OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - For a little over a decade, winter canola - the crop agronomists developed from spring-grown canola - has had an on again, off again production history in the southern Great Plains.
Jimmy Kinder, Walters farmer and secretary of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, says the crop works well for him and will remain in his crop rotation for the foreseeable future. Kinder, who is recognized as a member of the Oklahoma State University master agronomist group, belongs to a family of farmers recognized for their creative and productive farming methods.
“We were one of the first to plant winter canola nearly 10 years ago,” he said. “It was created in the first place to disrupt the growth of weeds like rye grass and cheat grass. Rains last winter left many wheat fields with a lot of weeds. Using canola in rotation with wheat helped farmers to reduce the weeds in those fields.”
The Lawton Constitution (https://bit.ly/2fnFYAm ) reports that winter wheat is a crop most farmers can fertilize, plant and then, unless there is an insect outbreak or late freeze in early spring, the crop pretty well takes care of itself. Wheat farmers found winter canola demands more attention from planting to harvest.
Sept. 10 through Oct. 10 has been determined to be the optimum time to plant the crop in the Southern Plains. In fact, to obtain federal crop insurance, that is the time when canola needs to be planted. Canola needs to be planted in a firm seed bed at a shallow depth so it will emerge and grow uniformly.
With many farmers now using no-till to reduce soil erosion and use of fuel and oil in farming equipment, winter canola had problems establishing a stand of young plants. Canola needs to be planted in a clean seed bed, something not found in no-till fields. Seed drills were fitted with coulter discs to clear the seed bed in front of the seed falling from the drill to help solve this problem.
This development caused some farmers to hitch up their plows again to prepare seed beds for planting their canola crop.
Another aspect to growing winter canola has been how to best harvest it. Due the dense growth of the canola plants when the crop matures, it is difficult to harvest. Some farmers remove the header from their combines to cut the plants and leave them in a swath to dry. Other farmers will use a swather similar to one used for hay harvest, wait for the plants to dry and then combine it.
Farmers who are primarily wheat producers would like to be able to directly harvest the crop like their wheat in the adjacent field. And there are farmers who have been successful in directly combining the crop.
Kinder believes this will become an accepted practice in the future with winter canola. He said Canadian canola growers are directly combining canola more than ever before.
“Canadian canola breeders are developing varieties that can be harvested with a combine more efficiently,” he said. “We have been able to combine it like wheat here more and more.”
Another challenge for canola production in the Southern Plains has been finding grain terminals where it can be bought and stored. For several years an effort, mostly successful, was made to get local grain buyers to buy and store harvested oil seed. For a few years, one crop processor, or crusher for oil seed crops, bought and processed canola seed. Producers Cooperative Oil Mill, established in 1944 to process cotton seed, began a full program of providing farmer contracts to get farmers started in canola production.
The cooperative also bought canola seed from farmers and crushed the seed for biofuels, cooking oil and livestock feed. But PCOM no longer processes either cotton seed or canola seed, choosing to move its headquarters to Altus and start buying and selling the seed from the two crops.
Because canola production in the Southern Pains has not increased production acreage in the last few years, Archer Daniels Midland Co., which had planned a canola processing plant in Enid, shelved its construction plans.
“We take our canola seed to Lubbock, Texas,” Kinder said. “Some growers, like the ones in the northern part of Oklahoma, truck their seed to a processing plant in Kansas.”
How to successfully plant, grow, harvest and market winter canola has been a learning process, something to be expected for a crop that didn’t exist before 2004, Kinder said. He remembers OSU and Kansas State University handing out individual bags of seed to selected farmers to get the crop started. A “Canola College” is still held annually in Enid to educate farmers on how to best produce the crop.
Kinder maintains the original purpose of the crop developed by Tom Peeper, OSU weed scientist emeritus, to reduce weeds growing in continuously cropped wheat is still the best reason for growing winter canola
“Winter canola grown in rotation with wheat will clean up wheat fields where perennial weeds cut down on wheat farmers income when they sell their wheat crop,” he said. “An additional reason is canola will bring from $2 to $3 more per bushel than wheat, particularly now with wheat prices being so low.”
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Information from: The Lawton Constitution, https://www.swoknews.com
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