sugar Archives - Grainews

FEED ME: Can well-fed plants fend off diseases and insects?

We examine an Idaho farmer’s program for crop self-defence

By Jay Whetter May 7, 2025

Blake Matthews works with agronomist Jared Cook on an intensive cropping program that improves plant health and soil health, reduces pesticide use and somewhat increases profits. We check in with Prairie experts to see how that program’s principles could work in this region.

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

General

Striking Rogers Sugar workers reach tentative deal

The walk-out sparked sugar shortages and led Alberta sugar beet producers to call for more local investment

By Geralyn Wichers, GFM Network News January 26, 2024

Rogers Sugar says it's reached a tentative deal with the union representing striking workers from its Vancouver refinery.

Investors are increasingly focusing on links between a healthy food system and efforts to fight global warming and preserve biodiversity. Photo: fotografixx/Getty Images

Crops, General

Sugar beet growers seek to expand sector with domestic policy

It wouldn’t stop strikes, but it would recharge Canada’s sugar industry, says producer group

By Jeff Melchior December 13, 2023

The Alberta Sugar Beet Growers want a national domestic sugar policy, which the organization says could lay the foundation for resurgence in the sector.

File photo of farmland in Sierra Leone. (Belen B Massieu/iStock/Getty Images)

Crops, Reuters

Sierra Leone passes new laws to boost landowners’ rights

By GFM Network News August 9, 2022

Freetown | Reuters — Sierra Leone’s parliament on Monday passed two laws that lawyers say will help boost the rights of rural landowners and women against land grabs by big mining and agribusiness firms. The West African country has a history of sometimes deadly conflict between local communities and foreign companies that have cleared huge […] Read more

File photo of wheat being loaded onto a bulk vessel at port in Russia. (YGrek/iStock/Getty Images)

Crops, Markets, Reuters

‘Containergeddon’ drives sugar, rice shippers back to bulk vessels

By GFM Network News October 23, 2021

New York | Reuters — Food traders are switching from containers back to dry bulk vessels to transport refined sugar and rice, hoping to avoid shipping delays caused by container shortages and port congestion the industry is calling “containergeddon,” according to traders. Container-based transportation has been hit by sky-high costs and delays amid booming shipping […] Read more

General, Markets, Reuters

Chickens culled as Brazil truckers disrupt commodity exports

By GFM Network News May 29, 2018

Sao Paulo | Reuters — Striking truckers in Brazil have disrupted supply and exports of farm produce from one of the world’s agricultural commodity powerhouses. Brazil is the top global exporter of soybeans, sugar, coffee and chickens. The strike over high fuel prices has paralyzed Latin America’s largest economy, emptied Brazilian roadways and left major […] Read more

Livestock, Reuters

Honeybees’ attraction to fungicide ‘unsettling’

By GFM Network News January 9, 2018

London | Thomson Reuters Foundation — Honeybees are attracted to a fungicide used in agriculture with “unsettling implications” for global food production, a U.S. scientist said on Tuesday. Tests carried out by a team from the University of Illinois showed bees preferred to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone. […] Read more

General, Reuters, Weather

From sugar mills to hog farms, U.S. agriculture braces for Irma

By GFM Network News September 7, 2017

Chicago/New York | Reuters — Hurricane Irma sent farmers and food companies scrambling to protect processing facilities, farm fields and animal herds in the south and southeastern parts of the U.S. on Wednesday. Florida sugar and citrus processors rushed to secure rail cars and equipment that could be crushed, blocked or turned into flying projectiles. […] Read more

Dave Park, Sarnia-area farmer and president of the Cellulosic Sugar Producers Co-operative stands in front of one of the bale accumulators that will be used by the co-op. Photo: John Greig

Crops

Cellulosic sugar co-op looking for farmer investors

By GFM Network News November 10, 2016

The Ontario-based Cellulosic Sugar Producers Co-operative is now ready to sign up farmers to supply 55,000 acres of wheat straw and corn stover to a new plant the co-op will partly own in Sarnia, Ont. The co-op will be supplying the biomass to a proposed $70 million Comet Biorefining plant to be built in Sarnia. […] Read more

Alberta crop conditions improve: report

U.S. grains: Corn sets contract lows on expectations for big US crop

U.S. livestock: Cattle strength continues

GFM Network News