The federal government has announced it's dropping the four-year cumulative duration requirement — also known as the "four-in, four-out" rule — from the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) effectively immediately. It's welcome news for agricultural employers and farm groups. “The feedback we received from agricultural stakeholders is very supportive of these changes," noted Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst,... Read More
Category: Western Canada
The Saskatchewan Pulse Growers' board of directors is keeping its levy non-refundable. The board had one year to respond to a resolution passed at the organization's 2016 annual general meeting requesting the check-off be made refundable. SPG chair Tim Wiens informed members of the decision in a letter distributed December 13 (see below.) SPG is... Read More
John Deere has unveiled its first electric high-power tractor ahead of the upcoming SIMA agriculture show in France. Built on the chassis of Deere's 6R tractors, the SESAM (Sustainable Energy Supply for Agricultural Machinery) prototype features a set of 130kW lithium-ion batteries which power two independent 150 kW electric motors, producing the equivalent of roughly... Read More
If it's done right, deep ripping can help address a compaction problem in the field, but if you're not careful, it can also make it worse. As with any kind of tillage, you have the potential of breaking up soil aggregates with a deep ripper or subsoiler, but that's not all, notes Aaron Daigh, soil... Read More
Cavendish Farms has announced plans to spend at least $350 million on a new frozen potato processing facility in Lethbridge. Robert K. Irving, co-CEO of J.D. Irving Limited and president of Cavendish Farms, was in southern Alberta to make the announcement alongside Ag Minister Oneil Carlier, local MLAs Shannon Phillips and Maria Fitzpatrick, and Lethbridge... Read More
While the U.S. ag sector is closely following what's happening in Washington and who's visiting Trump Tower in New York, some of the developments in the transition to the new administration — whether it's renegotiating NAFTA or policy changes that impact corn and soybean demand — will also have implications for Canadian agriculture. Are North... Read More
Is Shaun Haney unknowingly biased? Why is agriculture so very short on good people to fill jobs — from the farm level to the corporate office? Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst joins (the possibly-biased) Haney to talk about recent research by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council that outlined the huge personnel gap in farming and agriculture processing.... Read More
A prediction earlier this week from a Canadian academic suggested Donald Trump’s presidency would cause food prices in Canada to rise in 2017. Here’s why. To make America great again, Trump has said he’s going to deport illegal immigrant workers. If he succeeds, that effort will include getting rid of the ballooning number of illegal... Read More
There's going to be a pile of low quality durum left in Western Canada that, for lack of better words, will need to disappear from the market. According to the StatsCan report out earlier this week, durum production totalled 7.8 million tonnes in 2016 — up over 40 percent versus 2015. With maybe half of... Read More
Food prices in Canada are forecast to rise between 3 and 5 percent in 2017 — larger than last year's price increase and higher than what is considered as "acceptable" food inflation, according to the 7th edition of Canada's Food Price Report. Led by Sylvain Charlebois, food distribution and policy professor at Dalhousie University, the... Read More