Ag News

Alberta's weekly crop report from September 29th shows 79 per cent of the provincial crop has been harvested, that's an increase of 14 per cent from the previous week.

According to the latest report, the harvest is mostly complete in the Southern part of the province,  and in some areas of the Central region. 

Harvest progress shows peas are virtually complete while spring wheat is at 89 per cent, barley at 91 per cent, oats at 73 per cent, while canola is at  62 per cent .

There's still time to register for the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association's 2023 Regenerative Agriculture Conference.

The event runs November 13th to 15th in Brandon and features international and national speakers, local producer panels, and a tradeshow. 

This year's theme is "Building Your Legacy" and includes a variety of topics.

Lallemand Plant Care's "Hometown Roots Family Contest " provides a way for growers and their families to give back to the communities that they are part of.

During the contest growers in  Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta had the opportunity to enter by either purchasing Lallemand Plant Care inoculants or by writing an essay explaining what farming means to them and how they would leverage the funds to support their community.

Fall dormant seeding perennial forages can be a successful alternative to spring or summer seeding. Spring is generally the recommended time to seed perennial forages as moisture is often most abundant at that time. However, fall seeding can be done to lessen the seeding workload in the spring and wet areas that typically flood in the spring can be accessed to seed in the fall.

We are at day 9 of Grain Rush winners and today we celebrate Page Ranches Ltd. They are a grain farm that west of Strathmore, around the Cheadle, Langdon area who grow things like wheat, barley and canola for the most part.

Day 8 of our Grain Rush winners goes to Hendricks Enterprises Ltd and Mike Hendricks and his crew are still in the mix of harvest and said that everything so far has gone very smoothly. 

"The yield was probably a little better than I was anticipating. I was thinking it was going to be ugly, but it wasn't. We are waiting on a bunch of canola; we are day three of Canola and I think that we have about three to four days left."

Today comes with another local farm who has won a harvest dinner at the Legion courtesy of Baldwin BBQ. Today's Farm is Triple K Farms located in Rockyford.

Cale Kathol says how this year has gone way better than he expected "A couple breakdowns and whatnot, but pretty smooth overall. We just have a little bit left to do, just some picking around and all that but for the majority of everything else we are done."

Voters are being encouraged to think about some of the key issues for the ag sector as they prepare to go to the polls next week. 

Matthew Atkinson, president of Manitoba Beef says it's important to think about party policies when it comes to the ag sector and some of the issues for producers.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) says a partnership happening near Brandon serves as inspiration to advance Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. It can also serve as an example for how conservation success can be achieved hand-in-hand with members of the community.

We're starting to see grain movement pick up as harvest activities start wrapping up in a few areas across the prairies. 

CPKC's assistant vice president of marketing and sales for bulk, Elizabeth Hucker says for the first eight weeks of the new crop year this year we've started 
seeing demand increase.

She notes that in the past four weeks, they've seen an 18 per cent increase in volume as more grain moves into the elevators.

"In Week 7, we moved approximately 534,199 metric tonnes to markets in Vancouver, Thunder Bay, and U.S. destinations."