Reading Time: 3 minutes Western Canadian farmers will get $5 of equity in a privatized CWB for every tonne sold to the CWB this crop year. The offer was recently posted on CWB’s website, Gord Flaten, CWB’s vice-president for grain procurement, said in an interview. Details were issued to grain companies Sept. 19 and information is also being sent […] Read more
CWB unveils plan to raise new equity
Bayer’s new product cuts potentially toxic corn dust 90 per cent
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canadian corn growers will have access next spring to a new product from Bayer CropScience that reduces dust emissions by 90 per cent. Dust from corn and soybean seed coated with neonicotinoid insecticides has been blamed for widespread bee deaths in Ontario and Quebec. “There will be no limitation on the availability of the product […] Read more
Dawson: Crop sales to yield equity stakes in privatized CWB
Western Canadian farmers can expect to get $5 of equity in a privatized CWB, for every tonne sold to CWB this crop year. The offer was recently posted on CWB’s website, Gord Flaten, CWB’s vice-president for grain procurement, said in an interview. Details were issued to grain companies Thursday and information is also being sent […] Read more
Wheat’s future is bright and bountiful, says top Syngenta official
The giant seed and pesticide company says it expects to nearly quadruple North American wheat yields
Reading Time: 4 minutes Corn and soybeans are getting lots of ink as Prairie acreage skyrockets. Canola has had a long run as the Prairies’ Cinderella crop. And then there’s wheat. Considered merely a “rotation” crop by some farmers, it feeds more people and is planted on more acres than any other crop on Earth. But it hasn’t come […] Read moreCanada’s crop variety-registration system under review
The public has until Nov. 30 to respond to four options that vary from the status quo to scrapping the process
Reading Time: 2 minutes The federal government is reviewing Canada’s crop variety-registration (VR) system as part of its objective to “streamline” the system. Citizens can learn how the current system works and consider four alternatives in an “issues and policy” paper prepared by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and the Canadian Grain Commission. […] Read moreConsultations to begin on Sask. agricultural drainage
The Saskatchewan government is asking citizens for their views on agricultural drainage through an online forum running from Sept. 1 through to March 31, 2014. “We’re looking for input and opinions because drainage has been an issue for a while and the 25-year plan (for water management) identified it as an area of concern to […] Read more
Researcher wants to know if farmers are happy with the contracts they sign
Production, marketing, and technology-use contracts are increasingly common but are they fair to farmers or tilted in companies’ favour?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Many don’t like them but are production, marketing, and technology-use contracts unfair to farmers? “We still hear from our members that the contracts are typically quite one sided,” said Doug Faller, policy manager with the Agricultural Producers of Saskatchewan. “Now with the changes to the wheat board and so on, the need for addressing this […] Read moreCanadian canola meal boosts Chinese milk cows’ production
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Chinese have 7.2 million reasons to switch their dairy cows to canola meal from other protein rations. That’s how many more litres of milk their 12 million cows would produce every day based on a year-long joint Sino-Canadian study conducted by Chinese academics, in co-operation with China’s five largest dairy companies. “Canola meal has […] Read more
A million acres of glyphosate-resistant weeds in Canada?
Reading Time: 3 minutes More than one million acres of Canadian farmland have glyphosate-resistant weeds, according to an online survey of 2,028 farmers conducted by Stratus Agri-Marketing Inc. based in Guelph, Ont. The shockingly high Canadian numbers were met with skepticism from some experts who suggest farmers might be mistaking hard-to-kill weeds with glyphosate resistance. But others say the […] Read more
Glyphosate weed resistance grows fast stateside
AAFC’s Hugh Beckie is optimistic Western Canada can avoid the severe problems experienced in the southern U.S.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Glyphosate-resistant weeds are a big problem in the United States and getting worse, according to surveys conducted by Stratus Agri-Marketing Inc. the last three years. “Those completing the online survey in 2012 report that almost one out of every four acres is now infested with glyphosate-resistant weeds,” Stratus Agri-Marketing vice-president Kent Fraser said in an […] Read moreCyber-Savvy Farmer
