Larry Friesen’s death has shocked Manitoba hog farmers.”This is going to leave a hole in the hog industry,” said Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch about Friesen’s April 28 death after he fell from a barn roof on his farm near Rivers.”He was very involved and people knew him all across the country.”The 58-year-old represented […] Read more
Ed White
Stories by Ed White
Grain marketing flexibility helps when plans go south
There are few things in farming as satisfying and comforting as a signed contract with a major grain company that locks in a premium for a specialized product. How could you hedge your crop better than that?Perhaps that’s why farmers have been so outraged at the failure of Louis Dreyfus Canada to accept delivery of […] Read more
Not a lot of help from USDA
USDA’s supply and demand report today doesn’t help make the future look any brighter. It’s no surprise that it predicts enormous corn and large soybean stocks by August 31, 2011. Everyone expects huge crops in the U.S. this year as an early spring allows acres to be seeded pretty much as farmers want them seeded. […] Read more
Surging loonie pressures canola prices downward
A surging Canadian dollar Monday helped hammer down canola prices, a rout compounded by sell stops triggered by a temporary reaching of the $380 level in the July ICE Canada Futures contract.July futures closed down $6 per tonne to $382 and November fell $6 to $384.40. Chicago Board of Trade soybeans ended up one penny […] Read more
CAC is anything but caca today
Check out the Paris stock market today: That’s a 9.25 percent gain IN ONE DAY. Wow! The weekend’s “shock and awe” trillion dollar provisional bailout for the sick souther members of the European Union appears to have worked and convinced markets – at least for today – that the euro currency and the European Union […] Read more
A trillion dollars worth of goodwill to begin the week
Wow! Just look at how much market goodwill you can buy with a trillion dollars: That red line at the bottom of each chart is where the markets closed Friday, after a crazy week of violent moves. Over the weekend the European governments got together and pledged about a trillion dollars in emergency money to […] Read more
The slide sorta stops
Well, today didn’t bring a reprise of yesterday’s excitingly scary equity market crash and whiplash recovery. It wasn’t a quiet day in the markets, although it seemed like it compared to yesterday, but by the end of the day the markets seemed to be leaving us with no clear idea of whether or not they […] Read more
Fasten your seat belts – again
Well, there was hope that the equity markets would recover a bit this morning when good jobs news came out in Canada and the U.S. For a little while the market seemed to have stabilized, but right now, at 9:29 a.m. CST everything seems to be going to Hades again. If we’re lucky we’ll have […] Read more
Canola closes lower on rising dollar, falling crude
Slightly higher soybean and soy oil prices didn’t stop canola prices falling Friday as a rising dollar, falling crude oil and brisk commercial hedging undercut the oilseed. July ICE Canada Futures canola futures closed down $1.10 per tonne at $388. November canola futures closed down 30 cents to $390.40. Outside markets were quieter than Thursday’s […] Read more
Fear turns into panic
You wanna see ugly? Ok, here it is: That’s what it looks like on a one-day chart when fear turns into panic in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And that’s what happened today as the blood from Greece’s debt crisis washed over the North American markets. “It’s chaos. Some historic moves in the markets today,” […] Read more
