In that sense, the Agri-food Hub and Trade Centre, which opens to the public Aug. 10, marks a return to the Lethbridge and District Exhibition’s roots, said the CEO of the 126-year-old ag society.

“This organization has always been about bringing the world together to showcase agriculture,” said Mike Warkentin.

“This facility is a throwback to those original roots of bringing the world together to celebrate agriculture and showcasing the natural advantages and the advantages that we built for ourselves here in southern Alberta.”

Construction of the trade, convention and ag centre, which replaces three of Exhibition Park’s pavilions, began in March 2021 on the Exhibition grounds at the east side of the city.

The $80 million project was enabled through a combination of federal, provincial and municipal funding as well as partnerships with companies such as MNP, which received naming rights to the meeting centre and one of four meeting suites.

“It’s a good opportunity for driving investment and opportunity for local farmers, an opportunity for the world to understand the importance of the local southern Alberta producer and how far the products they produce actually reach into the world,” said Warkentin.

The unique makeup of southern Alberta’s agricultural sector will make the Hub an ideal destination for commodity meetings and other industry events, said Warkentin, particularly commodities with a large presence in southern Alberta that lack facilities elsewhere to hold national meetings.

“Southern Alberta plays a large component in a lot of different commodities and a lot of processing — obviously in commercial cattle production, corn production and potato production. There’s a significant component of the national ecosystem of all those commodity crops that come out of southern Alberta,” he said.

“(The Hub is) that connection point to attract those events that traditionally don’t have agriculture-centric markets to hold their events and conventions.”

One highlight of the facility is its 104,000 square feet of exhibition space, which Warkentin said will be a perfect fit for Ag Expo, an agricultural and equipment show held every spring.

“It’s specifically capable of holding any element of agricultural equipment that is transportable on a provincial highway today,” he said. “You’ll really see an impact (of that) on our existing signature events and how we grow those.”

Speaking specifically of Ag Expo, Warkentin said the sheer size of the exhibition area will make the event more competitive with other popular western Canadian farm shows such as Canadian Western Agribition, Canada’s Farm Show (both held in Regina) and Red Deer’s Agritrade Equipment Expo.

“It provides us an opportunity to greatly expand the demographics coming to the show just because the centre is so much larger,” he said.

Expanded demographics are important to the goals of the Exhibition, which envisions the Agri-food Hub as an incubator to spur more than $90 to $100 million in economic activity in the region every year.

“What that means is more people are going to be coming to this market, which means there will ultimately be overall growth — not just the money that people come in and spend, but ideally growing the population, growing the tax base, driving new dollars into the southern Alberta economy that do not exist today,” said Warkentin.

The hub will also be home to 13,000 square feet of convention space as well as 5,000 square feet divided into four meeting suites.

“Those are really amenity spaces that didn’t exist here before,” said Warkentin.

In addition to three salon rooms and pre-function lobbies, the Hub will feature banquet halls where locally sourced “farm to table” cuisine will be served.

“We created some gala space which didn’t exist in our urban park before, very specifically to elevate event experience and our hosting opportunity here in southern Alberta,” he said.

The Hub’s original budget rang in at around $71 million: just under $28 million from the Alberta government, $25 million from the City of Lethbridge and just shy of $18 million from a loan taken on by the Exhibition.

A March 16 Global News story reported the overall budget had grown to just under $80 million due to rising costs.

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At a crop demonstration in Manitoba this summer, he pulled apart a hemp stem and showed the hurd, the fibrous, almost woody core.

“This is the strong part, the super absorbent middle part of the plant. This was actually a byproduct seven years ago but it’s what’s driving the fibre market right now,” said Kostuik.

Hurd is used to make hempcrete for the construction industry. It’s a bio-composite material, almost like concrete, made from a hydrated lime binder mixed with processed hemp hurd fibre. The process starts by separating the hurd in the centre of the hemp plant from the ‘bark’ on the outside.

“The process of separating those two is called decortication,” Kostuik said. “The crop is laid on the ground, the microbes come in and eat the pectin and the lignin that hold these fibres together. Then it runs through a hammer mill, essentially, separating them.”

The fibre and lime are mixed and pressed into a hard block. These blocks can be stacked to make something similar to a cinder block wall. The material may also be mixed with less moisture to become a fibrous fluff that can be sprayed into a frame, almost like plaster.

Unique properties

“It’s like a thermal wall,” Kostuik said. “If the house gets flooded, once the water recedes, you don’t have to rip out all the drywall. The house just dries out.”

This is especially important in the southern U.S. states, where hempcrete is popular for building low income housing. The non-weight-bearing walls can be built with the blocks or sprayed in fluid form into a stud frame. It can also be used to restore older stone walls.

This has caused a sudden demand that many hemp growers can’t fill.

Many are servicing the market for CBD market (a cannabidiol that doesn’t contain THC) and farms producing CBD tend to be small operations requiring intense management.

“So you’ve got all these little 10-acre farms scattered throughout the U.S. and then the fibre market comes and they want all this fibre and they’ve got to deal with 100 of these 10-acre farms,” Kostuik said.

“They come up to Canada. We’ve got a grower just outside of Portage who’s growing 4,000 acres of hemp for a fibre one-stop shop and they’re very interested in what we’re doing here.”

Alberta a leader

Along with fibre and CBD, hemp is also grown for grain — and this versatility creates a challenge.

If hemp grain is desired, short plants are needed so a combine can handle it. For fibre, taller plants with lots of tissue are best.

“Hemp is a photoperiod sensitive crop,” Kostuik said. “We get more height and more vigorous growth out of a hemp crop the further north you go.”

Long summer days in the northern parts of the Prairies means hemp grown there will grow a lot taller than hemp grown in Kentucky.

Growers should identify the desired market before planting, he said.

“When you get to a plant stature of 16 to 17 feet, it can be a challenge to harvest it and you need specialized equipment at that point.”

The Europeans have equipment with dual-cut combines to harvest really tall plants. The header sits high enough to combine the hemp heads, while directing stems into a type of forage processor.

On the Prairies, tall plants may be good for fibre but not for grain because of the equipment. Cutting with a sickle mower or a disc bine could work, however, if it’s properly adjusted.

“Another issue, of course, has been the stability of those varieties,” Kostuik said. “In Canada we have a program where you have to purchase certified seed and one of the reasons is that hemp is a very strong pollinator. The pollen will flow and be dispersed for miles and miles and miles.”

Hemp should be treated like an oilseed in the rotation. It’s another host to sclerotinia but none has yet been seen in Canadian hemp fields.

“I’ve never seen a crop failure in Canada because of sclerotinia but I was at a presentation in Wisconsin and a guy showed me a picture of a complete disaster because of their higher humidity and moisture,” he said. “So never say never, is what I learned from that one.”

The bottom line is that there are new opportunities for hemp, which is good news for growers.

“I’ve been doing it for a long time and every year there’s ups and downs just like every other crop and market,” said Kostuik. “But once again, I kind of feel excited about what’s coming down the pipe for hemp.”

– This article was originally published at the Manitoba Co-operator.

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Provincial Agriculture Minister Lana Popham and her federal counterpart Marie-Claude Bibeau on Monday announced cost-shared funding of $228 million for the Canada-B.C. Flood Recovery for Food Security Program, which is now taking applications.

That includes funding via AgriRecovery, the disaster relief segment of the Canadian Agricultural Partnership funding framework. AgriRecovery is a 60-40 federal-provincial program provided where needed to help farmers cover “extraordinary costs” borne in a natural disaster. A similar AgriRecovery program was rolled out in September in response to drought and wildfire damage in the province.

Heavy rains and flooding in mid-November in the province’s south swamped farms and created mudslides that killed four people, caused billions of dollars in damages and temporarily cut off road and rail access to Vancouver from points east.

The federal government has already separately budgeted about $5 billion through its Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (DFAA) to help cover non-farm-related losses from the flood damages in the region. Funding was previously made available to livestock producers to help cover immediate feed costs.

Flood damages in the farm sector alone are believed to include more than 1,100 farms, over 35,000 acres and 2.5 million head of livestock, in areas ranging from the Sumas Prairie at Abbotsford east and northeast to Merritt and Princeton. Farm-related losses alone are estimated at about $285 million.

In the case of the flood recovery program announced Monday, funding is to go to cover farmers’ “extraordinary expenses from uninsurable damages” not already covered by other programs. Costs covered under the new program would include:

• cleanup, repair and restoration of land, barns and animal shelters, water and waste systems, and returning flood-impacted land and buildings to “a safe environment for agricultural production;”
• repair of uninsurable “essential” farm infrastructure and equipment plus “reasonable” repair of on-farm structures such as livestock fences and drainage ditches, as well as rental of temporary production facilities or pastures where needed;
• replacement feed and other animal welfare costs including livestock transportation and veterinary care for injured animals; deadstock disposal for animals killed in the flooding; support for destroyed beehives and colonies; and
• loss of perennial plants not raised for resale, such as blueberry plants.

Popham said funding may also be available to help remediate farmland contaminated by floodwaters.

The province said it will deliver the Flood Recovery for Food Security Program with a combination of AgriRecovery and DFAA funding. AgriRecovery will focus on larger farms, with annual sales over $2 million, providing up to 70 per cent compensation for eligible costs.

Farms with less than $2 million in annual revenue, meanwhile, would be eligible for up to 90 per cent compensation, for which the province would seek reimbursement through the DFAA.

Farmers who plan to apply for funding under the program but have already started work and incurred eligible expenses are advised to keep receipts, track hours of work involved and take pictures documenting damage and repairs.

Popham, speaking along with Bibeau at a press briefing Monday, said farmers who had already applied separately for disaster financial assistance before now can expect to be contacted by the ag ministry; others may now start applying through the new program.

Popham described November’s flooding as “the most impactful agricultural disaster ever in our province, resulting in profound losses” for producers.

“We’ve worked closely with farmers and farming organizations to make sure we have a comprehensive response that will support their recovery, help them get their farms back in production, and continue our collective efforts to build a resilient food system and food economy in B.C.”

Affected farmers enrolled in the federal/provincial AgriInsurance (crop insurance) program are also advised to contact the provincial ag ministry to open claims if they’ve not already done so.

Farmers also still have time to apply for the AgriStability income stabilization program for the 2021 program year, and can seek interim payments under that program, the province said Monday. That program may also help farmers cover losses in stored crops, nursery plants and livestock. –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Australian-British mining firm BHP announced Tuesday its board has approved its potash mine about 60 km southeast of Humboldt, near Jansen, Sask., for another $7.5 billion in development to completion.

At full production, the Jansen mine is expected to yield about 4.35 million tonnes of potash per year, with a position in the “world’s best potash basin” allowing for further expansion. The mine is expected to operate for up to 100 years.

First ore is expected in 2027, with full construction expected to take about six years, followed by a two-year ramp-up period, the company said in a release.

In development since 2010, Jansen lines up with BHP’s current strategy of “growing our exposure to future-facing commodities in world-class assets, which are large, low-cost and expandable,” BHP CEO Mike Henry said in the release.

Its entry into the potash business gives it “increased leverage to key global mega-trends, including rising population, changing diets, decarbonization and improving environmental stewardship,” the company said.

“This is an important milestone for BHP and an investment in a new commodity that we believe will create value for shareholders for generations,” Henry said, noting the mine will be designed with a “focus on sustainability, including being designed for low GHG emissions and low water consumption.”

Getting Jansen to first-stage completion will involve design, engineering and construction for an underground potash mine and surface infrastructure including a processing plant, product storage and a “continuous automated rail loading system.”

The mine’s potash will be railed out for export via the Westshore coal terminal at Delta, B.C. as per a recently announced agreement with terminal operators. The approved funding also covers the infrastructure needed to handle potash at Westshore.

BHP’s investment until now at Jansen has run up to about $5.7 billion, including construction of the shafts and associated infrastructure — already about 93 per cent complete, the company said Tuesday — and engineering, about 50 per cent completed.

The company said Tuesday it has previously acknowledged its “significant initial outlay” at the site, adding that “our approach would be different if considering the project again today.”

“The positive economic impact of this decision for our province cannot be overstated, as the Jansen mine will generate tens of billions of dollars in taxes and royalties and create thousands of quality jobs for the people of Saskatchewan,” provincial Energy and Resources Minister Bronwyn Eyre said Tuesday in a separate release.

Operations at the company’s mine and Saskatoon corporate office will create over 600 jobs in the province, along with about 3,500 jobs at peak construction, Henry said.

‘Excess capacity’

As for the mine’s impact on potash fertilizer markets, BHP said it “anticipate(s) that demand growth will progressively absorb the excess capacity currently present in the industry, with opportunity for new supply expected by the late 2020s or early 2030s.”

That time period, BHP said, is “broadly aligned with the expected timing of first production from Jansen.”

Past the 2020s, BHP said, the industry’s long-run trend prices are “expected to be determined by Canadian greenfield solution mines.”

Solution mines, the company said, tend to consume more energy and water than conventional mines like Jansen, and also have “higher operating costs and higher sustaining capital requirements.”

BHP’s 2010 proposal to build the Jansen mine originally charted a more aggressive pathway into the Saskatchewan potash sector, first by buying junior miner Athabasca Potash, then by launching a takeover bid for Saskatchewan fertilizer giant PotashCorp.

BHP later dropped the PotashCorp bid after it was rejected by both the Saskatchewan and federal governments.

Earlier this year, news reports had quoted unnamed sources as saying BHP was in discussions with Nutrien — formed by the 2018 merger of PotashCorp and fertilizer rival Agrium — about the latter firm taking a stake in the Jansen mine. Nutrien later scotched those reports as “speculative and inaccurate.” –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Brandt Tractor, the equipment sales arm of the Regina-based Brandt Group, on Monday announced an agreement to buy all of publicly-traded Cervus Equipment Corp. for $19.50 a share, valuing the Calgary-based chain at about $302 million.

Cervus’ holdings today include 22 Deere dealerships in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C., 17 Peterbilt dealerships in Ontario and Saskatchewan, eight forklift dealerships in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, seven Deere dealerships in Australia and nine in New Zealand. Another Deere dealership is due to open at Penhold, Alta., near Red Deer, next year.

Cervus dates back to 1982, when the company’s current chairman Peter Lacey bought five Deere dealerships in Alberta. It listed on the TSX in 2000 and went on to buy further outlets across Canada, expanding also into New Zealand and Australia in 2010 and 2012 respectively.

Brandt Tractor, meanwhile, operates 56 dealerships across Canada, selling Deere equipment such as skid steers, dozers, excavators and feller bunchers and also handling sales and service for brands such as Ditch Witch, NPK, Hammerhead and Topcon.

Brandt CEO Shaun Semple said Monday the addition of Cervus would see Brandt Tractor shift its dealership chains into three new segments “dedicated to serving the agriculture, transportation and material handling industries.”

Those segments, he said, “will further establish Brandt as a total solutions provider across our diverse customer groups.”

“As a private company with a committed, well-capitalized and long-term owner, Cervus will be better positioned for the next stage of evolutionary growth for our dealerships,” Cervus CEO Angela Lekatsas said in the same release.

“The size and scale of the entity created by the combination of our two companies will allow for increased investment into Cervus for the benefit of our employees and customers.”

John Deere Canada and Peterbilt Motors have already consented to the change of control, Brandt and Cervus said in their release.

Brandt and Cervus said they expect to close the deal sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, pending the outcome of a special meeting of Cervus shareholders to be held sometime in October.

Among Cervus shareholders, Lacey, who holds about 18 per cent, has already locked into an “irrevocable” agreement to vote his shares in favour of the Brandt deal.

Other Cervus directors and officers, who in all hold about one per cent, have “revocable” agreements in place to vote in favour. Also, as of Monday, Brandt and affiliates together hold about nine per cent of outstanding Cervus shares.

Brandt said its proposed deal represents a 37 per cent premium to the 20-day volume-weighted average price per Cervus share for the period ending Aug. 13.

Cervus on Monday also announced its best-ever second quarter, booking $14.88 million in adjusted before-tax income for the period ending June 30, up from $8.08 million in the year-earlier period. Gross revenue from sales and service for the period came in at $402.3 million, up from $340.97 million in Cervus’ 2020 Q2.

Ag equipment revenue specifically was up 10 per cent in the quarter, “primarily driven by increased customer demand for new equipment, supported by strong market fundamentals in all our geographies.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The company is working toward full operation at the world’s largest pea plant by early 2022, she said.

“To date we have picked up hundreds of loads of peas from growers and we are using these peas to fine-tune and commission our processing and quality assurance systems at the plant,” Finley, the company’s communications and public affairs manager, said via email.

Construction of the 200,000-square foot facility, costing about $500 million, was completed late last year, and Roquette purchased peas to calibrate the production equipment.

“Our goal is to have consumer-ready protein available during the summer of 2021 and the plant will reach full production capacity in early 2022,” Finley said.

Ground was broken for the plant in 2017, but work was delayed for more than a year as Roquette upgraded its design, with construction resuming in October 2018.

Once operating at full capacity, the Roquette plant will be able to process about 125,000 tonnes of yellow peas per year. Also, the plant is able to process conventional and organic peas, with plans to buy 5,000 tonnes of Manitoba-grown yellow peas during the first year of operations.

Up to 120 people will be employed at the plant, Finley said.

Prices for yellow peas have been steady for about the last month, but have climbed more than $4 per bushel during over the last year, according to Prairie Ag Hotwire. Prices currently range from $9.25 to $11.25 per bushel.

Nearly 4.6 million tonnes of peas were produced in Canada in 2020, according to Statistics Canada. Of that, about 2.5 million tonnes were in Saskatchewan, with 1.8 million tonnes in Alberta, while Manitoba harvested about 246,000 tonnes.

Roquette has said it fully expects the amount of peas produced in Manitoba to increase.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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That’s the amount of extra water that will, or rather won’t, be needed to add more than 200,000 irrigated acres that will be created by a $815-million project, officials say.

“With the savings we gain by becoming more efficient, we can make the service we provide to our water users even more secure,” Dan Shute, chair of the Western Irrigation District, said at a news conference to announce the mega-project.

There are currently just over 1.7 million irrigated acres in the province, so the expansion will boost that number by nearly one-eighth.

Western is one of eight irrigation districts that are participating in the initiative. (The others are Bow River, Eastern, Lethbridge Northern, Raymond, St. Mary River, Taber, and United.) The $815 million will be spent on four new off-stream reservoirs and 56 modernization projects, much of that devoted to converting open canals to underground pipelines.

The pipelines will be the focus of the first phase of the project (which will provide irrigation to 58,900 acres) with the second phase (covering 143,800 acres) involving new and expanded reservoirs (whose location has yet to be determined) and other works, said the Canadian Infrastructure Bank. The bank is a federal Crown corporation that’s been given $35 billion for joint investment projects with the private sector or groups like the irrigation districts.

The eight irrigation districts are putting in $163 million and will pay off a $407.5-million loan (bearing an interest rate of one per cent) from the infrastructure bank over 35 years. The provincial government is putting in the remainder, $244.5 million, in the form of a grant.

It’s estimated the project will create nearly 1,300 construction jobs and another 6,800 “direct and indirect permanent jobs,” the province said.

Officials at the news conference cited figures from a 2015 study commissioned by the Alberta Irrigation Projects Association that estimated the irrigation sector adds $3.6 billion annually to the provincial economy.

“Sales of irrigation crop and livestock products on 4.7 per cent of Alberta’s cultivated land base generated 19 per cent of total primary agricultural sales,” the report stated. “Irrigation sales equated to about $2,400/ha. compared with about $329/ha. for dryland production.”

That report, prepared by consultants with input from university experts, warned that climate change could bring longer, more intense, and more frequent droughts to the province. That, the reported argued, ups the need for irrigation districts “to better optimize water supply and irrigation production during prolonged droughts.”

But the other side of that coin is that irrigated land will become even more valuable.

“Climate change may also lead to more diverse and high-value irrigated crop production and encourage establishment of additional processing industries in the region,” the report said. “The message — that water; land; skilled irrigation producers; and diversified, high-quality irrigation products are available to support value-added processing industries — needs to be better communicated to international food-processing industries.”

The irrigation expansion is just the sort of “high-impact” project that the infrastructure bank was created to invest in, said Michael Sabia, the former head of Bell Canada and the body that invests Quebec’s $330-billion public pension fund.

“This is a project that will grow Alberta’s economy because the value of sales from irrigated land is about seven times greater than dryland,” said Sabia, who became chair in April with a mandate to ramp up the three-year-old infrastructure bank’s investments.

The irrigation sector was overdue for major investment, said Premier Jason Kenney.

“It’s gone for too long without renewal, without new capital investment,” he said.

The province has funded irrigation upgrades since 1969 (on a 75-25 cost-share basis with irrigation districts), but the amounts have been relatively small. The most recent report on the Irrigation Rehabilitation Program says $18.7 million was spent in 2018.

The new project will be more than 40 times larger than that, and it’s a good time for such an investment even though the provincial economy has been battered this year, said Shute.

“Even in tough times, it’s prudent to invest in the future,” he said. “Installing pipelines and modernizing canals with long lifespans will benefit future generations of Alberta food producers and ensure that infrastructure required for stable food production for many decades to come.”

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Trump said over the weekend on Twitter he would issue the permit, which he signed on Monday but was released by the White House late on Tuesday. Projects that cross the U.S. border require presidential permits.

The Alaska-Alberta Railway Development Corporation (A2A Rail) project would move Alberta crude 2,570 km to the Alaskan coast, as well as freight in the other direction.

Backers of the US$17 billion project hope it will be in service by the end of the decade.

Calgary-based A2A said in a release Tuesday, however, that it’s ready to begin “soft construction” this year, and estimated its completion at that rate in 2025 and operation in 2026.

A2A would still require numerous regulatory clearances in the U.S. and Canada that would likely take years.

The company said Tuesday it would work with U.S. and Canadian federal, state and provincial government entities to “minimize” the project timeline.

The proposed rail line could carry up to two million barrels of oil per day, along with potash, sulphur and grain that often back up at Vancouver, said Mead Treadwell, A2A’s vice-chair for Alaska.

The company’s chairman, Canadian financier Sean McCoshen, said Tuesday the project “could unlock $60 billion in additional cumulative (gross domestic product) through 2040 and create more than 28,000 jobs.”

Moving commodities and other goods out of ports in Alaska, the company said, could also reduce end-to-end shipping times between North America and Asia by as much as two to four days.

Trump’s permit, McCoshen said, is “a significant milestone that will greatly assist with our continued efforts.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Eric Beech in Washington. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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In addition to being home to 70 employees from both organizations, the facility will be able to host large events and community groups.

Marigold is a not-for-profit municipal collaborative that serves 320,000 residents in municipalities and First Nations from the B.C. border to the Saskatchewan border.

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The gain in producer prices followed four months of consecutive decreases and matched a flash estimate released by the statistical agency earlier this month.

StatsCan said the May increase was driven by higher prices for meat, fish and dairy products as well as gains in energy and petroleum products. Of the 21 major commodity groups monitored by the agency, six rose, 11 fell, and four were unchanged.

Meat product prices rose 13.3 per cent, led by fresh and frozen pork, which increased a record 31.3 per cent as disruptions in the supply chain from the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and higher demand for meat products contributed to the gain.

Earlier this month, StatsCan had said it expected meat prices would rise following outbreaks of COVID-19 in Canadian and U.S. meat plants that forced operations to shut down or reduce capacity.

Meanwhile, prices for energy and petroleum products rose by 4.6 per cent.

In a separate release, the national statistical agency said Canadian building permits rose 20.2 per cent, the largest percentage increase since March 2009, as some provinces eased constraints imposed on the construction industry due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the May figure was still 20.4 per cent below the peak seen in January 2020, StatsCan said.

The value of residential permits was up in six provinces, rising 18.7 per cent, with most of the gains due to a jump in the value of permits in single-family homes, which rose 37.5 per cent. Meanwhile, commercial permits jumped 20.8 per cent.

— Kelsey Johnson reports on Canadian economic issues for Reuters from Ottawa.

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