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| Excitement grows at station Tarlok Singh Sahota inspects a flax crop that he is experimenting with at the Thunder Bay Agricultural Research Station. |
Farmers and agriculture specialists toured of the station this week to learn about new growing opportunities.
Tarlok Singh Sahota, the research station’s president, and his staff have been experimenting for years with many types of grains to find which will grow best and produce a high yield in the Thunder Bay area.
He said when they plant test crops, they consider the concerns of the farmers to find opportunities to improve their farming systems.
“This is so they can diversify, broaden their operations, modernize their operations and get high returns from their crops,” said Sahota.
The process involves looking at what is in demand and what grows well while trying to gather varieties from other places, including the U.S., he said.
“We want our farmers to have the best varieties to give large yields that has high marketing value,” he said.
“We have to match everything, the consumer demand, market demand, and farmers demand.”
Testing is done over a three-year cycle and the research appears to be paying off.
Crops like last year’s new addition of canola - 243 (local) hectares of it - has picked up.
New this year is 67 hectares of winter rye that was planted last fall and is growing on local farms for the first time. Rye is very winter-hardy.
Sahota said winter wheat can be killed by the winter, but not winter rye.
“And fortunately, winter rye has a market,” said Sahota.
“When I sent a sample of the rye grain to the manager of the Canada Malting company, he asked, ‘How much yield do you have?’”
The big news on the farm scene is the growing of flax.
Sahota lead the tour through a field of 50 types of flax that are being grown with a variety of fertilizers and fungicides to determine which grows best for our area.
“This is why we need a research station here because some of these products work in southern Ontario but not here. We need to test all seeds and products here under our specific climate conditions,” said Sahota.
He said we have a short growing season and farmers cannot afford to risk large crops in the event they will fail.
The new crops that are being grown locally have been tested and proven to grow in the Northern climate thanks to the research station.
“Canola is a Canadian crop and so is flax, but neither have been grown here before,” he said. “They were grown in Western Canada but to Thunder Bay they are new crops.”
Researchers found that flax did excellent in the last two years of testing at the research station, and as a result, two farmers decided to grow flax on their farms.
Sahota said both crops are doing very well but it hasn’t been harvested yet.
“The harvesting will tell how much yield they get but for now the crops look very good,” he said.
A new grain called galega, which originates in Finland, is being studied at the research station along with fava beans and cow peas, also known as red-eyed beans.
There is much excitement around another new crop of master grazed corn, which will produce eight metric tonnes in 80 days.
Sahota said the seed source for this corn crop is only in southern Ontario and is all shipped to Alberta.
Dairy farmers around Calgary planted 121 hectares of it.
Sahota said studies in that area found that when the master-grazed corn was fed to dairy cattle, they would produce much more milk per year with a higher butter fat.
One local farmer has planted two hectares of the master grazed corn and will access the yield at harvest time.
Sahota said the research station works with all local farmers to help them develop hardy crops by finding new varieties of existing crops and introducing new crops that will grow in this climate.
“This annual tour is an opportunity for farmers to see what kind of research we are doing here and whether that research can be applied on their farms, and so far we have had great success.”