Columns & Production Tips

Cattle producers need to be aware, as we head toward 2025, that a small change in supply has a large influence on price.

Cattle herd declines while economy expands

One per cent increase in consumer spending means one per cent increase in beef demand

By Jerry Klassen March 21, 2024

I often place myself two years in the future, with a view of the past two years. The old saying is that hindsight is 20/20. Well then, place yourself in the future and look backward. If I were giving a cattle market outlook in March 2026, the summary would be the following: During 2024, feeder […] Read more

(Kraig Scarbinsky/DigitalVision/Getty Images)

Columns, Editor's column, Wheat & Chaff

Editor’s Rant: The customer is always right

By Dave Bedard March 20, 2024

Hi, my name’s Dave and I’m a Cheerios consumer. So I’ve got to admit, any news article that name-drops Cheerios grabs my attention much more effectively than an article mentioning, say, Taylor Swift. (I’ll stop here briefly as a public service to warn that if you somehow happened on this article by accident, that last […] Read more

A peat slough by Highway 26 north of Pine Cove.

Columns

For peat’s sake: a picture story

Crops can be grown on shallow peat -- but there are very wrong ways to develop that land

By Les Henry March 17, 2024

Let us start with a mystery. Inga was raised on a farm near Loon Lake, Sask., west of Meadow Lake in the province’s northwest, so we have visited there many times in summer months. While driving Highway 26 north of Pine Cove nearby, I noticed what looked like peat sloughs. The trusty soil probe proved […] Read more

A farm’s founders and successors alike need clarity of expectations.

Columns, Farm Life

Write the first draft now for your next chapter

You no longer have the luxury of avoiding hard conversations

By Elaine Froese March 17, 2024

Imagine how wonderful life would be on your farm if you did not have to guess what other folks on your farm team really want for their lives, and for the farm business? I had the great joy of speaking to 540 young Iowa farmers last month. Many of them are stuck in getting equity […] Read more

Dusting Liège waffles with icing sugar is optional.

Columns, Farm Life

Bigger than breakfast, part 1: Liège waffles

Unlike for the modern waffle, this batter needs a head start of a day or two

By dee Hobsbawn-Smith March 13, 2024

In early May 2018, I spent a few days in Vancouver with my youngest son Dailyn and his partner Rachel. They were both running in the Vancouver marathon, and I was running my first half-marathon. I couldn’t think of a better place to enter the game: a flat, fast course, the seawall, Stanley Park. I […] Read more

The stronger the consensus, the more wrong it usually becomes.

Columns, Global markets, Home Quarter Investing

‘Everybody’ is usually wrong — and why it must be so

Overwhelming strength of sentiment, when few buyers or sellers remain, can bend a trend

By Herman VanGenderen March 12, 2024

Everybody is familiar with the colloquial term “Everybody is doing X.” By “X” we don’t mean “formerly Twitter” — everybody has been writing “X (formerly Twitter)” so I thought I would do the opposite. In this case you’re welcome to fill in whatever you wish for X. Salespeople often use the phrase to help sell […] Read more

As picturesque together as they may be, onions and garlic should be kept in separate areas while growing in the garden.

Columns, Practical Tips

More on Prairie vegetables and fruits

Part 6 of a series: Let’s look further at what grows well on the Prairies — and when it doesn’t, why

By Ieuan Evans March 11, 2024

In previous issues I dealt with potatoes and the cabbage family of garden vegetables, but perhaps I should also take a look at all and any successfully grown Prairie vegetable crops. To do this, I should list all vegetable crops into related categories, as in the table shown here, so we can more clearly plan […] Read more

Columns, Editor's column

Editor’s Rant: Planning for failure

By Dave Bedard March 8, 2024

Since this issue of Grainews is supposed to be on the press in two hours or less, there’s a good chance this week that I’ll either be very brief in this space, or not nearly brief enough. I really loathe leaving things like this to the last minute, but this past week didn’t work out […] Read more

A centre-pivot system at work near Cowley, Alta., about 40 km east of Crowsnest Pass. Snowpack in mid-February was estimated at 50-75 per cent of normal at monitoring sites in southern Alberta's Rocky Mountains.

Columns, Crops, Weather

Managing irrigation with limited water

Some irrigation districts are advising users to brace for limits on available water

By Ross H. McKenzie March 8, 2024

There is increasing concern with below-normal mountain snowpack and potential for limited irrigation water availability in 2024. Snowpack in mid-February was about 50 to 75 per cent of normal at most of the snow pillow monitoring sites in the Rocky Mountains of northern Montana and southern Alberta (visit the Alberta River Basins web page, then […] Read more

This photo was taken following a Dec. 8, 2020 collision at an uncontrolled intersection east of Winkler, Man. — the first of two vehicle-versus-train collisions in the same RM that afternoon involving the same westbound CP train.

Wheat & Chaff

Farm safety includes being rail-safe

By Canadian Agricultural Safety Association March 8, 2024

With nearly 45,000 kilometres of active railway tracks and roughly 40,000 railway crossings from coast to coast, many Canadians encounter trains daily. That’s especially true in rural areas, where many farms are located near railway tracks. “In 2022 there were 232 incidents between trains and vehicles or people in Canada that resulted in 66 fatalities […] Read more

GFM Network News

U.S. livestock: Cattle extend gains on improving cash prices, packer demand

U.S. grains: Soy futures slide on China demand doubts

Spain probes whether swine fever outbreak was caused by lab leak