Photo credit: Via Flickr, Paul Xymon Garcia, 2010 Thanks to automation and good management (and perhaps necessity), some producers can farm vast tracts of land themselves with minimal help. But not all farmers are so fortunate. Certain industries, fruit and vegetables for example, require an exceptional commitment to human resources – along with hard work... Read More
Category: Features
Just as energy requirements change as a cow moves through pregnancy, calving and lactation, so to do mineral requirements. The same can be said for a growing calf or yearling — the bottom line is, if you're tweaking a ration based on growth or energy requirements, the mineral type or level may need to change... Read More
It's important, when you're going about the business of farming that you really think about it not as a series of distinct and separate seasons, but as a series of interconnected processes. Not just in an obvious "seeding naturally leads to harvest" kind of route, it's more like, "how I set my machine at harvest... Read More
Prices are firm, feed costs are looking softer and there's plenty of green grass still late in the year. Let's call it a good place to be before the moving and shaking of the fall calf run. As Anne Wasko, of Gateway Livestock, says in this edition of the Beef Market Update, fat cattle prices... Read More
Is there a strong business case for another grain co-operative in Canada? Carl Casale thinks so, and as CEO of CHS, the largest co-operative in the United States, it's probably an opinion worth some weight. In this episode of the RealLeaders series, Kim McConnell, founder of AdFarm, sits down with Casale to discuss not just... Read More
Seeding winter wheat while you're busy with harvest can take some time to wrap your head around. At the same time, there are several advantages to breaking out the seeder after the canola comes off the field. While the weather and soil conditions may be significantly different for September seeding than May, the importance of... Read More
Owen Roberts is currently in Argentina, attending the IFAJ 2013 Congress. The photo above is courtesy Chuck Zimmerman. View the Flickr account here. Any export-intensive country for agriculture needs to be constantly tuned into global developments that influence what happens inside our own borders. Today, the search for those developments takes us to the backroads... Read More
It's officially back to the grind for the RealAg team, which means Shaun Haney and Lyndsey Smith sat down for another edition of the Most Serious 10 to 15 Minutes in Ag News — Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down. In this episode, Shaun and Lyndsey discuss how junk food is still junk food, even if it's... Read More
Want to bury news? Send out your press release late on a Friday afternoon. You get bonus points if it's the Friday before a long weekend, and the spokesperson most versed in the subject takes the next week as holidays (I call that the trifecta of bad news sharing). So, when I saw the Manitoba... Read More
I think every farmer is tired of reading about activists saying agriculture is making Canadians unhealthy, especially when the opposite is true. From what I read and hear, it’s sedentary lifestyles and poor dietary choices that are leading to alarming rates of diabetes and high blood pressure, not the crops and livestock that ultimately become... Read More