The following passage shouldn’t be surprising: “Agriculture is the backbone of the provincial economy. As the minister of agriculture, you are the steward of this essential sector. Your goal will be to support the sector so that Manitoba can be a leader in agricultural innovation, research and job creation. A strong agricultural sector means a […] Read more
Tag Archives Hedge Row
Western Canadian farm organizations need more farmers
It’s just a short walk across a lawn and past some statues to get from the Keystone Agricultural Producers offices to the Manitoba legislature and the heart of government. That’s a walk KAP’s staff and farmer representatives will need to be frequently taking to keep farm issues in front of — or even recognized by […] Read more
Cloudy statistics are clearly worthwhile for ag industry
Job growth has surged in recent reports in Canada and the United States. In Canada, an increase of 5,000 jobs was expected, but a whopping 104,000 were recorded. In the U.S., jobs also jumped by more 200,000, also beating expectations. But U.S. wage growth slowed. And through the week various stats seemed to suggest that […] Read more
Cryptocurrency, Twitter reminders of trust’s importance
If you spent hours and hours on Ticketmaster trying to buy your kids tickets to the upcoming Taylor Swift North American tour, you know what frustration and perhaps even fury feel like. Hundreds of thousands of hopeful, and pre-approved, people spent a fretful day trying to use the Ticketmaster website and app to purchase tickets […] Read more
Farmers can play a role in staving off political stupidity
When democracy works, politicians of all stripes have lots of opportunities to stave off stupidity. This is the sort of policy stupidity they might themselves commit when in power if they weren’t clued in to the nightmarish consequences of their possible actions. To help them with that, farm and other organizations work hard to provide […] Read more
Externalities: farmers caught in the middle
Farmers have the honour of being a textbook example of a group of people who inhabit a crucial but seldom discussed (by the public) economic concept: Externalities. It’s something that could bring or cost farmers lots in the future. It’s the concept of costs or benefits of something being unrecognized in the price or cost […] Read more
Great to be a bulk commodities producer during these times
Sometimes it’s great to be a bulk commodities producer. One of those times is now. It’s a lot easier to see the future for bulk grain and meat markets than it is to see the future for food and processed products. So many of the big food market themes of the last decade are stories […] Read more
Producers must find ways to make farm jobs attractive
Farmers’ ability to find and keep employees is probably being crippled by a new reality that exacerbates a bad, old reality: “It’s easier to pick and choose.” That observation was made by economist Chris Ferris when I met with him the other day to chat about the mystery of why so many industries and businesses […] Read more
Plenty of blame to go around with current financial crisis
With any luck, we’ll be done with what we could call the “harder-faster recession” by the time we’re drinking April wine. If we can get through what now looks like an inevitable recession by then, there’s a chance we’ll avoid killing the commodity bull market that has helped make these last couple of years a […] Read more
World given an opportunity to revive rules-based trade
A couple of years ago, rules-following free traders like Canada seemed to be sadly out of step with the march of history. China was beating down on countries like Canada and Australia for daring to anger it, nakedly weaponizing trade for political ends. The United States was coming to the end of the first term […] Read more
