Harvesting with NDFB: Ep 1 - Canola Harvest

Join hosts Emmery Mehlhoff and Alisha Nord as they begin a new season of Straight Talk with NDFB, “Harvesting with NDFB.” We are visiting with farmers across North Dakota as they bring in the harvest. 

In the first episode, our hosts visit with Kristie Sundeen from Brocket, N.D. Kristie and her husband harvest canola on their farm. Kristie visits with us about raising canola, the challenges that come with harvesting, and changes to canola farming over the years.

Join us as we find out whether the 2024 canola harvest was a boom or a bust!

And if you'd rather watch the podcast in video format, check it out here.

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme]

[00:11] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff 

[00:16] Alisha: And Alisha Nord.

[00:17] Emmery: We are your Farm Bureau duo bringing you your competitive edge. In this season of Straight Talk with NDFB, we are traveling across North Dakota visiting with farmers about their harvest season. We visit with farmers about their growing challenges, harvest strategies, and whether the 2024 crop was a boom or a bust.

[00:38] Alisha: Today we had Kristie Sundeen from north of Lakota. We talked about raising canola, the challenges that come with harvesting, and how techniques have changed over the years.

[00:50] Emmery: Join us as we harvest across North Dakota. 

[Straight Talk stinger]

[00:56] Emmery: Well, welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I'm here with Alisha, the first of our "Harvesting across North Dakota with NDFB" series. And today we are talking with Kristie Sundeen. Kristie, why don't you go ahead, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your operation and what you are harvesting today.

[01:15] Kristie: So, my name is Kristie Sundeen. I farm with my husband, Austin. We have two kids. We farm northeast of Devils Lake by Brockett. Our operation consists of my husband, my father-in-law, and then we have one full-time hired man that helps us, and we haven't actually started harvest yet. We were supposed to start actually today, actually yesterday on some canola, but we got rain last night, so unfortunately, we're not able to get started yet. But we did desiccate our canola, so our plan was to straight cut our canola this weekend.

[01:52] Emmery: So I live in the Spiritwood area, and we used to do canola down here, and back then we just had to put it in big swaths, you know, like, cut it down for swaths. And I don't think we ever desiccated. I don't know if that was popular at the time because we stopped probably 20 years ago. Plus, is that...when did you guys start doing that as, like, a normal practice of harvest?

[02:18] Kristie: Um, so we used to swap canola. Actually, my dad, my brother farm up by Langdon. They still swath canola up there. Um, it's kind of a grower by grower decision. Some growers actually do both, depending on how they want to spread out their harvest. Uh, if you swath, you can actually get on it a little bit quicker. If you straight cut, it's usually a little bit longer. Down in the southwest part of North Dakota and even west, not a lot of guys desiccate, but it's more of an arid climate, a little bit drier. But you get up into this northeast, and we're just, we have such a short growing season. We're always humid, and we're always wet, and you're always waiting for stuff to dry down. So to be able to timely harvest canola, if you want a straight cut, you've got to desiccate it. We started desiccating about, oh, I would say it's probably at least six years ago. So we've been straight cutting our canola for the last six years. We don't do a lot of canola on our farm. We used to do quite a bit more, but we've kind of pared it down and do a lot more corn and soybeans. But we usually do anywhere from 200 to 400 acres of canola a year.

[03:22] Alisha: Have you guys always raised canola on your farm, or what drew you guys to raising canola?

[03:27] Kristie: So as long as my husband and I have been together, we've been raising canola. I grew up on a farm that raised canola. I think we started raising canola back in the '90s. I would have still obviously been in, like, middle school, high school at the time. But that's about the time period that we started raising canola. That's when canola, you know, became a hybrid. The acres really started spreading from that point on. Before that, it was open pollinated. But it's been a really good cash crop. High inputs, obviously, but from a commodity standpoint, it has been a really good cash crop for most guys.

[04:00] Emmery: Where do you market your canola? Do you just bring it to the local elevator and they put it on the train for you, or....

[04:06] Kristie: It depends on the year. But actually, we tend to haul straight to a plant. We've hauled it down to Enderlin. We've hauled to Hallock before, too. So we tend to haul it straight to the end user, the crush plants. But you can haul it locally, obviously, but there's a little bit better market, especially if you're set up to do some long distance hauling. You get a better cash price if you can haul it direct.

[04:30] Alisha: And I know nothing about raising canola. My family's never raised canola. And honestly, my neighbor, that's kind of the first time I've really seen canola around my area. I live near Emmery. I live near the Valley City area. And that's kind of the first time I've seen canola was this year around our area. Otherwise, I've never seen canola really grow, bloom, and being harvested. But what are the main challenges of growing canola and harvesting canola?

[04:58] Kristie: So canola is a specialty crop, you know, even though there's about 2 million acres in the U.S. It's still is kind of a specialty crop in that aspect. It's an oil seed. Acres are kind of spreading throughout North Dakota. And part of the reason is obviously with being able to straight cut now. You know, it's easy to get into it. You know, before when you had to swath it, you couldn't straight cut canola. You know, guys had to own a swather. Well, nobody wants to go out and buy a swather. So, you know, there wasn't as many acres. Now that guys don't have to do that and they can jump in and out of it. There's a lot more guys that do that spreading into other acres. Part of it is because canola does better on the semi marginal ground than like soybeans do, you know. So if growers in some of those other areas, like Valley City area, Jamestown, down there, they have some ground that's probably not as good for soybeans and that soybean, those fields are bringing down their aph yields or something. There's guys that are more interested in growing canola just because they've been able to get a good yield off of it, you know, 2000 plus pounds off of it on semi-marginal ground. And the price has been good. So that's part of the reason why the acres have spread a little bit, is that it's kind of a good fit for guys in a rotation. 

You can put pretty much any crop onto canola, except probably dry beans and sunflowers. Obviously, you need a year rotation in between there. But it'll rotate with corn, it'll rotate with wheat. You could actually do it back to back with soybeans also. So it doesn't have any rotation restrictions in terms of like herbicides that you're putting on it. Guys have kind of jumped into it a little bit on that aspect. It's not always an easy crop to grow. I would say sometimes it's a little bit finicky from the planting season. You want to have a really nice seed bed. Sometimes emergence can be a problem with canola and you run into a lot of early season pests, you know, so, like, flea beetles are a big one. If canola's just starting to come off the ground and we have flea beetles coming after them, there are seed treatments we use, you know, a dual seed treatment. So you're using a neonic plus you're using a secondary seed treatment that's gonna help. But flea beetles are still a big issue when it comes to canola. And guys will have to do some post spraying. But if you can get canola past that first early stage, um, it's a pretty hearty plant. It's just that first, probably the four leaf stages. That's usually when you run into the biggest issues when you're trying to establish that stand.

[07:31] Emmery: You said it's a higher input crop. Is that just because of the amount of fertilizer or spray in general or, why? Why is that?

[07:41] Kristie: No, it's. It's the fertilizer. I mean, it's a high input crop from a fertilizer standpoint. You need nitrogen, you need phosphorus, you want to make sure that your potassium level is good, and then it's a high sulfur user, too. And you want to use sulfate sulfur because it's a readily user. So usually you're putting like 25 pounds of sulfur down. So it's even a higher user of sulfur than like, corn is. High nitrogen user, too. So you're looking at 150 to 200 pounds of N that you're putting down. So from a cost standpoint, it's, the seed is fairly expensive. You're looking at probably $60 to $75 an acre just for the seed. So, you know, the beginning costs on canola are pretty expensive, you know, especially when you compare it to, like, soybeans or something. 

Herbicide costs are not horrible on canola just because there's not a lot of options. Basically, you've got Roundup, you've got liberty, you've got Clearfield, and then you can spray grass herbicides in season. That's about all you can spray. Depending on the herbicide tolerance of the seed that you bought. You're for sure probably going to end up spraying a fungicide on it. It's very susceptible to white mold. So most guys, if they grow canola continuously in the rotation, eight out of ten years, you're going to be spraying a fungicide. It's kind of an automatic thing that's going to happen within canola. And then obviously, if you're straight cutting and you're in the northeast, you're desiccating. And desiccating costs are going to be anywhere from $10 to, oh, $16 an acre, and that's not including the cost of a plane. If you decide to do it by air.

[09:18] Emmery: What are you looking at per bushel, then yield, and then price wise?

[09:24] Kristie: Most guys don't talk in a per bushel when it comes to canola.

[09:27] Emmery: It's been a while, like I said.

[09:29] Kristie: Yeah, in Canada they do, but in the U.S., most growers, it's a pounds per acre type thing. Most guys have a yield goal. You know, you own the traditional canola areas and their yield goal is probably 2500 pounds. You go in some of the fringe areas depending on what type of ground it is, you're talking 2000 pound. Anything below 2000 pounds for most guys is a failure on canola. From a money standpoint, right now the commodity price of canola is in the tank. I don't know if anyone's watched the news, but Trudeau has kind of started a little bit of a trade war with China. And basically the canola market is based out of Canada. So it's on the Winnipeg Board of Trade on ice there. So it's based up there on the pricing. And obviously there's exchange rates that come into play as it comes into the U.S. But if they mess things up, up there, it affects the board price. And right now, canola is probably... the price right now is in the tank. And I think most guys are a little upset about that, but there's really nothing we can do about it. It's not even a U.S.-based issue. It's a Canadian-based issue. So we're just going to have to ride it out at this point. But twenty cents and higher is kind of where most guys want to be.

[10:43] Emmery: Do you put your like beforehand, do you pre-price, or do you just have to take it whenever you bring it in?

[10:50] Kristie: You can contract, depending. We didn't. We don't typically do any contracting. We don't do enough acres for us to warrant it. And usually we don't like to contract until we know the crop is going to be close to making it just because we're not sitting on bushels to buy, buy it out or anything. Yeah, so we did not do any contracting on canola. There are some guys that do, but the pricing wasn't really... It's been fairly flat the last year, so there hasn't been a lot of fluctuation in movement. So I don't know that there's been anything that has triggered guys to want to price the canola. There's a lot of stuff that actually sat in the bin last year because guys just didn't want to sell it at those prices.

[11:30] Emmery: So as far as the dynamics of harvesting on your operation, is it a family affair? Do you hire custom group? Do you do it all yourselves on the weekends, on the non-rainy days? Tell us a little bit about how you guys do harvest.

[11:43] Kristie: So we just have one combine. We used to have two, but we ran into where we were struggling to find enough people to operate all the equipment. We are about a 4500 to 5000 acre farm, but we have about 1700 acres of corn. So you're only operating one combine in corn anyways. So we traded in two combines a couple years ago and we went and upgraded to a bigger combine, bigger header and just one combine. My father-in-law usually is the one that runs the combine. My son actually runs the grain cart when he's not in school. And then we've got one full-time hired man who, he bounces into everything depending on what we need him, he'll run grain cart, he runs truck and, and then my husband runs semi and truck. So he kind of corrals everybody on that. I will say for myself, I have a full-time job, so I have not been in the combine as much or the grain cart. That's usually where I am, is in the grain cart, but I have not been able to be in the grain cart as much as I used to. My job has kept me a little bit busier in the last couple of years.

[12:43] Alisha: Yeah, you have some miles to put on on the road.

[12:46] Kristie: Yep. Yeah. I travel a lot for my job, so it, it makes life interesting. The plus part about that, I will say is that I home office for my job. So if I am around home, especially if I do end up running grain cart, it usually is in corn harvest because my son is in school. So usually if we need extra people or extra hands and we have more trucks that are rolling at that point in time, then usually I'm in the grain cart for a couple of days. I'll take days off work.

[13:13] Emmery: Can you tell us a little bit about what you do for work?

[13:16] Kristie: So yeah, I'm a field agronomist for Pioneer Seed Company. I really like my job. I've been with Pioneer for about five and a half years. I've been in the industry for over 20 years, actually. I've worked retail. I did crop consulting for about seven and a half years independently. I've worked for Bayer Crop Science, I've worked for BASF, and now I'm with Pioneer. So kind of seen all aspects and different points of how the business works on the retail side, you know. So from retail to the major corporations that produce everything that we end up putting in the ground and using on our crops, it's kind of an interesting dynamic where I can see both sides, I can see the grower side. I'm on the grower side, but I'm also on the other side, the corporate side.

[14:01] Emmery: That's so interesting. So with the canola seed, do you end up. Do you have to buy that, like, corn and beans every year, or are you able to, you're not able to...

[14:09] Kristie: No, they're hybrids, so you have to buy them every year. You'll buy a hybrid from a company and you'll plant it in the ground. And. Yeah, I mean, and there's different... there's Clearfield canola. There's Liberty Link canola. There's Roundup Ready or Optimum GLY canola. And then they are some... there's one company that, two companies, actually, I think, that have stacks, so they have a Roundup Ready Liberty Link stack product, too, that's on the market.

[14:36] Alisha: Since you guys started raising canola, what's the biggest change that you have seen?

[14:40] Kristie: The straight cutting is probably the biggest thing. When I first started, so I graduated from college a long time ago, back in 2004. Back then, you know, everything was swathed. All the canola was swathed. Interstate Seed was big back then. There is no Interstate Seed anymore. They were bought by Monsanto. But the difference is with the companies, you know, that you're buying from has changed. Being able to straight cut canola has really changed that marketplace. You know, the acres were very limited before you could straight cut just because guys had to have special equipment to really get into it. And now you see a lot of canola grown in, I would call them fringe areas. So areas that are not traditionally known for growing canola. Hawley, Minnesota, Barnes County in North Dakota. There's a lot more acres that are going into canola than were before. And I think part of that, huge part of that has to do with the fact that we're able to straight cut canola, whereas back before you didn't. 

Hybrids have really changed. Yield goals have increased. I think the biggest negative that we've really seen is more diseases. Diseases have really started to become a big problem. There's a new one that's relatively new, I guess it was identified in 2014, but over the last four years, I've run into it quite frequently in the traditional area, and that's Verticillium. Right now, there is no.... really no way to control it. They're looking at genetics to try to find ways to be able to control it, but there's no fungicides on the marketplace or anything that do any type of control of that disease. So I think some of our traditional areas are going to start widening out rotations and moving away from canola a little bit so that... It'll be interesting to see what happens with that marketplace over the next how many years.

[16:32] Alisha: So do you guys strictly use canola oil in your house for cooking and baking?

[16:38] Kristie: For the most part, yes, I have canola oil. I do have a little bit of olive oil for just frying some stuff on the stovetop. I do like the olive oil a little bit, but yeah, baking and everything else. All I buy is canola oil. I don't, I don't buy vegetable oil. Sorry. And I probably should because my husband would say, well, we grow corn, and I'm like, "Well, yeah." (laughs)

[17:00] Emmery: Awesome. Well, thank you, Kristie, for joining us today and I hope things dry out for you this next week. And blessings on your harvest season. Stay safe out there and thanks again.

[17:11] Alisha: Thank you.

[17:12] Kristie: Yep. Thanks, guys.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[17:16] Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. Thank you for joining our new season "Harvesting with NDFB." If you have any questions or would like to be on straight TaLk with NDFB, contact myself or Alisha at emmery@ndfb.org.

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