POBC tours oat plots at Research Centre

Research Scientist Dr. Jennifer Mitchell Fetch hosted  representatives of the Prairie Oat Breeding Consortium  (POBC) and other interested groups on a tour of oat plots at the Cereal Research Centre in Winnipeg on July 22, 2008.

POBC was established in 1996, a unique blend of private industry and government  interests and funding. Industry partners include Can-Oat Milling, Cargill, Emerson Milling, FarmPure Seeds, General Mills, Grain Millers Inc., Pepsi-QTG, SeCan and Austgrains of Australia along with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC).

Dr. Mitchell Fetch says the wide range of interests provide valuable insights for the AAFC team, including oat breeders, cereal pathologists and food chemists. She notes that they are able to suggest specific breeding objectives targeted towards milling, food quality and agronomics.
 
AAFC has so far released nine oat cultivars from the POBC "stable" and by 2007, some 75 per cent of  Manitoba oat acreage was seeded to those varieties.

The major goal is to provide growers, marketers and processors, (and ultimately, the consumer), with disease-resistant varieties which grow well in Canadian prairie conditions. Many of the POBC varieties are virtual household words in the oat world of the Canadian prairies. These include AC Ronald AC Furlong, AC Pinnacle, AC Leggett, AC Jordan, AC Gwen, and AC Medallion. Two varieties have been registered in Australia: Graza 51 and Graza 80. Dr. Fetch notes that the widespread use of these recently-developed oat varieties "represents a proven return on investment  in cultivar development."

Dr. Mitchell Fetch can be reached at the AAFC Cereal Research Centre by telephone at (204) 983-1460 or by email at jfetch@agr.gc.ca.

Click any of the images below to see a larger version.

     
Left, the group at POBC tour; centre, oat stem rust; right, Tom Fetch, Phil Bailey of SeCan, Lorne Kyle of POGA and Jim Downey of SeCan.

     
Left, Bob Anderson of POGA; centre, Grant Morrison of QTG Canada; right, Bruce Roskens of PepsiCo QTG.

POGA holds grower meetings in Alberta

Is it time to talk about $5 oats?

That was the question which the Prairie Oat Growers Association (POGA) took to Alberta in early April of 2008, through a series of grower meetings at Grande Prairie, Barrhead and Vegreville.

POGA President Bill Wilton reports the meetings were well attended both by farmers and the seed and processing side of the industry.

“We put the five dollar oat question squarely into the hands of David Drozd of Ag-Chieve, a Winnipeg-based analyst,” Wilton notes, and what Drozd had to say surprised some people. “While we still are some ways away from five dollar oats both on the cash and futures market, we see that it is an achievable target and we think the chart formations David showed support that conclusion.”

David Drozd runs a  farm advisory business, and he is an analyst who follows the charts closely. In fact that has been his business for more than twenty years. “We don’t always know why the charts are pointing us in a particular direction, but most often they are right,” says Drozd, who notes that often it is after a chart formation has formed that the real reasons for major market moves become evident.

The Alberta meetings also featured grower information from oat breeder Dr. Jennifer Mitchell-Fetch from the AAFC cereal research centre in Winnipeg, who co-ordinates oat work at the LaCombe research station. Agronomic information was supplied by two Viterra agronomists, while other speakers covered grain transportation (Grande Prairie) and the clearing house concept being discussed at meetings across Western Canada. Freda Molenkamp-Oudman of the Alberta Marketing Council office supplied direction on what next steps would be if growers decide to form an oat commission in Alberta.

Following are presentations made at the meetings, in both PowerPoint and PDF formats.

Market Outlook - Ag-Chieve (Power Point) (PDF)
Wild About Oats - Viterra (Power Point) (PDF)
Growing Oats - Viterra (Power Point) (PDF)
Oat Varieties, Diseases and Research - Agriculture Canada (Power Point) (PDF)
From Field to Food - Can-Oat Milling (Power Point) (PDF)
Forming a Commission in Alberta (Power Point) (PDF)
Status of Producer Checkoff Programs - POGA (Power Point) (PDF)

Invitation and Program, Barrhead (PDF)
Invitation and Program, Grande Prairie (PDF)
Invitation and Program, Vegreville (PDF)

POGA 2007 Conference and AGM

The 2007 conference was held in Winnipeg Nov. 29.

Please see the POGA AGM and Conference page for downloads (PDF and PowerPoint) of presentations made at the conference.