Western region farmers were pleased to see the strong yield with their soybeans this fall, landing anywhere between 35-60 bushels to the acre, and averaging about 45 bu/acre.
"Just hot off the press here, I just calculated our yield results of our variety trials, and it is a pleasant yield, I don't know if it would be our record-breaker, but certainly it will pay the bills and maybe a little bit more," shares Scott Chalmers, Applied Research Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.
Chalmers says their herbicide tolerant soybean test plots in the Melita area ran anywhere from mid-40's to the mid-60's. "And our conventional types were about 10 bushels/acre less and that's normal."
"I think it has a lot to do with mid-season moisture and some of that heat we got in July really pushed them along at the right time," he adds.
This is year two for the soybean protein study funded by the federal government, comparing irrigated vs non-irrigated. Chalmers says there was certainly a difference although they only turned the irrigation on in mid-season simply because of the very wet spring. However, they had an ongoing challenge with the deer population in that area.
"We do see a local difference between irrigated and dry, but to be representative of the area wouldn't be fair because of the deer browsing," he says. "And we were kind of stuck in a barley field to do this project and they don't really like barley. When they find something they like, they keep coming back. We also had some grazing corn beside that too, which was yielding around 150 bu/acre under the irrigation, and about 120 on the dry land condition. They were into that too."
"Our corn and our sunflower plots are only a hundred plants big and so if you lose 5 plants or more that is quite a substantial change in the yield, and so we take things pretty seriously when it comes to the wildlife."
Chalmers says their barley yields were also higher than expected, running anywhere between 80-120 bu/acre.
Please listen to more with Scott Chalmers below.