Ottawa urges Canadian grain industry to pull together

Danny Penner, the iconoclast who wants Canada’s farmers to get their voices together, has a fan in high places. “I read your blog. I think it’s great,” Greg Meredith, an assistant deputy minister with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada told Penner during a question period April 2 during the Canada Grains Council’s annual meeting in Winnipeg.



Farmers leery of offending grain buyers

The following is an exchange between farm marketing consultant Brenda Tjaden-Lepp of FarmLink Marketing Solutions and Elwin Hermanson, chief commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission at the recent Canada Grains Council meeting in Winnipeg over how farmer and grain buyers determine fair value. Tjaden-Lepp:  “It boils down to this party wants to sell high and

Farm groups say trace levels of GM contamination should be allowed

Allowing minute traces of genetically modified material in shipments of grains and oilseeds is needed to keep exports flowing, say the Grain Growers of Canada and the Canada Grains Council. Both groups want Ottawa to keep pushing for an international agreement on low level presence (LLP) of GM material. “Canada has the chance to be


Farmers urged to consider forming one, national association

Manitoba producer Danny Penner says there would be less duplication and better use of checkoff dollars

A Manitoba farmer mounting an effort to create one big commodity association says a splintered voice is not only expensive, it could cost farmers control of their industry. As the number of commodity organizations collecting checkoffs continues to grow, a 5,000-acre Manitoban farmer can be paying around $20,000 a year in checkoffs, said Danny Penner,

Letters, Feb. 28, 2013

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Grain Growers funded to promote grain sales

Fifty thousand dollars in federal government money is going to the Grain Growers of Canada to promote Canadian grain, which will include sending farmers on overseas trade missions. It’s part of $208,000 David Anderson, parliamentary secretary for the Canadian Wheat Board, announced here Nov. 21 during the annual Grain Industry Symposium organized by the Canada

Post-CWB monopoly system receives record grain volume Q1

Concerns that Canada’s grain pipeline would initially struggle in the wake of ending the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly have proven groundless. A record 14 million tonnes of grain were delivered to the Canadian grain-handling system during the first 15 weeks of the crop year, Cargill Canada president Len Penner told the Grain Industry Symposium here


Canada’s grain system world’s best

For years Canada’s grain industry engaged in self-flagellation, condemning the grain-handling and transportation system as inefficient. Not anymore. “We have arguably the world’s most efficient handling network,” Don Solman, Richardson’s vice-president of finance and chief financial officer told the Grain Industry Symposium Nov. 21. “Back in the 1990s, basically the network was rebuilt with large

Cigi appoints three farmers to its board

With farmers paying for part of its funding directly, Cigi says it’s important to get them more involved in governance

Three Prairie farmers have been appointed to the Canadian International Grains Institute’s six-member board, just one of many changes to the institute in the wake of the Canadian Wheat Board end of its sales monopoly Aug. 1. Cigi, which teaches customers how to use Canadian crops, was founded in 1972 by the wheat board and