Many of the readers of Agwired may not know that Manitoba, that northern Canadian province, just north of North Dakota, and on the way to Churchill and polar bears, is soybean country. Yep, not millions of acres, but ½ a million if weather conditions are right.
At a recent Bean Symposium, many farmers showed great interest in growing soybeans, but according to pulse crop specialist Bruce Brolley of Manitoba Agriculture, most are still undecided. “We had a lot of growers, but I still get the feeling many growers are kicking tires trying to decide which crops they want to grow,” said Brolley.
The soybean RoundUp Ready seed, most in short supply, growers bought last fall or at least spoke for it.
“Since the bad season in 2004, we haven’t really built up our seed stock for the new varieties and that seed stock is more limited,” said Brolley. “I think for most of the RoundUp Ready, the seed has been spoken for already.”
It’s hard to get a handle on how many soybeans growers will plant this year because of the high intentions in the last two year, but Mother Nature cut those acres both years. “You tell me what type of spring we’re going to have, and I can give you a good handle on acres,” said the pulse specialist. “We have had good intentions to seed a lot more acres than we had. Even last year, we were probably in that range of 220,000 intended; but because of Mother Nature, we only got 100,000 acres in.” He believes there’s interest for around 350,000 acres; others are saying maybe 450,000 and even more.
I hope the food is good at the Waldorf Pam. At least I’ve heard it’s okay. I guess you’ll get to find out when they announce the winner. Good luck!
I already introduced Andy Vance on 
This is just a friendly reminder to enter our 
Meet Mary Irelan, University of Illinois student and about to become, AgWired blogger. Actually, she’ll just be blogging her experiences as a first time visitor to Commodity Classic next week. Her trip is being sponsored by 
Meet Margy Fischer, University of Missouri student and also blogging her Commodity Classic experience right here on AgWired. Both Mary and Margy will begin blogging their trip next Tuesday. All their posts will be categorized by their name so you can easily find them, since they’ll be mixed in with my coverage of the event. Additionally, they’ll also be helping me with my coverage. I was very happy to find out that they will be bringing a digital camera and notebook computer. That’s what the ag journalist of the future must be equipped with.
I think Monsanto is one of the companies that’s “getting it.” They’re already 
Our last session of the day involves a discussion on intellectual property rights and how they benefit society.
When we got to precision farming it was time for a tag team approach again. Getting this session started was Tom Doerge, Agronomy Research Scientist. Tom talked about using yield monitors and doing on-farm testing. He had some great photos of fields in which different treatments were applied side-by-side and in other patters. I will ask if these presentations are available.
Tag team member Todd Prescott got into the services Pioneer offers its customers who want yield mapping done for them. A certain amount of this information is or can be available via internet and computer. So, I asked him what kind of feedback he gets from growers about internet access. I was surprised and pleased to hear him say that farmer access to broadband is growing fast. He sees a lot of DSL becoming available and throughout the corn belt and soybean growing areas of the country. In fact, he’s spoken with growers who now have high speed options. He’s been hearing growers say they’ll have it installed and working as soon as they can now that it’s available in their area.
Jody did a great job and I hope he earned himself a Pioneer logo blazer!