Reading Time: < 1 minute Don’t expect a return to normal geopolitical conditions — at least not if you think the past several decades were normal. That was Janice Gross Stein’s message March 8, in an opening address to the Canadian Crops Convention. The noted political scientist and founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy […] Read more
As globalization fades new strategies needed
Charting Canada’s agricultural path forward
Reading Time: < 1 minute John Stackhouse is a senior vice-president of Royal Bank of Canada and author of the Farmer 4.0 report that delves into the transformation of agriculture. Stackhouse was a participant in a panel discussion on innovation and resilience in agriculture at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture annual meeting in Ottawa on March 7. He sat down […] Read more
Farmers hear from national political leaders
Reading Time: < 1 minute For the first time since at least 1980, according to a long-time member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, a sitting Prime Minister has spoken to the annual meeting of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA). Liberal leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was a last minute addition to the agenda, joining Conservative Party leader Pierre […] Read more
The path to attracting workers
Reading Time: 2 minutes [UPDATED: Mar. 6, 2023] Farm labour was a hot topic at the annual meeting of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture in Ottawa March 6 and 7. Jennifer Wright, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council, led a panel discussion that delved into the size and scope of the issue and some of the […] Read more
Farmers Edge launches IPO
Digital ag firm makes first public share offering to big demand
Reading Time: 2 minutes Manitoba’s best-known digital agriculture firm is now a publicly-traded company. Farmers Edge, founded in 2005 in Pilot Mound, Man. by agronomists Wade Barnes and Curtis MacKinnon, has carved out a niche using field-centric data, artificial intelligence and its FarmCommand data management platform. CEO Wade Barnes called it an exciting day during an online press conference […] Read more
Canada’s mink farms brace for COVID
Producers have had time to increase biosecurity efforts at the farm level
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canada’s 40 mink farms are operating under heightened biosecurity requirements after reports of COVID-19 jumping from humans to mink in Europe. Alan Herscovici, an industry spokesperson who operates the website Truthaboutfur.com, said early reports out of Denmark and other European countries gave Canadian producers some time to prepare. “These farms have always had a certain […] Read more
Opinion: Canada has many research success stories — but there should be more
If we can’t bridge the farmer-researcher gap, we’re leaving money on the table
Reading Time: 3 minutes Every year around the world, billions of dollars, euros, yen and yuan are spent on agriculture research. In Canada alone, public funding of “research in support of agriculture,” to quote the federal government, topped $557 million in the 2016-17 fiscal year. That figure may wax and wane with the budgetary vagaries of government, but it’s […] Read more
High disease risk sees many Manitoba canola growers spraying fungicide
A wet spring creates canola fields full of sclerotinia as flowering blooms
Reading Time: 3 minutes This season Manitoba canola growers shouldn’t be asking if they should be spraying fungicides — they should be asking themselves if there’s any possible reason they shouldn’t. Clinton Jurke, director of agronomy for the Canola Council of Canada, says it’s been a moist spring, yield looks good in much of the province and dense canopies […] Read more
Integrated Pest Management gaining credibility
More and more growers are beginning to embrace the IPM approach to insect control, and the system is beginning to bear fruit
Reading Time: 7 minutes A few years back Owen Olfert and other entomologists approached a group of growers with what might have seemed like an outrageous request — don’t spray for wheat midge. They were in the process of introducing a new parasite to knock back midge populations, but there was a problem — the critter in question was […] Read more
Crop pest scouts may gain from ‘app’lied knowledge
Insect ID is a challenge — but Prairie entomologists say there will soon be an app for that, and a whole lot more
Reading Time: 7 minutes One of the most challenging aspects of crop protection will always be the flying, crawling and chomping critters that show up every season, hoping to take a bite out of your profits. There are a lot of them, they can be hard to tell apart, and wind and weather can determine if insects arrive in […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
