“We’re making an assumption that sustainability isn’t going away,” said Bryan Prystupa, senior product owner for FCC AgExpert. “Regardless of campaign slogans or what political colour is leading our country, if we focus on the value we can deliver for the farmer, none of that should matter.”

Prystupa was talking about AgExpert’s new feature at Manitoba Ag Days 2025 in Brandon on Wednesday.

AgExpert is two different, but related software products. AgExpert Accounting, which Prystupa describes as similar to QuickBooks, delves into the bookkeeping and financial management of a farm. AgExpert Field is a field record keeping tool that tracks things like field boundaries, yield data, and various other activities associated with farming to help calculate that cost of production. The sustainability tool is an option that was recently added to AgExpert Field.

Basically, the tool takes the data already being collected to track production costs and creates reports that give farmers insights into their net carbon footprint.

“It can estimate the carbon my farm sequestered last year and the history of my soil organic carbon going as far back as 40 years, all with two clicks,” said Prystupa.

He stressed that greenhouse gas emissions are only half of the equation.

“It was very important for us to also measure the carbon sequestration getting pumped into the dirt, the soil organic carbon, thanks to the crops, the pastureland and the tree belt.”

Prystupa said the developers made certain that the sustainability feature is non-judgmental. It won’t tell a farmer that they need to do better. “We are neutral,” he said, adding that the feature is also optional. “If there’s interest by a user, great and if there isn’t, no sweat either.”

Read more about AgExpert’s sustainability tool in an upcoming print edition. For more stories on Manitoba Ag Days 2025, visit, our landing page.

The post New tool for carbon footprint tracking unveiled at Manitoba AgDays appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Verticillium is a new disease to Canada,” said Cornelsen. “It was first identified on a farm south of Winnipeg in 2014, but it has now been identified in many other production regions.”

As a result, very little is known about the disease.

Canola yields were down across the Prairies last year. Cornelsen said much of the yield loss has been attributed to heat stress and drought loss in Saskatchewan and to blackleg in Alberta. But poor yields coincided with a severe outbreak of verticillium in Manitoba, and many farmers and agronomists are thinking the soil-borne disease might be the issue. But Cornelsen said it’s hard to pin down exactly how verticillium affects yield.

“There’s nothing to really validate that those were the primary losses, just anecdotes and field evidence,” she said. “When we look to yield losses for verticillium, we don’t have a good answer.”

The problem is, because it’s so new, very little research has been done in Canada.

“It’s probably only been the last five years that this disease has been taken seriously, where there’s been investment into research and a more focused effort,” she said.

Since research projects can take up to five years, and since 2020 was basically a write-off because of COVID, in many cases we’re only seeing the very earliest results from that research now.

While the disease is new to Canada, the brassica-loving species verticillium longisporum that was discovered here in 2014 was first discovered in Germany on horseradish in 1960. As a result, it would make sense that plant pathologists could lean on European research to deal with the disease. Unfortunately, the Europeans have been no help.

“They actually kind of try to spin it as a positive,” said Cornelsen. “It’s a kind of a natural, dry-down product for them, thought to help with harvestability.”

Because it’s a soil-borne disease, fungicides won’t be effective. For the same reason, crop rotation, the go-to for any integrated pest management approach, isn’t all that effective because canola is everywhere and the disease is wind-borne.

So, a lot of the hope and expectation is for some kind of silver bullet from plant breeders to develop resistant hybrids.

But Cornelsen cautions that rushing something to market isn’t always the best idea. She pointed to clubroot. It was discovered in 2003 and within six or seven years, new resistant hybrids came on the market. But within four years, those hybrids were overcome.

“We want to provide a product that’s going to have some longevity and help solve our answers to verticillium,” she said. “It’s tough to provide any sort of management practices, but we are working on it.

Keep an eye out for a future print edition for more on verticillium longisporum. And visit our launch page for more coverage of Manitoba Ag Days 2025.

—Updated Jan. 29. Corrects spelling of Justine Cornelsen’s name.

The post Researchers scramble to understand verticillium in Canada appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The supply and demand fundamentals for canola are supportive of price this winter, but Canadian farmers are facing a situation where geopolitics are dominant and supply/demand is secondary for canola.

“Given the supply-demand fundamentals … if we didn’t have the political issues at play, with Donald Trump and the tariff situation, the biofuels and the threat looming of China import tariffs, we would already be trading $700 futures today,” said Mike Jubinville, a senior markets analyst with Glacier MarketsFarm.

“That’s what the political uncertainties have injected.”

As of Jan. 23, canola futures for the May contract were trading around $640 per tonne.

Jubinville presented a grain and oilseed outlook at the Manitoba Ag Days trade show held in Brandon from Jan. 21-23.

He ran through a series of chart, showing that domestic crush and canola seed and oil exports have been strong over the last several months. Given the smaller crop on the Prairies, canola stocks at the end of the 2024-25 crop year will be low.

Jubinville pegged the ending stocks-to- use ratio at seven per cent, which is below average.

“When I look at it from the canola specific fundaments of supply and demand, it actually appears pretty price-friendly,” he said.

Jubinville clarified that he isn’t “bullish” on canola, but there could be better prices for new crop canola.

“I’m probably inclined to wait (to price new crop),” Jubinville said, in response to a question from the audience at Ag Days.

“In a tight stocks scenario, with a bit of rationing back of canola acres, it may present some new crop pricing opportunities — that we have yet to see.”

Despite the low stocks and strong demand for Canadian canola, there is now a massive price gap between canola and European rapeseed.

In the third week of January, EU rapeseed futures were trading at a $143 per tonne premium to canola futures.

Europe and Ukraine had disappointing rapeseed crops, and European biodiesel producers will need to import canola to compensate for the shortfall.

“EU production (of rapeseed) is down. EU stocks down. We think EU rapeseed imports and canola imports will have to reach a record level of close to 7.3 million tonnes,” said David Mielke, a market analyst with Oil World.

Demand from Europe is supportive of price, but multiple geopolitical issues are keeping a lid on canola this winter.

First off, there is U.S. president Donald Trump and his threat of imposing 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Canada. Then, there is China and its investigation into whether Canada is unfairly dumping canola into the Chinese market.

Adding to the confusion, there is uncertainty around the U.S. biofuel market.

On Jan. 15, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released an interim rule around feedstocks for the production of biofuels. The rule didn’t mention canola.

“The rule issued today establishes a framework to connect climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices applied in the production of feedstock crops with reductions in the carbon footprint of biofuels. The rule includes three feedstock crops: corn, soy, and sorghum.”

That decision rattled the canola markets, but Jubinville recently spoke with representatives of canola grower associations in the United States who believe canola will ultimately be included in the list of eligible feedstocks.

That’s positive, but Canada’s chaotic trade relationship with the U.S. will be much more difficult to fix. Plus, it’s possible that China will impose duties on Canadian canola sometime in 2025.

Therefore, it’s hard to imagine that canola fundamentals will wrestle back control over the market.

“At this point, I would say ‘no,’ ” Jubinville said.

“We are subject to these political manipulations to a degree in the marketplace that I don’t think I’ve seen in 37 years that I’ve been involved in this business.”

Check out all our coverage of Manitoba Ag Days 2025 here.

The post Manitoba Ag Days: ‘Political manipulations’ hold back canola – analyst appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Karen Fatteicher, an agronomist with 360 Ag Consulting, said she once asked a friend who is a farmer what kind of canola she grew. Her friend answered, “The cheapest.” But Fatteicher advised that it’s best not to let price dictate the variety you choose.

“If somebody is trying to sell you something that’s on the shelf, it’s on the shelf for a reason,” she said. “You will not grow yourself into prosperity by saving on seed costs. Keep moving the needle with your varieties.”

While it’s important not to choose a variety based solely on cost, Brunel Sabourin, an agronomist with Antara Agronomy, said the opposite is also true. Choosing a variety specifically because it offers higher returns could also have unforeseen consequences.

“We have a lot of growers who would like to chase specialty canola oils that often have a premium attached,” said Sabourin. “We need to ask ourselves: Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

He said if the grower has to make compromises to grow that variety and, as a result, ends up with a stubborn weed problem, it could mean spending more on herbicides or other expenses associated with dealing with the issue.

Panelist Breanna Miller-Friesen, an agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, had a different take on the same question.

“I think it goes back to the problem we’re trying to solve,” she said. “Say we have a clubroot issue. If the trade-off is a couple of bushels of yield versus a clubroot infestation, that makes our decision a lot easier. It’s definitely worth that potential yield loss versus, say, developing a weed resistance issue.”

To catch more of their conversation, keep an eye out for more in upcoming print editions. More Ag Days news, video and more can be found on our Manitoba Ag Days 2025 landing page.

The post Panel explores key issues in canola variety selection at Manitoba Ag Days appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Aster yellows is a disease that makes yellow things green,” said Tyler Wist, research scientist, field crop entomology with Agriculture and Agrifood Canada’s Saskatoon branch at Manitoba Ag Days 2025 in Brandon.

The disease is not specific to canola. It can infect many grasses and broadleaf plants. But in canola, it can have a devastating effect on pod development. Instead of the standard canola pod, the pods are like large green bladders.

“If we cut them open, all the seeds have turned into tiny little leaf-like things,” said Wist, who added that it could mean complete yield loss in that plant if it was infected early enough.

Most years, the incidence rate is less than 0.1 per cent incidence, but in 2012, there was a serious outbreak of aster yellows on the Canadian Prairies. That infestation saw incidences of between five and 64 per cent in fields and caused an estimated $400 million in canola losses.

“That’s the one everyone remembers,” said Wist, but he added that 2023 saw incidences as high as 36 per cent.

Interestingly, there is a correlation between drought in the areas where they breed (in the Great Plains around Nebraska and South Dakota) and the level of infection we get up here in Canada.

Wist explained that what is happening is, if the leafhopper is feeding on wheat or barley down south, there won’t typically be a bad outbreak up here. But if there is a drought in that area, the bugs will feed on weeds where they pick up the bacterial infection and then float on the winds to infect crops in the Canadian Prairies.

For more news, previews and videos, see our Manitoba Ag Days 2025 landing page.

The post Aster yellows rare but potentially costly Manitoba Ag Days speaker says appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

You’d be hard pressed to find a person more passionate about craft beer than Graham Sherman of Toolshed Brewing Co. He’s also learned a thing or two about building a business from the ground up, taking his taste for beer – and passion for brewing – literally from the toolshed in his back yard to an award-winning craft beer and brewery in Calgary.

Sherman was at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon, Man., talking about building his business – and his connection to the farming community, advice for entrepreneurs wanting to ‘take the leap’ and his love for one of Alberta’s best home-grown commodities: barley.

(Recorded at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon, Man., Jan. 16, 2024)

The post VIDEO: Taking craft beer from the toolshed, to the community appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Ag Days’ management team and directors have postponed the event – now to be determined at a later date – originally scheduled for January 18-20, 2022, in Brandon, Man., based on new COVID-19 public health orders issued by the Manitoba Government on Dec. 27, 2021.

The new orders limit the capacity of indoor gatherings to 50 per cent or 250 people until further notice.

In a news release issued on Dec. 28, 2021, Manitoba Ag Days said that its management team is working with the Keystone Centre and other service providers to determine where alternate dates are possible.

In 2021, Manitoba Ag Days in-person events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The post Manitoba Ag Days postponed on COVID protocols appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.