I have good news and bad news about direct seeding. The good news is that you can become a direct seeder, achieving superior yields, higher profits, and improved soil quality with low capital costs. The bad news is that this requires higher management skills and more information.
Some of my acquaintances accuse me of being a professional conference participant. There might be some truth in this. When I quit teaching in 1984 to become a full time farmer (you can see I am an old-new farmer), I knew I required a steep learning curve. To achieve this, I began to attend as many conferences as I could, learning from the speakers and also from the farmers attending the conference. In the past year, I have attended conferences in China, Taiwan, Hull, Ottawa, Calgary, Winnipeg, Kenosee Lake, Regina and several in Saskatoon. The SSCA conferences are some of the best conferences in the world. The SSCA conferences gave us the information and maybe more inportant in the early years, the confidence to try direct seeding and then helping us to continue to improve and refine our operation. Without involvement with SSCA, we would not have been able to make as smooth a transition into direct seeding. I would also like to commend the kitchen table discussions organized by SSCA the past few years.
Any change is disconcerting and the change to direct seeding is no different. We are not smart enough to be an innovator - those 4% of the population who have the insight to try new things, such as a Jim McCutcheon. We are probably in the 25%, known as early adopters. In our family, our oldest son was farming with us in 1990, but he was also working in Alberta during the winters at that time. He was not able to attend the SSCA conferences (Prince Albert, Moose Jaw, etc.), so he was not as enthused about direct seeding as the old man was. The first year, we compromised - we seeded half the farm directly and half conventionally. In the fall of 1990, Richard did most of the combining and he became an instant convert. The yields were better and the number of weeds were less in the direct seeded half.
We seed with a 42 foot 7200 Case IH hoe drill. The only modification we did to the drill was to install Atom Jet openers. The drill has seeded about 30,000 acres. One set of openers will do about 10,000 acres in our soil, which is mainly loam with some clay hills and some peat land. A John Deere 9450 or other hoe drills work equally as well. On average, cost for one 14 foot section of a 7200 Case IH drill is about $5,000. These drills will seed all sizes of seed from canola to peas.
We removed every second shank from our Bourgault 42-foot cultivator and band anhydrous ammonia with a narrow Dutch knife on 16-inch spacing. We have never seen streaking with this spacing.
We use a 220 Spray Coupe with 60 foot booms. This works well for us because we do a lot of spot spraying, especially for wild oats and thistles. The only task we hire a custom applicator for is desiccating spring wheat.
We share ownership of a heavy harrow with another farmer. We only heavy harrow spring wheat stubble or barley stubble in the fall. We harrow the canola stubble in the spring to allow it to catch snow.
We straight combine as much crop as possible. The combines are equipped with chaff spreaders because you can harrow straw, but not chaff. If the wheat straw is more than 10 inches tall, it can cause plugging with our drill. If this happens, we will swath the stubble with our pull-type swather without the canvasses.
Our basic rotation is a four-year one with canola, wheat, peas, barley and on occasion, crops like flax or canary seed are included. We have been experimenting with shorter rotations in which we grow canola every three years and even every two years. Results to this point have been encouraging.
At this point in time, we use pre-harvest Roundup or Renegade on one third of our crop. We do a spring burnoff. Half the burnoff is done before seeding and half after seeding. Our major weed problems are thistles, so we also spot spray Lontrel in canola crops. We are also aware of herbicide resistance, so we also use fall applied, unincorporated granular herbicides like Edge, trifluralins and Avadex.
There are certainly many in this audience who are more qualified than I am. I hope that we can change and adapt to new equipment and new crops. Our method of operation fit our present philosophy and we are excited about the future of farming and look forward to the coming year.