Friendly farmer competition in the Maritimes helps grow grain yields

PEI farmers are putting their best crops forward this fall, hoping to win an annual competition organized by the Atlantic Crop Enhancement Network, formerly called the Yield Enhancement Network. It was created in 2019 through a partnership between the Atlantic Grains Council and Agriculture Canada. You know, we find out things about how to grow the crop better on PEI, how to increase our yields, and make a little bit of a friendly competition out of it. and get some really good data on the side. When the competition started in the Maritimes in 2019, it was just a handful of crops, such as spring and winter wheat. That list has now grown to include barley, oats, soybeans, grain corn, and silage corn, providing more information for researchers as well as farmers. We really didn't have baseline data for a lot of these crops in PEI. There's a ton of potato data, but the grain farms really were flying on their own. Farmers who take part in the annual competition share what they are doing on their farms. Things like fertilizer, how they deal with pests and disease, when and how they plant and harvest. So everyone can see what is working. Kind of hand-pick some of the things that somebody else might be doing that you're not doing and then take it home and apply it to your own farm and see how it goes. Ryan Hamill has been part of the competition since it started and has been a winner. He says before the competition, farmers often kept their best practices to themselves. It gives you something to go by and something to say like this yield is achievable and it's been proven and if you're not there, then you can push forward and try to get there. Organizers and participants say the real winner has been the grain industry in the Maritimes, which has been given a boost. You know, we can do this in the Maritimes. We can hold our own with the rest of the country and all over. So I think it really has improved people's practices for sure. Organizers will announce the winners once the harvest is in, and they have calculated the yields for 2026. Nancy Russell, CBC News, Emerald.