Roberta Rampton

They’ve traded in a long bench by a wall of windows with good northern light in a heritage building. They’ve moved into limousine-grey work stations with intense fluorescent lights hanging 100 centimetres overhead in a strip mall. And the 16 inspectors and staff with the Canadian Grain Commission service centre in Winnipeg say they couldn’t […] Read more

Manitoba farmers will be able to insure a crop this spring that has risen from relative obscurity to the latest seeding option. Last week, the Manitoba Crop Insurance Corporation announced it will sell insurance for soybeans because of interest from farmers. “There was quite a few acres in ’97 and they’re talking about as many […] Read more

The Asian flu hanging over North American stock markets is infecting commodity markets too. In the past six months, the currencies and buying power of South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia have taken a nose-dive, dropping by as much as 70 percent. Prices at the Chicago Board of Trade have moved lower, anticipating […] Read more

Wheat growers will notice the effects of the Asian currency crisis on their returns this year as important customers like South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines lose buying power. “It does have an impact on (farmers’) bottom line, because with the prices going down in the futures market … and everything being more skittish, it […] Read more

Farmers are warned to use extreme caution when pumping out manure pits and tanks. Last month two farmers in southwestern Ontario died while doing that chore. They were moving liquid manure from a holding tank to mix with older manure, in order to loosen the material and drain it into a tank. But the area […] Read more

SARTO, Man. – It aims to give beef producers more control over how their cattle are marketed. It’s a closed “new generation” co-operative. But organizers want to make sure farmers don’t confuse Prairie Beef Alliance Co-operative Ltd. with Northern Plains Premium Beef, a co-op that has so far failed to attract enough investors. Cattle producers […] Read more

ELIE, Man. – Beyond the massive stacks of bales rising like pyramids near the Isobord strawboard plant, past the red rows of seeding equipment from Valmar Airflo’s manufacturing plant, a new landmark is rising on the flat horizon near this bustling small town just west of Winnipeg. Prairie Flour Mills Ltd. is small, but it’s […] Read more

AMARANTH, Man. – Wielding the long steel instrument, Jack Robertson bends under the paint pony and with a deft movement and a visceral crunch, turns it into a gelding. He does the job carefully and efficiently. But this event, like most others on the Bar J Polled Charolais ranch, is a convivial family affair. Jack’s […] Read more

As the last cattle carcasses rolled down the line at the Burns plant in Winnipeg on Dec. 5, Gunton, Man. cattle producer James Bezan was making an enthusiastic pitch about the future of the beef packing industry in Manitoba. The province is now left with only one federally inspected plant, with a total capacity of […] Read more

Unless you’ve been trapped in a barn for the past three years, you have likely heard how the end of the Crow means a new beginning for the livestock industry. Leave it to an economist to debunk something that has become almost an article of faith in the prairie farm economy. Daryl Kraft, head of […] Read more