Kelvin Heppner, field editor for RealAgriculture, has been reporting on Canadian agriculture since 2008(ish). When he's not working on a story, he's usually in a chicken barn or a field, as he also farms with his family near Altona, Manitoba.
Ceres Global Ag Corp. has suspended plans to build a canola crush plant and refinery along the Canada-U.S. border at Northgate, Saskatchewan. The publicly-traded company says it has decided to halt the project “due to a variety of factors, including but not limited to, inflationary pressures resulting in higher costs than initially projected and shifting… Read More
CN Rail says it has received 72-hour strike notice from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents around 750 signal and communications employees who work for the railway. Union members could go on strike as soon as 11AM eastern on June 18. “CN has negotiated with the union in good faith and will continue… Read More
Several organizations that represent grain farmers from across Canada are raising concerns about the federal government’s push to add environmental incentives or criteria to business risk management (BRM) programs, such as crop insurance, AgriStability, or AgriInvest. As part of the negotiations for Canada’s next five-year agricultural policy framework, federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau is urging… Read More
A Liberal election promise to expand and rename Farm Credit Canada has been cancelled, according to the federal agriculture minister. The party’s platform in the fall of 2019 included a promise to “merge existing financial and advisory services currently scattered between several agencies into Farm Credit Canada, whose mandate will be expanded and enhanced.” The… Read More
A private member’s bill aimed at reducing the risks of biosecurity breaches and trespassing on farms was re-introduced in the House of Commons on May 30. Bill C-275 was brought forward by Foothills MP and Conservative shadow minister for agriculture, John Barlow. Like Barlow’s previous Bill C-205, the new bill would amend the Health of… Read More
Organizers of the National Poultry Show (NPS) in London, Ontario, have decided to cancel the 2022 event due to the ongoing highly-pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak. The Poultry Industry Council and Western Fair Association say there are no plans for a further postponement of the major Canadian poultry show that was to be held June… Read More
Manitoba farmers struggling with wet conditions this year will have a few more days to plant soybeans while still receiving full crop insurance coverage through the Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation (MASC). A permanent extension to the AgriInsurance seeding deadlines for soybeans was announced by Manitoba Agriculture and MASC on May 20. The deadline for full… Read More
Health Canada has issued a long-awaited clarification on how it will regulate different forms of plant breeding, including newer gene-editing methods. Genetically modified crops are deemed “novel” under Canada’s regulatory framework, requiring an expensive multi-year safety review before being approved for sale, but there was uncertainty about whether gene-edited crops would also be treated as… Read More
The Chinese government has lifted restrictions on imports of canola from Canada’s two largest exporters that dated back to March 2019. Richardson and Viterra were banned from shipping canola seed to China more than three years ago. Both companies are listed as approved for exporting canola to China in a government document that was published… Read More
The Canadian government is still looking at additional measures to reduce the impact of 35 per cent tariffs on fertilizer from Russia and Belarus, according to the federal agriculture minister. However, Marie-Claude Bibeau isn’t saying what those measures could be. Farm groups, including Grain Farmers of Ontario and Grain Growers of Quebec, have been calling… Read More
Not all glufosinate ammonium herbicide formulations are the same. This is especially important to note in areas that grow both glufosinate-tolerant (aka LibertyLink) corn and canola. A corn grower in Ontario, or in the Midwest U.S., who orders Liberty or glufosinate from a retailer would likely receive a formulation containing 200g of active ingredient per… Read More
The principles around fertility and nutrient uptake in soybeans are the same, whether you’re farming in Ontario, the U.S., or Western Canada, but there are some unique or special factors to be considered by soybean growers in western and northern growing areas. Following up on this Soybean School episode from last month with Horst Bohner… Read More
Greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizer were reduced by approximately 20 per cent in the Canadian government’s official 2022 greenhouse gas inventory report thanks to an update to how nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from fertilizer are estimated. The reduction, however, will not count toward the federal government’s mandate to reduce emissions from fertilizer by 30… Read More
Federal, provincial, and territorial (FPT) ministers of agriculture from across Canada met in Ottawa on Monday to discuss the next agricultural policy framework ahead of their annual meeting in Saskatoon in July, where they hope to sign a new five-year agreement. The ministers, nine of whom attended in-person, spent their morning session discussing want they… Read More
50 years ago this summer, Soviet agents traveled to North America in the middle of the Cold War and secretly bought massive amounts of grain, driving up world prices in one of the most significant events in the history of commodity trading — later dubbed the “Great Grain Robbery.” Russ Crawford, who had a front-row… Read More
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