Tag Archives Commodities

Hosni Mubarak finally agreed to haul his old butt off the pharoah’s chair in Egypt, and the wheat market slightly rallied in response. At least that’s what Agricharts told me, and I don’t know any different, so that’s the truth for now. About the wheat markets, I mean. I didn’t find out about Hosni’s decision […] Read more

Chris Gillard of the University of Guelph summed up his view of the Western Bean Cutworm this way: “This thing scares me more than anything else I’ve worked with,” said the pulse crop specialist at the Manitoba Special Crops Symposium. It’s a pest in edible beans and corn – big Ontario crops – and also […] Read more

This year is likely to be a poor year for sunflower acreage in Manitoba. It’s not because prices are bad, but because farmers in the last couple of years have been ravaged by sclerotinia. People expect acres to drop by about 20 percent. Manitoba is a world leading exporter and producer of confectionary sunflowers. Manitoba […] Read more

Why should edible bean growers plant edible beans this spring? That was a question that presented Ontario bean buyer Jim Barclay with a challenge this morning during a session at the Manitoba Special Crops Symposium. He suggested farmers knew how to grow the crop and it fit into their rotations. It allows farmers to lock-in […] Read more

Statistics are greasy little pigs that we journalists have to often wrestle with, and many times the pigs win and get away from us. But sometimes we can wrestle them down and make them squeal for the reader. This is good. But sometimes, if they’re tackled too hard, they’ll scream and writhe and get mutilated. […] Read more

There’s never a dull moment in the wheat markets these days. Up, down, all around, like a rollercoaster. But mainly up. Here’s what Chicago winter wheat futures have been doing in the last few days: Look at that whiplash-inducing swing a couple of trading days ago! We know the stories moving the wheat markets: crop […] Read more

These are dizzyingly interesting time in world markets, world history and world weather. Not only has cyclone Yasi shwacked Ozzieland and driven sugar prices to three-decade highs (because the Australian sugarcane crop is not looking so good), but the freakin’ weather in Winnipeg has given me a brutal migraine headache, the only good aspect of […] Read more

There’s a clever form of analyst that knows how to blather out strings of statistics and vomit forth reams of information of a bewildering complexity – and ends up taking no position whatsoever on the likely evolution of the situation they’re speaking about – without seeming to dodge the obvious question. The blathered string of […] Read more

The world’s economically powerful are gathering right now in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Most the planet’s worthwhile big-name economists, business executives and government financial ministers are there, such as Nouriel Roubini and George Soros. It’s like the Bilderburg Group, except 80 percent of it happens in public, there’s lots of media there, […] Read more

Today’s Canadian Wheat Board Pool Return Outlook for 2010-11 pushes many prices up sharply – surprising no one – but there are no happy surprises awaiting those in the malting barley pools, which hardly moved at all. Number One CWRS 13.5 pops up to $9.31 per bushel from $8.85 last month; Number Two CWRS 11.5 […] Read more