The Five Nations Beef Alliance (FNBA) met in Australia for their annual conference. Tours and introductions began in Brisbane, then gradually migrated towards Cairns, where the conference concluded. Some of the topics discussed at the FNBA meetings, included discussions around: the letter of support for a comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, Country of Origin Labelling, consumer preferences, the Young… Read More
Category: Trade
In this edition of the Beef Market Update for late September, Anne Wasko, marketing analyst with Gateway Livestock Exchange, offers commentary on last week’s on-feed cattle report out of the U.S. that added to the bullish outlook there. The hiccup is, she explains to RealAgriculture.com editor Lyndsey Smith, that the same bullish factors of tight… Read More
Today marks one year since the CWB was stripped of its monopoly. This climax of, oh, 40 years (or more?) of bickering between those for and against the monopoly was a great day for many, but also rather anti-climatic. As RealAgriculture.com shared then, August 1, 2012 dawned with no earthquakes, riots in the streets or… Read More
Gerry Ritz was on hand at Richardson’s Kelburn Farms, just south of Winnipeg, today to announce a federal government commitment of $15 million to the canola industry. This funding, through Growing Forward 2, will be leveraged to bump that total to more than $20 million, says Patti Miller, president of the Canola Council of Canada… Read More
Prime Minister Stephen Harper shuffled his Conservative government’s cabinet yesterday and, drum roll please…not much, if anything, will change for the agriculture industry. Gerry Ritz remains as Agriculture Minister and Ed Fast stays on as Minister of Trade. There are a few new names in the agriculture fold, as Maxime Bernier takes on the role… Read More
As everyone is hearing from the news this morning regarding the lawsuit against the US Government for the possible unconstitutional components of COOL, this is very much apart of a multi pronged attack against the legislation. Who better to talk to an hour after the launch of the legal battle than John Masswohl, Canadian Cattlemans… Read More
Many Canadian cattle people have been urging CCA and the Canadian cattle industry to try and focus more on developing other markets than just the United States. With issues like mandatory COOL in place in the Unites States, other trade partners are needed so that the Canadian beef industry is not just a one trick… Read More
It’s tough being a small fish in a big pond. In this case, Canada’s beef industry is that minnow in the giant ocean that is the U.S. beef industry. Or perhaps that’s not fair — it would seem the big hiccup with the entire mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) fiasco is that, according to… Read More
Though it has not been grown in nearly a decade, wheat containing the Roundup Ready gene has been reportedly found in an Oregon, U.S., field by the USDA. The Roundup Ready wheat was field tested many years ago by Monsanto in the state from 1999 to 2005, but the crop was never approved for commercial… Read More
The United States was required to come into compliance with its World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations in relation to the WTO dispute on its country-of-origin labelling (COOL) regulations today, May 23. The country has instead implemented proposed changes that many U.S. and Canadian cattle and hog industry players say makes it even worse. The Canadian… Read More
For many in the agriculture industry and especially the beef industry, the announcement that BSE had been found in the Canadian cattle herd was one of those moments where you’ll likely always remember where you were when you first heard it. I was at work, my first job in publishing, and the news came over… Read More
The Government of Canada, the Government of Saskatchewan and the University of Saskatchewan today announced the creation of a new Canadian Wheat Alliance (CWA). This initiative will coordinate research and development projects to improve the yield of Canadian wheat by reducing losses under extreme weather conditions such as drought, heat, cold and diseases, according to… Read More
We should all steal a page from Pulse Canada’s inventive approach to market expansions. The organization’s new Meal Planning for 9 Billion People video campaign pushes just about every button imaginable. First, the positioning. It sounds elementary, but feeding the world with meals as Pulse Canada suggests rather than simple saying “food” is brilliant. It… Read More
It was great news this week that, following negotiations between Canada and China, canola producers and exporters here will have a shot at expanded access to the Chinese market.But to me, it was even more noteworthy that science, not politics, helped open the door.Science is constantly maligned in agriculture, particularly when product safety is on… Read More
If you cannot seee the above embedded audio player, Click Here This morning I talked to Martin Unrau, President of the Canadian Cattlemans Association about his recent trip to Washington, DC to lobby for the repeal of the US mandatory Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) legislation. As Martin Unrau mentions in the interview, groups like the… Read More