As fields clear of snow, the negative mood in the crop markets is also clearing away, offering farmers a rally to entice them to plant another expensive crop. Advisers say it’s also a chance to clear some of the large grain stocks still sitting in farmers’ bins. “At $10 (per bushel cash price in Alberta) […] Read more
Ed White
Stories by Ed White
Gov’ts give GM wheat a second look
For years, genetically modified wheat promoters found that government regulators wouldn’t listen to a thing they said. Today, GM wheat is still not grown or accepted in any significant producing or consuming region. But something big has changed, the annual meeting of the Canada Grains Council was told April 6 – governments of countries that […] Read more
Researchers awarded for grain storage work
Like the bugs they study, Digvir Jayas and Noel White are used to working in darkness. But the University of Manitoba scientists were recently turned out into the public light when they won a prestigious national award and $250,000 to continue their grain storage research. “We were surprised, because grain storage research is not usually […] Read more
Market myths and assumptions
We all know that pork prices pick up in the spring as soon as the yanks find it warm enough to waddle outside and fire up their barbeques, right? There’s a two-part answer to that question: 1) No we don’t know that, because it probably isn’t true and therefore can’t be “known;” 2) Yes, we […] Read more
No GM wheat: good or bad for wheat?
Yesterday I was covering the Canada Grains Council’s annual meeting here in Winnipeg and there was a lot of talk about how wheat was falling far behind the other major crops in terms of research because of the refusal of any major producing company to allow genetically modified wheat to be grown. Corn and soybean […] Read more
Holding pattern
So, I took three weeks off work to take care of my new baby girl and keep my wild 17 month old daughter from leaping on my recovering wife, and not too much changed in the ag markets. I kept abreast of the markets by watching Bloomberg TV, which I wake up with every morning, […] Read more
Rally begun, or ended?
March has been a kind month for ag commodities, finally giving farmers the rally they’d been hoping for since the selloff began in mid-January. After early December seemed to provide the lows for the year, right on cue, there had been a nice rally into mid-January, in which prices moved up more than 20 percent. […] Read more
The Mighty Oat
Oats play such a big role in my household – and in that of most North Americans – that it’s easy to forget that it is a tiny crop on this continent, and utterly irrelevant to American farmers. It’s in my face daily, and not mainly by market reports. In the morning when I stumble […] Read more
Input costs influence seeding decisions
The latest private forecasts are expecting a U.S. soybean crop of 80.4 to 81.5 million acres this year, which would be up from 75.7 million acres last year and a new record. The low cost of soybean production is thought to be behind farmers’ increased interest in soybeans, which could result in overproduction of the […] Read more
Fertilizer prices poised to climb – Special Report (story 2)
Farmers have been staring down fertilizer dealers since harvest and there’s at least the illusion of success. Prices have dropped substantially since the high prices of last summer and early fall. Alberta’s monthly farm input price survey says urea 46-0-0, which peaked last October at $935 per tonne, had dropped to $606 by February. Phosphate […] Read more
