A contact list of crop insurance customers at Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp. has gone out via email to several dozen of the Crown ag insurance agency’s customers. MASC on Monday said a file containing names and contact information of an unspecified number of AgriInsurance clients was “attached in error” to an email sent last Tuesday […] Read more

Insurance customers’ contact info dropped into MASC email
Crown crop insurance agency warns of privacy breach

Bigger sunflower crop expected for 2020
MarketsFarm — Canada will likely see its largest sunflower crop in a number of years in 2020 if weather conditions co-operate, as good end-user demand and solid returns for growers generate increased interest in the crop. Canadian farmers intend to seed 104,400 acres of sunflowers this spring, which would be up 36 per cent on […] Read more

Strong demand supports sunflowers
MarketsFarm — Global demand for sunflower oil is steadily increasing, according to Scoular’s Robert Deraas. Deraas, director of the Scoular Co.’s sunflower and bird food division, explained Wednesday at CropConnect in Winnipeg that the majority of Canadian sunflowers are grown for oil purposes. Increases in demand are driven largely by health-conscious consumers who use sunflower […] Read more

Manitoba growers approve five-way commodity group merger
Manitoba grain growers represented by five separate commodity organizations have voted to greenlight a merger they now expect to make official by August. A total of 165 ballots were cast Wednesday and Thursday during the groups’ annual general and special meetings at the CropConnect conference in Winnipeg, with members at the various events voting between […] Read more
Alberta harvest continues, 11 per cent of crops remain
Alberta Crop Report: Conditions as of November 5
Reading Time: 6 minutes Following a cooler than normal growing season, September brought several wet spells, interspersed by two major dry spells, each lasting less than two weeks. In October, wet spells occurred more frequently, with the northern half of the province blanketed with a few cloudy days. Over the past month, all areas in the province experienced below […] Read more

Manitoba’s sunflower crop under threat from weather
MarketsFarm — Manitoba’s sunflower crop has been compromised by the snow that fell over Thanksgiving weekend, but it’s not yet clear what percentage of the crop will be impacted. Before the snow fell, windy and rainy weather took a toll on the sunflower crop. The soil was oversaturated to the point that sunflower roots couldn’t […] Read more

Wet weather continues, stalling Alberta harvest further
Alberta Crop Report: Conditions as of October 15
Reading Time: 5 minutes Wet weather along with below normal temperatures have been the dominant pattern in Alberta over the past couple of weeks. During the long weekend, large areas in the North East and North West Regions received between 10 to 15 mm of precipitation in the form of either rain or rain and snow mix. For the […] Read more

Most oilseed estimates down in USDA’s October outlook
MarketsFarm — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its monthly oil crops outlook on Tuesday featuring reductions in global rapeseed and sunflower production and U.S. soybeans. USDA estimated global rapeseed production at 68.6 million tonnes, a decline of one million, with the lion’s share of the losses in Canada. Canadian production for 2019-20 was […] Read more

Wet, cold weather dampens harvest progress
Alberta Crop Report: Conditions as of October 8
Reading Time: 6 minutes Most parts of the province experienced wet weather conditions in September and the month ended with a significant amount of snowfall in the south. In addition to wet conditions, average daily temperatures were below seasonal norms in most areas across the province over the past two weeks. Many places in Central and Southern Regions recorded […] Read more

Weather conditions put the chill on harvest progress
Alberta Crop Report: Conditions as of October 1
Reading Time: 5 minutes Harvest progress for major crops is 20 points behind the provincial 5-year average, but on par with progress for this reporting period last year. As compared to last week, 5 per cent more crop is in the bin. The Peace region is 34 points behind its 5-year average, followed by the North East at 25 […] Read more