During his presentation at Manitoba Ag Days, Winnipeg analyst David Drozd pondered the question of whether China could pull a version of the “Great Grain Robbery,” the event that lit the spark that led to the early 1970s explosion in grain prices. That was when the Soviets showed that they were better businesspeople than the […] Read more
Ed White
Stories by Ed White
New, higher range for crops?
During his presentation to Manitoba Ag Days, Winnipeg technical analyst David Drozd made the argument that crop prices have likely moved into a new, higher long term trading range, much as they did in the early 1970s. He’s not the only analyst who’s made that argument. David Reimann of Informa Economics made the same observations […] Read more
Hiring researchers should be priority: grain growers
Farmers could be saved by research that gives them top-performing varieties, says Grain Growers of Canada. They won’t be saved by getting a small refund cheque from last year’s rail charges. That’s why the organization is lobbying for at least some of the $68 million railway refund and penalty money to be put immediately into […] Read more
Youth movement grows at WCWGA
When Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel introduced a speaker and oversaw a presentation at the recent Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association convention in Winnipeg, she didn’t do it alone. She had help from her three-week-old baby girl, Addison. The baby slept quietly beside her mother on the stage while the speaker discussed some of the finer points of […] Read more
Volatile year in marketing, says CWB
The Canadian Wheat Board prides itself on aggressively demanding high prices from buyers but being restrained in how it hedges those sales once they’re on the books. However, in late 2007, like many farmers and using the same logic promoted by farm advisers across North America, the wheat board moved quickly to lock up high-priced […] Read more
Pooling still useful tool, growers told
Some Canadian farmers get annoyed at having to pour their wheat and barley into revenue-sharing pools when the market is rising. They see older, lower priced grain sales dragging down the prices that the newly delivered grain will eventually receive through the pool. Some Australian farmers often have the opposite annoyance: when the market starts […] Read more
Hog farmer wants vote on Ont. pork monopoly
The Ontario hog marketing monopoly isn’t disappearing without a fight. A London-area hog producer is appealing an Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission decision to break the monopoly of Ontario Pork, which markets all Ontario hogs. “The commission erred when it allowed the July 2008 hearing to become focused on producer choice instead of the ability […] Read more
Omega 3 meat producer draws Chinese attention
Money’s nice. But money and connections are more than twice as nice. That was the view of Prairie Orchard Farms when it went looking for investors last year to expand its production and sales of omega 3 pork and other products. The company wanted more than money to expand its production. It also wanted to […] Read more
Young farmers focus on family
DUFRESNE, Man. – Jonothon Roskus doesn’t like spending a lot of time away from his farm. It’s a beautiful place in the rich farmland just east of Winnipeg, where he, his wife Christine, and his three children, Chelsea, 6, Logan, 4, and Chloe, 6 months, have made a warm family home, regardless of the -30 […] Read more
Reasonable price for canola
What’s a reasonable price for canola this year? That’s a question market analyst Greg Kostal pondered during a presentation to the Manitoba Canola Growers Association during Manitoba Ag Days yesterday. His answer: about nine dollars per bushel, unless something radically changes the world supply and demand situation. Kostal said he thinks canola futures prices will […] Read more
