So here’s the lowdown on the Hogs and Pigs report, which came out moments ago: The U.S. breeding herd is down three percent from last year and two percent from the last quarter. So sow liquidation is happening but not at a torrential pace. We need a torrent, not a trickle. Market hog inventories are […] Read more
Ed White
Stories by Ed White
Americans need to feel more pain
Everyone in the hog industry is watching for this afternoon’s (Friday’s) USDA quarterly hogs and pigs reports. The sow number is vitally important for Canadian producers. Everyone knows that the overall North American herd needs to shrink by about 10 percent to balance hog supply with demand and the increased price of feedgrains, energy and […] Read more
Friendly trends in the end don’t seem like short term friends
I’ve been in a livestock nutrition and feeding conference, the Western Nutrition Conference, for the past couple of days. It’s a couple of large meeting halls filled with some of the world’s best livestock feeding and nutrition experts, and the prairie farmers and livestock feeders who want to know what the cutting-edgiest researchers are discovering. […] Read more
Man. gov’t captures carbon credits
Have Manitoba farmers been cut off from the developing carbon offset market in Western Canada? The answer depends on who you talk to. Keystone Agricultural Producers says they have not because the new environmental farm plans can pay for much of the cost of greenhouse gas emission measures with government money and there’s no Manitoba […] Read more
Long-term analysis points to rising crop prices
A farmer might get dizzy from vertigo looking back at the last two years in commodity prices. But even though the stunning rally of 2007-08 and the sickening fall of 2008-09 makes it hard for any producer to get his bearings, a look at a longer term chart wouldn’t cause the same discombobulation. And analyst […] Read more
Doubting economists – Hedge Row
While working on a recent story about the currency exchange outlook, I was struck by the general disdain for bank economists expressed by all the analysts I called. The comments always involved a recognition that the Canadian big bank economists took the opposite stance, but then a laugh and a wry comment about the general […] Read more
Bakery builds delivery bin
The opening of a dedicated-organic grain unloading, storage and milling system made Aaron Tully do what no farmer wants to do in beautiful weather at harvest time. He left the farm for the city. But Tully said he felt both relief and gratitude that the Tall Grass Prairie Bakery in Winnipeg was installing a system […] Read more
Man. gov’t captures carbon credits
Have Manitoba farmers been cut off from the developing carbon offset market in Western Canada? The answer depends on who you talk to. Keystone Agricultural Producers says they have not because the new environmental farm plans can pay for much of the cost of greenhouse gas emission measures with government money and there’s no Manitoba […] Read more
CBC helps the silent scream become audible
A lot of hog farmers feel like they’re screaming silently in the countryside, inaudible to Canada’s overwhelmingly urban population. Even in Manitoba, few realize the extremities of the hog crisis, with most Tobans living in Winnipeg and Brandon suffering from “Perimeter vision.” But the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation did a lot to remind the nation today […] Read more
Keynes the capitalist and the curse of mathiness
For the past few days I’ve been driving, busing and walking in to my office listening to a podcast of an interview of Robert Skidelsky by Bloomberg radio’s Tom Keene. It’s a fabulous discussion of how John Maynard Keynes’ thoughts apply to the present world economic and financial situation, what Keynes’ relation to the Austrian […] Read more
