If the tariffs are imposed, U.S. manufacturing companies would pay 25 per cent more for imported steel and 10 per cent more for imported aluminum, unless the exporting country has an exemption.

But it’s not clear if the new duties will drive up equipment prices in a noticeable way for Canadian producers looking to buy new machinery.

“I think it’s too soon to really make a judgment call on that,” said Kevin Bender, chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission.

Alberta Barley chair Jason Lenz has a similar view, saying the possibility of the new tariffs causing price increases is cause for some concern, but noted it’s hard to predict how the situation will play out.

“You never know what’s going to happen south of the border these days,” Lenz said.

Since Trump’s initial announcement of his proposed tariffs, Canada and Mexico received an exemption while North American Free Trade Agreement talks continue. However, the exemption is only “for now,” U.S. officials said, with Trump tweeting, “tariffs on steel and aluminum will only come off if new and fair NAFTA agreement is signed.” (Australia has also been granted an exemption and other governments were scrambling to get exemptions from the levies, which were scheduled to take effect March 23.)

Many of the major farming equipment manufacturers are U.S. based, like John Deere or Case New Holland. The possible impact on American manufacturers’ bottom lines has the U.S.-based Association of Equipment Manufacturers sounding alarms.

• Read more: Deere fears hit from Trump tariffs, retaliation

A 25 per cent steel tariff could have negative ramifications not only for the companies, said association president Dennis Slater, but also employees and producers, as production costs go up, profit margins decrease, and sales possibly drop.

“I’ve seen a couple already say they’ll put a… steel fee on that, on top of their costs for now,” Slater said. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to absorb all the cost of that.”

Most U.S. equipment manufacturers work with at least some imported steel, he said.

“I’ve only met one manufacturer, and a very small one at that, that sourced all its steel in the U.S.,” he said.

However, how much equipment price tags may go up is unknown.

“It depends on the individual manufacturer,” Slater said.

His organization estimates that steel accounts for about 10 per cent of equipment manufacturers’ direct costs. A 25 per cent jump in that cost translates into a 2.5 per cent increase in the total cost of manufacturing a tractor or combine. That may not seem like a lot but it would be a significant jump given the high price of some agriculture equipment, Slater said.

(In its most recent farm input cost estimates, Alberta Agriculture puts the price tag for a new four-wheel-drive, 325- to 375-horsepower tractor at just over $384,000. A 2.5 per cent increase in that price equals $9,600.)

But the bigger impact on the cost of equipment at the moment is the slide in the Canadian dollar, said Bender. A low loonie helps producers on export sales (which are priced in U.S. dollars) but greatly increases the price of imported machinery.

“That’s a tangible change that we’ve witnessed in the past,” Bender said.

The lower dollar combined with a drop in grain and oilseed prices prompted Prairie farmers to scale back purchases of tractors, combines, and other new equipment in the last few years. However, the country’s largest dealer of Case IH farm equipment recently expressed the hope that was changing.

“We have begun to see signs that Western Canada’s agriculture equipment profile is reverting to a more typical composition, with customer demand for new equipment beginning to pick up,” Rocky Mountain Equipment said in stock market regulatory filings earlier this month.

Farmers have faced increasing equipment costs over the last several years, said Lenz, adding that if manufacturers’ costs go up due to the new steel levies, they will be passed on to farmers.

“If those manufacturers end up having to pay that, we all know who will have to pay,” he said.

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers is part of a wider effort by the U.S. manufacturing industry to persuade the Trump administration to dump the idea of steel and aluminum tariffs altogether. Meanwhile, the uncertainty of what is happening is already affecting steel prices, Slater said.

“We’ve heard there’s been a run-up in anticipation of the tariff, that prices are already on their way up,” he said in a mid-March interview. “One manufacturer told us in the farm industry just this week, on hearing the announcement told us that they in the last six months have already… faced 30 per cent in increases.”

The uncertainty over the future of NAFTA and what Trump might do next also has the Canadian agricultural manufacturing industry on edge.

“The lack of clarity around NAFTA is the big issue at the moment. It’s got a lot of people, I would say, on pause in terms of investment decisions,” said Nigel Jones, CEO of Seed Hawk and a director of the Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada.

Canadian makers of agricultural implements have annual exports of around $2 billion, with the U.S., Australia and Russia being the biggest customers. While most agricultural equipment is exported tariff free, Trump’s steel tariffs are concerning, he said.

“(The tariffs) could have an effect on supply, the supply/demand ratio, that comes into play. If supply tightens up then it could be a big impact,” said Jones, whose company manufactures air seeders and drills in Langbank, Sask.

The uncertainty over access, tariffs, and potential cost increases are bad for everyone — equipment makers and farmers alike, added Leah Olson, president of the Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada.

“There’s just so much trade that flows between Canada and the U.S. that to put up barriers at this point, I don’t understand how that can be positive for both sides,” she said.

“I think that there’s enough innovation, particularly on the Canadian side when it comes to farm equipment that U.S. farmers will want to see Canadian farm implements continue to be available to them.” — With files from CNS Canada

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Members of the Alberta Women’s Institutes will be going to schools across the province to talk about farming and the food on the dinner table. The goal of the project, called “Food and Farmers — What’s the Connection?” is to go to at least 45 communities and reach as many as 10,000 students in Grades 1 to 3. The children will be given a folder of information, which includes pumpkin seeds.

“Alberta Women’s Institutes recognizes the role agriculture plays in all our lives,” said Faye Mayberry, the co-ordinator of the project and organization’s incoming president.

“We take a special interest in promoting the importance of the industry to children in our province.”

School officials are eager to have their members come in and talk to their students, many of whom don’t realize food comes from farms, said current president Brenda Willsie.

“Any of the schools that I have spoken with, or spoken with members who have talked to schools, we are very welcome,” said Willsie.

The project is due to start later this month and continue until mid-June.

“Unfortunately a lot of children are disconnected from the farm,” said David Sprague, CEO of Ag for Life, one of the program’s sponsors.

The program is complementary to an Ag for Life initiative, the Classroom Agriculture Program, which is aimed at students in Grade 4, he said.

The hands-on, pumpkin seed-growing approach will be a hit, he predicted.

“At this point of their lives they’re inquisitive… they get totally amazed by things that grow,” Sprague said.

It’s hoped the students will take the information and seeds home and talk to their parents about it as well, he added.

Ag for Life put $5,000 towards the project, which was matched by the provincial government, Sprague said. Hannas Seeds and Deermart are also sponsors.

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“There is no prize money here, it is bragging rights,” said organizing committee chair Mark Kaun.

The college also has something to brag about; it’s “the only place where a plowing competition has happened twice in the exact same spot,” noted Kaun, adding that organizing the event took four years of effort.

Barry Timbers, Canada’s representative in the conventional plow competition, only had to travel from Sunderland, northeast of Toronto, but said plowing has a special attraction to its devotees and it’s not surprising the event drew competitors from places such as Kenya, Australia, and the Czech Republic.

“Why do people show horses? Why do people show cattle? Why do people go to tractor pulls?” he replied when asked why he loves the sport.

This was Timbers’ 11th world championship and likely his last. His father Robert was a competitor at the first World Plowing Championship in 1953, and at age 86 travelled to Olds to watch his son. The younger Timbers has been plowing since age nine, but says this is likely his last event. (He placed 11th overall in the conventional competition, with fellow Canadian Brian Fried, coming in seventh in the reversible category.)

There are young and fresh faces at the competition. The conventional category was won by 24-year-old Barbara Klaus from Austria, who became the first woman to win the golden plow trophy.

But Timbers said many competitors are longtime rivals.

“The old standbys still come. I’ve plowed against some of their fathers,” he said.

To get to the world finals, plowers have to win their respective national competition. John Tracey, who lost to his son Eamonn (third in the conventional category) for the chance to compete in Olds, said he was planning on heading to the Republic of Ireland’s national competition as soon as he gets home — one of about 18 competitions he enters each year.

Entrants are judged on things such as straight lines and ins and outs. They have 20 minutes to complete the opening split and then just under three hours to finish off their 100×20-metre plot. On the first day they competed on stubble plots, while grassland plots were plowed on the second.

“It’s a great sport as well as an art,” said Robert Timbers, who plowed in four world championships before a rule change (since abolished) limited competitors to three championships.

Plots are assigned by draw the night before, and competitors aren’t allowed to speak to anyone once they start plowing, said Anna Marie McHugh, general secretary of the world organization.

“It’s very lonely,” she noted.

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Brown said results-based budgeting means government departments review what they’re doing and what value they provide for Albertans.

That will affect the program since that in January, the federal government announced Japan would start accepting beef under 30 months instead of under 21 months, which had been the previous practice.

“The landscape has changed since January so that’s also a factor that we’ll consider when we review this,” Brown said.

Mandatory age verification was required starting in 2009.

“The intent of the regulation at the time was to ensure there was this critical mass of age-verified cattle that could be identified and accepted by export markets that would be under 21 months,” Brown said.

He said now that under-30-month beef is being accepted by markets such as Japan, processors can use other tools such as dentition to confirm the age of the cattle.

There’s been a steady decrease in compliance since the policy was introduced, but Brown said compliance averages about 78 per cent. Mandatory age verification hasn’t only been under an in-depth review since the change in Japanese import policy, Brown said. Internal reviews were conducted in the last couple years before the change, he said.

Fred Hays, a policy analyst for Alberta Beef Producers (ABP), said international markets now accepting under-30-month beef means most products coming out of Alberta are covered.

“It’s just about a non-issue right now,” Hays said about mandatory age verification. “Anything older than 30 months can easily be recognized.” Hays said ABP doesn’t have a policy on whether mandatory age-verification regulations should continue.

“As far as we’re concerned… it’s being taken care of,” Hays said, now that most markets are accepting under-30-month instead of under-21-month cattle. Countries that open to older beef means having the potential to double their imports, Hays said.

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“I’m going to suggest we’ve done very well,” Brant Randles told attendees at the recent International Livestock Congress.

He noted in 2007-08 prices for wheat futures were higher than in November 2012, but the farmer was still getting the same amount.

“The net back to the grower is much bigger — the basis has collapsed and I would suggest the market is doing a very efficient job of pricing grain,” Randles said.

Without the wheat board, there’s essentially a continental wheat market and exports to the U.S. are at a near-record pace, he said. With the transition to an open market last year, many were trying to get rid of their inventory in preparation, Randles said, and the market is even tighter now with robust prices.

“It’s happening the world over,” he said. “The farmer is incredibly wealthy and he’s not delivering anything. So stocks are depleted, we have vessels waiting in Prince Rupert waiting for cargo.”

Growers are holding off on sales to see how crops develop over the next few weeks and the prospects are generally good, despite a late start to seeding, Randles said.

Across the border, the drought is done, which should bring corn prices down significantly but wheat may be a different story as Chinese buying in the U.S. is strong, he added. Although Russian wheat is cheaper, China appears to be favouring the U.S. because it is a more reliable supplier, he said. If anything goes wrong with the wheat crop in any of the world’s major exporters, “wheat prices will be on fire,” he predicted.

While canola isn’t going to hit the record acres of 2012, Randles said a better yield is predicted this year. Overall, he predicted continued market volatility until farmers have a better idea of what the crop looks like this year. After high corn prices and the decimation of last year’s hay crop putting more pressure on cattle margins, Randles predicted better circumstances for cattlemen this year.

“We would expect cattle margins to improve significantly as we realize these lower corn prices,” Randles said.

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“Faba beans seemed like a really good fit,” Bowness said of the plant’s popularity in central Alberta. She said the crop has moved into southern Alberta under irrigation as well.

Bowness took attendees to see faba bean trials during a July crop walk at the Lacombe Research Centre.

Zero-tannin faba beans for feed are the more popular crop in Alberta, though beans with tannin for human consumption are garnering more interest, Bowness said. The tannin faba beans are popular for export to countries where the “snap” in the taste is appreciated.

For those interested in growing faba beans, Bowness warned they need to seed early — it takes 120 days to reach maturity. “Faba beans really do have to be one of the first things you put in the ground,” she said. They’re tolerant of early-spring frost and less forgiving of fall frosts. Make sure to plant faba beans in ground where not much nitrogen was used the year before. When planted they need a little bit of phosphorus.

The aim is to have 90 per cent of the pods black by the second week of September. Bowness said some of the top pods might still be green, but those aren’t the high-quality seeds anyway. The high-quality seeds are lower on the plant.

Diseases and insects to watch for with faba beans are chocolate spot and lygus bugs.

There are supply-and-demand issues with the beans, so Bowness said to avoid planting them on spec alone. “I would suggest you get a contract before you put them in,” she said. While faba beans aren’t cheap to put in the ground, the returns can be good, the tour attendees were advised.

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“Producers are responding but not fast enough to meet the demand,” Dave Kasko, vice-president of operations for JBS Food Canada said at the recent International Livestock Congress.

The Brazilian multinational has introduced a new IT system at the former XL Foods facility in Brooks and has the ability to sell beef processed from that plant around the world, he said.

“The really neat part about it… is the fact that regardless of where a salesman sits now… they can see product availability that’s produced in that plant.”

The Brooks plant is also about to start producing JBS-branded product lines and that will further increase the capacity for exports, he said.

But low cattle herd numbers have created excess capacity at North American feedlots and packing plants and that is “putting quite a squeeze on multiple sectors of this industry,” he said.

Increasing pounds on the carcass has helped delay some of the issues around declining inventory.

“What we’ve been able to do is offset some of those numbers with a larger-type carcass,” said Kasko. “So we’ve been able to maintain a balance to a certain point.”

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“Educating people about what we do is not an automatic that they’re going to believe what we do is right,” Dr. Joseph Stookey, a professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine told attendees at the recent University of Calgary Veterinary Medicine Beef Cattle Conference.

In countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland, urbanites have closer relationships with farms than their North America counterparts — but those countries still have some of the strictest animal welfare guidelines around.

He praised the new draft Beef Cattle Code of Practice for requiring painful procedures to be performed at younger ages and encouraging use of pain-mitigating drugs.

“Is it that much more (work) to give them an injection? And does it cost that much more?” Stookey asked.

He said he’s often asked if animals feel pain, and that’s a sign that producers aren’t paying close enough attention.

“Animals do show us pain, it’s just you’ve got to be good enough to see it,” he said, adding producers should look for signs such as twitching ears and tails, a common way that animals signal they are feeling pain.

Vocalizations and a lack of appetite are also signs, while checking cortisol levels or employing strain gauges on pen bars can also be used to measure stress and pain levels, he said.

Progress has been made, said Dr. Reynold Bergen, science director of the Beef Cattle Research Council.

Beef quality audits have shown more cattle are being dehorned younger, and fed cattle with brands have dropped from 65 per cent in the 1995 audit to 10 per cent in the most recent one.

“Branding and dehorning are painful, but they’re not done to every animal,” Bergen said.

He urged producers not to “do anything you wouldn’t be willing to explain in front of a television camera,” and also welcome research into current practices.

“Sometimes industry gets kind of nervous about studying things,” he said.

But while activists may use research for their own ends, it’s better to know the facts and, if need be, adopt more humane practices, he said.

“If we can use research to demonstrate what we do and honestly tell all the good stories that we have and also tell people that we’re really trying to find ways to do things better, I think we can tell a really good story for our industry,” he said.

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“Many of the landowners and ranchers are finding out that the system seems to be too restrictive and the burden of proof seems to be too high,” project co-ordinator Jeff Bectell said during a recent tour of the group’s carnivore mitigation projects.

At a farm that suffered sheep losses to a grizzly in 2012, Bectell cited an example of a sheep that died during a grizzly attack but didn’t have a mark on it — possibly dying from the stress of the event.

“The system requires that the carcass have evidence that the bear or the wolf or the cougar killed it,” Bectell said. “Nobody would want to start compensating people for losses that their cow just died and the bear scavenged it. But the feeling in the community is we’re mostly pretty honest people and that maybe the burden of proof is just a little high and it’s been a frustration to the point where some people won’t even call Fish and Wildlife now because they think it’s just a waste of their time.”

The wildlife predator compensation program pays for cattle, bison, sheep, swine and goats injured or killed by predators such as wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, cougars and eagles. Kills by coyotes are not covered by this program, nor are attacks on horses, donkeys, llamas and other exotic animals, which are covered by other provincial and municipal programs.

Many parts of the program are working well, but his group wants it revamped to include missing livestock, full compensation for probable kills, and a higher minimum amount per animal, said Bectell. The burden of proof should also be reduced and there should be additional incentives to reduce risk, he said. The southwestern area of Alberta has seen increased grizzly activity in recent years, and Bectell took tour participants to farms that have had grain and livestock impacted by the bears.

Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, which administers the program, is reviewing the recommendations, said spokesperson Carrie Sancartier.

“At this point it’s too early in the process to say what changes would be made to the program, but the requests are coming in and they’re being looked at,” Sancartier said.

Producers have experienced some delays in getting payment from the Alberta Conservation Association. That’s because claims outstripped available funds last year, said association president and CEO Todd Zimmerling.

“We had to wait till new funding started this spring,” he said.

ACA uses proceeds from the sale of hunting and fishing licences to fund its conservation programs, including the predator compensation program. Zimmerling said compensation payouts have risen from $68,000 in 2001 to $274,000 in 2011 — a result of higher cattle prices and more claims, which rose from 121 in 2006 to 228 last year. Alberta is seeking federal funding as Ottawa funds compensation programs in other western provinces, he said.

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“We don’t have a final number at this point, but what we can say right now is we identified over 100 grizzly bears,” said Andrea Morehouse, co-ordinator of the Southwest Alberta Grizzly Bear Monitoring Project.

And they’re increasingly found on the bald prairie, said Lyle Lester, a provincial Fish and Wildlife officer.

“I can tell you, in southwestern Alberta, we have a lot of grizzly bears,” he said.

The Prairies were actually the grizzlies’ natural habitat before humans pushed them into the mountains, and sows are again bringing their cubs onto the plains because it’s a safer environment for them, he said.

The latest survey, conducted last year, expands on one done in 2011, which was conducted only on public lands. Morehouse’s survey used 831 sites to collect DNA from hair samples left on barbed wire or objects such as tree trunks that bears like to rub against. Some may be visitors from Montana or B.C., but farmers in the area who have lost livestock or had their grain bins raided know the population numbers are rising, said Jeff Bectell, chairman of the Waterton Biosphere Reserve Association and co-ordinator of its Carnivore Working Group.

“It’s just been the last 15 or 20 years that we started to have bears around,” he said during a recent tour of the group’s carnivore mitigation projects.

To reduce bear damage, the group has set up a deadstock composting facility and promoting things such as electric fencing or new, sturdier and hopefully bear-proof grain bin doors.

“The solutions, we’re trying to find them but they’re not all easy cookie-cutter solutions,” Bectell said.

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