At the end of two hours of debate about banning gestation stalls, two University of Manitoba agriculture students wondered whether much had been accomplished. “It’s pretty much what I already knew,” said Christian Hinrichs, whose family operates a dairy farm at Whitemouth, Man. “I spent a lot of time in Europe and I saw this […] Read more
Ed White
Stories by Ed White
CWB not alone in western wheat sales
The news that international grain companies may have recently sold 550,000 tonnes of Canadian wheat to Saudi Arabia struck some farmers as odd. After all, isn’t making big wheat sales the point of having a Canadian Wheat Board sales monopoly? If grain companies can do the business themselves, why have the board at all? But […] Read more
Great Pumpkin rising
Once a year The Great Pumpkin arises from the pumpkin patch and distributes gifts to all the good children of the world. Some don’t believe in him. But for those with faith comes joy in late October. And clearly someone, and perhaps it’s the Great Pumpkin himself, is out distributing gifts to farmers right now, […] Read more
Chinese inscrutability
Has China rejected both Canadian and Australian canola shipments? Is it all about blackleg, or is it also “other things?” Are the Chinese worried about blackleg because they’re secretly buying our canola seeding and using it as seed for their own crops?’ These are some of the questions being batted around by traders today as […] Read more
The other end of the spud
Producers of one commodity for at least one buyer on the prairies aren’t crying about the dollar’s surge. They’re the potato growers of southern Manitoba who grow for McCain Foods in Portage La Prairie. They’re paid in Canadian dollars, the rate set out in contracts signed back in the spring, so the rise of the […] Read more
Surging loonie lowers boom on crop prices
A phantom has been stealing the U.S. crop market rally from Canadian farmers. Its name is The Loonie. “When you knock (U.S. crop market prices) back to the Canadian dollar, there isn’t much there,” said Alberta Agriculture crop market analyst Charlie Pearson. “The loonie’s moving up, too.” American farmers are enjoying a sharp crop market […] Read more
Asian buyers welcome prairie soybean production efforts
Asians are raising their eyebrows over western Canadian attempts to grow soybeans. It’s a pleasant development for buyers from some of the world’s premium markets. “In our notion, Winnipeg is not the place for growing soybeans,” said Japanese food industry journalist Chiaki Terada in an interview during a tour of the Canadian International Grains Institute. […] Read more
Surging loonie lowers boom on crop prices
A phantom has been stealing the U.S. crop market rally from Canadian farmers. Its name is The Loonie. “When you knock (U.S. crop market prices) back to the Canadian dollar, there isn’t much there,” said Alberta Agriculture crop market analyst Charlie Pearson. “The loonie’s moving up, too.” American farmers are enjoying a sharp crop market […] Read more
The dollar, momentum traders and correctionistas
Yesterday when I started writing a story about the impact of the Canadian dollar’s rise on ag commodity markets, the Loonie was at 97 cents. Now, one day later, it’s at 95.3. This is annoying for a reporter for a weekly paper that goes to press on Monday afternoons but doesn’t hit farmers’ mailboxes until […] Read more
Bumping a rally forward
Remember all the talk in mid-summer about the chance for a big rally in 2008-09 soybeans as supplies ran short and the new crop was months away from harvest? Perhaps you were doing better things with your time than thinking about that – like growing a crop – but if you did pay attention to […] Read more
