Reading Time: 2 minutes Beijing/Reuters – China’s ruling Communist Party has for the first time proposed to let land lie fallow in some areas to ease pressure on exhausted water and land resources while grain stocks are near record levels, state media reported on Wednesday. After years of excessive cultivation and bumper grain harvests, China is facing severe shortages […] Read more
China to let land lie fallow as grain stocks surge
Cereals North America: W. Canada to see marketing shifts
Reading Time: 2 minutes Winnipeg/Commodity News Service Canada – Crops in Western Canada saw a range of weather conditions this year, resulting in lower production and higher protein. That means there will be a marketing shift next year, according to Bruce Burnett, weather and crop specialist with G3 Canada (formerly CWB), speaking at a Cereals North America conference in […] Read more
New in winter cereal crops
A few tough years for winter wheat have led to some great new opportunities
Reading Time: 3 minutes Planting conditions in the falls of 2013 and 2014 were difficult, to say the least. Only 800,000 acres of winter wheat were planted in 2013 (with roughly 675,000 acres harvested last year) and about 600,000 acres planted last fall. Early assessments done in the spring labelled many of those fields as, at best, “decent.” Winter […] Read more
NW Sask. sees patchy canola, better cereals
Reading Time: 2 minutes Spring has been tough on many canola crops in northwestern Saskatchewan. “Canola — it’s kind of hit and miss. They’re just all over the place,” said Stephanie McMillan, an agronomist with AgriTeam Services at Glaslyn, Sask., about 90 km south of Meadow Lake. One field might have some plants at the two- to four-leaf stage, […] 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
Options in a bear grain market
If you’ve been leery of high-quality put options, Errol Anderson wants to change your mind
Reading Time: 8 minutes We’ve all seen it. Grain markets can take on narratives that uncouple them from the basics of supply and demand. A bull market can charge forward, horns thrust in the air, and it can generate a level of excitement and pricing that sellers love, but privately marvel at. It’s heady, it’s optimistic, it’s confident, and […] Read more
The slow road to traceability for grains and oilseeds
Traceability may be inevitable, and it may even be welcomed by farmers, but it is arriving in baby steps
Reading Time: 5 minutes The word gets rolled out every time there’s a scare about food-borne illness, or when a meat or vegetable recall hits the headlines. It’s traceability. On the food side of the agri-food industry, it’s a word that instils confidence and trust. Yet on the agricultural side — at least, on the crop side — it […] Read more
The straight goods on straight cutting crops
Straight cutting has the potential to make canola harvest much more efficient, so we ask one of the West’s top researchers about the state of the art
Reading Time: 5 minutes Just 20 years ago, virtually every acre of Western Canada was swathed before it ever saw a combine. But then a few things started to fall into place — mainly cheaper off-patent glyphosate — that meant farmers could stop the growth of their crops and get them to dry them down more quickly and uniformly. […] Read more
The future of cereal futures
Will the West ever get realistic cereal futures contracts?
Reading Time: 8 minutes They used to call Winnipeg the “Chicago of the North.” In fact, in 1943, wheat contracts traded on Winnipeg’s Grain Exchange Building surpassed the wheat volume in Chicago. But that lead was short lived. The Second World War effectively killed wheat futures in Winnipeg, ushering in the era of the Canadian Wheat Board’s (CWB) single […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
