The Calgary maker of Matex drilling fluids is under new ownership from one of its minority owners and its biggest supplier of crude canola oil. Winnipeg grain firm Richardson International announced last Tuesday it has bought full ownership of Control Chemical Corp. for an undisclosed amount. Control Chemical is billed as a specialized manufacturer of […] Read more

Richardson buys up veg oil-based drilling lubricant maker
Grain firm supplies canola oil to Control Chemical

Brandt to buy Deere dealership chain Cervus
Regina firm to pay $302 million in all-cash deal
The world’s biggest privately-owned chain of Deere construction and forestry equipment dealerships is set to expand its reach into Deere farm equipment in a major way. 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 […] Read more

Bayer takes battle over Roundup cancer claims to U.S. Supreme Court
Frankfurt | Reuters — Bayer, trying to contain billions of dollars in legal costs, filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court verdict that upheld damages to a customer blaming his cancer on the German group’s glyphosate-based herbicides. Bayer last week lost a third appeal against verdicts that sided with […] Read more

Feds lock in AgriRecovery funds before election call
Ottawa's pledged share now up to $500 million
Just hours ahead of a federal election call, the federal government has committed $500 million to cover its share of federal/provincial AgriRecovery support plans for drought-hit farmers across Canada’s West. Shortly before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit Sunday to Rideau Hall seeking the dissolution of Parliament for a federal election, Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau confirmed […] Read more

Ag lender willing to ‘find solutions’ for farmers
Reading Time: < 1 minute Farm Credit Canada (FCC) is offering a customer support program to farmers and ranchers hit by adverse growing conditions. “We are watching the weather situation very closely and are talking to customers daily,” said Michael Hoffort, FCC president and CEO. If clients suffer cash flow problems. ”We’re ready to support them and find solutions,” he […] Read more

Once-in-50-year heat waves now happening every decade: U.N. climate report
Reuters – Extreme heat waves that previously only struck once every 50 years are now expected to happen once per decade because of global warming, while downpours and droughts have also become more frequent, a U.N. climate science report said on Monday. The report www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1 found that we are already experiencing those effects of climate […] Read more

Schoepp: A promise with no timeline is not a succession play
The people in these four tales are very different but they all believed in a promise never fulfilled
Reading Time: 3 minutes There are seven days in a week and someday isn’t one of them. This popular saying could be made into a hit single — for farm succession. A man I’ll call Rick is in his mid-60s and still ranching on the same land his grandfather homesteaded. And while that might sound ideal, he has no […] Read more

Corteva lifts sales forecast on strong demand for crop protection products, seeds
Reuters – Corteva Inc on Thursday raised its net sales forecast for the year after strong demand for crop protection products such as herbicides and insecticides helped the agricultural company beat estimates for the second quarter. Corteva also announced a new $1.5 billion share repurchase program, in addition to a $1 billion buyback announced in 2019, […] Read more

Bayer Q2 misses forecasts as costs, forex effects bite
Frankfurt | Reuters – Bayer shares fell to their lowest levels in more than seven months after the German agricultural and pharmaceuticals group reported lower-than-expected second-quarter core earnings due to higher production costs and currency headwinds. Second-quarter earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) before special items fell 10.6 percent to 2.58 billion euros ($3.05 billion), […] Read more

Putting Mother Nature’s water filter to the test
It’s called phytoremediation and using native species as filters could be big for the feedlot sector
Reading Time: 3 minutes Walking through the wetlands at Olds College is an education unto itself: Native plants and trees line every path that loops around 20 constructed ponds where waterfowl swim and songbirds flit from cattail to cattail. But the wetlands are also home to something equally important — wetland research. “Managing resources like water is critical,” said […] Read more