The tree row catches the snow, and the big slough goes from dry to high water table. In years gone by, I spent many hours with three, two-inch pumps to move water from the slough to adjacent upland — not always a huge success.

Les Henry: Twenty-seven years of crops at my Dundurn farm

And a few lessons learned

In the early 1990s, agriculture in Saskatchewan was still suffering from the devastation of the 1980s. Drought and poor crops with low prices were bad news. But, interest rates as high as 20 per cent were the kicker that resulted in much land going back to FCC or the Royal Bank. (Yes, Virginia, interest rates […] Read more

(Screengrab from Merit Functional Foods video via YouTube)

Plant protein processor Merit Foods in receivership

Company owes $95 million to EDC, FCC

The company behind a new Prairie processing plant extracting plant-based proteins from peas and canola has landed in receivership, in the high eight figures’ debt to its secured lenders. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on Wednesday announced it’s the receiver for both Merit Functional Foods Corp. and the numbered company that owns Merit’s processing plant and property in […] Read more



Yellow peas. (Victoria Popova/iStock/Getty Images)

Pulse weekly outlook: AAFC report makes minor changes

Revisions mainly in dry peas, chickpeas

MarketsFarm — Following the latest supply and demand estimates from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), MarketsFarm Pro analyst Mike Jubinville said their numbers “all seem reasonable enough.” There were only a handful of small tweaks to pulses in the AAFC report released Friday. For the most part, the revisions came with dry beans and chickpeas. […] Read more


Four years of plot and field research by Farming Smarter to study the use of a precision planter, such as this Monosem planter to seed grains, oilseeds and pulse crops, show overall the planters produce an even crop stand and good yields particularly on 12-inch row spacing.

In search of a uniform crop stand

Seeding research and technology are working to help farmers increase yields with potential to reduce input costs

If uniformity of stand establishment is a key element to optimizing crop yield, is one seeding system better than another? Should you run out and buy something new? According to Jason Casselman, an agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, farmers can make gains in the uniformity of their canola stands just by paying […] Read more

Humanitarian aid provided by Palestinian Arabs is distributed at northwestern Syria’s Deir Ballut and Muhammadiyah camps near the Turkish border on Feb. 13, 2022. (Photo: Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto via Reuters)

Pulse weekly outlook: Earthquake to have little effect on pulse markets

Such disasters don't often blow back on agrifood commodity costs

MarketsFarm — The earthquake that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria on Monday last week, taking the lives of more than 40,000 people, may not have a major effect on pulse markets, according to one analyst. Jon Driedger from Leftfield Commodity Research in Winnipeg said that while natural disasters like an earthquake can take on […] Read more


Chickpeas. (CalypsoArt/iStock/Getty Images)

Pulse weekly outlook: Chickpea stocks down; lentils, dry peas up

Chickpea prices unchanged before report

MarketsFarm — Statistics Canada on Tuesday tallied up increases in commercial and on-farm stocks of both lentils and dry peas, in its report on grain stocks as of Dec. 31, 2022. Unlike those two pulses, however, StatCan reported total stocks of chickpeas decreased, at 185,000 tonnes in December 2022 compared to 311,000 in December 2021. […] Read more

“It just makes tracking your inventory and your contracts a lot easier... I don’t have to spend days on the computer entering contracts and doing spreadsheets.” – Sean Edwards.

New tool for grain marketing at your fingertips

Combyne marketing app built for grain producers

A new software system developed by a Canadian tech firm promises to make grain marketing easier and more efficient for farmers across the country. Combyne was developed by Alain Goubau and his Ontario-based company, Combyne Ag. It was released to the public in November 2021 and is available for mobile devices and computer desktop use. […] Read more


Wheat being loaded onto a cargo ship in Vancouver in 2011. (File photo: Reuters/Ben Nelms)

China top destination for Canadian grains, oilseeds

CGC data points to key destinations

MarketsFarm — China is the top destination for Canadian grain and oilseed exports through the first five months of the 2022-23 marketing year, accounting for roughly a third of the total movement, according to the latest monthly report from the Canadian Grain Commission. Canada has exported 6.566 million tonnes of grains, oilseeds, and pulses to […] Read more

Dry alfalfa and straw bales are loaded into the Kuhn Side Slinger manure spreader, which doubles as a mixer wagon. The hay and straw will serve as biomass for the compost.

Build your own bioreactor

Regenerative Ag: A farmer puts his homegrown biological fertilizer to work in his fields to improve soil health and crop quality and save on input costs

Former Saskatchewan farmer Franck Groeneweg will be heading out to his Montana grain fields this spring to apply a biological fertilizer made on his farm. Over the past three growing seasons, it appears this liquid compost extract helps to maintain crop yields while making it possible for him to significantly reduce chemical fertilizer rates. It […] Read more