Several oilseed analysts expect palm oil prices should rally by 15 to 20 percent by early 2020, providing modest support to high-oil crops such as canola. The forecast was lost in more immediate market news, sparked by developments closer to home. November canola futures topped $460 per tonne Oct. 3 for the first time since […] Read more
Author Archives
Quality durum expected to be in short supply this year
If you have quality durum safe in a bin you will likely be able to sell it at an attractive price this year. On the other hand, a lot of durum grown this summer was degraded first by rain and then by snow. This column was written before the weekend when heavy snow was forecast […] Read more
Safety net made in good times might fail in tough times
It is likely going to be a miserable year for crop income, and whatever party wins the federal election this fall will likely encounter increasing requests for agricultural income assistance. The harvest in much of Western Canada is already the slowest in many years. Recent rain has downgraded the quality of many standing crops and […] Read more
Weak price makes wheat harvest and seeding a chore
I hope the current dismal state of the wheat market will encourage a further drop in American winter wheat acreage this fall. Meanwhile, western Canadian farmers are applying the word dismal to their harvest, where rain Sept. 9-12 further stalled progress. The moisture also likely damaged the quality of wheat and durum. The largest accumulations […] Read more
Standing up to China would be costly
Few farmers had heard of Dominic Barton before this week, but he should be in their prayers because as the new Canadian ambassador to China he has an almost impossible job. Canadian-Chinese relations are the worst in decades, mostly because Canada is holding a top officer of China technology giant Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, on an […] Read more
Canola situation not good, but could have been worse
Canadian canola might be shut out of China, a market that took more than 4.5 million tonnes of canola in 2018, but the export prospects for the current crop year are not catastrophic. Agriculture Canada’s August supply and demand update forecasts 2019-20 canola exports to all buyers at nine million tonnes, down only 500,000 tonnes […] Read more
Global wheat production recovers but frost is a danger
Weak canola prices caused by the trade problems with China dominate market headlines, but wheat values in percentage terms have fallen further compared to this time last year. Cash prices in Canada for canola are down eight to nine percent compared to the same point a year ago but hard red spring wheat is down […] Read more
We need common sense when addressing meat’s role in climate change
If social media is anything to go by in assessing public opinion, and really it is not, people are losing their minds over meat’s role in climate change. As is too often the case, the extreme positions dominate the discussion. On the one hand, if we don’t all become vegetarians or vegans we are evil […] Read more
Canada must work to save international rules-based order
Our experience with superpower conflict during the Cold War with Russia does not give us much guidance in our new challenges with China. For all its military might and geopolitical meddling, Russia and its bloc of Eastern European satellite states were never much of an economic power. China, however, has become the second largest economy […] Read more
New crop wheat price forecast looks similar to 2018-19
As the crop year counts down to its final weeks, Canadian wheat farmers have seen good demand for their product at prices similar to the previous year. Looking ahead to the coming crop year, global production is expected to recover somewhat from the tight crop of 2018-29 when the European Union, Russia and Australia all […] Read more
