bee on a flower

Surprisingly few ‘busy bees’ make global crops grow

Conservation of wild pollinators can’t be based on economics alone

A major international study published in Nature Communications, suggests that only two per cent of wild bee species pollinate 80 per cent of bee-pollinated crops worldwide. The study is one of the largest on bee pollination to date. While agricultural development and pesticides have been shown to produce sharp declines in many wild bee populations,

assorted vegetables in a basket

Farmers’ market vendors need to give customers more ways to pay

Customers buy more if they can use their credit cards

Farmers’ markets wanting to increase purchases by customers should consider accepting more than just cash or cheques as payment, according to Washington State University researchers. “Customers are willing to buy more if they have other payment options,” said Karina Gallardo, a WSU associate professor and extension specialist in the School of Economic Sciences. “They may


Canadian politicians

Farm and food goodies in federal budget well received

Farmers will get an increased capital gains exemption when they sell the farm

Farm groups are welcoming federal budget provisions that offer long-sought-after increases in the capital gains exemption on farm sales, the manufacturing equipment depreciation allowance and trade expansion programs. Increasing the capital gains exemption to $1 million from $813,000 has been on the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s wish list for years. Implementing it immediately will “have

aerial view of farmland

Editorial: Farmland — always a good buy?

Keep renting, or buy that land now before it gets even more expensive? Alberta farm management adviser Merle Good provided some perspective on that for an attentive crowd at Ag Days last week. So far, it’s been a truism that farmland is a good investment. That’s not to say it is always the right investment

Chuck Penner

Investors lulled by high prices

Ending stocks of corn are likely to begin to drop downwards next year

They’re phrases that have gotten a lot of use over the last few months. Analysts and experts are increasingly describing changes in commodity prices for wheat and corn as a “paradigm shift” or the arrival of a “new price paradigm.” But Chuck Penner, founder of LeftField Commodity Research said producers should be cognizant that high


Canadian dollar monthly nearby: Chart as of Dec. 12, 2014.

Canadian dollar continues to trend lower, slipping to a 5-1/2-year low

A lower Canadian dollar makes our exports more competitive but it increases the cost of imports

The Canadian dollar has been trending lower for the past three years. As recently as December 2012, it was trading at par to the U.S. dollar. Last year at this time it was worth 94 cents to the U.S. dollar and this year it is down to 86 cents. Canada is a resource-based country and

Scrap the cap and the railways will do a better job moving western grain, says Barry Prentice, an agricultural economist and professor at the University of Manitoba’s Transport Institute.

Scrap the cap and the railways will move more grain

The University of Manitoba’s Barry Prentice says ‘Soviet’-style regulations 
make for a less efficient western grain-handling and transportation system

The railways would do a better job moving western Canadian grain if the revenue cap was scrapped, allowing the free market to work, says Barry Prentice, an agricultural economist and professor at the University of Manitoba’s Transport Institute. “I wonder why on earth do we have a government… holding up the case for capitalism… dealing

Crude oil monthly nearby: Chart as of Nov. 27, 2014.

Crude oil falls to a four-year low

Plunging prices are casting a dark shadow across the commodity sector

At the time of this writing, crude oil has plunged $40 per barrel, losing 37 per cent of its value, since prices turned down from $107.73 in June 2014. This market’s steady decline may have come as a surprise to some followers of oil, but for those who study charting and technical analysis, they were


broiler chickens

Chicken industry struggles with production quota allocations

An old problem takes on new urgency as disgruntled provinces start pulling out of the system

A recurring dispute over how production quota is allocated to provinces experiencing rapid population growth is once again haunting Canada’s broiler chicken industry. Negotiations to solve the issue of differential growth have repeatedly broken down and one province has left the national chicken system in protest. A solution appeared close several times this summer. But

Doug Chorney

Five years lost as farmers wait for better default protection on grain sales

Leaving feed mills exempt from coverage under existing licensing and bonding leaves farmers vulnerable to losses

In 2009, western Canadian farm groups submitted a report to the Honourable Gerry Ritz, minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, outlining options for a program that would provide security to producers when grain buyers defaulted on payments. The main options were fund-based, insurance-based or bond-based programs. It was not that there wasn’t already a form