Markets across the board started 2016 a little rough as fresh Chinese economic concerns continue to show contraction which led to not one, but two halts to trading in their stock markets this week! While the Chinese government moved to support the market immediately by flooding it with fresh capital, the broader market still isn’t... Read More

It’s been a good news week for Grain Farmers of Ontario chair Mark Brock. But he’s unsure how positive reports on the impacts neonicotinoid seed treatments have on pollinators will affect provincial grain farmers. Earlier this week, reports from Health Canada and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) delivered a one-two punch supporting the embattled... Read More

If farmers want to supersize their corn yields, they have to challenge conventional thinking and become students of the crop. That was the main message National Corn Growers Association yield contest champion Randy Dowdy shared with hundreds of farmers at the 2016 SouthWest Agricultural Conference in Ridgetown, Ontario earlier this week. In 2014, Dowdy set... Read More

In this week’s Word, Peter Johnson, resident agronomist for RealAgriculture and host of this weekly podcast, gives us the highlights of the SouthWest Ag Conference, and manages to squeeze in a few questions around cover crops, fungicides and soil sampling. Have a question for Wheat Pete? Call 1-888-746-3311, send him a tweet (@wheatpete), or email... Read More

An international group of scientists working on mapping the genetic code for wheat say they've reached a major milestone that will help them reach their goal several years earlier than expected. The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium project, which is co-led by two Canadians and partly funded by Canadian farmers, announced yesterday it has produced... Read More

If you’ve been attending agricultural conferences in the past few years, you’ve likely heard the phrase “social license to operate.” It essentially boils down to the approval of a certain industry by local communities and public stakeholders. With new regulations affecting farms, maintaining social license has become a priority for modern agriculture. At the 2015... Read More