Grain is loading slowing down at port terminals, such as at Cargill’s newly expanded Northern Vancouver facility.

Farmers call for action on grain transportation

Thousands of rail cars haven’t been delivered in what has been the worst performance since the crisis of 2013-14

Reading Time: 4 minutes Farm groups are redoubling their efforts to get the federal Liberals to move Canadian grain — but their pleas appear to be falling on deaf ears. Olds-area farmer Jeff Nielsen travelled with other farm leaders to Ottawa at the start of the month in a bid to get the government to crack a whip and […] Read more

Indiana farmer Kyler Laird posted this video in November after making a new remote control for his automated combine because he wanted something more user friendly than his laptop. In the video, he uses the joystick on the game controller to back the combine out of the shed, bring it alongside a grain cart, and then transfer grain to the cart. To find this and other videos by Laird, go to YouTube.com and search for ‘Kyler Laird.’ 
PHOTOS: From ‘portable joystick system’ on youtube.com

Robo-tractors invented by farmers are already here

Software-savvy producers aren’t waiting for equipment makers — 
they’re writing code and automating their machines

Reading Time: 5 minutes Kyler Laird did it the John Deere way when he returned to the family farm in Indiana after his father’s death in 2010. But after five years of sitting in a tractor, planting crooked rows of corn, he decided to do it his way instead. “Even when I was a kid out discing or out […] Read more


Beef isn’t bad for the planet if you take a holistic approach to raising cattle, Nicolette Hahn Niman told Organic Alberta conference attendees.

Cattle aren’t actually killing the planet, says vegetarian rancher

Livestock’s environmental impact is complicated but done right, it’s good for the planet, says author

Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s become accepted wisdom that cattle production is worse for the environment than gas-guzzling SUVs — but it’s not true. “We’re told over and over again that cattle are bad for the environment and, therefore, everybody should eat less beef,” said Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production. “We’re […] Read more

You need to up your game on managing people, say producers

You need to up your game on managing people, say producers

Top-down management doesn’t cut it anymore, but fewer than one in five farms have a human resources plan

Reading Time: 3 minutes Five years ago, Kevin Serfas tried to manage human resources on his farm. It was a “train wreck.” Workers were walking away from the job. The people who stayed weren’t happy. And Serfas found himself on Facebook, “begging people to come run a tractor.” Finally, he went to one of his remaining workers and said […] Read more


Farmers once again railing against slow grain movement

Farmers once again railing against slow grain movement

Slow grain movement this winter is bringing back bad memories for many

Reading Time: 5 minutes Despite recent improvements to rail transportation in Canada, farmers are still forced to rely on a largely unreliable system. “Rail is the backbone of the economy, but it’s also the Achilles heel,” said Mark Hemmes, president of Quorum Corporation. The 2016-17 crop year was one for the books. Despite a slow start, the system set […] Read more

This is the goal for every malt grower, but it’s not an easy one to achieve.

Trying to grow malt barley can make you cry in your beer

There’s way more money in malt than feed, but just 20 per cent of growers capture 80 per cent of malt sales

Reading Time: 4 minutes Kevin Sich thinks malt barley could give canola a run for its money any day of the week — even if market share doesn’t reflect that. “Malt barley is probably one of your most profitable crops. Return on investment is probably very strong,” said Sich, Rahr Malting’s grain department manager. “But if malt barley is […] Read more


Lloydminster-area author Billi J. Miller is celebrating the up-and-coming generation of farmwives in her new book, Farmwives 2.

There’s no right way to be a woman on the farm

Reading Time: 3 minutes Billi J. Miller has never been a traditional ‘farmwife’ — whatever that means anyway. And that’s just fine by her. “The term ‘farmwife’ has changed so much,” said the Lloydminster-area author. “I don’t fit into that box. And there’s comfort in knowing that there are other women like you.” In 2016, Miller published her first […] Read more

Small-plot trials are designed to account for different variables, but producers put more trust in field-scale testing. Researchers are now developing protocols for conducting field-scale trials to see if they bear out the results from small-plot studies.

Scaling up: How to take small-size research from plot to field

Many farmers are skeptical of small-plot research results, 
but proper protocols are needed to scale up to a field level

Reading Time: 3 minutes Farmers are making some pretty big decisions off test strips — and that scares JP Pettyjohn. “We could flip a coin and pretty much come up with the same answer,” said Pettyjohn, a crop technology instructor at Lakeland College. “I don’t want an answer. I want the right answer.” Small-plot trials have been widely used […] Read more


Nothing to write home about but durum is getting second looks

Nothing to write home about but durum is getting second looks

This could be a year when half bad looks pretty decent, and that’s why durum is getting some attention

Reading Time: 3 minutes Pulse acres are expected to drop this year, and while many are predicting a corresponding rise in canola acres, another crop is drumming up some interest among producers. “I’ll be interested to see what happens this year with the possible decrease in pulses that could happen in Canada due to all the tariffs,” said Keldon […] Read more

The surge in Black Sea wheat is a huge — and underappreciated — threat, says Alberta producer Greg Porozni (left), seen here talking with Essa Al Ghurair, owner of the United Arab Emirates’ largest flour mill and canola crush plant, during a trade mission earlier this winter.

A tsunami of Black Sea wheat is flooding global markets

The Black Sea troika of wheat producers used to be minnows — now they’re giants and still growing

Reading Time: 3 minutes The Russians aren’t coming, they’ve already arrived. And they’ve been joined by the Kazakhs and Ukrainians. The surge of wheat exports from Black Sea producers into global grain markets isn’t new, but most Prairie farmers may not appreciate just how strong they’ve become. “Russia continues to dominate the global wheat export trade,” market analyst Marlene […] Read more