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Planting progress picking up in Saskatchewan

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm — Overall spring planting across Saskatchewan reached 33 per cent complete as of Monday, according to the latest weekly crop report from Saskatchewan Agriculture. Despite the good progress over the week, that’s still 20 points behind the five-year average. When compared to the excellent progress this time last year, the gap expands to 41 […] Read more

(Government of Alberta via Flickr)

Alberta seeding ahead of five-year average

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm — While spring planting in Alberta is 12.2 per cent complete overall there’s a disparity between the south and the rest of the province. Also, the pace was 2.6 points above the five-year average, but 5.2 behind last year. As of Tuesday, Alberta Agriculture found seeding in the south was at 36.5 per cent […] Read more


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Seeding already behind in Saskatchewan

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm — Saskatchewan Agriculture on Thursday issued its first weekly crop report of 2022, showing only one per cent of all crops in the ground. The report cited cool temperatures and spring snowstorms holding back many farmers getting into their fields. The overall five-year average at this time of year is five per cent complete. […] Read more

Emerging winter wheat plants. (File photo by Laura Rance)

Not warm enough yet for accurate read on Ontario winter crops

Reading Time: < 1 minute MarketsFarm –– The crop report on Wednesday from Ontario’s ministry of agriculture, food and rural affairs (OMAFRA) notes a lack of temperatures warm enough to accurately assess winter crops and/or to begin spring planting. OMAFRA determined winter wheat that was seeded on time looks healthier than what was planted later in the fall. Also, water […] Read more


John Smith and Laura Laing of Plateau Cattle Company in Alberta, Canada.

Wild Rose Country is like nowhere else

Guide Canada: With their incredible blend of the traditional and the cutting edge, the ranches in Alberta’s foothills are unique not only for their lifestyle, but for their approach to business too

Reading Time: 3 minutes In the articles below, we travel to southwestern Alberta to hear first-hand what it’s like to ranch in the foothills, a region that’s every bit as romantic as it sounds, dominated by scenery, wildlife, unbelievable weather and pristine glacial rivers that feed Canada from the Rockies all the way east to Hudson’s Bay. For conservationists […] Read more

“We live in this landscape,” says Roberts. “It’s not like we visit it for recreation. We have to make a living here.”

Like Nowhere Else: Mike Roberts

Guide Canada: Waldron Ranch is a grazing co-operative of 261 square kilometres

Reading Time: 5 minutes Waldron Ranch is 65,000 acres of unbroken foothills wedged between the Porcupine and Whaleback Hills in Alberta’s eastern slopes, and it is one of Canada’s most important ecological sites. These acres are a mixture of deeded, leased and forested areas. In the summertime the ranch is stocked with up to 8,000 cattle at a time. […] Read more


Tanis Cross and her father, John, manage 13,000 acres of native grasslands and 4,000 yearlings.

Like Nowhere Else: Tanis Cross

Guide Canada: "It’s so important to keep my mind open,” says Cross.

Reading Time: 3 minutes As you pull up the main drive to the A7 Ranche, you get a feeling there must be real history and tradition at work here, and you’d be right. This ranch been running cattle for 135 consecutive years, back to when Calgary had only been a town for three years. Tanis Cross represents the newest […] Read more

“We are super concerned,” Laura Laing says of the coal controversy, but adds, “it’s created an opportunity to show how we are land stewards.

Like Nowhere Else: John Smith and Laura Laing

Guide Canada: For Smith and Laing, it has to be the right technology, whether new or old. Often it’s horses. Sometimes it's drones. And it’s always sustainable

Reading Time: 5 minutes In the same country that’s been ripped open by controversy over a new generation of massive open-pit coal mines, the husband-and-wife duo of John Smith and Laura Laing trail their cattle to pasture the way ranchers always have, by horseback. They could use ATVs but the horses generate less noise and keep the animals’ stress […] Read more


(Photo courtesy Canada Beef Inc.)

Saskatchewan ranchers backed for runoff control

Funding on offer for earth-moving work

Reading Time: 2 minutes Cow-calf producers in Saskatchewan may be able to get cost-shared funds from the federal/provincial Farm Stewardship Program to build ponds, ditches, dikes or berms to collect or manage runoff. The province and federal government on Tuesday announced such work now qualifies as a beneficial management practice (BMP) covered under the program. Eligible beef cow-calf producers […] Read more

(Photo courtesy Canada Beef Inc.)

Klassen: Drier conditions will influence feeder market

Reading Time: 2 minutes The feeder market was hard to define this week. The quality of yearlings was quite variable. Fleshier types were heavily discounted while quality packages were unchanged from seven days earlier. Calf prices were mostly unchanged; however, values were down $4-$6 in drier pockets of southern Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba. Southern Alberta barley prices were quoted […] Read more