The "exceptional" production of cool-season crops such as canola in some regions of the Prairies in 2009 shows the wisdom of sticking to a diverse rotation, one Manitoba expert suggests.

An unusually cold and wet growing season this year led to "really good" production in traditional cool-season crops such as canola, while longer-season crops such as corn and soybeans took a beating in the same conditions.

Speaking on UniversityNews.org, a service sponsored by the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba, crop production instructor Gary Martens last week cautioned farmers against overreacting to this year's yields.

"In some places they did just fantastic and record yields have been established this year in some of those cool-season crops," he said.

"For farmers who have had a really good crop, they will be quite optimistic about probably shooting for high target yields," he said. "For example, I've heard yields as high as 100 bushels per acre for wheat."

A cautious farmer, he said, would instead consider his or her longer-term average yields and think "100 bushels, that's an exception; I'll only budget or target maybe 50 bushels, which is more like my long-term average."

It's too soon to speculate that conditions like these will come again, he said, and farmers who overfertilize next year hoping for another bin-busting crop may be taking a chance.

Martens also cautions farmers against giving up entirely on longer-season crops. "We have had a history of crop loss in those long-season crops but it's still a profitable crop when you get a crop and we do have the crop insurance to back us up."

Growing degree days in 2009 were running almost a month behind the average year in Manitoba, he noted.

In short, he said, farmers "shouldn't abandon a crop that they had a disaster with and they shouldn't overshoot on crops they had fantastic yields with."

Any year of extremes, he said, is a cautionary tale, and the moral is diversification, so crop producers don't run the risk of a total loss by having all available acres in one crop.