Hursh Comment

A rising tide is supposed to raise all the ships, but some grain prices have increased a lot more than others. Wheat, durum and barley price expectations took a major jump yesterday in the CWB’s newest Pool Return Outlook. Top quality spring wheat is up by nearly $1.50 a bushel. The price expectation for No. …

I spent some time yesterday north of Humboldt looking at the greatly expanded lakes, washed out roads and rushing culverts. Thousands of acres of crop land and pasture have been lost to flooding. Some forty year old houses have water problems in their basements for the first time ever. Rural municipalities are fighting with the …

With the growing season drawing to a close, the accumulated precipitation maps tell an amazing tale. Since April 1, there has been a record high amount of precipitation over about 40 per cent of the Saskatchewan grain belt. This record spills over into the east central region of Alberta and some northern parts of the …

There are major developments in the feed barley market. Drought in Russia and Ukraine and restricted exports from those major feed barley suppliers has meant a significant increase in offshore prices. Suddenly, the export market can compete with what Canadian producers are receiving for feed barley in the domestic market. Our domestic livestock industry is …

The long-anticipated Statistics Canada report on field crop production that came out on Friday has a lot of questionable numbers. As expected, there’s a big increase in Saskatchewan’s summerfallow acres due to all the land too wet to seed. Stat Can pegs summerfallow at 9.67 million acres, an increase of 5.5 million acres from last …

Reopening the Mexican market for Canadian canaryseed is taking a lot longer than most observers expected. The problem is Mexico’s list of quarantine weed seeds which includes wild buckwheat and stinkweed. Canada and Mexico have been unable to come to terms on how to minimize these weed seeds in canaryseed shipments. Mexico is our largest …

Tomorrow, August 20, is going to be a big day for Canadian grain markets. Statistics Canada will be coming out with its estimate of field crop production for each of the grains, oilseeds and specialty crops. This is a bigger deal than usual because there’s so much uncertainty over how much was actually seeded this …

The Grain Growers of Canada is making some great suggestions for what should be in the next federal budget. Invest in public research say the Grain Growers. They point out that real government dollars for basic agronomic research have fallen dramatically since 1994. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has far fewer plant scientists and breeders than …

Saskatchewan’s lentil crop is in big trouble. With about three million acres seeded, an average crop of lentils at prevailing prices should be worth three quarters of a billion dollars. With the weather conditions we’ve been having, there will be heavy losses. Recent heavy rains are flattening the crop canopy and in many cases, the …

The rain over the past week was not on the wish list for most farmers. As crops ripen, rain is going to become less and less welcome. Much of the Prairie grain belt has seen record high precipitation this growing season. The weather problems in Russia and Ukraine are the complete opposite of what we’re …

There’s a third product choice for desiccating peas, lentils and chickpeas. Up until now, the only registered choices have been glyphosate and Reglone. Glyphosate provides control of perennial weeds in the crop, but it’s very slow for crop dry down. Reglone provides fast dry down, but in heavy crops it doesn’t always penetrate to the …

One of the major frustrations for producers at this time of year is crop movement. In many cases, grain that was supposed to be off the farm by the end of July is still taking up bin space. This can apply to CWB grains as well as whole host of other crops. Even when there …