Fast times are upon us in the North American beef industry. Feed is cheap, calves are in short supply, and credit is a hot commodity. Today Anne Wasko and Shaun focus on the calf market. In particular the rate at which Canadian ranchers are not retaining heifers. As Anne will share with you, the US... Read More
Category: Western Canada
Almost a decade after negotiations began, the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement was signed today in Ottawa by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Korean President Park Geun-hye. The deal is expected to help Canadian agricultural exports compete against American exports, as sales of Canadian beef, pork and other commodities have declined since South Korea ratified a... Read More
With all the excitement about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in agriculture, it’s important to understand the reliability of information collected by UAVs. Can we trust their accuracy to make farm management decisions? Beyond that, could UAV data tell us something before we see it on the ground? Researchers in North Dakota are evaluating... Read More
While new bilateral trade agreements present many opportunities, international trade is also becoming much more complicated for agriculture companies in the export business, say the authors of a report published by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (read the paper here.) With bilateral deals with the European Union, Japan and South Korea in the works, keeping... Read More
Trying to stay fit can be a challenge for many of us, what with busy personal and work schedules. It just so happens that people can now take full advantage of Subway's new fitness craze "CropFit" — where fitness goes old-school and back to the farm. In Subway's new TV commercial, CropFit is based on... Read More
For Mary Carver, a professional home economist, it is hard to imagine — a 20 year old that doesn’t know how to crack an egg; a shopper wondering why he couldn’t find bananas local to Ottawa; a senior no longer eating eggs because her doctor had told her to stop eating dairy products. The stories... Read More
Heading past the halfway point of September, the pace of the North American harvest picked up with excellent weather allowing crops to dry out from late growing-season rains. That being said, the quality of the crop coming off is quite variable with reports of fields next to each other swaying a few grades one way... Read More
With the increasing push to use more cover crops in Ontario, particularly red clover in winter wheat, producers are looking for tillage options for managing the cover crop stand. The tillage demonstration at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show last week focused on conservation tillage options for red clover, as outlined by independent agronomist Pat Lynch in... Read More
Cervus Equipment Corp. has announced a deal to buy another four John Deere dealerships in Alberta. The company has entered into an agreement to acquire all of the shares of Evergreen Equipment Ltd., which owns Deere outlets at Bassano, Brooks, Drumheller and Hanna. "Signing of this Definitive Agreement demonstrates Cervus' continued opportunities for growth with... Read More
From afar – and maybe even up close -- it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on in environmental hot spots, such as Alberta’s oilsands, despite oil company ads that tell everything is coming up roses. But agriculture needs to pay more attention to oilsands. Here's why. It’s hard to separate agriculture and the environment,... Read More