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It is strange times we are living in.
Over the last three weeks, we have received more rain than the four months before. On our little piece of the Earth, we had a total rainfall of three inches till late July and in the last three weeks we have had just over six inches of moisture.
All through our growing season you did not have to travel very far in any direction to have different amounts all through your travels. The local annual crop producers had an average crop but now the land is waterlogged, and they have limited access to do harvest.
When you talk to other producers from around the province you will find that the best discretion of the seasonal moisture is erratic.
We are now seeing some of the best forage growth on pastures and hay fields. Just imagine the fall and winter feed we will have if it does not freeze till after Thanksgiving. We can only dream for now. Most annual crops have increased in value over the growing season, but it only counts if the crop is in the bin and there remains a way to still go to achieve it.
The financial reality is the crop value has increased and so has all the input costs and there are no signs that it is maxed out as of now. It is hard to start buying inputs for 2027 crops before this crop is binned.
We are very lucky to know that we will be able to access diesel fuel, it will be based off world fuel prices, but at least we can still buy it. Many places in the world are looking hard to source enough for their field work on their operations. My question is “will there be enough fuel to source to keep the large freighter ships to haul our products to the consumers around the world”?
Livestock are no better off as we must haul them 100’s of kilometers to be fed out and then again to the processer and then back on the trucks to the consumer. Someone is going to be paying for the freight.
In the beef market to the States there is talk of bringing back mandatory country of origin labeling (M-COOL). Canada and Mexico have had this fight before and have the ruling at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
There is one more thought I have been thinking about, the world population in affluent (read: the ability to buy beef) countries is declining. Who will our customer be in 10 or 20 years?”. We need long-term thinking by our government and our commodity groups to help shape our future.
The world is changing. I think of this as a two-sided coin, on one side is status quo where the motto is “no body move and no will get hurt.” While on the other side it is full of excitement and wonder as all the options are on the table and the limit is how much we are willing to move to create a new future.
It is expected that in the next 10 to 15 years 60 per cent of all farmlands in Canada will be changing hands. Now is the time to look ahead and start planning where you want to be. Good or bad, nothing stays the same. What we did in my time as an ag producer will not be the same practices that my sons will be doing over the next ten years. The smart producers will be embracing practices to help with these new changes, or they can fight to hold onto status quo till they can retire. It will be a personal choice.
You may be asking yourself what this has to do with Manitoba forages and grasslands. It is simple to keep ourselves informed about the world from the other side of the fence lines. Cost of production is going to be critical going forward. Being a low-cost producer matters. In my past couple of blogs, I have written that the beef industry is prime to expand but we need more acres of forage planted to expand the herd. I wonder if there was an increase in forage seed sales this year?
IN my last blog I had a couple of questions from readers on my statement: the USA government has allocated ten million dollars for Regen Ag. I said if they wanted to make the best use of the funds would be to use it for soil health and education of the producers on Regen Ag. For the past, several years in Canada we have had a federal program doing the same thing under the Environment Portfolio. I am not sure how many producers will keep following these practices when there is no more funding. The program has had good usage by producers and has opened some new ideas. I wonder about follow up with producers.
I had Don Cambell of Meadow Lake SASK. Educate me about Holistic Management; it was a great course on trying to plan and be profitable. Don has a little saying he used in the course and over time I have found it rings true, “if you want to make small changes, change the way you do thing, if you want to make big changes, change the way you see things.” So, if I had any say in these projects in the future I would want to see more done on education to change how we all see things.
I believe it would improve the practices that we do on the land.
A month ago, I was asked to talk at pasture tour at Towner North Dakota at the home of Rob Kramer. I shared the talk with Gene Goven, a person I have learned from every time we have met. It was 100 F under the big oak trees with a gentle breeze to cool the sixty-five producers that had come out. We did the pasture walk in the mid-morning to avoid the afternoon heat and after lunch we had an open discussion on pasture management.
Gene and I shared our experiences on several different topics on pasture management. I did not know that Towner was the beef cow capital of North Dakota with many herds from 300 to 1000 cow herds. There is a lot of rolling land and some highly productive flat land. Rob was from a non-farming family and to get his start he ended up buying land full of leafy spurge. He used a medium-sized flock of sheep to first suppress and later control the spurge. Rob has done an excellent job with his pasture management, most of his land is mix of warm and cool season native plants. He has a warm season legume that was having s a good year call a “lead” plant, it has long spikelets with purple flowers.
Rob told me a story about a time his back went out checking ewes lambing; he could only walk a little way and stop to a rest on a fence post. At one of these breaks, he was looking down and questioning his life choices when he saw a roller dung beetle. He mounted one in a small display box, so I got to see it.. Rollers roll a dung ball with their back legs and then bury the ball several feet underground with an egg cluster. From Rob’s place to ours is about 160 KM (one hundred miles), so here it is hoping they will roll their way north.
Big news on the family front. On July first long weekend the new generation of Wegner land managers -Herb, Brooke, and Max - processed the young calf crop. After it was all done Herb got down on one knee and proposed to his better half Brooke. She said yes! When Herb talked to Brooke’s dad that evening, he said you are brave to propose after we work cattle together, I usually am looking into finding the divorce papers.
All the best to Herb and Brooke.
See you all at the MFGA Regen Ag Conference November 9-10, 2026 at the Vic Inn in Brandon.
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