Hello, my name is Scott Day, and I am the Director of Agronomy at Fall Line. I grew up on our family farm in southwest Manitoba, Canada—near the exact geographical center of North America. This means we are very far from the moderating effects of any ocean. As a result, our climate is as extreme as anywhere on earth where food is produced. Last month, in early February, the temp dropped to -60 C (-76 F) at our farm, while in the summer we can expect to hit temperatures well over 38 C (100 F).
In Manitoba, we can be frozen solid for 6 months or have periods in the winter that are warmer than some days in the summer. These weather extremes also mean we have very limited periods of time in which to plant, grow, and harvest a wide variety of crops. Through all these weather and farming challenges, canola has risen to be the most important crop in the Prairies region of western Canada.
It is from my experiences with this crop as a farmer, agronomist, and researcher that I have identified locations where canola can have a future on our Fall Line farms as well—even in locations that are on the other extreme of the weather envelop from Manitoba.
My two careers in farming and agronomy started basically on the same day back in the spring of 1989 when in the morning I received the loan approval to buy my first piece of farmland (which was adjacent to our farmyard). That afternoon, I was offered the local Extension Agronomist position by the Manitoba government; both opportunities I had not thought I could have achieved until much later in life.
For the next 23+ years, I worked for the Department of Agriculture in various capacities in my home region while continuing to farm with my father. When I joined Fall Line Capital at its genesis 10 years ago, I left the government. But I still farm with my family today, living in Manitoba in the summer, and living in the USA in the winter.
Continuing to farm keeps me up to date with a wide variety of the dynamic issues that pertain to farming, and it helps me stay current with some of the latest activities in the canola industry—a crop that is as important to our farm as it is to the broader Prairie region.
Canola: Background and Agronomic Benefits
Canola was created in the early 1970s from the efforts of two plant breeders at the University of Manitoba who managed to vastly reduce the erucic acid and glucosinolates levels commonly found in rapeseed. These compounds help make rapeseed a highly effective natural industrial oil, but they create serious problems for the plant material to become a quality food & feed source of oil and protein.
The term “canola” is derived from “Canada” and OLA (oil, low acid). Today canola generally describes any of the Brassica Napus and B. Rapa types that are suitable for human consumption, and rapeseed refers to the older genetics that are still grown for industrial purposes. Virtually all the yellow-flowered crop you will see from the roads across North America will be canola (not rapeseed). Of those 23+ million acres (21 million in Canada and 2 million in the USA), about 90% of the crop will be GMO.
Growing Canola
Canola, being a brassica (like mustard, broccoli, kale, and cauliflower), has several rotational advantages in a multi-crop farming system. It is a deep tap-rooted broadleaf crop that can scavenge certain nutrients better than many other crops. It does not support mycorrhizae populations, yet it can still extract phosphorous effectively.
When its big leaves drop to the ground as it matures, those leaves release soluble P back to the soil that can benefit subsequent crops. Canola, like its cousin mustard, quickly becomes an aggressive, bushy plant that will choke out other weeds early in the growing season.
These are some of the reasons why brassicas in general are highly sought-after seeds in cover crop mixtures. Adding brassicas to your cropping system also helps break the disease and pest cycles of many of the problems found in the common row-cropping systems in the USA.
However, it is not the universally perfect rotational crop, because it can cycle some of the diseases that are found with soybeans and other broadleaf crops. Despite that, it is excellent in a rotation with corn, wheat, and many other crops. The canola seed is typically 45% oil, so it has a much higher oil yield than many other veg oil crops.
Plant to Table—and Beyond
In addition to the agronomic benefits of growing canola, there are also the very tangible health benefits from having such a brassica plant in your diet and your livestock feed. About 15 years ago canola was given special health status by the FDA for its ability to help to reduce heart disease, along with other diseases. It has a great combination of a high smoke point, flavor subtleness, an excellent amino acid balance, and is very low in saturated fats.
For these reasons, it is now the third most common source of food oil in the world after soy and palm oil (which have some inferior dietary qualities). In fact, if you look at the total acreage of all crops in Canada and the USA, canola becomes the fourth most popular crop behind corn, soybeans, and wheat. If you were to take all the barley, oats, sorghum, rice, and cotton acres in the USA and add them together, it would still be lower than the total acres of canola in our two countries.
So, while it is a relatively minor crop in much of the USA it can be considered a major crop in North America. The canola meal left after the crushing process is highly coveted in several animal rations but especially for the dairy industry as it provides a unique balance of amino acids that are often lacking with other veg oil meals.
While canola has been primarily developed for the food market, it still can be used in industrial situations with equal success compared to some of the rapeseed varieties. Canola has a low freezing point, a suitable iodine
content, great lubricity, etc.—all pointing to it being a better source of biodiesel and biofuels compared to many other plant oils, particularly soy or palm oil. It is this growing demand in biofuel use that has really propelled increases in canola acres and prices in recent months.
Current Limitations and Concerns
Some of the raw seed and oil from North America is now ending up in Europe, as their ability to grow the crop has been eroded because of the EU’s banning of certain pesticides that were important to the production of canola/rapeseed in Europe.
Western Canada is where most of the world’s exported canola is grown, but it cannot easily grow more canola because current crop rotations there have maxed out canola acreage, with roughly one-third of all acres now being canola each year on the Prairies. With record-high canola market prices right now, 2021 should see canola acres on the Prairies pushed even farther.
However, disease and pests remain a constant threat in a tight rotation, and with planting to start in a month’s time, a severe drought is already shaping up on the Prairies this spring. Canola is less resilient in a severe drought compared to wheat and some of the pulse crops, so this will be an interesting year for canola indeed!
Canola is a cool-season, broadleaf crop so it cannot handle significant heat at flowering. It grows best in regions of the world where it is relatively cool during most of its vegetative stage, and especially where there are cool nights during flowering. For Canada this means it is a summer crop. But for Europe, Australia, and South America it is mainly grown as a winter crop.
In the USA, there are regions where it can thrive as a summer crop along the Northern Plains. However, in the South all the way down to Louisiana it appears to have the most potential as a winter crop. Much of the problem with expanding acres in the USA has been due to a lack of infrastructure to support the crop, and a dearth of places to market/sell it in those regions that are well-isolated from the existing canola industry.
Also, the crop’s performance relative to the main crops in the Southern regions have not held up to the economic potential of corn, soybeans, or even wheat in the South. However, that is all changing with better hybrid canola varieties, these excellent prices, an expanding world market, and US grain companies increasing their support and marketing regions for the crop.
Looking Forward: Fall Line’s Work with Canola
It is with all this in mind that we at Fall Line have started to incorporate canola into our farms across our regions. Fall Line’s most Northerly farm in Northeast Montana has been growing canola since our purchase 6 years ago, and it quickly became one of the most important crops on that farm. 2020 saw our first year of spring canola on a few of our fields in Barron County, Wisconsin. Farmer Eric Weber, with help from Thiago Lima, Fall Line’s regional field manager for that region, was able to plant, manage, and harvest a very good crop of canola with only one minor adjustment to the planter.
All the other activities with the crop, including harvesting and handling, were done with the farm’s existing corn and soybean equipment. The harvested canola was delivered directly to a canola crushing plant only an hour and a half away (very good basis). This plant obtains all its current canola from far away by rail, so a truck delivering the canola seed directly to the facility was for them a unique and welcome sight.
The crop provided some additional benefits: its timing in relation to planting, spraying, and harvest were a bit out of sync with those actions on the main crops, so this allowed for better use of equipment and labor during the whole cropping season. Like the canola crops in Montana, the crop in Wisconsin was produced with the latest and best Liberty-Link tolerant variety.
This provided excellent weed control with a different mode-of-action compared to glyphosate. It should have also provided an excellent block to many other pests and diseases that will also build up in a traditional corn/soybean rotation. If many US farmers had access to a high-quality Liberty-Link tolerant crop in their rotation 10 or 15 years ago, then much of the current issues with glyphosate-resistant weeds could have been significantly reduced.
Guessing the potential yields in regions where Canola has not been grown is risky and foolish, but we were lucky with what we hoped for in Wisconsin with Eric’s first try, and we know we can build from there.
Increased canola acres are planned there for 2021. We are gaining confidence that growing canola can be a very worthwhile addition to the corn/soybean rotation there from a strictly financial standpoint and not just an agronomic standpoint.
In addition to the benefits of canola that I have stated in the other regions, one of the significant advantages for this crop in the South could be from its ability to mature earlier as a winter crop compared to winter wheat. This would allow our farmers to plant a follow-up summer crop sooner and therefore have greater potential with their summer crop than they would expect following a winter wheat crop.
Case Study: Condrey Farms
It was this in mind that late in the fall of 2019 Condrey Farms planted some winter canola on a small field on one of our farms in Northeast Louisiana. Wade Condrey, Manager of Southern Operations for Fall Line, managed this crop.
The crop emerged quickly and grew surprisingly well, despite it being seeded by airplane in less-than-ideal conditions. We had high hopes for the crop, but epic and excessive rainfall later in the season, and a less that perfect start, kept us from achieving a reasonable yield on the field in the spring of 2020.
However, there were enough positive aspects that encouraged us to try this again in the fall of 2020. This time the field was better prepared, and Condrey used a light rolling harrow to incorporate the seed. The crop looked excellent until the unexpected and infamous ice and snowstorm gripped the entire region in mid-February.
Then, geese decided they enjoyed the crop a great deal when the rest of the region was under snow. Wade hired young people to scare the geese away. When things started to warm up the geese left, and we witnessed the tremendous resiliency that canola often exhibits when it is young. It grew back from the areas of the plant that were not frozen or eaten and started to bloom again!
Joaquin Oliverio, who is a Vice President with Fall Line, has experience with Canola from his farming and agronomy careers back in his native Argentina. Joaquin has been instrumental in helping organize and coordinate our canola trials in the South.
We are already thinking of what we will do with canola next year in Louisiana and continue to see its potential as part of a more robust cropping system for the South.
If you want to learn more about canola from my extensive experiences with the crop, feel free to drop me a line. scott@fall-line-cap.com
