8 Story Idea? Email Paul.Nolan@Farms.com Better Farming | February 2024 Beyond the Barn OMAFRA REPORTS ON SLOW START TO ’23 CORN HARVEST OMAFRA reports that high grain moisture and late maturity led to Ontario’s delayed 2023 corn harvest. The 2023 Corn Seasonal Summary was released in Field Crop News in December. The report detailed planting conditions, challenges experienced in 2023, and focuses for the 2024 growing season. OMAFRA reports that corn planting started for most farmers during the second week of May, with most producers observing quick emergence. Some corn was planted during an early April window and suffered emergence issues, but most stands were kept. Warm and dry conditions during late May and June were ideal for nitrogen management. The summary states that despite these conditions persisting during June, by the end of the month, crop heat units were approximately five to 10 per cent below the 10-year average for many regions in Ontario. Heavy and consistent rainfall occurred throughout July and August, creating concern for ear moulds and foliar leaf disease. Cooler temperatures also led to worries about grain fill, as crop heat units continued to be 10 per cent below the average. Harvest brought challenges with late maturity and high grain moisture, as well as mould and DON levels. In October, 23 per cent of samples tested above 2 ppm, which is greater than an average of 12 per cent. For 2024, OMAFRA predicts that DON testing variability and tar spot will be topics of ongoing interest. BF A recent study from the United States suggests that beef operations which keep cattle on lifelong grassbased diets may have an overall higher carbon footprint than those that switch cattle to grain-based diets partway through their lives. The experiment was led by Daniel Blaustein-Rejto of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research centre in Berkeley, Calif. The results were shared in the open-access journal PLOS ONE in December. The goal of the study was to explore all aspects of beef production systems that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to the direct emissions from beef cattle, which has been the focus of previous studies. These prior studies have suggested that pasture-finished beef operations have a higher carbon footprint than grain-finished operations. To investigate this objective, the research team calculated carbon footprints for 100 beef farms in 16 countries. Their calculations included direct greenhouse gas emissions from cattle, soil carbon sequestration, and carbon opportunity cost. The carbon opportunity cost was defined as the carbon that would have been sequestered if the land had native ecosystems instead of being used for beef production. After calculating and comparing direct emissions across the farms, the analysis suggested that grain-finished operations were producing 20 per cent less greenhouse gas than pasture-finished farms. When soil carbon sequestration and carbon opportunity cost were accounted for it was found that this number increased – as pasture-finished farms had a 42 per cent higher carbon footprint. “Our research reveals that the carbon cost of land-use accounts for the largest part of beef’s carbon footprint. Therefore, there is an even larger carbon cost than typically found to land-intensive beef operations, such as many grass-fed systems, even when taking into account potential carbon sequestration due to grazing,” said the authors in a release on EurekAlert.org. These findings demonstrate the importance of accounting for all relevant factors when calculating and comparing carbon footprints. BF - Emily Croft Lisa Herlick/iStock/Getty Images Plus photo NEW STUDY ON BEEF EMISSIONS PLAY IN MILLBROOK In our January article, ‘The Farmerettes: Renewed Awareness,’ we reported that the 4th Line Theatre was located in Millbank. The venue, which will stage a production of ‘Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes,’ is located in Millbrook. For more info, refer to the advertisement on Page 46.
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