How, and why, the province’s crop landscape has changed over time
By: Matt McIntosh, writer and farmer
There was a time in Manitoba’s agricultural history when cereals reigned supreme. A time when the Canadian Prairie was synonymous with endless fields of wheat, barley and more.
Now, it’s a more complicated and diverse picture.
Though millions of acres continue to be planted with cereal crops each year, recent decades have seen several usurpers succeed in knocking some classic Prairie crops from their lofty heights. Pulses and canola, in particular, have had a significant impact, and continue to change Manitoba’s cropping landscape as new varieties, markets and production challenges wax and wane.
The Soybean Wave
Data from Statistics Canada illustrates the story of what could be called Manitoba’s traditional broad-acre crops. Barley, for example, comprised 1,568,000 acres in 1980, but just 439,373 acres in 2024. Flax covered 210,800 and 21,934 in the same years, respectively. For sunflowers, acreage numbers declined – albeit with significant variation between some years – from 158,800 acres to 36,136.
These declines coincided with growth in other crops, notably canola (294,800 acres in 1980, to over
3,000,000 in 2024). New crops also emerged – canary seed, chickpeas and lentils among others. David Simonot, intelligence and crops foresight and analysis specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, points to the rise of soybeans as one of the most significant trends in Manitoba agriculture. Despite ups and downs, soybeans have grown from some 50,000 acres in 2001, to around 2.3 million acres in 2017. It now ranks as Manitoba’s third largest crop.
Part of the reason soybeans have done so well is the risk-mitigation they afford growers.
“One of the things that’s really attractive to Manitoba farmers about soybeans is they’re a strong diversification play as well…The way soybeans are different is they do well in wet years,” says Simonot, adding that plant breeders have done a particularly good job of developing cultivars well-suited to the different regions within the province.
“Soybeans are also planted later, so the whole growing season is a little offset. It spreads out the work but also spreads out your weather risk. You can have a great year for soybeans and a poor year for wheat, and vice versa.”
According to Dennis Lange, pulse specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, the gradual transition from conventional food-grade varieties to herbicide-tolerant varieties indicates weed control as another driving factor behind the popularity of soybeans.
“The biggest thing was weed control and that farmers were able to clean up some of their fields. It really helped drive the industry forward, along with more earlier maturing varieties,” he says. This fact can be seen in the change in acreage from largely food-grade soybean varieties to herbicide-tolerant varieties over time – from just 38 per cent of soybean acres in 2005, to 98 per cent of planted acres in 2023.
Herbicide-tolerant weeds are a natural concern given the trend. However, Lang says the variety of cropping options Manitoba farmers can help mitigate risk.
“Now we’re starting to see growers who say ‘Hey, we have all these other crops we can grow, and we can grow things with other herbicide packages.’ There are just so many other options. You’re also making sure you narrow up your rows so you have better plant competition, and then you’re also scouting,” says Lange. Going forward, he expects Manitoba’s soybean acres to level off around 1.5 million per year.
Protein Prominence
Simonot says protein’s rise to prominence has been another factor driving interest in soybeans, and pulses in general. Indeed, such interest appears to be raising the value of crops already considered high-value due to its variety of uses – animal feed, soybean oil and human cuisines.
Lange cites the establishment of the Roquette pea protein processing plant in Portage la Prairie, Man. as an example of how market development has, and will continue, to shape Manitoba’s crop landscape. Increasing the number of acres planted with other pulses – fava beans, lupins and others either being actively investigated, if not already grown on a smaller scale – is possible as well. But whether for high-quality plant proteins or some other desirable characteristic, the development of new markets is critical to widespread success of other pulses.
“A lot of it has to do with markets. Markets have always been a challenge. Having an end use has been a challenge. Other pulses will eventually have a fit, but they need to walk before they can run,” says Lange.
On the soybean front, demand for food-grade soybeans has spurred a small comeback in food-grade production, as well as corresponding interest in variety development. Conversely, higher workload and other practical factors may continue to limit the spread of some pulses, such as dry beans.
Rotational Impacts
Significant changes in crop acres don’t occur in a vacuum. Indeed, the impact of more pulses, or any crop, can alter conditions for subsequent crops – and by extension, what farmers do to address problems and seize opportunities. For Ramona Mohr, research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Brandon Research and Development Centre, understanding how crops fit into and change rotational conditions is necessary to inform what challenges growers will face as they change what goes into the planter seeder. This is particularly important as soybeans and canola have come to prominence in what was once a landscape dominated by cereals and canola.
Mohr is currently researching how soybeans and peas – and corn, to a lesser extent – best fit into common crop rotations.
“We’re trying to take a holistic approach,” says Mohr, speaking specifically to soybeans. “So, not looking only at crop yield and quality, but also looking at disease, soil factors, economics of different rotations. We’re trying to get a broad understanding of the performance of these different rotations and how best to fit soybeans into rotation, and what are the optimum rotations with respect to soybeans.”
The rotations being studied include two- and three-year rotations with canola and wheat, plus an additional rotation with a stacked two-year soybean component, followed by wheat. Thus far both the two- and three-year cohorts have performed similarly, but some slight soybean yield reductions in the double-stacked rotation have been noted – something Mohr says they are eying with interest. Slight increases in soybean root rot have also been observed in tighter rotations.
Protein levels in both wheat and canola appear to get a boost when planted after soybeans in some years, but whether soybeans afford any nitrogen benefit in subsequent seasons, however, isn’t yet clear. All these and other questions, Mohr says, will help inform how the Manitoba crop landscape will continue to change, even in limited rotations.
Simonot also points to fertility, and specifically the nitrogen-fixation capability of pulses, as a potential driver of greater change. If a pulse can reduce the cost burden of nitrogen fertilizer in other crops, even by a small margin, Simonot says growing pulses becomes a “very attractive” prospect.
“Ultimately, farmers tend to focus on what’s profitable and works on their farm,” says Simonot.