When Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch took the podium last week, he didn’t sugar-coat the message. “This is one of the most challenging times we’ve ever been in,” Kynoch said April 8 at Manitoba Pork’s annual general meeting. The only hope he could offer pork producers was the familiar agricultural refrain – wait until […] Read more
Robert Arnason
Stories by Robert Arnason
Explosion rocks Man. canola plant
An explosion at a canola crushing plant in Ste. Agathe, Man., has caused millions of dollars in damage, say company officials. “We’re thinking that it’s in excess of a million and it could even be a few million,” said Peter Kozicz, chief executive officer of Associated Proteins, which operates the plant south of Winnipeg. The […] Read more
Man. budget disappoints farmers
Manitoba farm leaders showed up at the provincial legislature April 9 hoping the new budget would provide help for the livestock sector. They left disappointed. “We were looking for some type of program that would help the cattle industry, to bridge this time of stress in our industry,” said Martin Unrau, president of the Manitoba […] Read more
Weather system to expand across Prairies
A network of weather stations that was launched last summer is expanding. Weatherbug, a weather information service with its headquarters in Maryland and a network of 8,000 stations in the United States, recently announced that it now intends to install 900 weather stations in Western Canada by 2011. The stations will augment Environment Canada’s service […] Read more
Man. flood aid extended
Persistence does pay off. Over the last five months, Linda Shewchuk of Garland, Man., has written multiple letters to federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz and prime minister Stephen Harper, asking the politicians to sort out her grievance with a federal flood assistance program. Last year, Shewchuk and her husband, Walter, whose farm is 60 kilometres […] Read more
Producers plan more wheat
Canadian farmers will plant substantially more wheat and durum this spring, according to FarmLink Marketing Solutions. Analysts at the Winnipeg farm consulting firm predict wheat acres across Canada will jump to 18.1 million acres, up 7.7 percent from 2007. Durum acres should increase 16.3 percent, they said, rising to 5.6 million acres compared to 4.8 […] Read more
Man. producers back weanling cull
STEINBACH, Man. – Hog farmers in Manitoba, sick of financial bleeding, have come up with a fix for the industry – a cull of two million weanlings, which will reduce the number of pigs in Canada and, they hope, raise prices. “We are proposing the government set up a similar program (to the sow cull), […] Read more
Pork group seeks lawsuit evidence
The Manitoba Pork Council is on the verge of launching a lawsuit against the U.S., but the organization needs documents from Canadian hog farmers to prove the proposed COOL legislation is a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. At an April 3 meeting of pork producers, the chair of Manitoba Pork, Karl Kynoch, […] Read more
Funds under scrutiny
The new era of commodity funds dominating agriculture markets may be short-lived. A growing number of critics are demanding that regulators take action to curb the funds’ immense influence on futures prices. “My concern is that it’s almost a self-perpetuating bull market,” said Dan Basse, president of a Chicago research and analysis firm that specializes […] Read more
Fire destroys hog barn
A fire at a Hutterite colony north of Winnipeg killed more than 8,000 hogs April 2 and destroyed a hog barn valued at $6.5 million. The Manitoba Office of the Fire Commissioner investigated and concluded an overheated light fixture caused the fire at the Netley Hutterite colony. Volunteer firefighters from the nearby village of Clandeboye […] Read more
