storm cloud that’s brewing called NAFTA. Are you worried at all for your farmer friends?

Harry: You know, that’s a really good question. It also appears, you know I had a chance to visit with Orion Samuelson, who’s a premier farm broadcaster in the United States just before Christmas, and he talked to the Secretary of Ag, Sonny Sec. Sonny Perdue, in the United States, and Sonny Perdue felt that NAFTA would actually, from their perspective they were looking to make it work for Mexico, Canada, and the United States. But what Prime Minister Trudeau does with NAFTA here in Canada, on our behalf, we’re not exactly sure. I think that’s probably one of the more iffy things as to whether we’re going to make that deal from this side.

Hal: Any other potential bumps on the road for producers here in Manitoba, in the new year?

Harry: I believe that the commodity prices are always dependent on the weather, right? Supply, demand, weather. One of the dark clouds has been Russia. I have a real good contact who does Russian reports out of Ukraine, and out of Russia. Mike Lee.

Farm broadcaster, mentor, and friend Orion Samuelson of Scottsdale, Az and WGN, Chicago, Il., sat down recently with the United States of America’s Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue in his office for 90 minutes to do something he has done annually at the end of the year for more than 40 years. Orion interviewed the current Secretary for a look back at the year just ending and a look ahead to the year about to begin.

Harry – at the end of the year you always sit down with the Secretary of Ag, I saw that in your latest Samuelson Sez, and with Sonny Perdue, what sense did you get when you sat down with him this year?

Orion – Well, I got a sense of a Secretary of Agriculture who knows and understands the challenge of farming and ranching. I got a sense of somebody who knows what’s going on. I mean, you could ask him the price of corn at the moment and he would be able to quote it. I have described him as a good, old, down-home boy, great personality, always smiling, but he knows what’s going on in agriculture, and I think he knows how to deal as well with President Trump as anybody in the current administration. He was very optimistic about getting a NAFTA agreement that would benefit farmers in the US, Canada and Mexico because he said if it’s an agreement that benefits only one, then it’s not going to last.

Orion – He thinks we’ll get a farm bill on schedule, which we have to have that by I think it’s the 30th of September 2018 to avoid going back to a farm bill written in 1949. Very optimistic that we’re going to get the farm bill, and the one sticking point in the farm bill from critics is farm insurance. Chicago Tribune described it as a federal boondoggle to benefit farmers, and of course that couldn’t be further from the truth. When you look back at our many times we had to go to Congress to write a disaster bill at the last minute because we had a drought, or we had a flood, or we had a blizzard.

Orion – So I gotta tell you, I like him, and I spend an hour and a half with him in his office, talked about family, talked about the fact … I mentioned to him he is the first Secretary of Agriculture ever from the State of Georgia, and he said, “Well, you might look a little deeper, because I think I’m the first veterinarian to be a Secretary of Agriculture in the US.” And of course he is that, but he’s been in the world of politics, Governor of Georgia, he’s been in agribusiness with two or three companies that he had to place in trust to become Secretary. He knows the business, and he knows how important trade is to the United States and all countries, really.

Orion – And so I asked him if he’s able to convince President Trump that trade is important, and he kinda smiled, and he said, “I’m working on that.” So I like him.

Harry – That’s great, you know, and now I’ve had you tell me what your Secretary of Ag thinks, now I want to hear what you think.

Orion – Well, from the standpoint of NAFTA, it’s been interesting to watch President Trump, probably the first businessman we’ve had in the White House in decades, and he deals or tries to as much as you can with the Congress, to handle those situations, and I take NAFTA as an example. He, of course, raised a lot of eyebrows and a lot of criticism when in the campaign he said, “I’m going to blow NAFTA up.” But then he watched the reaction for the next couple of days from even the auto industry in the US, and certainly from farmers and ranchers, and he watched that reaction, and a couple of days later he is saying, “Well no, I may not blow it up, but I just kind of renegotiated. It’s 20 years old, and things have changed, and we’ve gotta renegotiate.” And he seems to do that, approaches to a lot of legislative ideas that a...

David Przednowek is proud to come from a farm and work for CN as Director of Marketing-Grain. David talks about the recent challenges in moving grain to the West Coast, and things happening to make things better. Przednowek says people need to step back and realize oil is one per cent of their total business referring to this article in the Calgary Herald. 

Harry – Tell me, David, I’m hearing some things that grain movement isn’t going quite the way farmers in western Canada would like to see it. Can you tell me what the issues are and your perspectives?

David – I think it’s worth sharing a couple of statistics to put things into perspective. A good place to start is going back and taking a look at what we’ve done over the past couple months. For example, in November, grain movement is not as high on CN as it was last year. Last year was exceptional, record performance, everything pretty much going right across all corridors, terminals being fluid, very fluid network, and we achieved record results, September through April last year.

David – You take a look back and put into perspective last year, everything going right, no derailments, no challenges on the network. We moved about 5,800 hoppers per week on average in November. Take a look at this year. We had our third best November ever. It’s not the same as last year. We moved just over 5,000 hoppers. So there’s a difference, but there are definitely some significant differences between how things looked last year versus how things look this year.

David – So that’s third-best performance on record, and we had a similar October. Not as much grain as everybody would like to see moving in the fall, but it was our third best October on record. What’s happened in the past couple of weeks is that performance has fallen below that 5,000 per week level, and there’s a couple of reasons for that. We certainly had our share of mainline derailment and outage incidents almost on week after week basis that it caused some challenges regarding imbalances in the flow of hoppers in and out of the West Coast. So back in October, there were the windstorms in Alberta that knocked out the main line between Saskatoon and Edmonton for four days, and that screwed things up. It took a long time to recover from that. It’s probably two or three weeks to get back on track, and since then, I know that we’ve had a bit of a milder November here for sure. The first couple of weeks where we’re pretty cold, and then it’s warmed up here into the middle of December, but we’ve had some challenges moving in and out of the west coast regarding mudslides putting the main line out of action into Vancouver. That happened a couple of weeks ago.

David – We had a mainline derailment. I think it was on the evening December 1st. That was another even that put the main line out of action into Vancouver out ’til December 3rd; there was a derailment last week with a cold train moving into on the main track into Prince Rupert. So all those things cause stops and starts and supply chain that make it hard to recover, so indeed, we haven’t been anywhere near that 5,000 per week level over the past couple of weeks. Now, all that said about challenges with mainline outages.

David – The central theme of this year has been an uptake in demand for freight movement across some different commodity segments on CN. So there’s always that strong grain demand that wants to be there in the fall time, but other commodities have also stepped up here, and some of those strong uptakes and demand have been very sudden. Frack sand is a perfect example of that for oil drilling. Prices fluctuate based on world supply and demand for all the products that come out of the drilling process like condensate,

Harry – With the Western Canadian Wheat Growers and, of course, I along with a lot of you people, so long were focused on removing the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board, and this isn’t to be a negative question, but what continues to be the place of the Wheat Growers of Western Canada?

 

Jim – Well, you know, there are always new issues come up. We had the same kind of discussion around our board at the time that the Wheat Board was disbanded. We kind of weren’t too sure where our place was, and there’s never a shortage to come up. Right now, we’re working on the carbon tax issues and fighting for farmers as best we can on that front to say here we are. We’re the group that’s been worried about the environment for our entire lives. We’re the ones that are thinking carbon, especially with the changes in cropping and whatnot, and practices, and technology, and tillage.

 

We’re putting carbon back in the ground, yet it’s the flavor of the day for the politicians. It’s a new way for them to tax. I mean, you can sugarcoat it. You can put the lipstick on the pig, as they say, but this is nothing more than a brand new tax scheme. We’re fighting tooth and nail to prevent that to happen.

Harry – Since the demise of the monopoly and the single desk selling system, and as the Act says, and as Gerry Ritz, the former Minister of Agriculture, this whole idea of freedom to market, it’s, to me at least, it’s really played out maybe even better in most cases than what we had envisioned?

Jim – Yeah, I think so. There are a few hiccups getting started. And then we had the rail issues in 2013, but guys are getting into it. Guys are starting to do a little bit of forward contracting some more. You know, the ability to literally deliver your entire crop off, the combine if you so desire. I think that’s helping for cash flow. I think it’s putting a bit of squeeze on some of the companies. I think there are some growing pains in the companies themselves to contracting amounts and grains and that, that they have no possible way that they can take delivery within that contract month.

 

That’s another issue we’re looking at is companies tie up your grain. You got a payment, so you agree to sell in, say, December and that’s when your payment’s due, and you’re waiting in February, you still haven’t delivered the grain. That’s certainly something, I think, that has to be looked at further within the contract specs is there needs to be some kind of accountability so we don’t have these guys running around and grabbing all this grain and getting it all under contract, and then, have no intentions of moving it for a few months.

Harry – I guess the individual farmer can catch on pretty quickly because he looks after his own farm, but when all those individual farmers come together into a company that wasn’t necessarily ready or didn’t even know what it would mean once the Wheat Board was gone. I guess, for them, that’s where the growing pains really have set in.

Jim – I think it’s better for some and not for others. It’s people’s, how comfortable they are with risk. Moving forward from there, I think that’s the thing is you use the tools, whether it’s forward pricing or a basis contract or something like that, as farmers get more familiar with that. I mean, we had 75 years of not having to do that. It was all done for you, and so this is a steep learning curve for some people.

Harry – You remember Rolf Penner, who at one time was a director for Manitoba on the Wheat Growers?

On a recent radio show hosted by Jack Dawes on the Rock 98.5 in Yorkton, Sk heard every Thursday at 11 am, he and farm journalist Harry Siemens spoke with Naomi Paley, PAg – Regional Livestock Specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture about an on-farm demonstration project involving pour-on de-wormers.

Jack Dawes – Well, off the top, something cattle producers use in the livestock industry known as a pour-on dewormer meaning various products onto the animal; they’re absorbed into the bloodstream to control multiple parasites and other nasties that can happen to cattle in feedlots and out on the range. And Naomi Paley is the livestock specialist for this region in the Province of Saskatchewan, and I guess, Naomi, we had a couple of farms in this area that were involved in this … technically, not research, but technically a, let’s call it a study.

Naomi – Right. So it was a demonstration, and it was looking at a couple of things. We looked at; we had three different locations across the province. So we had backgrounding operations, one at Swift Current, one at Ituna, and one at Langenburg.

Naomi – And so we specifically wanted to look at background cattle and take a look at a couple of different things. One, at what was the level or the prevalence of parasite resistance that we saw in background cattle? Two, the good old ivermectin pour-on, something that’s been a mainstay in the cattle industry, in the North American cattle industry, for the last 25 years. It’s been the wonder drug. It was the one-shot deal, the easy to administer, the pour-on right down their back, and it took care of everything. It took care of internal parasites; it took care of lice and everything. And so, it’s been revolutionary for the livestock industry for the last 25 years.

Naomi –  But, like all good things, after continued use and perhaps uneven applications and inconsistent absorption, we get sometimes low levels of the active ingredient, the Macrocyclic lactones is what they call them, in all the ivermectin-type pour-on. And when you have low levels of absorption and things like that, what happens is we start to see resistance. These parasites, these bugs begin to build up a tolerance and build up a resistance to them. So over the last 25 years, yeah, resistance has started to happen, and we have lots of proper research to say that that is becoming more and more of a problem, especially in western Canada and in our cattle here. And that’s why we wanted to take a look at this and see what’s happening in our backyard.

Jack –  Naomi, when we talk about background cattle, what exactly are they?

Naomi – Specifically, background cattle are cattle that are weaned directly from their moms, from the mother cows, put onto a feed ration. And basically, they’re getting them up onto feed, getting them gaining and moving in the right direction, ready to, principally by the time they hit about 750-800 pounds, then they’re prepared to move into the finishing stages. Feedlot cattle, by the time they get 1250 pounds, 1300 pounds when they’re finished and ready for slaughter. So it’s that between weaning and hitting finishing stages.

Jack – So how did you do this study? What happened? Specifically, we have a farm in Langenburg, one in Ituna. What happened on those ranches?

Naomi – We did a side-by-side demonstration. So we had two pens of cattle at each of the locations. One pen received the regular pour-on Ivermectin, and the second enclosure of cattle was treated with ivermectin, and then in addition to that, a product known the trade name as Safe-Guard. And the difference between it, it’s precisely for parasite treatment. The difference between it and good old ivermectin is that is has ...

By Naomi Paley, BSA, PAg, Regional Livestock Specialist, Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture

In response to new research on parasite resistance in Western Canadian beef cattle, the Ministry of Agriculture Livestock Specialists, in partnership with Merck Animal Health, identified the need to examine and demonstrate the prevalence of parasite resistance and the effect of using a strategic deworming program in three Saskatchewan backgrounding lots.

Source: Government of Saskatchewan 

On the Land with Jack Dawes Agricultural Programmer

Listen for “On the Land” with Jack Dawes, weekdays at 8am, noon and 5pm. And tune in every Thursday at 11am for a half hour talk show, as he and a guest discuss the many aspects of the agricultural industry. Today Jack and Harry Siemens interview Naomi Paley about the on-farm demonstration.

Mike Lee is a freelance consultant, agronomist, crop touring blogger and tweeter on farming, agri-business and associated issues in the Black Sea region including Ukraine, Russia, Belarus & Kazakhstan. Mike recently released his latest crop report and the crop in Russia even bigger than last year’s huge crop. 

Russian harvest & planting update

Russia harvest currently stands at 109.9mmt of grains and pulses from 43.8mha (97.2%) with an average yield 2.51mt/ha.

To date Russia has harvested 62.2mmt of wheat from 23.9mha (97%) with an average yield of 2.61mt/ha; 21.2mmt of barley from 9.0mha (99%) with an average yield of 2.35mt/ha; 10.9mmt of corn from 2.4mha (91%) with an average yield of 4.56mt/ha; 8.6mmt of sunflowers from 6.1mha (90%) with an average yield of 1.40mt/ha; 1.4mmt of oilseed rape from 1.0mha (87%) with average yield of 1.39mt/ha; 2.5mmt of soybeans from 1.8mha (93%) with an average yield of 1.36mt/ha.

Russia has planted 16.8mha of winter grains or 101.6% of the planned.

CN’s David Przednowek, Director of Grain Marketing, looks at last month’s performance and the current demand vs. capacity.