Colleen Munro

The canola market has finally roused itself out of winter inertia. The move, however, was likely opposite to what farmers holding canola were hoping for. The June contract traded in a narrow $15-per-tonne range from December to March – from $430 to a brief top of $445 in early January – to break through $420 […] Read more

SASKATOON – For the past three years, Lloyd Shearer has had extra help at calving time. The Dropmore, Man. mixed farmer built himself a portable shelter that attaches to the three-point hitch of a small tractor. The cage protects him from overly protective cows when he handles newborn calves. “I wanted to make it safer […] Read more

CALGARY – Canadian cattle producers are reacting less dramatically to radically lower cattle prices than are their American counterparts. Statistics Canada released its semi-annual count of cattle and calves on farms earlier this week. It reported the Canadian cattle herd, as of Jan. 1, had grown by 4.1 percent to 13.37 million head, the largest […] Read more

RED DEER, Alta. – The days of farmers being told to turn their fields into tractor-style Indy 500s to get the best results from granular herbicides may be numbered. Farmers have had it drummed into them for the past 20 years that granular herbicides must be incorporated seven to 10 centimetres deep in the soil […] Read more

REGINA – Tim Island’s hardest decision used to be whether to grow wheat or durum. Living in Shaunavon, in the heart of the brown soil zone, he already knew half the land would be summerfallowed. “We were traditional 50/50 farmers,” he told about 1,000 farmers at the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association’s annual meeting last week. […] Read more

Flax is an oddity among oilseeds. While it generally follows the prevailing trend set by the global vegetable oil market, it can resist the trend too. Take earlier this winter, for instance. While canola prices were languishing, trading in a narrow range at the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, flax futures made new contract highs early in […] Read more

SASKATOON – With an off-farm job in the winter, 45 cows and 1,200 acres of crop, Ken Serviss doesn’t have much time to shovel manure. But the mixed farmer from Ethelton, Sask., likes to keep a few pigs, and he likes to keep them outside. That way, shoveling is kept to a minimum. When the […] Read more

It’s easy to assume futures prices in the United States spin around a Chicago axis. With the Chicago Board of Trade trading wheat, oats, soybean and corn and the Mercantile Exchange doing the same with cattle and hogs, sometimes action at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and the Kansas City Board of Trade gets overlooked. However, […] Read more

Market watchers say falling calf prices have accelerated the cattle cycle in the United States. The U.S. department of agriculture released its semi-annual inventory report of cattle and calves last week and caught most in the sector off guard. Analysts polled before the report was made public estimated cattle supplies would increase to 105 million […] Read more

China’s trip to the world equivalent of Superstore – namely the United States – has pushed wheat prices above $5 (U.S.) a bushel on futures markets. For most prairie farmers, this latest price move will cement a decision to grow more wheat this year. But unlike the last time wheat markets cycled this high in […] Read more