By paNOW

PHOTOS: Farmers seeing new ag research firsthand in PA region

Jul 25, 2014 | 6:31 AM

Farmers and others in the agriculture industry in the Prince Albert region are seeing research results firsthand at the Annual Field Day held by the Conservation Learning Centre.

The Centre, 18 kilometres south of Prince Albert on Highway 2, is a conservation research farm funded, in part, by the provincial government, testing new agricultural technologies, methods, chemicals and crops on small-scale fields to see how well they work.

Each year, the Centre holds an Annual Field Day, inviting people to come out and see what they’re doing.

“We have experts in the field talking about the various projects,” said Larry White, chairman of the board for the Centre. “Whether it’s fungicide application, or foliar application of fertilizers or maybe just some new chemical we might be trying on a particular crop.”

Some of the experiments on the Centre’s land include seeing what effects excess 2,4-D herbicide applied in the fall has on the yield of a crop, and whether higher wheat seeding rates provide a beneficial yield outweighing costs.

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“It gives [farmers] a chance to see some of these new innovations on a smaller scale, and then look at whether they might want to adapt it to a larger scale on their own farms,” explained White.

Not everyone at the event was a farmer – Curtis Degooijer, an agronomist with Bourgault Industries in St. Brieux, went to several similar tours throughout the province at Scott and Melfort.

Degooijer said it’s a way to figure out which way the industry is going: what are some of the bigger issues and solutions producers are interested in and what a manufacturing company can do to get a crop into the ground and off to the best start.

“Seeing side-by-side trials like this is great,” he said, pointing towards the fields. “We’re seeing different varieties side-by-side – you can see the different levels out here and how they look.”

Small-scale tests by places like the Centre risk less for farmers than experimenting themselves on a larger scale, said Degooijer.

“We get to see it in a small 10-by-20 foot plot rather than a 360-[foot] plot out in your field. If you apply 2,4-D too early or too high a rate and all of a sudden you don’t have a canola crop coming up, at least you get to see it here firsthand.”

Degooijer encourages others in the agricultural industry to come out and see the research in person.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the farmers and producers – it’s trying to get the best practices displayed in front of them so they can make those decisions on their farm and be profitable.”

The Conservation Learning Centre is also holding a Forage Field Day on Aug. 14 at 1 p.m.

Those interested in learning more about the Centre’s experiments can find a virtual tour here.

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