Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay and his Saskatchewan counterpart Lyle Stewart signed onto a general agreement for a five-year federal/provincial funding framework on July 21. (Saskatchewan.ca)

Ministers agree on new ag funding framework

Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial ministers for agriculture have agreed on the bones of a new five-year policy funding framework, committing them to a review of its business risk management (BRM) programming. The ministers came out of three days of meetings Friday in St. John’s with the “key elements” of a five-year, $3 billion framework,

Fusarium head blight risk maps

Fusarium head blight risk maps

Fusarium head blight risk maps are posted daily courtesy of Manitoba Agriculture. During the winter wheat flowering period up to the end of the flowering period for spring wheat, these risk maps will be provided for you here. The map above shows the current risk for fusarium head blight development based on the previous seven days of temperature and


This single head, infected with wheat blast, is the first known occurrence of the disease in North America.

Wheat lost blast resistance recently

There’s good news and bad news for the world’s wheat crops. An international consortium of researchers have identified a gene in wheat that protects the plants from the deadly fungus which causes wheat blast infections. Unfortunately it would appear many strains of wheat lost this gene sometime in the 1980s, when it was inadvertently bred



A close-up screengrab from near 100 Mile House on the B.C. Wildfire Animal Resource Map. Tags in red denote producers with livestock needing to be moved; tags in green denote offers of space or transport for affected livestock.

BCCA connecting ranchers, haulers in wildfire areas

Livestock producers needing to move animals out of wildfire zones in British Columbia’s Interior are being asked to contact the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association. The BCCA, on its website, said it’s helping to co-ordinate haulers with producers who need to evacuate livestock. “With closures of highways and evacuation orders, permits are needed to re-enter evacuated areas







(Canada Beef Inc. photo)

Prairie wheat, barley commissions’ single checkoffs set

The post-deregulation era of Prairie grain research and market development funding is cleared to begin, as the three Prairie provinces’ wheat and barley commissions have set new single checkoffs on Prairie wheat and barley, all starting Aug. 1. The Manitoba Wheat and Barley Growers Association (MWBGA) on Wednesday announced that when the Western Canadian Deduction