A Man Outstanding in his Field

Kostia put the girls on the plane at 11:00 on July 2 and at 1:00 picked my colleague and friend Al Scholz off the plane and put him on a train to our place at 5:45 for a three day visit.  Al is on his way home to Saskatoon from Kazakhstan for the summer and will go back late August.  He is working on a minimum tillage research project on a 250,000 ha corporate farm of which 5,000 ha is dedicated to research.  They have had no rain since winter and wheat crops are going backwards very fast.

It has been a great two days so far talking farming with Al.  He is an agronomist and consultant and has 8 years farming experience on his own to back up his technical expertise.  Al says that yields in Kazakhstan are half of Saskatchewan though growing conditions are similar and the big issue is management, not lack of technology.  Fields are too big and managers are not hands on.  No one has an overall picture of what is going on, including top management.

We took the dogs for a walk this morning and stopped to check out a local wheat field. Combines are rolling again today though we wonder if the grain is dry enough.