Featured – Kevin Hursh

Member companies of the Canadian Crop Hail Insurance Association paid out $230 million to Western Canadian grain farmers on nearly 11,000 hail claims this year. The Canadian Crop Hail Association reports a coverage total of $10 billion this year, matching the record liability set in 2023. The season started unusually slow for claims, but picked […]

A newly-incorporated, Saskatchewan-based company is expanding its reach in the pulse and specialty grain market. Harvest Grain Ltd is combining existing assets with new Saskatchewan acquisitions. Bornhorst Seeds Ltd. at St. Gregor in northeast Saskatchewan, a Canary seed buyer and processor, is an existing asset of the company. In the near term, all grain transactions […]

Producers who were not paid for grain delivered to Global Food and Ingredients Inc. will not receive full compensation from the Canadian Grain Commission’s payment protection program. The company’s security was not adequate to cover all of the unpaid grain. Following a review of individual producer claims by the Canadian Grain Commission, 29 eligible claims […]

A grain broker operating in Western Canada has hit a financial squeeze resulting in a number of producers being unpaid for grain deliveries made many months ago. The broker is not licensed to buy grain and therefore unpaid producers have no protection through the Canadian Grain Commission. Grain brokers typically arrange deals between buyers and […]

An extra requirement is coming for the AgriInvest program for 2025. Producers with allowable net sales of a million dollars or more per year will require an environmental assessment to receive the matching government contribution. The change in AgriInvest came out of the federal/provincial/territorial agriculture ministers meeting two years ago, but details are just now […]

The latest field crop market outlook from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has large declines in the expected prices for many pulse and specialty crops. The monthly Outlook for Principal Field Crops report from Ag Canada takes Canadian and international supply and demand into account. Wheat is the only crop expected to have a somewhat better […]

The Canadian Grain Commission revoked the licences of Purely Canada Foods on August 27 and has since received claims from unpaid producers against the company.  Kevin Hursh, Chief Agricultural Editor of SaskAgToday.com, talked with Canadian Grain Commission commissioner Lonny McKague about the situation starting with the number of claims received:

Crop yields in Saskatchewan are better than last year, but the decline in prices will mean lower overall returns. Using Statistics Canada estimated yields and comparing them to the estimated yields from one year ago, all crops are showing a significant increase. It should be noted that the Statistics Canada yields do vary from those […]

Farm cash receipts from crops decreased in the first six months of the year as compared to 2023 while livestock receipts were higher. According to Statistics Canada, farm cash receipts for Canadian farmers totalled $47.4 billion in the first two quarters of the year, down $1.6 billion from the previous year. Crop receipts fell $3.3 […]

The Canadian Grain Commission has revoked the grain dealer licence and primary elevator licences of Purely Canada Foods Corp. in Avonlea, Kindersley and Lajord. According to sources in the grain trade, Purely Canada has been struggling to pay its bills for quite some time and there are many farmers unpaid for grain deliveries, particularly pulse […]