South Dakota Archives | Alberta Farmer Express

File photo of a truck arriving at a Smithfield Foods pork plant at Smithfield, Va. on Oct. 17, 2019. (Photo: Reuters/Tom Polansek)

Smithfield starting to reopen Sioux Falls hog plant, union says

Major plant was shuttered by COVID-19 outbreak

By Reuters, GFM Network News May 5, 2020

Chicago | Reuters — Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, resumed limited operations on Monday at a massive South Dakota slaughterhouse it closed last month because of the coronavirus pandemic, the union representing plant employees said. The closure of the plant and other slaughterhouses due to coronavirus cases among employees has led to temporary […] Read more

Hogs, Livestock, Markets, Reuters

Smithfield shutting South Dakota pork plant indefinitely

Major packer warns of meat shortages during pandemic

By Tom Polansek, GFM Network News April 12, 2020

Chicago | Reuters — Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was moving “perilously close to the edge” in supplies for grocers. Slaughterhouse shutdowns are disrupting the U.S. food supply chain, crimping […] Read more

CBOT May 2019 soybeans with 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages. (Barchart)

Crops, Markets, Reuters

U.S. grains: Corn, soy up a bit on weather woes, trade hopes

By Julie Ingwersen April 10, 2019

Chicago | Reuters — U.S. corn and soybean futures closed higher on Wednesday on light technical buying as a blizzard bore down on portions of the Plains and Midwest, threatening to delay plantings, analysts said. Wheat futures fell, recording a fifth straight lower close, as traders focused on plentiful world supplies. Chicago Board of Trade […] Read more

Nebraska State Police tweeted aerial footage on March 15, 2019 showing cattle stranded on tiny islands in floodwaters around Fremont, about 50 km northwest of Omaha. (Nebraska State Police photo via @NEStatePatrol on Twitter)

General, Markets, Reuters, Weather

U.S. farm belt slammed by floods, heavy snow from bomb cyclone

By Karl Plume March 18, 2019

Reuters — A harsh late-winter storm broadsided a vast swath of the U.S. agriculture industry this week as heavy snow closed roads and buried cattle in the Plains while excessive rain flooded Midwest fields and swamped grain elevators. A “bomb cyclone” hurled hurricane-force winds, sparked tornadoes and dumped heavy snow and rain across the Plains […] Read more

Crops, Hay, Reuters, Weather

U.S. northern Plains ranchers welcome hay lottery

By Theopolis Waters August 18, 2017

Reuters — Hundreds of livestock ranchers in the drought-stricken U.S. northern Plains are embracing what organizers say is the first lottery designed to provide some much-needed relief to their operations. The prize? Tons and tons of hay. Ranchers in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana have been suffering through the region’s worst drought in 30 […] Read more

(Photo courtesy South Dakota Department of Tourism)

General

Ad Feature: Centrallia puts opportunities on horizon for Plains region

By Jim Bentein March 28, 2016

Rock Nelson is a fifth generation South Dakotan — and South Dakota is a few thousand kilometres from Winnipeg, Manitoba and in a different country — but he is an admirer of the entrepreneurial spirit that drives the province, which he thinks is embodied by the World Trade Centre Winnipeg. That may be because his […] Read more

Minnesota’s Winnie Benson (left) and cousin Dawn Taylor of Carstairs examine the grave marker of their great-great-grandmother at ghost hamlet of Masinasin.

News

A genealogical mystery brings a family together

Winnie Benson wanted to know the fate of her  great-great-grandmother, but she found something much more 

By Johnnie Bachusky September 16, 2015

Reading Time: 3 minutes For more than a quarter of a century Winnie Benson had dreamed of this moment. With Carstairs’ Dawn Taylor at her side, she knelt down on the sun-scorched ground of a long-forgotten southern Alberta cemetery and caressed the ancient etchings of a flat gravestone marking the final resting place of Drusilla Ennis, the pair’s great-great-grandmother. […] Read more

Livestock, Markets, Poultry/Eggs, Reuters

U.S. cuts poultry export forecast as avian flu spreads

By Reuters April 9, 2015

Chicago | Reuters –– The U.S. government on Thursday reduced its forecasts for poultry exports by nearly six per cent from last month due partly to an accelerating outbreak of bird flu that has triggered wider-than-expected trade restrictions. The steep cuts came as the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed a second commercial flock of turkeys […] Read more

Livestock, Markets, Poultry/Eggs

Canada blocking poultry from Montana, South Dakota

By Alberta Farmer Staff April 4, 2015

Canada is blocking cross-border shopping for raw poultry, eggs and live birds from another border state, after H5N2 avian flu was confirmed in central Montana on Friday. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Friday expanded restrictions that block travellers to Canada from H5N2-positive states from bringing in live birds, hatching eggs, eggs, yolks, egg […] Read more

Livestock, Markets, Poultry/Eggs, Reuters

H5N2 avian flu arrives in South Dakota

By Tom Polansek April 2, 2015

Chicago | Reuters — A virulent strain of avian flu has spread for the first time to poultry in South Dakota and infected a fourth turkey flock in Minnesota, the nation’s top turkey producer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday. The latest infections of H5N2 flu show the virus, which can kill almost an […] Read more

B.C. again waives ag income threshold for farm properties

Flea beetles a nuisance for canola crop

Businesses, U.S. legislators fume as Canada extends travel ban

GFM Network News