Soybeans Chasing Canola’s High-Stability Oil Markets

High-stability canola oil is gaining market share in food services and food manufacturing, but the soybean industry is fighting back. In 2010 the United States Department of Agriculture granted Monsanto’s new Vistive Gold soybean “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) status. Now companies can test Vistive Gold’s high-oleic oil in food, a prerequisite to commercialization. And

Oilseed Demand Outweighs Harvest Pressure

ICE Futures Canada canola contacts moved higher during the week ended Sept. 1, as production concerns, advances in outside markets, solid end-user demand, and fund buying all provided support. However, the futures did run into some solid resistance to the upside, and profit-taking at the highs served to limit the advances. Harvest operations are moving


Extending The Sow’s Productive Lifetime

Bernie Peet is president of Pork Chain Consulting Ltd. of Lacombe, Alberta, and editor of Western Hog Journal. His columns will run every second week in the Manitoba Co-operator. While many producers use pigs per sow per year as the benchmark for success in the breeding herd, there is now much more focus on lifetime

Consider Fall Weed Control

The wet spring didn’t just delay or prevent seeding, it spawned unusual weed problems, including one relatively new to Manitoba called Northern willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum). “This year it’s everywhere,” Scott Day, Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives’ (MAFRI) diversification specialist in Melita, said in an interview Aug. 25. “You have areas of fields where it


Hedge Funds Hit The Fields To Check Out Crops

Except for the spiffy Hunter rainboots that can cost more than $100 a pair, the fund manager was one with the crowd – farmers and industry folk in a muddy cornfield in the heart of U.S. grain country. Hedge fund officials are making their way to fields in the midwestern United States in record numbers

Time To Overhaul, Not Tinker With Farm Programs

It’s time to stop tinkering and undertake a major overhaul of farm support programs, according to the executive director of the George Morris Centre. A discussion paper released after a recent meeting of agriculture ministers “seems to contemplate only modest changes if any to the status quo policy environment,” Bob Seguin wrote in a recent


Perennial Crops May Store Carbon

Finding ways to make farming more environmentally sound is one of the goals of a greenhouse gas study taking place south of Winnipeg. “What we’re trying to do is to see if it’s possible to generate cropping systems that are greenhouse gas neutral; in other words we want to build up soil carbon and prevent

Give Zinnias A Try

Zinnias always find their way into my garden. Even though I have gradually changed most of my flower borders to mainly perennials, I cannot resist having some zinnias, either tucked into a flower bed somewhere or grown in a row in the vegetable patch. One reason that I like zinnias is that they make great


Grain Growers Offers Budget Wish List

Modest changes in government policy could reap major benefits for farmers, the Grain Growers of Canada says in a pre-budget consultation paper for the Commons Finance Committee. Making agriculture research a key priority and rewarding producers for good environmental farm practices are among the suggestions GGC has for the committee, which holds hearings this fall

Dow Introduces Triple-Resistant Soybean

Dow AgroSciences is launching a genetically altered soybean seed aimed as a direct assault on the dominance of global seed leader Monsanto. Dow submitted a regulatory package on Aug. 19 seeking government approval for a glyphosate-tolerant soybean that the company says would be the “first-ever, three-gene,” herbicide-tolerant soybean. The new soybean will be tolerant of