One of those reports pertained to Canada and its wheat production. Written by the USDA attaché in Ottawa, the report stated drought could be a major concern for 2024/25 across the Prairies, citing low snowfall this winter and a lack of soil moisture following the 2023/24 harvest. The attaché added that grasshoppers are set to be an issue for Alberta and Saskatchewan this coming growing season.

Meanwhile, the Ottawa desk pegged the 2023/24 Canadian wheat harvest at 31.95 million tonnes, down from 34.34 million the year before. Exports for this year were forecast at 23.30 million tonnes, short of the 25.60 million in 2022/23. The attaché pegged ending stocks for 2023/24 are expected to dip to 3.54 million tonnes compared to the 3.66 million last year.

In comparison with data compiled by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2023/24 production was slotted at 31.95 million tonnes, exports of 23.20 million, and a carryover of 3.95 million.

The USDA attaché in Beijing projected China’s 2023/24 corn crop to grow by 4.2 per cent at 288.84 million tonnes due to heavy rains during the summer. Corn imports were forecast to increase to 20 million tonnes in 2023/24 from last year’s 18.71 million. The Beijing desk noted that Brazil, with 10 million tonnes, surpassed the United States in 2023/24 as China’s top source of imported corn.

China’s corn for feed and residual was nudged up from 220 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 223 million. The carryover is to increase to 206.85 million tonnes from 203.03 million.

For Mexico, it’s 2023/24 corn crop faced unfavourable weather, reduced planted area, and smaller than expected yields. The attaché in Mexico City placed the harvest at 25.5 million tonnes compared to the 28.08 million in 2022/23. Corn imports were to bump up from 19.36 million tonnes to 19.60 million. Ending stocks were projected to fall from 4.5 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 2.80 million this year.

The 2023/24 corn crop in South Africa won’t be as large as the previous year’s harvest of 17.06 million tonnes, according to the USDA attaché in Pretoria. The attaché estimated this year’s crop at 15.80 million tonnes, citing rain-delayed planting in some regions of South Africa, with dryness in the North West province. That’s to see exports contract from 3.80 million tonnes in 2022/23 to three million in 2023/24. However, total consumption was projected to rise from 12.75 million tonnes to 13.10 million. In the end, the Pretoria desk set the carryout to decline from 19.01 million tonnes to 18.26 million.

In Kuala Lumpur, the USDA attaché in Malaysia said that country’s palm oil production is to increase from 18.40 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 19 million this year. The attaché pointed to Malaysia being less affected by the El Nino than anticipated, reduced labour challenges, and less replanting of palm trees. Exports were set to climb from 15.36 million tonnes last year to 16.60 million this year. That’s to lead to ending stocks falling from 2.33 million tonnes in 2023/24 to 1.65 million this year.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg. 

The post USDA attaché reports from Canada, other countries appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

David Roberts, a clinical veterinarian at the South African Foundation For The Conservation Of Coastal Birds, said at least 28 out of around 3,000 penguins in the colony had died from the disease since the middle of August.

“We have confirmed avian influenza in 14 African penguins since the middle of August,” Roberts said, adding that at least another 14 penguins were also affected but not tested for the virus.

“This is a continuation of the outbreak that happened last year and it affects several different species of sea birds and at the moment we are quite concerned because the numbers of penguins that are being affected and dying from the disease is going up,” Roberts added.

South African environmental authorities said on Sept. 16 that the strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza was similar to that detected last year among a range of wild seabirds, including Cape cormorants and common terns.

Roberts said scientists were monitoring the situation because it was not clear how the outbreak would evolve.

“Because the virus is contagious between birds, we’re doing everything that we can to reduce the viral load and transmission rate between the penguins,” Alison Kock, marine biologist at South African National Parks, told Reuters.

To identify and remove sick birds from the colony, South African scientists perform tests or diagnose penguins on their symptoms, Roberts said. Sick and dead birds are then euthanized and cremated in attempt to reduce the spread of the disease.

“There is almost no risk to people from the virus but we do ask people to make sure that when they visit the colony that they disinfect their shoes because it is transmissible between different seabird colonies and also poultry farms,” Kock said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Esa Alexander; writing by Anait Miridzhanian.

The post More penguins dying of avian flu at Cape Town colony appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

However, it will be far less than the USDA’s current estimate of 17.3 million tonnes.

Nevertheless, if the attaché’s forecast were to hold, it would be an increase of nearly 1.7 per cent compared to the previous year and mark the fourth consecutive year of South Africa producing more than 15 million tonnes of corn.

USDA ranks South Africa among the world’s top corn producers, roughly on par with Russia.

The attaché projected planted area in South Africa to remain relatively steady at 6.4 million acres as high crop input costs, such as fertilizer, have deterred farmers from expanding their corn.

An increase in soybean acres, at about 2.3 million, has also impeded corn planting. Soybeans are projected to account for 20 per cent of the country’s summer rainfall field crops, up five-fold in the last 20 years.

While soybeans have cut into corn acres in South Africa over that time, the attaché pointed out corn yields have doubled over the same 20-year period. The report chalked that up to the use of genetically engineered seed, more precise farming techniques and more reduced/zero-tillage methods.

Corn exports are expected to increase as well, from 2.2 million tonnes in 2021-22 to 2.5 million in 2022-23. That said, exports will still be notably lower than the 3.7 million tonnes shipped overseas in 2020-21. Among South Africa’s top customers are Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and Botswana.

The attaché projected 2022-23 ending stocks at 1.57 million tonnes, down sharply from USDA’s call of 2.68 million. That’s due to smaller beginning stocks and reduced production.

The post South Africa looking at another large corn crop in 2022-23 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Lawmakers debated whether to change Section 25 of the constitution to enable authorities to seize land to address racial land inequalities left over from colonialism and white minority rule.

Redressing them has been a flagship promise of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) but little progress has been made on it nearly three decades since the end of apartheid.

“Today we stand to complete the fight against the original sin of land dispossession,” the amendment’s main champion, Justice Minister Roland Lamola, said in a speech in parliament.

He said the state was targeting land only under special conditions such as it having longtime informal occupants, being unused and held purely for speculation, or being abandoned.

But it was rejected by the ANC’s opponents on both sides of the spectrum. The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and right-wing Freedom Front Plus view the plan as an assault on property rights, while the radical Marxist EFF — which also voted against — wants the state to take control of the land.

In all, 204 lawmakers backed the amendment and 145 voted against, with no abstentions.

In the early 20th century, South Africa’s British imperial rulers gave the lion’s share of farmland to whites, mostly to the Afrikaners, descendants of generations of Dutch settlers who make up most white farmers today.

They left just seven per cent for “natives,” meaning Blacks, aboriginal Khoisan and “coloureds” — Afrikaans-speaking South Africans of mixed multiracial heritage.

Then in 1950, the Afrikaner National Party passed a law limiting movements of non-whites, kicking 3.5 million Blacks off their ancestral homelands and putting them in townships.

Twenty seven years of Black majority rule has barely shifted this apartheid geography, despite Nelson Mandela’s pledge after taking power in 1994 to return 30 per cent of land in five years.

“This bill…does nothing to help landless South Africans who have been let down by the ANC’s failing land reform,” the DA’s land committee chairperson Annelie Lotriet said.

Nearly 26 million hectares — three quarters — of privately-owned land is still in the hands of whites, who make up less than a 10th of the population of 58 million, while only four per cent is owned by Blacks who are nearly 80 per cent, government data shows.

The government has tried to persuade whites to sell their land under a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ policy, but found hardly any willing sellers. A 2016 parliamentary study found the programme had transferred just 5.46 per cent of farmland to Black individuals, trusts and state institutions in two decades.

— Tim Cocks is a Reuters correspondent for southern Africa in Johannesburg.

The post South African plan to allow land expropriation fails to pass appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The killing of Brendan Horner, a white man whose body was found tied to a pole at his farm in Free State province, sparked riots at the start of this month, and prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to appeal to South Africans to “resist attempts … to mobilize communities along racial lines.”

The farmers outside the courthouse in the town of Senekal accused the government of failing to protect them from violent crime. Their opponents, from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), complained about what they see as the continued domination of South Africa’s economy by whites, while many Black South Africans remain as poor as they did under apartheid.

EFF leader Julius Malema sat inside the courtroom in which the two murder suspects filed a request for bail during Friday’s hearing. The judge adjourned the case until Oct. 20.

Afterwards, Malema told a rally of thousands, “don’t be confused by the so-called farm murders,” adding that many more Black South Africans were victims of violent crime.

“Those are the ones who deserve our sympathy, not the old, white racists. We don’t want to kill (the) white man. We want equality.”

EFF supporter Khaya Langile, from Soweto, said, “I’m here because of white people … taking advantage of us.”

Tired of murders

Earlier, police separated the two groups with razor wire in one street, but despite the noisy standoff there was no violence.

“There have been indications of tensions but by and large all of them took a decision that they did not want to see violence,” State Security minister Ayanda Dlodlo said outside the court.

The farmers mostly wore khaki shirts and shorts, a few wore military outfits, and at least one was armed. A group on motorbikes sporting long beards drove through Senekal, some waving flags emblazoned with crosses.

“We are getting tired now of all the farm murders,” said Geoffrey Marais, 30, a white livestock trader from Delmas, where a woman was strangled to death two weeks ago.

“Enough is enough. They (the government) must start to prioritize these crimes.”

Murders of white farmers make up a small fraction of the total in South Africa, which has the world’s fifth highest murder rate. In the 2019-20 financial year there were 21,325 murders across the country, of which 49 were white farmers, according to police statistics.

The farmers also feel threatened by a government plan to expropriate white-owned land without compensation as part of an effort to redress economic inequalities that remain stark a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid.

Roughly 70 per cent of privately-owned farmland in South Africa is owned by whites, who make up less than nine per cent of the country’s population of 58 million.

— Tim Cocks is a Reuters southern Africa correspondent based in Johannesburg.

The post South African white farmers, Black protesters face off over farm murder appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“The storm system for the most part moved further to the north — more to South Dakota, and missed a lot of key areas in Nebraska,” said Don Roose, president of Iowa-based U.S. Commodities.

The slow-moving storm is set to bring heavy, wet snow, with the heaviest accumulations in western Minnesota and southeast South Dakota.

Lacklustre cash cattle trade added to bearish sentiment. Cash cattle sold in Texas and Kansas at $124 per hundredweight, about steady with last week, traders said (all figures US$).

“Bigger numbers (of cattle) are going to come at us … and it feels like we have a seasonal top in the cash,” Roose said.

Benchmark CME June live cattle futures fell 0.4 cent to close at 119.95 cents/lb. while front-month April settled down 0.025 cent at 125.875 cents.

April feeder cattle futures settled down 0.975 cent at 145.175 cents/lb. and May feeders fell 0.950 cent at 149.225.

Lean hog futures closed higher, bouncing back from limit declines the previous session as news that African swine fever emerged in South Africa sparked a fresh round of buying.

The incurable hog disease has spread across China since last year, causing major losses to the world’s largest hog herd and raising expectations of a pick-up in U.S. pork exports.

“The big news was the swine fever announced in South Africa,” said Jeff French, analyst with Top Third Ag Marketing. “It jumped a continent,” he said.

However, traders also noted that the U.S. pork industry on Wednesday canceled its annual June convention, the World Pork Expo, over concerns that international attendees could bring in the disease.

“If you are a hog producer, you have to have puts in place, in case the swine fever is found in North America,” French said, adding that if the disease ever reached the U.S., “We would just be limit-down for a while because immediately, all of our trading partners would stop buying our pork.”

Most-active CME June lean hog futures settled up 1.3 cents on Wednesday at 96.45 cents/lb. while front-month April hogs ended up 0.375 cent at 78.9 cents/lb.

— Julie Ingwersen is a Reuters commodities correspondent in Chicago.

The post U.S. livestock: CME live cattle down as weather fears ease appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

First, she was an immigrant. Second, she was a woman.

And the killing blow? She wanted to be a sheep farmer in beef country.

“When I went to apply for my mortgage, the bank managers would say, ‘Lady, this is cattle country, you know,’” said de Rosemond, who operates PaSu Farm with husband Patrick.

“But the more they said no, the more I said yes.”

The couple emigrated from South Africa to Carstairs in 1977, where they lived for a couple of years before deciding to try their hand at farming. With hindsight, they might have chosen horticulture (“it’s far easier than livestock”) but de Rosemond liked the idea of livestock on the land.

However, she thought cows were too big and pigs too scary. Sheep, she figured, she could handle.

De Rosemond took a three-month sheep-handling course and bought some “old, broken down” Cheviots from a neighbour — a diversion from traditional Suffolk sheep, the ‘in’ breed of the time.

“If you’re at PaSu Farm, you’re a survivor. You want to get fancy, go to another farm,” she said.

De Rosemond finally found a banker who took her seriously, and just like that, PaSu Farm was born — “with 300 sheep, three kids, mortgaged to the hilt.”

The couple admits they had a rather romantic view of farming when starting out, and quickly got a wake-up call.

“Everybody told us we were crazy. I must admit that, at that time, it was nothing short of insanity,” said de Rosemond. “But it’s amazing what you can do when your back is to the wall.”

Patrick worked an off-farm job in Calgary, helping sustain the operation in the early years. They supplemented their income by selling wool products, sheepskins, and moccasins at craft shows and farmers’ markets. Then in 1992, the couple built a tour facility for visitors from the city who wanted to experience life on a sheep farm. And pretty soon, these visitors wanted to experience more of a getaway in the countryside.

So the de Rosemonds adjusted their course again, turning their facility into a restaurant and shop.

“We’ve been very blessed with things falling into place — not always with ease, but the next step was always in front of us,” said de Rosemond.

Today, the couple only has 30 sheep (their herd was decimated last year in coyote attacks), but their tourism business keeps them plenty busy. The gift shop stocks wool products from all over the world, preserves made from their own garden, and skin-care products made on farm from sheep lanolin (or wool wax). Likewise, their restaurant serves fresh, locally produced meals (specializing in lamb, of course).

And as their tourism business has grown, they’ve pulled back some from the hands-on work of farming.

“We’re at the stage where we don’t want to be doing this much work,” said de Rosemond, adding their son will be taking over part of the sheep operation. “What we produce on the farm is minute. We produce very little.”

Given that, their diversification into agritourism wasn’t just good business savvy — it was “survival.”

“We couldn’t have survived on the sheep,” said de Rosemond. “It just wasn’t sustainable.”

But the operation is thriving as a shopping and dining destination, helped by its location in rolling farmland at the foot of the Canadian Rockies.

“PaSu Farm has gone on to develop a place that is needed in today’s society. Calgary is very go, go, go. Sometimes we can’t even catch our breath. I think it’s really important that there’s a peaceful place where people can come and breathe.”

The post Agritourism sustains central Alberta sheep farm appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“There’s no other way to fight poverty than to create wealth,” South African farmer Theo de Jager told an international gathering of farm journalists here last month.

“And there’s no other sector in this economy that has the potential to create the kind of wealth that can lift the masses out of poverty.”

Poverty is the “biggest single challenge of this continent,” said de Jager, who produces timber, livestock, mangoes, avocados, and macadamia nuts on his farm in Limpopo, South Africa’s northernmost province.

But the method for meeting that challenge has taken an abrupt shift. Instead of relying on government, the farmers are realizing their best resource is each other, he said. New farm organizations have sprung up in the past few years, including independent agricultural unions that communicate across borders, allowing farmers to network with producers in other African countries.

“The key to unlocking wealth in African agriculture is the way you organize farmers,” de Jager said at the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists’ world congress. “This is the way European farming (or North American) farming got to the way it is today. It all started with small co-operatives. Together, we can do more.”

It’s a theme that Alberta producers who support the Canadian Foodgrains Bank would recognize.

A major focus of that organization, which has projects in nearly 20 African countries, is “agriculture and livelihoods programming” — helping families to not only provide food for themselves but also to boost yields so they can generate an income from farming.

The potential is certainly there, said de Jager.

“How ironic could it be that the producers on this continent are some of the world’s most food-insecure people,” he said.

South Africa is the only net food exporter on the continent, but in many cases, it is easier (and more profitable) to sell its agricultural goods to Europe, Australia, or North America. Less than three per cent of food and fibre sold within the continent is produced there. Again there are parallels with Canada — because freight is so expensive and there are many internal trade barriers, it is often easier to import from abroad rather than cross borders.

A lack of farming equipment is another barrier — the most common tool is the hand hoe (usually wielded by women, who account for more than 70 per cent of farmers on the continent).

“We must mechanize agriculture on the African continent or it will never be a means of an end to poverty,” said de Jager.

However, Africa has advanced greatly in communications technology and producers have more access to information thanks to cellphone technology.

“You can go into the deepest corners of Africa and you can find people with mobile phones,” he said.

European and North American organizations have invested in African farming by sharing equipment, skills, and knowledge. However, there are always challenges with this approach, he said. The best way for people in Africa to access equipment or develop their industry is to group together in small collectives to purchase or run the equipment.

“Even if you could do that flawlessly, it will cost a lot. African agriculture needs a lot of investments to get off the ground and financing is very scarce,” said de Jager.

Very few farmers on the continent own their own land. Only some farmers in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia have landownership rights. Many farmers on the continent are without land deeds — although that does not lessen their love for the land they farm.

“In Africa, there is a very special bond between the people and the land, as if the people were made from this very land which they farm,” said de Jager. “Land is something much more than just a means of production for the African farmer. If you want to invest in farmland as an outsider, you must know this. If you want to use land, you marry the people. It’s a long-term relationship. They have to like you and you must like them.”

Outside investors often fail to understand that.

“Too many investors love the land and try to manage the people, instead of loving the people and managing the land,” he said to applause from the room.

The post African farms are vastly different but share common bonds appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

South Africa is in the worst drought in 100 years, so bad that cattle farmers in other provinces have had to sell some of their stock. But in the diverse agricultural region of the Western Cape, farmers graze on marginal lands, and cattle breeds such as Afrikaners, Angus, Nguni, and Sussex are thriving. Sussex do well in South Africa, both as purebred stock and crossbred.

The cattle originated in England and can do well in Australia, South Africa, and Namibia, flourishing in both hot and cold climates.

But I’ve never seen a Sussex in Canada. Why not?

I studied the cattle with the owners of the farm, father and son Nollie and Pieter Stofberg, along with my tour guide for the day, Breyton Milford, the well-travelled operations manager of South Africa’s version of Northlands. None could say why there were no Sussex in Canada.

Back home, I did a quick Google search and discovered the only Sussex-cross cattle in Canada live at CL Ranches near Calgary, and so I called rancher Cherie Copithorne-Barnes to find out why.

It turns out that her cattle are a complete anomaly on the North American continent.

“We do have some Sussex in our herd that we were able to get from an Englishman who had a ranch down in Wyoming,” said Copithorne-Barnes.

That rancher has since passed away and his herd ceased to exist. Copithorne-Barnes doesn’t have any purebred Sussex on her farm anymore, but still has them in her genetic line.

“Frankly, the characteristics of Sussex — which are almost identical to Angus — worked really well,” she said. “But phenotypically, the cattle have been really tough to try and get through. I could have probably worked harder at producing a more purebred line of them.”

The Sussex-cross cattle at Copithorne-Barnes’ place have long toes. The breed is capable of foraging and walking long distances to find water.

“Really, they’ve got that instinctive survivor mentality and the ability to create a good carcass out of not a whole lot, which I like,” she said.

However, the cattle had problems with their udders and legs, and Copithorne-Barnes doesn’t use artificial insemination on her ranch. Instead, she prefers to take different traits and cross them to create an animal that thrives in her environment.

Her cattle still have some of the Sussex traits, and are a dark, red wine colour with a white muzzle and white tassel. She hasn’t had purebred bulls for two to three years, but Sussex traits are still coming through.

“We’ve never said that we’re going to be a breeder of any particular thing other than the animal itself as a whole,” she said. “Granted, the Sussex, if you were going to produce a grass-foraged animal, they would be it.”

Copithorne-Barnes also used Sussex to bring down her cow size.

“We were having 1,500- to 1,600-pound cows and it was just too much for their environment here,” she said. “They did bring it down, but the (animals) that were heavy on the Sussex, those cows were starting to mature around 900 to 1,000 pounds. They were way too small.

“It was just a matter of finding the balance. I never pursued it as hard as I should have. I never got the opportunity to travel to South Africa or to Australia or to any of the other places to find them.”

Sussex cattle in England have all been bred for the show ring, and that wasn’t what Copithorne-Barnes is looking for.

But while it appears no one else has raised Sussex in North America, that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested. Copithorne-Barnes gets tons of phone calls looking for genetics, even though she doesn’t have any purebred Sussex genes available.

“It just takes someone who has the ability to really hone in on wanting to bring in and go through the rigamarole of the purebred side of this,” she said.

She recommends that producers check out the website of England’s Sussex Cattle Society. For information about the South African cattle I saw, go to the Platdrif Sussex Stud website.

The post There’s a lot to love about Sussex cattle — but try finding any appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The divestment of the two global brands, a requirement imposed by South Africa’s Competition Commission on Sunday, will account for the bulk of asset sales worth about $2.5 billion which need to be made to satisfy competition regulators looking at the $66 million Monsanto deal, sources close to the matter have said (all figures US$).

“Bayer has agreed to these conditions and is evaluating how best to execute the imposed divestiture,” the German group said in its statement.

It would not comment on revenues, number of affected staff or the value of the assets.

While South Africa is a relatively small market for the two global agricultural supplies giants, the move marks the first time for Bayer to acknowledge it has to sell the two related Liberty brands, which compete with Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and Roundup Ready seeds.

The planned divestitures are also widely expected to be required by competition regulators in larger jurisdictions, such as the U.S., where approval has been requested, and the European Union, where an application for approval has yet to be made.

“Bayer will continue working with regulators globally with a view to receiving approval of the proposed transaction by the end of 2017,” the company said, reaffirming an earlier goal.

LibertyLink seeds, mainly used by soy, cotton and canola growers, are an important alternative to Roundup Ready seeds for farmers suffering from weeds that have developed resistance to the Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate.

The spread of Roundup-resistant weeds in North America has been a major driver behind Liberty sales.

Monsanto, for its part, has responded by combining Roundup with older weed killer dicamba to finish off the Roundup-resistant weeds, while selling farm crops that withstand the plant-killing effects of both compounds.

As part of a global investment drive worth hundreds of millions of euros to double the global output capacity of Liberty since 2013, Bayer has built a production plant in Mobile, Alabama, to complement an existing facility in Frankfurt, Germany.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt.

The post Bayer to sell Liberty brands to get Monsanto deal passed appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.