Farmers across Manitoba are now cleared to apply spring fertilizers including livestock manure on their fields, thanks to sufficiently warm soil temperatures, the province said Tuesday. Though the winter nutrient ban has been lifted, the province cautioned producers to “assess current weather conditions and periodically check weather forecasts” if they’re applying anytime between now and […] Read more
Manitoba soil temperatures allow for spring fertilizer
Winter ban lifted, with cautions
Cargill buying further into Saskatchewan ag retail
Company to take up other half of Precision Ag
Cargill plans to expand its crop retail reach further into southeastern Saskatchewan by buying up the remaining half of one of its joint ventures in the region. The Canadian arm of the U.S. agrifood firm said Thursday it will buy up crop input retailer Precision Ag for an undisclosed sum, taking up the 50 per […] Read more
Nutrien beats profit expectation on strong potash sales
Reuters — Canadian fertilizer maker Nutrien posted fourth-quarter profit above analysts’ estimates on Wednesday as potash demand rose amid rising crop prices, sending its U.S.-listed shares up in extended trade. Fertilizer producers have benefited from high U.S. crop exports, including record-large corn sales to China. With crop prices touching multi-year highs, farmers are poised to […] Read more
High fertilizer prices likely to climb more
MarketsFarm — Expect fertilizer prices to resume increasing, despite having fallen back recently. Prices began their sharp rise around the middle of December and beginning of January. “They will go higher as demand goes up at seeding time,” Mike Jubinville of MarketsFarm Pro in Winnipeg said. Jubinville reported urea prices have jumped $100 per tonne […] Read more
Federated Co-op buying into ag retailer Blair’s
Central, southeastern Saskatchewan sites to go into new joint venture
The ag retail arm of the Saskatchewan-based Blair’s Family of Companies is set to go into a joint venture with one of Canada’s biggest co-operatives. Blair’s and Federated Co-operatives (FCL) announced last week they’ve reached an agreement to set up a joint venture which, pending regulatory approvals, will own and operate the seven Blair’s ag […] Read more
New research digs into value of subsurface fertigation
Delivering water and nutrients straight to root zones is nice in theory, but the payoff isn’t known
Reading Time: 2 minutes Subsurface drip irrigation is gaining popularity in Alberta, and is now in use on 1,090 hectares. But while it’s more water efficient compared to surface irrigation, there are few scientific studies on subsurface fertigation (SDF) specific to Alberta crops and soil conditions. “Most of the data we have is from the U.S. on crops like […] Read more
Facing green push on farm, fertilizer makers look to sea for growth
Winnipeg/Oslo | Reuters — Two of the world’s biggest fertilizer producers, CF Industries and Yara International, are seeking to cash in on the green energy transition by reconfiguring ammonia plants in the U.S. and Norway to produce clean energy to power ships. The consumption of oil for transportation is one of the top contributors to […] Read more
Port of Thunder Bay wraps up 21st-century-best year
MarketsFarm — The last vessel of the 2020-21 shipping season left the Port of Thunder Bay on Tuesday, wrapping up the busiest year at the port since 1997. Annual cargo volumes through came in at 10.2 million tonnes, which marked the first time the tonnage topped 10 million since 1997. A total of 9.3 million […] Read more
A fertilizer revolution is on the horizon
IBM says it will produce a breakthrough within five years that will greatly lower the energy needed to make nitrogen fertilizer
Reading Time: 5 minutes As fledgling technology goes, quantum computing sounds as science fiction as it gets. Most people have likely not even heard about it, let alone think it can be used for anything immediately useful. But if IBM fulfills a very bold promise it made in September, crop producers will see the fruits of this technology in […] Read more
Fertilizer use increasing rapidly in Western Canada
Reading Time: < 1 minute Rising Prairie grain production has seen steady increase in the use of nitrogen, phosphate and potash over the past 10 years, says provincial market analyst Ryan Furtas. Nitrogen use in Western Canada has gone from 1.66 million tonnes a decade ago to 2.28 million tonnes in the 2019-20 crop year — an annual increase of […] Read more
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