The grain industry is hoping new legislation will finally turn the page on recurring grain shipping problems that stretch back decades.

Historic transport bill passes Parliament

But some industry officials won’t fully celebrate until they see it’s working

Western grain shippers are counting on better rail service after the Transportation Modernization Act (Bill C-49) became law May 23 to the delight of grain companies and farmers. During a news conference at Richardson-Pioneer’s South Lakes elevator both groups lauded federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay, Transport Minister Marc Garneau and the Senate transport committee for

Transportation fight as old as western grain growing

The Transportation Modernization Act has been a long time coming. “For more than a decade the members of the WGEA (Western Grain Elevator Association) have worked alongside farmers and the full grain value chain to build a consensus around long-term solutions to the chronic capacity and performance efficiencies of the rail freight system,” WGEA executive


CN Rail ordered 1,000 hopper cars

The new cars will hold more grain and replace older cars

CN Rail has ordered 1,000 new-generation high-cube grain hopper cars over the next two years to rejuvenate the aging equipment needed to serve increasing annual crop yields. “This substantial investment in higher-capacity payload hopper cars, with up to 10 per cent more capacity than the older generation, demonstrates our commitment to safely, efficiently and reliably

The grain shipping backlog is mostly gone partly because railways have picked up the pace, but also because some unfulfilled sales made earlier this year, have disappeared, says Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association.

Grain backlog no longer a problem

The railways are filling more car orders, but also unfilled earlier sales were lost

This year’s grain shipping backlog is mostly gone. “Members (of the Western Grain Elevators Association) are fairly current right now after having to defer sales, and not make new sales, and make adjustments to their sales books to reduce the amount they can sell during peak price periods,” WGEA executive director Wade Sobkowich told reporters


A worker outside a seven-storey pig building of Guangxi Yangxiang’s farm at Yaji Mountain Forest Park in Guangxi province, China, March 21, 2018.

China’s multi-storey hog hotels elevate industrial farms to new levels

The structures are as high as 13 floors and save land costs but production experts worry about disease risk

On Yaji Mountain in southern China, they are checking in the sows 1,000 head per floor in high-rise “hog hotels.” Privately owned agricultural company Guangxi Yangxiang Co. Ltd. is running two seven-floor sow-breeding operations, and is putting up four more, including one with as many as 13 floors that will be the world’s tallest building

University of Winnipeg history professor, Janis Thiessen and researcher Sarah Story will tour Manitoba over the next four years in the Manitoba Food History Truck.

Food history truck ready to roll

Researchers embark on unusual project to capture oral history of how food in Manitoba has been produced, sold, manufactured and consumed

Who developed the recipe for that perogy or pasta? What’s the tale that torte could tell? A small group of history researchers from University of Winnipeg want to know, and will set out this spring to hear Manitobans tell their food-related stories. It’s a team assembled by Janis Thiessen, a history professor at University of


Chinese geneticists have mapped the subgenome in wheat that was contributed by einkorn wheat, seen here.

Genetic road map

Chinese researchers have just added significantly to what 
we know about the wheat genome

Few crops are more important and more genetically complex than bread wheat. It feeds more than a third of the human population and is adaptable to a wide range of climates. It’s also a complex ‘hexaploid’ that contains three subgenomes (dubbed A, B and D) from parent plants, making its genetic package larger, more complex

The Stepplers’ bull sales have been boosted by live streaming on social media.

Selling the farm life, byte by byte

Producers are turning to the internet to market their farms and their practices

It’s not hard to keep track of what’s happening on Steppler Farms, west of Miami. A quick scroll through their blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter feeds shows pictures taken in the field, videos of feeding cattle, links to articles and posts on everything from beehive management to family birthdays. On screen, Ian Steppler appears in


The Manitoba government has singled out the province’s beekeepers, dairy farmers, sheep producers and the horticulture sector for the $176-million Manitoba interpretation of the Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

Four sectors focus of Ag Action Manitoba

Some application deadlines are less than a month away

The province has released the first round of Ag Action Manitoba funding guidelines for the $176-million Manitoba interpretation of the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. Their next challenge will be hitting the application deadlines, some of which are June 22. Four sectors have been earmarked for specific projects in the first year of assurance funding. The province

Rain, warm temperatures spur good alfalfa growth

Rain, warm temperatures spur good alfalfa growth

Forage and grassland conditions for Eastern Manitoba/Interlake as of May 24

Fields throughout the southeast experienced very little winter kill even though soil temperature in the southeast were getting down to the critical temperatures of -12 C. This may in part be due to were the weather stations are located and that many of the fields in the area had considerable stubble left from last fall.


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