RealAg LIVE - Jeremy Boychyn of Alberta Wheat and Barley Commissions

Intro hey carol gustros here with real agriculture.com we are back here today with another real ag live and i am now in the host seat today uh in place of sean haney um so this is my first time in the host seat so be kind be nice and bear with me as we get through this um as many of you know my main focus with real agriculture is agronomy so naturally as we head into the through lag live we are going to be talking agronomy so uh if you have any questions please whether you're watching on facebook or twitter or twitch or youtube wherever you're watching just enter your comments into the comment box and uh we will be sure to get to them so today i have here with me jeremy boychen who is agronomy research extension specialist with alberta wheat and barley commissions how's it going today jeremy it is going wonderfully kara i'm happy to be on here with you at at first i was a little hurt that shawn didn't want to hang out and chat um but when he said he was sending in his second best and not lindsey but not lindsey just wanted to put that in there i'm happy to be here i'm excited to chat with you awesome Crop update so we are now in the time of harvest um a lot of producers are they already have their wheat and barley off or they're getting to the point of getting it off but a little bit of a crop update how are things looking out there and what sorts of things are you seeing across the province right now yeah i mean it's funny we get to harvest each year and every year harvest in spring it reminds me that you know alberta is essentially three provinces at once in one um i mean it really depends where you are you chat with producers in the southern part of the province and things have been coming off in general pretty good um some of the later seeded stuff maybe got hit with some of that heat the canola you know i've kind of heard up and down on how that's going but a lot of the wheat and the barley has been coming off wonderfully some yield some some guys i've been chatting with have seen yields that they haven't seen before on their farm so pretty happy i mean we're thankful for all that spring moisture we got um and and from what i've heard quality has been great as well i was talking to a producer you know an hour and a bit southeast of calgary um he was looking at 75 bushel wheat and 14 protein so if if we're looking at things like that coming out of that part of the province we're looking at a pretty good year but as you move north um things become a little bit more dicey um we had some some excess moisture in in some regions as you get closer to edmonton um and i think when we hit the beginning of the year um we had excess moisture and things were drowning out we had some challenges we had crop we had to take off still too um and then some of that crop really had some wet feet early in the season um but then things kind of balanced out and we got some timely rains and things are coming off decently i think they're coming off a little bit less than what some producers were hoping for um you know here last year i got this number and and i kind of expected that this year and i think we're maybe kind of forgot how the impact of early season wet feet can can impact the crop um you know spike set on wheat and barley really is set in that four to six leave stage so if you have high pressure high stress during that time um even if you have good seasonal conditions after that uh that that yield potential is essentially set at that point there's only a certain amount of spikes on those heads i mean you can get some later tillers but are those really that beneficial um so that's kind of give or take depending on the region some regions are looking at decent yields um some aren't really getting where they want and and the protein is sitting about the same um but a lot of those regions in the north we're still looking at maybe only 12 13 maybe up to 20 percent harvested at this point so we're still getting an idea of what things are are looking like um you know one of the challenges that thankfully has kind of dissipated at this point is the smoke which i'm sure you were going to ask me about at some point but uh you know that that was kind of slowing guys down as they were starting starting uh to move in the morning so but i think things are humming along um feels like an open fall so i hope guys are feeling optimistic absolutely so uh we have a question here from mr sean haney as he has uh he stated Fall fertilizer application earlier i put the comment up he said he's very happy to be watching and not in the host seat today so he's got me on a little bit of the hot seat but a question from him is any recommendations on fall fertilizer application for next year's wheat or barley crop oh i think we might have lost jeremy here maybe oh is he coming back um this is how the live likes to work sometimes we uh oh he's coming maybe maybe not um he just probably didn't want to talk to me heard sean wasn't going to be here i see he's laughing on that end so he's probably having some sort of good time um yeah so smoke is no longer bothering us here in alberta and uh jeremy please come back as we are losing you come on jeremy so uh yeah if you guys um meanwhile while we wait for jeremy to come back in hopefully he does here soon uh one of the things like i said i am a focus on agronomy here at uh real agriculture so a lot of the uh for those of you that don't know what they are um we do crop schools which are agronomy-based uh schools they're five ten minutes um and now there goes jeremy so we're just gonna uh take a second here and pull him back in and once we do so i will just get to my uh jeremy back in here i feel like me okay so we got some technical difficulties here but i believe we are back in here right away with uh jeremy um and we are good to go right away here so i will get jeremy right back in here i don't actually believe he's back so anyways i will go back to talking about our crop schools here uh one of the things we do here at real agriculture is we do uh five to ten minute agronomy videos throughout these seasons so anything from markets throughout the year to um different things we talk about uh and we will see if we got jeremy back here but uh they're based on canola they're based on pulses uh we do it all across canada and uh it's it's a great time and jeremy here is one of our guests that often pops up in our wheat schools so it is always great to have him here but uh before we uh jeremy are you there on your end i i am here um but i feel like every time i pop on my video i i that's when things cut out yeah yeah so uh you are you i can hear you now i cannot see you unfortunately so we'll just uh we'll keep going for now um with just you on the um audio for now so you were i think it might be my internet oh no that's uh that's unfortunately part of it as well um we all know in rural alberta and well rural canada it is not easy to get high-speed internet so uh no no problem there but uh so anyways you were answering your question that sean had about fall fertilizers what are some of the things you can tell me when it comes to next year's wheat or barley for fertilizer applications yeah so i mean it really depends on what you're talking about in terms of of what nutrients you're looking to apply um the typical ones we're talking about are either going to fall in the nitrogen category or the phosphorus category um so i'll start off on the phosphorus category because i've actually had this question come in a couple times um this fall already you know is it worth broadcasting or putting my phosphorus down in the fall versus the spring um you know sometimes the amount of phosphorus you're trying to apply can really slow down your spring progress so so trying to push that into the fall is a desire that some producers are looking to have and my first question is is always what's your soil phosphorus levels um because if you're if your soil phosphorus levels are low when you're when you're broadcasting or putting phosphorus down in the fall um you're not putting that phosphorus directly beside or with the seed and with low soil phosphorus levels the most efficient um and yield responsive application methods are either with the seed or directly beside the seed so if you're in a low soil phosphorus level area um or your your fields are low in phosphorus um i always recommend if you can put some of that phosphorus with the seed uh it's it's beneficial to get it there because you're going to see a better yield response than just broadcasting it on top and working it in and again when you're working with phosphorus you do want to either get that phosphorus a few inches down or make sure you're working it in after your broadcast the last thing we want to do is be dealing with any overland um leeching or lossing of that phosphorus into waterways it's inefficient for you you're spending phosphorus money for it to disappear and it's not going into the plant so you're becoming less efficient so those are kind of the big things that that i kind of talk about um when the question comes in of should i be applying phosphorus in the fall or in the spring um and and sometimes you don't have to choose one or the other um you can do maybe you know 75 of that in the fall um and then finish up with 20 percent in the spring and maybe that'll that'll reduce the amount of slow down that you're seeing but if you're in very low phosphorus levels sometimes you see responses up to 40 or 50 pounds of phosphorus per acre so typically the lower your phosphorus levels the more i'm going to recommend that you try and get more of that phosphorus with your seed when it comes to sorry go ahead when it comes to nitrogen there's a couple things to think about uh the first is you know are you in a high risk area when it comes to to denitrification and loss and leaching especially in the spring if you find that your fields are seeing a lot of spring saturation then you're at risk of some nitrogen loss um so if you're in those situations typically i recommend not to go in that direction because you're just going to have too much loss it's not as efficient and effective as you want it to be getting it down in the spring with the seed you know the four hours the right place the right time the right rate you know you really need to be thinking about what's going to be most effective and efficient when it comes agronomically to the crop i realize that logistics has a big thing to play it has a big part to play in that um and if you're if you're in an area where maybe sometimes you see those issues but it's not too common using something like an enhanced efficiency fertilizer to help reduce your loss of of nitrogen so something like esn or entrance or super you that's going to protect it from denitrification um or or or leaching um and though that that's going to help really in that spring time when you can't get the crop in yet but you know your nitrogen is in the ground it's going to protect that nitrogen from being lost to the atmosphere or or into the soil the other thing like phosphorus you really want to get it deep enough that you're not going to lose it to volatilization um you know two plus inches is really is really where we want to see that going down um and you know you really want to wait till you're in that seven degrees celsius or lower soil temperature that's when there's not as much microbial activity going on you're not going to get as much breakdown of of those products into nitrates so you're not going to see as much loss and and those are kind of the big questions that uh or the big factors that i like to mention so you really just where where are my potentials with losses and it usually comes down to excess moisture how can i mitigate that and that's by either picking a better time picking a different product um or or having something in there that's going to protect it and sticking on the topic of uh moisture danny oddbright here has a Moisture removal question that says how much moisture is removed from the soils via a fall tillage pass that is an excellent question i would imagine it has to do with your soil type um you know like a clay soil would probably be holding on to more in those those fine um or those those smaller pore spaces um and maybe something with uh with a bit of silt in there is is going to release it a little bit easier so i don't know that there's a defined answer there i can't really say you know it's going to be seven millimeters or one inch um there may be some research on on different soil types of different loss but um i would imagine it's going to be heavily dependent on soil type the type of tillage that you're doing um the residue and organic matter that's in there so there's a lot of variables that that are going to play a role in that so there's not going to really be a specific answer so when we're looking at our phosphorus Phosphorus planning planning you and i talked earlier this year on one of our wheat school episodes about planning for phosphorus and using some years previous as well as looking into the future can you talk a bit more about what you need to do for your planning right now and how important it is to keep records yeah and i think this is absolutely important this year for maybe some of those producers i mean it's important for all producers to be looking at long-term phosphorus planting lack of proper phosphorus levels in the soil can really start to impact yield but those producers that are pulling off higher than expected yields in the south likely there they did not fertilize phosphorus for those levels especially after what maybe in some areas three years of of drought so i'd imagine there's a lot of a lot of producers that pulled back on phosphorus levels which means maybe we're fertilizing for for 35 40 45 bushels and and we're seeing you know sometimes in the 50s um or or you know maybe even up in the 60s who knows but if you're if you're seeing those differences in how much you applied versus how much you removed um you're creating an overall deficit in that soil so if if that happens year after year after year where you know maybe you applied for or for 40 bushel and you get 45 or 50 for three years in a row we have created that phosphorus deficit over those three years and sometimes i i i see it's almost like we you know forget about that year we push it back and we say okay now we're planning for this coming year how much what's my new yield potential and now i want to fi now i want to apply phosphorus for that and we almost we forget that in the previous two or three years we've pulled off more than we've actually applied and this this doesn't matter if you're doing um you know a kind of a maintenance or or a build um kind of phosphorus plan or you know you're topping up your phosphorus levels to reach your your yield goals accounting for what's in the soil or you're just straight applying total phosphorus for what your yield goals are it doesn't matter which method you're doing asking the question of what was my yield what's the equivalent pounds per acre of phosphorus that i removed with that yield and is it equal to less than or greater than what i applied this year and if you cumulatively add those up over the past three years four years you know get your balance for this coming year and then say okay the next three or four years out do i either need to you know if you're looking at maintenance and you want to kind of pull back on your phosphorus if you applied more than you needed over the past three years where can i maybe take away some or if you're looking to build where can i add in where is it safer to build in typically in your cereals you can find more more space to add in more phosphorus than something like canola with seed safety concerns so taking a look at that historic what's my balance and then asking the question of over the next three to four years how do i account for that balance and you don't build that eight year plan and then say okay i'm going to address this again in four years when i reached the end of my plan every year that plan shuffles forward a year it's like okay well now this is what the balance is how do i readjust my next three to four years and it sounds cumbersome but once you have that plan and that structure in place it does become much easier and simpler to think about that moving forward it's really going to prevent you from getting in a position where maybe you're spending too much on phosphorus you're over applying because you're already in the position you need to be or you're slowly eating away at your phosphorus levels which um i mean if we look at research that ross mckenzie has done uh in the past lower phosphorus level soils typically are not able to reach full yield potential even if you are applying the appropriate amount of phosphorus to reach that yield goal more often than not those low phosphorus level soils will not reach the full yield potential Fall fertilizers so staying on the same sort of topic here with fall fertilizers uh jim hale out of saskatchewan has a question for you off of facebook and he's saying are you recommending for producers to stay with conventional macro type fertilizer versus some of the newer alternative products that are on the market what kind of newer alternative products are you talking about jim yeah that's that's the real question um i'm sure jim will tell us here in a second but um do you overall recommend staying with these conventional macro type fertilizers uh i mean they have shown consistent results in the past they have provided proof that they do provide a yield result and they their return on investment is there um so i i wouldn't be pushing producers away from utilizing those but i am really curious as to what other products he's talking about but to me it really comes down to i mean return on investment needs to be there um and the the the phosphorus balance still needs to be maintained um and maybe he's talking about some of the new products that are said to you know release unavailable phosphorus that's in the soil that's being held up maybe microbes that help release you know more tied up phosphorus but to me it really comes down to are we are we creating a balance or a build in those soil phosphorus levels if you're using an alternative and i'll use quotations even though no one can see me alternative phosphorous source um and you're only applying five pounds of phosphorus a year but you know we've we've seen the research we know how much um phosphorus is pulled off of grain if you're pulling a 40 or 50 bushel crop and if you're seeing an imbalance between what you're applying and what you're removing then you're still working towards a deficit um so so jim here is actually saying he says humic acid so low Humic acid salt pea products yeah um so i wouldn't say i'm i'm super experienced in the humic acid i have read a little bit into it i know there's there's some research that's been done globally i know there's not a ton of research done in alberta so i can't really speak to what what alberta or maybe saskatchewan producers can do but i know in some greenhouse studies it's shown benefit in increasing um nutrient availability um but without kind of solid prairie research it's really hard for me to to give recommendations one way or the the other i mean i applaud producers for for trying some of this stuff and and i would i mean if if you guys are seeing results on humic acid com comparisons i would love to hear about those results and and what it's doing um and i know it's it's kind of something that's that's growing in interest because there's there's potential there for it to provide value so i definitely wouldn't say um to walk away from that but i definitely wouldn't say to uh to to not be considering your your application versus removal at this point um but i would say i think there's more research that needs to be done on humic acid um before we start converting ourselves to to that method um and and i think some of that research is is you know kind of on the brink and it we we should be seeing more of it soon absolutely so switching gears here a little bit insects it is now the time of year that Wire worm scouting you'll be telling producers to start scouting for those wire worms what can you what can you say about wire worm scouting and the importance of getting out and doing it now well actually cara wire worm scouting is super important in the spring um so the reason the re i mean wire worm scouting is super important in the spring um and i mean we've seen a lot of damage i've had multiple calls this year a couple of producers trying to overseed uh crop that had been significantly impacted by a wire worm that didn't get a treatment and it almost seems like wire worm starts in small little patches that are almost non-noticeable and then all of a sudden one year they all hit very impactful growth stages and and you have um a field that that that you're you're wondering what happened where'd my crop go things were fine here last year um what can i do to mitigate this and then you're stuck with a multi-staged crop you know i had a call it must have been june you know mid to late june of you know i have this crop at this stage um wire worms have taken out 40 50 you know can i overseed and typically the recommendation is no i mean you're dealing with multi-staged crop which means your disease mitigation factors your nutrient use efficiency goes down you're dealing with competition in issues intra species so your wheats competing with your wheat and it just it's not a very efficient method and then really not not 5 or 10 miles away from that producer i was working with another guy kind of digging through some areas he thought was a concern he's never seen wire worm there before never seen issues and kind of little spots maybe maybe five feet by five feet and you dig under and you dig for five or ten minutes and and you know lo and behold you find wire where they're small but they're causing impact and it's those areas that end up growing significantly to the point where you're wondering where your crop went and this is why scouting is is vital you can't you can't ignore those small little areas because they end up being something significant um you know previous to last year there hasn't been a lot of availability for products to help control wire worm luckily we've seen some stuff coming from corteva and i believe basf has their wire worm product that'll be coming out next year i i think um they're aiming for that i'm not sure whether that's for sure but they are aiming for that so there are becoming options to help control um you know haley caton is doing a lot of research on why we're on on cultural methods are there ways that we can avoid wire worm um through certain rotations or certain crops um what's the actual life cycle and movement of a wire worm it's interesting because a lot of the wire worm research prior to what haley cat was doing was really done in the 50s and 60s before we came up with control methods once we came up with control methods we said wow we don't need to know anything more about these we're killing them fine uh and then we lost those control methods and now we're stuck sitting on our hands i mean now we're not because we're getting new control methods but we were stuck sitting on our hands really not having too much of a clue about this pest how it moves where it moves so it's good that haley is doing that research because if we ever get to that point where we can't use some of these products again it'll be it'll be valuable to have that information about their life cycle and cultural mitigation methods they're really interesting interesting pests that they can live for you know five seven years in the soil easy they can reverse molt if there's not enough food so if you don't seed something that they'll feed on they'll just sit there and wait and reverse molt and then when you put your your wheat or barley crop in there they'll go and feed and grow again they they generally stay in the same area they just kind of dig down deep um during the winter and then once spring comes they'll poke back up and feed on whatever's producing the most co2 which is typically your crop so it's their their chat they're a challenge to control so i'm hoping as we move forward with some of these new control products we will find some mitigation methods Sugar solution absolutely and there's kind of a fun conversation going on in our facebook comment section right now jim hale is saying he had a neighbor tell him that because wire worms have no pancreas they can't handle sugar so he's applying sugar solution to his seed and in brackets he writes yeah i have weird neighbors so have you heard anything about that or uh yeah any sort of research around that i have not heard anything about sugar uh and um the potential for uh that being an impact a wire worm i mean if they're not meant to digest and they don't have the tools to digest sugar why would they be digesting sugar why would they be looking to find sugar molecules you know whether it be sucrose or or whatever any of those um you know secondary sugars might be um if they know that's not what's beneficial to them but i i find that find that hard to to i don't want to throw them under the bus or anything but i mean there's there are carbohydrates in that seed that that that that um wire worm is eating and you know some of those carbohydrates are turning into sugars as that seed germinates and that wire worm is eating that germinating seed so wouldn't that germinating seed that's producing sugars from the carbohydrates then kill the wire worm yeah you never know um moving into the Biological controls same we're still on wire rooms here uh danny bright has another question for you and as lindsay will also note in the comments section danny that is your two questions and you are done what is a biological control for wire worms and what are their predators i'm not aware of any biological controls on wire worms that doesn't mean they don't exist um i believe we are trying to get a better understanding of what their predators are um there are the uh oh and i'm gonna forget the name of them now but they're a predatory beetle um that does live in alberta that will feed on um potentially the click beetle which is the adult form of wire worm um and haley is trying to get a better understanding of what that relationship looks like is there ways that we can better culture that predatory beetle to um uh to attack wire worm um because uh i guess not because but they're they're actually what they're doing is they're taking some of these predatory beetles and they're doing dna analysis on what they've eaten to see what species they're eating how much of that species they're eating what percentage of the diet is is click beetle uh because if we can if we can control more click beetles then we can control um how much how many of those wire worms are being put into the soil uh and i mean this really ties back to the rest of our research which is getting a better understanding of where the click beetle likes to lay their eggs why they like to lay their eggs there um so danny i don't i can't think of any um cultural or not biological controls at this moment i'm hopeful that based on conversations i've had in the past that there are there are people looking into that direction um because i don't like i think that's that's a desirable direction to go in um but i don't know of any right now danny do you know of any have you heard of any i will uh get him to follow up with you Plot to Farm if he has heard of anything for sure so i guess he gave him the cut so he can't say anything anymore he does get one follow-up question so uh you do have one follow-up you have not been silenced yet um but uh before i let you go for the day here jeremy um alberta wheat and barley commissions had their first year of their plot to farm program this year um can you quickly touch on plateau farm and what sort of things you guys actually got out of your preliminary results yeah absolutely um so plot to farm um it's certainly not a novel idea that alberta wheat and barley came up with there's a few other commissions alberta pulse uh the manitoba wheat and barley which would now be the manitoba crop alliance they have had something similar running for the past few years and actually one of the most long-standing ones that i'm aware of would be the nebraska extension network and really what it is is the commissions or or extension network works with the producer to develop research protocols that the producer can implement on their farm um it is asking the question of what question does the producer want to answer on their farm and how to best answer that through a farm-sized trial um sometimes the the translation from small plot research to large scale research is or not large scale research but on farm results is is can can kind of vary so giving the tools to a producer to do a strongly scientific or a strong scientific comparison between a couple different treatments on their farm to give them strong results the overarching goal would be to have numerous producers across the province enacting some of these protocols and then communicating between each other and with the commissions as to you know what results are we seeing what new challenges might be presented from the results we're seeing and what steps moving forward so we did two trials this year as kind of a launch here we did seeding rates on barley and that was done in car stairs um kind of unsure results at this point uh we think some some hail damage from previous years may have caused some some variable results so a learning lesson there at this point um the other trial was in olds where we did a comparison between goodwin and foremost um goodwin was a new variety of cps that's looking like of interest and foremost obviously got kicked into the cnhr class so the crest question was is it is it a better opportunity to move with good good and it turned out on that farm that um it wasn't an advantageous move um so it really i mean you know we chatted with the farmer as the results were coming off and they were pretty strong results um so it you know it's helping him make that decision move forward it's confident results and you know i asked him the question because he he had a field a quarter section of goodwin on the other side of the um of the road compared to the where we had the the split trial um the side by sides and uh you know they're seated at different times they're in different field conditions they may get a few little bit different rains um so having that side by side in the field really kind of solidifies the results and allows you to move forward confidently and are you looking for producers uh to be a part of it next year yes Producers i would very we have we have more room next year we have a few barley spots and we have a few um wheat spots uh and really looking for producers that are already interested in doing on-farm trials and are looking for you know a strong protocol to implement um we provide some funding to support uh enacting those protocols um so you can bring a um a an agronomist on farm with you and kind of help enact those to make sure that you're you're pulling off results that that are you know that you're confident with moving forward so if anyone wants to be a part of this in alberta um growing wheat and barley uh feel free to reach out to me and we can work together building something okay and one more quick question this might be a character building uh question here what is your favorite Favorite variety name variety name my goodness for some reason for some reason thorsby sticks out to me i don't i don't know why but thorsby that one it just it it rolls off the tongue it sounds nice it sounds like a good strong crop that i would want to put in the ground but that's just me yeah i see it okay well that is uh that was a very quick uh 40 minutes here and we are out of time so we're gonna wrap her up jeremy but uh thank you very much for joining us on real ag live today uh it was great to have you on jeremy and thanks to our audience for joining in and thank you for all your questions it is always great uh don't forget to join in to realign radio on sirius xm rule radio 147 at 2 30 p.m mountains at undertime to hear today's episode of real egg radio and if you love agronomy like i do then tune in on our monday show which is agronomic monday and for the rest of you good luck with the rest of harvest and have yourself