Tracy Tjaden

For the first time since the federal agriculture department began regulating genetically altered plants nearly a decade ago, a plant variety has been suspended for containing unregistered genes. In an unprecedented move, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has frozen the registration on Limagrain’s line of Roundup-resistant canola after quality control tests by Monsanto, the company […] Read more

and Reuter News Agency news As if digging their farm out of a late-season blizzard wasn’t enough, Larry and Chris Hamblin are now preparing for the highest flood Manitoba has seen this century. It’s the worst-case scenario for residents of the province’s Red River Valley. “We use the boat in the summer so it’s always […] Read more

Farmers in Manitoba’s Red River Valley are hitting one obstacle after another in their efforts to move grain out of area before what could be Manitoba’s worst flood this century slams the region later this month. A backlog of grain shipments to the West Coast, a record April blizzard that paralyzed the region and a […] Read more

Manitoba hog farmers must embrace change to keep their heads above water as the industry reshapes itself, said an Indiana agricultural economist. “The single biggest opportunity that change is bringing is what many of us have been saying is absolutely awful: My neighbor is getting out of the hog business,” Chris Hurt told delegates to […] Read more

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool created a new company last week that it hopes will feed the growing livestock industry across the Prairies and around the world. Cangro Processors will provide the missing link in Sask Pool’s strategy to expand hog production in Western Canada, said Cangro chief operating officer Les Rankin. Operating as a subsidiary under […] Read more

In the race to claim space on the information highway, farmers are leading the pack, says an Ontario internet consultant. “The trend is on a steep upward slope,” said Helen Aitkin with the Guelph, Ont. firm Agribiz.net, an internet consulting group that specializes in keeping agriculture in the electronic loop. She describes the momentum that’s […] Read more

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Visits to food shows, tours of grocery stores and a flour mill, a meeting with Indonesia’s president and several Japanese and Indonesian agriculture and food ministers and the unveiling of a totem pole. These were some of the components of agriculture minister Ralph Goodale’s 10-day Asian trade mission. There were no contract […] Read more

TOKYO, Japan – There were Mounties, maple syrup and a minister of agriculture: the Canadian pavilion pulled out all the stops to stand out at Asia’s largest food show. But the effort was almost lost in the culinary fantasy that is Foodex ’97, where hundreds of representatives from 40 countries wine and dine 85,000 food […] Read more

BRANDON. Man. – The Brits like their bread, and they’ll settle for nothing less than the best wheat to get it. England’s premier bakery believes the wheat grown in southwestern Manitoba is some of the best in the world. That’s why Warburton’s established a plant in Brandon to test the wheat shipped to the company’s […] Read more

Intercontinental Packers will become a top supplier to the world’s largest pork buying country, vice-president Fred Mitchell has announced. The Saskatoon meat packing company sealed a deal last week with Tai Fang Foods, the Taiwanese firm that supplies Japan with most of its pork. The 10-year exclusive supply agreement, four months in the making, takes […] Read more