Pulse specialist expects drop in soybean acres

The Manitoba Crop Diagnostic School wraps up today in Carman at the University of Manitoba Ian N. Morrison Research Farm.

Earlier in the week, Manitoba Agriculture Pulse Specialist Dennis Lange took part in the weed presentation and talked about using a conventional versus a herbicide tolerant system and some of the different management practices.

He was asked how the soybean crop is coming along.

"Much better now. I think we're getting some heat and humidity now and things are kind of moving along. I haven't seen any soybeans flowering but I do expect that over the next week or so. We're probably getting into our last application of herbicide on the herbicide tolerant ones here in the next little bit."

Lange expects soybean acres to be down this year.

"For the most part, our acres are probably going to be lower than last year from what I'm hearing so far. Maybe somewhere between 600,000 to 700,000 acres compared to the million that we had last year. A lot of that just has to do with the fact that we had a little later season and even with the change of the seeding deadlines, growers did elect in some cases to switch to other crops just based on where they were located in Manitoba. Overall, crops look good. Fields are relatively clean so far, no real complaints and real good emergence this year."