Archives for October 2010

It’s a challenging year to be a grain buyer. Quality is all over the map and a wide array of degrading factors are at play. There’s frost damage, bleaching, sprouting and all sorts of disease issues. Producers have sample bags representing each bin of stored grain and they will be shopping them around looking for …

Saskatchewan’s fruit and vegetable sectors are still accessing their losses, but 2010 has been a difficult year. Fruit producers in central and northern regions of the province are reporting very little production this year and many have lost plants due to flooding. Province wide, it’s believed that production may be as little as 10 per …

The Canadian Farm Business Management Council on its website www.farmcentre.com has an interesting story on how the Association of Alberta Co-op Seed Cleaning Plants is adopting colour sorting technology. According to the story by Donna Fleury, five Alberta co-op plants are now running a colour sorter on their cleaning line and another three will soon …

Are the best grain prices over or are they yet to come? Canola futures prices dropped last week and on top of that most grain companies widened their basis levels. A widening basis is a signal that more grain is being pushed into the system than what buyers can handle. Lots of producers want to …

The deadline has passed for putting in an application under the Excess Moisture Program.  As the flood of last minute applications are processed, it should give a picture of exactly how many crop acres were unseeded and how many seeded acres were flooded. This $30 an acre federal / provincial program has been relatively easy …

The latest report from Statistics Canada is again generating more questions than answers. Between September 1 and 9, nearly 3,000 Saskatchewan farmers were surveyed on their crop production expectations. The results were released yesterday and analysts immediately started picking the numbers apart. The biggest problem is the long time lag. In early September when farmers …

Over the weekend, I heard a presentation by yet another expert who believes the world’s climate is going to hell in a hand basket. The long term trend, say most of the experts, is undeniably warming temperatures. While the science isn’t as sure, many experts are betting the Prairies will become drier as well. Some …

The province of Manitoba has announced this it is committing $400,000 for the establishment of a new Agricultural Premises Identification program. This is part of the national livestock traceability system. An agricultural premise is defined as a parcel of land on any part of which animals, plants or food are grown, kept, assembled or disposed …