Reading Time: 5 minutes Working under tight security in their plant science laboratory at Morden, Man., Tom Fetch and his scientific colleagues look as if they’re handling extremely hazardous material. After changing into hospital scrubs in a locker room, Fetch and his team deactivate an alarm system and go through four doors to enter the laboratory. The Level 3 […] Read more
Heading off a stem rust pandemic
Only two older wheat varieties are resistant to Ug99, a devastating race of stem rust which threatens to spread around the world
Russia takes on the world
Millions of acres in Russia had been waiting for someone to farm them. Now they’re bursting with grain
Reading Time: 6 minutes For many Canadian grain growers, this year’s weather concerns, disease pressure, high input costs, and low crop prices made it seem like we’ve already been facing the perfect storm. However, there is an even bigger threat on the horizon — Russia. In the first week of October, while most Canadian growers were still busy with […] Read more
Russia’s (grain) strengths… and weaknesses
Reading Time: 2 minutes Strengths Russia is blessed with many advantages that strengthen its position as a wheat exporter: Russian wheat production is in close proximity to Egypt and Turkey — two of the world’s largest wheat importing markets. There is ample arable land — Russia possesses almost 10 per cent of the world’s arable land (122 m ha). […] Read more
Checkoffs to become a checkerboard
The plan is for a single checkoff next August 1, but will different provincial recipients all go in the same research direction?
Reading Time: 5 minutes What a tangled web. That’s one way to describe the system of checkoffs to support cereal research in Western Canada. From a centralized system administered by a single agency, the plan has splintered into six separate checkoffs and five different producer-run wheat and barley commissions in three provinces. This patchwork will simplify a little on […] Read more
Tight high-protein supplies underpin Minneapolis wheat
Reading Time: 2 minutes CNS Canada — Spring wheat futures in Minneapolis are outpacing the Chicago and Kansas City winter wheats to the upside, and tight world supplies of higher-protein wheat should remain supportive until the 2017 North American crop becomes better known. “A lot of it is the protein market,” said analyst Bryan Strommen of Progressive Ag in […] Read more
Showing off the new crop
Harvest assessment is key to quality seminars for international wheat customers
Reading Time: 3 minutes This past fall the Canadian International Grains Institute collected grain samples from across Western Canada to complete its annual harvest assessment in preparation for worldwide customer seminars on crop quality. “It’s important that we get the information out as quickly as possible on what’s coming through the system so customers can see what they’ll be […] Read more
China shipping wheat flour to Canada
Reading Time: < 1 minute Chinese state-owned agrifood firm Cofco says it has scored its first-ever international sale of wheat flour — into the Canadian market. Cofco, which said in June it plans to open a Canadian grain trading office in Winnipeg, recently announced it had loaded a container ship at the northeastern port of Dalian on Nov. 17 with […] Read more
Focus on quality, not quantity following StatsCan report
Reading Time: 1 minute CNS Canada –– This year’s Canadian wheat production was up considerably from last year, according to updated estimates from Statistics Canada — but the quality of that crop remains questionable. All-wheat production (spring, winter and durum wheat combined) was pegged at 31.7 million tonnes in 2016-17, which compares with 27.6 million in 2015-16. Of that […] Read more
Canadian wheat, canola crops seen weathering snow
Reading Time: 2 minutes Winnipeg | Reuters — Canada’s wheat and canola crops withstood wintry weather that stalled the autumn harvest, and production topped last year’s output, according to Reuters’ industry survey of 13 analysts and traders. Statistics Canada on Tuesday will issue its final crop production estimates for the 2016-17 marketing year. The industry expects, on average, all-wheat […] Read more
ADM sells stake in Canada Malting owner GrainCorp
Reading Time: < 1 minute Chicago | Reuters — U.S. agricultural commodities trader Archer Daniels Midland has sold its 19.9 per cent stake in GrainCorp to underwriters UBS, just three years after a failed bid to wholly acquire the Australian grain handler, ADM said Thursday. The sale to the Swiss bank was valued at A$387 million (C$382 million), or A$8.53 […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
