Hamster wheel business

”The worst business of all is the one that grows a lot, where you’re forced to grow just to stay in the game at all and where you’re reinvesting the capital at a very low rate of return. And sometimes people are in those businesses without knowing it.” Warren Buffett, 1998 Between 1990 and 2003,

Hemp provides many solutions

“We need options, otherwise we’ll be a wheat-canola country from coast to coast and that’s not sustainable.” – DARYL DOMITRUK Hemp is the solution for many agricultural and environmental concerns in Canada according to Daryl Domitruk. The director of Agri-Industry Development and Innovation for the province said Manitoba is especially well suited to position itself


Lower yields nip U. S. corn, soybean crops

U. S. growers will reap 12.02 billion bushels of corn and 2.921 billion bushels of soybeans this year, the government forecast on Nov. 10, lowering its estimates for both crops slightly due to lower yields in a rain-slowed harvest. “The lateness of this year’s fall row-crop harvest has limited planting opportunities for both Soft Red

Global glut of wheat seen pressuring prices

A global glut of wheat will weigh on wheat and corn prices while tighter stocks of soybeans should provide life to the soybean market, a CME Group panel of grains analysts said Nov. 10. “There is plenty of wheat around. The world estimate is more interesting and it shows ample supplies,” said Jack Scoville, analyst


Designer wants Canadian hemp

Barbara Filippone dreams of the day she can do business closer to home. The president and developer for EnviroTextiles in Colorado said she would love to work with Canadians. Canada’s hemp industry might still be in its infancy. Right now, hemp seed and oil are the hot commodities but fibre is on the horizon. Filippone,

Hemp industry needs aggressive approach

“The gluten-free aisle in the store is getting bigger.” – KELLEY FITZPATRICK Kelley Fitzpatrick grabbed attendees of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance annual meeting and snapped them to attention, espousing the nutritional values of hemp like a televangelist. “You have to be aggressive with your research,” Fitzpatrick, owner of NutriTech Consulting, told the meeting in


BSE report points to usual suspect

Canada’s 13th case of BSE, confirmed in June in a five-year-old dairy cow in B. C.’s Fraser Valley, likely got the disease from its heifer ration, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency reported last week. The ration was made at a plant that kept separate lines for ruminant and nonruminant livestock feed but “cross-utilized” some handling

Canada a growing market for U. S. distillers grains

Since the boom in the U. S. biofuel industry, U. S. supplies of dried distiller grains, ethanol’s co-product, have grown significantly and U. S. exporters have been looking North to a large and growing market for their feed alternative. At the recent United States Grain Council’s, or USGC, International Distillers Grains Conference & Trade Show


“Farmers will be driving Maseratis” and other news

For three-times-daily market reports from Don Bousquet and RNI, visit “ICE Futures Canada updates” at www.manitobacooperator.ca Grain and oilseed futures at ICE Futures Canada in Winnipeg closed the week ended Nov. 6 higher. Canola prices rallied as farmers virtually turned off the tap and stopped delivering. Traders feel it will take farm gate bids of

World more dependent on Latin American soybeans

The global soybean market will become increasingly dependent on South American supplies in coming months, following a lower-than-expected U. S. soybean crop, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World said Nov. 4. The U. S. Department of Agriculture on Oct. 28 reduced its forecast of the U. S. soybean crop by 1.5 per cent in an unprecedented