1150 farmers from across western Canada and northern U.S., met at the Saskatoon Prairieland Exhibition Grounds February 12 and 13 to attend the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association's (SSCA) annual Direct Seeding Workshop. This was our largest direct seeding conference ever.
"The purpose of the conference was to bring farmers together to get the latest information on direct seeding and how to implement these practices on our farms," says SSCA president Clint Steinley. "Farmers had the opportunity to have their questions answered by researchers, industry experts and other farmers," says Steinley.
This year's conference featured keynote speaker was Dennis Avery with the Hudson Institute. According to Avery, author of the book "Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastics," the only way we can meet the food demands of 10 billion people without destroying millions of acres of natural habitat is to triple production on existing agricultural lands. Failure to increase yields on existing lands will result in millions of acres of natural habitat being plowed under in developing countries to produce the food needed. Conservation tillage and integrated pest management will be some of the high yield farming techniques needed to realize this production increase.
The conference had six sessions which offered a mixture of farmers and researchers to provide both experience and first hand information. This year's sessions covered topics on moisture use efficiency, crop rotations, agronomy, weed control, and opener and packing systems. Speakers talked about how to integrate all this information into a successful direct seeding system.
Once again, the informal evening "Bear Pit" sessions were well attended. There were three concurrent "bearpits": How to Start Direct Seeding, Crop Management in Direct Seeding, and Direct Seeding Equipment. These sessions provided farmers with the opportunity to have their questions answered by experts in less formal, smaller groups.
The trade show had 66 exhibitors showing the latest in crop production technology and information related to direct seeding. The trade show continues to be a major attraction of the conference.
Due to the large crowd at the conference this year, we don't have any extra copies of the conference proceedings for sale. However, we plan to have the proceedings available at our web site *http://paridss.usask.ca/consgroups/ssca/sscahome.html#SSCA Home Page* soon. Plans are already under way for the 1998 annual meeting and conference in Regina, February 11 and 12, 1998.