“Budgets are always going to be tight, regulatory issues are always going to be confounding, but creativity is free.” Whether we’re talking about employees at Disney or on a North American farm, financial and regulatory constraints will always exist. How businesses perform within those limitations depends on creativity, stresses Doug Lipp, business consultant and author… Read more »
Category: CropConnect
Soybean School: What to Know Before Sowing Off-Patent Soybean Seed
If you grew first-generation Roundup Ready soybeans under contract, saving and trading or re-planting that seed could result in a violation of their contract, says Lorne Hadley, executive director of the Canadian Plant Technology Agency. In 2011, Monsanto’s patent on the first Roundup Ready trait in soybeans expired. Some sellers may be selling or trading soybean… Read more »
Toronto Star Looking for Farming and Food Stories
It almost sounds too good to be true, with farmers often feeling the general public is uninformed and uninterested in agriculture, but urban media outlets are realizing stories about farming and food resonate with their audiences. Whether it’s the ‘wow’ factor, interesting personal stories, great visuals, or top-of-mind topics related to our own health or the environment, agriculture has plenty… Read more »
Survey Aims to Paint a Picture of Precision Ag Adoption in Western Canada
Western Canadian farmers are being asked to participate in a survey analyzing the adoption of precision agriculture tools, as well as the barriers to adoption and innovation, on the prairies. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has commissioned Lethbridge-area precision agronomist Dale Steele to lead the study. As he explains in the video below, the results will be used… Read more »
Soybean Prices Maintaining Remarkable Strength in Face of Record Crops — John Duvenaud
U.S. farmers grew a record soybean crop in 2016, South American farmers are harvesting a record crop, and big soybean acres are expected in North America in 2017, yet somehow soybean prices have remained relatively strong to start 2017. “We’re about a buck a bushel above where we were at the fall lows, which is… Read more »
Feedback Wanted for Manitoba Farm Group Merger Discussion
The idea that Manitoba’s commodity organizations need to work more closely together to provide more value to members — possibly going as far as merging — was formally introduced and discussed recently at CropConnect. “All these organizations, particularly in Manitoba, have basically the same membership, doing very similar projects, with the same money, going after… Read more »
Drew Lerner Offers a Hopeful Forecast for Spring on the Prairies
With unharvested crop still in the field and saturated soils in many areas, some helpful weather could be on the way for Western Canada this spring, says Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc. “The spring bias is tilted toward a little less precipitation and a slight warmer bias,” he says in the video below, filmed after… Read more »
Could Wheat Be a Sleeper Pick in 2017?
After four consecutive years of record wheat production in the world, we’ve become accustomed to adjectives like “burdensome” and “massive” describing wheat supplies. However, it’s looking like 2017 could break that trend, according to Mike Krueger of The Money Farm. “That pattern is starting to change,” he says in the interview below, filmed at CropConnect in Winnipeg… Read more »
Plan B for Trade with Asia — Glen Hodgson
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead, and Canada needs to move on to ‘plan B’ for increasing market access into Asia, according to Glen Hodgson, senior fellow with the Conference Board of Canada. “The Japanese are trying to keep it alive, but it’s effectively dead. I do think we should be developing a ‘plan B’ for Asia,… Read more »
CropConnect ’17 Wrap-Up: Canada’s Ag Day, Commodity Group Collaboration & 275-Bushel Corn
Around 1,600 people spent part of this week at the Victoria Inn Convention Centre in Winnipeg taking in the 2017 CropConnect Conference. Organized by eight provincial commodity organizations, co-chair Roberta Galbraith joined Kelvin for a wrap-up of the fourth-annual edition of CropConnect: CropConnect ’17 notes: The idea of collaborating/working together/possibly even merging provincial commodity associations was… Read more »
Ag Minister MacAulay Visits CropConnect, Discusses Trudeau-Trump Meeting
Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay was in Winnipeg on Wednesday, visiting CropConnect with his Manitoba counterpart Ralph Eichler. MacAulay announced $675 thousand to support market development work through the Canadian Special crops Association and Cereals Canada. Both ministers also outlined $1.6 million in fed/prov funding for eight crop research projects at the conference (coming from… Read more »
Granular Phosphorus Extracted from Hog Manure Shows Promise in Canola & Wheat
Granular phosphorus fertilizer recovered from liquid hog manure could be a viable alternative to traditional 11-52 monoammonium phosphate (MAP) fertilizer for growing wheat and canola, according to research done at the University of Manitoba. Struvite “looks like a fantastic fertilizer,” says Don Flaten, U of M soil scientist and one of the authors of a… Read more »
Soil-Applied Herbicides Stage a Comeback on the Prairies
The number of herbicide-resistant weed cases is growing while the list of modes of action available for controlling these weeds is not, so farmers in Western Canada have shifted back to soil-applied herbicides, including some old chemistries, like Edge and Avadex. “We’re going full-circle here. These are older chemistries, but they’re coming back in and growers… Read more »
Quadrupling Quinoa Acres
Responding to rapidly climbing demand from consumers and food companies, a Saskatoon-based company is quadrupling its contracted acres of quinoa production this spring. Northern Quinoa owns the lone Canadian-developed variety of quinoa and is one of only a few buyers of the pseudocereal crop in the country. The company has been growing and producing a small… Read more »
Growing Phosphorus Disparity Is Not Sustainable
The number of soil tests in Manitoba with phosphorus concentrations below the critical level for crop production grew by 7 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to the new North American Soil Test Summary published by the International Plant Nutrition Institute. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec, as well as 13 U.S. states, all saw more… Read more »