(Greg Berg photo)

Oats values hold steady at harvest

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm — The oats market in Western Canada is holding relatively steady despite seasonal harvest pressure, although yields failed to live up to earlier expectations. “Steady at harvest time is good,” said Scott Shiels, grain procurement merchant with Grain Millers in Yorkton. Prices often dip at harvest time due to increased deliveries, he noted, but […] Read more

The researchers found that an N rate of 90 lb./ac. provided the most consistent economic returns when oat prices are between $2.50 to $3 per bushel.

Boost the N and boost the fungicide?

Study shows oat growers should make separate decisions on how much of each to apply

Reading Time: 3 minutes With the increasing demand for oats in the food market, growers these days are paying attention to both yield and quality, leading to questions about managing both nitrogen and fungicides. Does use of one affect how much you should use of the other? Not by much, according to research published this spring. Agriculture Canada crop […] Read more


(Dave Bedard photo)

Wheat crop to be second-largest on record, StatsCan predicts

Canola estimate at lower end of trade predictions

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — Canada’s farmers will have grown their second-largest wheat crop on record in 2020, according to the first production estimates of the year from Statistics Canada, as released Monday. The government agency pegged total wheat production in the country for 2020-21 at 35.74 million tonnes, up 10.5 per cent on the year and second […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

Canola crop expectations vary ahead of StatsCan report

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — Statistics Canada is due to publish its first production estimates for Canada’s 2020 growing season on Monday (Aug. 31). Late-season hot temperatures and a lack of rain may cause Canada’s canola production to be lower than originally expected, according to some market participants. Earlier in the growing season, Winnipeg-based FarmLink Agriculture Solutions published […] Read more


(Dave Bedard photo)

Attention turns to yield potential after StatsCan report

Future tweaks to acreage numbers seen as unlikely to sway markets

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — Updated acreage estimates from Statistics Canada came largely within market expectations, with the focus now shifting to growing conditions and yield potential. The survey was completed in early June “and may not have captured all of the seeding delays and potential shifts that may have happened in central/northern Alberta and northwestern Saskatchewan because […] Read more

(Photo courtesy Canola Council of Canada)

Canola area expected to be lower in Monday’s StatsCan report

Later-seeded areas expected to add pulse, barley, durum acres

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — Market participants generally expect canola acreage will be revised downward in a second acreage estimate due out Monday from Statistics Canada. “There’s a lot of uncertainty about canola acres,” Ken Ball of P.I. International in Winnipeg said, noting acreage was “definitely lost” in central and northern Alberta due to wet spring conditions. In […] Read more


(Dave Bedard photo)

Little change seen in June’s crop supply/demand tables

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm — Supply/demand estimates for Canada’s major crops saw little change in updated tables released Tuesday from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Acreage estimates from Statistics Canada are due out June 30, and should lead to more sizeable adjustments in subsequent reports. Canola ending stocks were left unchanged at 2.6 million tonnes for the current marketing […] Read more

Cigi staff evaluate wheat flour for use in oriental noodles. (Cigi photo)

‘New’ Cereals Canada names board, chair

The merged Cereals Canada/Cigi unit held its first annual meeting

Reading Time: 3 minutes Alberta farmer Todd Hames was elected Monday as the chair of the board for the recently reconstituted Cereals Canada, at its first-ever annual meeting. The ‘new’ Cereals Canada was created June 1 when it and the Canadian International Grains Institute (Cigi) amalgamated after two years of discussions and the approval of their respective boards April […] Read more


CBOT July 2020 oats with 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages. (Barchart)

Demand pushes up cash prices for oats

Cash oats uncoupled from Chicago futures values

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — While scarcity of oats on the Prairies has pushed up cash prices, there has been a drop in futures prices on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), two buyers said. “The weakness in the futures definitely has nothing to do with cash prices in the country,” said Scott Shiels of Grain Millers at […] Read more

A healthy wheat head at left and one with severe symptoms of fusarium head blight at right. (Keith Weller photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

Alberta deregulates fusarium

Crop disease comes off province's 'zero tolerance' list

Reading Time: 2 minutes Alberta is moving to keep fusarium in check by means other than the “zero tolerance” policy it has in effect on agricultural pests such as rats, rabies and clubroot. Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen announced a ministerial order Wednesday to remove Fusarium graminearum from the list of pests covered by the Pest and Nuisance Control Regulation, […] Read more