Reading Time: 5 minutes After six years, the “Day of the Triffids” appears to be ending for Canada’s flaxseed industry. Triffid is a genetically modified variety of flax that was rather unfortunately named after the creatures in The Day of the Triffids, a 1951 novel about carnivorous plants bioengineered in the USSR that escape and blind people with their […] Read more
Flax on the road to recovery in a post-Triffid world
Flax is back now that a GM variety is flushed out of the system, but there’s new competition from the former Soviet Union
Soybean market outlook
Soybean Guide: When a supply interruption eventually comes, which it will, soybean prices will have to go up to ration demand
Reading Time: 5 minutes Driving through Eastern Canada this summer, you could see the crop everywhere. Fields of soybeans stretched from Windsor, Ont. into Quebec and beyond into New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. And that’s without even mentioning the West. Soybeans have truly transformed the farm landscape over the last several decades. They have become an integral part […] Read more
Should agronomic practices focus more heavily on soybean production?
Growing soybeans more intensively raises crucial new questions
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the mid-2000s, a spirited discussion between a private-sector crop adviser and a public-sector employee working in extension reflected the disparity that existed between corn and soybean production. At the time, corn yields were climbing at a stronger pace than soybeans, despite the arrival of glyphosate-tolerant soybeans. The adviser suggested that more had been done […] Read more
Soy wins health claim
The label approval is seen as an important step toward increased Canadian consumption
Reading Time: 6 minutes The popular saying is that good things come in small packages, which exactly describes Canada in terms of its overall output as one of the world’s soybean producers. Because good things do come from Canada. In fact, they may even be great things, thanks to our capabilities at producing high-quality identity-preserved, non-GMO soybeans, as we […] Read more
New in soybean varieties
New options will help the crop continue expanding its value and range
Reading Time: 12 minutes Canadian soybean production has grown up in the past 30 years. It seems a distant memory now that in 1985, Ontario was still the only major producer in the country, topping the million-tonne mark that year, well above the average of 690,000 tonnes earlier that decade. One year later, Quebec joined the market, and five […] Read more
Is the renewed interest in oats, barley and flax just a blip?
Acreage may be up in barley, oats and flaxseed, but that doesn’t mean there’s a long-term resurgence of interest in those crops
Reading Time: 7 minutes The trend to lower acreages of barley, oats and flaxseed in recent years has largely reflected the increased profitability in alternative grains and oilseeds, and canola in particular. As Western Canada’s darling, canola production crested at nearly 18 million tonnes in 2013, and even more is being called for with the Canola Council of Canada’s […] Read more
Livestock biosecurity strategies come to canola
Canola and soybean farmers are just beginning to see the wave of biosecurity that could sweep them the way it swept Canada’s hog and poultry sectors
Reading Time: 6 minutes When Manitoba agronomist Terry Buss goes out on a call from the Beausejour office, he takes a big trunk full of plastic boot covers in the back of the pickup. There are disinfectants in the trunk too, and other cleaning supplies as well, and he uses them all. Buss has adopted a brand new form […] Read more
The right amount of harvest loss
Here’s how to find that optimum balance between harvest efficiency and lower field losses
Reading Time: 6 minutes Combines can easily throw more than a couple of bushels per acre of canola without drawing any notice from the operator. Yet that hidden loss can add up. Two bushels per acre tossed with the chaff amounts to $3,200 per 160 acres (based on the round number of $10 per bushel of canola) and it […] Read more
Crop outlook 2015
Country Guide attended Wild Oats GrainWorld to hear what the industry said about grain and oilseed crops
Reading Time: 11 minutes With all the day-by-day and minute-by-minute noise that rocks today’s grain and oilseed trading, it can seem impossible to pick out the vital messages that the market is actually sending. Country Guide sent veteran ag reporter Richard Kamchen to Wild Oats GrainWorld in Winnipeg this winter to listen for the home truths about 2015’s grain […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
