In January, the National Beef Strategic Planning Group published its strategic goals for 2020 in a paper that brought to light the full depth of funding issues being faced by the industry. “Since the National Check-off was introduced in 2002,” the report reads, “inflation and a reduced number of marketings resulted in less check-off collected,... Read More
Category: Western Canada
If there's one job on the farm that everyone fights to have, it's certainly not picking rocks. It's a dirty, time-consuming task that never seems to end, and no matter how attentive the operator of the pull-type (or walk-type) picker, there will always be rocks left in the field. Though the Flexxifinger 'Quicker Picker' doesn't... Read More
In 2013, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Canadian Grain Commission collaborated on an Options Paper to describe crop variety registration and identify possible changes. From August to November, an online engagement period allowed respondents to support one of four possible options. The first, "allow the flexibility inherent in the current VR system to emerge,"... Read More
The Toronto Blue Jays’ 26-year-old home is one of only two stadiums left in Major League Baseball where the game is played on artificial turf. As fans of the ball club know, the combination of synthetic fibres and rubber on top of concrete at Rogers Centre (formerly SkyDome) has taken a toll on players’ bodies…Read More
Calgary-based Rocky Mountain Equipment, through a subsidiary, has entered an agreement to purchase all the shares in Manitoba agricultural equipment dealer Chabot Implements for $6.8 million. A family-owned business started in 1935, Chabot sells Case IH and other brands through locations in Portage la Prairie, Steinbach and Elie. Chabot also handles Kubota, Buhler and various... Read More
The word ‘brand’ is no longer limited to the mark that differentiates livestock. It’s used in business as well, identifying company goals, visions and business characteristics. “We all have a brand,” Faith Matchett,vice president of eastern Ontario and Atlantic operations for Farm Credit Canada, told Lyndsey Smith in an interview. “The question is, do we... Read More
You're looking at yield data from last year trying to figure out which soybean varieties to grow in 2015 — how do you know when the yield difference between two varieties is meaningful? "That's a question we get all the time when it comes to picking varieties and looking at single-year site data," says Dennis…Read More
Although prices have retreated from the sky-high levels that followed the quality problems around the world last year, durum acres are expected to rise by up to 20 percent in Western Canada in 2015. “With the prices that we’ve seen this year, we should see an increase for acres,” said Alan Hagemeier, a Minneapolis-based merchandiser... Read More
There's no shortage of less than stellar wheat out there — the weather near the end of summer and early fall was not kind to harvest or the resulting grain (remember all that snow in September, Alberta?). While some quality parameters aren't deal breakers and might be managed through bumping seeding rates, others can't be…Read More
(Yuma, Arizona) – From the desolate, moonscape-like look of the surroundings here, complete with a never-ending vista of foreboding mountains, scattered rock, tumbleweeds, cacti and dirt devils, it’s hard to imagine this part of the world is popularly called America’s winter salad bowl. But it’s true. Farmers in the vast and sparse extreme southwestern part... Read More