The Rural Voice, 1983-07, Page 18Canola country
Canola is catching on in some of the cooler counties. Now with a crushing plant a little closer,
canola may be a good cash crop.
Topas is a canola variety from Sweden.
Six metric tonnes were brought into
the country under special license.
PG. 16 THE RURAL VOICE, JULY 1983
by Sheila Gunby
If a farmer plants five pounds of canola
seed on an acre of land, he'll have up to
one metric tonne of seed in three
months.
The seed production from 200,000
acres will take care of one year's crush at
the new canola processing plant recently
opened in Hamilton. That's the target for
1990.
Canada Packers Inc. has been crushing
soybean oil seed at this location for forty
years. The new canola plant has just
been built. The plant will buy all their
seed requirements in Canada. At the
present time, most of the seed comes
from the Prairies but eventually, all the
seed requirements will be grown in
Ontario.
Several Bruce county farmers were
present at the official opening because
they are interested in canola production
or because they have already planted it
for the first time this year.
Mac Bolton, ag. rep. for Bruce county
says he'd make a wild guess at 2,000
acres of canola in Bruce this year. Bruce
county has the heavier soil and cool
region conducive to growing canola.
"It's grown over in Grey too," he says,
"where it's higher and colder, areas like
Dundalk." Canola has also yielded well in
trials at New Liskeard. Tower and Topas
are two varieties he hears a lot about.
Bolton says canola is nearly as
expensive to grow as corn. "It needs the
same nitrogen requirements, Treflan for
weeds and Furadan for insects. You'll
probably have to go over it again in the
summer to catch the Diamondback moth.
It's a crop that is not without problems."
Canola is Canada's major oilseed crop.
It's rapeseed, low in erucic acid (less
than 5 per cent) and glucosinolates (less
than three milligrams per gram of oil -free
meal). The new canola varieties have
been bred for low erucic acid content as
this acid has been linked with heart
abnormalities, according to laboratory
studies. Low glucosinolates, studies at
U. of G. indicate, makes the meal less
likely to cause goiter and organ abnor-
malities in livestock and improves feed
efficiency as well.
Canola is a cool season crop. If
planted early in the season, weeds are
not a problem. With later plantings,
chemical weed control measures are
needed.
One of the worst weed problems is
wild mustard. It can make or break a
crop. If more than five per cent wild
mustard seed is present, the canola
cannot be used for processing. Bolton
says there's a new triazine resistant
variety being developed to counteract
this problem. Current research at Guelph
is directed toward the development of
varieties tolerant to triazine herbicides
such as atrazine or Bladex. Canola is
highly susceptible to 2, 4-D herbicides.
Clean seed must be used and at least a
four year rotation, including cereals
and/or corn.
Canola should be swathed when about
25 per cent of the seeds in pods from the
middle portion of the plant have changed
colour from green to red to brown. At this
stage, pods are still quite green. Swath-
ing too early will reduce grade, yield and
the amount of oil in the seeds, while later
swathing will result in excessive shatter-
ing, according to "Spring Canola in
Ontario" a fact -sheet published by
OMAF. "It's a stiff crop," says Bolton,
"but it does have an advantage of drying
quite readily in the field."
Arnold Storey, Topnotch, at Milverton
says canola production is increasing
rapidly. "There were about 4,000 acres in
Ontario last year. This year, there will be
about 20,000." In Bruce county, he says,
it has multiplied as much or more than
other counties. It's the lower heat units in
Bruce and the northern areas that
enables farmers there to grow better
canola. Southern counties like Middlesex
are certainly not as suitable for this crop.
Out-of-pocket expenses, that is, seed,
insecticide, fertilizer and weed control,
says Storey, are around $60. "The saving
is in the seed; it costs less than corn."
According to Storey, canola is not easy
to store; the fine seeds make air -flow-
through a problem. It should not be
combined over 11 per cent moisture as it
is hard to control heating.
Hermann Weller, from the Hanover
area is growing winter canola for the first
time, just north of Lucknow. Seventy-five
acres (in full bloom mid-June) is a double