Average crops just don’t pay the bills, particularly if you apply inputs aiming to achieve above average yields. That’s evident in the new Crop Planning Guide 2020 from Saskatchewan Agriculture, which has a two-pronged approach to yields this year. Its targeted crop yields represent the top 20 percent of five-year average yields for each crop […] Read more
Author Archives
It is hard to make money with average yields
Fearless predictions for the decade ahead
While 20/20 may be considered good eyesight, having the calendar turn over to 2020 doesn’t improve the vision for future gazing. Despite that, here are some predictions for agriculture in the decade ahead. Warning: some of these may make your blood boil. They aren’t necessarily what I want to see happen; they are what I […] Read more
This is the season for new crop pricing information
Starting next week with Crop Production Week / CropSphere / Crop Production Show in Saskatoon, this is the season for crop marketing information. And this doesn’t necessarily mean the market outlook presentations featured at the various meetings. Oh, I still like listening to a good analysis of supply and demand, but predicting what a crop […] Read more
Government support for farmers seldom simple
Increase AgriStability support to 85 from 70 percent of the reference margin and compensate producers for the carbon tax expense on grain drying. Farmer and farm group seem to have galvanized around these two requests, but neither are as simple or effective as they seem. Producers are justifiably upset over a carbon tax that applies […] Read more
Navigating the confusing world of crop nutrition
With the dollars at play in crop nutrition, it shouldn’t be surprising that companies both reputable and not so reputable all want a piece of the pie. In the Crop Production Costs — 2020 guideline document recently released by Manitoba Agriculture, the assumed fertilizer cost for canola is more than $80 an acre, with hard […] Read more
Yield reports may fuel 2020 acreage shifts
The crop production numbers released Dec. 6 by Statistics Canada will provide lots of fodder for market analysts. Beyond the supply and price analysis, it’s instructive to examine the surprising differences in crop yields for various crops across the three prairie provinces. Flax yields are particularly interesting. In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, flax yields for 2019 […] Read more
Equipment innovation is about more than just size
Equipment innovation is a huge factor in making agriculture more efficient. Always has been and likely always will be. However, to truly enhance efficiency while also cutting costs, the innovation has to involve more than bells, whistles and increased horsepower. One of the most publicized events at Agritechnica in Hannover, Germany, this year was the […] Read more
We need a different kind of back-to-work law
We need to come up with a new approach for dealing with work stoppages like the strike that has slowed product shipping at Canadian National Railway to a trickle. Under Conservative governments, railway strikes were typically ended quickly with back-to-work legislation, a solution that pleased most farmers. However, if railway companies can count on a […] Read more
Recent boom years have likely come to an end
Canadian farm income took a nosedive in 2018 and that could be a harbinger of what the numbers will do in 2019 and beyond. Statistics Canada has released an interesting analysis of realized net farm income going back to 2008. The StatsCan report digs deeper than just the raw numbers providing rationale for the major […] Read more
Wet harvest makes producers look at grain drying
The 2019 harvest from hell has many producers assessing their grain drying capability. This includes upgrading current systems to add capacity and automation, while for others this means a first foray into grain drying equipment. In some regions, grain drying is a fact of life for most harvests. In other regions, there will be years […] Read more
