Dear Editor
I was sorry to hear Vic Hult was hit with pneumonia (Vic's View, Regional Optimist, March 13). I was in Battlefords Union Hospital with a surprise bout myself this January. I was back up to near normal in about 10 days, I hope you are, too, Vic.
The column mentioned the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission and raised the question of who speaks for the farmers. Since I was just elected to the SWDC, I thought I might address this.
When the Canadian Wheat Board was killed, along with losing its ability to extract a premium from the marketplace and its ability to co-ordinate rail transportation, we lost a directed revenue stream for research and development. To replace this the prairie provincial governments created wheat and barley commissions to levy a similar amount of money from sales to invest on behalf of farmers. The mission of the SWDC is (paraphrased) to make Saskatchewan wheat as profitable as we can by agronomic or genetic research, by market development or by education and advocacy. We budget about $5 million a year to do this.
The column also mentioned midge tolerant wheat and one of the first meetings I attended as an SWDC director was with the MTW Stewardship Team. MTW does not kill wheat midge, it is just distasteful to the fly at the susceptible stage. A "refuge variety" at 10 per cent of the wheat population is still attractive to the midge, keeping it happy and still minimizing the crop damage at harvest. Since the midge pressure is only on the susceptible variety, cleaning your own seed for just a few years will quickly reduce the refuge variety percentage to almost nothing. We all know how adaptable nature is and predictions are that the very few midge that still attack MTW now will evolve to become the majority of the population in just 10 years if all that exists is MTW. If the refuge varieties are maintained at 10 per cent there is little pressure for the midge to adapt and we might be good for up to 90 years of midge tolerance.
You can check out MTW and the SWDC on the web or see me at Agrimex.
Glenn Tait,
Meota
