Roberta Rampton

People at the front lines of Manitoba’s emergency farm loans program have been keeping a hectic pace. In December, the provincial government announced the $25 million program available through the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation. Since then, field officers have been doing 10 to 15 interviews with farmers each day, said Gill Shaw, general manager of […] Read more

Shortly after Easter hams are carved, Manitoba Pork est. will be no more. After five years of study, debate and transition, the hog marketing agency has gone through its final phase of restructuring, forming two separate groups. The old agency will officially dissolve after its 34th and final annual meeting in April, leaving the Manitoba […] Read more

GLADSTONE, Man. – Garth Jarvis wraps a generous beef roast with string as effortlessly as tying a shoelace. He sets a quick pace, matched by Marjorie Jarvis and four staffers in the cutting room. Together, they make short work of a side of beef, accompanied by the constant ring of the phone, an electronic bing-bong […] Read more

There is common ground in the lifestyles of the people who produce food in Manitoba and the people who most need it. David Northcott, executive co-ordinator of the province’s food bank, calls it “a fragility.” Don Dewar, a farmer and president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, agrees. “We both know adversity,” said Dewar. And on a […] Read more

Has the World Trade Organization soured on the way Canada prices its milk? A panel examining complaints from the United States and New Zealand released its first thoughts on the subject Feb. 5. The interim report is confidential and Canadian dairy officials won’t comment on what it contains. But an unnamed source in a National […] Read more

Maurice Doyon doesn’t know the interim ruling of a World Trade Organization panel on Canadian dairy products. But the agricultural economist at Laval University in Quebec City said a loss for Canada may not be a bad thing. Much depends on what parts of Canada’s special milk class pricing system, if any, the WTO panel […] Read more

The support price of $1.15 (U.S.) refers to the premium paid over the average Minneapolis spring wheat futures for February 1999: roughly $3.60 per bushel. This represents a price guarantee of about $4.75 per bushel. Converted to Canadian currency, that is $7.07. Farmers can buy between 50 and 85 percent price coverage. At the top […] Read more

and Reuters News Agency news Most old-crop oilseed and grain prices fell last week after the United States Department of Agriculture forecast a lower level of world grain trade and higher ending stocks. The canola March futures contract at the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange hit life-of-contract lows during the week, tugged down by the malaise that […] Read more

Clouds hang over the chances for “blue sky innovation” in today’s intensely competitive, high-stakes world of plant breeding, said a scientist who works in the field. This is the kind of labor-intensive research that may not produce results for years, but also has the power to radically alter plant breeding, said Julian Thomas, a wheat […] Read more

It will be some time before consumers can put a carton of omega-3 milk in their shopping cart beside a carton of the nutritionally enriched eggs. University of Manitoba trials prove feeding flax to cows significantly boosts the levels of the healthy fatty acid in milk. But the cow is a complex animal, explained Ray […] Read more