Reading Time: 3 minutes 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
Quick Action On Flooded Land, But…
Delayed Checkofiamendment A Stick To Unify Industry?
Reading Time: 3 minutes I would suggest that the concept of creating one united super-voice for cattle producers in Alberta is wishful thinking at its best. Whether by circumstance or design, the delay in amending the refundable cattle checkoff is causing much consternation with many cattle producers and their affected organizations and agencies, not just in Alberta but across […] Read more
WTO — nine years of talks, none of action
Reading Time: 2 minutes While $16.6 billion is a nice chunk of business, it also matches the monthly trade deficit – $16.5 billion The surest way to confirm if anyone in Washington, D.C. is telling you the truth about trade is to watch their lips: if they move, they’re not. Of course, not many lips have moved on trade […] Read more
Battling world hunger by increasing global production?
Reading Time: 3 minutes “The data from the last 30 years suggests that while we need to continue to increase agricultural productivity, we have been producing enough calories to meet the needs of the world.” At the time of the World Food Conference in 1974, over 800 million people out of a world population of 4.2 billion people were […] Read more
Where Is The Evidence Of Checkoff Success?
Reading Time: 2 minutes In recent weeks there have been a plethora of articles in the farm media promoting the value of organizations like the Canada Beef Export Federation (CBEF) and the Beef Information Centre (BIC). The underlying theme is the necessity for cattle producers to continue to fund these organizations through checkoffs. We are told that these organizations […] Read more
Government Uses Incentives To Save Faltering Program
Reading Time: 3 minutes If feedlot owners or final sellers want to reap the value of age verification from a market premium, they should be obliged to buy that information from the original owner at a negotiated price. You have to hand it to Alberta Agriculture officials, when they make a policy decision they intend to fight for it […] Read more
Wanted: Accurate Weather Forecasts
Reading Time: 2 minutes 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
Dissecting The Demise Of Agricultural Co-Operatives
Reading Time: 3 minutes With several large agriculture co-ops facing the same issues at roughly the same timeframe, one has to ask – are these isolated events or are they part of some larger pattern? Co-ops are one of our shopping options– Co-op Marketplace grocery stores, credit unions, Co-op Gas Bars and C-stores, Mountain Equipment Co-op – and they […] Read more
The Russian Grain-Export Bear Is Out Of Hibernation
Reading Time: 3 minutes The former Soviet Union may not have been a model of economic efficiency, but there was one thing that it did very well, and that was import grain. In the grain trade heyday of the 1980s, the Soviets would import up to 50 million tonnes a year and distribute it far and wide across the […] Read more
Long-Gun Issue Just Never Seems To Go Away
Reading Time: 3 minutes People have come to accept that they have to get a licence to buy a gun, no different than having to get a driver’s licence to drive, so be it. It’s a topic that has been kicked around ad nauseam, but it seems our federal politicians can’t resist waking up this old dog. The long-gun […] Read more