Ducks Unlimited Canada agrologist has promoted winter cereals for decades and remains hopeful about the crop’s future
Winter wheat was a big deal on the Prairies from about 2006 to 2014.
Total acreage ranged from 800,000 to 1.3 million, with the lion’s share of the crop seeded in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Ken Gross, a Ducks Unlimited Canada agrologist who has promoted winter cereals for decades, described that period as the “second wave” of winter wheat on the Prairies.
The first wave happened in the 1980s, when Saskatchewan’s agriculture ministry encouraged farmers to grow winter wheat.
The promotion worked.
In the fall of 1986, Saskatchewan farmers seeded 880,000 acres of the crop, says Statistics Canada data.
The provincial target was one million acres, but someone in the department decided that 880,000 acres was good enough.
“Once they reached that, their job was done. They moved on … and pulled back the extension support,” said Gross, an agrologist who recently retired as head of Ducks Unlimited’s conservation programs in Manitoba.
By 1991, winter wheat acres in Saskatchewan had declined to 80,000 and the acreage surge from the mid-1980s was over.
Gross has witnessed the ups and downs of winter cereals in Western Canada during his career with Ducks Unlimited.
He started working for the organization in 1990, first at its field office in Shoal Lake, Man., and then at the provincial office in Brandon, where he lives.
For 35 years, Gross has encouraged farmers to seed winter wheat and other winter cereals because those crops provide excellent nesting habitat for ducks in the spring.
“Our research shows ducks nesting in winter wheat are 24 times more productive than ducks nesting in spring-sown cereals,” said Alex Griffiths, who works with Gross at Ducks Unlimited’s Manitoba office.
After 35 years at the organization, Gross retired at the end of June.
“It’s been my life … it’s been a good ride,” he said.
“It’s been a good group to work with.”
Gross made a difference in his time with Ducks Unlimited.
In 2021, the Manitoba Forage & Grassland Association recognized his decades of work around conservation by making him one of the initial inductees into the organization’s wall of fame.
“Ken has dedicated his career to sustainable agriculture. His impact on the landscape is important not only for farmers but for everyone concerned about clean drinking water, floods, droughts and climate change,” Mark Francis, Ducks Unlimited’s manager provincial operations in Manitoba, said in 2021.
Looking back at his career, Gross said Ducks Unlimited realized in the 1990s that winter cereals were helpful for waterfowl.
To support farmers and boost adoption, the organization invested in the development of more resilient, higher yielding varieties.
That investment paid off in the late 2000s, when superior varieties and a wet weather cycle convinced farmers to try winter wheat again.
creage tripled on the Prairies, going from 350,000 in 2000 to more than one million in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Winter wheat was a success story until two factors came together around 2014.
A new winter wheat hit the market in the early 2010s, called Flourish. Gross and winter wheat growers were excited about it because the variety had many desirable traits, expect one – resistance to fusarium head blight.
By random chance, 2014 was a nasty year for fusarium in Western Canada, and about 70 per cent of winter wheat crops had some level of the disease.
“A lot of producers in Manitoba embraced (Flourish) and that was the year that aligned with the worst fusarium year that we’ve ever had,” Gross said.
“I’ve never seen one come close to it, since.”
That negative experience came at a time when new, high-yielding spring wheat varieties were available to growers. As a result, a significant number of farmers abandoned winter cereals and never looked back.
Gross and other winter cereal advocates have been battling perceptions around winter wheat for about a decade.
He said he has learned that farmers (like most people) are creatures of habit. Once they’re out of the habit of seeding winter cereals, it’s not easy to get them back.
His career of promoting winter cereals, managing conservation programs and preserving habitat for ducks has come to an end, but Gross is hopeful about the future.
Winter cereals do make business sense for farmers – as a way to reduce the workload during spring seeding and the fall harvest and to manage weather risk.
One possible path forward is that the federal government has been encouraging Canadian farmers to plant cover crops, which keep a living root in the soil when a cash crop is not in the field.
Gross is hoping that environmental groups soon recognize the value of winter cereals and provide incentives to encourage adoption.
“Winter wheat does the same thing (as a cover crop) and in a profitable way,” Gross said.
“It puts down carbon in the shoulder seasons – the spring and the fall.”
As for Gross, he will shift his immediate focus to things other than winter wheat.
“I’m going to take the summer off and golf with my buddies. That’s my two-month plan. After that, we’ll see what happens.”