Agricultural subsidy Archives | Manitoba Co-operator

Editorial: Agriculture slips through the safety net

By Gord Gilmour May 7, 2020

Canadian agriculture is very proud of its prominence in the national economy, and rightly so. As StatsCan noted in a 2019 report, agriculture and food contributed $49 billion to the nation’s GDP in 2015, or 2.6 per cent of total GDP. That’s been a target of growth too, as various projection and government plans have

News

$16 billion pledged to U.S. farmers due to COVID-19

USDA predicts lower prices for most commodities, excluding wheat and rice

By Allan Dawson April 23, 2020

While the Canadian Federation of Agriculture asks for ad hoc subsidies to help Canadian farmers to offset lower incomes expected due to COVID-19, the United States administration could spend as much as $25 billion to help its farmers due to the pandemic. American farmers will receive billions of dollars of subsidies through direct payments. But

If government bodies want agriculture and food to help drive economic growth, they need to be prepared to ride out the cyclical nature of the profession right alongside farmers.

Editorial, Farmit Manitoba, Op/Ed

Editor’s Take: Farmers need better financial supports

By Gord Gilmour November 7, 2019

One thing the designers of farm programs at the governmental level can’t seem to wrap their heads around is the myriad of ways things can go wrong out in the countryside. They like to slot things into neat boxes and sketch out a few likely scenarios, and design the programs around them and call it

Columns, Editorial, Farmit Manitoba

Editor’s Take: Canada at a crossroads

By Gord Gilmour July 19, 2019

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada remains either a leader or laggard in the realm of support for its agriculture sector, depending on how one approaches the problem. A free market idealist who favours letting the invisible hand sort it all out might think less support to producers is a

A combination of late planting and soggy soils can create a host of problems.

Comment, Opinion

Comment: Looks like 2019 is one of THOSE years

While the Canadian Prairies are dry, the U.S. is struggling with very wet conditions

By Daryll E. Ray, Harwood D. Schaffer July 9, 2019

For many of us, certain years are permanently imprinted in the brain: 1983, 1993, 1995. While rainfall is generally welcomed, there are those years when one wishes that it would just hold off long enough to get the crop in the ground. Surely 2019 is destined to join that company. Worse than that, it looks

News

Is it the end of the ag trade world as we know it?

Trade tensions, ad hoc American subsidies and surplus stocks raise the spectre of the 1980s — an era of grain subsidy wars and low prices

By Allan Dawson May 24, 2019

As Manitoba farmers wrap up seeding they face more uncertainty than usual, including the potential unravelling of the international, rules-based trading system that has become almost as essential as rain. Meanwhile, crop prices are down after a decade of relatively good returns spurring global production to exceed demand, exacerbated now by African swine fever decimating

Crops, News

U.S. trade double standard confirmed

American trade expert Joe Glauber sees continued pressure on Canada’s supply  management and rising domestic farm subsidies in developing countries

By Allan Dawson November 21, 2016

Joe Glauber confirmed what many Canadian farmers believed during the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks from 2001 to 2008: the Americans were promoting farm subsidy cuts, while increasing their own. In 2001 the United States spent $10 billion in market loans to offset low prices for U.S. wheat, corn and soybeans, Glauber,

Cereals, Comment

Look back to understand how low wheat prices are

Once inflation adjusted, today’s wheat prices are at historic lows, even below Depression-era prices

By Leo Oliva August 16, 2016

Wheat prices are the lowest in actual value since the Civil War, and only farmers are aware of this. Here is some food for thought. I recently harvested my 64th wheat crop and produced more bushels this year than any other year. Many Kansas farmers have had the same experience. Because of record yields, most

Editorial, Opinion

Editorial: Stuck in time

By Gord Gilmour May 12, 2016

Is it time for a fundamental rethink of Canada’s agriculture trade policy? That simple question is, these days, tantamount to heresy in the agriculture sector, long preoccupied with trade issues. However, a new policy note from the independent research group Agri-Food Economic Systems in Guelph, Ontario, suggests it might be worth asking. The research team,

Cereals, Crops

Canadian wheat growers hit by subsidy effects

Advanced developing nations subsidize wheat growers,  hurting farmers from exporting nations

By Alex Binkley April 20, 2016

Canadian farmers are among those being disadvantaged by wheat subsidies in advanced developing countries like China, India, Turkey and Brazil, according to two U.S. groups. The U.S. Wheat Associates and the U.S. National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) pegged the annual cost to Canadian farmers at about 249,000 tonnes in lost sales and $251.9 million

Klassen: Stronger demand drives feeder market

Montreal longshoremen to strike on weekends

U.S. grains: Soybean futures drop as soyoil crumbles

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