Minnedosa, Man. – Most people wouldn’t be comfortable making a speech from a narrow trench, but Alan Moulin is in his element as he talks about the varying soil characteristics at the Manitoba Zero Till Research Farm.
Starting at the highest elevation of the metre wide and metre deep trench, Moulin, a soil scientist with Agriculture Canada in Brandon, explains the changes in the soil profile as he walks downhill.
About halfway down the 40 metre long pit, Moulin points to a soil profile with an A horizon that is dark gray to black and about 30 centimetres thick.
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The group of 60 people, representing the Manitoba Soil Science Society and the Soil Conservation Council of Canada, leans over the edge of the trench for a closer look at the profile of Newdale soil, which may soon become the provincial soil of Manitoba.
On July 8, the Soil Science Society and Soil Conservation Council visited the zero till farm between Minnedosa and Brandon as part of the society’s annual summer tour. The participants learned why Newdale deserves to be the official soil of Manitoba.
“It (Newdale) covers such an extensive area of Western Manitoba and there are very similar soils in Saskatchewan and Alberta. It really is characteristic of agricultural soils on the Prairies,” said Moulin in an interview.
Newdale, named after a town on the Yellowhead Highway west of Minnedosa, is a Class 2 soil and an orthic black chernozem. It’s found in undulating or hummocky terrain and is a mixture of glacier eroded granite, limestone from Manitoba’s Interlake, also deposited by glacier, and local shale.
“It doesn’t have any adverse problems, it’s got undulating topography … and it’s got slight stones, but not a lot of stones,” said Wally Fraser, head of the land resource unit for Agriculture Canada in Winnipeg.
“Overall it has a clay-loam texture to it, which has a very good water holding capacity,” added Fraser, noting that the motion to enshrine Newdale as the provincial soil has passed first reading in the Manitoba legislature.
There are Class 1 soil types in Manitoba around Portage la Prairie, but those soils only cover a small portion of the province, Fraser said. In comparison, Newdale is found in a broad band stretching from Brandon to the Riding Mountains.
“These (Newdale soils) occur in western Manitoba and this is part of what they call the Newdale till plain. It extends about 10 miles or so east of the Manitoba zero-till farm, clear across to the Saskatchewan border,” he added.
The undulating till formation and the chernozem extends into Saskatchewan, Fraser said, but across the border its name changes to Oxbow soil. However, Newdale is distinct from the brown chernozem soils of Saskatchewan, he noted. Black chernozemic soils have more organic matter than the drier soils common in the Palliser Triangle.
Naming a provincial soil would be an excellent public education tool, Fraser said.
“It increases public knowledge and (encourages) thinking about soils as an important resource that has to be maintained and preserved.”
The province would become the third in Canada to have an official soil, after New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
After closing its doors nine months ago, Shape Foods will resume bottling flaxseed oil this September, said Jim Downey, the co-owner and chief executive officer of the processing plant in Brandon.
“I believe very strongly in value-added processing of grains that are grown in the Prairies,” said Downey, explaining why he bought the plant.
“And this particular product (omega 3 fatty acids) … everybody in the world needs.”
Downey expects the company will be processing flax by the early fall, once staff are hired and the idle plant is readied for operation.
The previous owners of Shape Foods, which was founded in Burnaby, B.C., before relocating to Brandon, used a $4.5 million credit union loan and a $4.1 million loan from the Manitoba government to build a $30 million processing plant on Brandon’s east side.
The 70,000 sq. foot plant produced its first flaxseed oil in December 2007, but by the fall of 2008, Shape Foods announced it was going into receivership, putting 60 employees out of work.
Downey and three unidentified partners were the successful bidders in the receivership, acquiring Shape Foods for $5.1 million.
The company’s assets include a substantial inventory of flax oil, which Downey said they will “move into the marketplace as soon as we can.”
Downey noted the reincarnated Shape Foods would take a different approach to marketing flaxseed oil.
“The initial plan (when Shape first opened) was to go into the high-end U.S. market,” he said. “Our plan is to not forget about the U.S. market … but also develop the Canadian market and a bulk oil market to get the plant up and running.”
Later, Shape Foods would like to develop its own brand, Downey said, and also sell flaxseed oil in capsules.
Barry Hall, president of the Flax Council of Canada, said he’s encouraged that Shape Foods’ state of the art facility will soon be operational.
“It is an extremely high-tech, very advanced processing facility,” he said. “They put out a very high quality flax oil product.”
One of Shape Foods’ important assets is the company’s proprietary technology that extends the shelf life of its flaxseed oil, Downey said.
Shape Foods’ website states its flaxseed oil is shelf stable for one year after the date of manufacture.
Interest in Saskatchewan farmland continues to grow thanks to bullish commodity markets and affordable land prices relative to other Canadian provinces, say real estate brokers specializing in farm sales.
Roger Menagre, broker and owner of Re/Max of the Battlefords, says demand for Saskatchewan cropland is as strong as ever, particularly among buyers from Alberta and British Columbia.
“It’s really tough to get grain land for listings anymore because everybody seems to be after it,” Menagre said.
“Commodity prices are pretty good so farmers are hanging on to their land …. They’re starting to finally make some money on the grain side so I think they’re trying to get a few more years of good income in and then they’ll probably look at putting it on the market once (commodity) prices start falling again.”
Despite price increases over the past two years, Menagre said out-of-province buyers still view Saskatchewan farmland as a bargain.
Some people are selling their farms in other parts of Western Canada and buying at a lower price in Saskatchewan. Others are looking for affordable opportunities to expand their landholdings.
Alberta buyers in particular are providing significant support for Saskatchewan land prices, as are investment groups that buy farmland and lease it back to producers.
According to Menagre, prices for cropland have fallen very little since the Saskatchewan real estate market hit unprecedented highs in mid-2008.
“It really hasn’t slowed down in terms of pricing,” he said. “Pricing is probably holding up to what it was a year or two ago.”
Listings for pasture are more plentiful in Saskatchewan but demand is less robust than demand for cropland, he added.
Amber Ray, a farmland evaluation specialist with Farm Credit Canada, said demand for Saskatchewan farmland has increased over the past few years, especially since the province eased restrictions on land ownership.
For decades, provincial law in Saskatchewan prohibited out-of-province investors from owning more than 320 acres of farmland.
When those restrictions were lifted in 2002, the pool of prospective buyers increased and the value of Saskatchewan farmland began to rise, moving closer to values in Manitoba, Alberta and other Canadian provinces.
According to FCC, Saskatchewan farmland values rose 8.8 during the last six months of 2008, the largest increase of any Canadian province.
In the two-year period ending Jan. 1, 2009, Saskatchewan farmland values increased by 25.2 percent, the FCC said in its 2009 farmland values report. Only Alberta had a larger increase, at 25.6 percent.
Saskatchewan farmland has come to be viewed as a solid long-term investment opportunity, both by individual buyers and by investment companies that raise private capital, buy farmland and lease it back to producers.
Doug Elmsley, president of Assiniboia Capital Corp. in Regina, said his company has raised $40 to $50 million since 2005 by selling shares in four capital pool limited partnerships.
Assiniboia has used the money to buy 80,000 to 90,000 acres of farmland on the open market, most of which was leased back to area farmers.
The company is now the largest farmland management company in Canada, Emsley said.
Jordan Hokanson, president of HCI Ventures, another company that invests in farmland, said despite the growing interest in prairie land, rapidly rising prices over the past year or two have made farmland a less enticing investment option.
He said competition among buyers reached a peak last year and high prices pushed potential buyers out of the market.
Hokanson described current prices for Saskatchewan land as being “fully valued,” adding that prices leave little room for commodity price depreciation or weather uncertainty.
“It’s been tough to buy farmland over the last year because it got overvalued,” he said.
“It’s not the same opportunity that it was in 2004.”
Hokanson added that farmland is still an investment that will generate interest among long-term investors.
“Historically, farmland has been an excellent hedge against inflation, so for investors who were looking for a way to protect the long-term value of their money, farmland has been an interesting choice,” he said.
