After a powerful spring rally and a recent selloff, where are hog prices heading this summer?That’s the question Canadian producers are pondering as they slowly recover from a brutal three-year downturn.Profitable warm season prices don’t seem an easy assumption this year, considering last year’s failed spring-summer rally that collapsed and plunged farmers into unexpected losses.Analysts’ […] Read more
Ed White
Stories by Ed White
Oversupply may keep oat prices from quick rebound
Oat futures prices have breached the $2 futures barrier.That has dragged down farmer hopes for what was believed to be one of the top two returning crops of 2010-11.Cash oat bids in Portage la Prairie, Man., have recently dropped slightly below $1.80 per bushel, taking them to within three cents of the September 2009 low […] Read more
Global markets closely watching Chinese weather
Weather problems in China are cheering farmer-focused North American crop watchers glum about price prospects due to excellent U.S. corn belt conditions.But it’s too early to assume China’s multitude of problems today will result in bigger sales of North American canola, soybeans and corn after harvest.”It’s a world market desperate for some good news (about […] Read more
The painstaking, excruciatingly slow process of building a marketing edge
A news alert came across the teletype machine this morning and I was excited as my staff here in the Winnipeg Western Producer bureau decoded it for me. But when I read the decoded news release, I realized that this was about something that wouldn’t put money in producers’ pockets this year, next year or […] Read more
Old friends, albeit dark ones, reappear
Crippling debts. A seeming inability to stop spending like the profligate son. Total irresponsibility in financial management. Grotesque failures of judgement repeated time after time after time. Licentious toe-sucking. You think I’m talking about Greece and its debt crisis, right? Well, I’m not. I’m talking about another ludicrous situation: Sarah Ferguson and her recent calamitous […] Read more
Whither pork and oats when the Dow sucketh? Will the linkage stinkage?
It’s another crazy day in the equity markets, with the Dow opening sharply lower – beneath 10,000 – but quickly rebounding above 10,000 and above the open. So it’s a green day on the charts right now. For now. Let’s hope it stays that way, because in interviews for stories on both oats and pork […] Read more
CME: Your overreaction isn’t my problem
Derivatives are really exciting and dramatic these days! Well, at least they’re exciting and dramatic if you study derivatives and are already interested in them, as I am. If you’re a normal person, they’re probably just slightly interesting at the moment. Or slightly infuriating, if you believe the bad press about them. But even that’s […] Read more
Hog cash promise fails to excite
GLENLEA, Man. – Marg Rempel stood at the back of the hall feeling economically battered and bruised, but she tried to be hopeful about the future.“I still think farming is the most important vocation in the world and I stand by that,” said Rempel, a farrow-to-finish producer from Ste. Anne, Man., after listening to a […] Read more
CIGI to continue promoting Canadian grain
The federal government has made a three-year commitment to continue funding the Canadian International Grains Institute.“Our number one rule is farmers first, so if there’s an agency that’s serving farmers well, we’re going to backstop it, as CIGI is doing,” federal agriculture Gerry Ritz said May 14 at the funding announcement.CIGI executive director and former […] Read more
EU financial crisis forces euro down, pressures prices
Currency fluctuations are pushing down the price of crops prairie farmers grow.The euro and loonie have ganged up to beat down current and deferred prices since the Greek debt crisis began spilling out of Europe into the world’s stock and commodity markets.”It’s Greece,” Joe Victor of Allendale Inc. in McHenry, Illinois, said about the slump […] Read more
