The burrowing owl migrates roughly 3,400 km per year, making its southern home in Texas and Mexico, and arriving back in Canada in early spring. Its home is unique: an abandoned burrow lined with livestock dung (thought to help mitigate the risk of flooding, control humidity and/or mask the odour of the burr0w). A predator... Read More

Seed size can vary significantly, making planting by weight or volume alone a rather untrustworthy endeavour. So it's no wonder calculating seeding rates based on the thousand kernel weight (TKW) of the desired crop is advised by so many researchers and agronomists. In this Wheat School, Richard Marsh of Syngenta re-joins Lyndsey Smith to compare... Read More

The pea leaf weevil can cause devastating economic losses to both peas and faba beans. Though the adult beetles feed on these crops after overwintering in perennial legumes, it is actually the larvae that cause the greatest damage. Larval feeding occurs on Rhizobium nodules for roughly six weeks. This may limit or completely inhibit nitrogen-fixation... Read More

In November 2013, CropLife Canada announced Ted Menzies, a long-time Alberta farmer and former Member of Parliament, was set to take the role of CEO and president of the organization on January 1, 2014. Menzies owned and operated a 5000-acre farm and was heavily involved in agricultural groups, including the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, Grain... Read More

In 1996, Jacob van der Schaaf, a Dutch immigrant to Canada, and his daughter Angela Santiago planted a small, one-acre plot of potatoes just outside Edmonton, Alberta. It was an experiment meant to test the waters of the potential potato market in Alberta, and was obviously an overwhelming success. Today, Jacob runs Tuberosum Technologies and... Read More

In the last episode of Saik's Agri-Treks, we toured Carnaval celebrations in São Paulo and Rio De Jainero and the statue "Christ the Redeemer." We also learned of Carnaval's significance to the favelas, where many of the samba schools are formed. Favelas are areas typically located on the periphery of large cities in Brazil, where... Read More

Every year, North American farmers adopt more technology, enabling precision, efficiency and, in some cases, more holiday time. Even those with intensive management systems can control and monitor some of the operation from a distance. This is certainly becoming the case with irrigation systems, with a few apps and precision technologies now competing on the... Read More