Roberta Rampton

REGINA (Staff) – Farmers often ignore advice that could prevent injuries or help their health, say health workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. “Farmers are getting hurt not because they lack the knowledge” of safety measures, said Solomon Kyeremanteng of Alberta’s health department. “They know. So how do we motivate them to do the things they […] Read more

WINNIPEG – A new report on how to keep the port of Churchill alive sees canola, peas and lentils as providing a future “surge in new traffic” for the port. But two organizations dealing with these crops are skeptical. “I don’t see them (special crops) as the light at the end of the tunnel for […] Read more

WINNIPEG (Staff) – A task force which involved community, private sector, railway and government stakeholders said it has found “positive and cost-effective” ways to rescue the beleaguered rail line and port. The report, released last week, states there’s plenty of opportunity for Churchill, if governments pay to maintain and improve the rail line and grain […] Read more

MARIAPOLIS, Man. – Between sips of coffee and bites of oatmeal cookies, five young producers huddle over the day’s Chicago hog prices torn out of the newspaper and predict what a new contracting program could mean for their operations. At another table, three hog farmers in their late 50s sit back and discuss the “what […] Read more

MARIAPOLIS, Man. (Staff) -Manitoba Pork is telling producers not to go whole hog into its new forward price contract. Sales manager Perry Mohr recommends that farmers using the program limit their advance selling to one half of their projected production to ensure they can fulfil their contracts and in case the spot price turns out […] Read more

MARIAPOLIS, Man. (Staff) Here’s how the new forward price contract works: Producers phone Manitoba Pork. Using an automated system, they can choose to book their hogs for delivery, get markets information, or contract with sales manager Perry Mohr. The producer requests the current price for a given future month. Using CME live hog prices and […] Read more

BRANDON, Man. – Incorporating herbicides in a no-till field? Impossible! Maybe not. Researchers and several farmers at a zero-till workshop held here last week say from experience it can be done. They have brought granular herbicides like Treflan, Rival, Edge, Avadex and Fortress back into their zero-till herbicide rotations with encouraging results. Success depends on […] Read more

BRANDON (Staff) – Researchers aren’t the only ones experimenting with soil-incorporated herbicides in zero-till farming. Farmers are doing it too. Gregg Fotheringham, president of the Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Till Farmers Association who farms near Reston, Man., used a ‘worn-out’ set of harrows and a Phoenix rotary harrow to incorporate Rival and Edge on 600 acres […] Read more

WINNIPEG – (Staff) A tough new mutation of wild oats in Manitoba is resistant to the Group 2 herbicide Assert and to Mataven. Weed specialist Luc Bourgeois said a Swan River-area farmer discovered the plant and researchers are still running tests on the sample. He said this is the first time this type of wild […] Read more

BRANDON, Man. (Staff) – Cut them. Spray them. Mow them down. Rotate them out. “Use anything you want. You can even use napalm, I don’t care,” said Luc Bourgeois, a weed specialist at the University of Manitoba. Bourgeois emphatically told farmers they must take action against wild oats resistant to Group 1 herbicides at an […] Read more