Herbicide resistance will sneak up on you if you don’t change up your management practices from time to time. Steve Shirtliffe works to help farmers develop strategies to keep resistance issues at bay. He is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, and I caught up to him at the recent CropConnect conference at Winnipeg,… Read More
Author: Dale Leftwich
Dale Leftwich farmed for over twenty years and throughout that time worked as an agronomist, seed manager and businessman. He has been on the Boards of SaskCanola, Canadian Canola Growers and Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan. He also helped develop the documentary License to Farm.
It was billed as an invitation to celebrate the coming into force of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement For Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), as Canadian Minister of International Trade Diversification Jim Carr made the final stop of a cross-Canada tour with trade commissioners from Global Affairs Canada at Saskatoon. The event was meant to convey a… Read More
There are a lot of anxious canola farmers in Canada at the moment – and with good reason. One of the most important export markets for Canadian canola has suspended imports from one of Canada’s largest and most storied grain companies, Richardson International. The most common feeling seems to be that it is just politics… Read More
When news announcers talk about “geo-political uncertainty,” or “bi-lateral trade disputes,” it all seems quite remote from the lives of most people. For Canadian farmers, though, it often hits very close to home because the overwhelming majority of Canadian agricultural production is exported. This is why when news that one of the Canada’s largest agriculture… Read More
The images from smartphones and dashcams are seared into the minds of most Canadians. The May 2016 fire that started out as a plume of smoke on the horizon moved into Fort McMurray, Alta., with such speed, fury, and persistence it became became known simply as”the beast.” The person who was in charge of fighting that… Read More
Farmers know that being efficient with fertilizer is economically sound and required, environmentally. The problem is, that oftentimes the process is not quantified, so, the public doesn’t have any idea about the kind of stewardship already taking place on farms. There is also a need for more data so that best practices can be benchmarked,… Read More
Should I or shouldn’t I plant soybeans this spring? This is a question on the minds of many farmers as we head into spring of 2019. For a few years, it looked like soybeans were going to take over many acres across the southern Prairies, but a couple of bad years for soybeans have caused… Read More
Things are looking up for the barley market. That’s the message from the SaskBarley annual general meeting held recently during CropSphere at Saskatoon, Sask. “I think the industry has never been stronger. We’re seeing huge exports on the feed side going into China, we’re strengthening in the malt side, both domestically and globally, and we’ve… Read More
Although the wheat market is often considered a stagnant one, it is in fact growing, says Marlene Boersch, owner of Mercantile Consulting Ventures. The market only seems stagnant because supplies have been growing as fast as demand. This may be changing, however, as Russia’s — one of the world’s largest wheat exporters — upward trend in production may… Read More
When most people hear the term biotechnology they think GMOs. It’s important to know that biotechnology is much more than just GMOs because understanding this helps us to understand how scientists are helping to provide food for the seven billion people on the planet. In this episode of the Wheat School, Dr. Harpinder Randawa, research scientist with… Read More
Katie Dilse has infectious enthusiasm that can easily get a room full of people engaged. She’s a farmer, a truck driver, and lives in the least populated county in the United States, so you might not think public speaking would also be added to her long list of duties. But once a person listens, and can… Read More
What a difference a couple of years make. It was not that long ago Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SaskPulse) was sitting on a $30 million surplus and the projection was for the surplus to just get bigger and bigger. Now, after what may have been the most disruptive year in Saskatchewan’s pulse growing history, reducing the… Read More
Over eight hundred people crowded into TCU Place at the end of CropSphere to have an informal consultation on impending changes to Canada’s seed royalty structure. Usually, the end of a conference is marked by a thinning crowd as the last speaker takes the stage, but not this time, as the last item on the… Read More
According to Michael Landsberg, when he first went to his family doctor about his depression the doctor said, in effect, “You’re ok, I see you on television.” Many people make the same mistake that the doctor did. That’s because you can’t diagnose mental illness with an Xray or a thermometer. Landsberg, a former sports broadcaster… Read More
Six new inductees have been announced for the Saskatchewan Agriculture Hall of Fame. The range of experience of these six individuals is an example of just how diverse agriculture is and how many changes have occurred in the span of a generation. Chantelle Donahue, a farmer and vice-president for Cargill, has been a leader in… Read More