Reading Time: < 1 minute Reuters – Nutrien, the world’s biggest fertilizer producer, said it expects a Canpotex facility in Portland, Oregon, to be back online by the end of the year after suffering an outage. Canpotex, a Canadian potash marketer owned by Nutrien and Mosaic, should have full export capacity through its terminals in 2024, Nutrien said on a quarterly earnings call. A failure on a conveyor […] Read more
Nutrien expects Canpotex facility in Portland back online by year’s end
Prices have been falling due to return of Russia and Belarus to fertilizer market
Prairie Forecast: Winter temperatures try to move in
Issued Nov. 22, covering Nov. 22-29
There is a large, deep area of low pressure spinning over the northern half of Hudson Bay along with a building area of high pressure over the Yukon. The counterclockwise rotation around the Hudson Bay low will create a north to northwesterly flow across the Prairies. This will allow the Yukon high to drop southward. […] Read more
Seaway workers ratify labour deal
Deal ended one-week strike on waterway
Unionized workers on the St. Lawrence Seaway in Ontario and Quebec have voted their approval of the agreement that brought them in off the picket line. Unifor, which represents about 360 Seaway workers across five locals in the two provinces, announced Thursday its members had voted to ratify a three-year agreement retroactive to April 1. […] Read more
The benefits of multiple soil tests
Selecting test sites for the least common denominator could waste opportunities
Reading Time: 4 minutes Most farms don’t do even one yearly soil nutrient test per field, but maybe they should be doing three. Three tests would enhance farmer understanding of in-field variability in a way that one test cannot. Soil tests that demonstrate the variability of field conditions might prompt producers to adopt a three-test approach. According to Fertilizer […] Read more
Nutrien misses quarterly profit estimates as potash prices plummet
Fertilizer demand expected to rise in Q4
Reuters — Nutrien fell short of analysts’ estimates for third-quarter profit on Wednesday, as lower potash prices weighed on the world’s biggest fertilizer producer. Potash prices have been falling after shipments from Belarus and Russia resumed. These exports had been significantly restricted last year following Western sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its invasion […] Read more
More affordability, usage of fertilizers in 2024, analyst says
Israel's fertilizer output normal for now
MarketsFarm — While global fertilizer prices were projected to be steady to higher in 2024, overall affordability is set to improve while usage will increase, according to one analyst. Samuel Taylor, a New York City-based farm inputs analyst for RaboResearch Food and AgriBusiness, delivered a presentation on the fertilizer market during the firm’s Fall Harvest […] Read more
Opinion: Fighting for low grain prices
One bushel of barley can make 500 bottles of beer, but the Wheat Growers are asking for help to make it cheaper
Reading Time: 3 minutes It used to be that if you wanted to raise a farmer’s blood pressure, you only had to suggest that an increase in bread prices was due to a change in the price of wheat. That started in the 1970s after wheat prices skyrocketed to the $6 per bushel range after the “Great Grain Robbery,” […] Read more
‘Little hammers’ control weeds on organic farm post-harvest
Tillage, grazing and cover crops are options for organic growers
Reading Time: 5 minutes Conventional grain farmers have chemical tools to manage weeds post-harvest, but for certified organic producers like Ward Middleton, options are limited. “We don’t really have a sledgehammer-type problem-solving option to control weeds, so we have to use many little hammers,” said Middleton, quoting weed ecologist Eric Gallandt, who coined the phrase at the 2012 Canadian […] Read more
St. Lawrence traffic to resume as tentative labour deal reached
Deal goes now to ratification vote
A week-long strike by about 360 unionized workers on the St. Lawrence Seaway ended Monday morning with a tentative agreement on a new labour deal. The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation (SLSMC) and Unifor, the union representing the workers, announced the new agreement separately Sunday evening. Unionized workers had been on strike since just after […] Read more
Prairie Forecast: Arctic high slowly moving out
Issued Oct. 25, covering Oct. 25 to Nov. 1
As is often the case at this time of the year, the weather models got the general picture right, but the finer details were much to be desired. Usually, the models struggle with the forecast beyond two to five days out, but for much of this forecast period they struggled with the finer details on […] Read more