Roberta Rampton

A forgotten lunch bag and a chance meeting at a gas station have led to a short-line railway negotiating with CN Rail to buy about 150 kilometres of track in northwestern Manitoba. The rail, stretching from north of Dauphin to just west of Minitonas, could have ended up as scrap. It is one of the […] Read more

It may not be love at first sight when farmers lay eyes on the McLeod Harvest Method. The prototype shares little of the muscle that lures farmers and their lines of credit to the combine. Bob McLeod, a Winnipeg entrepreneur, has spent three years developing a new system to take grain, chaff and weed seeds […] Read more

Manitoba Pool Elevators’ first foray into further-processed foods has not been without some bumps. In 1995, the grain company announced it had become 25 percent owner of Gilbert International Inc., a Manitoba food processing company. Today, it owns 75 percent of the company that makes frozen pot pies and appetizers for U.S. grocery stores. But […] Read more

This year, prairie canola growers seeded about two million acres of herbicide-tolerant plants. Flax growers did not have that option, even though flax varieties with similar qualities have been developed. This twist in the tale of transgenics in Canada’s two oilseeds comes mainly because of different markets for the crops. And the controversy in the […] Read more

The prolonged bon voyage party for old-crop flax held some fireworks for farmers who were fortunate enough to be delivering their newly harvested seed. “There’s $8-a-bushel bids for canola and flax at the same time, and it’s very rare that the guys get the same value for both crops,” notes grain marketing consultant Dulcie Price, […] Read more

Prairie strawberries taste great in the summer, but have a hard time making it through the cold winters. But a group of growers hopes to find some new varieties to tough out the cold with $120,000 in research over the next three years. Waldo Thiessen explained part of the money will go toward evaluating strawberry […] Read more

Shut out by sugar beets, tired of trifling grain prices and fed up with finicky special crops, farmers in southern Manitoba have pushed soybean acres from zero to about 6,000 this year. For the farmers who planted this heat-hungry crop in the absence of experience and crop insurance, judgment day approaches. “If we get a […] Read more

The wrong weather in the United States and Australia is doing the right thing for malting barley’s price outlook in Canada. The Canadian Wheat Board’s last projections for the crop point to better price prospects for both six-row and two-row malting barley because of production problems in competing countries. The United States is the main […] Read more

It’s open house at a new federal laboratory where scientists will probe some of the most deadly diseases known to humans and animals. And it is obvious the intended public relations message for reporters is the safety of the $142 million complex. As tour guide Paul Langevin leads reporters through a maze of labs, showers […] Read more

ELIE, Man. – On an overcast day at the end of August, the smell of harvest was in the air as combines furiously mowed fields before an anticipated rain. But in this field about 40 kilometres west of Winnipeg, the rush wasn’t to take off grain or oilseeds. Instead, three Caterpillar Challenger tractors raced at […] Read more