Ralph Pearce

Bayer CropScience says it’s working to address concerns that its neonicotinoid insecticide seed treatments are contributing to bee mortality. During a recent grower information day at the company’s research farm here, Bayer representatives Greig Zamecnik and Luc Bourgeois said company researchers and advisers are working on several different levels, including tests on a new dry […] Read more

Three years ago, Dr. Ford Baldwin stood in a field near Widener, Arkansas, and spoke of the many challenges facing growers in the Mid-South of the U.S. He talked about the advance of resistant weed species and how, five years prior to that, he’d written about the looming “train wreck” represented by glyphosate resistance. He […] Read more

Call it a lot of bad news contrasting against the potential for some upside. Yes, early July — particularly in the southwest corner of Ontario — was not only wet, it was very wet — a deluge that has damaged some crops and probably lowered yield. But the bright spot to this wet first half […] Read more

Considerable discussion in the past few years has focused on improving wheat, both in terms of quality and yield. Much has been made of corn’s hybridization and the advances that came from that plant breeding process — and that’s led to similar debates on the ease or difficulty of hybridizing wheat, or even soybeans. Highlighting […] Read more

Some Ontario growers were happier than others to see the end of May — and for more than one reason. The planting season across much of Ontario is all but done, and in spite of later-than-desired planting for corn, soybeans went in as expected. Yet aside from a late-month deluge, things were getting a little […] Read more

Glyphosate resistance continues to be a hot topic as more Ontario growers head into the field to finish off their corn planting and begin work on their soybean acres. Yet according to Dr. Peter Sikkema, a recent find of glyphosate-resistant Canada fleabane and giant ragweed in Huron County comes as something of a surprise. Sikkema, […] Read more

Two weeks ago, the word on corn planting in southern Ontario was so limited it wasn’t even expressed as a percentage, just as “a few acres” in the immediate area. The biweekly meeting of certified crop advisors and provincial ministry staff, held near Exeter, north of London, was more focussed on nitrogen applications on wheat […] Read more

A recent survey by Stratus Agri-Marketing of Guelph has found concerns on the rise about herbicide-resistant weeds among farmers in Eastern Canada — specifically, resistance to glyphosate is gaining more attention. In the U.S., an online survey in 2012 found upward of 61.2 million acres of cropland have some species of glyphosate-resistant weed. That’s almost […] Read more