Featured – Kevin Hursh

Saskatchewan Agriculture’s 2025 Crop Planning Guide is now available on-line. Printed versions will be available at the Crop Production Show next week in Saskatoon and also at regional offices. Some crops show a profit over and above total costs, but many cropping options do not. The Crop Planning Guide uses two yield assumptions – a […]

Crop prices varied dramatically throughout 2024. The agriculture portion of the Saskatchewan government website has graphs of farm gate grain prices over time. Note that prices vary from one location to another each day and also vary geographically depending upon access to processing facilities. However, the graphs show the relative ups and downs. Canola hit […]

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has dropped its canola price forecast for the current crop year. This has ramifications for what the canola price will be for the crop insurance program. Every month, the Market Analysis Group of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada releases an Outlook for Principal Field Crops. In the December 19 report, a number […]

Statistics Canada has dramatically lowered its canola production estimate for 2024. This latest estimate is based on a November survey of Canadian farmers while previous reports in July and August were based on remote sensing and agroclimate data: There has been a great deal of debate and speculation regarding the final canola production number. Provincial […]

The Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture has developed new survey maps for various crop pests including pea leaf weevil, wheat stem sawfly, grasshoppers and cabbage seedpod weevils. The 2024 pea leaf weevil survey show a large reduction in notches per plant as compared to 2023. The most damage was along the eastern edge of Saskatchewan. Wheat […]

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 […]