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A newly publicized study by researchers with the University of Saskatchewan confirms what many farmers already knew.

Glyphosate, one of the world’s most widely used herbicides, and crops that are genetically modified to tolerate the herbicide have contributed to better soil management through reduced tillage.

The researchers with the university’s agricultural and resource economics department set out to quantify the net increases in carbon sequestration due to the virtual elimination of summerfallow practices, reductions in tillage and the use of herbicide-tolerant crops over three decades. Based on a 1,000-hectare farm, it equates with the emissions from 432 cars.

In the early 1990s, a 1,000-hectare farm under conventional tillage of the time released 15 times more carbon than the average car each year. Two decades later, in the period between 2016 to 2019, that same farm would sequester the equivalent of emissions from 95 cars due to the adoption of reduced tillage.

You could still see snowbanks in the treelines as Manitoba farmers headed for the fields this week, anxious to pick up the pace after yet another cooler-than-normal spring.

Although seeding progress is well behind what’s considered optimal, it’s not nearly as delayed as it was last year after a series of spring snowstorms and rain bogged down field operations until late May and into early June.

“If you look at the five-year average, we should be at 20 per cent by now,” provincial agricultural representative Lionel Kaskiw told this week’s CropTalk webinar.

So far this year, seeding progress province-wide could be measured in the low single digits. But that’s changing rapidly as warm, dry weather starts heating things up.

Provincial farm management specialist Darren Bond was hearing from an unusual number of callers looking for the scoop on farmland rental rates one morning this spring.

One of the most frequent questions he gets asked is how much to pay or charge for rented farmland.

About 40 per cent of the land farmed in Canada is rented. Escalating farmland values have prompted many farmers to choose renting over purchases. Landlords may be disconnected from the local scene and want to be sure they’re charging fair market rates.

But the cluster of calls from one area of the province and the rumoured jump in rental values had him a little confused.