(Alice McFarlane/farmnewsNOW Staff)

By Alice McFarlane

Agriculture Roundup

Agriculture Roundup for Tuesday October 8, 2019

Oct 8, 2019 | 9:00 AM

It’s been a tough year for barley producers.

The difficult harvest has had an impact on quality meaning there won’t be as much malt barley available.

Brent Johnson is the vice chair of Sask Barley and he farms east of Strasbourg.

“If you were lucky to get some [barley] off before some of the bigger rains you probably do have some malt quality,” Johnson said. “Definitely the snow that we got last week and just those four-day rain events, really, really hard to keep your germination through those type of things and malt barley is definitely suffering.”

Johnson said the quality specifications are wider because of the shortage of malt barley.

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Producers still have a week to express their opinion on farmer saved seed.

The government’s proposed seed royalty models include trailing royalties or an end-point royalty.

The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) want farmers to take part in the Western Canadian Farm Groups Producer Input Survey on the proposed changes to the seed royalty structure for cereal crops.

APAS President Todd Lewis said it’s important for farmers to take a few minutes to express their opinions.

“It’s pretty clear in the responses we have received so far that Canadian producers have a lot to say and feel very strongly about the seed royalty issue and they deserve to be heard,” Lewis said. “We encourage as many producers as possible to take the survey before Oct. 15. These changes will affect producers first and foremost and their views need to be considered in this decision.”

The survey can be found here.

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The grain dryers have been running non stop for the past month. Farmers need to be sure there hooked up and operating in a safe manner.

SaskPower has released a buyer’s guide for buying and installing gas-fired grain dryers.

A check list of six items have been set up to help with that process.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF