Ag News

Alberta's Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation RJ Sigurdson has a lot on his plate in the upcoming year.

He says they want to make sure that every year, efforts are being made to continuously strengthen the agriculture industry.

Yesterday, at the Western Canadian Crop Production Show in Saskatoon, SK, a new brand was announced. SaskCanola and SaskFlax announced that they would be amalgamating under one brand called SaskOilSeeds. While this amalgamation isn’t brand new, in fact, they officially merged together on August 1st, 2024, this announcement marks a new chapter in oilseeds for producers in Saskatchewan. Tracy Broughton is the executive director of the new SaskOilSeeds brand, and she talks about why this merger was needed, and how it will help producers of Saskatchewan oilseeds in the future. 

Excitement is building for the 48th annual Manitoba Ag Days, and with the 2025 event just days away, Teresa Hildebrand, the event's media coordinator, says it promises to be similar to past years, with some fun new events.  

With 2025 getting started Saskatchewan will be the host of a number of agriculture events over the next two months, with the province's Ministry of Agriculture preparing for those.

Besides the larger agriculture shows happening across the prairies, the province's Regional Roundup and the Celebrating Rural Ranching Women events are just around the corner.

For Manitoba's pulse and soybean growers, 2024 was a year of unexpected challenges and surprising success. Daryl Domitruk, Executive Director of the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers (MPSG), reflected on the year, noting that early conditions didn’t inspire much optimism.

“Our crops went into cold, dry ground that quickly turned wet and stormy. We were bracing for a tough year,” Domitruk said.

In 2024, Farmers for Climate Solutions (FCS) commissioned market research firm Leger to conduct a national poll of Canadian producers during the 2024 growing season.

The goal was to:

Looking at this year's grow season, Manitoba Agriculture Applied Research Specialist with WADO, Scott Chalmers says something to certainly be watching out for is the herbicide resistant weeds that are starting to really take hold, like Kochia here in the southwest corner of the province.

Chalmers says Kochia has become resistant to a variety of herbicides and if it starts cross-pollinating it could turn into a super weed.  In the eastern region of Manitoba water hemp is a problem and we're not wanting that weed to come this way.

Farmland values continue to rise and as producers head into the 2025 growing year, operations will have to take a calculated approach to either expanding their business or even just staying competitive. Farmland values within Canada increased by 11.5% in 2023 and 12.8% in 2022. Farm Credit Canada or FCC reports on these increasing farmland values and will release a full report for the 2024 year expected in March 2025. Justin Shepherd is a senior economist with FCC who sheds some light on the rise of land prices over the last few years. 

When you think back to 2024, what were the most impactful food stories?

The Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University has released its Top 10 list of most impactful food stories that shaped Canada's agri-food landscape. 

Saskatchewan continued on the path to recovery as another year saw conditions remain closer to normal following the droughts earlier this decade.

The ag sector is hoping to see more progress on that with a good snowpack over winter helping to balance that moisture deficit.

Daryl Harrison, Saskatchewan's Minister of Agriculture, talks about the province's economic fortunes over 2024.