The first 15 are already out. From tariff tensions to invasive wild pigs to weather, here’s a taste of what farmers wanted to read most over the last year:

No. 25 — Port of Churchill searches for year-round trade: In November, KAP hosted Arctic Gateway Group’s CEO to talk future plans for Manitoba’s northern port. Part of the big expansion planned is a goal to keeping the ice open, and trade flowing, all year long.

No. 24 — Weather school: It’s all about the clouds: Do you know your cumulus from your nimbostratus? This piece from way back in 2020 re-emerged on our most-read list for 2025.

No.23 — Fishing the deep water of Manitoba: Want fishing success farther from shore? Our outdoors columnist Tim Sopuck ran readers down some tips and tricks for catching deep water fish in Manitoba.

No. 22 — Manitoba’s wild pigs not headed for population boom, expert says: The co-ordinator for Manitoba’s Squeal on Pigs program says our cold climate situation isn’t comparable to U.S.

No. 21 — We’ve seen trade wars before, but this time is different: Throwing back all the way to January for this one. This early 2025 editorial looked down the barrel of changing U.S. trade policy and what it could mean for Canadian agriculture.

Nov. 20 — Riverside Hutterite Colony gets top honours: It was a western Manitoba sweep at this year’s Royal Manitoba Winter Fair Pork Quality Competition back in spring.

Other highlights so far include beekeepers battling for survival, more trade and tariff stories and Manitoba’s first bovine tuberculosis case in years.

Want to see the full list? Check out our top stories landing page in the top-left corner of our website. Keep checking back until Jan. 31 as we unveil our top 10.

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On June 16, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said they were investigating a bovine tuberculosis infection in a dairy cow, which had come from a farm in the Pembina Valley region of south-central Manitoba.

Why it matters: Canada has had brushes with bovine tuberculosis in recent years, but not in Manitoba.

According to a CFIA notice to industry, samples had been taken from the seven-year-old animal at the abattoir. Labs found the bacteria responsible for bovine tuberculosis June 9, 2025. The finding was later confirmed June 13.

Officials tracked down the originating farm through the DairyTrace traceability program. The CFIA says the herd has been quarantined, pending further testing and depopulation.

“The timing of testing will be determined after discussions with the producer to manage the operational impact of the process,” the agency said.

“The CFIA is continuing to work closely with producers, industry associations, and provincial and federal agricultural and health authorities throughout the investigation.”

The investigation is still in its early days, the CFIA said.

Canada’s bovine TB record

Until this point, the only bovine tuberculosis cases confirmed in Canada since 2018 have originated in Saskatchewan. In February 2023, U.S. officials found the disease in a heifer that had come from Canada. After tracking that animal back to its originating farm, 32 animals in the herd were also found infected. Traceability did not find infection in any potential contact herds

Another case was confirmed in November 2024. Samples from a six-year-old cow, collected at an an abattoir in Alberta came back positive for infection. That cow was tracked back to a farm in Saskatchewan and the birth herd was quarantined. As of June 5, the CFIA had found 25 cases in the one infected herd, which has been depopulated.

Traceability efforts flagged 39 potentially linked herds, 12 of which have been released from quarantine.

In May, Saskatchewan beef producers took the government to task on bovine tuberculosis. They argued that farmers of infected farms should get better compensation, wildlife testing should be bolstered and that more work should be done on vaccines.

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In a notice to industry Feb. 25, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said they have found three more cases while testing the birth herd of an animal confirmed positive for bovine TB late last year.

The herd in question will be euthanized, the producer compensated as per CFIA regulations and tests will be done on all animals over a year old to determine how significantly infection had spread in the herd, the agency said.

Where were the cases found?

On Nov. 29, 2024, the CFIA confirmed bovine tuberculosis in samples from a six-year-old cow after the animal had been sent for slaughter in Alberta. The animal had been raised in Saskatchewan, the agency said. The birth herd was put in quarantine as tests were done and contact tracing began for other possibly exposed herds.

It was Saskatchewan’s second brush with bovine TB in recent years. In February 2023, Canadian officials got word from the United States Department of Agriculture that tests from an animal shipped from Saskatchewan the previous fall had come back positive. In June 2023, the CFIA confirmed two further cases in the Saskatchewan herd where the flagged animal had originated.

More herds to be tested

All of the three recently identified cases were born outside of their current herd, the agency said. The investigation and “applicable movement controls” has expanded to include the originating herds of those animals.

Any herds that have been in contact with the infected herd are up for testing, the CFIA said. Contact tracing will also cover any animals that left the herd in the last five years, as well as any herds that provided animals to the farm in the last five years. Testing will be done as needed.

The strain of bovine TB has also garnered attention. Lab testing of the case found in November 2024 “found a strain that has never been identified in animals or humans in Canada, and the origin of the strain is unknown. It is not closely related to any of the recent strains in Western Canada,” the Feb. 25 notice read.

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On Sept. 17, Bayer announced that its Buteo start seed treatment has been registered for mustard in Western Canada.

“The damage caused by flea beetles at the start of the season impacts crop development long-term and can lead to significant yield loss,” Bryan Bryson, Bayer marketing portfolio lead for traits and licensing, said in a release.

The Group 4D, flupyradifurone-based product reached the Canadian market in 2020. Its label now covers early season control of flea beetles in canola, as well as soybean aphid and bean leaf beetle in soybeans, although promotional materials from the company heavily market the insecticide for its canola applications.

The company pitches the product for control of striped and crucifer flea beetles. Fact sheets published by the company cite canola trials done in 2019 in flea beetle-infested areas. Those trials found that a combination of Buteo start and the seed treatment ProsperEverGol (which is also registered for mustard), showed significantly less leaf damage from three to 17 days post-emergence, quicker crop progression and a thicker stand.

The insecticide “delivers rapid uptake and systemic translocation from cotyledon to leaf margins, enabling a quicker-growing canopy and uniform flowering, even in dry conditions where flea beetles thrive,” the Sept. 17 release said.

Mustard growers face many of the same agronomic challenges as canola growers do, the company noted, and that includes flea beetles.

The insects have been a perennial problem for canola growers. Several years of difficult spring conditions led to stalled stands while plants were vulnerable. Significant and sometimes repeated applications of foliar spray were needed once seed treatments wore off.

According to the Canola Council of Canada, heavy flea beetle infestation can cause a 10 per cent yield reduction even when insecticides are applied.

“A yield reduction of one per cent per acre results in a total crop loss of about 25 million to 35 million dollars,” the council’s website states. “Annual crop losses in North America from flea beetles potentially exceed 300 million dollars.”

According to the manual put out by the Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission, “damage is most severe when the beetles attack the growing point of the plant. In cool moist conditions, scouting should include observing the underside of cotyledons for pitting and the stem for notching or girdling. Feeding on pods can result in premature shattering and grade loss.”

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On Aug. 30, the government announced a formal request for proposals from interested providers.

“The successful bidder(s) would provide concentrated FMD (foot and mouth disease) vaccines that could be rapidly transformed into usable vaccines,” the agency said in a release.

Livestock producers were promised a vaccine bank in the 2023 federal budget. It had been a long-time ask from industry, which was wary of Canada’s reliance on U.S. vaccine sources in the case of a outbreak occur on the continent.

The budget laid out $57.5 million over five years for the establishment of the resource and to develop foot and mouth disease response plans. The government has also said they would provide an ongoing $5.6 million for the project.

“It’s vitally important that we continue to take steps to protect livestock, and the livelihood of our hardworking farmers, against the threat of animal disease,” Agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay said in the August release.

“By creating a dedicated foot and mouth disease vaccine bank, we’re working to reduce the spread of the disease and the impact that a potential outbreak would have on market access for Canadian producers.”

The Canadian Cattle Association welcomed the Aug. 30 announcement.

“We hope to never need to use it, but having a vaccine bank in place is critical to protect Canada’s beef producers,” president Nathan Finney said. “If FMD occurred in Canada, having a vaccine would minimize spread and expedite a return to normal trade. Today’s news is positive on the progress on preparedness and is the first step of many to follow.”

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In a release Aug. 20, Fertilizer Canada called for federal intervention on the potential work stoppage on Canada’s two major railways. The industry group would like to see binding arbitration that would stop both strike action on the part of the union and lockout action on the part from the railways from going forward.

“We can no longer patiently wait for a resolution,” Fertilizer Canada CEO Karen Proud said. “The federal government must protect Canada’s economy and food security by ordering binding arbitration.”

The labour dispute between the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union and both Canadian Pacific Kansas City and the Canadian National Railway threatens to explode this week. Both railways have issued lockout notices starting Aug. 22. On Aug. 18, the teamsters union issued its strike notice to CPKC, also starting Aug. 22.

“Each and all of the TCRC’s demands remain outstanding at this point in time,” the union said in an online statement published Aug. 18.

Fertilizer Canada estimates that a work stoppage would cost their sector $55-63 million in lost sales a day, “not including logistical and operational costs.”

“In the last seven years, Canadian supply chain labour disruptions have cost the fertilizer industry nearly a billion dollars,” Proud said. “These stoppages are doing immense damage to our reputation as a reliable trading partner. Our customers, who rely on Canadian fertilizer products, are being forced to turn to our competitors in Russia, Belarus, and China. We can’t afford for our railways to shut down, and we can’t afford a passive approach to our supply chains any longer. We need long-term solutions.”

The impact has already been felt, the industry group said. Last week, railways announced that shipment of certain more volatile materials, which included some ammonia products, were being curtailed in anticipation of a potential stoppage. Fertilizer Canada estimates that about 75 per cent of fertilizer in Canada is transported via rail.

Numerous provincial and national farm organizations have called on their members and other members of the public to sign a letter to Canadian Labour and Seniors Minister Steven MacKinnon. The #StopTheStrike campaign also urges the government to invoke binding arbitration under section 107 of the Canadian Labour Code.

“This will provide needed certainty to Canadian farmers and shippers, and their customers around the world,” the letter reads, in part.

The three provincial organizations representing rural municipal governments in the Prairie provinces have launched similar concerns and calls for action.

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Ernst and Young has been named the appointed receiver for the case, according to a court order dated June 11. The document names both Leon’s Manufacturing and Ram Industries as debtors.

The Bank of Montreal, which submitted the application for receivership, says the named companies owe over $16.6 million.

The bank had initially set out repayment demands with a deadline of Aug. 9, 2021. The companies then made “satisfactory arrangements with BMO for BMO to agree to continue to make credit available,” according the bank’s affidavit.

The companies failed to meet their obligations in winter 2023, and a new repayment deadline was set for Jan. 31, 2024.

The owing companies consented to a receiver being appointed in spring 2024.

BMO’s affidavit further pointed to the companies’ difficulty meeting payroll and utilities payments, as well as 15 creditor judgements registered against Leon’s Manufacturing since Aug. 1 last year.

In April this year, the Western Producer noted several legal claims filed against the company from farmers who said they had purchased equipment that they had not yet received.

The company had accumulated years of similar complaints, the Producer and Manitoba Co-operator reported as early as 2020.

As of January this year, farmers had registered complaints with the Saskatchewan agriculture ministry, Better Business Bureau and Alberta Farmer’s Advocate Office. The latter said it had been hearing those reports for two years. Farmers complained of paying deposits for equipment that then failed to appear for months or years.

Ernst and Young said in a notice that those who have questions about the receivership or want to file a claim can contact the receiver at 780-441-4237 or by email.

The Leon’s business dates back to 1952 at Bankend, Sask., about 120 km northwest of Yorkton, where Leon Malinowski operated a welding and machine shop.

Relocating to Yorkton in 1967, the company expanded into product lines including its patented dozer blades as well as land scrapers, front-end loader buckets and bale handlers. The family opened the affiliated Ram Industries at Yorkton in 1973, making hydraulic cylinders for ag equipment and other sectors.

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He’s got more than one variety growing — a grazing-oriented option and the typical silage corn — but the real experiment is happening beneath the canopy. This year, the corn shared space with forage soybean and hairy vetch.

The beans were “very impressive,” he said during a late-January tour to his farm south of Brandon, Man. “In the best spots of this field, where there was 10-foot-tall corn, the beans were probably chest height.”

The idea of adding legumes to intercrops for soil health purposes is well established. The hope is that the field will benefit from added nitrogen fixation, along with the purported other benefits of intercropping, such as erosion prevention, green cover and weed suppression.

From a feed standpoint, both soybeans and vetch are high in protein, offsetting the typical weakness in corn, which is famously high in energy but requires supplementation when fed.

In recent years research stations have explored intercropping in terms of corn grazing and improved soil health, and to gauge whether the practice could reduce time and cost associated with supplemental hay.

How it started

Forage soybeans are new to intercropping species lists in Manitoba.

The idea of a long-growing species, which would stay vegetative in a northern climate, was interesting to Joe Gardiner, co-founder of forage seed provider Covers and Co. The variety he chose, sourced out of South Carolina, was marketed for grazing and as a tool to improve soil health.

The ensuing trials showed promise. With soybeans added, Gardiner reported 40-50 pounds an acre of residual nitrogen in 30-inch corn rows. His own experiments on 60-inch rows showed even more, although the company’s current recommendation is to stick to narrower spacing to preserve biomass yield.

Forage soybeans were later integrated into plots at the Westman Agricultural Diversification Organization. The southwestern Manitoba research station, known for its intercrop innovation, had turned its attentions to forage corn mixes.

Forage soybeans joined tillage radish, Italian rye grass, crimson clover and hairy vetch in the lineup of corn companion crops. They were a stand-out success.

The species has also been put to work on Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives, an applied research farm north of Brandon, said Covers and Co. sales manager Owen Taylor.

“We recommend sowing at 20 pounds per acre, either day before, day after or the same day as the corn planter,” he said. “Most producers will just solid-seed the soybeans, a lot of them, when they put the fertilizer down. Some producers were able to bump the planter over and sow directly between the rows.”

Producers fertilize the corn at regular rates, he added.

The company also urges producers to seed rows north-south to maximize sunlight between the rows.

Corn grazing is untested ground. The company typically sees the mix put to silage, Taylor said, with cows turned out afterward to graze the residue in fall or early winter.

“Probably 60 to 70 per cent of the plant actually ends up in the pile and we’re seeing an increase of 1.5 to two per cent in protein on a feed test. And then what’s left of the beans, guys are grazing it after.”

Producers who corn graze can expect the same soil health, nutrition and water infiltration benefits of intercropping for silage, Taylor said, but it’s unknown how snow load and leaf drop will affect feed quality.

How it’s going

McRae opted for 30-inch corn rows, but backed off the population. His stand was targeted at 24,000 plants per acre, down from the 30,000 he’s done for regular corn grazing.

The soybeans were seeded the day after the corn at the rate recommended by Covers and Co. Hairy vetch was seeded at five pounds an acre.

“I’ve liked it so far,” McRae said of the soybeans. “The beans, I think, are adding a little bit of protein and other minerals to it.”

That’s hard to quantify, he admitted. Feed tests prior to turn out showed an increase in protein and the beans climbed high enough to clear the snowpack, but he doesn’t have a split field set up to directly compare a pure corn system to the intercrop.

“I haven’t really sat there all day and watched them graze through it, but judging by what’s left when they leave the field, they’re eating enough of it that I think they’re getting some benefit,” he said.

Between hairy vetch and soybeans, however, the soybeans are winning. Both the corn and soybeans are glyphosate-tolerant, making weed management easy, McRae noted. The vetch was stunted by the herbicide.

“I think that’s a little bit year-to-year dependent,” he said. “I was hoping the vetch would vine its way up the corn so we would be able to access it this time of year in the winter.”

There are few good herbicide options for a corn intercrop, other than glyphosate.

“It’s just so hard to put another species into it because all of the corn herbicide is meant to kill everything except corn,” McRae said, adding that there is also the challenge of herbicide residue.

He has had a good winter for the experiment so far, Taylor noted. Snowpack has been light, reducing hurdles for soybean uptake.

Covers and Co. does not have different recommendations for corn intercrop grazing versus intercropping for silage, he said.

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In a joint statement June 13, Keystone Agricultural Producers, the Alberta Federation of Agriculture and the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan urged the Senate to pass Bill C-234 before the end of June, when it breaks for the summer.

Why it matters: June 30 is the last possible sitting day for the Senate, after which no business will clear the chamber until at least Sept. 18, when farmers are already looking at harvest.

Both KAP president Jill Verwey and AFA president Lynn Jacobson said the end goal is to have the bill given royal assent by the time farmers want to start drying grain this fall.

“We have strong support from a number of senators,” Verwey said. “We’ve been in contact, certainly. Our MPs that are in Ottawa are certainly having a lot of those conversations with individuals so that they understand the importance and the urgency of getting this passed.”

Verwey said the exemption is critical for farmers.

“Individuals [in the Senate] realize that farmers don’t have a choice and it is a fuel that is used to produce,” she said. “It’s also important even for the welfare of the animals. We’re north of the 49th parallel. We have to use fuel for heating of these barns… In a lot of cases, drying of grain is a normal practice for a number of farming operations.”

The bill passed its second reading in the Senate the same day that farm groups released their statement; it was sent to the standing Senate committee on agriculture and forestry, and for examination by the standing Senate committee on national finance.

It was initially introduced to the Senate on March 30, after spending just under two months in the House of Commons. A total 176 of 322 MPs voted in favour of the bill on its third reading March 29 in the lower house.

The bill must still clear the committee/report stage, as well as a third reading in the Senate, before being put forward for royal assent.

Both Verwey and Jacobson said they were “cautiously optimistic” that the bill will clear the Senate before the summer break. After the end of June, the Senate will not reconvene until September.

“I think they realize that it needs to be done,” Jacobson said, though he worries some other issue may divert the Senate’s attention in the meantime.

“That’s been one of the things in the past. Something else has come up to interfere with whatever you’re trying to do.”

Several senators, including Senator David Wells, who sponsored the bill in the upper house, pointed to the legislation’s multi-party support in the House of Commons.

“This bill is not about whether you like the carbon tax,” Wells said. “Although Conservatives are opposed to the carbon tax in principle, the NDP, Bloc Québécois and the Green Party fully support it. Yet all these parties voted in favour of this bill, along with a number of Liberal members including the chair of the House standing committee on agriculture and agri-food.”

Senators who spoke positively on the bill also acknowledged the lack of alternative fuel sources for grain drying and barn heating.

The exemption for propane and natural gas was characterized as a transition measure, allowing time for newer, green fuel sources to become feasible. The bill includes a sunset clause of eight years for this reason, Wells said. A review would then let the government decide if the exemption should be extended.

Some senators questioned the length of the sunset clause and asked whether having an exemption would be a disincentive for adopting new, greener technologies.

“One of the strategies around carbon pricing is to try to incentivize people to make other choices. It is clear that is a real challenge for farmers in this context, but removing this from the carbon pricing regime does kind of disincentivize that direction,” Saskatchewan-based Senator Brent Cotter said May 9.

“I haven’t really thought about the eight-year clause too much,” Jacobson said. “I guess my focus has just been to get it passed for now. Things are going to change in eight years,” particularly in terms of energy use and cost.

“Just working off past experience with agriculture, we’re always moving forward and looking for better alternatives,” he added.

“Adoption of technology that’s available and processes that are available, people are willing to move in that direction and try different things, as long they’re economical and they can see that there’s an economic benefit as you go forward.”

Verwey urged farmers to contact senators to reiterate the farm groups’ message.

— Alexis Stockford is associate editor of the Manitoba Co-operator.

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The Weston Family Foundation — the philanthropic arm of the Weston business empire — has slated $10 million for those eight projects through the organization’s soil health initiative, it was announced Feb. 13.

The initiative is tagged under the foundation’s “environmental stewardship” stream — a category mandated towards biodiversity improvement, research and sustainable agriculture. Other projects in the stream have funded ecological renewal around the Great Lakes and promoted grasslands.

The new soil health initiative was launched in spring 2022. Successful projects would help spread practices like cover cropping, 4R nutrient management or diverse crop rotations to increase soil organic matter, according to the foundation’s website.

In total, 38 organizations made a bid for the funding, said Eliza Mitchell, chair of the foundation’s conservation committee. Of those, 16 were invited to make a full proposal, with the final lineup decided by a review panel.

“Several [reviewers] were active farmers, but they all had experience in soil health management, some were involved in conservation…and they were all in fair agreement of the outstanding eight,” Mitchell said.

Those standouts “had a really clear focus and a really clear way forward,” she said. “The projects that showed a defined and clear approach on how they would successfully help shift producers towards greater adoption were given more weight.”

The list of chosen projects includes digital soil mapping tools for better nitrogen management, a farmer-led peer network, a reverse auction model to incentivize small grain and cover crop acres, research into cover crop best practices, benchmarking soil in Ontario’s Greenbelt, soil health outreach, a registry to help underpin markets for ecosystem service credits and Indigenous-led education for managing First Nations farmland.

The project list spreads funds widely nationwide, although Mitchell said that was more happy accident than part of the selection criteria. First project assessments were largely blind in terms of location, she noted.

The final list also spans both industry and academic perspectives, she said, pointing to the split of producer groups and universities singled out for funding. Half of the awardees are post-secondary institutions.

“There’s a lot of complexity in soil health and in rebuilding healthy, fertile soil, so there’s lots of ways of going at it. But we wanted to find projects that would help promote beneficial management practices, not just to the individuals involved, but hopefully communicate it out into the wider farming community,” Mitchell said.

— Alexis Stockford reports for the Manitoba Co-operator from Brandon.

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