[Scene opens with a shot of two rows of soybean plants. The Soy Masters badge and "Field Notes" overlaid on it. Drum and guitar music plays in the background. The text “Growing Soybeans in 2020” and “Opportunities and challenges drive planting decisions” shows. Scene switches to Bryce (Soybean Product Development Agronomist) seated indoors, speaking to the camera.]
BRYCE: Every year is different; that goes without saying. Doesn't matter if you're in Western Canada or anywhere else in North America or the world. Every year we have different environmental and agronomic challenges that we're dealing with. I just think when we look over the past three years certainly we've had some unusual challenges. So 2017, 2018, in some cases in 2019 has represented the driest three year period that we've seen in, realistically, the past hundred years. 
[Scene switches to camera panning a row of soybean plants].
BRYCE: So I think this has led to a lot of growers saying, I really like soybeans in their rotation. It’s another high-value crop I can grow. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: It's breaking up my disease cycles from other crops and spreading out my planting, spreading out my harvest, my in-season management. 
[Scene switches to closeup of soybean plants in a field]
BRYCE: It's giving me new marketing opportunities. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: I just don't know based on these past three years if I get enough rainfall in the long run to really successfully grow soybeans on my farm. 
[Scene switches back to shot of soybean rows. The text “Understanding production fundamentals increases success” displays. Drum and guitar music plays in the background. Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: We want growers to be successful on their farms, whether that's growing any crop they have or soybeans. 
[Scene switches to pan soybean plants in a field]
BRYCE: It's not something we take lightly introducing a new crop into the different areas of Western Canada. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: So we've spent a lot of time looking at all the environments that we see across the three provinces and trying to understand based on all the fundamental factors that we know go into growing a crop. 
[Scene switches to zooming in on rows of plants in soybean field]
Whether that be soil type, whether that be seasonal or periodic accumulations of rain throughout the year, whether that's CHU, whether that's spring or fall frost. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
Are we going to be successful in the long run based on our climate information? 
[Scene switches back to shot of soybean rows. The text “Factor rainfall into your planting decisions” displays. Drum and guitar music plays in the background. Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: I think when we start to look at some of these maps, let's take the seasonal accumulation. So that's April 1st to September 1st. 
[Scene switches to graphic displaying soil zone rainfall amounts across Western Canada]
BRYCE: Across Western Canada we see a lot of variation: we can see anywhere from as low as 7 inches of seasonal rainfall way up to 14 inches. A lot of variation within there and certainly when you look at that there's definitely some areas Western Canada where you probably will not be successful in the long run based on some of this information in growing soybeans. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: But then again you start to look at that and there's a lot of areas like it that get over ten plus inches of rain.
[Scene switches to graphic displaying areas in Western Canada where there is sufficient rainfall for soybeans]
BRYCE: Especially when this falls in an area that has a darker soil texture that can retain that for a longer period of time that definitely helps a lot. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: The other factor we like to talk a lot about is August rainfall: how important that factor is and driving that seed and pod retention.
[Scene switches to graphic displaying rainfall in each soil zone in Western Canada]
BRYCE: Increasing seed size; that really influences yield late in the season. We get a lot of growers that say you know I think I dry out a little bit more towards the end and that's true in some cases. August is typically a little drier than June and July but it's not like we don't get any rain at all. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: In a lot of cases we're getting to two and a half plus inches of rain within August which is enough to grow a good crop of soybeans. 
[Scene switches to a closeup of a soybean plant]
BRYCE: So I think when you look at all this we spend a lot of time talking about averages. What do we get on average? But you ask any grower within any region how often you see average and that answer could be almost never.
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: Weather is variable. So I like to say we should look at a lot of the odds of any given amount of rainfall, so how frequently we might see a drought cycle. 
[Scene switches to graphic displaying frequency of seasonal rainfall amounts in Western Canada]
BRYCE: Eight inches or less where we start to see longer periods of dryness. How often do we get 15-16 inches plus? So that's when we get a lot of periods of saturation where soybeans are gonna handle that better than almost any other crop that we have out there. 
[Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: So it's really important to have these multiple crops in the rotation the benefit from when it gets too dry, benefit when it gets too wet, and then all these crops are gonna do well when we're somewhere in the middle. 
[Scene switches back to shot of soybean rows. The text “Soybeans - 2020 and beyond in Western Canada” displays. Drum and guitar music plays in the background. Scene switches to Bryce seated indoors, speaking to the camera]
BRYCE: I think that growers spend a lot of time looking at what happened last year, especially if we're looking in the past three years to make plans on our cropping situation going forward. I think in 2020 and beyond it really pays for a grower to look back at some of this climate information and saying, “what does my farm look like in the long run? What can I expect to have in a long period of time and build a rotation around that that includes multiple crops to benefit from all these really dramatic variations and environment that we see to really stabilize our profits over time.
[Scene changes to a white screen with the Soy Masters badge. Guitar music plays in the background.]