Featured – Kevin Hursh

At Tuesday’s annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers Association, a resolution on variety use agreements, also sometimes referred to as trailing royalties, received a great deal of debate culminating in a very close vote. Sask Pulse has a breeding agreement with the private plant breeding company Limagrain and royalties will be part of the […]

With a few notable exceptions, most grains, oilseeds and specialty crops are seeing lower prices than one year ago. Cash prices for canola started 2023 in the $800 a tonne range. There were ups and downs through the year, but overall prices ratcheted lower ending the year barely above $600 a tonne. That’s a move […]

While there have been ups and downs, the past 15 years have seen record profitability in the grain sector. Along with that has come rapid land price increases and much larger farms. It’s interesting how the quest for profitability has switched to doing the grain business better rather than finding profitable alternatives. Diversification used to […]

Some changes are coming to the meeting events organized by the crop commissions in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta over the next couple of months. There’s no longer one large meeting event with keynote speakers during Crop Production Week in Saskatoon. SaskCanola, Sask Wheat, SaskBarley, SaskFlax and Saskatchewan Pulse Growers are holding back-to-back annual business meetings […]

Statistics Canada has just released a large amount of farm financial data. SaskAgToday.com’s chief agricultural editor Kevin Hursh has this analysis of the numbers: Most of the Stats Can data is up until the end of 2022 and covers income, expenses, government support payments and farm debt. It’s a blizzard of numbers, but here are […]

Nearly 10,000 randomly selected farms and ranches across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba will have received an invitation to participate in a Citizens Assembly on Agriculture. From those who apply, 36 lottery-selected producers will gather to work on climate and sustainability solutions for agriculture. Producers can register for the process even if they didn’t receive an […]

A new pork processing plant has been established at Moose Jaw. The plant plans to process the 200,000 cull sows that are currently exported to the U.S. Donald’s Fine Food owned by Donald Leung and his family already runs Thunder Creek Pork in Moose Jaw processing a little over 300,000 market hogs per year. Their […]

It has become increasingly attractive for farmers to own a semi to haul their own grain to market rather than relying on custom truckers. Everyone, including farmers, seeking to get a Class 1A driver’s licence to drive big trucks needs MELT, Mandatory Entry Level Training. As Susan Ewart, executive director of the Saskatchewan Trucking Association […]

By Kevin Hursh With an early harvest in most regions, there’s lots of time for soil testing to guide fertilizer application decisions for the next growing season. Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell you the best time to buy next year’s fertilizer and the best time for nitrogen may have been back in July. It’s tough to […]

I don’t claim to be a market analyst, just an analyst of analysts. I follow several market commentaries quite closely and have a few observations about which crops seem to have upside market potential and which ones don’t. Wheat and durum prices have diverged and this could continue. Wheat prices have been steady to softer […]