The Winnipeg company said Thursday it expects to complete a new high-throughput grain elevator by fall next year on Canadian National Railway (CN) track at Huallen, about 35 km west of Grande Prairie.

The Huallen elevator will have 45,000 tonnes of storage capacity and a loop track system to load up to 150 rail cars, Richardson said.

The new build will give Richardson Pioneer presence in the County of Grande Prairie, which Tom Hamilton, the company’s senior vice-president for agribusiness operations, described in a release Thursday as “one of the most productive regions in Western Canada.”

The company’s grain handle in the larger Peace region also includes Alberta elevators at Rycroft and Nampa and a facility at Dawson Creek, B.C.

Further north, Richardson also recently replaced an older elevator with a new high-throughput facility at High Level, Alta., which “has significantly expanded shipping capacity in a region historically underserved,” the company said.

Once the Huallen elevator is complete, Richardson said it will build a retail crop inputs facility at the site, to be open in late 2022. That operation will include a high-speed fertilizer blender and 10,000-square foot warehouse, the company said.

The Huallen crop inputs facility “will enable us to provide a full-service option for both grain and agronomics,” Hamilton said.

“This will include offering our customers leading seed, fertilizer and crop protection technologies in addition to year-round support with CropWatch agronomic services and CropMatrix digital services.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Over the Aug. 10 weekend there were isolated reports of frost in some areas of the Peace region in northwestern Alberta. Other parts of the Prairies may be experiencing similar conditions sooner rather than later.

“The environment is certainly not going to favour a long growing season this year,” said Drew Lerner, president of World Weather Inc. in Kansas.

Lerner said there’s a chance the Canadian Prairies will see some colder-than-average temperatures as early as this weekend, due to warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska which helps generate a high-pressure ridge over western North America. The high-pressure ridge helps funnel cool arctic air to the south.

The Prairies are also experiencing a northwesterly flow pattern, part of a long-term cycle, which aids in moving colder air from the northwest to the southeast across the Prairies.

“The odds are pretty high we’ll see some more coolness come around. We’ll probably see it multiple times,” he said.

“We aren’t going to see this every weekend or every week from now for the rest of the growing season, but it will come back again.”

The past weekend’s weather, and trends set over the past two weeks, point to a pattern, Lerner said.

“We will see additional bouts of cold air coming in as we go through the balance of August, and especially in September,” he said.

Widespread frost before the second week in September could lead to crop damage.

“Because there’s quite a few crops that are running late and will not be fully mature if frost and freeze come along, that will hurt crop quality for sure.”

In some cases, if crops are so immature, there might actually be a loss in production.

Lerner said at this point it’s unclear when, exactly, these frost episodes may occur.

“I can tell you we’re going to see additional bouts of coolness, and I’m confident we will see additional frost occurring. How significant it is remains to be seen.”

— Marlo Glass writes for MarketsFarm, a Glacier FarmMedia division specializing in grain and commodity market analysis and reporting.

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Winnipeg-based Richardson announced Wednesday it has bought Agland Seed and Chemical at La Crete, Alta., about 320 km north of Peace River.

The deal, which closed Tuesday, will see all of Agland’s staff become Richardson Pioneer employees. Financial terms aren’t being released.

“We know that under the Richardson Pioneer umbrella, we will be able to not only continue to provide the excellent service our customers have grown to know, but we will be able to expand our offerings for customers, giving them the best possible products and services,” Agland co-owner George Unrau said in a Richardson release.

Richardson said Wednesday it had previously identified the La Crete area as “a gap within the Richardson Pioneer crop inputs network” on the Prairies.

The Agland location is expected to “complement” Richardson’s nearest ag business centre in High Level, about 100 km northwest of La Crete. Richardson has operated at High Level since 2013, when it bought the former Viterra facility there.

“We look forward to building relationships with producers in the area and providing them with leading seed, fertilizer and crop protection technologies, in addition to year-round support with our CropWatch agronomy team supported by our leading edge CropMatrix platform,” Tom Hamilton, Richardson’s vice-president for agribusiness operations, said in the same release.

The company’s CropMatrix agronomic platform, launched in 2017, is used by Richardson representatives and farmer customers to analyze farms’ yield data and product performance information. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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But normal harvest price discounts are still not as great as expected, said Susanne Leclerc of Market Master Ltd. in Edmonton.

Feed grain prices have declined somewhat, she said, but not as much as what is normally seen this time of year, when new-crop harvest generally drives down prices. Usually, she said, they’ll see feed grain prices slide 40-50 cents from August to October, but this year the price drop is just 10-15 cents.

The delayed harvest caused by recent storms may force many buyers, who had been holding off making feed purchases, to buy at price premiums, she said. Buyers had hoped to cover their needs by picking up lower-cost feed during the cheaper harvest season, but will now be forced to make purchases to get through September.

Many farmers across northern areas and in the Peace River district were expecting good-quality crops, but with the recent snow and wet conditions, Leclerc expects a lot of crops will be downgraded, pushing more feed grains onto the market.

“We are starting to see some of the pricing on the feed wheat starting to soften as buyers are anticipating this weather will affect the grading of wheat,” she said.

Prices have moved about 50 cents on the weather, she said. Feed wheat last week was selling for about $7 per bushel but this week that has dropped to about $6.50 as more supply is anticipated.

Heavy precipitation and snow on Wednesday covered a region in Alberta from Sylvan Lake, near the Rocky Mountains, north to High Level and east through Morinville, Edmonton and Vegreville. Leclerc said the system petered out near Lloydminster and turned into rain.

Environment Canada reported five cm of snow and 12.4 mm of rain at Edmonton International Airport on Wednesday; the Grande Prairie Airport received 10.6 cm of snow.

Frost has also been reported at many weather stations across the Peace region and around Edmonton and northeastern regions.

John MacArthur, who raises cattle and grows feed in the Peace region near Fairview, Alta., said his farm was spared from the worst of the weather, but farmers south of the Peace River weren’t so lucky. He estimated about 10 to 15 cm of heavy, wet snow fell in that area.

“Those crops — pea crops and wheat crops across the river — are flat, but on this side of the river, north of Fairview, the crops missed the big wet one,” he said.

Environment Canada shows temperatures in Fairview fell to -3 C, one of the coldest temperatures recorded in the province overnight. Fort Vermillion fell to -5.4 C; Hendrickson Creek hit -6.1 C.

For the early morning hours Thursday, Calgary posted a low of -3.2 C at Olympic Park; Fort Vermillion hit -7 C; and Nordegg saw -4.6 C.

At Fairview, MacArthur said he saw a lot of standing green canola and he expects much of it will be downgraded.

He tested a neighbour’s field, drying out a few pods of frozen canola to do so. “There was nothing in it. It was like pepper.”

Farmers with frozen canola might be able to bale it or turn it into silage, he said, but transportation costs make it impractical to ship it to feed-needy areas of central and southern Alberta.

According to Prairie Ag Hotwire, prices for feed barley, delivered to elevator, were $3.83-$4.40 per bushel in Saskatchewan, $4.40-$4.75 in Manitoba and $4.40-$5.40 in Alberta.

Feed wheat was listed at $5-$6/bu. in Saskatchewan, $5.88 in Manitoba and $5.46-$7.08 in Alberta.

— Terry Fries writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Glacier FarmMedia company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow CNS Canada at @CNSCanada on Twitter.

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“Yields that have been coming in suggest the crop will be bigger than the (Statistics Canada) estimate,” said Ken Ball of PI Financial.

StatsCan on Aug. 31 released a production forecast in which it pegged Canada’s canola crop at 19.2 million tonnes.

Reports suggest yields in the southern Prairies, where rainfall was extremely limited, will be worse than in the north. At this early stage it is tough for traders to get an exact handle on what the overall counts will be.

“In Alberta not even 20 per cent of the crop has been harvested,” said Ball.

Cold and wet weather in has kept farmers off combines in Alberta’s Peace region, but next week the weather is expected to turn warmer.

“As long as it stops raining guys will get out there and get their canola off,” said Keith Ferley of RBC Dominion Securities. “However, there are worries about downgrading.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday released its production estimate for the U.S. soybean crop, in which it hiked the forecast to 4.7 billion bushels. It also hiked ending stocks by 60 million bushels to 845 million, which cast a gloomy outlook on the oilseed market in general.

According to Ball, though, the biggest factor facing canola traders these days is the unknown size of the Canadian crop.

“There’s still a long way to go for harvest and it will be a challenge for a while longer to get an assessment on the crop,” he said.

Strength in the Canadian dollar has also put pressure on canola, which was already dealing with a recent slump in soyoil prices.

— Dave Sims writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Glacier FarmMedia company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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While many producers are still working to get the first cut done and the situation could change with the second cut, many regions are already reporting below-average yields.

“In areas of the province where moisture was lacking through that important time of May and they also had some above-average temperatures, in those areas certainly hay yields have been affected,” said Mark Cutts, a crop specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry at Lacombe.

He estimated half to two-thirds of the hay in the driest areas could see lower-than-average yields.

Central and southern Alberta are especially dry and northeastern and northwestern regions are also reporting below-average yields.

The Peace region appears to be the outlier this year, with average hay yields reported.

Cutts cautioned it’s too soon to give up on the crop.

“It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Showers have been happening in different areas of the province now, so some areas are getting moisture, which will help for the second cut.

“If producers can get a decent second cut, that will reduce some of that pressure for feed.”

As the summer progresses, producers will begin making decisions based on their field conditions, he said.

They could turn a crop into green feed, or silage, or look to other sources if the dry conditions persist.

Ben Fox, president of Manitoba Beef Producers, said producers in his province are also facing dry conditions and hay production “looks to be on the short side.”

In spots, he said, “I think it could be worse than last year, but everybody, usually, in agriculture has a very positive outlook on things so those (fields) do have some time left in the growing season.”

Manitoba’s Interlake is especially dry, he said, with most areas receiving well below average moisture.

Southern fields are also withering under dry conditions, he said, adding that good hay crops are being reported in the Winkler-Morden and Riding Mountain-Dauphin areas.

Fox said he has already heard talk of producers in drier areas sourcing supplemental feed supplies to ensure they will have enough to feed their herds.

One producer near Winnipegosis has two-thirds of his supply stacked up in his yard already, he said.

“It’s just that folks are going to have to work a little harder maybe to get what they need.”

First-cut hay in Saskatchewan is also showing below-average yields in southeastern, east-central and west-central regions, while low topsoil moisture and heat are dragging down all production in the southwest.

Hay crops in the northeast have received good moisture and 20 per cent of the first cut is rated excellent, with 80 per cent rated good.

In the northwest, most areas have adequate moisture with an average crop, but strong winds and rain are hindering harvest, according to the latest provincial crop report.

— Terry Fries writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Glacier FarmMedia company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow CNS Canada at @CNSCanada on Twitter.

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Alberta farmer co-op UFA (United Farmers of Alberta) announced Tuesday it’s buying CHS’s interest in the two firms’ joint ag retail venture, Bridgeland Limited Partnership, for an undisclosed sum.

Bridgeland was set up in late 2015 in what the two companies described as “a competitive crop input value proposition to UFA and CHS members and customers” in the Peace region of northwestern Alberta.

“After almost two years of building a strong and collaborative relationship for the benefit of our customers, both organizations have mutually decided to enter into this transaction.”

Once the deal closes, UFA will fully own and operate Bridgeland’s assets at LaCrete, Sexsmith, Baytree, Fairview, Falher, Eaglesham and Grande Prairie and rebrand them under the UFA banner over the next month.

The sites will continue to offer crop inputs such as seed, chemicals and fertilizers, grain storage and handling equipment and livestock inputs, and will retain all Bridgeland staff as UFA employees, the Alberta co-op said.

“Complete ownership of these assets and sites allows us to realign that business back to the UFA brand — a brand that our membership and customers know and trust,” UFA CEO Carol Kitchen said in a release Tuesday.

The move, she said, “reinforces UFA’s commitment to its core business and to its members and customers in one of our most important geographies.”

Winnipeg grain company Richardson International also announced a deal for CHS assets Tuesday, buying the St. Paul, Minn.-based co-operative’s 10 wholly-owned crop input retail sites in Alberta and Saskatchewan for an undisclosed sum.

Of the Richardson deal, a CHS representative said via email late Tuesday that the co-operative is “grateful to the growers and employees who have been loyal to its Canadian retail business” and it was “with their best, long-term interests in mind that we pursued this agreement.” — AGCanada.com Network

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While rains are forecast to be fairly general across eastern Saskatchewan and Manitoba over the next week or so, they are expected to cause minimal damage and harvest delays there.

In the Peace, crop development is already behind thanks to a wet spring and there were concerns about what untimely precipitation might mean for farmers.

Micheal Seabrook, location manager for Crop Production Services at Fairview, Grimshaw and Hines Creek, Alta., was quick to dispel those worries.

The harvest, he said, is very well advanced in areas he covers, which includes farmland from just north of the Peace River to La Crete, about 360 km north of Fairview.

“My La Crete customers and a lot through to the Manning and Deadwood area are well advanced at the harvest. I would say for the most part from 70 to 80 per cent along,” he said.

Though rain is in the forecast, conditions now are dry due to persistent winds, and small amounts of rain are likely to have little effect, he said.

“We’ve had some pretty wicked winds that have kept things dry and kept things moving,” he said.

“You know how farmers are. We’ll wait and see what next week brings. The forecast will change 10 times between now and then,” he said.

More of a concern, he added, is when the first serious frost hits, with predictions for frost tonight and tomorrow night. He said it could affect some later-seeded canola, which is still fairly green.

However, he said, overall, farmers are optimistic.

While harvest might be behind a bit, it is a major improvement from a year ago. Snow struck the region on the third week of September last year and kept farmers out of fields until November.

“What’s rolling into the bins is good quality and clean,” he said.

“Right now, our peas are still standing. We’ve had good weather to get them off. They’re nice clean samples and coming off decent.”

Farmers in the Fairview and Grimshaw areas are 70 to 80 per cent done combining peas, with Hines Creek slightly behind that pace.

Most farmers are getting into canola, with some being combined around Fairview and about 80 per cent lying in swaths in the Fairview-Grimshaw region.

“Guys are pretty optimistic right now.”

Most farmers haven’t started wheat harvest yet, though it developed more quickly than many people thought it would due to a warm, dry August. Much of the wheat was seeded late and many farmers were expecting to take it off in October, but it now appears it could be combined sooner than that.

“With what’s going and the crop that’s there, we’ve got an average to above-average crop for the most part. The bushels are there,” Seabrook said.

Bruce Burnett, director of markets and weather analysis for Glacier FarmMedia, said general rain for this week and next should not concern many growers in areas outside of the northern grain belt.

Following scattered showers, which are predicted for the middle of this week and next, he said more harvest-friendly weather should return.

“The longer-term forecast looks fairly good. We’re going to return on the Prairies to a warmer, drier flow,” he said.

The rain comes as a mixed blessing to farmers, he said, depending on where they live. While many southern farmers could use the rain to replenish dry soils, farmers in central and northern areas need to finish their harvests first.

Soybeans, a key crop still in the ground in southern areas, should be able to weather the expected precipitation, Burnett said. The soybean harvest is still a week to 10 days away in most areas, he added.

— Terry Fries writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow CNS Canada at @CNSCanada on Twitter.

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Alberta Canola on Wednesday announced the Peace region has reported a case of clubroot in canola, in Big Lakes County, which surrounds much of Lesser Slave Lake in the region’s southeast.

The disease has been well known in central Alberta since the early 2000s and had already been detected in canola fields in Big Lakes’ neighbouring counties to the south and east, including Lesser Slave River, Woodlands and Yellowhead.

Alberta Canola said Wednesday it’s working with the Canola Council of Canada and extension partners to “reinforce grower awareness of the clubroot management fundamentals” such as crop rotation and equipment sanitation.

A clubroot information session for local growers is also scheduled for 10 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 31 at Guy Community Hall. (Guy is about 50 km northwest of High Prairie, on Township Road 760 just east of Highway 49.)

A soil-borne disease of cruciferous crops, clubroot is caused by a fungus-like organism, Plasmodiophora brassicae. There are no known economically feasible controls to get it out of an infested field.

In clubroot-infected canola, swellings or galls appear on roots, cutting off a plant’s water and nutrient supplies so it prematurely ripens and dies. Typical yield losses run around 50 per cent but can run up to nearly 100 per cent in fields under severe clubroot pressure.

“If clubroot has not yet been found in your community, that does not mean it is not present,” Alberta Canola said on its website Wednesday.

“A buildup of clubroot spores eventually leads to visual symptoms, yield loss and reduces the durability of variety resistance.”

To help prevent clubroot spore buildup, canola producers are urged to use clubroot-resistant varieties, and if clubroot is already present in the area, those varieties should be used in a rotation interval of at least three years.

Clubroot-resistant varieties can help reduce disease loss to as low as zero, but the resistance isn’t considered durable when used in short rotations in heavily-infested areas. Fields known to be heavily infested shouldn’t be seeded to canola.

Growers should also scout for clubroot in canola fields — even in fields seeded to resistant varieties.

Growers will also want to follow a crop rotation with at least a three-year interval of canola crops, to reduce pressure from clubroot and other diseases and pests. Volunteer canola should also be controlled in all crops.

Growers are also urged to clean equipment between fields, in order to “minimize soil movement” from field to field, and to reduce tillage and other soil disturbance, so as to cut down soil movement via wind and water.

Clubroot is established in Canada mainly in vegetable-growing regions of Quebec, Ontario, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia. Its first appearance in Canadian canola was in Quebec in 1997, but it took until 2003 to appear on the canola-rich Prairies, near Edmonton.

Cases have since been confirmed in thousands of canola fields elsewhere in Alberta, mainly in central regions and particularly around Edmonton, but also as far south as Medicine Hat, as well as in canola fields in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.

Areas with warm soils, high soil moisture and acid soil (pH under 6.5) are known to favour infection and show more severe disease development.

More information on clubroot is available on the Canola Council of Canada’s clubroot website. — AGCanada.com Network

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DLF Pickseed Canada announced April 21 it has a letter of intent in place to buy Moore — based at Debolt, Alta., about 50 km east of Grande Prairie — for an undisclosed sum.

Moore has “significant” market presence in the Peace region’s turfgrass and forage crop seed production area, buying, processing and retailing. Moore sells domestically and exports into the U.S. and Europe, Pickseed said in a release.

Moore “represents a significant addition and a highly complementary fit for DLF Pickseed Canada,” DLF Pickseed CEO Rob Clark said in the same release.

The deal is expected to close in July, after which Moore would “continue as a separate entity operating as DLF Moore Seeds,” he said.

“I feel that DLF Pickseed Canada will provide strong management succession for Moore Seeds when I retire in a few years,” Moore Seeds president Raymond Walker said in the same release.

In the meantime, he said, Moore expects to seek “synergies through (Pickseed’s) global leadership in market share and research and development.”

DLF Pickseed Canada is the Canadian arm of Danish seed grower co-operative DLF, which has owned Pickseed since 2013. — AGCanada.com Network

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