Manitoba Zero Till Research Farm

Lindsay Coulthard is the manager at MZTRA. This farm was set up through a land grant to promote sustainable agricultural systems. The farm has a board of 15 made up of 8 farmers, 3 research personel from the university and a number from government agencies such as Nicole Rabe from Assiniboine Community College. An interesting sponsor is Ducks Unlimited (top right hand of sign) It is an American group that sponsor farming practices that look after habitat that is used by ducks and other birdlife. They do this in order to have lots of birds for their members (hunters) to have birds nthat fly south in the winter.

The MZTRA has concentrated on no-till throughout its cropping program since it’s inception in the 90’s. Lindsay and the board are looking at creating efficiencies with lower energy systems. One area of this is precision agriculture. They have mapped the soil over the farm done to 1:5000 which gives them very detailed soil zones. Nicole is working with Lindsay to create VRT maps to use their inputs more efficiently such as using more fertiliser on higher yielding areas and vice versa on low yielding ones.

Also in this area they are utilising modern military knowledge to fly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) in the form of a toy radio controlled plane to fly over paddocks to take infrared photos. They are then using these to look at crop densities for the need to apply fungicides. This technology could also be used to map nitrogen levels in crop.

Lindsay and one of his summer students have been trialling cell grazing in lucerne pastures compared to native prairies. They are in the second year of this and will use the cell grazing for one more year then will crop those paddocks for a number of years. The aim is to again look at the low energy input that the lucerne has contributed in the form of nitrogen. The returns will be examined in $/ha and the energy inputs and outputs.

Summer Students with Cattle in Cell Grazing Trial