Reading Time: 8 minutes Buckle up. Commodity markets look to be in for a wild ride. China is experiencing its first major setback since its market liberalization began. It generated 40 per cent of global economic growth last year, so this is troubling. If its engine is faltering, everyone is going to feel it. Market analyst Errol Anderson tells […] Read more
Hold on tight. The global economy is a mess
Not even Errol Anderson knows where the pieces will all fall. What’s a farmer to do?
Grow your own nitrogen
As the cost-price squeeze reasserts itself, those old ideas about producing your own nutrients might become new again —- which means the organic industry might have a thing or two to teach us
Reading Time: 5 minutes Near Oxbow, Sask., organic producer Ian Cushon spends a lot of time and energy trying to produce the key building block for plant life — his own nitrogen — because unlike most growers, Cushon can’t just spread some fertilizer and be done with it. If he wants to play the organic game and capture those […] Read more
The China (economic) factor and Canadian agriculture
Does China’s economic slowdown have to be bad news for Canada’s farmers? We ask Errol Anderson, does he see hope in the year ahead?
Reading Time: 6 minutes For the first instalment in our five-part series this fall and winter, we sat down with Calgary-based grain market adviser and regular Country Guide contributor Errol Anderson for his insights into what to look for in markets this year. The billion-dollar question, Anderson says, is what will happen in China. Other issues are important too, […] Read more
Talking up the job. Creating common ground between the farmer and consumer
What’s wrong with letting consumers know just how professional you have to be to grow their food in Canada today?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Every farmer has one. For Manitoba’s Rolf Penner, his aha moment came a few years back, when he suddenly realized just how hard it is for a farmer to talk to non-farmers about his business. Penner and a farming friend were on a weekend getaway with their spouses. Neither wife had a farming background. As […] Read more
Signs of a recovery in the french-fry business
Potato Guide: While the rest of the agriculture sector nervously eyes the oil melt-down, the potato industry might actually be poised for a comeback
Reading Time: 4 minutes Just one simple fact helps you understand the Canadian potato industry, and that’s just how big our crop is relative to domestic consumption. We Canucks consume just under 26 pounds of potatoes a year, but we produce about 10.2 billion pounds a year — 310 pounds for every man, woman and child in the country. […] Read more
When farm leaders meet provincial politics
Does it always pay to put your “X” beside the farmer’s name on the ballot?
Reading Time: 8 minutes It isn’t a unique story. In the late fall of 2010, Manitoba farmer Ian Wishart called a press conference to announce that he was heading into provincial politics, and that he had decided to seek the Progressive Conservative nomination for his Portage la Prairie constituency. Until then, Wishart had been the well-regarded president of the […] Read more
‘Pioneering spirit’ alive and well in Peace River
Times might be changing, but Alberta's Peace River Country is still like nowhere else
Reading Time: 13 minutes It was the height of summer and what should have been late evening when the engines of the small regional jet slowed almost imperceptibly and the craft began to make its gentle descent into the northern Alberta city of Grande Prairie. The first thing that grabbed the eye was mile upon mile of yellow-blossomed canola […] Read more
Root rot disease could become the clubroot of pulse crops
For pulse growers, aphanomyces has all too much in common with canola’s clubroot
Reading Time: 3 minutes Nervous eyes are watching it, and voices are already whispering that it may become the clubroot of pulse crops. Aphanomyces is a virulent root rot, technically classified as a water mould, and it appears to be slowly spreading throughout the Prairie region, affecting annual and perennial legumes including legume forages. First confirmed in Saskatchewan in […] Read more
Campaign season
With the federal election heating up, how nervous should Ontario’s dairy farmers and the West’s grain shippers start getting? By some accounts, quite nervous indeed
Reading Time: 6 minutes There was a time when farmers were front and centre in federal election campaigns. But no longer, it seems. With only about two per cent of the population involved in primary agriculture, it’s hard for this important industry to break through. “The reality is, the days of elections being won or lost on agriculture issues […] Read more
Canada’s top agriculture politicians on farm issues
Canada’s agriculture politicians say the coming campaign has plenty of grist for the mill, but none is expecting non-farmers to care much
Reading Time: 8 minutes Sometime between now and next fall, the federal election writ will be dropped and the 42nd Canadian federal election will be underway. Country Guide recently spoke to federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and the critics from the other two major parties about how they see agricultural issues playing out in the campaign. As you might […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
