Under rainy skies on July 18, 2023 at Ag in Motion, Justine Cornelsen of Brett Young Seeds discusses soybeans’ evolving Canadian acreage base. (Glacier FarmMedia video screengrab)

At Ag in Motion: Soybean proponents still eye western expansion

Crop seen as a good add to rotations -- if conditions are right

While canola is king of the Canadian oilseed market, the same can be said of soybeans in the United States. However, the big pulse crop south of the border has made inroads in the western provinces. Manitoba has seen the biggest growth in soybean acres with well over a million planted annually in recent years,

File photo of a farmed mink. (Konstantin Sokolov/iStock/Getty Images)

B.C. calling halt to mink farming

Live mink on farms to be banned in 2023

British Columbia’s remaining mink farmers are “devastated” by the province’s proposal to phase out their industry over risks related to COVID-19. The province announced Friday it’s starting the process toward a permanent ban on mink farming — beginning with a ban on mink breeding, followed by a ban on live mink on farms by April


File photo of equipment tracks over a field in England. (Georgeclerk/E+/Getty Images)

Regulations on gene-edited crops to be eased in England

London | Reuters — Britain’s farming and environment minister George Eustice announced Wednesday that regulations related to gene editing in agricultural research would be eased in England following a public consultation. Rules will now largely be aligned with conventional breeding methods for research and development into plants although scientists will still be required to notify

(Freder/iStock/Getty Images)

Don’t count chickens before they hatch: Tyson bet on wrong rooster

Meat giant books unexpected decline in hatching

Chicago | Reuters — Tyson Foods is laying off a certain type of rooster from its U.S. chicken business after a surprising discovery that eggs fertilized by the male bird hatch less often, resulting in fewer chickens. The world’s largest meat producer by sales will install a replacement across its breeding program by this fall


File photo of a canola field in northern France’s Normandy region. (Brasil2/iStock/Getty Images)

France backs non-GMO regulation for crop gene-editing in EU

Paris | Reuters — France sees crops developed using gene-editing techniques as different to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and opposes a European Union court decision to put them under strict GMO regulations, the country’s agriculture minister said. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in 2018 that mutagenesis, among so-called new breeding techniques (NBT) based

Fred Greig.

Greig to chair wheat research council

CWRC announces new executive and president; AWC obtains host duties

The Canadian Wheat Research Coalition (CWRC) — a collaboration between the Manitoba Crop Alliance (MCA), Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (Sask Wheat) and Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC), has announced its newly appointed executive and president. The new executive is comprised of chair Fred Greig (MCA) who farms at Reston, vice-chair Jake Leguee (Sask Wheat), a farmer from


Horses on the Martin farm display the results of the family's Clydesdale program.

Clydesdales: Keeping up with the family tradition

Four generations of Martins have been producing Boulder Bluff Clydesdale horses

When George Martin purchased the east half of 1-16-22 in the Strathclair district in 1931, and began his small breeding operation of Clydesdale horses, he probably had no notion the farm and descendants of those horses would still be in the family nearly nine decades and four generations later. “When you can say you are

(Canada Beef Inc. photo)

Barley’s genome now two-thirds sequenced

A team led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside says it has reached a new milestone in its work on sequencing the barley genome. In a release Tuesday, the researchers said they have sequenced large portions of the genome that together contain nearly two-thirds of all barley genes. Because barley is a close relative


Neal Gutterson (r), head of biotech for DuPont Pioneer says new tools are speeding up the crop improvement process.

Corn and soybeans headed north and west

DuPont Pioneer is among a number of companies that see huge 
growth potential on the western Prairies

Earlier-maturing varieties of corn and soybeans rolling out across the Canadian Prairies will provide new cash crop options and contribute to more sustainable rotations, a senior official with DuPont Pioneer said here last week. While it is widely acknowledged that farmers are squeezing their canola rotations too tightly, setting the stage for a rise in