38 Ate Today? Thank a Farmer. Better Farming | August 2024 crops: the lynch fileS AWC EAST 2024 - Better Farming Ontario - 1/2 Page Horizontal - 7 x 4.875” *Note: this advert calls for a large .6875” bleed on the left and right, and .3375” top and bottom. Please view crop marks for actual ad trim Call Iris Meck (403) 686-8407 • AdvancingWomenConference.ca/2024east AWC EAST 2024 November 17, 18 & 19, 2024 at the Sheraton Fallsview, Niagara Falls, ON Listen, learn, network and grow! REGISTER TODAY! retail farm supply business were to blame because they were neither convincing farmers to soil sample nor soil sampling for them. The retailers in the group were quick to reply that they couldn’t hire people to soil sample and that their salespeople were too busy doing other things. They blamed the private crop consultants for not encouraging farmers to soil sample. In the end, there was no answer. I said if we all tried harder this year, maybe we could get more soils tested. But all this does bring up an opportunity. A summer student could make a decent wage by offering a soil sampling service to farmers and dealers. I believe farmers would pay for the service. Farmers don’t have time to soil sample. It’s one of those jobs that just doesn’t get done. I’m hoping that after reading this article, you will get your soil tested. You can start now by planning to get all wheat ground sampled. Figure out who will do it and when. All wheat acres should be tested. There are various ways to sample and test but I like the SWAT approach where you use variable rates of fertilizer based on soil levels and topography. Selling straw And speaking of wheat, a question asked annually is, “Should I sell my wheat straw?” You may have already made a decision for this year, so think about next year. Fellow Better Farming crops columnist Dale Cowan, CCA ON, presented at the Southwest Agricultural Conference in 2020 and stated that a 90-bushel wheat crop produces about 11,250 pounds of biomass. The grain makes up about 50 per cent of this, or 5,400 pounds. If you sell the straw and get, say 2,200 pounds of straw, there are still 3,650 pounds of biomass returned to the soil. So, by selling straw, you still return about one-third of the biomass produced. This is a lot more biomass returned to the soil than a crop of soybeans. With current and past fertilizer prices, there are about 1.25 cents to 1.5 cents worth of nutrients in a pound of straw. The current suggestion of selling straw for five cents per pound means you are making about 3.5 cents per pound, or at 2,200 pounds of straw per acre, about $75 to $80 per acre. That is like getting another 10 to 11 bushels of wheat per acre. There are other benefits to selling straw. This past spring, we saw that fields with a lot of straw had more slugs than fields without straw. If you leave straw, there is an extra cost to doing extra tillage to bury some of the straw. Working the field adds another $20 or more per acre. Timing corn tassel emergence For some of you who planted early, your corn may already have a fungicide on. For those fields where the
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