General

Reading Time: < 1 minute Donald Buckingham, a lawyer for the federal agriculture department in Ottawa, has been named to head the tribunal that hears farmers’ appeals of their federal fines. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on Friday named Buckingham to a five-year full-time term as chairperson and CEO of the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal (CART). “He brings to the position […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes The federal government’s follow-up to last year’s Community Development Trust program will again give priority to “single-industry, rural communities” including those “heavily reliant” on resource industries such as agriculture. The government on Thursday rolled out its Community Adjustment Fund (CAF) which, like the CDT, allocates $1 billion in federal support for communities hit particularly hard […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes REVISED, May 11 — The federal government’s $250 million, two-year program to modernize federal laboratories will see a number of agricultural and agri-food labs share in the funding. MPs on Friday announced $4.9 million in funding for upgrades at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) Saskatoon lab; and $250,000 for upgrades to the growth control […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes A comprehensive trade deal between Canada and the European Union will be “by far the biggest trade agreement that we will ever work on negotiating.” That’s the assessment of Brad Wildeman, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, one of several groups hailing Wednesday’s announcement of talks toward an “economic partnership agreement” between Canada and the […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Canadian farmers are seen being among the beneficiaries of a proposed “economic partnership agreement” between Canada and the European Union. Meeting Wednesday in Prague in the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, EU President Mirek Topolanek and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso announced the launch of negotiations between Canada and the 27-nation EU. “This […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes A raise in the cap for guarantees on loans to farmers is among the changes pending as the federal government moves to amend, and rename, its Farm Improvement and Marketing Co-operative Loans Act (FIMCLA). The amendments, introduced Monday in the House of Commons by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, were telegraphed last Friday in Saskatchewan by […] Read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and Manitoba Agriculture Minister Rosann Wowchuk have announced that Manitoba farmers in flood-affected areas will now have until June 30, 2009, to meet the 2009 AgriStability program enrollment requirements. Farmers in flood-affected areas have until June 30, 2009, to:• pay their fee for the 2009 program year without penalty; and,• […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced changes to the Farm Improvement and Marketing Co-operative Loans Act (FIMCLA), which will expand credit available to individual farmers and co-operatives. FIMCLA is designed to finance farm improvements and fund the processing, distribution and marketing of farm products. The act currently provides individual farmers with up to 80 per […] Read more

Reading Time: < 1 minute Using radar imagery from the Canadian satellite Radarsat-2, Statistics Canada has analyzed the area of Manitoba farmland covered by this year’s flooding in the Red River Valley, and compared it with the area flooded in “The Flood of the Century” in 1997. The area of flooded agricultural land is estimated using the 2006 Census of […] Read more