File photo of a rapeseed field in southern China’s Yunnan province. (YuenWu/iStock/Getty Images)

USDA attaché alters call on China’s ending stocks

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — Ahead of the July world supply and demand estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), due out Tuesday, the department’s attaché in Beijing put forth its forecast changes. The attaché lowered ending stocks for China’s new-crop soybeans and rapeseed, while it increased the carryover for new-crop corn and wheat, in reports released […] Read more

CME August 2022 live cattle (candlesticks) with Bollinger bands (20,2). (Barchart)

U.S. livestock: CME cattle, hogs advance in turnaround from losses

Live hog futures in China drop sharply

Reading Time: < 1 minute Chicago | Reuters — Chicago Mercantile Exchange cattle and hog futures closed stronger on Wednesday as the livestock markets recovered from losses in the previous session that were linked to fears of a global economic recession, traders said. Wall Street also finished higher, after broad declines in equities and commodities on Tuesday spilled over into […] Read more


File photo of pigs on a farm in Germany. (FooTToo/iStock/Getty Images)

Swine fever outbreak in Germany’s top pork state poses lasting threat

Risk seen for spread to neighbours Netherlands, France

Reading Time: 2 minutes Hamburg | Reuters — The spread of African swine fever to Germany’s most important pig rearing region has dealt a serious blow to the sector with major markets such as China likely to maintain import bans for years to come, analysts said on Monday. The outbreak on a farm in Emsland, Lower Saxony is the […] Read more

ICE July 2022 canola (candlesticks) with Bollinger bands (20,2) and November 2022 canola (yellow line). (Barchart)

ICE weekly outlook: ‘Meltdown’ not yet on canola market radar

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm — There’s more to the sharp decline in U.S. wheat and corn futures than the possibility of Ukrainian exports returning to the global market along with the massive liquidation of longs, according to analyst Errol Anderson of ProMarket Communications in Calgary. “My theory with what is going on is that we’re seeing a fairly […] Read more


ICE July 2022 canola (candlesticks) with Bollinger bands (20,2) and November 2022 canola (yellow line). (Barchart)

ICE weekly outlook: Canola sideways for now

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — The ICE Futures canola market may have seen some large price swings over the past few weeks, but remains relatively rangebound overall with values sitting just below their all-time highs. The upward momentum is slowing down, said David Derwin, a commodities investment advisor with PI Financial in Winnipeg. However, he added, it remains […] Read more



Huawei Technologies’ logo is shown on its France headquarters at Boulogne-Billancourt just west of Paris on Feb. 17, 2021. (Photo: Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes)

Canada to ban Huawei/ZTE 5G equipment, joining Five Eyes allies

Move comes as diplomatic tensions ease, canola block lifted

Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa | Reuters — Canada on Thursday said it plans to ban the use of China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. 5G gear to protect national security, joining the rest of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network. “We intend to exclude Huawei and ZTE from our 5G networks,” Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told reporters in […] Read more

(Xinzheng/Getty Images)

China lifts block on Canadian grain firms’ canola exports

Canola from Richardson, Viterra again allowed, officials report

Reading Time: 2 minutes Officials say China has reinstated market access for two major grain firms whose exports of Canadian canola have been blocked from Chinese ports since 2019. Canada’s Trade Minister Mary Ng and Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, in a joint statement Wednesday, confirmed the decision by Chinese customs officials allowing Richardson International and Viterra to resume canola […] Read more


CME July 2022 lean hogs (candlesticks) with 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages (pink, brown and dark red lines). (Barchart)

U.S. livestock: CME lean hogs extend recovery from recent slide

Live cattle, feeder cattle lower

Reading Time: < 1 minute Chicago | Reuters — Chicago Mercantile Exchange lean hog futures rose for a third consecutive session on Tuesday as the market continued to recover from oversold conditions, traders said. Live cattle and feeder cattle futures ended lower. Short-covering helped propel hog futures higher following recent declines, said Matt Wiegand, commodity broker for FuturesOne. The market […] Read more

National politics came to the aid of Ed and Harriet Pinckney’s farm plans.

Home ground

In New Zealand, farmer Ed Pinckney helped his entire country see the cost of being so open to Chinese investment

Reading Time: 7 minutes While they may be in different hemispheres and on opposite sides of the world, there are a lot of similarities between New Zealand and Canada. The New Zealand economy is driven by their land and natural resources. So is Canada’s. Our agriculture is heavily dependent on exports. So is theirs. The Kiwis export nearly 90 […] Read more