The 2012 fall feeder run seems to be moving at a very slow pace. Last weeks Canfax Cattle on Feed report would definitely confirm that. All things considered, the slow feeder run may be a blessing in disguise as many of the cattle liners are busy shipping cattle south due to the XL Foods closure... Read More
Category: Western Canada
It was the bumper crop that almost was. Late in the summer, farmers watched helplessly as ripe canola ready for swathing or swaths waiting for the combine were tossed around and blown into trees, shattering on to the ground bushel after bushel of seed. Some estimate that as much as 10 bushels an acre was... Read More
According to the Canola Council of Canada's press release, president Patti Miller has urged the Standing Committee on Finance to "sustain the momentum of Canada’s canola industry by supporting strategic investments and policy direction in three priority areas – research, market development and market access." Her comments are in regards to up-coming potential changes to... Read More
In this second episode of the Real Leaders series, Kim McConnell asks Greg Stewart, Farm Credit Canada's CEO, about farmers' own perceptions of agriculture and how that impacts another generation of farmers. What's more, Stewart shares his insight into what, as an industry, agriculture must teach the public and the future generation about farming and... Read More
With less cattle slaughter capacity in Canada, many ranchers and feedyards are concerned about the possibility for the feeder cattle and live basis to significantly widen. A basis that gets too wide makes the current Canadian model unworkable. Currently the live cattle basis sites at 16-18 which is the same as last year at this... Read More
Better timing of manure application with in-crop needs was the motivation behind developing a new low disturbance, shallow injection manure application toolbar. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (OMAFRA), along with industry partners, developed the multi-coultered toolbar to try and find a made-in-Canada solution for in-crop manure applications for not just pastures... Read More
Larger discs sure do look menacing. They also require far more horsepower to pull, but they wear out more slowly than smaller-diameter discs. But there are two very important considerations when choosing planter disc size. The first is trash management (guess which one cuts through straw better? You may be surprised) and the second is... Read More
The feel-good message about how healthy pulses are for us isn't new, but those who struggle to eat beans, peas, lentils and chickpeas in their whole form may be able to include more of them in their diet without changing the foods they already eat. That's the scope of a four-year pulse flour milling and... Read More
In the a story that seems to be getting stranger and more unpredictable with every passing day, XL Foods has decided to bring back 800 of the 2,000 laid-off workers. If you are saying to yourself, "huh?" Don't feel bad, I think everyone is. XL foods released the 2,000 workers just yesterday. In a report... Read More
With an uncertain timeline for the re-opening of the packing plant, XL Foods had made the decision to temporarily layoff 2000 of its union workers. Up until this point XL Foods has been honoring the contract of the workers during the shut down but that has stopped immediately. This layoff does not mean that the... Read More