Hursh Comment

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 …

Record high rainfall is going to mean record high hay and pasture production in much of the Prairie region. The difficulty may be getting hay cut and baled in a timely manner to preserve quality. For a lot of cattle producers, it will be a year to stockpile forage production for the inevitable years when …

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has completed his third trade mission to China in less than a year. During the mission, China agreed to formally lift the ban on Canadian boneless beef under thirty months of age. Ritz kicked off his mission by serving up the first plates of Canadian beef available in China in almost …

With almost no fanfare, Saskatchewan has passed a new climate change bill that should theoretically provide a mechanism for farmers to be paid for carbon credits. However, the devil will be in the details and the regulations for the bill have yet to be established. A few years ago, Alberta initiated a program whereby that …

Ralph Goodale, the lone Liberal MP in the province, is the latest politician to tour the areas hardest hit by spring rains. Goodale is calling on governments to commit to assistance quickly so farmers know where they stand, but he doesn’t seem to have any suggestions for exactly how governments should provide assistance. Some have …

These aren’t company names that typically come up on coffee row, but a large deal is pending among two giants in off-patent crop protection products. The Makhteshim Agan Group, considered the world leader in branded off-patent products, has a letter of intent to acquire Albaugh Inc., a privately held leading manufacturer of off-patent products operating …

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has received notification from Mexico that all imports of Canadian canaryseed will be held and tested for the presence of quarantine weed seeds. Specifically, Mexico is looking for wild buckwheat and they have indicated that the detection of just one wild buckwheat seed will result in rejection of the canaryseed …

Complications from all the wet weather are dominating the inquiries to the Ag Knowledge Centre of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture. Producers have been asking about nitrogen losses and whether topdressing fertilizer might pay. It’s hard to give a clear cut answer, but cropping specialists are advising producers to scout canola and mustard crops for …

The difficult growing season in Western Canada has moved many of the grain markets, but wheat, durum and barley prices remain stubbornly depressed. In the latest Pool Return Outlook from the Canadian Wheat Board, new crop wheat with good protein is up a little bit, but durum and barley are unchanged from last month. The …

What a waste. The seeded acreage report released yesterday by Statistics Canada has almost no value. More than 7,500 Saskatchewan farmers were surveyed for the report, but the survey took place from May 25 to June 3. At the time, seeding was 67 per cent complete and Stats Can just assumed that farmers would end …

Most producers in Saskatchewan are unaware that the province has passed Bill 126 which sets the stage for carbon credit trading. Unfortunately, exactly what that will mean for farmers remains unclear at this point. In some other jurisdictions around the world, governments are providing clear benefits to agriculture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In Brazil, …