(Nadezhda_Nesterova/iStock/Getty Images)

Details on federal food surplus program expected in ‘days’

Ottawa already at work with businesses, minister says

Ottawa — Detailed plans of the federal government’s food buyback program are expected soon, according to Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. Ottawa tabbed $50 million of its COVID-19 response funds for agriculture to buy surplus food from farmers and redistribute it to communities in need. The challenge Bibeau and her federal colleagues are faced with is

Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Conservative ag critic John Barlow discussed the impact of carbon pricing on farm expenses when Bibeau addressed an agriculture committee meeting on June 10, 2020. (Video screengrabs from Parl.gc.ca)

Carbon pricing not having ‘significant impact’ on grain drying, Bibeau says

Conservatives, ag groups dispute government's numbers

Ottawa — Grain drying costs an average of $210 to $819 per farm in carbon taxes, according to federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. Her department used data provided by grower groups – including Manitoba’s Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) and the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) – to arrive at the figures. The federal estimate


(CMEGroup.com)

Coronavirus threatens Chicago’s last remaining trading pits

Grain options pits remain closed, for now

Chicago | Reuters — Chicago brokers and traders worry COVID-19 will kill more of the city’s once famous shout-and-gesture trading pits. CME Group, which owns the Chicago Board of Trade, said this week that most of the pits it closed in March because of the pandemic will remain shuttered indefinitely. The news disappointed some brokers

Flooded southeast Manitoba crops under threat

Flooded southeast Manitoba crops under threat

Initial reports suggest many farmers could soon be filing crop insurance claims

The final fate of flooded fields in southeastern Manitoba has yet to be determined, but initial reports aren’t good with the likely result that many affected insured farmers will submit crop insurance claims. “Approximately 20 to 30 per cent of the land in southern districts (of eastern Manitoba) was still unseeded and will now likely

File photo of a bridge over the Yalu River boundary between China and North Korea. (Tarzan9280/iStock/Getty Images)

U.N. expert says ‘some are starving’ in North Korea

Estimated 40 per cent of North Koreans need humanitarian aid, WFP says

Geneva | Reuters — A United Nations human rights expert voiced alarm on Tuesday at “widespread food shortages and malnutrition” in North Korea, made worse by a nearly five-month border closure with China and strict quarantine measures against COVID-19. Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,



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U.S. EPA permits farmers’ use of dicamba until July 31

Court ruling blocked product registrations

Chicago | Reuters — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that farmers can use existing supplies of a herbicide linked to crop damage, after a federal court blocked sales and use of the product last week. The EPA said farmers have until July 31 to use supplies of dicamba-based herbicides that they had

(Leonid Eremeychuk/iStock/Getty Images)

Court blocks sales of dicamba in U.S.

Bayer says it's seeking new EPA registration for 2021

Updated — Reuters — A U.S. appeals court has blocked Bayer from selling an agricultural weed killer in the United States, the latest setback for a business already fighting an expensive legal battle over another product. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) substantially


(Dave Bedard photo)

Insurance customers’ contact info dropped into MASC email

Crown crop insurance agency warns of privacy breach

A contact list of crop insurance customers at Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp. has gone out via email to several dozen of the Crown ag insurance agency’s customers. MASC on Monday said a file containing names and contact information of an unspecified number of AgriInsurance clients was “attached in error” to an email sent last Tuesday

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China tells state firms to halt purchases of major U.S. farm products

Purchases of soybeans, pork, corn, cotton on hold

Beijing/Singapore | Reuters –– China has told state-owned firms to halt purchases of soybeans and pork from the United States, two people familiar with the matter said, after Washington said it would eliminate special treatment for Hong Kong to punish Beijing. Large-volume state purchases of U.S. corn and cotton have also been put on hold,