The Rural Voice, 1978-04, Page 5Pat I nch spends a good deal of time each winter telling farmers
about the latest des elopments in agriculture.
Pat
Lynch
has the
answers
As soils and crops specialist for
Huron and Perth he has to have a
wide knowledge of many crops,
conditions.
The warm sunshine of April and May lsaves farmers busy,
busy, busy on the land planting their crops. But for Pat Lynch,
Soils and Crops Specialist with the Ministry of Agriculture and
Food, the busy season comes earlier in the year.
By now. Pat has done most of his planting: planting
information and ideas with farmers at meetings all over his area
of Huron and Perth counties. February and March saw him at a
seemingly endless string of meetings and when he was in his
office, fielding a stream of phone calls from farmers with
questions about the latest developments for the upcoming crop
season.
The area he's responsible for means he has to keep up to date
on a wide variety of crops grown by some 7000 active farmers
The area varies in heat units from 2300 to 3100.
He has to specialize in the main crops, he says such as forage
corn and beans and when he is asked questions on smaller crops
has to look up the information because it's impossible to stay on
top of everything. For instance, he says, two companies are
interested in growing mustard in the area which means a whole
new area of knowledge.
One of the biggest areas of concern with farmers this spring,
Pat says, seems to be in ways of cutting casts. There have been a
lot of calls to his office regarding grain varieties, fertilizers,
seeding rates, etc.
One area where many farmers can save, Pat says is in
fertilizing. Most farmers can cut back a little, say from 250 Ib. to
200 Ib. without loss. Another area of saving can be in seeding
rates for forages. The soil and crop associations have been doing
a lot of work in this area in the past few years, and have found
that you can get as good a crop with 10 pounds of seed as with 20
and even if farmers can cut their costs by $12 an acre it can be an
important saving. He used to be a seed salesman himself, he
says, and knows the temptation for salesmen to try to get
farmers to seed a little thicker.
THE RURAL VOICE/APRIL 1978. PG. 3.