Would you consider growing winter wheat?

[joedales]

Is winter wheat a sound agronomic option? Here is a video from a visit at Farm Progress with Duck's Unlimited.

What are the issues?

Joe



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[TOM4CWB]

Dear Joe,

Marketing Winter Wheat has been such a frustrating experience with the CWB... it would be nice if growers would be given an outline of post Aug 1 2012 options by the CWB and other Marketers in the 'post monopoly' market place.

We really do need to start now... as this will be front and centre in growers minds... as they prepare to plant winter wheat this fall.

[joedales]

Thanks Tom.
Some good points.

Joe

[freewheat]

Winter wheat can be an excellent fit.
However there are many areas where
getting the previous crop off in time is
a rare occurence. The only time I was
able to grow it, was after a year of too
wet to spring seed. It worked well.
Looking at it for this fall, under the
same circumstances. Here it needs to be
in the ground by sept 1 if possible. We
rarely have anything combined by then. I
remember combining in August twice in 19
years...

Of course on the marketing side, clarity
needs to be there. Many of us would
rather not seed something we have no
idea what the options are as Tom states.

[TOM4CWB]

Freewheat;

In the fall of 2010... we couldn't get our winter wheat in the ground until the last week of Sept.

One of the nicest winter wheat crops ever... this year it caught up and looks like will be ready 2nd week of August... which is normal for winter wheat in the Edmonton AB area.

We have carryover Radiant seed from last year... so can supply early plantings as well.

[joedales]

They always mention Ontario...the agronomic conditions are very different compared to the Prairies...Ontario has a longer growing season and usually more moisture (except the last 2 years)

I am in Ontario and we are getting ready to start our winter wheat harvest... likely next week.

This spring weather has been terrible here as well, first cold and wet and now hot and very dry...it has been hard on the corn and soys.

The winter wheat fits well into our rotations and with our growing season.

It also spreads some of the weather risk and field work.

With the current grain prices, corn makes the most money, soybeans second and wheat third but it helps agronomically with a rotation.

I hope might give you another option once the marketing and the agronomics are sorted out...

Take care,

Joe

[freewheat]

Winter wheat here matures hopefully by
the end of August. It only has a week to
10 day advantage over spring for the
most part. We are consistently too
blamed wet and cool!

Our historic yearly precipitation is one
of a very few in Sask with more than 20
inches.

I think our falls have been getting
later, the last 20 years. So that
seeding window is probably changing a
bit.

I sure do want to try it, but we got
another inch last night, and the creek
is running again. If it doesn't dry out
soon, it will be unseedable this fall
anyway. lol

[bucket]

I have acres that should be seeded to it. Then it could be ready to market without the cwb. What a great crop to start out a new era of farming.

[silverback]

Reading and hearing horror stories about disease pressures on winter wheat in southern alberta.

[Braveheart]

We were early adopters of winter wheat. But the last few years canola hasn't been harvested early enough for optimum planting time of winter wheat. In these last few years spring wheat has been yielding 70-85 bushels per acre. With the yield of winter wheat at 85-95 bus per acre margins on spring wheat have been better.

It seems that varietal development of winter has lagged behind developments in spring wheat. Some plant breeders will confirm this and I hate to say it again but, most of those breeders blame the wheat board.

We will only consider winter wheat this year to deal with wet ground. But are on the fence. Seeding is just the start. If it's wet next spring timely fertilizing, spraying and fungi application are tough.

Uncertainty about marketing is a concern. The board always kept what we considered an arbitrary spread between hrs and ww prices. End users may need a visit to the adjustment bureau to rectify that one.

So, for us the jury is still out.

[rhoff]

We plan to be seeding a chunk of our too wet to
seed acres.We have had good drying weather
since farm progress so if it keeps up we should
be able to get it seeded in August.We are going
to seed Buteo so we can sell it to the ethanol
plant or milling market if opportunity exists.I
believe without CWB monopoly winter wheat will
be a really nice cash crop because elevators are
usually empty that time of year.

[checking]

It's a staple on our farm. (No pun intended!)

I like waterfowl in the live form. I like waterfowl hunters, if they ask for a shoot. I don't much care for DU, and it is zero reason in considering sowing WW.

I think this is a plus. A few quarters of last season's WW that received a 5% hail shelling near harvest, volunteered. Our weather didn't allow spring glyphosate spraying without ruts; let alone spring crops, so it continues to grow. It's now filled, even though there was leaf disease. It received no fertilizer and weed spray, and appears that it should make 35 out of nothing.