Hursh Comment

According to longtime farmland realtor Tim Hammond, retired farmers are becoming more likely to sell some or all of their land rather than renting it out. This shift in attitudes could have an impact on the farmland market in the years to come. About one-third of Saskatchewan farmland is leased and while the land owned …

Here are some of this year’s seeding season frustrations. Perhaps you’ll relate to one or more. It’s been a few years since we’ve had significant rain delays during seeding and one of the frustrations is seed inoculant for pulse crops. We’ve long used peat inoculant applied to the seed as it goes into the seed …

Adam Bercu, founder and CEO of a company called Guardian Agriculture has altered my opinion on the future of spray drones. I recently met Bercu at a venture capital summit in Silicon Valley, not far from San Francisco. He was a sponsor of the event and had one of his drones on display for everyone …

Governments should cut taxes. Governments should increase spending in key priorities such as health care and education. Meanwhile, governments shouldn’t run deficits. While the math says these three are incompatible, government budgets are simultaneously criticized on all three counts. It’s easy picking for whatever party is in opposition. Even if a government has a lucky …

What if current grain prices and squeezed margins are the new normal? Certainly, there are well-capitalized operations with a great deal of resilience. However, you have to think there will be operations financially stretched by aggressive expansion. Timing is everything when a new producer starts out or when a farm makes a major expansion. Buying …

With the substantial reduction in grain prices over the past five months, the profitability picture in the crops sector has dimmed considerably. That appears to be having an impact on the farmland market while making AgriStabililty look more appealing. Let’s start with AgriStability, a program which many farmers have dropped. Slightly less than half of …

Many farmers are probably unaware of the legislation regarding the interoperability of equipment, but it’s a rare example of parliamentarians coming together to support a good cause. In simple terms, interoperability refers to the ability of short line equipment manufacturers to have their products work on mainline machines. The issue came to a head with …

Mixed farms, farms with both grain and cattle, don’t get a lot of attention. In fact, you could call them an endangered species. For that reason, it was refreshing to see a presentation called “Bucking the Trend” at the recent Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon. The presenter was Duane Thompson of Tee Two Land & …

Producers who haven’t yet purchased their urea fertilizer will want to do so before the second half of February. That was one of the recommendations from a January 17 session at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon. The fertilizer market outlook was provided by Noah Bishop, a trader with ADM Fertilizer. ADM is a worldwide player …

At the January 9th annual meeting of Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, a resolution on variety use agreements, sometimes referred to as trailing royalties, received a great deal of debate culminating in a very close vote. While all the crop commissions do commendable work, SPG was the first check-off established in the province and the organization has …

Is the carbon tax adding to food costs? Certainly, but not in all the ways purported. When an argument supports your point of view, sometimes you don’t fully scrutinize it. That’s the case with the carbon tax and grocery bills. Make no mistake, the carbon tax is bad policy. It isn’t significantly reducing Canadian carbon …

For those seeking top agriculture-related speakers each January, Saskatoon used to be the leading prairie location. Gradually, that distinction has been lost to events in the neighboring provinces. For years, Saskatoon hosted Crop Production Week with big and small crop commissions holding annual meetings along with speaker programs. The meetings coincided with the Western Canadian …