MARCH 2018 GERMINATION.CA 51 SEED TREATMENT DO YOU KNOW WHY A SEED TREATMENT SHOULD BE FLEXIBLE? Nicholas Petruic, SeedGrowth Specialist, Bayer Canada @NickPetruic • nicholas.petruic@bayer.com • bayer.ca THIS TIME of year, farmers are thinking ahead to seeding. It’s the perfect time to plan, and most of that planning begins anywhere from six to eight months before the next growing season begins. But there’s an old adage about the best-laid plans of mice and men. Things can turn on a dime as far as crop selection goes. Last year, a customer of mine was plan- ning to seed oats, and as he was in line to pick up oats from his seed grower, his marketer called him and said, “Wheat’s really rallying — do you have time to put more acres of wheat in?” The farmer was able to do that last-minute. This is the kind of situation where seed treatment flexibility comes in handy. Even if your seeding plan changes, the seed treatment you use doesn’t necessarily have to change if it’s suitable for more than one kind of seed. Over the years, working with formulation experts here at Bayer, I’ve gained some insight into this. Characteristics of a flexible seed treatment product are: Robustness. It should control a host of diseases over a multitude of crops and at the agronomic level required. Flowability. It should flow easily in different situa- tions — that’s a huge a benefit. If you’re going from a durum wheat to a barley, the seeds are quite different. Likewise, a chickpea needs to be treated much differently than a lentil. Chickpeas, for example, are bumpy and have a lot of crevasses and are not as easy to coat, especially in cold weather. This is where flowability comes into play. Something with a lower viscosity will flow better onto dif- ferent kinds of seed than something with a higher viscosity. Compatibility. Products exist that can be mixed with a seed treatment to offer protection from pests. Ensuring you use a seed treatment that’s compatible with these add- ons only increases that seed treatment’s flexibility level. This is a constant battle on the farm — economics versus agronomics. Using a seed treatment that is as flexible as possible is like an insurance policy that covers you should the unexpected occur and your cropping plan changes. STORAGE & HANDLING FOCUSING ON STORAGE CAN ESTABLISH YOU AS A LEADER Glenn Friesen Senior Vice-President, Meridian Manufacturing @GfriesenGlenn • gfriesen@meridianmfg.com • meridianmfg.com WE LIVE IN a technological world that seems to be chang- ing faster than we can keep up with. Despite humanity’s tendency to become nostalgic about “the good old days,” technological change is a wonderful thing, and agricul- ture has always been at the forefront of harnessing the power of human ingenuity. Seed/grain storage is a great example. Over the past 30 years we have seen bins change from small, square, wooden flat-bottomed structures holding 1,200 bushels in the early 1960s to galvanized flat storage bins, where a large bin held anywhere from 2,000-25,000 bushels by the 1980s. In the 1990s, aerated hopper-bottom bins with sizes growing to 4,000 bushels became very popular, but were looked upon as a luxury. The hopper bottom is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for a number of reasons. Storage control, labour savings and return on investment (in most cases hopper-bottom bins increase in value over time) are all major reasons for this. We are also moving to bigger sizes in both hopper and flat storage because storage capacities and requirements are becoming larger all the time. All of these changes, however, simply allow us to satisfy our age-old need for storage faster and more effectively. The concept of on-farm storage has remained mostly the same for decades because, typically, market prices are at their lowest in the fall, so for the best profit- ability it is important to have control of seed/grain so that the market and time of sale can be chosen. Shifting weather patterns/climate change also require us to think of new ways to store product. We are seeing a shift in producers wanting to set up grain handling systems with high capacity grain dryers so that the producer can start his harvest earlier in order to overcome the challenges of a wet fall and early frost. Grain drying and aeration including temperature control is also vital because of this. Storage is one aspect of agricultural production that has never fundamentally changed, and has always been key to financially successful farming operations. In fact, focusing on storage can establish you as a leader on your farm and in your circle of colleagues in the ag sphere.