Reading Time: 2 minutes Winnipeg | Reuters — Light rains sprinkled Western Canada’s crops and pastures during the weekend, but amounts fell well short of what’s needed to remedy dry conditions that have stunted growth, analysts said Monday. Rains were scattered across the Prairies and similar light amounts are expected during the next two weeks, Commodity Weather Group said […] Read more
Rain sprinkles Prairie canola fields, pastures
Larger Canadian wheat, canola crops beat expectations
Reading Time: 2 minutes CNS Canada — Canada’s 2014-15 wheat and canola crops both ended up considerably larger than early guesses, according to updated production estimates released Thursday by Statistics Canada. Production, however, was still well below the record levels seen the previous year. After the canola crop was pegged at 14.08 million tonnes in StatsCan’s October report, average […] Read more
Upward revisions expected in StatsCan report
Reading Time: 2 minutes CNS Canada –– Canada’s major agricultural crops likely yielded a bit better than earlier estimates, and most industry participants anticipate Statistics Canada’s production numbers will be revised higher in a report due out Thursday. However, the extent of those adjustments could be limited. “The (production) numbers will probably go up for all commodities… wheat, durum, […] 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
EU moves step closer to law on national GMO crop bans
Reading Time: 2 minutes Brussels | Reuters — EU politicians on Tuesday backed a plan to allow nations to ban genetically modified crops on their soil even if they are given approval to be grown in the European Union, raising the chance their use will remain limited on the continent. Widely grown in the Americas and Asia, GM crops […] Read more
The science of how neonicotinoids work
Reading Time: 2 minutes Neonicotinoids, like many of our insecticides, are neurotoxins that go after the central nervous system. We often refer to the nervous system as an organism’s wiring, but its workings are a lot more complicated because all physiological actions must take place at low temperatures that won’t damage the surrounding proteins. Any electrician will tell you […] Read more
Neonicotinoids for pest management
Evidence in support of neonics is impressive, if you take the time to understand it
Reading Time: 6 minutes Another summer is over, another harvest is done and now the key decisions are starting to loom for next year’s crop. The canola page in the seed catalogue is open, but whether the varieties on display are OPs or hybrids, herbicide tolerant, Argentine or Polish, most of them will come with a seed coating containing an […] Read more
GMO battles over ‘settled’ science spur new study of crops
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, and its brethren of global biotech crop developers are spreading the word that as far as the safety of their genetically modified grain goes, the science is solidly on their side. The message of “settled” science has become the rallying cry for defenders of the crops and […] Read more
All in a day’s work
The Van Kessel family redefines what it means to ‘stay busy’
Reading Time: 4 minutes In the old days, farmers were kept busy finding enough hours in a day to get the planting and harvesting done, as well as all the other chores that went with running a farm and keeping up with the demands of day-to-day living. It was simply a fact of life in agriculture. If you don’t […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
