August is coming and with it the end of an era on the prairies. August 1, 2012 officially marks the end of the Canadian Wheat Boards marketing monopoly in the West. The end of that monopoly means a lot of adjustments for producers and industry alike. How that individual marketing freedom will change the landscape... Read More
Category: Western Canada
The corn crop in Argentina holds major influence over corn prices worldwide. Argentina is the fourth largest corn growing country worldwide. According to the USDA foreign agriculture service the projected crop for 2012-13 is projected to be 23.6 million metric tonnes. The 2011-12 crop was badly affected by drought conditions spread across a large corn... Read More
Cattle market conditions today saw the LC and FC pit futures trade limit down on the news of the 4th case of BSE in the US. Overnight trading (Tues night) has already seen some recovery off of those pit lows earlier today. Markets will be closely watching the communication of this BSE case to US... Read More
The Alberta Pulse Industry has room to grow. There are close to 1 million acres in Alberta dedicated to pulses with a mandate by the Alberta Pulse Growers Association to increase that by 15% over the next 2 years. There are a number of things that the Association is doing to help that along including... Read More
On-farm trials are an exercise not widely pursued by farmers in general. What's unfortunate about that is the fact that most farmers could stand to benefit greatly from adopting some type of on-farm trial. The reason being that a lot of manufacturer trials are limited in scope for financial reasons. They may perform fewer location... Read More
I have written before that the future is in seed treatments and fungicides for the traditional crop protection companies. The additional point that I should of included is the growth potential for the biological market in the seed treatment product area. The interesting point is that biologicals are designed to work in conjunction (stacking) with... Read More
Government cutbacks aren’t surprising for anyone. They’ve been debated, we’ve been warned, and now the axe is falling. Of course that makes words like ‘streamlining’ and ‘efficiency’ go-to terms, even though there is no proof, and instead of loss of local control. The perfect example is news that should be devastating for the entire industry.... Read More
Producers are beginning to aggressively chase 300 bushel corn. As elusive as it may seem, all the elements are there to make it a reality. Genetics, planting strategies and all the inputs and fungicides are necessary to get where we need to be are more readily available to producers than they ever before in history.... Read More
The Canadian Cattlemen's Association's Young Leaders program provides invaluable mentoring partnership opportunities for young entrepreneurs involved in the cattle industry. Ryan Beierbach is one of those young leaders that benefitted from the program. Ryan lives in Whitewood, Saskatchewan where he operates both a ranch and a ranch supply store as well as serves on the... Read More
When using inoculants, time is one of the most critical factors affecting your products performance. The reason for that is the fact that those inoculants contain living organisms that can only survive outside the soil for a limited time. Depending on the formulation and application of of that inoculant, that time frame can vary. The... Read More