Manitoba Agriculture filling two specialist positions

Manitoba Agriculture has a new oilseed specialist and its new weed specialist is expected to be on the job in January. Dane Froese, who grew up farming in the Winkler area, started work as the province’s oilseed specialist Nov. 6, Anastasia Kubinec, his boss and former oilseed specialist, said in an interview Dec. 1. Kubinec,

Sizable fund shorts still hang over CBOT grain market

Sizable fund shorts still hang over CBOT grain market

Market speculators are looking at ample supplies and sticking with their bets

There is simply too much supply in the world to shake speculators from their tremendously bearish view of Chicago-traded grain futures and options, and their hefty short stance still looms over the market. Combining net positions through Nov. 21 in CBOT corn and wheat, K.C. wheat, and Minneapolis-traded wheat futures and options, money managers hold


Lake Winnipeg algae blooms can create, under certain conditions,
powerful neurotoxins.

Lake Winnipeg blooms create neurotoxins

Researchers say the substances have been associated with 
several health conditions

Manitoba’s largest lake is the host to potentially harmful toxins caused by cyanobacteria, more commonly known as “blue-green algae.” Researchers from the University of British Columbia, working with the Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium, were looking for a specific toxin called BMAA that’s been linked with conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s to Lou Gehrig’s disease. “Cyanobacteria blooms

Winnipeg Beach-area farmer David Reykdal, Bruce Dalgarno from Newdale and Keenan Wiebe of Starbuck display bottles of the Northern Lights, Big Prairie Sky and Heartland canola oils produced from seed from their respective farms.

Premium canola oil offers distinct flavours

Three new cold-pressed canola oils each have unique flavour and fragrance characteristics particular to the farm where the seed was grown

When they say ‘taste the difference’ they really mean it with this canola oil. Three newly released cold-pressed canola oil products from Manitoba actually do taste like the individual farms the seed producing them came from. Big Prairie Sky, Heartland and Northern Lights oils hit store shelves earlier this fall. Owners of farms at Newdale,


Scott Stothers (l to r), Loic Perrot, Tabitha Langel, and Doug Cattani with bread made from Kernza.

Making bread — and maybe history too

The first loaves of bread made from Kernza have been gobbled up in Manitoba

You won’t be buying Kernza bread in a Manitoba bakery or grocery store any time soon, but a small group of proponents see it as a sign of things to come. Guests at a small reception at the Tall Grass Prairie Bakery in downtown Winnipeg Nov. 23 were treated to loaves of freshly baked sourdough

Editorial: Rotation, rotation and rotation

In the early 1980s, the wheat board developed an idea called the Market Assurance Plan (MAP). That was back when there were perennial transport bottlenecks and the whole crop could sometimes not move by the end of the crop year. Even if it could move in total, it could be feast or famine for supply


Local governments direct questions, including questions about legal marijuana, to provincial ministers during the Association of Manitoba Municipalities convention in Brandon.

Municipalities have questions on cannabis rollout

Municipalities have less than a month to say ‘yea or nay’

Municipalities are scrambling after news that the province expects them to make a decision on cannabis by Dec. 22. Blaine Pedersen, minister of growth, enterprise, and trade, announced Nov. 28 that municipalities must decide if they will allow marijuana sales by the December deadline. “It’s tight timelines and we sort of apologize for that, but

Manitoba is getting new legislation aimed at protecting watersheds in the province.

Province tables Sustainable Watersheds Act

Incentives would be offered landowners who protect wetlands 
and adopt other beneficial land management practices

New water legislation tabled last week lays the foundation for an ecological goods and services program for Manitoba, say provincial ministers. The Growing Outcomes in Water­sheds (GROW) program would offer farmers and other landowners incentives for farm practices that protect wetlands and promote better land management. It is based on the Alternative Land Use Services


Soil background

Better soil health could capture more carbon

A recent study says changing farming practices could capture as much carbon as the global transport sector emits

Thomson Reuters Foundation – Improving soil health in farmlands could capture extra carbon equivalent to the planet-warming emissions generated by the transport sector, one of the world’s most polluting industries, experts said Nov. 14. Soil naturally absorbs carbon from the atmosphere through a process known as sequestration which not only reduces harmful greenhouse gases but

A worker checks mining equipment at the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan’s Lanigan mine.

Merged fertilizer firm Nutrien eyes U.S. farm suppliers

Regulatory-driven divestitures are creating a sizable war chest for acquisitions

Nutrien, the company to be formed from the merger of Agrium and PotashCorp of Saskatchewan, plans to expand its U.S. farm supply network and return cash to shareholders, Chuck Magro, Agrium CEO, said Nov. 15, as it leverages unusually flush coffers during an agriculture slump. Regulators in China and India require Potash to divest minority