Reading Time: 4 minutes A new company — a partnership between the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) and livestock technology company ViewTrak — plans to bring the newborn unsteadiness of an information exchange network to a full gallop for all Canadian livestock sectors. The as-yet unnamed private company was formed to bring the CCA’s beef information exchange system, BIXS, to […] Read more
New company set up to deliver BIXS livestock data system
P.E.I., Man. couples named Outstanding Young Farmers
Reading Time: 2 minutes After a year-long nationwide competition, a P.E.I. couple in a potato growing and processing partnership, and a Manitoba couple building a seed growing and seed retailing business, are Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2014. Andrew and Heidi Lawless of Kinkora, P.E.I., both part of a partnership producing about 1,200 acres of potatoes, and Myron and […] Read more
Hart: Alta. packer to restart with eye on premium market
Reading Time: 2 minutes A veteran of the North American beef industry says he has no doubts he can turn a long-shuttered Alberta beef packing plant into a profitable business. Rich Vesta, the former CEO of the North American beef division of Brazilian meat packing giant JBS, has set up a temporary headquarters for a new family-owned company, Harmony […] Read more
From Grainews: Grain bag unloading made simpler
Reading Time: < 1 minute Neeralta Manufacturing at Neerlandia, north of Edmonton, has this year introduced a new grain bag extractor, that not only unloads nine- to 12-foot wide grain bags but also wraps and ties the plastic into a handy bale for easy disposal — all in one easy operation. The new extractor is available in both trailer and […] Read more
Lee’s Insight: How the Stampede gets horses to buck
Reading Time: 4 minutes If you plan on being reincarnated in the next life, hope to come back as one of the bucking horses owned by the Calgary Stampede. It ain’t bad. Room and board for the rest of your life, 23,000 acres of scenic Prairie grassland over which to ponder the meaning of the universe, and during the […] Read more
Winter pulses give farmers another option
Reading Time: 2 minutes Many farmers struggled to get a crop in this spring, and still others were happy to have had winter cereals in rotation to take some of the squeeze off a short seeding season. With wet weather persisting in some areas, the prospect of seeding a wider range of “winter” crops in late summer may have […] Read more
Kee Jim Okotoks, Alta.
Reading Time: 4 minutes KEE JIM HASN’T ALWAYS BEENthe most popular person in the Canadian livestock industry, but he is well known and respected. He’s a relatively young big-picture thinker, and over his 27 years of developing a successful feedlot consulting service, he has never shied from controversy. In fact, as the hint of mischief in his smile suggests, […] Read more
John Kolk Picture Butte, Alta.
Reading Time: 4 minutes THE INDUSTRY IS ALLOWINGits problems to define it rather than its opportunities,” says John Kolk, getting immediately to his point. As a third-generation grain farmer from southern Alberta, Kolk says agriculture’s brand is eroding, and there is a growing public perception that whiney “poor me” farmers are always looking for some form of government bailout. […] Read more
Flo Price Acme, ALTA.
Reading Time: 4 minutes IT’S WHAT MOST MOTHERS DO.Flo Price worked to instil a sense of independence in her children, plus a spirit of co-operation, a good work ethic and a desire to do well at all the tasks they took on. After all, those were the values she’d been raised with, and they were the values that Price, […] Read more
Rubbing Shoulders
Reading Time: 12 minutes “I love farming and I love the challenges, but I have no romantic notions about it. It is a business — a big business.” — Steve Vandervalk Like any farmer his age, Steve Vandervalk already knows a thing or two about steep learning curves. When we meet in mid-fall, he is renovating an older farmhouse […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
