Grain marketing, Mother Nature and Murphy’s Law

Some years anything that can go wrong, will. Avoid further trouble with these three marketing strategies

For many the first week of September 2014 was no doubt an agonizing experience as you had to sit by helplessly and watch it rain and snow and freeze. Undeniable proof that Mother Nature’s last name has to be Murphy, and she was in the mood to apply the full wrath of Murphy’s Law to […] Read more

red poppies

Time to remember

A profusion of scarlet-red Flanders poppies with jet-black centres always rouses comment and attention in the garden. Red poppies also initiate memories, but their symbolism goes beyond that. From youth to seniors, Canadians wear a poppy on the left side over their heart as a quiet symbol of appreciation and high regard. A strong desire […] Read more


six rye seeds

You can’t have one without the other

Farmers need plant breeders to keep developing new varieties and breeders need farmers to buy their seed

Have you been reading articles about UPOV ’91, Plant Breeder’s Rights or Bill C-18 over the last several months? Does all the jargon leave you confused? Angry? Ambivalent? Considering the number of my fellow farmers who tell me that they bought some new variety of seed from their neighbour, I suspect that a lot of […] Read more

By May 27, there was even germination and emergence.

Diary of a wheat crop

After a successful 2014 grain harvest at 
his Dundurn farm, Les Henry is grateful

This is the story of my 2014 wheat crop at my farm near Dundurn. August 25, 2013 Combined a 55 bushel per acre pea crop. No rain for over a month, so soil dry. September 24, 25, 2013 Mother Nature declares. There was 2.25 inches of nice gentle rain, all soaked in. Soil is now moist […] Read more


combine harvesting wheat in a field

We swathed our wheat. Would we do it again?

Toban Dyck’s crop went from “the crop that 
could have been” to… well, the crop it was

We swathed our wheat. Because why not. Because there’s nothing like picking up a dry swath with a powerful combine. Because we didn’t want to desiccate. But swathing turned out to be a mistake. We had no idea our wheat would sprout. How could we have? And the worst thing is there’s no guarantee it […] Read more

Farm financial planning: Trusts can increase family trust

Trust avoids family infighting for retiring Manitoba couple aiming to keep 
their land in the family, but also keep their kids still talking to each other

In south central Manitoba a couple we’ll call Harry and Ella, both 64, face the challenge of transferring their 3,500 acre mixed grain and 400 cow operation to their three children. The problem is that two of the children, each in the 30s, don’t want to farm. It’s a good business worth about $4 million. […] Read more


Fusarium head blight in a wheat head.

2014 was a bad year for fusarium

Farmers need better data to make good decisions around spraying for fusarium

Nothing sharpens focus on a production problem like a little skin in the game. My crop rotation on my tiny Blackstrap farm has been wheat, peas, wheat, canola since 1998. It is too much wheat, and for a very scary reason: fusarium head blight (FHB). FHB was a Manitoba problem, so no big worry for […] Read more

grain

Changing times, yet again for grain prices

With risks of global change and bad 
harvest weather, farmers can take action


Over the past month a number of things have happened that are going to impact world grain prices. Reports from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture are saying that due to conflicts they expect that at least 15 per cent of the crops in Eastern regions will be lost because they have not been tended to […] Read more


man standing beside downed trees

Wild weather and loose wheels

For an ag reporter driving on Prairie roads to get to the story, sometimes a
 little bit of on-the-spot help from strangers is more than welcome

I was on my way to Ravenscrag, Saskatchewan, on the last day of May this year when my wheel flew off. I’d just driven through the Elrose Hills, rolling knolls dotted with oil tanks, and was watching the sky, wondering if it was going to rain. Then I realized that wobble in my Chevy Tracker […] Read more

stock market numbers

The high cost of buying stocks and bonds in a boom market

With financial prices rising, prudent investors need to be cautious in the marketplace

It is a paradox of off-farm investing that, as the U.S. economy strengthens and the Canadian economy gains speed, albeit sluggishly, buying stocks and bonds is getting to be harder, not easier. The reasons are, of course, that many other investors have already made their bets, bought the stocks they expect to rise, put money […] Read more