Reading Time: < 1 minute CNS Canada –– Canadian farmers will seed more wheat and canola in 2018 at the expense of pulse crops, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s latest supply/demand estimates that include their first projections for the upcoming 2018-19 crop year. Total canola acres in 2018 are forecast at 24 million by the government agency, which would […] Read more
More canola, wheat acres expected at pulses’ expense
Agriculture contributed C$111.9 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2016
Reading Time: 2 minutes Winnipeg | CNS – A new report from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada released Friday has pegged agriculture as contributing C$111.9 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2016, which accounted 6.7 per cent of the country’s total GDP. The annual report entitled An Overview of the Canadian Agriculture and AgriFood System, provides a summary of the economic […] Read more
A ‘bio’ that works
Commercial use is still a couple of years away, but this bioherbicide is already raising eyebrows
Reading Time: 5 minutes When it comes to biopesticides, most researchers say that despite today’s limited selection of bio-based fungicides, insecticides and herbicides, the technology’s potential is extraordinary. Public and private scientists are especially excited by an “all natural” basis for developing new active ingredients. Since most of the elements for these biopesticides come from natural sources, they point […] Read more
Soft white spring wheat spreads east
Ethanol drives new demand while research adapts SWSW to new regions
Reading Time: 5 minutes Until relatively recently, there were few producers outside the irrigation belt of southern Alberta who had ever heard of, much less planted, soft white spring wheat (SWSW). However, backed by 50 years of research, the wheat class is suddenly showing a new potential to be grown on more acres and in more areas, and for […] Read more
Canada’s farm income to dip, but remain above average
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — Canadian farmers’ incomes will decline seven per cent in 2017, falling for the second year in a row but remaining at above-average levels, the country’s agriculture department predicted on Friday. A drop in North American cattle and calf prices from record highs in 2015 is the main reason for the two-year dip, Agriculture […] Read more
Adding nutritional punch to instant noodles
The go-to quick meal for university students could be improved with Prairie peas
Reading Time: 3 minutes Quick, easy and tasty, but a bit too high in fat and salt and a bit low in nutrition. Ever-popular instant noodles could be improved, based on results of Canadian International Grains Institute research focused on developing new uses for Canadian pulses. Since 2014 Cigi has been conducting a four-year project funded by Pulse Canada […] 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
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
Counting the full value of farming
After years of talking, ALUS enviro-payments are finally going mainstream, with 722 farmers already getting cheques
Reading Time: 8 minutes To get an idea of a farm’s financial health, we check the balance sheet. It’s straightforward. On the one side are liabilities like loans and outstanding bills to suppliers. On the other are assets like inventory, cash, land, buildings and equipment. Then you simply subtract the liabilities from the assets to find net shareholders’ equity, […] Read more
Manitoba, Canadian farmland values up again in 2015
Farm Credit Canada says the annual percentage increase in farmland values is getting smaller
Reading Time: 4 minutes Manitoba farmland values led the way with the highest average percentage increase in Canada last year, says Farm Credit Canada (FCC). But the pace of increases the last few years here and across Canada is slowing in step with the plateauing of farm cash receipts, and slower drop in interest rates, J.P. Gervais, FCC’s chief […] Read more
Canada’s agricultural research deficit
Public ag research in Canada gets cut again and again, all while proof grows that science is needed more than ever
Reading Time: 9 minutes Get public research right and the results can be impressive, whether the benefit is incremental, like the new crop varieties that, year after year, edge farm productivity up, or if it’s transformative like the invention of canola or the equally ground-shifting release of early genetics that saw corn and soybeans to sweep the East and […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
