Mark two weeks off on a calendar then feed only quality grass or hay and free-choice salt, mineral and fresh water for that duration.

Taking the two-week grain-free challenge is worthwhile

Removing grain or processed feeds from your horse can be a good starting point in identifying dietary issues

Reading Time: 3 minutes Even though the ‘two-week no-grain challenge’ may be anxiety inducing, implementing it can offer surprisingly beneficial results for both horse and human. Humans often equate food with love and unknowingly project these feelings on to their animal family — cats, dogs and horses. So this grain-free challenge, touted in some horse websites and forums, often triggers […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

StatsCan confirms tight grain and oilseed stocks

Canadian corn stocks up on year

MarketsFarm — Canada’s tight supplies of canola, wheat and other crops following the 2021 Prairie drought received more confirmation from Statistics Canada with the release of updated stocks data on Tuesday. Canola stocks, as of Dec. 31, 2021, of 7.6 million tonnes were down 43 per cent from the previous year and the tightest since […] Read more


This photo illustration from the British website for the Yield Enhancement Network shows, in a simple way, the idea of using data to achieve a field’s potential yield.

Yield contest aims to make every grower a winner

Ontario and two American states launch their version of Yield Enhancement Network

Reading Time: 4 minutes A wheat-growing competition that started in the U.K. has crossed the Atlantic with the promise of helping farmers increase their yields. Started by a British agricultural consultancy a decade ago, a Yield Enhancement Network — or YEN — uses an annual competition as a learning tool by having participating farmers share field data. Computer modelling […] Read more

CBOT March 2022 oats (candlesticks) with 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages (yellow, brown and dark green lines). (Barchart)

Oat prices, acres to rise in 2022, analyst says

MarketsFarm — An independent crop market analyst told Saskatchewan oat growers he is bullish for the crop in 2022. Brennan Turner, founder and former CEO of online crop marketing platforms FarmLead and Combyne Ag, delivered a presentation at the Saskatchewan Oat Development Commission’s (SaskOats) annual general meeting in Saskatoon on Wednesday. Turner, a Foam Lake […] Read more


This year’s gross dollars figures for peas, oats and canola were well above those from a year ago.

Gross revenue tally provides ‘interesting’ take on drought impact

If you had average yields and captured high fall prices, your per-acre revenue might have gone up

Reading Time: 2 minutes It won’t be of any comfort for those who had a wreck this year, but high prices mean gross revenue for most crops may have been as good or better for some compared to last year, according to a provincial market analyst. “Using the average yields and prices, there is a significant offset of the […] Read more

Both of these canola plants were sown on the same day, with this photo taken about four weeks later. The one on the right was grown in a regular greenhouse under natural 12-hour light.

When it comes to new varieties, there’s a need for speed, says breeder

Creating the equivalent of a 22-hour day can speed up variety development by six times

Reading Time: 4 minutes Combining ‘speed breeding’ with new genomic tools will be able to deliver big dividends for farmers in the coming years, says a plant breeder using the accelerated breeding technique. “It really highlights that we can bring these technologies together to improve genetic gain in the crops of the future,” said Lee Hickey, an associate professor […] Read more


A wheat crop in 2018. Spring wheat production fell in 2021, but not nearly as much as in other difficult growing years.

2021 was a bad crop year, but not 2002 bad

Reading Time: < 1 minute It was the worst year in a generation but production in Alberta was still considerably better than 2002. For example, spring wheat production this year fell to 5.71 million tonnes (according to the latest StatCan estimates). But that’s more than double the 2.59 million tonnes in 2002. On a per-seeded-acre basis, it was 35.9 bushels per […] Read more

(Xinzheng/Getty Images)

New China import rules bring headaches for food, beverage makers

Cooking oil, milled grains among foods moved to higher-risk categories

Beijing | Reuters — Makers of Irish whiskey, Belgian chocolate and European coffee brands are scrambling to comply with new Chinese food and beverage regulations, with many fearful their goods will be unable to enter the giant market as a Jan. 1 deadline looms. China’s customs authority published new food safety rules in April stipulating […] Read more


(Dave Bedard photo)

Canola declines, durum drops in new StatsCan estimates

Soybean, oats estimates raised

MarketsFarm — There were very few surprises in Statistics Canada’s latest principal field crop production estimates released Friday — the first in 2021-22 to use a survey of producers. Nevertheless, they quantified just how severe last summer’s drought was in Western Canada. Canola production for the 2021-22 marketing year was estimated to be 12.595 million […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

Smaller crops likely in StatsCan survey-based report

MarketsFarm — Mindful of the summer drought conditions that seriously cut into crop production across the Prairies, average trade estimates call for downward revisions to Statistics Canada’s already-small forecasts for most crops when the it releases its first survey-based estimates of the marketing year on Friday. While prior reports, in September and August, were compiled […] Read more