Can we capture the energy from manure that dairy cows produce and use it to fuel the trucks that pick up and deliver milk? The short answer is yes, but we’re not going to see bio-methane pumps around town any time soon. RealAgriculture.com caught up with OMAFRA’s Don Hilborn at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show to… Read More
Month: October 2012
Masterfeeds and Ridley’s Canadian feed business, Feed-Rite, have announced plans to merge. The new commercial livestock, poultry feed and nutrition company, dubbed Masterfeeds LP, will become the second largest feed company in Canada. The new company will operate, among other things, 22 feed manufacturing plants and employ over 500 people in a business spanning across… Read More
If you had to, how would you rank the importance of food safety, the environment, animal welfare, the cost of food and health, as it relates to agricultural sustainability? Which is most important? Which matters less, relatively speaking? These are tough questions, certainly, but ones the agriculture industry needs to ask to better understand and… Read More
Each year my agricultural communications students prepare university-level speeches to compete with others from across the country in the Canadian Young Speakers for Agriculture contest, held annually in early November at the Royal in Toronto. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they don’t, but at the very least they get an all-too-rare platform to stand up… Read More
Priaxor DS from BASF is now registered to provide chickpea, lentil and field pea growers in Western Canada with a pretty good looking fungicide option. Priaxor is actually a combination of two fungicides from different chemical groups (7 & 11). Most notably, it contains the new active ingredient Xemium (fluxapyroxad) which is absorbed into the… Read More
Harvest is always a busy time and weather and mechanical delays are to be expected. But if all is going reasonably well and you’ve got several fields ready to harvest all at once, have you ever thought about the best way to prioritize harvesting one field over the other? Right now, there are still soybeans… Read More
Never say never will be the theme of this story. In a deal announced today, JBS (a Brazilian Packer) will take over the operation of the plant with the option to purchase the plant, the feedyard and the farm. A source informed us that XL Foods employees were told at 5 PM. According to the… Read More
According to Dow Jones Newswires, CME Group has agreed to buy the Kansas City Board of Trade for US$126 million. CME already owns the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). By purchasing Kansas City, CME would then offer wheat contracts for both soft and hard wheats, along with several other agriculture commodity contracts. While it’s not… Read More
Fall is a great time to do a few things: soil test, research soybean varieties for next year and test for soybean cyst nematode (SCN). The three tasks can actually be done simultaneously. As Albert Tenuta, field crop plant pathologist with OMAFRA, explains in this video, now is a great time to test for SCN…. Read More
The 2012 fall feeder run seems to be moving at a very slow pace. Last weeks Canfax Cattle on Feed report would definitely confirm that. All things considered, the slow feeder run may be a blessing in disguise as many of the cattle liners are busy shipping cattle south due to the XL Foods closure… Read More
It was the bumper crop that almost was. Late in the summer, farmers watched helplessly as ripe canola ready for swathing or swaths waiting for the combine were tossed around and blown into trees, shattering on to the ground bushel after bushel of seed. Some estimate that as much as 10 bushels an acre was… Read More
According to the Canola Council of Canada’s press release, president Patti Miller has urged the Standing Committee on Finance to “sustain the momentum of Canada’s canola industry by supporting strategic investments and policy direction in three priority areas – research, market development and market access.” Her comments are in regards to up-coming potential changes to… Read More
In this second episode of the Real Leaders series, Kim McConnell asks Greg Stewart, Farm Credit Canada’s CEO, about farmers’ own perceptions of agriculture and how that impacts another generation of farmers. What’s more, Stewart shares his insight into what, as an industry, agriculture must teach the public and the future generation about farming and… Read More
With less cattle slaughter capacity in Canada, many ranchers and feedyards are concerned about the possibility for the feeder cattle and live basis to significantly widen. A basis that gets too wide makes the current Canadian model unworkable. Currently the live cattle basis sites at 16-18 which is the same as last year at this… Read More
Better timing of manure application with in-crop needs was the motivation behind developing a new low disturbance, shallow injection manure application toolbar. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (OMAFRA), along with industry partners, developed the multi-coultered toolbar to try and find a made-in-Canada solution for in-crop manure applications for not just pastures… Read More