Reading Time: 2 minutes A memorial will be held next week for Bob Speller, the Ontario businessman who served as Canada’s agriculture minister in the thick of the country’s BSE crisis. Speller, the MP for the southwestern Ontario riding of what’s now Haldimand-Norfolk from 1988 to 2004, died Thursday at age 65. A cause of death wasn’t given in […] Read more
Former federal agriculture minister Bob Speller, 65
Ontario MP served in Paul Martin's cabinet
The value of Alberta farms rises again
Rising land prices – fuelled by higher crop prices – up by $8 billion but debt also rose in 2020
Reading Time: 3 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – You’re richer than you think — and you owe more, too. That could be the theme of StatsCan’s latest snapshot of farm equity, the number you get when subtracting farm debts from the value of assets. If you had put all of the assets of every farm in Canada on the auction […] Read more
B.C. again waives ag income threshold for farm properties
Some farms otherwise risked property tax reclassification
Reading Time: 2 minutes British Columbia farmers who’ve taken pandemic-induced losses in farm income will be able to keep their farm properties classified as such for another tax year. The province on Monday announced that for the second year running, it will waive the minimum farm income thresholds normally required for B.C. properties to be classified as farms for […] Read more
StatsCan shows 2020 farm income up significantly
Farm cash receipts were up more than expenses
Reading Time: 4 minutes Canadian farm income, no matter how it’s measured, was up a lot in 2020, data released Wednesday by Statistics Canada show. Canadian net farm income of $18.1 billion is up $4.8 billion from 2019 — a 36.5 per cent increase. Another measure — realized net farm income (RNFI) — saw farmers take in $9.9 billion, […] Read more
USDA can steer farm aid money to fight climate change, Vilsack says
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — The White House wants to tap a pool of funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Credit Corp. (CCC) to support on-farm efforts to fight climate change, Tom Vilsack, President Joe Biden’s nominee to run the USDA, said Tuesday. The Depression-era program of up to $30 billion in annual funding was tapped […] Read more
Selling the corporate farm
Darren and Carmen Sterling made the hard decision. 2019 would be their last crop. Then they would retire. But that’s when the real work began
Reading Time: 10 minutes When we talk about Canada’s aging farm owners, we generally talk about how best to pass the agricultural torch to sons and daughters or, more recently, about creative contortions to move the farm into the future with those who are not family — in short, succession planning. But is it still called succession when there […] Read more
Former federal ag minister Don Mazankowski, 85
Long-time Alberta Tory MP deemed a 'minister of everything'
Reading Time: 2 minutes A private memorial is planned for long-time Alberta MP Don Mazankowski, whose work in the cabinets of prime ministers Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark included a stint as Canada’s minister of agriculture. Mazankowski, the MP for the east-central Alberta riding of Vegreville from 1968 to 1993, died late Tuesday at age 85, his family said […] Read more
Bibeau not considering closing AgriInvest accounts
Minister wouldn't order farmers to pull funds
Reading Time: 3 minutes Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau is not considering ordering producers to withdraw from their AgriInvest accounts. “Not in this way. All the options are on the table for the future, but I’ve never considered asking them to withdraw, to empty their accounts, to face COVID-19,” she said in an interview Friday. Bibeau had previously expressed […] Read more
India’s levy cut on lentils part of balancing act
Global markets had zero or little forewarning of decision
Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — To Pulse Canada, the recent move by the Indian government to temporarily reduce the import levy on lentils from 30 to 10 per cent is part of a balancing act between competing interests. Greg Cherewyk, president of Pulse Canada, explained that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “looking after the needs of a politically […] Read more
Legalization lifts Canada’s net farm income in 2019
Livestock receipts up, unsmokeable crop receipts lower
Reading Time: 3 minutes A significant year-over-year increase Canada booked last year in realized net farm income rests mainly on 2019’s status as the country’s first full year in the recreational cannabis market. Statistics Canada on Tuesday released full-year data on farm income, pegging Canada’s realized net farm income for 2019 at $4.9 billion — a 10.4 per cent […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
