Developing countries increasingly adopting GM crops

Genetically modified crops hit a milestone last year — for the first time, acreage of biotech crops in developing countries surpassed industrial ones. A record 17.3 million farmers grew biotech crops worldwide in 2012, up 600,000 from a year earlier, says a new report from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA).

Seaway raises tolls after five-year freeze

Tolls on the St. Lawrence Seaway are going up by three per cent this year. It’s the first hike in six years, and the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation says the increase will help fund infrastructure renewal, efforts to reduce system costs, and marketing efforts. A late-season surge in Prairie grain exports last fall pushed


High standards, or regulatory burden?

If you are one of those grain farmers who takes great pride in being a free enterpriser, the next sentence may upset you. You are a member of a collective. Perhaps you don’t have a certificate certifying your involvement in such a pinko outfit, but unless you sell all your grain to one customer who






Hard red winter futures trading set to expand

The CBOT has acquired the Kansas City exchange and will move trading of the benchmark contract to Chicago

The Kansas City Board of Trade’s lightly traded hard red winter wheat futures contract is positioned to become the new benchmark for U.S. wheat prices following a takeover by CME Group, traders said. The size of the U.S. hard red winter wheat crop is the best argument for why volumes for the futures contract that

India to prioritize wheat exports to grapple with grain mountain

Increased exports could weigh on global grain prices at a time when 
many exporters are expecting a return to better harvests

Reuters / India will do everything it can to push record volumes of wheat on to the global market to cut massive stocks, a senior Farm Ministry official said March 6, in a move that could hit shipments of other grains using rail and congested ports. The world’s No. 2 wheat producer is expecting another


U.S. crop insurance guarantees push big acres

Reuters / Crop insurance that guarantees prices for the 2013 growing season should encourage U.S. farmers to again plant a large number of acres, with soybeans possibly claiming ground from corn, analysts said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency set the guarantees March 1, which act as the “floor price” for crop insurance

Farmers locked in acres last fall with fertilizer applications

chicago / reuters / Recent declines in U.S. corn futures prices have failed to dent growers’ enthusiasm for planting the feed grain this spring, even though soybean prices have outperformed corn, farmers and analysts said. Crop insurance guarantees, money spent on fertilizer and recent rainy weather in key growing areas have cemented the acreage decisions