50 Ate Today?Thank a Farmer. Better Farming | November 2023 irty years ago, Ginty and Lorie Jocius started what is now Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show held at Discovery Farm in Woodstock. Ginty was a classmate and friend of mine. He wanted to showcase modern agriculture in a venue that farmers and industry would ock to from all over the world. at vision and a lot of borrowed money set him in motion. I think Ginty would be proud of the 2023 version. I was proud to be part of it. I worked on the eld demonstrations and then spent time visiting exhibitors. I saw a lot of young people – farmers and workers at exhibits for various companies. It felt good to see agriculture had a future in the hands of all these young people and their families. I saw a lot of equipment. ere were many with a SRP near $1 million. Of course, equipment is the heart of the show, and there were many equipment demonstrations. Equipment demonstration highlights e day started with forage demonstrations. ere were a number of disc bines cutting the alfalfa eld. It was amazing to watch AGCO, New Holland, John Deere, Kubota and the newcomer to Ontario, SaMASZ, demonstrating their forage equipment. When I was a kid on the farm you did good to cut 10 acres a day. ese new pieces of equipment cut one acre per hour a foot of cut a mile per hour of ground speed. So, a 30-foot cut going at 10 miles per hour cuts 300 acres per hour. is is a lot of forage. On the nal day the mergers put it all together for harvesting. e next demonstration was of fertilizer spreaders. e advent of SWAT maps and SoilOptix along with various ways of mapping is leading to variable rate fertilizing. ese machines have section control applications. Spreading fertilizer up to 120 feet and being able to apply di erent rates across that 120-foot swath is incredible. is is really bringing economic fertilizer use to the farm. e grand nale, in my mind, was the demonstration of tillage of cover crops. It promoted the use of cover crops and showed how to terminate them. It was interesting to see all the companies involved. In my opinion, they all did a good job. When I spoke to spectators, they o en said there wasn’t a big di erence between the nal results. ey did get to see, though, these tillage tools side by side and see up close the options that were available. I can imagine a farmer going back to his equipment supplier and saying, “I really liked how such and such piece of tillage worked the ground.” e knowledgeable dealer would then comment that they can get a piece of equipment to do a similar job. e various options and settings meant that many of these tillage machines can work in most situations. Seed and crop protection highlights I went to the seed and crop protection companies a er I nished with the equipment demonstrations. I asked each company about their best-selling hybrids, varieties and up-and-coming genetics. I’m sure many others asked the same questions. At the Bayer exhibit, I saw their new corn hybrids with RNA interference (RNAi) genetics to control corn rootworm. e corn rootworm is evolving to overcome the genetic resistance that we have counted on for years. e new RNAi genetics are giving us a new level of control. In the United States, growers are using rootworm insecticides at planting. I went through that and hope we don’t have to go back to New varieties and hybrids. Tillage of cover crops. crops: the lynch fileS TAKING IN ‘THE SHOW’ Highlights of 2023’s Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show. By Patrick Lynch
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