IF GLOBAL food production is to keep pace with rising demand, society will have to agree on how to get money into agriculture and dispense with romantic notions about small peasant farms. The barrage of angst from governments, aid agencies and media pontificators about rising food costs last summer was unsettling for farmers who were […] Read more
Opinion — page 696
Banish romantic ideas of small farm – WP editorial
Price of power forces Harper into awkward spots – Opinion
STEPHEN Harper looks like a man who enjoys power, likes being the lead Husky on the Canadian government dogsled and wears the prime ministerial skin well. Some of his predecessors – Joe Clark and Paul Martin come to mind – always seemed overwhelmed or uneasy wearing the skin that Macdonald, Laurier, Borden, King and Trudeau […] Read more
Finding joy in weekend farming – Opinion
Harelkin Bishop is the author of the recently released book Seeds of Hope: A Prairie Story. She lives in Saskatoon. I am a city person, born and bred. Having spent the first 40-odd years of my life in the relative convenience and comfort of the city, I had no real knowledge of the farm and […] Read more
New Brandon reporter reintroduces himself – Editorial Notebook
When asked why I enjoy reporting on farming, I typically respond that I like the diversity of agriculture and the opportunity to learn more about this wide-ranging field. Or, I explain that when I was a kid I helped out on my uncle’s farm west of Lake Manitoba, which fostered a lifelong interest in agriculture. […] Read more
No legs under market?
A lot of people were surprised when the USDA cut the legs out from under the righteously rallying crop markets Monday. Not Errol Anderson of Pro Market Communications in Calgary. (Nor Jeffrey Kennedy of Elliottwave International who I’ll write about in my next post.) He had already seen what he thought was evidence that the […] Read more
Rather embarrassing
I wasn’t sure if it was caused by massive interest in plummeting ag futures markets yesterday, but for some reason the new website for the Chicago Board of Trade wasn’t working yesterday. Click – nothing. Click – nothing. What the frak is going on? Has trading been suspended? It drove me crazy, and I imagine […] Read more
USDA slams market
Today’s USDA report hammered down crop prices across the board, knocking them well off their recent rally. At about noon, Chicago soybeans had dropped 54 cents to $9.83 per bushel, corn had dropped 30 cents to $3.80 per bushel and Minneapolis hard red spring wheat had dropped 50 cents to $6.00 per bushel. That’s big. […] Read more
Positive outlook
Here’s another 2009 market outlook. It’s from Agriweek, which is a weekly newsletter (there’s a daily version too) published in Winnipeg. It calls itself “Canada’s Agribusiness Authority Since 1967.” Each year the publication does a forecast for the year to come. This one is 16 pages long, but I’ll give you one paragraph from it […] Read more
OJ in down times
OJ isn’t doing great. I’m not talking about the former football boob, who recently got himself sent down the river. I’m talking about the stuff some of us drink, sometimes. It’s that “sometimes” bit that makes being an orange farmer such a pain. And it’s something that reveals the reality that not all ag commodities […] Read more
Livestock support sorely needed – Opinion
Beingessner is a farmer and columnist from Truax, Sask. God help the beleaguered cattle producers of Canada. As prices plummeted like the proverbial stone in 2007, we were told it was because of the high cost of feed grains and the soaring Canadian dollar that briefly took on the American greenback and pummeled it. Now […] Read more
