Michael Raine

If livestock slaughter waste is no longer allowed to be fed to animals in the wake of the BSE crisis, the alternatives are few and expensive. In the United States, 6.7 billion pounds of meat and bone meal and 120 million lb. of blood meal are produced every year as a byproduct of the packing […] Read more

Companion crops can provide revenue for producers while they establish short-lived perennial forages, but only if there is adequate moisture. Paul Jefferson of the federal Semiarid Agricultural Research Centre in Swift Current, Sask., found this during a three-year trial of the practice. “Producers have told me they don’t want to wait two years to establish […] Read more

BALDWINTON, Sask. – Betty McCrea rolled by on her quad to do chores with her son and husband, having swapped her apron for green coveralls. It would be just another warm spring evening on the mixed farm near Baldwinton in northwestern, Sask., if the farm weren’t quarantined for being the possible birthplace of the Wanham, […] Read more

Two days before the announcement that bovine spongiform encephalopathy was found in a Canadian cow, Howard Urnowitz stood before a crowd of fellow scientists in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and told them he was releasing the world’s first live test for the prion disease. Until May 18, tests for BSE could only be done by an […] Read more

The discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in a cow from northwestern Alberta has renewed speculation that chronic wasting disease can be passed from deer to cattle. But researchers say the speculation is unfounded. “Under any condition that even could be considered approaching natural transmission, researchers have been completely unsuccessful in passing CWD onto cattle,” said […] Read more

While mosquitoes can be controlled around farmsteads to reduce the dangers of West Nile transmission, treatment of farmland is not advised. The three prairie provinces will see little insecticide application aimed at the rural population of Culex tarsalis mosquito, the insect known to transmit the West Nile virus to humans and horses. “Where the heck […] Read more

Foaming fire suppression technology is most easily imagined as being used by firefighters controlling a burning aircraft. But an 18-month-old Calgary company has developed a farm-level version of the firefighting foam gear that weighs just 76 kilograms and is the size of a floor dolly stacked with fertilizer bags. “Agricultural producers are an important focus […] Read more

Considering cutting corners on canola costs? Weigh the decision carefully, say agronomists. A series of dry seasons, an early winter with a lost crop and rising input and insurance costs are conspiring to convince many growers to reduce what they put into the ground this season. Derwyn Hammond, an agronomist with Canola Council of Canada, […] Read more

The Canola Council of Canada has launched a new initiative it hopes will improve the profitability of the crop for western Canadian producers. The new Canola Agronomy Network is designed to discuss disease, insect and growing condition issues by weekly conference calls. Agronomists will then provide “how-to-deal-with-it” information to producers and agronomists within 48 hours […] Read more

Despite manure’s value as a fertilizer, farmers find it a costly and socially difficult product to manage. Clear Green Environmental of Saskatoon announced last week that it hopes it has a solution to the problem. Located at a Cudworth, Sask., hog farm, the $1.5 million project will turn manure into electricity and fertilizer. “We would […] Read more