Corn for profit in western Manitoba
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- Published on Friday, April 15, 2016
Photo by John Dietz. Roland Unger’s corn fields in Arden, last June.
Submitted by John Dietz
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MacGregor, Arden, Cypress River, Boissevain, small towns in western Manitoba, have something else in common. This year, a local farmer at each location was one of the top 10 in the 45th annual Manitoba Corn Growers Association (MCGA) yield competition.
The competition began in 1971. The MCGA is a not-for-profit organization representing more than 1,300 farmers who grow corn. It has an 11-member board of directors.
Arden area corn grower, and MCGA board member, Roland Unger, occasionally enters the growing competition. His 2015 entry, 219 bushels per acre (bu/a), put Unger in second place only to Baker Colony at MacGregor (241 bu/a) for the 2015 yield competition.
Others in the top 10 included Wynd River Farm at Cypress River, sixth, and Drumads Farms, Boissevain, ninth.
MacGregor is about 110 km north of the US border and about 160 km northwest of Manitoba’s traditional silage corn production areas. Arden is about 40 km northwest of MacGregor.
“The West was really well represented this year for entries,” MCGA agronomist Morgan Cott said in a telephone interview. “There’s certainly a possibility of higher yields outside the (Red River) Valley.”
She added, “The majority of acres are grown in the Valley and a bit east of the Red River, (but) we’ve seen westward expansion in the past few years. Corn is moving into the Portage-MacGregor area; it’s quite successful there. We have some in your (Arden) area, too.”
The agronomist visits each farm in the competition. At a place chosen by the grower, she takes a 100-foot sample, collecting all the cobs by hand from two adjacent rows. At the MCGA headquarters in Carman, the entries are dried, shelled and weighed.
The 2015 event had 37 farm entries. Nineteen varieties were Pioneer brand. Others included Thunder (10) and DeKalb (3), Dow seeds (3), Legend (1) and PRIDE (1).
Unger’s variety was Legend LR9474 VT2PRIB. It is rated to mature at 74 days. It has genetic resistance to European corn borer, plus corn earworm and fall armyworm protection.
“On this variety, the average yield was about 170 bushels. It was the highest yielding competition entry that I’ve had. Another variety did go better than that last fall, but it had to be combined to figure that out,” he says.
Total corn acres in Manitoba in 2015 were down to about 210,000 acres. However, the MCGA reports an average yield of 138 bu/a – the highest ever. For the most part, quality was excellent with high test weights and ‘very acceptable’ grain moisture due to the long, open fall weather.
For comparison, North Dakota growers planted about 2.56 million acres of grain corn last year, but the state average was only 128 bu/a, according to the USDA.
While 2015’s competition did not match the all-time provincial record (271 bu/a in 2013 by Baker Colony), it was an excellent growing season in western Manitoba.
“It just turned into a perfect year that we won’t forget very soon. The season was just extended,” Cott says. “It shows we can grow high-yielding corn outside the Valley. The ability to grow corn in western Manitoba is definitely there and we have earlier varieties that are helping the acres to increase.”
Corn heat unit accumulation was about 10 per cent more than the official rating in 2015 for both Arden and MacGregor.
Unger made some changes in his corn management that also may have helped improve the 2015 yield.
“I had assistance from EchelonAg with a field prescription this time. It wasn’t on a new piece of equipment, but I did figure out how to do variable rate planting as well as variable rate fertilizer,” Unger says. “Then, we topped her up when the corn was three or four feet tall with a floater and some liquid nitrogen fertilizer. That was new, too.”
At anything more than 120 bushels an acre in western Manitoba last year, there’s no doubt that corn is a profitable crop.
It may not happen again for a long time, but at better than 170 bu/a, western Manitoba even “beat the Valley” producers in 2015.
