ON-FARM THOUGHTS: Tis the season to Reflect, Recharge, and Read  

by Larry Wegner

It is the merriest time of the year.

The Christmas festive season is always a time to gather with family and friends to catch up with them and everything in their lives, the good and the bad. I enjoy reaching out to people I have not seen for a while just to say “Hello, how are you” and if they answer me, it is all good. Read on..

ON-FARM THOUGHTS: Adapting to Regenerative Agriculture 

by John McGregor, MFGA Extension Support

Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA)’s 7th Annual Regenerative Agriculture Conference is now in the books for 2024. Many of the 275 registered - mostly farmer- participants at the conference attended in hopes of learning more about regenerative agriculture. Especially as it pertains to profitability of their own farms. Read on..

On Field Thoughts: Of Birds and Bison

by Jacques Saquet, MFGA Board Member

Fifty-four years ago, during the last week of August, I was working at Riding Mountain National Park (RMNP) as an interpreter taking tourists out on a car tour. At one stop, we walked a short distance to a lookout on the north side of a steep gorge with a vast view of the valley before us and the distant farmland to the east. Read More..

Indicators Signal Right Direction  

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni/Wall of Fame Inductee

Following up on my most recent MFGA Blog, I wanted to continue the topic around how we as experienced grazers/soil health advocates explain to a new grazer or someone trying to up their level as an agriculture producer about some things we might know that perhaps they might not.

Read On..

Grazing System Phasing: Sorting Through and Finding The Right Pasture Management Systems For Your Farm and Herd

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni/Wall of Fame Inductee

As I go about my day, from time to time, my thoughts will pop up and make me think, “why do we do that, what if I do this instead, where do we go from here”? Read on..

ON-FARM THOUGHTS: Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes?

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni/Wall of Fame Inductee

“Who’s gonna fill their shoes”, is a famous tribute to dearly departed and famed country music radio heroes by country music superstar George Jones. But this song title could very well be our beef industry asking the same legitimate question right now as we have seen a large exodus of producers in the cow-calf and back grounding segments of our industry. Read More.

ON-FARM THOUGHTS: Sharing My Thoughts For New Ag Producers

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni
Our sons, Herb and Max, are taking over the operations of our farm. I am constantly told by them that they know it all and, well, they really do not care to know what I am thinking. Read more.

ON-FARM THOUGHTS: When Life Hands You Lemons: Make Lemonade

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni
A “black swan event” is a term well-used in stock market analysis to describe an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Read more.

MFGA Blog: Drought and Methane: Working with the Elephants in our Rooms.

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni
January 17, 2023 - It must be time for Manitoba Ag Days; indeed, like every year it seems, the weather is cold. But what a great gathering of the agriculture industry every year in Brandon. I would like to wish a Happy New Year to all who take the time to read my always-percolating thoughts and my own personal views of our forage and associated industries. Read on..

MFGA Blog: October Brings Tricks and Treats for Farmers to Deal With

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni
October 24, 2023 - Thanksgiving has come and gone. Halloween is next up on the calendar. For some of us, this year has been a treat, for others, the trick has been another dry growing season. Forage crops were hurt by the low rain fall causing lower-than-average yields. But the annual crops have been a pleasant surprise. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Moisture Perspective: Quarter Section Rain Bingo

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Board Alumni
August 15, 2023 - Are we as bad off as we think we are or are told we are? We are having another warm and sunny day again. The provincial weather station that I can see off our front step has been hit by a shower again. And we missed it again. This has been a year of quarter section rain BINGO. If your number is called, you get some moisture on your field and in many cases, the quarter section beside that same field is dry. At our family farm north of Virden, Manitoba, we have been wetter than some of our neighbours and drier than others in this year’s moisture received. All we can do is work with what we receive and try to get the most use from it. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Spring is here. Finally.

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Producer Relations
May 24, 2023 - We now, finally, have spring. Everyone is into their “go mode”. The crop producers are putting seed into the ground. The soil is still cold for this time of the year, but seeding is happening. The livestock producers are busy being midwives to the stock. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Mixed Messages From the Field

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Producer Relations
April 21, 2023 - Mother Nature sure has been giving us mixed messages lately. And, judging by this week’s weather, she seems to have forgotten about the start of spring. I am sure hoping this last brush with winter will be all we get before we can get into the long-awaited and busy spring season. And then, we will be looking for something else to talk about. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Planning Season Always Busy

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Producer Relations
March 10, 2023 - It is planning season, and I must admit as I write this, it is a cold one outside again today, the kind of crisp, brisk Prairie day that takes your breath away. However, we all know, the stock must be fed and cared for, there is grain to deliver to the grain terminals and seed to buy or get cleaned for the new crop year. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Jolabokaflod: My Regen Ag Christmas Book Flood for You

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Producer Relations
January 4, 2023 - I’d like to wish you all and your families a prosperous 2023. The other day I heard about Jolabokaflod, an Icelandic tradition of giving books as Christmas gifts. I checked into it and sure enough, Jolabokaflod is when books are given with beer and chocolate. I also learned that Jolabokaflod translates into "Christmas Book Flood” and after our recent winter storms in southern Manitoba, I thought I would give you a list of a dozen Regen Ag Books and the authors that I have learned from, enjoyed and heartily recommend.  Read on…

MFGA Blog: Knowing Cost of Production Helps Manage Risk

by John McGregor, MFGA Extension Support
October 11, 2022 - When one talks about cost of production (COP) they normally refer to the average cost of producing one unit of a commodity (e.g. $135 per ton of hay or $1550 per calf). This value is calculated by totalling all of the costs associated with a farm enterprise and dividing that total by the output (yield) produced. This seems at first like a very simple formula. However, total cost of a farm enterprise frequently includes different cost categories that must be estimated and managed independently. Read on…

MFGA Blog: The end of the growing season

by Larry Wegner, MFGA 2022 Regen Ag Conference co-chair
September 21, 2022 - Most of us are now in full swing in preparing for winter. The school buses are back on the country roads picking up students as a new school year gets rolling again. In many ways, we “old grazers” are just like those students: we never really stop learning new ways of doing thing to improve our management. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Managing Unseeded Acres with Annual Cover Crops

by John McGregor, MFGA Extension Support
July 27, 2022 - The end-of-June 2022 Manitoba Agriculture Crop Report stated more than 150,000 acres were planted after the June 20th final crop insurance seeding deadline. Additionally, the report estimated there were over 880,000 acres still unplanted due to excess moisture and that there still remains nearly 700,000 unseeded acres across Manitoba. Read on...

MFGA Blog: What a difference a year makes

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Past-Chair
July 11, 2022 - It is so beautiful to see the difference that one year can make to our forage crops. I think it is almost safe to say the drought is broken and is behind us. Read on…

MFGA Blog: High Nitrogen Prices and Hay Production

by John McGregor, MFGA Extension Support
April 27, 2022 - When looking to improve pastures after a drought, one of the points to consider is whether to use fertilizer nitrogen (N) to improve productivity. This becomes questionable given the price of fertilizer this year whether the benefit that fertilizer provides is affordable. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Spring Has Arrived, the Countdown is On

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Past-Chair
March 29, 2022 - After the seemingly long winter we have endured, spring kind of snuck in the back door on our calendars this year with not much fanfare. I must admit that I am still counting down the days until the springtime delights that warmer weather brings. These include ditching the winter clothes, the birds coming back to nest, snow melting and the first shots of green grass. Read on…

MFGA Blog: A Third Alternative: Pastured Proteins

by Zack Koscielny, MFGA Board Member
Feb 8, 2022 - As a regenerative livestock farmer, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I waded into the ‘protein debate’ we seem to hear much about. A key focus of our farm is pastured proteins. Regenerative-managed, pasture-raised beef, pork, chicken and eggs offer a unique win-win-win situation in terms of farmer profitability, animal health and welfare as well as human and environmental health. Read on…

MFGA Blog: MFGA’s 2021 year in review: Drought and Regenerative Agriculture

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Past-Chair
Jan 6, 2022 - A year ago, as chair of the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA), I sat down and wrote a blog containing a few of my thoughts around preparing for the impacts of the drought I could see we were in. In hindsight, as the year played out, no one could have imagined the depth of the drought we had to deal with in 2021. Even leading up to it, any weather expert who would have predicted that the Interlake and Parkland areas would be among the driest regions in the province for the summer months would have been looked at with sceptical eyes. Who would have thought that a drought could ever take such a major grip on the edges and in-between two massive water bodies? Read on…

MFGA Blog: A Chair's Farewell to Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Chair
Oct 26, 2021 - The 2021 drought has been by far the most impactful that we have ever had to deal with. This is our fourth consecutive year of drought and dry conditions and it looks like it will continue into the spring of 2022. We can only hope the drought will break next spring with the return of regular snowfall and spring precipitation. My repeated drought advice as we head into winter is not to rebuild your livestock numbers until your forage has recovered. Always remember that the harder the drought is on your soil and forages, the longer the recovery required. On our family farm near Virden where I farm with my wife Rosemary and sons Max and Herbert, we have had three different green ups and growth periods and then we had a total burn off due to following dryness. What has that done to our root reserves? How will that effect next year’s forages growth? Time is a great healer, but we must try and manage for it. Read on…

MFGA Blog: Planned Recovery from Drought

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Chair
Sep 7, 2021 - Soil health expert Nicole Masters will tell you that “a drought is no different than a flood, fire or anything that has major effects on the biology and soil life”. As many of you are aware, Nicole presented at our 2020 MFGA Regenerative Agriculture Conference (posted on the MFGA Youtube Channel) and did a great job kicking off our conference. Previously, I have heard Nicole state on other presentations that the “severity of the action has a bigger effect on recovery time than anything else”. That is how bad, how long or how intense was the effect. For those of us that ranch and run livestock herds in the Northern Great Plains this is the 2021 drought that we have endured this year. According to Nicole, the more intense and impactful the effect (drought); the longer the recovery must be to get back to status quo. Read on…

MFGA Blog: In a Farmer’s World: Talking Does Help

By Larry Wegner, MFGA CHAIR
July 8, 2021 - In today’s fast-moving world and social-media influenced times, simple talk can be cheap. But to Manitoba and Prairie farmers, ranchers and producers struggling to cope with hard fields, hard times and harder decisions, simple talk can be so rich and meaningful. “How are you doing?” Read on…

MFGA Blog: Annual Grazing Charts Signal Need for Proactive Producer Actions

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Chair
April 29, 2021 - As we make our way into mid- May, I felt this would be good timing to jot some thoughts on the forage industry in Manitoba. In our farm’s system, we declare a rain event if it produces more than 25 mm or one inch of rain in 24 hours. Looking back at our family farm’s grazing chart for 2019 and 2020 (*grazing chart is a record of where the cattle grazed, how long they grazed there and the grazing conditions such as rain, temperature and forage yield) we had one rain event in June 2020 and then have to go back to August of 2019 to the last rain event. Of course, there have been local squalls, spring snow dustings and micro-bursts that have provided smaller moisture amounts that have helped keep plants growing and stay green while dampening soil. Read on…

MFGA Blog: MFGA 2021: Where do we go from here?

by Larry Wegner, MFGA Chair
Dec 31, 2020 - I love the Christmas season, the good food and drink and the company and conversations with family and friends. I am not that fond of commercial Christmas shopping and making sure every gift is right for the person it is bought for. On that front, I am “Bah Humbug”. But the time between Christmas and the New Year holidays is my time to reflect on the past year and use that reflection to help plan ahead for the next year, usually with optimism. On our family farm near Virden where I farm with my wife Rosemary and our sons Max and Herbert, we are closing the books on 2020 plans and looking back at whether we accomplished our 2020 goals and what we need to adjust for 2021. I was at a conference many years ago and the speaker said “failure to plan is to plan to fail” that stuck with me. We have to have a plan, then we monitor the plan, then if action is required we adjust, re-plan and again monitor. With the year’s end right in front of us, we are looking back to evaluate how we did as we head into 2021. Read on…