Hursh Comment

Wheat, durum and designated barley prices are showing some strength, but they still aren’t very attractive. In the latest Pool Return Outlooks from the Canadian Wheat Board, there is little change in the values for the current crop year, but price projections are up for the new crop year. Wheat futures prices have increased to …

At a news conference yesterday, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers announced that it is contributing a million dollars to the Phytotron Renewal Project at the College of Agriculture and Bioresources. These specialized growth chambers enable year round plant research and teaching. The news conference was a time to reflect on what field pea, lentil and chickpea production …

A farmer from central Saskatchewan emailed me farm chemical pricing comparisons he recently compiled. He got price quotes from a farm input supplier down in the peanut growing region of the U.S. and found a lot of the prices considerably cheaper than what we’re paying in Canada. Note that the U.S. quotes are in U.S. …

Producers will be making their 2009 AgriInvest deposit at the participating financial institution of their choice. Up until now, AgriInvest funds sat in the government’s General Revenue account. Those funds will now be transferred to the producer’s AgriInvest account at a financial institution. The 2009 deposit notices should start to appear in mailboxes over the …

The PMRA has approved an emergency registration for aerial application of Centurion EC herbicide for control for grassy weeds in broadleaf crops such as canola, flax, field peas, lentils, chickpeas and mustard. The emergency registration for Centurion applies to Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. This information came as a note from the Alberta Pulse Growers last …

My wife Marlene and I have long attended the Craven Country Music Jamboree. We’ve been at nearly all of them dating back to the mid-80s. That’s where we are right now, camping in the mud in an amazingly wet year. As we enjoyed the music and festivities of the Thursday night beer garden, a farmer …

Within five years, Canada’s seed industry should not expect CFIA involvement in the field inspections of seed crops. That was the message from CFIA officials at last week’s annual meeting of the Canadian Seed Growers Association. Predictably, seed growers are not happy. They point out that since 1928, it has been through Agriculture and Agri-Food …

Mexico has agreed to a 60-day delay in implementing new restrictions on wild buckwheat in Canadian canaryseed. Speaking yesterday at the Canadian Special Crops Association annual meeting in Saskatoon, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced that he had talked to his counterpart in Mexico to arrange the brief reprieve. This means that a number of railcars …

Cattle producers were excluded from the federal-provincial Excess Moisture Program announced as an AgriRecovery initiative. The day of the $30 an acre announcement, the Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association issued a news release saying it expected governments to include standing pasture and hay lands that had been flooded. However, only annual cropland is included. Yesterday, the Manitoba …

Viterra has released its own update of seeded acreage in Western Canada, along with how the reduction in acres may affect the financial results of the company. Viterra estimates that eight million acres went unseeded and another two million acres have been lost to excess rains. This is a bit less than the estimates coming …

Rarely do governments act so quickly and decisively. I was amazed when the meeting of federal and provincial agriculture ministers resulted in a program announcement for flooded Prairie farmland. Usually the closing news conference to these meetings is short on tangible action and long on bafflegab. There is no perfect program to deal with the …

Genetically modified wheat has moved one step closer to reality. BASF and Monsanto are expanding their research cooperation to include GM wheat. Their plan is to introduce the first yield-enhanced wheat to the market at some point after 2020. Varieties with stress tolerance traits would be introduced later. A collaborative agreement between BASF and Monsanto …