Managing microbes

Managing microbes

Taking a page from pulse production, beneficial soil microbes are under the microscope

One of the biostimulant areas receiving the most attention is soil microbes, something that already has a long history in agriculture. The most obvious example is soybean and other pulse crops that are inoculated with rhizobia to ensure they efficiently fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. It’s an area that’s growing fast thanks to advances in

The poultry working group aims to “focus on both mitigation strategies to fully and fairly support farmers and processors...”

No end in sight for supply management working groups

The slow pace of progress is due to the complexity of the issues at hand, say industry insiders

Talks on how supply-managed commodities can adjust to expanded import access to Canada under recent trade deals are proceeding slowly but industry isn’t worried just yet. Back on Oct. 29, the federal government announced Agriculture Canada would create three working groups to help the dairy and poultry sectors. By early February there had been a handful


District 6 farmer Rauri Qually spoke in favour of a resolution to give landlords an income tax break for renting land at a reduced rate to young farmers during KAP’s 35th annual meeting Feb. 5 in Winnipeg. The resolution was referred to a KAP committee for further study.

Recent KAP AGM explored policy landscape

From tax breaks to help young farmers rent land to wild boar the discussion was wide ranging

Class 1 licences, grain dryers, seed royalties, wild boars and a plan to make land rent more affordable for young farmers — all among the 19 resolutions Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) debated at the 35th annual meeting in Winnipeg Feb. 5 and 6. The land rent resolution proposed KAP work to set up a system

KAP wants drainage regs changed to encourage on-farm storage

One farmer says he is successfully using excess water to irrigate crops instead of pushing downstream on others

The Manitoba government promotes water retention on farmland, yet has policies that seem to discourage innovative and economic ways to do it, Deloraine farmer Kelsey Sunaert said during the Keystone Agricultural Producers’ 35th annual meeting in Winnipeg Feb. 5. Farmers like him, who want to consolidate water bodies on their own land and keep it


The ability to move grain by rail from country elevator to port terminals still has room for improvement, says the president of Quorum Corporation.

Grain by rail fails to keep up

Rail transportation is the biggest bottleneck in the grain-handling system

Western Canadian grain shipments are moving well this crop year, but exports could be even higher. The limitation, according to Mark Hemmes, Canada’s grain monitor and president of Quorum Corporation, is the ability to move the crop between country elevator and port terminal by rail. “Grain companies generally do not market grain based on global

Thousand Hills Ranch owner Dean Hildebrand looks over the meat products he’s brought to the Pembina Valley Local Food Market as the venue gets rolling on market day inside the Morden Public Library.

The farmers’ market goes high tech

A small group of local food producers are taking their marketing efforts online

Squinting through blowing snow isn’t how most vendors travel to farmers’ markets across Manitoba — but that’s the sort of trip owners of Thousand Hills Ranch take once in a while. Tiina and Dean Hildebrand, who raise grass-fed beef and lamb near Morden, keep a segment of the Morden summer farmers’ market going through the


Rollout of mental health programs for rural Canadians coming this year

Rollout of mental health programs for rural Canadians coming this year

4-H, Farm Management Canada and Farm Credit are working together to try to raise awareness of this issue

Rural Canada will see the rollout this year of several programs to raise awareness of mental health issues, the Commons agriculture committee has been told. 4-H Canada will launch a healthy living initiative in three phases to support the mental and physical well-being of its members across Canada, Erin Smith, interim CEO and director of

Fred Tait argues for MBP to take action towards written permission for hunters during the Manitoba Beef Producers annual general meeting Feb. 7 in Brandon.

Hunting permission slips pitched

Producers say they’re sick of dealing with trespassers during hunting season and hope written permission rules might help them cope

Hunters would need written permission before their next trip onto private agricultural land, if the Manitoba Beef Producers gets its way. MBP will be lobbying to extend signed landowner access rules for hunters and require written permission from landowners. The province currently requires hunters to get permission before hunting or retrieving game animals, regardless of


Harbans Bariana, of the Sydney Institute of Agriculture, with wheat plants in a greenhouse.

Harvesting wild genes boosts resistance

A new method promises to make finding and using these genes much easier and faster

A global alliance of researchers has pioneered a new method to rapidly recruit disease-resistance genes from wild plants for transfer into domestic crops. The technique promises to revolutionize the development of disease-resistant varieties. The technique called AgRenSeq was developed by scientists at the John Innes Centre in Britain working with colleagues in Australia and the

Morag Margerison, a farm safety consultant, hopes five years of guaranteed funding will mean many farm visits in the future.

Government fixes farm safety funding

The Manitoba Farm Safety Program: It’s free, confidential and funded for at least another five years

In the midst of a farm safety seminar kicking off the annual meeting of the Keystone Agricultural Producers, some good news arrived. In a joint announcement the federal and provincial agriculture ministers revealed a $1.1-million funding program over five years to support farm safety programming in the province. The program is designed to develop safety