The Yara Incubator Farm is a place to collaborate with industry partners to work to find solutions for Western Canadian growers.
The Yara Incubator Farm is in its fourth year at Discovery Farm Langham. The project investigates ways to improve nitrogen use efficiencies, water use efficiency and soil health while reducing environmental impacts to support the goal of maintaining or growing the food supply and food quality.
Digital tools are also being utilized to aid in the decision making and gain valuable knowledge on what the yield potential is of the crop. This provides the opportunity to be responsible in our fertility decisions as well as contributes to improving return on investment.
Yara’s trials are conducted on a large 40-acre plot in conditions like those Western Canada farmers would face. The Yara Incubator Farm project compares their baseline treatment on 20 acres containing nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and sulphur to the Yara Complete Nutrition Program on the other 20 acres.
The Yara Complete Nutrition treatment contains the same rates of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sulphur as the baseline treatment, with the addition of YaraVita PROCOTE BCMZ and an application of YaraVita Flex foliar nutrition. YaraVita PROCOTE contains boron, copper, manganese and zinc applied to dry fertility for easy application and to access the complete nutrition. YaraVita Flex is a foliar fertilizer containing phosphorous, potassium, zinc, boron, molybdenum and nitrogen. It provides relief to any hidden hungers the crop may be experiencing and improves the plant’s ability to thrive during periods of environmental stress.
The digital tools that are being used on the farm by Yara are contributing to the knowledge and results found over the past two years. Soil moisture probes have been measuring root activity at varying depths, as well as how much water each treatment is using daily.
Over the past two years on the Yara Incubator Farm, results show that the Yara Complete Nutrition Program has developed a deeper and more active root system, utilizing on average 16% more of the available water in the soil in wheat and 18% in canola (2021).
Partnering with Discovery Farm Langham allows Yara to work with others in the industry, such as technology providers, equipment manufacturers, researchers and suppliers, to address the challenges that Western Canadian farmers face. It allows farmers in Western Canada to visit these plots at Discovery Farm, see the results for themselves and have this knowledge impact the decisions being made on their farms.
Access the Discovery Farm Langham Field Reports
The Field Reports are an annual overview of all activities that happened at Discovery Farm Langham during the growing season including demonstration research, events and knowledge transfer.