Farmers fund research through checkoffs collected on sales of various types of grains and oilseeds.
The two levels of government and private agriculture companies also invest in new research, but there are always more proposals than money.
Lana Shaw manages the South East Research Farm at Redvers—a producer driven Agri-ARM site. She has been very active in promoting intercropping and co-ordinating research.
Shaw had a chickpea/flax trial that was funded by individual donations.
“I went on Twitter last winter and said ‘I have an orphan trial, who wants to adopt my plots at $200 a plot?”
Shaw received 60 responses and generated enough money to do the trial.
“People got to feel like they were owning a part of the trial and twice a month they got an update on what was happening through a mass email. They got an insider view of the trial, but not exclusive access to the results and I think they liked that.”
Shaw is hoping to access more traditional funding for intercropping trials. There are proposals for plots at Melfort, Saskatoon and Swift Current and there are others she wants to try at Redvers.
“Flax and lentils is an interesting one that I haven’t tried yet. Flax and fababeans is another one because the chickpeas and flax worked out so well.”
Some combinations are tougher than others, but she hasn’t given up on anything yet.
“Dry beans is a tough one, maybe with yellow mustard. The cereals are tough because they don’t play that nicely with others. They are so competitive in monocrops.”
Shaw usually seeds her intercropping combinations into cereal stubble.