Taber corn will make a full appearance at the southern Alberta town’s annual Cornfest Aug. 22-25 despite severe crop damage earlier this month from a hailstorm in the Taber and Barnwell regions. The Aug. 6 storm, with winds of more than 140 kilometres per hour, drove large hailstones that wiped out area crops including the […] Read more

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The federal government is giving farmers a six-month reprieve in repaying their 2018 cash advances. Growers now have until March 31, 2020 to pay off cash advances on grains, oilseeds and pulses. The original deadline was Sept. 30. “Our government is working closely with our farmers to meet their needs and is taking many concrete […] Read more

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The federal government has announced it will make $1.75 billion available to Canada’s dairy farmers, compensating producers for losses in domestic market access due to new trade agreements. Unveiling the compensation package today in Compton, Que., agriculture minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said the dollars will be doled out over eight years to the country’s nearly 11,000 […] Read more

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The European Union is increasingly looking like it could be the saviour for the Canadian canola industry in 2019-20. When it first appeared that the EU’s rapeseed crop was in trouble, analysts were forecasting it could maybe take a few hundred thousand additional tonnes. These days analysts are forecasting millions of tonnes of new demand. […] Read more

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Canada’s hemp industry has changed. Not overnight, but close. For years, hemp farmers have grown the crop for grain and partly for hemp fibres. This summer the majority of Canadian farmers are growing hemp to produce CBD. “I think with the CBD acreage, I think we might exceed that 170,000 (acres) this year,” said Jeff […] Read more

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Canada’s largest railway is setting up a farmer advisory council in Western Canada in an effort to forge closer ties with producers and improve overall supply chain performance. Canadian National Railway announced earlier this month that it has established an agricultural advisory council consisting of primary producers and farmer representatives from Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan and […] Read more

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Save the bees. That has been a rallying cry in recent years, leading to greater public awareness about the importance of pollinators, especially honeybees. But it isn’t honeybees that society should worry about, said Megan Evans, president of the Alberta Native Bee Council. It’s wild bees that are in peril, yet public perception of that […] Read more

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Rising ocean freight rates are unlikely to disrupt trade patterns unless they keep escalating, says a Canadian grain industry official. The Baltic Dry Index, which measures changes in the cost of transporting bulk goods by sea, soared from a low of about 600 in early February to a high of 2,170 in mid-July, a 262 […] Read more

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International phosphate prices have tumbled in 2019 as supply has far outstripped demand but they could start climbing this fall, says an analyst. “I do see more upside to it, I absolutely do,” said Josh Linville, fertilizer analyst with INTL FCStone. Phosphate was trading in New Orleans for around US$300 per tonne at the beginning […] Read more

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WEYBURN, Sask. – There’s something special about a flax crop in bloom. The blue-purple flowers are easy on the eyes and calming. Almost therapeutic. Driving east of Weyburn, on the last day of July, the blue-purple flowers were seemingly everywhere. Not as common as yellow canola flowers, but close. “My acres (of flax) increased like […] Read more

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