Reading Time: 7 minutes It isn’t like commercial real estate, or even like housing markets where so much information is available. If you’re interested in a house, for example, your realtor can tell you what the last six houses sold for in the same neighourhood. If you want to rent office space in downtown Calgary or Toronto, finding out […] Read more
Farmland for rent
Too often it seems you don’t hear land is up for rent until you learn someone is already renting it
High-tech seeding
New equipment options promise growers more and better control over this critical field operation
Reading Time: 7 minutes Over the years, few field operations have caused growers more head scratching. Seeding is the critical first step in getting a good crop, and there are many variables in play. Is the seedbed right? Are the fertilizer and seed separation acceptable? Is the seed placed evenly? Is it being sown at the right depth? As […] Read more
The fine balance of controlling crop diseases
It's a classic example of where short-term decisions can mean long-term problems
Reading Time: 7 minutes Randy Kutcher recalls that when he moved to Saskatchewan 25 years ago, farmers were using hardly any fungicide. “They were using a bit of fungicide for sclerotinia in canola, and that’s about it. Now it’s pretty much part of the program, and often crops are getting two or more applications, and it’s almost become like […] Read more
The long-term battle of fighting crop diseases
Fighting crop disease isn’t a single-season job — you’ve got to be in it for the long haul and protect and maintain the capacity to do the work
Reading Time: 7 minutes In the winter of 1820, farmers at the embryonic Red River Settlement, at what is now Winnipeg, faced disaster after their seed grain was destroyed. The colony had dabbled in wheat production for the previous few years, but with little success. It was make-or-break time for the cold-hardened and dispossessed Scotsmen who had migrated via […] Read more
North of Superior, in ‘livestock country’
A northern Ontario mill town with a proud agricultural past and lots of essentially free land isn’t quite ready to call it quits yet
Reading Time: 11 minutes Coming from the west, it’s unexpected. You pass out of the Prairies just east of Winnipeg, then drive through mile after mile of rocks, trees and water — the typical geography of the Canadian Shield. But somewhere east of Kenora, something begins to happen… small meadows start to appear, finally broadening out and breaking up […] Read more
Canada’s agricultural research deficit
Public ag research in Canada gets cut again and again, all while proof grows that science is needed more than ever
Reading Time: 9 minutes Get public research right and the results can be impressive, whether the benefit is incremental, like the new crop varieties that, year after year, edge farm productivity up, or if it’s transformative like the invention of canola or the equally ground-shifting release of early genetics that saw corn and soybeans to sweep the East and […] Read more
Wheat class changes see the end of KVD
Kernel visual distinguishability (KVD) ended on paper in 2008, but new changes to wheat classes mean it will also end in practice
Reading Time: 4 minutes For decades, it was “What you see is what you get” when buying Canadian wheat. Not only did new varieties have to perform well in the field and in the bakery, they had to look similar to all the other varieties in their class. That helped ensure the consistency which has been such a strong […] Read more
Sizing up the farm
Lane Stockbrugger is betting that the age of the family farm has got a long ways to go yet
Reading Time: 7 minutes It was in the wide-open spaces of Saskatchewan where the trend was perhaps most apparent a few short years ago. A one-two combination had suddenly brought a lot of new attention to farming and farmland. First, crop prices spiked, creating attractive margins for the first time in a generation. Then, predictably, farmland followed suit, as […] Read more
Making change for cereal crop development
In the wake of deregulation, the cereals sector has needed to reorganize itself, and so far it seems like the major pieces have been picked up
Reading Time: 7 minutes When the Canadian Wheat Board was losing the single desk, there was no shortage of dire predictions about what the fallout might be. Even many of those in favour of an open market conceded that there were a lot of moving parts, and it was going to be necessary to proceed with caution lest very […] Read more
The Corn Belt moves north
Monsanto has plans to produce varieties that can be grown on half the acres in Western Canada
Reading Time: 7 minutes It might not look like it at first glance, but this nondescript boardroom in a steel building beside a busy highway in southern Manitoba is the heart of the western Canadian corn pipeline. The site near Carman is home to Monsanto’s major corn expansion project, announced just over two years ago with much fanfare and […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
