Perhaps it’s the passing of Farrah Fawcett last week – an icon of my youth – that brought up this line, but all I could think this morning as I looked at today’s USDA reports was: “There’s a bear in the air.” Yes, a Smokey and the Bandit reference. Vintage sometime in the ’70s. The […] Read more
Ed White
Stories by Ed White
W?
It’s getting near midsummer. (Don’t be one of those drips who points out “It’s only officially been summer for a week!” They’re similar to the nimrods who ignore six weeks of sleet and snow in November and early December to declare on December 21 that winter has begun.) That has me in the mood to […] Read more
Moonwalking into eternity
Wow. Stunning. Shocking. Two of the icons of my teenage and pre-teen days are reported dead in one day. When I was a kid in elementary school, lots of my friends had the infamous Farrah Fawcett poster (avec naughty bits showing through her top) on their walls. I must admit I didn’t. I had a […] Read more
Hog sector spreads word of hurt
Manitoba hog producers were hoping their cries of pain were heard in the legislature, in the House of Commons, and by the people of Manitoba. “They (hog producers) are very depressed. They talk suicide,” said Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch June 19, as he tried to convince federal and provincial politicians to attend the […] Read more
Alternative strategies available to reduce hedging risk – Hedge Row
The recent slump in crop prices has alleviated one dilemma farmers had been facing: do they lock in new crop prices when their crops look so iffy? With the exception of canola, whose rally was impeded by the concurrent run-up in the Canadian dollar, the other main crops experienced a heady May rally. A sharp […] Read more
Green party blames big barns for flu
A national political party is calling for the Canadian hog industry to be viewed as a potential source for new deadly viruses like H1N1. It is basing the call on the claim that the origin of H1N1 was probably a Smithfield-owned barn in Mexico, even though no widely accepted evidence has been found to back […] Read more
Volumes by their silence
Well, neither Manitoba premier Gary Doer nor agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk were heckled at the hog industry rally in Morris Monday night. They weren’t there. Ralph Goodale and Wayne Easter of the Federal Liberal party were there, as was provincial Liberal boss Jon Gerrard. Merv Tweed, James Bezan and other Conservative MPs were there, as […] Read more
Pound of flesh
At the World Pork Expo hog industry experts like Glenn Grimes were saying the North American sow herd needs to shrink by 5 to 10 percent more than it already has. That’s a grim prognosis for the oversupply problem that has hog prices unable to force prices high enough to compensate for higher feedgrain prices. […] Read more
Party over, or starting soon?
Today I’ve been looking at a couple of market outlooks that have opposite views. The happier one for farmers comes from Joe Victor of Allendale, Inc., an American market agricultural market analysis firm. Allendale doesn’t have much doubt a summer rally’s coming. “Sure,” he said when I asked about it, showing no sign of doubt […] Read more
Good advice. Anyone take it?
In a story I did for our June 4 paper with Randy Strychar of Oat Insight, Randy told oat growers who had been refusing to sell oats during the winter slump that the present rally was a great pricing opportunity. Prices on the CBOT nearby contract were over $2.60 per bushel, which was a bunch […] Read more
