Reading Time: 3 minutes An Ontario Supreme Court judge has dismissed a class-action lawsuit that alleged the federal government was negligent nearly two decades ago when it didn’t take measures that could have prevented the BSE crisis. But the case, launched in 2005, isn’t over yet. Lawyers for the plaintiff, an Alberta ranch, have already launched an appeal. The […] Read more
BSE lawsuit dismissed — but long-running legal battle not over
Judge agrees Ottawa failed to take steps to keep BSE out of Canada, but says that’s not negligence
Face herbicide-resistant wild oats head on, say producers
New video gives the view of three Prairie farmers who have been hit by resistant weeds and battled back
Reading Time: 4 minutes Don’t turn a blind eye: Admit you’ve got a problem and get on top of it right away. The issue is herbicide-resistant wild oats and that’s the advice from a trio of Prairie producers in a new video from the Resistant Wild Oat Action Committee. “It’s definitely something that it pays to get on sooner […] Read more
More calves in the first round is a winning formula
Research council urges producers to consider the payoff from tightening the calving season
Reading Time: 2 minutes According to experts, the winning numbers in the calving lottery are always the same: 60-25-10-5. And the Beef Cattle Research Council wants producers to test that theory by using its Value of Calving Distribution Calculator. Calving distribution is the percentage of calves born in each 21-day cycle during the calving season (which is 63 days […] Read more
Everyone is talking about sustainable agriculture
While grain farmers wonder why a code of practice is needed, there’s a wave of sustainability initiatives
Reading Time: 4 minutes You may think that all the talk about sustainability is just people and businesses jumping on a fashionable trend. But if so, that bandwagon is getting very crowded. In a 10-day period last month, three new sustainability initiatives were announced by major players in the Canadian ag sector. First up was the Egg Farmers of […] Read more
Expansion of Alberta’s vet college hailed as ‘bold investment’
Pledge to give U of Calgary $59 million for expansion is a major ag item in provincial budget
Reading Time: 2 minutes The province is giving more money to train large-animal vets, standing pat on its funding of ag research, and apparently making big gains in cutting red tape. The most eye-catching ag-related item in the Alberta government’s Feb. 24 budget was the pledge of $59 million over three years for “infrastructure to expand the veterinary medicine school […] Read more
Forecasting the future: What crop will be king in the coming year?
Oats is being touted as the profitability champion, but canola’s reign also looks set to continue
Reading Time: 4 minutes Scott Keller is pretty impressed with the latest crop profitability outlook from Manitoba’s Ag Department — but he’s not buying its prediction that oats will be this year’s No. 1 money-maker. Canola is still king and its reign isn’t going to end any time soon, said the grain farmer from New Norway. “Nothing will even […] Read more
Tax records show decline in Alberta farmers’ income
The StatCan data isn’t easy to parse, but the trend in recent years has been downwards
Reading Time: 2 minutes Even before the pandemic and the drought, Alberta farmers — along with their Canadian counterparts — saw their incomes drop, according to the latest report from StatCan. “Farm families in Alberta earned the highest average total income nationally for a second consecutive year in 2019,” the federal agency said in a recent report. “However, their average […] Read more
Rural population inches up in latest census, but not in Alberta
Reading Time: < 1 minute Rural Albertans have fewer neighbours than they did six years ago. And if you’re wondering where they went, you might want to check out Airdrie and Cochrane as well as the province’s big cities. That’s — sort of — the upshot from recently released census data. Rural Canada actually gained nearly 27,000 new residents from […] Read more
End of the wheat and barley merger road in sight
Up next is a plebiscite on merging the boards of the two farm groups, which already share staff and offices
Reading Time: < 1 minute The long anticipated merger of the province’s wheat and barley commissions is now one step away from being a done deal. Delegates at Alberta Wheat’s recent annual general meeting supported a resolution to have a farmer plebiscite on amalgamating with Alberta Barley, whose members took the same step in December. The vote allows the two […] Read more
Click your way to grasslands and wildlife protection
New guide from Birds Canada assembles a host of resources and makes them easily accessible
Reading Time: 2 minutes A new guide from Birds Canada offers an online version of a one-stop shop for resources for protecting and enhancing grasslands, preventing biodiversity loss, and finding grants for such efforts. “Across North America, birds that depend on grasslands are in steeper decline than most other groups of birds,” the organization said in a release. “Nearly 60 […] Read more
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