MarketsFarm — The ICE Futures canola market held rangebound during the week ended Wednesday, looking for some direction. “None of these markets are flashing any strong signals that there’s much going on… they’re waiting for fresh news and there isn’t much around right now,” said Ken Ball of PI Financial in Winnipeg. While uncertainty over […] Read more

ICE weekly outlook: Canola waiting on fresh news

No big surprises in province’s emergency drought aid program
Program will pay just over $4 per day to feed cows that have to be pulled off pasture early
Reading Time: 3 minutes Applications for drought assistance are now being processed and the fine print doesn’t appear to have any major surprises. As expected, the $340 million in emergency aid for Alberta livestock producers is only for breeding females, covers only grazing livestock (and therefore not pigs, chickens or dairy cows), and producers will need receipts to get […] Read more

BASF warns on seeding choices for drought-hit imi-treated fields
Steer clear of non-Clearfield canola, durum, canary seed in rotations, company says
Updated, Sept. 22 — The maker of Odyssey, Solo and Viper is warning grain growers whose fields were excessively dry in 2021 that those herbicides may not break down soon enough in those soils to allow certain seeding choices in 2022. BASF Canada on Monday issued an “urgent notice to growers” in which the company […] Read more

CFA’s Hay West program up and running
Program website now online
A revival of the “Hay West” initiative, aimed at shipping feed from Eastern Canada to supplement drought-dented supplies in the West, has gone live. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture on Friday announced its Hay West 2021 initiative is “now operational and seeking applicants to both receive and supply hay.” Applicants interested in either supplying or […] Read more

Drought slashes seed supplies across the Prairies
Seed supplies are likely to be lower than average this year, so source your seed earlier than normal
Reading Time: 6 minutes Sarah Weigum started to suspect this wouldn’t be a typical year for seed sales back in July, when one of her customers called to book seed for next spring. “My customers aren’t normally the type who call in July for seed for the next spring, and that was just the beginning,” said the Three Hills-area […] Read more

Ontario MDS volunteers already moving hay west
Disaster response group spearheading program separate from CFA plan
It’s in the spirit of co-operation in difficult times that a group of Ontario farmers have launched a hay donation program to assist their Saskatchewan counterparts. Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) Canada, a volunteer organization that provides assistance in the aftermath of disasters in Canada and the U.S., is organizing the latest iteration of Hay West […] Read more

Prairie crops downgraded in latest StatsCan estimates
Corn, soybean crops upsized from previous report
MarketsFarm — Drought conditions across Canada’s Prairies cut into yields throughout the region in 2021, with production of most of the major crops downgraded by Statistics Canada in updated crop estimates released Tuesday. Using satellite imagery, the government agency now sees total canola production for the 2021-22 crop year at 12.78 million tonnes, which compares […] Read more

Prairie cattle offered a new home on the East Coast
Reading Time: < 1 minute It makes more sense to send cattle from Western Canada to the Maritimes than to send hay the other way, says the New Brunswick Beef Producers Association. The farm group is offering to match producers from the West with their counterparts in New Brunswick who want to buy or temporarily feed their cattle through a […] Read more

Drought maps show little change at end of August
MarketsFarm — Much of Western Canada remained in some state of drought at the end of August despite widespread rains late in the month, according to updated maps compiled by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The area mapped out as dealing with ‘exceptional drought’ in south-central Manitoba’s agricultural regions contracted slightly compared to the previous month […] Read more

Pulse weekly outlook: Chickpeas find high-priced silver lining
MarketsFarm — Like many other crops across Western Canada, chickpeas weren’t immune to hot and dry growing conditions over the summer. This year’s domestic chickpea crop is only expected to weigh in at 63,000 tonnes, according to Statistics Canada — less than one-third of the five-year average of 189,600 tonnes. In Saskatchewan, some parts of […] Read more