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Cheap Food Versus Expensive Oil

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You can’t have cheap food and expensive oil. It just doesn’t work. For hundreds of millions of people who earn only a dollar or two a day, increasing prices for staple foods like grains, pulses, rice and cooking oil is a big deal. Canadians spend only about 11 per cent of their disposable income on […] Read more
Opinion

Could A Paradigm Shift Could Be Coming?

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We may be heading into a prolonged period of high grain prices. Many analysts say world grain stocks are so low that strong prices are likely for the next two or three or even five years. “Don’t talk about it because you’ll just jinx it,” some will say. Certainly, there have been many occasions in […] Read more
Opinion

Cow-Calf Producers Need Economies Of Scale

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With the fall calf run underway, cow-calf producers are rejoicing over this year’s dramatic improvement in prices. They have been many years with heavy losses and lots of producers have said “to heck with it all” and have sold off their herds. Unfortunately, the big improvement in prices doesn’t necessarily mean that profitability has arrived. […] Read more
Opinion

Quick Action On Flooded Land, But…

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Interestingly, the federal-provincial flood assistance is targeted at only crop producers. Livestock producers with flooded pasture and hay are not included. Amazingly, last month’s annual meeting of federal and provincial agriculture ministers concluded with a detailed program announcement for flooded Prairie farmland. Usually the closing news conference to these meetings is short on tangible action […] Read more
Opinion

Wanted: Accurate Weather Forecasts

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Talking about the weather is a Canadian pastime and an obsession among grain producers. There’s been a lot to talk about this spring, with a big low pressure system often following close on the heels of the last. There’s been an amazing amount of precipitation. Areas that were bone dry are now saturated. Not surprisingly, […] Read more
Opinion

Albertans looking east to Saskatchewan for farmland

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The purchase price on most of the land is in the range of $900 to $1,000 an acre. That’s a bargain compared to what most comparable land is worth in Alberta. Here in Saskatchewan, here’s a lot of talk about a big land deal around Conquest, just west of Outlook. In the last couple of […] Read more
Opinion

Ontario Farm Voters May Help Prairie Colleagues

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If you’re going to give any praise a farm safety net program that’s been steadily criticized over the years, you have to expect some feedback. In a recent column, I took the unusual stance of pointing out the benefits of AgriStability. The program has not worked well for livestock producers suffering years of poor margins. […] Read more
Opinion

Potential Benefits From Livestock ID

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Here in Canada, we’re enhancing our livestock identification programs. Individual cattle ID with radio frequency ear tags (RFID), age verification, premise ID, animal movement records – about the only thing that isn’t planned is a GPS locator attached to each individual animal. Incredibly, American efforts for a National Animal Identification System are back to square […] Read more
Opinion

Preserving The Wheat Midge-Tolerance Trait

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Limits are going to be placed on farmers saving their own wheat as seed. For farmers who are cynical, and we tend to be a cynical bunch sometimes, this will sound like a money grab. In this case, there’s an important reason. It’s an attempt to preserve the value of new wheat varieties that have […] Read more

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