Reading Time: 5 minutes If you ask Lee Moats why he grows pulse crops on his farm, he doesn’t have to scramble very hard for the answer to that question. “It’s about money,” the farmer and vice-chair of the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers Association told Country Guide during a recent discussion. On his farm at Riceton, Sask., Moats says they’ve […] Read more
Nitrogen fixing pulse crops are a win-win for growers
There’s a compelling economic and agronomic case to be made for pulses, not just soybeans
Editor’s Desk: Leading from the front
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Most bad decisions get made in good times.” We’ve all heard it, and most of us have said it. Except I’m not sure I believe it. I see precious little indication that farmers have been making bad decisions during the past five years. At Country Guide, we’ve been keeping our eyes open for signs of […] Read more
Federal funding pledged for crop market development work
Reading Time: 4 minutes Canadian crop commodity groups getting federal AgriMarketing funding plan to put the money to work over five years — not just in salesmanship, but in developing their crops’ story for potential customers. Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz made two five-year funding announcements during the CropSphere 2015 conference Tuesday and Wednesday in Saskatoon: over $3.3 million […] 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
Increase in conservation agriculture ‘has to happen’
Only 7.1 per cent of the world’s arable land is farmed no till, and there are many reasons to adopt practices
Reading Time: 4 minutes If conservation agriculture is so great, why aren’t more farmers doing it? It’s a question that surfaced repeatedly during panel discussions at the recent World Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg. Presenters from countries spanning the alphabet from Australia to Zambia left little doubt that conservation agriculture is a worldwide movement. Zero tillage is growing […] Read more
Humanity must stop treating soil like dirt
Why we care: Farmers around the world know soil is the stuff of life
Reading Time: 6 minutes Winnipeg was the site of 2014’s World Congress on Conservation Agriculture where farmers, agronomists, researchers and policy-makers from 33 countries around the globe met to discuss the world’s soil, as the stories in the special ‘Sustainability’ section in the July 2014 issue of Country Guide reveal. In fact, Country Guide, and our farm readers, feel so strongly about […] Read more
Day of reckoning coming for U.S. farmers
How long can the U.S. compete in a world where other countries are working much more effectively at sustainability?
Reading Time: 4 minutes American farmers are getting beaten badly by the likes of Brazil, Argentina and Australia. All those countries are far outpacing the U.S. rate for adopting conservation farm strategies, says Howard G. Buffett, and he believes a day of reckoning for the U.S. may come sooner rather than later. It won’t be pretty, Buffett told the […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
