Ed White

Producers are not alone as they search for a bigger bang from their farming buck. Prairie researchers are trying to lend them a hand by developing high-efficiency farming methods. “I look for win-win solutions that allow farmers to make more efficient use of nutrients,” says Don Flaten, a soil scientist with the University of Manitoba. […] Read more

Edward Alexander Partridge wasn’t the first furious farmer from the Prairies, and he certainly wasn’t the last. He was, however, one of the most colourful in the long history of farmer radical visionaries. And his legacy, a golden example of the law of unintended consequences, was as great as any other. The complicated and contradictory […] Read more

After a long climb upward, soybeans seem to be stumbling at prices above $10 per bushel. But there is little reason to expect a major drop in soybean prices soon, says a U.S. analysis firm. “Until we start to see pod filling in South America, which happens in January, and if there’s still good demand, […] Read more

For many farmers, picking price points and making projections are the most valuable things analysts do. After all, what is the point of analysis if it doesn’t help a farmer determine when and at what price to sell his crops? Although many farmers only want to hear an analyst’s price projection and don’t care how […] Read more

Sending wheat by rail to Mexico makes farmers good money. Too bad the Canadian Wheat Board can’t find enough cars to get the grain there. “We’re maximizing what we can ship there by rail, and once that capacity’s gone, then basically that’s it,” said CWB wheat and barley marketer Rhyl Doyle. CWB wheat sales to […] Read more

It’ll be a dark day in December when the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange fires up its new electronic trading platform, according to some traders. They think it is a worse platform than the present one, and it could undermine the exchange’s mainstay canola contract. “Volume in canola is going to drop drastically,” said Ken Ball of […] Read more

China consumes a huge amount of pork, but it isn’t getting any of it from Canada. Until China decides what to do about Paylean, hungry Chinese consumers aren’t likely to taste Canada’s premium pork. “It’s unfortunate we have to deal with that, because otherwise the opportunities would have been significant,” said Jacques Pomerleau, executive director […] Read more

Is Mexico a golden opportunity for Canadian farmers and food producers or a nightmare market where they will be cheated, drowned by ever-changing regulations and maybe kidnapped and held hostage? It could be both, neither or a bit of each, a University of Manitoba Transport Institute conference heard. Perhaps the nightmare scenario makes the golden […] Read more

What Mark Magdule really wanted was a yummy, fishy snack to take home with him, but the Mexican left Manitoba disappointed. He found lots of fish, honey, flax and the other components of what could be a great made-in-Manitoba snack food, but none of it was put together in a scrumptious package he could sell […] Read more