Michael Raine

Family garden, shelterbelts and road allowances dying? Neighbors plowing a full width between your crop and theirs? You may have a spray drift problem. There are some new systems to reduce drift, including adjuvant spray in which polymer compounds are added to spray mediums; low drift or hydraulic nozzles that produce standard coarse droplets; and […] Read more

SCOTT, Sask. – Placing canola seed in the icy hands of Mother Nature for a long winter’s sleep may be risky, but for those who do, the payoff can be worth the gamble. Testing that goes as far back as 1975 into the viability of fall seeding spring canola varieties has often met with the […] Read more

“I’m just happier than hell that it’s gone,” said one Alberta grower after the Fresh Vegetable Producers Board collapsed recently. “Problems have been building for the past couple of years and the fact that they are gone does make me very happy,” said Casey Gouw Jr., an onion grower from Taber. The board’s seven directors […] Read more

Money has begun to change hands between ConAgra and the U.S. government following the food product giant’s conviction of grain inventory tampering. ConAgra has been the subject of a four-year investigation by the United States Department of Agriculture, leading to a plea agreement worth $11.4 million (Cdn). Criminal fines of $6 million make up the […] Read more

REGINA, Sask. – Row after row of machines in blue, green, gray, yellow and red. Touted as larger, wider and better than ever. Yet one large, red machine stood out and attracted the gaze of nearly all who passed. Four metres tall, 12 metres long and 13 metres wide with four granular tanks, plus anhydrous […] Read more

REGINA, Sask. – Agricultural students from Canadian universities converged on Saskatchewan for the ninth straight year to battle over the right to call themselves academic victors over their counterparts. The Ag Challenge was held last week at the aged Exhibition Auditorium in the heart of this city. University of Guelph and Nova Scotia Agricultural College […] Read more

It’s back. El Nino has returned and weather forecasters feel it may soon be spinning its meteorological spells at a farm near you. Warmer water temperatures in the southeastern Pacific have caused climatologists to begin predicting warmer, drier weather trends for the northwestern hemisphere next winter. “There are no correlations between summer weather patterns for […] Read more

A flood of dryness threatens the same zones that have only just survived high water warnings. Southern Saskatchewan, after the second year in a row of late seeding, is now facing near drought conditions. Southwestern Manitoba is so severely short of water that farmers there have been delaying some spring seeding in hopes of gaining […] Read more

A new crop is sprouting from prairie soil this spring. Hog barns. And like any other crop, inputs will be necessary to grow them. Three more hog production facilities are being proposed for Saskatchewan, all destined for areas that have few hogs now. Meadow Lake, Sask., is the planned home for a Big Sky Pork […] Read more

The sale of the rail line across northern Manitoba is igniting fuses in that province as accusations of bad faith are leveled against the governments and a national railway. Following last month’s application by Gateway North Transportation Systems Ltd. to the Canadian Transportation Agency for an investigation into the sale of the Churchill rail line, […] Read more