Crops
Frankfurt | Reuters — Germany’s K+S will likely reject a seven billion-euro (C$9.7 billion) takeover offer from Canadian fertilizer group PotashCorp, a person familiar with the situation said Thursday. K+S’s management and board are still due to discuss the offer from Saskatoon-based PotashCorp, and a decision has not yet been taken, but at first sight […] Read more
Germany’s K+S seen likely to reject PotashCorp offer
U.S. grains: Corn, soy prices soar as storms drench U.S. Midwest
Chicago | Reuters — U.S. corn futures hit their highest level in two months and soybeans topped US$10 a bushel on Thursday on concerns about excessive rains in the U.S. Midwest curbing yield prospects, traders said. Wheat set a two-week high as the wet weather slowed the U.S. soft red wheat harvest, while dry weather […] Read more
Pea growers mull contract opportunities despite dry fields
CNS Canada –– The lack of rain in Western Canada is causing a few headaches for pea farmers, who don’t have a crop to call their own yet, but face Asian customers eager to get their hands on fresh supplies. While rain is on the wish list of most growers on the Prairies, the pea […] Read more
New tool launched for fusarium decisions
Saskatchewan farmers trying to decide if they need to spray for fusarium this summer will have new information on hand. The Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (SaskWheat) and Saskatchewan Agriculture have merged information about past outbreaks of fusarium with current weather and temperature conditions to create a day-by-day fusarium risk map. Faye Dokken-Bouchard, Saskatchewan Agriculture’s provincial […] Read more
Running the ruler on what works best
Project takes a high tech appraoch to rate the value of wetlands
Reading Time: < 1 minute To answer the question ‘What is a wetland worth?’ the Alberta Land Institute will be going high tech in the Nose Creek watershed project. The province uses letter grades — A, B, C, and D — to rate the functional value of wetlands. To assign a grade, project officials will employ a type of aerial […] Read more
What’s it worth? New project aims to nail down the value of wetlands
Innovative new project features a reverse auction in which producers ‘bid’ on the compensation they’d want for giving up acres
Reading Time: 4 minutes Wetlands often present a difficult choice for producers — keep them for their environmental value or drain them for the sake of the bottom line. Until recently, converting wetlands to croppable land was commonplace, and even encouraged by government projects that paid farmers to drain them. Wetlands advocates know it will take compensation to reverse […] Read more
Wet weather brings disease worries to Man. winter wheat
CNS Canada — Excess moisture in parts of central Manitoba could bring disease problems to winter wheat fields in the region. Fungicide spraying has occurred to control diseases such as fusarium head blight and leaf diseases, but farmers are running into some problems with applications, according to Bruce Burnett, crop specialist with CWB in Winnipeg. […] Read more
Organic is booming — and the push is on to get more growers
Demand for organic grain is growing at a sizzling pace and the sector fears it will lose market share if it can’t up production
Reading Time: 4 minutes Steven Snider was just 16 years old when he realized conventional farming wasn’t for him. “I was spraying a wild oat herbicide on a field, and I got drift poisoning,” said the Edberg-area farmer and owner of Little Red Hen Mills. “For three days, I was sick as a dog. That kind of changed my […] Read more
The money’s good. But is organic for you?
Reading Time: 2 minutes There’s money to be made in organics, says the executive director of Organic Alberta. “From a business perspective, organic production does make sense,” said Becky Lipton. “If you’re looking on how to expand your operation, organics do provide a lot of opportunities on that end.” While yields can be substantially lower — as much as […] Read more
Monsanto to invest over $1B in dicamba
Reuters — Monsanto’s efforts to expand its agrichemical interests beyond what has long been its bread-and-butter glyphosate business were underscored on Wednesday by news the company plans to invest potentially more than US$1 billion in production of an alternative herbicide. Monsanto officials expect to spend the money over the next three to five years expanding […] Read more