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Wild horse battle continueS No decisions about contraception program or cull in 2015 » PAGE 14

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Farmers forced to accept high land rents despite low crop prices Grain prices are way down, but it’s expected land rents will take awhile to follow suit

Almost a third of Alberta farmland is rented, with per-acre rents ranging from $25 to $100 depending on the land’s productivity. file photo

af staff

rop prices have plunged, but land rents look like they’ll stay high for a while. “I know that there are guys around here who are renting land for way more than it’s worth,” said Kelly Burkhardt, a Wetaskiwin grain and cattle farmer who rents 450 of his 1,000 acres of cropland. “At the end of the day, it comes

down to, ‘Are you going to pay this? If not, I’ll find someone who will.’ “And there are lots of guys who will right now. I have heard of guys around here who will go around trying to outbid their neighbours.” The young farmer is quick to add he is paying “the right price for the land I’m renting,” but that may be the exception rather than the rule as rents, which soared from 2007 to 2013, are expected to hold or be close to their peak level in 2014.

But the economics don’t justify that, says a farm business management specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. Last year, Ted Nibourg ran the numbers on a four-year rotation producing “respectable yields” (38 bushels for canola, 77 for barley, and two years of wheat averaging 61 bushels) and estimated it could justify a rent of $90 per acre. Today, a fair rent in that situation would be $53, he calculated. “I field a lot of calls on cash rents

and the big problem that I have is educating absentee landowners — or landowners who are a couple generations removed from the farm — who don’t understand agronomics,” said Nibourg. “There’s a mistake and an assumption to a certain degree, and a perception that land rental rates are a function of a return on investment on land.” Those expectations can add up to serious dollars as almost a third of Alberta farmland is rented, with

per-acre rents ranging from $25 to $100 depending on the land’s productivity — and what someone is willing to pay.

Still bidding

Robert Semeniuk of RAS Farms near Smoky Lake said he knows his rent bill won’t be smaller this year. “I’d love the rates to go down because it would make the books

see lAND RENTS } page 6

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by Alexis Kienlen

news » inside this week

inside » One step closer to title Sylvan Lake seeks votes for Hockeyville

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

livestock

crops

columNists

Bison producers seek more members

Big changes coming to breeding

No meeting date in sight for Council of Beef Leaders By Jennifer Blair af staff

he Council of Beef Leaders proposed in last year’s Straw Man Beef Industry Initiative may not meet until the fall, said the man in charge of bringing all the players to the table. “We haven’t had a meeting yet,” said Colin Jeffares, a former provincial assistant deputy minister of agriculture. “I’m not sure when a meeting will take place — certainly not in the near future.” The council is one of the key recommendations of the straw man task force, which was struck after a leading think-tank accused the beef industry of complacency and being overly reliant on a U.S. market instead of developing an independent Canada brand and pursuing high-value export markets. Jeffares said there is “pretty good interest” in creating the council, but it’s been a challenge to find a date for a meeting. However, at least one industry player has signalled its reluctance to participate. Earlier this year, Canada Beef Inc. president Rob Meijer said his organization is “nowhere near accepting of an advisory council.” “The beef industry has enough structures and organizations and committees,” Meijer said in January. “We’re not of the view that we need yet another one.” Jeffares said some organizations have misinterpreted what the council is intended to do. “Some (groups) see it as a new organization, and if you read the straw man recommendations, it’s clearly not,” he said. Rather, the council is intended to be a forum for all players in the beef value chain to develop solutions to some of the common problems plaguing the industry, he said. “That’s going to take some convincing for some people, (but) other people are very willing to do that,” said Jeffares, adding some organizations are overly focused on their own “little corner… of the industry.” “People have different goals, like anything else, and I think they’ve been unable to push aside their own particular goals and look at the bigger picture.” The canola industry is a model for what could be done, he said. “(The canola industry) seems to be able to work very well together at all points along that value chain,” he said. “The beef industry… needs to be in that mindset.” The sector needs to “do something different” if it hopes to overcome the challenges it is facing, he added. “Standing still is not an option here. We can’t continue with the status quo.”

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On-farm semen collection a valuable tool

Demand outpaces supply, bright future seen

With Ottawa pulling back, time to look ahead

Daniel Bezte CO2 levels highest in three million years

Alberta rancher gets economics lesson in Argentina Longview rancher Alex Robertson wanted to see a big global competitor for himself, but was surprised by what he found

A warm climate gives Argentina cattle producers many advantages, but a government tax regime nullifies them. Photo: Courtesy of Alex Robertson

By Jennifer Blair af staff

inter has its advantages, and Ottawa could be worse. Those were two takeaways from a recent trip to Argentina for Alberta rancher Alex Robertson. The Longview rancher was surprised to see his Argentine counterparts feeding their cattle in one coastal region even though winter there meant a “very damp” -7 C. “Their grasses don’t harden up in the winter like our native grasses do so we can have winter grazing,” said Robertson, who was part of a group tour organized by the Foothills Forage and Grazing Association. “(Argentine farmers) have a huge production advantage as to what they can grow, but they still don’t have good native grasses.” Along with a “huge variety of crops”

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most Argentine producers are able to grow two crops a year. Robertson said he made the trip because he wanted to see one of Canada’s major competitors up close so he could ponder what his country’s “competitive advantage” is. “We can’t compete productionwise because they way outproduce us,” he said. “We have to see (what we can do different) to match or beat our competitors.” For now at least, the Argentine government seems to be doing that job for us, he said. In 2006, it tripled its export tax on beef to 15 per cent — a move that quickly backfired, noted Robertson. “The plan was to keep beef cheap,” he said. “Well, once the producers had the tariff, they quit raising as much beef because they couldn’t make as much money. “In (introducing the tariff), Argentina reduced the amount of

beef, and the price of beef stayed high anyway.” Environmental stewardship also suffered. Prior to the tax hike, producers had a “really good rotational program” where they rotated between annual and perennial crops — a “very sustainable farming model,” he said. “But once they changed the beef production through the tariffs, they got rid of the sustainable model and went to straight cropping without any rotation, and they degraded their soil.” One local farmer told the group the government there “makes their rules; they change their rules; therefore, there are no rules.” Seeing the challenges farmers face in Argentina gave Robertson a new appreciation for farming back home. “We think we have problems with our government here, but we have nothing compared to what they have.” jennifer.blair@fbcpublishing.com

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These pigs aren’t welcome Municipal officials seek wild boar ban

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Novak: New pig welfare code shows ‘extremists’ wrong Frank Novak says new guidelines on pain mitigation and gestation stalls show pork producers are responding to concerns

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cation for swine hasn’t been available or used by producers in thePublication: past, said Novak. Client: BASFCAN Alberta Farmer . “By 2016, we’re going to have to figure out how we’ll File Name: 110201499_Headline_earlug_3x3_v2 Page Position: do it, how it will work, and what it will actually cost CMYK PMS ART DIR Project Name: BASFCAN Headline Alberta Farmer Earlug Live Area: in the barn,” he said. “We don’t even have all those . Docket Number: 110201499answers.” Trim size: 3” x 3” S T U D I O Even the new requirements for “animal enrichment,” Bleed: AD#: PMS PMS COPYWRITER A which includes toys and activities for the animals, aren’t straightforward. For example, one of the six categories for enrichments recommends bringing material such as straw or hay into the barn for animals to eat or play with. “Those are major issues for us from a biosecurity perspective,” said Novak. “No producer will willingly bring things into the barn that could bring disease into the barn in order to meet one detail of the code. They will find other ways to meet it. Producers as a group will Converting a barn to a group-housing system can cost up to $1,000 per sow. PHOTO: ALBERTA PORK go to the parts of the list that do not increase the risk of bringing disease onto the farm.” ner in Sunhaven Farms, which manages 12,000 sows in But despite the cost and effort, producers understand BY ALEXIS KIENLEN several farms across central Alberta. things need to change, he added. AF STAFF “A bad loose-housing system is much worse for wel“The position of the producer has always been that if fare than a good stall system.” the value chain, from consumers on down, want proew rules phasing out gestation stalls and requirEffective July 1, the code requires any producer who ducers to do something different, then all they need ing pain medication for castration are proof builds a new barn or renovates an old one to use a to do is say that it’s important and they’re willing to pork producers are responding to consumer group-housing system for mated gilts or sows. Existing pay,” said Novak. “Then the producers will find a way concerns, says the chair of Alberta Pork. stall systems can be used until 2024, when all producers to make it happen. But it cannot rest on the back of “We think it’s an important thing to have, and if we will either have to have group housing or a program that the producer.” follow the code, we’ll have to deal with less random allows sows to leave their stalls for periodic exercise. Hopefully consumers will recognize the effort the outside influence, if you will,” said Frank Novak. Exercise requirements will be developed over the next industry is making, he added. “We need to have this document and this process so five years, said Novak. “When you’re making decisions about buying pork we can talk about production and defend ourselves The challenge is that pigs can be very aggressive. in the marketplace, you should make sure you’re buyfrom extremists.” “If you’ve ever had the opportunity to see what hap- ing it from people who are actually following the code, Most producers are already moving towards the prac- pens when you mix a whole bunch of sows that have which means Canadian producers.” tices enshrined in the new Code of Practice for the Care not been together before, it isn’t pretty,” said Novak. The new code was developed by producers, industry and Handling of Pigs created by the National Farm “The fights are really quite impressive and there can partners, retailers, scientists, veterinarians, and animal Animal Care Council, said Darcy Fitzgerald, executive be a lot of serious injury.” welfare groups (such as the Canadian Federation of director of Alberta Pork. Humane Societies) over the past three years. Public Although the code is only a guideline, producers will Castration changes consultations were held last summer and the new code need to follow it to part of the Canadian Quality Assur- Changes to castration practices go into effect imme- released March 6. It had not been changed since 1993. diately. Pigs castrated after 10 days of age will require ance program. It follows a tumultuous decade for pork producers, Gestation stalls have become a flashpoint for animal anesthetic and analgesic to control pain, a rule that who have been battered by low prices, Washington’s rights activists, who call them inhumane. But removing will expand to swine of any age by July 1, 2016. Pain country-of-origin labelling law, and disease issues such the stalls from a barn and converting to a group-hous- mediation is also now required for tail docking on pig- as PEDv and H1N1. ing system is expensive — up to $1,000 per sow — and lets more than seven days old, and will expand to all Since 2005, the number of Albertan pork producers piglets regardless of age by July 1, 2016. doesn’t automatically improve the welfare of pigs. has fallen from 1,200 to 350. Those rules will also add to the workload of produc“There is no guarantee that you improve animal welfare by removing the stalls,” said Novak, who is a part- ers and increase costs because pain mitigation medi- akienlen@fbcpublishing.com

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

EDITOR Glenn Cheater Phone: 780-919-2320 Email: glenn.cheater@fbcpublishing.com twitter: @glenncheater

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An ‘efficient’ transportation system — except for farmers

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The U.S. elevator system can handle half a crop, while Canada’s can hold about one-eighth

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recently spoke to a group of Kansas farmers that I’d last met in 1987, and they asked for an update on what had happened to the Canadian grain industry since. Well, one or two things. The Pools and UGG almost collapsed, eventually merged and then were taken over by the world’s largest commodity trader. The wheat board has disappeared. Canola production has exploded, barley production has dropped by almost half, soybean and other pulse crop production has taken off… It’s quite the list of changes. Explaining all this required some context, and explaining the basics of the Canadian system. That’s an interesting exercise, because it makes you realize that while we’ve adopted the same open-market system as the U.S., we haven’t yet adopted the system that underpins it, and parts of it we never will — especially the size of the commercial storage and handling system. For much of the period during the 1950s through the 1980s, the U.S. had a problem with surplus production. The government dealt with the problem in two ways. One was to pay farmers to take land out of production, and the other was to pay for storage. The payments were high enough to make it profitable

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shrink their systems and achieve such efficiency while the old wheat board was controlling much of the sales and transportation system. Was this despite the board, or because of the board? Should the system have shrunk as much? Furthermore, is it “efficient?” Measured by the number of times the capacity turns over, yes. But if you’re a farmer looking to deliver right now, you don’t think things are very efficient. Whatever the size of the elevator system, you can only move as much as the railways will ship, but we’re now seeing a somewhat perverse definition of “efficiency” on their part. The national business press has been lauding CP Rail CEO Hunter Harrison for his success in reducing the company’s “operating ratio” (operating expenses as a percentage of revenue). The next paragraph in their story inevitably refers to one of Harrison’s first accomplishments as getting rid of 400 locomotives and 10,000 rail cars. That’s not particularly efficient if you want to ship grain, but shareholders are happy — CP stock was up 50 per cent last year. So is Mr. Harrison. He was Canada’s highest-paid CEO in 2012, with a salary and compensation package of $49 million. (There is no word yet on whether his pay package this year will be affected by the cold winter.) It seems we now have a grain-handling and transportation system that is “efficient” — except for farmers and customers.

Dispelling the myth of Big Agriculture Putting out the facts is farmers’ best way for discrediting their critics

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to build elevators and get a rapid return on investment through storage payments. The storage is still there today, and in fact, U.S. elevator capacity continues to increase. Off-farm commercial capacity in December 2012 was 10.2 billion bushels, up five per cent from 2010. That means that about half the U.S. grain and oilseed crop can go into commercial storage. In Canada today there is only 11.6 million tonnes of storage, which means it can only handle about oneeighth of our crop. Another notable difference between the two systems is that a large proportion of U.S. elevators is owned by local co-ops. In Canada, the system is mainly owned by six companies, which in turn are dominated by the top two — Viterra and Richardson/Pioneer. The Canadian companies deserve compliments for doing such a good job compared to their U.S. counterparts, turning their facilities much more efficiently while also doing a better job of delivering consistent quality. However, they also have some advantages compared to the U.S., where companies are required to report grain sales and there is more market information, such as the number of vessels waiting for what grain, available to all market participants. In Canada, the companies control most of the information. It’s also interesting to consider that the Canadian companies were able to

By Ken Coles

general manager, Farming Smarter

hat would you think if Big Oil or Big Tobacco said to you, “Just trust us!”? Are we guilty of the same thing in Big Agriculture? Do we even consider why they paint all of us that way even those we are just family farmers? So what if we use herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers and even GMOs? After all, we use them responsibly, produce more while protecting and improving our soils and landscapes. Does anyone know that we work hard to do the right things? Lately, some big marketing campaigns have made many farmers shiver, such as the whole gluten-free fad, no added hormones in our A&W hamburgers, GMO-free Cheerios, and Chipotle Mexican Grill’s “Farmed and Dangerous” campaign. What’s scary is the succes these efforts have had with consumers. Honestly, I have nothing against these campaigns. It’s just business on their part. What I am concerned about is the cumulative impact on the image of mainstream agriculture. Even our neighbouring province on

the Pacific coast is now talking of banning GMOs. How did we let things get this far? Many blame social media, but I have a hard time believing that because, more than ever, we have the ability to connect with people and share our stories. Others say it’s easier to sell fear than it is to effectively communicate good science but frankly, I don’t buy that either. But maybe critics of modern agriculture work harder at selling their message than we do. Maybe we’ve been too complacent, believing we should automatically be given respect because “we feed the world.” That is truly noble, but maybe it’s time to listen to our critics so we can better respond to a society that seems increasingly willing to accept their claims. That’s why my organization recently gave Don Huber a platform. The retired plant pathologist from Purdue University is dedicated to raising an alarm that glyphosate (Roundup), glufosinate (Liberty), and GMOs are literally killing millions. Huber used complicated language, mountains of data, and graphic images and charts showing trends of increased illnesses. (Video at www.farmingsmarter. com.)

But he offered no evidence of correlation, either during his presentation or during questions afterward. When I asked one farmer what he thought, he told me that it “scared the hell out of him and that he didn’t know how to respond.” I suspect he spoke for many, and that most people were overwhelmed by the onslaught of jargon. But we have to respond. And we are perfectly able. The whole time Huber spoke, my “baloney detector” was going off like a hockey mom in a badly reffed game. For example, he claimed every scientist who has ever studied glyphosate has failed to understand how it kills plants. He claimed — with no supporting evidence — it causes intolerances to soil-borne pathogens due to its strong antibiotic properties. He also claimed yields are decreasing and the reason we need to add micronutrients is because the ones in the soil are being tied up (chelated) by glyphosate molecules. It’s not clear why a once-wellregarded scientist makes such alarming charges without offering replicable evidence. Despite all this, I was thinking of whether there might be something valuable in all of his

junk science. For example, one of Huber’s claims is the scientists have not been given access to “isogenic” lines, which is the unaltered parent line and the variant that has been genetically modified. Huber claims comparing these nearly identical lines would allow scientists to see if the glyphosate variety actually reduced the available amount of micronutrients. Maybe he has a point. I know farmers would be interested in such a study. Most are already thinking carefully about their glyphosate use in their cropping systems. While a complete ban would not be good for our farms, soils and the environment, farmers understand you can have too much of a good thing. That’s how they operate. Farmers are intelligent, resourceful, and innovative people who work hard at applying new technologies and practices. We believe in sustainability and our goal is always to produce healthy crops with as few resources as possible. And we are not telling the world to “just trust us.” Clearly, it’s time to dispel the myth of Big Agriculture and show the world who is producing their food and how seriously they take that responsibility.

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Expert warns of ‘silent killer’ sneaking up on cash-short farms Merle Good says many farmers will find themselves in financial pain next winter, but can avoid it by acting now

he sharp fall in grain and oilseed prices has dramatically altered the farming landscape. But many farm business experts say the fallout won’t be felt until 2015. Merle Good is one of them. And he says many farmers at the greatest risk don’t know it. He spoke with editor Glenn Cheater.

Q: You say if there’s not a significant rebound in grain and oilseed prices, a lot of producers will be financially vulnerable, but they won’t realize it right away. When will they feel the pain? MG: It will hit home when they go to buy inputs for the 2015 crop year. So if prices stay low and we still have restrictions on the movement of grain resulting in unsold inventories, I believe November 2014, and going into the 2015 crop year, will bring the first indicator of trouble. Of course, if things are stagnant, it’ll be even worse for the 2016 crop year. Those who have a fairly strong balance sheet and significant working capital will

be fine, but those who don’t had better be worried.

Q: Don’t you know if you’re in that boat and heading for trouble? MG: The main issue is that it’s difficult to project that unless you do budgets. And a lot of producers do not do two- to three-year forecasts of cash flow, income statements, and debt payments on a detailed basis. So when trouble comes, they’re in a reactive mode rather that in a proactive planning mode.

Q: Don’t you need a crystal ball to do that? MG: Of course, variability is why a lot of producers don’t do that kind of budgeting. No one thought barley would be around $3 in mid-February when it had been as high as $5.65 (a bushel). So your forecasts can bounce all around and a lot of producers say, ‘Why bother? I can’t control the market anyway.’ But I think you have to do that to determine the impact and see what

it does to your net income and working capital. Cash flow is the lifeline of any agricultural business because our business is so cyclical.

Q: So how does that play out? MG: Fertilizer prices are up quite a bit since November and a lot of producers would have bought their fertilizer then if they had the liquidity to buy it. But they had grain they couldn’t deliver. So it can be a self-fulfilling situation: If you don’t have liquidity, you can’t purchase inputs when you think they’re in the lower range of the price cycle. And it’s usually the same when you want to sell. This year was unusual in that you would have made more selling it off the combine, but usually you make more by holding it and waiting until prices are higher. That’s the trap you get into — you can’t buy inputs when you want to and you’re selling grain when you don’t want to.

Q: You have one financial ratio that you say is key, and which you compare to a

blood pressure test. First, what’s the ratio? MG: Take your operating loan and add your accounts payable plus any cash advances you’ve received. Then divide that by the total of your unsold inventory plus any accounts receivable and any prepaid inputs. Let’s compare two farmers with $1 million in unsold grain and prepaid inputs. Let’s say Farmer A owes $400,000 for his operating loan, unpaid bills, and a cash advance. He’s at 40 per cent and that’s pretty good. But Farmer B owes $700,000. He’s at 70 per cent and that’s trouble. Any time you’re higher than 50 per cent, you should be worried.

Q: What should you do then? MG: Well, that’s why I call it a blood pressure test. There could be a lot of reasons why you have high blood pressure. Maybe it’s your diet or not getting exercise or stress or some combination of those and other factors. You need to investigate and

find those causes. But you also need to take immediate action. For one farmer I worked with recently, the action was to go to the creditor and take some of his short-term loans and spread them out over a longer term. We did a lot of this in the ’80s and early ’90s.

Q: So the goal is to have enough cash so you don’t have to do things you don’t want to do? MG: That hits the nail on the head. You know what they call high blood pressure? The silent killer. It’s the same thing with the operating capital ratio. If you don’t keep track of that, it can be a silent killer. You run short of cash and then you can’t function. That’s when you’ll start panicking. And that’s why you want to take the test and, if you need to, take action now. Merle Good (merle.good.grs@gmail. com) was a taxation and business specialist with Alberta Agriculture for 34 years. He now operates a private consulting business from the family farm at Cremona.

Set boundaries and be safe straight from the hip } Anything that risks the well-being of those on the farm shouldn’t be tolerated, and women need to make sure that message is heard By brenda schoepp

omen in agriculture are exposed to the risk of injury every day. Whether you work full time, part time, are an employee or partner, women and girls on Alberta farms need to ensure they are protected from injury and disability. That starts by setting boundaries for ourselves. A woman I’ll call Pat works in partnership with her husband on a large ranch. They do everything together, including the feeding, calving and pasturing of 1,500 cows. Pat has suffered several broken bones from horse accidents and although she is very fit, her aches and pains grab her at the most inopportune of times. Even though she’s just 37, her hospital rap sheet looks like a crash course in emergency care and that does not include the birthing of a raft of children. I went with Pat and her husband on a chore run one winter morning. It was not fun. Everything was in high gear with little attention paid to the details. Under pressure to perform

“her share,” she roared out of the yard at warp speed, dogs in hot pursuit. At the gate, she screeched to a halt and sighed. “That gate,” she said, “is so hard to open. It has been broken for years and when you tug on it the whole fenceline comes down.” I was shocked. Fixing the gate post would take about a half-hour. Taking the collective time that she struggled with the gate annually, the whole ranch could have had new gate posts. But hubby, she said, would not spend the money to fix it. My reaction was to ask hubby about the gate. Well, the proper latch would cost $129 and the ranch did not want to spend it. I inquired about the cull cow we just loaded — could the money not come from that? How about calculating the hours lost in dealing with the broken gate, did that not cover the repairs a hundred times over? How about the pup they just sold for $500 — would that not fix the post and put the proper latch on? Pat needs to recognize her health and safety is jeopardized every morning when she does

chores. It should not be about the ranch — it should be about the people who live on it. Setting the boundaries on what we will or will not do as a ranching partner or farm owner helps to put teeth into these situations. Creating a protocol in the business plan to immediately repair anything broken, treat anything sick or clean up any mess is important. Pat may have had input into the business plan as a business partner, but her role was not defined. So as the ranch physically fell apart, she did as well. Think about this from the perspective of Pat’s children. As adults we almost accept farm injury or stress injury as part of doing business. But the fragile world of the child only sees their parent being hurt or worse yet — going away. The younger they are, the less they can understand the timeline. “Mommy will only be away for two weeks with that broken leg and then she will be home.” Two weeks? Is that not an eternity to a child? I recall my childhood and the regularity of farm accidents. Dad, the cat with 99 lives, has

lived through gassing, poisoning, crushes, molesting, electrocution, gouging, trampling and major falls. He would spend some time recovering and then jump back into the game at full throttle — always shrugging it off. But in his daughter’s eyes, these were times of fear and anxiety. A child can see that something needs fixing or when adults are headed for disaster. They feel helpless and unheard. I cried many tears and still today accidents happen. But I no longer have a fear or anxiety — that has been replaced by indifference and a quiet anger because I don’t feel that, because of the way he acts, he respects us. And so I look at my own life and try to see it through my daughter’s eyes. How did she see the many times I was bucked off, bandaged up, operated on and hospitalized. Of course I knew that I would get better. But did she? And how has that affected her respect for me? Did I teach her about boundaries or did I cross them all? Today, as illness still strikes me often from a lifetime

of fatigue, is she scared or just simply angry? As women on the farm we need to STOP (stop treating ourselves poorly) for the sake of our long-term health and to set examples about boundaries for our sons and daughters. Not only are our actions alarming, but our undue care and attention may jeopardize the very home, the sanctuary that we build for our children. We must clearly define our limitations and work with our partners to ensure that adequate help is available for the things that we cannot or should not do and build it into the business plan. This allows our business partner the dignity of finding solutions and gives our children a sense of security. A farm is the people who live on it. May they enjoy long, happy, healthy lives. Brenda Schoepp is a Nuffield Scholar who travels extensively exploring agriculture and meeting the people who feed, clothe and educate our world. A motivating speaker and mentor she works with young entrepreneurs across Canada and is the founder of Women in Search of Excellence. www.brendaschoepp.com

OFF THE FRONT

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

LAND RENTS  from page 1 look a lot better, but as far as I know, there is nothing going down — there are still guys bidding, but that’s probably the biggest push,” said Semeniuk, who rents 2,700 acres, about a third of what he farms. “There’s been so much going on that it’s been mainly what the landlords wanted. As the prices were going up, no one has wanted to sign long-term leases.” Semeniuk said he’s been lucky because he’s been dealing with many of the same landowners for many years, and they haven’t been demanding sky-high rents. He also has a variety of different contracts, including three- to fiveyear leases, crop-sharing arrangements, and cash rentals. He said he would like to rent more land, but what land is available is just too pricey. “I know that some guys have moved out of their counties into other areas, but we’re just not structured to go that route,” he said. “For us right now, we’re wanting to expand, but we’re not overly crazy.” Taylor Snyder of Greenbelt Farms near Glendon has been renting land since 2008 and rents all but one quarter section of the 2,200 acres of grain land he crops. His rents have gone up 10 to 15 per cent since he started, but are still on the lower end of the provincial range. Part of that is because “it’s family land” and owners want to know it’s cared for, he said. Retired farmers will usually lower their expectations when the renter goes through the financial numbers with them, he added. “Land is tight in our area, but when you do get it, it’s not super expensive,” said Snyder, who pre-

It will likely take 18 months for land rents to soften, according to Ted Nibourg, farm management specialist with Alberta Agriculture’s Ag Info Centre in Stettler.

Kelly Burkhardt of Crooked Creek Farms near Wetaskiwin said competition is fierce for land in his area and that will keep rents high. SUPPLIED PHOTOS dicts rents in his area won’t go down by more than five per cent in the near term. That’s likely to be the case through 2015, said Burkhardt. Many renters in his area are younger farmers in their 30s and 40s, who are trying to build up their land base. But there isn’t much land for sale, so any acres up for rent attract a lot of interest. “If you’re bigger, you could negotiate, but if you’re little, it’s tough to negotiate prices based on the commodities,” he said. Many landowners have a specific price in mind when they rent, and won’t budge, he said.

Nor are most farmers willing to crop fewer acres this year even when it’s hard to pencil out a profit, said Nibourg, who predicts it will take 18 months before rental rates begin to soften. In the meantime, the best thing renters can do is to talk with their landlord and let them know what they’re facing, said Nibourg. “The landowners need to understand the realities of agricultural economics and what it’s all about — it’s certainly not roses out there,” he said. akienlen@fbcpublishing.com

Taylor Snyder of Greenbelt Farms said that his rental rates are low in his area compared to the rest of the province and likely won’t go down by much.

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Albertafarmexpress.ca • March 31, 2014

Dairy conference offers mix of latest research and farmer practicality Using genomics for feed efficiency, breeding for disease resistance, and crossbreeding hot topics at annual event staff

hen it comes to the Western Canadian Dairy Seminar, you just have to be there, says Gezinus Martens. “For dairy producers this is the most important seminar to go to and the most well-attended one in Western Canada,” said the Calmar-area dairy producer and Alberta Milk director. “It’s a really good mix of farmlevel technology with the higherup, more academic level.” That was evident as a stream of producers, nutritionists and academics questioned the young man operating the manure press at the Five Star Cattle Company, a 330-cow dairy near Lacombe and one of the stops on the preconference tour. “It’s a screw press for reclaiming the solids from manure,” noted Martens. “All the other presses I’ve seen have a big drum behind where the manure sits for 12 or 24 hours so it can heat up and kill the bacteria. But on this farm, the manure goes right to the press. “So of course everyone was asking about their somatic cell count. But even though all the bacteria aren’t killed, their somatic cell count is not higher. So there were lots of questions and discussions about that.” It’s that way throughout the conference with clusters of scientists, advisers and farmers having freewheeling discussions that mix the latest research and what makes sense at the farm level, said Martens, who is one of two Alberta producers on the 16-person advisory committee that develops the conference program. The Red Deer event draws about 700 attendees, with a roughly even mix of academics and industry professionals to farmers, who come from across Western Canada. There were several topics that had producers talking this year, said Martens. “Genomics is still fairly new and there was a presentation on using genomics to predict feed efficiency,” he said. “There was also a lot of interest in something that’s call High Immune Response. Semex is already using this at the farm level to select for offspring that are less susceptible for diseases.” Crossbreeding is another hot topic. “In previous years, people have asked for more information about crossbreeding and we had a couple of presenters on that topic this year,” he said. “It’s a very interesting area because with your first cross, the F1, you get better disease resistance and a stronger cow than a Holstein. You’re really building a better cow. But then it’s a question

of where to go from there. Are you going to breed back to Holsteins or go back to other breeds? If you don’t do it right, your milk volume is going to decline and it won’t be economical. The presenters brought some really good points to the surface and there were some really good discussions.” But while Martens insists that “if you don’t go, you really miss out,” all of the papers from the 28 presentations will be available online at www.wcds.ca later this year. Alberta Farmer will highlight some of these presentations with short articles from Alberta dairy farmers who were at the conference and have a reading recommendation for their fellow producers. Look for Dairy Cases in future editions of the paper. glenn.cheater@fbcpublishing.com

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Officials want ban on wild boar farming because of feral pigs threat Wild boar are the most destructive invasive species south of the border, causing hundreds of millions in damage each year BY ALEXIS KIENLEN AF STAFF

Wild boar are nocturnal and hardy and can cause major damage to croplands and feedstocks. PHOTO: GEOFF THOMPSON

he time has come to ban wild boar farming in Alberta, say field men and municipal officials in the Peace. “According to Alberta Agriculture’s information, there are only six or seven viable wild boar producers in the province,” said Normand Boulet, agricultural field man for the MD of Smoky River. “Our feeling was that if we were to get rid of those wild boar once and for all, then we could go after the ones that are at large, exterminate them and rid them from the province — period — before

they become an issue like they are in the United States.” Wild boar are the most destructive invasive species south of the border, with an estimated four million to six million feral animals roaming the countryside. They not only destroy crops, but root up the ground so badly that fields have to be levelled before they can be planted again. In Texas, the worsthit state, it’s estimated wild boars cause more than $400 million in damages annually. And while feral boars haven’t been a major problem in Alberta, the threat can’t be discounted, said Boulet. “In the 1990s, there were 200 or 300 animals running loose in Smoky River county, getting into

feedstock, trampling grain and generally being a nuisance,” he said. “But also, people were quite worried. Your child is standing in the dark, waiting for the bus and there’s a potential for a mom and some piglets to come… these things end up being a wild animal and they’re very ferocious.” That view is echoed by Phil Merrill, provincial pest and rat specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. “Our problem is in its infancy right now,” said Merrill. “We read or hear of horror stories in other counties and states that have really had a huge problem with wild boar. We don’t want to get into that situation. We’re trying to do our best to keep that from happening.”

Dutch elm pruning ban in effect April 1 ALBERTA AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT RELEASE

o help keep Alberta free of Dutch elm disease (DED), the Society to Prevent Dutch Elm Disease encourages everyone to respect the provincial elm pruning ban between April 1 and Sept. 30. To help eliminate beetle habitat, it is important to properly prune all dead wood out of elm trees and dispose of all pruned elm wood and elm firewood by burning, burying or chipping by March 31. Stored elm wood can harbour the elm bark beetles that can carry DED. “Elm bark beetles, responsible for spreading the deadly DED fungus, feed on healthy elms and breed in dead and dying elm trees,” says Janet FeddesCalpas, the society’s executive director. “If elm trees are pruned during the pruning ban period, these beetles which are active at this time can be attracted to the scent of the fresh wound and possibly infect otherwise healthy elm with DED. Once an elm tree is infected with DED it will die within that year.” Having trees pruned properly is important. Many trees are killed or ruined annually from improper pruning. Pruning, like any other skill, requires knowledge and should be done by a professional certified arborist who can determine what type of pruning is necessary to maintain or improve the health, appearance and safety of your trees. Topping or removing an excessive amount of live wood is not recommended on any variety of trees and will weaken the tree’s structure. For more information, visit www.agric.gov.ab.ca and type Dutch elm disease in the search box.

The calm before the...

Alberta has just over 31% of the farmland in Canada.

Scott Schiffner, wondering when the weather is going to break, near Strathmore, Alberta

CASHFLOW І FINANCING І CLOSE TO HOME І AG KNOW-HOW ™ Trademarks of Alberta Treasury Branches.

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Ban proposal fails

Harsh winters in 2005 and 2006 killed most of the wild boars in the Smoky River area, but the threat remains, Boulet said. That’s why in January, the agricultural services board in the MD of Smoky River proposed a ban on wild boar farms. The resolution passed at the regional level, but garnered only 40 per cent of votes at the provincial agricultural services board annual general meeting. “It’s disappointing that it didn’t pass, but I guess people are concerned about people’s right to farm,” said Geoff Thompson, an agricultural services manager on leave from Lac Ste. Anne County, which has some of the province’s worst problems with wild boar. There are no wild boar farms left in Lac Ste. Anne, but people say a local boar farmer who went out of business simply released his animals into the wild, said Thompson. “The markets and the game farm system never took off, so there were a number of producers who were raising them who were just not making the money they were hoping to have made,” said Boulet. “Some killed their herds off, but others opened their gates and let them go.”

Geoff Thompson, agricultural field man on leave with Lac Ste. Anne County, took this photo of damage caused by wild boar on his neighbour’s property. Since 2008, feral wild boars have been classed as pests under Alberta’s Agricultural Pest Act — which means they can be shot or snared without a licence. There is also a bounty, with the province paying $50 for each pair of ears submitted. Last year, Lac Ste. Anne County collected 24 pairs of ears, with two or three collected by the MD of Smoky River, which pays

an extra $50 per pair. About 800 boar have been killed in the bounty program. While feral boars need to be eradicated, a ban on wild boar farming would be going too far, said Earl Hagman of Hog Wild Specialties, who has been raising the animals for both hunting and meat near Mayerthorpe since 1991. “We have cattle and we have grain, but the wild boar is the

most important part of the farm,” he said. In the past, some operators may have turned wild boar loose, but that’s no longer the case today, he said. “About 15 years ago, there were 200 people raising wild boar in Western Canada and now there might be a dozen,” said Hagman. “The ones who are left are pretty responsible and are doing it as a living. Losing an animal to any of these producers would be like losing a cow. Nobody wants to lose one, so everybody works really hard to contain them.” Boars are worth between $800 and $1,500 per animal, he said. While fencing the animals properly is challenging, Hagman said people have cut his fences so they can hunt the boars after they escape. “About four or five years ago, we had our fence cut 12 times in one year. It’s really difficult to monitor that,” said Hagman. New fencing standards for wild boar farms were enacted in 2012, but operators have several years to comply. akienlen@fbcpublishing.com

You’re making the toughest decisions of the year right now. This is the critical time. These next few weeks. The time when all of your experience, all of your knowledge – and all of your intuition – gets put to the test. Our team at ATB Financial understands that most bins in Alberta are at capacity. Market trends are uncertain, Beef is higher than previous year, while grains and oilseeds are a bit volatile right now and Mother Nature well she’s is a wild card. Welcome to another season of putting it ‘all in’, and going all out. It’s not for everyone, this way of living. Because only those who’ve stood where you’re standing right now, can really appreciate how important the choices you’re weighing right now really are. Choices that demand one very level head – and a whole lot of heart. Let the new growing season begin. Long Love This Land.

atb.com

Alberta Flavour offers a hand up to new food businesses ALBERTA LIVESTOCK AND MEAT AGENCY RELEASE

aunching a new food product is a logistical challenge with little room for error, especially when you are dealing with a large-volume buyer like Northlands. In partnership with the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency (ALMA), Alberta Flavour, a Northlands initiative, is helping Alberta’s emerging agri-food businesses gain valuable experience working with industrial buyers. Part of Northlands’ mission is to contribute to the development of a strong and diverse local economy. Alberta Flavour assists small- and medium-size food processors by creating a learning process for these companies and providing a controlled setting for them to develop their brand. Participating companies are given opportunities to work with Northlands’ food-service operations to develop new products and move existing products through Northlands’ distribution network. “There are a lot of gaps in knowledge and experience that a new food business can get lost in,” said Jessie Radies, Northlands’ local food associate. “The Alberta Flavour initiative is about giving these businesses the support and practical experience they need to be successful with institutional buyers. We are trying to accelerate the growth rate of these businesses by helping them avoid some of the common mistakes that food companies make when moving from retail to largescale food service.” Alberta Flavour complements the efforts of the Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc. Companies graduating from the facility can enter the Alberta Flavour initiative to conduct realworld testing of their products and supply chain systems. In addition to the opportunity to move actual products through Northlands, the companies are able to draw on the experience of Northlands’ staff for advice on marketing, sales and business management.

FARMING IS ENOUGH OF A GAMBLE...

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news » livestock

U.S. pork stocks swell to record

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

CCA launches new logo

The amount of pork in U.S. cold storage warehouses in February reached a record high for a third straight month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s monthly cold storage report issued Mar. 21. Analysts attributed last month’s bloated stocks partly to processors and retailers salting away pork to avoid a potential supply crunch during the spring and summer peak barbecue seasons, especially if production declines as the deadly PEDv pig virus sweeps through U.S. farms.

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association has launched a new logo as the latest part of a rebranding process that began with the launch of the new CCA website in the fall of 2013. In keeping with tradition, there are two versions — the full version features the CCA acronym and association name along with the tagline “National Voice of Cattle Producers” and the second is a standalone CCA acronym in the same font with the tagline “Since 1932.”

Alberta bison producers putting out the welcome mat for new entrants Bison Producers of Alberta says demand outpacing production and newcomers can make a good living with low-maintenance livestock By Jennifer Blair af staff / ponoka

“We have to start (building bison herds) now if we think about five years or 10 years or 15 years down the road.”

f you’re looking for low-maintenance livestock, strong profits and a bright future, the Bison Producers of Alberta has a proposition for you. That’s the gist of the association’s enthusiastic new promotional video, but the organization isn’t trying to buffalo anyone — it’s all true, says chair Thomas Ackermann. “We’d like to see if we can attract more people into our exciting industry,” said Ackermann. “People are showing a really strong interest in the bison industry.” Strong prices and growing demand have buoyed the sector and even though there are more than 500 bison producers in Alberta, more are needed, he said. “Canadian consumers are really starting to catch on,” said the Lacombe rancher. “That’s moving us away from the niche market where we started to (where) now retailers are carrying bison... If we want to maintain the markets we started building up and the demand we created, we have to supply those markets.” But building a bison herd takes longer than a cattle herd, and so the sector is keen to welcome every potential entrant, he added. “We have to start (building bison herds) now if we think about five years or 10 years or 15 years down the road.” The producers featured in a five-minute video (available at www.bisoncentre.com) note that because bison are low maintenance (feeding is required but calving season is strictly a stay-away proposition), you can keep your day job while starting out. But getting into the bison business requires careful research and a significant investment. “Since bison is a land-based production, you can’t get away with small acreages,”

Thomas Ackermann

Cody Spencer is keeping his bison on his mentor’s ranch near Foremost as he looks for land to start his operation. photo: courtesy Cody Spencer said Ackermann. “If you want to run a certain size of an operation, you need a land base, which in Alberta means money.” Newcomers are advised to start with at least 10 animals — a bison cow costs about $1,300 — and to invest in proper fencing and handling systems. “It pays off to have a proper setup,” said Ackermann. “It doesn’t have to be the most expensive or most elaborate system. But something that keeps you safe and your animals safe requires some investment.” And get to know an established bison producer before spending any money. “We encourage people to look for a

mentor,” he said. “Visit places to see how they do it… and go from there.”

‘Bright future’

That was the approach 24-year-old Cody Spencer took when he became interested in bison two years ago while working on a cattle ranch. “The (cattle) ranch that I was working at before… was a 50,000-acre place,” said Spencer, who grew up on a grain farm in southern Alberta. “It was like the open range, and working there, I couldn’t help but imagine what that place would be like with bison on it. I just did a lot of research and decided

I wanted to get involved with them one way or another.” Spencer visited several bison ranches before finding a rancher in his area near Foremost who was willing to mentor him. “I’ll be buying animals from him to start a cow-calf operation, plus buying yearlings to market for meat,” he said. Land is the biggest hurdle, he said. “I’m in the process of trying to acquire land, but the value of land is so high,” he said. “Any land you get into probably isn’t going to be set up for bison, so you have to either be really upgrading the facilities or starting from scratch.” Having a mentor makes a big difference, he said. Once Spencer buys his heifer calves, they’ll stay on the ranch where he’s working for the next three years until they’re bred. Then he’ll move them to his own land — an arrangement that will allow Spencer time to purchase land and build handling systems. “I’ve got some time to get everything set up and working before I actually get the animals there,” he said. Despite those challenges, Spencer said he is “really optimistic” about his prospects. “There seems to be a bright future in bison.” jennifer.blair@fbcpublishing.com

Bison producers need to make the switch to RFID tags as of April 1 By Jennifer Blair af staff / ponoka

ison that are still sporting dangle tags as of April 1 will need to be retagged with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags before being moved. “Traceability is always a concern

for the livestock industry, so effective April 1, the RFID tag is the only legal tag for bison,” said Terry Kremeniuk, executive director of the Canadian Bison Association. The move should come as no surprise to bison producers, he said. “We made the decision about eight years ago to move away from dangle tags, and we believe that most dangle

tags have gone through the system,” said Kremeniuk. The switch was made at the request of “those involved in the industry,” and just makes sense now that RFID tags have become the standard, he said. “It creates a hassle if you don’t stick to the one (system).” While bison being sold to another

producer or moved off from their farm of origin will need an RFID tag, those headed for the slaughterhouse can keep their old tags. “It’s my understanding that CCIA and the slaughter facility will work with you as long as you have a tag in hand,” said Kremeniuk. jennifer.blair@fbcpublishing.com

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

National traceability for hogs becomes mandatory July 1 Hog producers must keep records and report all movements of pigs from birth to slaughter STAFF

og farmers and handlers in Canada have until July 1 to get their operations Pigtrace compatible. Amendments to the federal Health of Animals Regulations published Feb. 26 in the Canada Gazette make traceability of farmed pigs mandatory effective July 1 this year. The same rules apply to farmed wild boars starting July 1, 2015. The amendments will require farmers and other “industry custodians” to keep records and report all movements of pigs, from birth or import to slaughter or export, and also lay out the rules on how pigs and wild boars are to be identified.

Pigs dumped in southern Chinese river It is a smaller-scale repeat of last year’s pig dump

The new rules apply to “all domestic pigs that are farmed for food production, including those that die on farm and cannot enter the food chain.” The amendments allow the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to make a deal with a “third-party administrator” — in this case, the Canadian Pork Council (CPC) — to set up and maintain a comprehensive central database of “up-todate information as to the identification, movement and location of all pigs in Canada.” The rules will require “custodians” of pigs to provide information directly to the CPC. When pigs are transported from one site to another, such as for sale, shows, breeding or slaughter, both the sender and the recipient of

the pigs will be required to report the movement of the pigs to the administrator within seven days. Pigs shipped directly for slaughter, however, will need to be identified with an approved tag or slap tattoo indicating a site number, instead of a number unique to the pig. A mandatory traceability system, such as those already in place in Canada for cattle, bison and sheep, is expected to help cut the response and investigation time in an animal disease outbreak, from days down to “a matter of minutes,” the CPC said in a release. The council said its traceability program, Pigtrace Canada, will “continue to work with the pork industry and with the federal and provincial governments to become compliant” for the July 1 deadline.

The amendments will also apply “national consistency” in the pig sector, the council said, by “building on what is already in place in some provinces,” such as the swine traceability system in Alberta. A solid traceability system “requires significant investment in technology and time from all industry stakeholders, and a significant investment in administration to ensure successful coordination of the system, effective communications, customer service for industry stakeholders and most importantly, an efficient trace-out of animals in the event of an animal disease,” the CPC release said. “Sufficient time has been allowed to complete and deliver enhanced activities for producers

and will have the program fully implemented in advance of the implementation date.” The federal government estimates compliance costs for mandatory hog traceability will run at about $1.27 million per year across the industry, with administrative costs estimated at about $270,000 a year. Estimates from outbreak simulations suggest the net economic impact of a major animal disease outbreak, such as foot-and-mouth disease, in Canada would be at least $15.7 billion, the government said. If a traceability system such as the planned Pigtrace system is in place at the time of the outbreak, the government said, “these costs will be reduced by $6.1 billion or more.”

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he decaying bodies of at least 131 dead pigs were found in a major river in China’s eastern province of Jiangxi, the official Xinhua news agency said March 19. China’s new leadership has identified pollution, long a source of public discontent, as one of its top challenges, and vowed to more strictly police firms that get free rein to pollute from local governments eager to maintain jobs and revenue. Last March, thousands of dead pigs dumped into a river that provides water to Shanghai sparked widespread outrage about environmental degradation, which has been the price of China’s rapid economic growth. The water authority in the provincial capital of Nanchang said it found the dead pigs on Saturday in the Ganjiang River, which is a major tributary of the Yangtze. It was unclear where exactly the carcasses came from or why they had been dumped. Xinhua did not say what steps authorities were taking to find out why the animals were thrown into the river, but the pigs are believed to originate from the river’s upper reaches. In last year’s incident, authorities said traces of a common virus were found in some of the animals, indicating that farmers might have dumped them.

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

On-farm semen collection is a valuable tool beef 911 } With a valuable bull, on-farm collection becomes

like an insurance plan preserving his genetics for the future By roy lewis, dvm

his is the time of year when either your own hot breeding prospects or ones for sale are coming to the forefront. A good insurance plan is collecting semen on these hot new or proven prospects, especially when you incorporate artificial insemination into your program. This article will review some of the finer points of on-farm semen collection. On-farm semen collection has evolved greatly over the last several years, and now involves much less testing for disease than previously. Today, some simple reporting to the government is all that is necessary — we no longer need to test for brucellosis. It must be emphasized that onfarm semen collection is only for your own use. If multiple owners own a syndicated bull, each owner can receive some semen but it cannot be resold commercially. With a valuable bull, onfarm collection becomes like an insurance plan preserving the genetics of that bull for future usage in the event he is sold, dies, becomes incapable of natural service, or his testicles degenerate. There are, as you all know, a myriad of

things making a bull incapable of breeding. So semen in the tank is breeding insurance if the bull’s genetics are important to maintain your breeding program. However, you still may want to insure a valuable bull through the normal channels so he can be replaced in the event some unforeseen event happens. On-farm collection resembles a semen evaluation but there are many further steps taken. In my opinion, it is very important to help ensure success of the collection by conducting a breeding soundness evaluation or BSE (this is the good abbreviation, not the one for bovine spongiform encephalopathy) done shortly before (within two weeks) of collection. This ensures the semen is fresh, very low in defects and that you can get adequate volume to make collection worthwhile. There are three avenues for collection. There are a small number of accredited private veterinarians in Western Canada who collect semen. The commercial stud operations also run on-farm collection — often as a day service whereby the bull is transported to the farm, its semen collected and returned home. Again the tests are avoided. But for resale in Canada or any other country,

appropriate testing must be done by your accredited veterinarian and the collection made at an AI stud which is appropriately certified and has quarantine facilities set up. The semen must then be quarantined as well as stored and distributed out of these facilities when sold. Yet another avenue for on-farm collection has private veterinarians collect and extend the semen then ship it via courier in specially designed containers, which chill the semen en route. This may be simpler for the producer but there are many variables out of our control such as speed of the courier and ambient temperatures. Often the semen is then chilled for at least a day before processing. In remote locations this may be an option, but be warned the failure rate is definitely higher than direct on-farm collection. Private veterinarians will use an electroejaculator like they do for normal testing, but the object is to stimulate longer to get the maximum amount. The sample is still checked for motility and morphology. I like a high standard for morphological defects, and keeping the semen warm (around 35 C) is critical at this point. A count is done to determine the concentration (number of sperm

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per millilitre) and based on the volume collected, a final calculation gives us the number of straws to put up. The goal is to strive for 10 million live sperm per straw, taking into account the freezing and thawing process will kill up to half of the live sperm (some are dead to start with). Most times 30 million to 40 million sperm are put up in each straw. More is not always better as too many sperm can lead to detrimental results. The semen is extended (diluted) to the proper concentration using a commercially made product mixed in exacting proportions with egg yolk and distilled water.

Cooling

Once diluted properly with extender, the semen is gradually chilled over at least a three-hour period and then loaded into the properly labelled straws and sealed. Another timed process has the semen gradually frozen in liquid nitrogen. The straws are then loaded into canes, which are also properly labelled and placed in your tank. The final test is performing a post thaw on the semen to ensure it has survived well enough through the freezing process. This is where all the hard work hopefully pays off. Semen from some bulls simply

does not freeze well and even though all the parameters are good going in, the post thaw fails and the semen must be destroyed. You need certain criteria on frozen semen or conception rates would suffer and that would be more of a disaster than discarding some semen. Hopefully this article has explained the process clearly and for some, this may be a very viable procedure on some young herd bull prospects this spring. Costs are generally based on a collection fee and a per-straw fee for putting up the semen. There are probably fellow breeders who have had this done who would be worth talking to. This will give you the producer perspective and make your decision easier. As the cattle industry recovers, AI is increasing in popularity to maximize gain and that is where having semen in the tank from good-quality bulls will give you genetic gain. It can be done for both bulls in purebred herds and commercial herd sires. Have a great breeding season and may all the sperm swim straight. Roy Lewis is a Westlock, Albertabased veterinarian specializing in large-animal practice. He is also a part-time technical services vet for Merck Animal Health.

Student farm employment program Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development release

ow is the time for farmers to apply for the Summer Farm Employment Program. This program gives Alberta’s youth the opportunity to gain farm work experience and provides wage support to farmers for the months of July and August (to a maximum of $400 per month), as well as worker’s compensation coverage and safety training information. Employers must own or rent a farming operation in Alberta with gross production of $25,000 per year, and work must be directly related to the farming operation.

Employees must be residents of Alberta, between ages 15 to 24 years and cannot be a direct relative of the employer.

This does not include domestic work or child care. They must recruit their own employee, provide daily supervision, and ensure safe working conditions. Monthly records of time worked must be completed by the employer. Employees are paid by the farmer and by the government for each respective part of their salary, which must meet provincial minimum hourly rates. Employees must be residents of Alberta, between ages 15 to 24 years and cannot be a direct relative of the employer. Employees must not be working full time anywhere else or attending school while participating in the program. If they have been working full time prior to July 1 for the employer, they are not eligible for the program. Employees require a social insurance number. All summer farm employers and employees are required to review a safety DVD together. Employees must complete and pass a safety quiz based on the DVD information in order to be accepted into the program. Application forms and detailed information can be found at www.agric.gov.ab.ca or by calling 310-FARM. The deadline for applying is May 31, 2014, and signatures of both employee and employer must be included.

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Bright future for lamb producers, says Ackerman Branded, value-added Canadian Lamb Company sets sights on underserved market dominated by imports BY DANIEL WINTERS STAFF / NEEPAWA, MAN.

our years in the making, the Canadian Lamb Producers Co-operative (CLPC) is ready to start buying finished lambs this spring. “Our plan is to start small and ramp up,” said CEO Terry Ackerman, at a recent information session hosted by the Manitoba Sheep Association. The CLPC, which targets 650 to 1,000 members across nine provinces, plans to exploit new technologies such as RFID tags for traceability and an electronic ultrasound grading system to reward quality. The ViewTrak probe, developed by a Canadian company, is used to grade 25 million hogs each year, and an algorithm for lamb is currently being developed. Data from each carcass will be available to all co-op members online so they can use it to adjust their production and management systems. “We’re also probably going to start DNA swabbing them as well,” said Ackerman. “At some point we’re going to want to know the genetic information of your rams so we can tie it back into Genovis.” The CLPC, the first-ever federally incorporated national co-op, will own and oversee a corporate marketing arm called the Canadian Lamb Company, which is due to launch in March.

Serial entrepreneur

Ackerman, a serial entrepreneur who has worked with many corporate startups including the wildly successful Organic Meadow co-op in Ontario’s Amish country, said that the value of the Canadian sheep industry has been neglected for decades. Imports of Australian and New Zealand lamb dominate the industry with a 58 per cent market share, and the volume of sales amounts to an extra one million lambs per year. Sales of imported lamb in the past nine months have soared 20 per cent, roughly the equivalent of 20,000 lambs, and the market is growing steadily, mainly due to the 40,000 immigrants each year who “eat lamb like you eat beef,” he said. “Every study out there says they want Canadian products. Now we just have to figure out how to make you enough money so you can expand your flock,” said Ackerman. Canada’s ethnic communities are growing, and in places like the Greater Toronto area, enormous supermarkets are popping up that sell only ethnic foods. “What do they sell? Lamb and goat. What can’t they get? Lamb and goat,” said Ackerman. He added that in Ontario, lamb burgers sell for $5 for a 3.5-ounce patty, and to get them, customers must put their name on a waiting list. “Who ever heard of going into a grocery store and putting your name on a list? This isn’t the Soviet Union,” he said.

and sausages makes it easier to line up sales to supermarkets as well as major restaurant suppliers such as Sysco that have a product portfolio of over 450,000 products. Of that massive list, he noted, there are only four lamb products. By operating a wholly contracted-out, cold chain based on frozen convenience products with a 12- to 18-month shelf life, and arranging markets for offal and offcuts, hides and byproducts such as heads, all the value can be captured, he added. Potential for growth in lamb marketing is everywhere, because products such as lamb pizza simply don’t exist, and even shepherd’s pie is currently being made with beef. Three collection points have

been established in Brandon, Steinbach and Ashern to pick up lambs from Manitoba members, some of the over 100 across Canada who have paid a $500 membership fee and a onetime $30-per-head fee for every lamb shipped per calendar year with a minimum three-year commitment.

Signing up

All breeds of finished lambs will be bought, with freight from the collection points paid by the co-op. Another 100 producers have signed on to date, and 30 more are on a waiting list. The average flock size of the membership is over 300 ewes, but some have as few as 25, said Ackerman. Producers will be paid a five-

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Terry Ackerman, CEO of the Canadian Lamb Producers Co-operative, holds up an RFID wand and an electronic grading device, two new technologies that he believes will help the co-op unlock more of the value in Canadian lamb. PHOTO: DANIEL WINTERS cent premium over the Cookstown, Ont., average market price, a 16 per cent grading quality premium, and the possibility of dividend payouts from the Canadian Lamb Company after three years. Ownership of brand equity

GETTING OUR PIECE OF

could have significant future value, said Ackerman. “When I started with Organic Meadow, it was $1,500 to get in. Now it’s $40,000 – and you get a free hat,” he joked. daniel.winters@fbcpublishing.com

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Global Markets --------------------------------------

BEEF 2014: INTERNATIONAL LIVESTOCK CONGRESS

Beef 2014: International Livestock Conference This year’s conference will focus on the opportunities of marketing the whole carcass. With the trends that are taking shape today, there are many opportunities for the future. Hear an update on the economy – local and globally, the market opportunities of the whole carcass locally and globally – and what you can do to enhance this opportunity and why it is important to you.

ILC Beef 2014: Wednesday July 09, 2014 Deerfoot Inn & Casino, 1000, 11500-35 Street SE, Calgary, Alberta

Waiting lists

Value adding is key to Ackerman’s strategy for generating profits. That’s because packaging lamb products such as kebabs

Cattle photo courtesy of Canada Beef Inc.

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Wild horse battle continues No decisions made about contraception program to reduce horse numbers or cull in 2015 By Alexis Kienlen af staff

he wild horse cull has ended, but not the controversy. Just 15 horses were captured — a small fraction of the 196 allowed under permits issued by the province. This year’s short season was likely a factor, said a government spokesperson. Legislation allows the capture season to run from Nov. 1 to March 1, but this year’s season began in the third week in January and ended Feb. 15. “Another reason is that there were fewer people applying for capture licences than in the past, but I couldn’t speculate on why that is,” said Carrie Sancartier, spokesperson for Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development. Three permits were issued for this year, but only two were picked up. Permit holder Jason Bradley caught the largest number — 12 horses. But critics say the low capture numbers are proof the cull wasn’t needed. “There have been two really harsh springs that have affected the wild horse foal survival rate,” said Bob Henderson, president of the Wild Horses of Alberta Society (WHOAS). “We thought it would be an excellent opportunity this winter to establish whether or not the wild horse population is ballooning out of control the way that the SRD would like you to believe. Or

A family of three horses was captured using Bryn Thiessen’s permit. These horses are being gentled, in the hopes that they will be adopted in the future. supplied photo if Mother Nature and natural biological factors are actually working to control the number of horses.” An aerial survey last March estimated the wild horse population at 980 animals — which suggested their numbers (778 in 2012) were rising rapidly. But Henderson said provincial officials overestimate both conception rates and how many foals survive their first year. However, protests near the capture site may also have been a factor, he admitted. Bradley has previously charged that opponents of the capture have trespassed on his land,

and used snowmobiles to drive horses away from capture sites or camped near them to deter the animals from coming near them. Although subjected to a storm of criticism, especially in social media, one of the permit holders worked with WHOAS to capture three horses that had wandered onto private property. Permit holder Bryn Thiessen also helped relocate the three horses to the property of a WHOAS board member, where the group is working to gentle them with hopes of future adoption. Some of the 15 horses captured

this winter have also been sent to new homes. “One of the biggest reasons they were re-homed is due to the outcry that was going on at the time,” said Henderson. WHOAS will continue to push for a contraception program, which uses a special gun to shoot barbless implants containing contraceptives, he said. Dr. Judith Samson-French, a veterinarian who successfully implemented contraception in dog populations on reservations in northern Alberta, outlined the program at a meeting of the pro-

vincially appointed Feral Horses Advisory Committee earlier this month. The committee, composed of 15 stakeholder groups, didn’t make a decision on the program, but Henderson said government officials at the meeting also didn’t offer supporting evidence to prove that the wild horse population numbers were too high, or that the horses were damaging the habitat. “We’re certainly opposed to any cull,” said Henderson. “We’ve got a humane alternative to the way that we’re doing things now, so why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to put into place this contraception program, and at least see what it can do.” Sancartier said it’s too early to say if capture permits will be issued again next winter. Meanwhile, an investiga tion has concluded a deceased wild horse found in Clearwater County on Feb. 28 was not shot as first suspected. There was blood around the animal’s corpse, so the forensic unit of Alberta Fish and Wildlife Enforcement branch was called in. But a necropsy showed there was no foul play, said Constable Val Dennis with the Sundre RCMP detachment. “It looks suspicious, but it was natural,” said Dennis. “It is possible for horses to die of natural causes and for someone to suspect foul play, but in this case, there was none.” akienlen@fbcpublishing.com

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ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

El Niño likely in 2014 Climate models show an increased chance of a 2014 El Niño weather event, said Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, leading to possible droughts in Southeast Asia and Australia and floods in South America The bureau said an El Niño could occur during the Southern Hemisphere winter, May-July, with Australian cattle and grain farmers already struggling with drought which has cut production. Australia’s outlook echoes similar forecasts from other weather bureaus in Japan and the United States, which each said an El Niño was increasingly likely. — Reuters

Interesting facts for the month of March March came in “like a lion” with 50 stations recording lows of -40 C or colder between March 1 and 2. The coldest recorded temperature was -45.7 C at Kakwa Auto north of Grande Cache on March 2. The warmest temperatures occurred March 12, with 16 stations recording highs of 15 C or more, with the Pine Coulee Reservoir station, near Pincher Creek reaching 18.7 C. Since March 1, the Akamina station, near the continental divide in Waterton Lakes National Park, recorded over 200 mm of precipitation, which is nearly 2.0 metres of fresh snow. — AgroClimatic Information Service (ACIS)

CO2 levels highest in over three million years Temperatures may keep rising for decades after this level is hopefully stabilized by daniel bezte

tmospheric CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels on top of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa hit a record high of 401 parts per million earlier this month, and as we are still a month or so away from peak CO2 levels, this record will likely be broken. Just what does this mean? Let’s start off by looking at the history behind our tracking of CO2 levels, and finish off by looking at what these high levels might mean. Carbon dioxide and water vapour are considered to be two of the most important greenhouse gases. The Earth needs greenhouse gases; without them we would be a much colder place and life as we know it could not exist. On the other side of the coin, too much greenhouse gas and the Earth will grow warmer, possibly to the point that once again, life as we now know it could not exist. As our technology has increased over the last couple of hundred years, so has our ability to influence certain greenhouse gases through pollution. Tracking the levels of greenhouse gases gives us an idea of just how much we are changing or influencing their levels. In 1958 Charles Keeling began to accurately measure carbon dioxide levels. He decided to take the measurements at the Mauna Loa Astronomical Observatory, located on top of an inactive volcano in Hawaii. He picked this site because it was far away from any major sources of carbon dioxide and should therefore provide a good value that will be representative of an average number for the Earth. If you look at the two graphs included with this article, you will see that in the first graph, the values for CO2 follow a very rhythmical seasonal pattern, with levels topping out in early May and then bottoming out in November. This seasonal up-and-down pattern is the record of our planet breathing — or rather, the plants breathing. The majority of land and plants on our planet are in the Northern Hemisphere. During the summer months, plants are actively growing and taking

in large quantities of CO2 and we see atmospheric CO2 levels drop. During the winter, plants no longer take in CO2 but bacteria and animals continue to produce CO2 and we see the values go back up. This graph has become known as the Keeling curve. The other thing you probably noticed about these graphs is that the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere has been steadily increasing in recent times (since about the 1700s) and that the pace of this increase has become very rapid over the last 50 years. As noted above, CO2 levels have now gone above 401 ppm and will likely go higher over the next month or two. What is the significance of 400 or 401 ppm? Nothing really. While it is a record value, we are creating record values every year. It’s simply a symbolic number; we are now over 400 ppm and at the current pace will likely hit 450 ppm well before 2040. So, when was the last time the planet has seen values this high? The records from Mauna Loa only go back 55 years, but we do have what is considered a fairly good record set going back 800,000 years. These records come from the Antarctic ice sheet and were obtained from samples of air trapped in bubbles within the ice sheet. Looking at these values (second graph) we can see that over the last 800,000 years values have fluctuated between 200 ppm during ice ages to around 300 ppm during the warmer periods. Using slightly less reliable geochemical methods we can extend the CO2 records back much further and we would have to go back about three million to five million years to see the levels we are now experiencing.

in CO2. This means that while the level of 430 ppm shouldn’t increase global temperatures beyond what we consider to be safe, temperatures will likely continue to increase for several decades after this value is hit and hopefully stabilized. The second reason we don’t really have 20 years to fix this issue is that CO2 levels are rising at about 55 per cent of what they should be based on our emissions. Therefore, to keep CO2

levels close to where they are now means we would have to cut CO2 emissions by around 55 per cent, which we know won’t and can’t happen without a major impact to the world’s economy. The 45 per cent of CO2 emissions that are not making it into the air are being stored in what are known as CO2 sinks, the largest of these being the world’s oceans. Eventually these sinks or storage areas will fill up and when they do, atmo-

spheric CO2 levels will increase very rapidly. Some estimates place a final possible value at nearly 1,600 ppm by the time we use up all of our fossil fuels! One final note on this topic. The measurement project that created the Keeling curve is in danger of being discontinued due to budget cuts. If you are interested in learning more and possibly helping out you can check out http://keelingcurve. ucsd.edu.

The upper limit

The big question out there is, just how high can this number get before we are really in trouble? No one is absolutely sure, but best estimates are around 430 ppm. So some of you are now probably thinking that we have a good 20 years to figure this all out and hopefully fix it, but that’s not really the case for a couple of reasons. The first one is that global temperature increases lag behind increases

The first image is a graph showing carbon dioxide levels as measured at Mauna Loa since 1958. This graph is known as the Keeling curve. You can see the seasonal fluctuations in CO2 levels along with the steady increase in amounts from year to year. The second graph is a reconstruction of carbon dioxide levels from ice-core data for the last 800,000 years. If you look at the end of the graph you can see just how rapidly CO2 levels are changing today.

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

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T:10.25”

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

More beans, less corn: survey A Survey by Farm Futures magazine shows U.S. farmers intend to boost soybean seedings more than earlier estimates, while cutting back corn ground. It estimates 2014 soybean intentions at a record 82.93 million acres, easily an all-time high. If achieved, seedings would be up 8.4 per cent over last year’s total, which was cut by wet conditions last spring. Corn planting intentions could fall to 92.06 million acres, down 3.5 per cent from last year’s lower-than-expected total, when farmers failed to put in more than 3.5 million acres of corn due to wet, cold conditions.

Big changes coming to plant breeding With Ottawa poised to step back from developing market-ready cultivars, wheat and barley breeding is in for big changes Staff

UPOV ’91 supported

The wheat commission supports UPOV ’91 — a stronger form of plant breeders’ rights that Ottawa says will encourage more privatesector plant breeding. It’s looked at the Australian model, where farmer organizations and private companies have formed joint ventures in cereal breeding. While it “isn’t a perfect model,” Australia offers lessons for Canada, said Erickson. “The Australians have an endpoint royalty system,” he said. “That’s the starting point and the principle that we want to start

T:15.58”

hat do Prairie farmers want when it comes to cereal breeding? That’s the question being posed by the Western Grains Research Foundation, the farmer-run conduit for most of western grain farmers’ investment in agricultural research. “Breeding is a long-term process,” Garth Patterson, the foundation’s executive director, said at Winter Cereals Manitoba’s recent annual meeting. “You have to look 10 or 15 years out. You have to start planning for that now if there are new models out there that farmers want to be involved in.” The foundation has given federal government breeders and researchers $82 million in funding — most of which comes from wheat and barley checkoffs — since 1995. But Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has said it plans to focus on upstream varietal development, instead of releasing market-ready cultivars. “They haven’t given us dates, but they have said that to give more space to private industry,” Patterson said. Although the foundation is committed to funding public research until at least 2020, producers need to decide soon on its future direction — or even if it needs to continue, Patterson said in an interview. “What’s important for producer groups during the next one to two years is to make some decisions and

start implementing plans,” he said. “We can’t wait until 2020. There has got to be a planned transition.” The biggest thing for farmers growing cereals is the bottom line, and that’s got to improve, said Kent Erickson, who farms near Irma and is chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission. “What makes money for farmers is more yield,” he said. “Incremental yields is obviously the No. 1 genetic increase we’re looking for.” There should be a continued focus on improving hard red spring varieties, but better Canada Prairie Spring varieties are also needed, he said. “There’s a lot of appetite for CPS in the world,” he said. “It’s not as high quality as hard red spring, but our CPS could really fit a market. With a little quality and better yield, we could probably get good profitability for our producers.”

Garth Patterson, executive director of the Western Grains Research Foundation wants farmers’ input on farmers’ role in funding research and the foundation’s future. The Western Grains Research Foundation wants farmers to get involved in its strategic planning process. photo: thinkstock from... I think that is going to bring money back to the table.” Patterson said his organization wants to do what’s best for farmers, even if that means the foundation plays a smaller role in research. “We’re asking the big questions like, ‘What does success look like?’” Patterson said. “Is it important to continue to have public varieties, but do you also want to attract the investments that private industry is making and commercializing in other parts of the world so you have choices?” The Alberta Wheat Commission

photo: allan dawson

favours a “three-P approach” in which producers, public bodies and private companies form partnerships, said Erickson. But at the end of the day, success will only come if there’s a bigger investment in cereal breeding, he said. “The government has been putting money in, producers have been putting money in, but really, it hasn’t been enough to get us up to speed with everybody else in the world,” he said. “The dollars that the Australians and the Americans are putting into plant breeding, compared to what we are doing, is kind of a little bit embarrassing.”

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See Express® in action at expressvideo.dupont.ca Questions? Ask your retailer, call 1-800-667-3925 or visit express.dupont.ca As with all crop protection products, read and follow label instructions carefully. The DuPont Oval Logo, DuPont™, The miracles of science™ and Express® are registered trademarks or trademarks of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. E. I. du Pont Canada Company is a licensee. All other products mentioned are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. Member of CropLife Canada. © Copyright 2014 E. I. du Pont Canada Company. All rights reserved.

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Researcher urges a slow and steady approach to spraying Expert says a bigger tank, wider boom, and faster tank filling is a better alternative to increased speed BY JENNIFER BLAIR AF STAFF / RED DEER

low and steady is the better bet when spraying, says a sprayer specialist. “When you have to cover each acre five times per year, you may be very tempted to travel fast,” said AgriMetrix’s Tom Wolf at the recent Cereal Disease Conference. “I’m going to try to convince people to go slower. I know it’s a losing battle, but I’ll go down fighting.” Manufacturers are pouring research dollars into developing faster sprayers, but higher travel speeds can cause uneven spray distribution on the plant, reducing the overall effectiveness of the spray, he said.

In most cases, spray droplets fall “more vertically” at higher speeds, landing mainly on the forward side of the plant, and the challenge is “getting it to deposit on the side facing away.” “The faster you go with a vertical target, the more deposition you get on the forward-facing side.” Nozzles are also “aerodynamically non-porous” — which means some air moves through the nozzles, but most of the air moves around them, a problem that becomes more pronounced at faster speeds. “(Nozzles) essentially behave like pieces of plywood hanging off your boom,” said Wolf. “They’re aerodynamic walls.” Forcing air to go around nozzles creates negative pressure, which draws any small droplets out and disperses them.

“When we go fast, we lose control over the droplets,” he said. “You lose an increasing proportion of your small droplets, and you lose control over whether they go into the canopy.” Producers improve spray distribution by moving to an asymmetric nozzle that varies fan angles and flow rates. “It’s very difficult to get the same amount of spray on both sides of the head when you have the same fan angles and the same flow rates,” said Wolf. But one recent study suggests that producers can achieve a better spray distribution with the right nozzle, regardless of sprayer travel speeds. Using an asymmetric nozzle design with an air-induction tip, Wolf had “terrific results” at five miles per hour. At 10 miles per

hour, the deposit became “less uniform,” but the sprayer did a “reasonably consistent job over a range of travel speeds.” “We found the same basic deposition at all speeds. That was good news,” said Wolf, who will be conducting more research on travel speeds over the next three years as part of a research project with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. But in the meantime, producers can increase their productivity without increasing their speed, said Wolf. Using a bigger tank, a wider boom, and a faster fill speed can double the rate of application — without the risks that come at higher speeds. “We don’t have to go fast to be more productive.” jennifer.blair@fbcpublishing.com

Using an asymmetric nozzle design with an air-induction tip, Wolf had “terrific results” at five miles per hour. At 10 miles per hour, the deposit became “less uniform.”

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uPont Pioneer has received a $1-million grant from two Alberta research agencies to develop early-maturing corn hybrids for provincial growing conditions. Alberta Crop Industry Development Fund and Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions are contributing $500,000 each over five years to develop shorter-season corn hybrids with higher yield potential. “In the next decade, we see a landscape where corn will become a normal rotation crop right across the Prairies and right here in Alberta,” said Greg Stokke, business director for Western Canada at DuPont Pioneer. “The bottom line is corn will be a profitable and sustainable cropping choice for growers in Alberta.” Corn is a “different kind of crop, with a different kind of growth habit,” that could break disease cycles and bring other rotational benefits, said Doug Walkey, executive director of the Alberta Crop Industry Development Fund. “Hopefully, (corn will be) a step up in agronomy for everyone across the board,” he said.

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ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

SPRING FLING

The first day of spring came in with a roar across much of central and southern Alberta, with blowing snow and icy conditions. This pickup slid off a rural side road near Millarville, Alta., rolled down the ditch and landed upright, having crumpled livestock panels and a barbed wire fence and posts. Volunteer firemen worked to free the driver, who was then transported to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Photo: Wendy Dudley

Global theme for grains council annual Customer panel to address quality and service expectations

he Canada Grains Council says it’s going global with its 2014 annual meeting conference in Winnipeg April 14-16. Under the new title of the Canadian Global Crops Symposium, the event will feature presentations from senior officials of Canada’s major grain industry organizations, but will also introduce a customer perspective. “The symposium program includes a panel of long-standing customers in key export markets who will speak to why they do business with Canada and what their quality and service expectations will be in coming years,” grains council president Richard Phillips said in a release. In conjunction with the symposium, on April 14 the Canadian International Grains Institute is hosting a half-day short course on Canada’s grain quality assurance system, presented by the Canadian Grain Commission. Cigi is also opening its doors to a limited number of conference delegates for tours of its facilities immediately following the close of the program on April 16. Phillips said the council will continue to partner with the Grain Growers of Canada in hosting an annual outlook symposium in Ottawa in November. More information is available at www.canadiancrops.com.

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Doors still open for Alberta Shelterbelt Program Shelterbelts can lower your heating bill, trap snow, foster biodiversity and provide wildlife habitat By Marianne Stamm af contributor

here is a misconception making the rounds that the demise of the PFRA shelterbelt program means the Alberta Shelterbelt Program has also closed. Not so — in fact, the program will be shipping more plants than ever because of the demise of the federal program, said Alyssa DeGray of the Alberta Nurseries in Bowden. With 20,000 square feet of greenhouse space in addition to its outdoor growing area, the nursery is well positioned to continue meeting demand, she said.

The Alberta Shelterbelt Program had been operated in conjunction with the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration program for the past 17 years. But while the PRFA offered trees for free, Alberta Nurseries is a private company and charges $23 for a bundle of seedlings, regardless of variety. No land title is necessary to apply for the program, and no order is turned down, as long as it is in bundles of 10. Customers are required to fill out an application form to participate in the program, for which there is a $25 fee. The application fee gives customers access to extension services from Alberta Nurseries horticulturists and environmen-

tal technicians, who can answer questions concerning growing concerns, insect problems or soil issues. The plants are delivered in their second year of growth, guaranteed to be shipped healthy and true to type. No substitutions will be made without customer permission. There are 30 species of plants to choose from, in four categories. Spruce, pine and larch constitute the Evergreen category. The Tall Tree category contains poplar and willow species. Mid-size trees include the western chokecherry, saskatoons, Manitoba maple and mayday. The Hedges and Fruits category includes specialty plants as sea buckthorn and silver buffaloberry, as well as the usual lilacs, caragana and dogwoods. Even raspberries are offered. The wide variety of plants available makes it possible to plan for many purposes. An orchard shelterbelt can provide food for the family and wildlife.

The benefits of a shelterbelt are numerous. Wind speed is reduced, creating a unique microclimate. A mature five-row shelterbelt with at least two rows of conifers planted around a farmhouse can reduce heat requirements by 25 per cent. They also trap snow to provide water for dugouts and soil reserves; foster biodiversity; and provide wildlife habitat. However, growing a shelterbelt is a long-term proposition and, depending on the species planted, it can take up to 15 years to get the full benefit. Deciduous trees develop much faster than evergreens — for example, poplars will grow an average of two feet per year, while an evergreen may only grow one foot. Good care is important, especially in the first two years. “We recommend watering once a week (and) when it’s hot, twice,” DeGray said. Plants should be watered for at least the first year, preferably for two, until the roots are properly

established. Fertilizing is discouraged as it makes the plants less hardy. “We want to make the shelterbelt as strong as possible,” she said. Weeds should be controlled in a one-foot diameter around the tree. And it’s easy to lose sight of small seedlings in a field of wheat. “If you don’t have time to weed, at least put a stake beside the tree so it doesn’t get lost,” cautioned DeGray. Shipping is free if purchased through one of the approximately 30 counties participating in the program, with some counties also providing planting services or renting out tree-planting equipment. However, the free shipping program is only for orders received by April 1. After that, seedlings are delivered collect by Greyhound. Trees will be delivered about mid-May. Application forms and information can be found on the Alberta Shelterbelt website www.marketland.net or by calling 403-224-3544.

Mature shelterbelt provides good microclimate for a Prairie garden. PHOTos: Marianne Stamm

Mature willow shelterbelt provides shelter for wildlife.

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Long rows of saskatoons act as a shelterbelt and a U-pick.

Trays of Red Osier dogwood seedlings at the Alberta Nurseries grown for the shelterbelt program.

Albertafarmexpress.ca • March 31, 2014

Canadian Grain Commission’s new farmer payment protection program delayed The new insurance scheme will provide 45 days of protection after farmers deliver their grain By Allan Dawson staff /selkirk, man.

t’s taking longer than expected to roll out the Canadian Grain Commission’s (CGC) new insurance program to protect farmers against payment defaults by grain companies. But farmers need not worry because the current security program will continue until the new one is ready to go, Jim Smolik, the CGC’s assistant chief commissioner told Winter Cereals Manitoba’s annual meeting March 12. Last fall the CGC had expected the new program to start Dec. 1. “But there’s a lot of stuff we didn’t anticipate that needs to get done especially when the government is engaging with a private company,” Smolik said. That company is Atradius Credit Insurance, which offers trade credit insurance around the world. Among other things, the government wants to be sure grain company and farmer information supplied to Atradius is secure, he said. One of the biggest changes

between the new and existing program will be the length of time farmers are protected after they deliver any of 20 eligible crops to a licensed grain company. Now farmers are protected for 90 days after delivering or 30 days after receiving a cheque. Under the new scheme, protection runs out 45 days after delivering, Smolik said. (Farmers will have 30 days to file a claim with the CGC after a payment default.)

Questions

That is raising questions about protection for crops — often pulses — stored by buyers without having issued a CGC-approved grain receipt. Those deliveries are unprotected now, which won’t change under the new system. “You’re at risk,” Smolik said. Some farmers might be concerned about fewer days of protection, but it also reduces the risk of a payment default, which means lower premium costs for grain companies, Smolik said. “What we’re trying to do is strike a balance,” he said. The total amount of coverage

changes too. Under the current program grain companies are supposed to post enough security through letters of credit or bonds to cover what they owe farmers for their grain. In theory, 100 per cent of a farmer’s claim could be covered if a grain buyer fails to pay. However, in past, some companies didn’t have enough security to cover all what farmers were owed, so payments were pro-rated. Under the new program farmers will be guaranteed 95 per cent of what they are owed, Smolik said. “The farmer will have a little bit of skin in the game and ensure that he is dealing with a reputable company,” he said. “What we’re also trying to do is encourage you when you deliver your grain to get a cheque and cash it as quickly as possible.”

Underwritten

The CGC’s new insurance program being underwritten by Atradius will save grain companies, the Canadian Grain Commission and ultimately farmers, money, Smolik said.

The Canadian Grain Commission is still working on its new insurance-based farmer payment protection program, says assistant chief commissioner Jim Smolik. photo: allan dawson Now grain companies collectively tie up $900 million to $1 billion of capital to cover farmer liabilities, he said. “This way, by kind of pooling that (risk through insurance) it will allow them to put a whole bunch of money back into their operations and businesses and hopefully back through you guys,” Smolik said. Currently companies must provide the CGC with monthly updates on their finances, including what is owed to farmers. And the CGC must track and audit grain company finances. The new insurance approach will cut company and CGC administration costs, Smolik said. All licensed grain companies will be required to be insured against defaults and premiums will be

based on each company’s risk of default. “So the riskier they are the higher the premium with be,” he said. The insurance plan will cover up to $100 million in annual grain payment defaults. That might not seem like much given the total value of Western Canada’s crop, but Smolik said according to Deloitte Touche there’s only a 0.6 per cent chance of payouts exceeding the limit. When a company fails to pay a farmer, he or she must apply to the CGC, which will then submit a claim to Atradius. If the claim is legitimate, a payout will be issued to the CGC, which will then pay the farmer. allan@fbcpublishing.com

Climate change to disrupt food supplies New UN report to raise pressure on governments to act By Alister Doyle oslo/reuters

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drastic changes” that could mean irreversible shifts, such as a runaway melt of Greenland or a drying of the Amazon rainforest. It said there were “early warning signs that both coral reef and Arctic systems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts.” Corals are at risk in warmer seas and the Arctic region is thawing fast. Climate change will hit growth. Warming of 2.5 C above pre-industrial levels could mean “global aggregate economic losses between 0.2 and 2.0 per cent of income,” it says. Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 C. The report points to options such as improved planning for disasters such as hurricanes or flooding, efforts to breed drought- or flood-resistant crops, measures to save water and energy or wider use of insurance.

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

HEADING OUT

A rider and his dog head out to move cattle on the Waldron Ranch, north of Pincher Creek, in southern Alberta. Photo: Wendy Dudley

Fertilizer makes top 10 list

Let your flag leaf fly.

Chemical engineers voted from a list with the biggest impact on society

survey by the Institution of Chemical Engineers ranks fertilizer as one of the top 10 inventions of the last century. Drinking water, gasoline and antibiotics topped the poll of a shortlist of more than 40 inventions. The 10 considered to have made the biggest impact on society were: 1. Drinking or potable water 2. Petrol or gasoline (and other fuels including diesel) 3. Antibiotics 4. Electricity generation (from fossil fuels) 5. Vaccines 6. Plastics 7. Fertilizer 8. Sanitation 9. Electricity generation (from non-fossil fuels) 10. Dosed medications (such as tablets, pills and capsules) Some notable inventions which didn’t make the top 10 included biofuels (11th), contraceptives (12th), batteries (13th), the catalytic converter (14th), adhesives (28th), pneumatic tires (39th) and photographic film (41st).

Stand up for healthy yields with Quilt ®. By applying Quilt fungicide at the flag-leaf stage, you protect your cereal crop from leaf diseases that reduce your yield and quality. Cereal crops treated with Quilt are protected against rusts, tan spot, powdery mildew and Septoria. Registered on all wheat, barley and oats, Quilt safeguards your investment and your profitability.

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ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Exporting grain, oilseeds and special crops to the U.S.

An information booklet and video are available on the AARD website AGRI-NEWS

n the current tight shipping logistics, there may be profitable opportunities that arise for selling grains and oilseeds into the U.S. Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development has an Exporting Grain, Oilseeds and Special Crops to the United States handbook and an information video available for producers considering exporting to this market. “The handbook is divided into 15 sections, and covers areas such as documentation requirements, finding a buyer, choosing and using a U.S. customs broker, U.S. grain grading and purchasing standards, U.S. grain checkoffs, and other topics,” says Rick Dehod, agriculture farm finance specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. “As conditions do change, it is advised that potential exporters verify all information before beginning an export process.

“The handbook is divided into 15 sections, and covers areas such as documentation requirements, finding a buyer, choosing and using a U.S. customs broker...”

Dehod says it is best to hire a U.S. customs broker if you choose to market your own grain to the U.S. They are highly qualified and know the required procedures and documents. For a reasonable fee, they will help with the paperwork. This will eliminate almost all delays that you could experience without their help. Many grain companies in Western Canada market grain into the U.S. They may be able to provide producers with bids for movement into this market. However, the handbook deals primarily with marketing grain directly from Alberta to a U.S. buyer. This handbook also shows examples of some U.S. CBP documents which may be filled out in hard copy. Other required U.S. documents can only be filled out online, from a computer connected to the Internet. “Always double check with a U.S. customs broker to make sure there have been no recent U.S. documentation changes,” says Dehod. “The required U.S. documents can be obtained from a U.S. customs broker when requested.” To view the book visit http:// www1.agric.gov.ab.ca and search for “Exporting Grain, Oilseeds and Special Crops to the United States handbook.” A related video is also available on the AARD website.

CHS expands further into Canada, buys 16 Agrium outlets U.S. co-op says it is interested in further expansion in Canada BY ROD NICKEL REUTERS

“As the border blurs, we see the opportunity for Canada to grow for us.”

.S. farm co-operative CHS Inc. said Mar. 17 it has agreed to buy 16 Canadian farm retail outlets from Agrium Inc., and plans to further expand its business in Canada. The deal includes eight stores that sell seed, chemicals and fertilizer to farmers, as well as eight ammonia tank businesses, located in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the two biggest wheat- and canolagrowing Canadian provinces. The purchase bulks up CHS’s modest Canadian holdings, which currently consist of three retail stores and small offices in Winnipeg and Calgary. The St. Paul, Minnesota-based company is interested in buying or building more farm retail stores, grain-handling sites and fuel sales

JOHN MCENROE AGRIUM

locations in Canada, said John McEnroe, executive vice-president of CHS country operations. “Anything that touches the farmer, we would be interested in looking at,” he said in an interview. “There’s a good argument that instead of a Canadian market and a U.S. market for agricultural commodities, it could be a North American market. “As the border blurs, we see the opportunity for Canada to grow for us.” CHS’s interest in Canada grew

with the end of the Canadian Wheat Board’s grain-marketing monopoly in 2012 and the once-powerful farmer-owned grain pools over the past decade, McEnroe said. A fertilizer plant that CHS is building near Shelby, Montana, which is expected to open in spring, will supply some of the Canadian outlets, McEnroe said. Terms of the deal, which is to close around April 1, were not disclosed. Agrium acquired some of the assets as part of its 2013 purchase

of more than 200 Canadian outlets from Viterra, a unit of Glencore Xstrata PLC, said Agrium spokesman Richard Downey. To gain approval from Canada’s Competition Bureau, Agrium had to divest certain outlets in sensitive areas. CHS shares on the NASDAQ exchange eased 0.4 per cent in midday trading Mar. 17, while Agrium stock gained about one per cent in New York and Toronto.

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Industrial hemp acres on the rise, especially in southern Alberta Industrial hemp has a huge variety of uses, and is gaining new markets for both seed and fibre BY HELEN MCMENAMIN

AF CONTRIBUTOR / LETHBRIDGE

ndustrial hemp is moving into the mainstream and Alberta is at the forefront, says a researcher who has been helping to develop the crop for more than a decade. Upwards of 100,000 acres will be grown in Canada this year, said Jan Slaski, a crop physiologist with Alberta Innovates Technology Futures in Vegreville. “Processors have contracted about 20,000 acres in southern Alberta,” said Slaski. “Health Canada doesn’t release any acreage information until after harvest, but the feeling among members of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance is that the numbers are strong and getting stronger, especially with a new decortication plant planned for Taber.” Two Manitoba plants process hemp seed for sale, either dehulled as hemp hearts or in other forms. Some farmers dehull seed on the farm and sell it privately or at farmers’ markets, but Slaski said it is better to have seed processed at a commercial facility. “Hemp seed has a relatively high risk of E. coli,” he said. “We’re not sure why, but I think it’s probably birds. They’re attracted to the seeds at the top of the canopy. And, while they’re eating seeds, they poop. I’d hate to see any risk of E. coli problems being linked to hemp, especially while this is such a young and promising industry.”

Many uses

Hemp seed is being added to a huge variety of foods from breakfast cereal to cookies, and processed into a milk substitute, beer, even as flavouring in vodka. Seed is also being cold pressed for its oil, which is used in soaps, skin- and hair-care products as well as in paints and lubricants (often used for food machinery). The protein cake left behind is being sold as a protein supplement for athletes.

It has two types of fibre — long bast fibres on the outside of the stalk and very short ones called hurd fibre from inside the stalk. The two types of fibre are separated, along with huge amounts of dust, in decortication plants, such as that of Alberta Innovates in Vegreville. The separated fibres can then be made into compressed bales (whole stalks don’t compress well) and shipped to users. Hemp and flax fibres can be processed with the same equipment and sold for some of the same uses, although only hemp has hurd fibre. Hurd is used as an erosion control material on exposed land slopes and as garden mulch, or for animal bedding. It can be mixed with lime as a hempcrete, a light building material. It provides excellent sound and heat insulation but is vapour permeable. Hurd can also be used in low-grade paper. The long bast fibres can be formed into mats as a framework for biocomposites. Lightweight plastics used for highend vehicle interiors, truck canopies made in Alberta, and Versatile tractor hoods, cabs and mudguards. Textiles including hemp fibre are attracting buyers as they are durable and natural, and more comfortable than synthetic blends. It all adds up to an exciting future, said Slaski. “We don’t really have the agronomics entirely worked out yet,” he says. “But farmers tell me they’re growing hemp because they’re making money. Some of it is grown organically, but we’re going to work with Farming Smarter on agronomics for conventionally grown industrial hemp.” Hemp plants are naturally female or male, and the latter wither away after shedding their pollen. However, new varieties such as Alberta Innovates’ “Silesia” combine male and female traits in each plant,

so every one produces seed and pollen and contributes to crop yield. Breeders are working to develop lines that are well adapted for Alberta conditions with increased biomass and less lignin in the fibre (to make processing easier). Hemp is daylight sensitive. In northern Alberta, vegetative growth continues until late in the growing season, so crops as far north as LaCrete on the N.W.T. border are grown for fibre. In the south, seed sets earlier and is the salable harvest. Growers use conventional harvest equipment, but Slaski predicts dedicated machinery will develop as the industry grows. With sufficient heat and moisture, plants can grow 20 centimetres a day and sequester around a quarter of a tonne of carbon dioxide per acre per year. Hemp needs a well-aerated seedbed for good germination and emergence, but once seedlings are started they close the canopy quickly and choke out most annual weeds. It also has a very deep tap root that allows the plant to remediate contaminated sites, including at Chernobyl. Hemp was one of the first crops cultivated by humans because it had so many uses. Its nutritious seed has a high-value protein (including all 23 amino acids), its oil is edible and can be used in lamps, and its fibre could be made into clothing and shelter. Across central Asia, traces of hemp have been found at neolithic sites where farming and settlement began. Later, it was used to make rope and sails, and was mixed with lime as a building material. But as alternative materials were developed, its use dropped and it was banned in 1938 because its psychoactive cousin was becoming a popular drug. However, industrial hemp contains minuscule amounts of THC and in 1998, Health Canada made it a regulated crop — with growers needing a licence to produce it.

Jan Slaski in a harvested hemp field in 2013. After being cut, the crop is left for two to four weeks to rett, a curing process which makes fibre processing easier. SUPPLIED PHOTOS

Jan Slaski checks plants in a nursery field of “Silesia” industrial hemp seed in 2013.

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ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Food manufacturers hooked on salt, fat, sugar, says speaker Author Michael Moss says food companies have a real challenge making processed foods palatable without excessive amounts of three ingredients BY LORRAINE STEVENSON STAFF / WINNIPEG

When New York Times reporter Michael Moss started delving into why the foods we eat contain so much salt, sugar and fat, he didn’t expect his investigation to leave him empathizing with the food industry. “At one point I asked, ‘Everyone wants you to cut back on sodium because of high blood pressure. Why don’t you just do it?’” Food executives invited him in to taste foods they’d specially formulated for him sans these ingredients. “My favourite moment was going to Kellogg in Battle Creek, Michigan where they sat me down and made for me special versions of their products without any salt in them at all. It really impressed upon me their problem,” the author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us” told the Growing Local Conference in Winnipeg last week. “It was the most horrific dining experience you could ever imagine,” he said. Snack foods stuck to the roof of his mouth or were hard to even swallow, he said. Frozen waffles tasted and looked like straw. That’s when he realized how addicted the processed food industry is to keeping their customers hooked on food ingredients that are bad for their health. And it’s why food scientists study how to make salt trigger the taste buds faster and how to shape fat globules to enhance mouth feel and increase the cravings we have for certain foods, he said. They’re continuously working on how the human brain responds to sugar, enabling product makers to engineer into foods what’s called “the bliss point” or precise amount of sugar to derive maximum satisfaction. “Suddenly I realized that this wasn’t a $1-trillion industry that was this impenetrable fortress,” he said.

Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat — How the Food Giants Hooked Us — was the keynote speaker hosted by The Winnipeg Foundation and Growing Local Conference last week. PHOTO: LORRAINE STEVENSON “These are companies that are more hooked than I am and we are on salt, sugar and fat. Their dependence has now put them in a real problem, as more people are concerned about what they’re putting into their bodies and demanding that the companies come up with healthier products. They’re scrambling and realizing it’s not going to be an easy thing to do.” Particularly problematic is reducing sodium in meat products. “When meat gets rewarmed, as in canned soup, the fat oxidizes and gives off what they call warmedover flavour (WOF),” he said. “Sometimes they pronounced it ‘woof’ instead of ‘wof’ because they describe that flavour as having the taste of wet dog hair.” The solution is “a little bit more salt, of course,” he added. The award-winning journalist spent years reporting on foodborne illness outbreaks and troubling holes in U.S. federal food safety regulations before becoming interested in obesity as a public health crisis. “As tragic as these incidents are, there’s this other public health cri-

sis involving things we intentionally put into our products and over which we have absolute control,” he said. Gaining access to confidential files and sources deep inside the industry, Moss began to uncover not only why, but how food makers use salt, fat and sugar as “weapons they deploy, certainly to defeat their competitors but also to keep us coming back for more.” Sugar is now ubiquitous as the food industry has gone on to put in those bliss points for foods that previously weren’t sweet, he said. “So bread has sugar and a bliss point for sweetness. Some yogurts have as much sugar as ice cream,” he said. “What it has done is taught us and habituated us to expect sweetness in everything we eat. And this is especially true of kids.” Every year the average American now consumes 33 pounds of cheese, and 70 pounds of sugar. Daily intake of salt is 8,500 milligrams, or double the recommended amount, he said. Moss said he was especially struck to discover how many food company executives professed to not eat their own products. “Part of it is a socio-economic difference,” he said, “but it’s also a real awareness of the power of their products.” In an interview, Moss said he believes we’re reaching “a tipping point” on the issue and that industry is starting to get it. “More and more people care about what they’re putting in their bodies, and it’s getting translated a little bit into purchasing decisions,” he said, adding that a competitive business pays attention to that. “It doesn’t take much to alarm the food manufacturers,” he said. “The slightest drop in sales will send them scrambling. “The challenge for them is that they’re even more dependent on using gobs of salt, sugar and fat than we are. It’s going to be really difficult for them to come up with some truly healthy versions.”

“These are companies that are more hooked than I am and we are on salt, sugar and fat. Their dependence has now put them in a real problem, as more people are concerned about what they’re putting into their bodies and demanding that the companies come up with healthier products.” MICHAEL MOSS AUTHOR AND AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST

lorraine@fbcpublishing.com

PHOTO: THINKSTOCK

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NEWS » Markets

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Russia’s exportable surplus seen down

China Rejects more U.S. corn

Russia, one of the world’s key wheat producers, may cut exports of all grains by about two million tonnes in the 2014-15 marketing year due to a lower harvest, Russian analytical firm SovEcon said Mar. 25. Russia sends grain to North Africa and the Middle East via the Black Sea. Its export prospects have drawn additional attention due to fears of possible disruptions in supplies from crisis-hit Ukraine, a peer grain exporter via the Black Sea. Russia will be able to export 22 million tonnes of all grains in 2014/15, which starts on July 1, down from 24.1 million in the 2013-14 year, SovEcon said. — Reuters

China has turned away more U.S. corn after detecting an unapproved genetically modified strain in shipments, with buyers waiting for sales from the country’s huge state reserves or shifting to cheap grain from Ukraine. China’s quality watchdog in the northern city of Tianjin turned away 21,800 tonnes of U.S. corn after detecting MIR 162, a GMO strain developed by Syngenta AG that Beijing has not approved for import, the official Xinhua news agency reported Mar. 24. “The industry is not optimistic over imports from the United States. Resolution of the GMO issue could drag on until the second half of the year,” said an industry analyst with an official think-tank in Beijing. — Reuters

Canola values still tied to the railroad tracks Other bearish pressures are piling in on oilseeds By Phil Franz-Warkentin

CE Futures Canada canola contracts ran into resistance during the week ended March 21 and dropped sharply lower overall, as speculators returned to the sell side after covering their short positions over most of the past month. Increased farmer selling, as country pricing started to show a bit of life, added to the softer tone. That producer selling built on itself in the futures when canola crashed on Thursday and Friday, but any actual opportunities were relatively short lived, as overarching logistical issues remain slow in sorting themselves out. The ongoing container truckers’ strike in Vancouver, the possibility of a Canadian National Railway (CN) conductors’ strike, thick ice on the Great Lakes and persistent winter weather across the Prairies were all overhanging the market. May canola hit a session high of $466.60 per tonne on March 19, having risen by over $60 per tonne since mid-February on the back of speculative short-covering. Large fund traders had held a short position as large as 40,000 contracts when canola was at the lows, according to some

reports, and were actually thought to be switching over to a net long by the time canola hit its highs March 19. However, that spec selling quickly materialized the next day, with weakness in the U.S. soyoil market somewhat responsible. The well-documented difficulties moving this year’s crops out of the Prairies have largely insulated canola from any supportive news in the outside oilseed markets, but bearish news seems to have an easier time worming its way into the conversation. For canola, that bearish news is starting to come from a number of fronts: Malaysian palm oil has

backed off of its highs, as the strength of that market causes buyers to slow their export demand; South American soybean crops will still be record large, despite any downgrades; and it’s thought to be only a matter of time before China starts cancelling more previous U.S. soybean purchases. Soybeans did move higher overall in the most active front months during the week, but failed in an attempt at breaking above nearby resistance and fell sharply on Friday as speculative selling came forward. Fund traders are holding a large net-long position in soybeans, leav-

For three-times-daily market reports from Resource News International, visit “ICE Futures Canada updates” at www.albertafarmexpress.ca.

ing plenty of room for more liquidation going forward.

Parched Plains

Wheat futures were also up during the week, with the biggest gains in the Kansas City hard red winter wheat market. Crop conditions in the southern Great Plains are dry, and the lack of moisture is creating concerns over the winter wheat in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas as the fields emerge for the spring. The situation in Ukraine and Russia is creating some tensions in the global wheat market as well, with traders still on edge over any possible supply disruptions from the Black Sea region of the world. Corn was down slightly during the week, with farmer selling a feature as U.S. growers were opening their bins and making sales for cash flow needs ahead of spring seeding. On the other side, demand for U.S. corn is still strong, while Ukraine is also a major player in the corn market. Phil Franz-Warkentin writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

file photo

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Railway customers fret over transport legislation Other shippers fear their interests will be sidelined in the government’s bid to get the grain moving By Alex Binkley contributor

ajor shipper organizations have appealed to Prime Minister Harper to include their interests in promised legislation to improve grain transportation by rail. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz says legislation will be introduced after Parliament returns on March 24 “to ensure Canada maintains a world-class logistics system that gets agricultural products to market more efficiently.” The government has already ordered the railways to pump up weekly grain shipments to 500,000 tonnes each by mid-April. Lumber, potash, sulphur and other industries dependent on rail service are suffering from poor rail service this winter as much as grain farmers and companies, says Bob Ballantyne, president of the Freight Management Association of Canada and chairman of the 19-member Coalition of Railway Shippers, in a letter to Harper. They fear that measures to move more grain will disrupt shipments of their products. “The rail freight market is not a normally functioning competitive market,” he adds.

Report findings

The Rail Service Review Panel final report in 2008 recognized CN’s and CP’s domination of rail transportation results in an imbalance for large segments of the railways’ customer base.” Shippers had hoped the situation would have been rectified

in the Fair Rail Service Bill the Conservatives muscled through Parliament two years ago. But the government ignored crucial amendments advanced by shippers and the legislation has been ineffective. The coalition hopes the government will incorporate its suggestions this time to put real teeth into the bill. Ballantyne said the upcoming bill must “ensure reliable rail service is available for the broad range of rail customers, from agriculture and other natural resource industries to manufacturing and retailing.” The Coalition of Rail Shippers speaks for industries that

account for more than 80 per cent of CN’s and CPR’s annual revenues. Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association, said the rail freight bill failed to correct the commercial imbalance between shippers and the railways. “Railways are in a monopoly position. If rail service is poor, shippers have no practical means of moving their business elsewhere.

No incentive

What incentive is there for the railways to agree to negotiate meaningful service commitments with penalties should

they fail to provide proper service? While the legislation was supposed to provide for negotiating level-of-service agreements between shippers and the railways, there was no way to require the railways to accept one that would impose financial penalties on them if they failed to meet commitments, Sobkowich said. All the bill did was provide for an arbitration process to set service levels for the railways, which if not fulfilled could result in financial penalties of up to $100,000 a day, he added. However, any fines imposed that way would go to the federal government and not the harmed shipper.

“To add insult to injury, the agreement is only good for one year, meaning the process never ends,” he added. The grain industry didn’t bother with this provision in the Canada Transportation Act because it would have incurred “hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to get through a process to end up with a service agreement that is unlikely to be useful, so that penalties can be paid to the government?” The amendments shippers want to see included in the bill would see any fines go to the grain companies to be passed on to their grain farmer customers.

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

China draws up plan to tackle widespread soil pollution Top government officials are concerned, but they are finding it hard to rein in industry and local governments obsessed with growth beijing / reuters

hina’s environmental authorities have passed a plan to tackle soil pollution as the government becomes increasingly concerned about the risk to food posed by widespread contamination of farmland. About 3.33 million hectares (eight million acres) of China’s farmland — about the size of Belgium — is too polluted for crops, a government official said in December, after decades of industrial development and poorly enforced laws allowed poisonous metals and discharge to seep into soil and water.

Farmers dig ditches to lead water from a white polluted stream into farm fields, in Dongchuan district of Kunming, Yunnan province. According to local media, the sources of the pollution are production waste water discharged by nearby mining industries. PHOTo: Reuters/stringer

Changing Weather is Changing Farming. Better Get Ready. The growing season of 2013 was one for the record books. We had it all: too wet, too dry, too cold, too hot. Although variability in the weather cannot be changed, we can learn to better manage under these conditions. Conservation of water and soil is vital to your success in all kinds of weather. The 6th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg, Manitoba, will present new ideas on all these topics and more. Be there June 22-25, 2014, for innovative solutions for challenges facing today’s agriculture. Weatherproofing agriculture is one of three major themes for the conference, along with Growing More with Less and Sharing Innovation Success Stories.

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The plan, together with a soil pollution law in the drafting stage, is expected to focus on protecting food supplies and ensuring that contaminated crops do not enter the food chain. China has time and again published policies and plans aimed at addressing environmental problems but it has long struggled to bring big polluting industries and growth-obsessed local governments to heel. The top leadership is increasingly worried about the problem, with Premier Li Keqiang declaring a ‘war on pollution’ during his opening speech of parliament this month. The vice-environment minister, Wu Xiaoqing, told reporters this month the new soil pollution plan would help to create the legal mechanism to stop the soil problem from getting any worse.

First priority

Meeting last week, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said cleaning up soil was a first priority for food safety and a fundamental basis for creating a healthy environment, according to a report published by the ministry’s official newspaper on Wednesday.

About 3.33 million hectares (eight million acres) of China’s farmland — about the size of Belgium — is too polluted for crops.

The discovery last year of dangerous levels of cadmium in rice produced in Hunan, the country’s top rice-growing region, caused an outcry with members of the public venting frustration that even their staple food appeared to be unsafe. The plan proposes measures including targeting various sources of soil pollution as well as management of land for agriculture and setting up a process for cleaning damaged soil. A recent government agency survey found that restoration of contaminated soil accounted for only 3.7 per cent of the environmental protection business in China, highlighting the potential for growth. Agriculture Minister Han Changfu said this month pilot projects had been launched to rehabilitate farmland. However, pollution experts have told Reuters the projects were only small and did not begin to redress the extent of the problem. One of the major concerns is who will eventually pay for clearing up polluted soil. The action plan, approved in principle, will be submitted to the State Council, or cabinet, for approval. The ministry is also working on a draft law on soil pollution.

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Alberta Water Council says riparian lands need more protection ALBERTA WATER COUNCIL RELEASE

s development intensifies and land uses change, Alberta’s riparian lands will continue to be lost and degraded without a focused effort to conserve and manage them. These lands, immediately adjacent to rivers and lakes, support productive and diverse animal and plant communities; play an important role in flood and drought mitigation; and are a valuable component of the landscape. A new report by the Alberta Water Council makes 13 recommendations to more effectively conserve and manage riparian lands. “All levels of government as well as those who use riparian areas on Alberta’s public and private land have a role in managing and influencing outcomes,” said Gord Edwards, the council’s executive director. “Alberta has many successful riparian initiatives, but what’s missing is a broad provincial vision and strategy that sets measurable goals and monitors progress toward achieving them.” The Riparian Land Conservation and Management report (available at www.awchome.ca) states a great deal of good work has been done, and the ongoing efforts to integrate watershed and land use planning are compatible with improved riparian land conservation and management. It also identifies specific challenges in protecting the health of riparian lands and recommends how these challenges could be addressed by the Government of Alberta. Examples include: • Develop a provincial vision and outcomes for riparian land conservation and management that will allow policies, strategies and initiatives to work towards a common goal. • Adopt accepted methodologies and use them to map riparian lands throughout the province on an ongoing basis. • Co-ordinate and collaborate with municipalities to ensure consistent decision-making with respect to riparian land conservation and management. • Share knowledge and information to increase understanding of riparian lands. • Develop integrated management solutions at all scales. The report also proposes timelines for implementation, aiming for action on all 13 recommendations within the next five years. The lead agency for implementing the recommendations, Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, participated in preparing the report, along with many other key departments and organizations that use and manage riparian lands.

CWB to build first grain elevator in hoped-for network CEO Ian White says facilities not purchased using government guarantee BY ROD NICKEL REUTERS

WB has started building the first in what it hopes will be a network of grain elevators as the company formerly known as the Canadian Wheat Board attempts to reposition itself as an independent grain handler. CWB said Mar. 24 that it will build a grain elevator at Bloom, Manitoba, and it will be ready to receive grain for the 2015 harvest. The high-throughput elevator, near Portage la Prairie, will have 33,900 tonnes of storage. The company, controlled by the Canadian government, hopes to buy and build more

grain elevators and secure a foothold in Port Metro Vancouver, the country’s biggest port, CWB chief executive Ian White said in an interview. “We’re trying to put together a network of country and port assets that will make us a reasonably significant sustainable player in the Canadian industry,” White said. “What we’re really doing is starting to look at one part of our strategy, to build some elevators in places we think are appropriate. “This is the first announcement of those.” CWB has downsized sharply since the government removed its marketing monopoly on most western Canadian wheat and barley in August 2012. Since then, the Winnipeg-

based company has bought and sold farmers’ wheat, durum, barley, canola and peas, relying mainly on grain facilities owned by rivals such as Richardson International Ltd. and Cargill Ltd. CWB started to assemble its own network of handling facilities in November, when it acquired Mission Terminal Inc. from Upper Lakes Group. Mission Terminal includes a terminal at Thunder Bay, Ontario, a grain facility at Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, and a stevedoring service. In January, CWB also bought a 10 per cent stake in Prairie West Terminal, a farmer-owned network in Saskatchewan. The Canadian government agreed to guarantee CWB’s borrowings until it is

sold or develops a plan to be self-sustaining by 2016. To finance its acquisitions and elevator construction, CWB is using its retained earnings and debt that does not require the government’s guarantee, White said. White said there have been no takeover offers for the CWB. He said CWB and the government have not yet agreed on a privatization process. Once that is clarified, CWB would look to add a strategic investor, but not take it over, White said. Part of CWB’s plan to become self-sustaining involves farmer ownership. Farmers can receive an equity interest in CWB based on their grain deliveries.

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UFA.com 3/3/2014 2:58 PM

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

HIGH COUNTRY CATTLE Grazing windswept ridge tops, west of High River, Alta., these cattle are taking advantage of chinook winds that boosted temperatures and blew snow off high pastures across much of southern Alberta. Photo: Wendy Dudley

World conservation congress coming to Winnipeg International conference focuses on principles of putting conservation into action WCCA release

“We are running out of dirt, and it’s no laughing matter.” So says Dr. David Montgomery, professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, and author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. Montgomery, who sees the recent rise of no-till farming as “the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations,” is one of the keynote speakers at the 6th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture (WCCA6), which will be held in Winnipeg June 22-25, 2014. Another keynote speaker is Howard Buffett, chair of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, a private family foundation working to improve the standard of living and quality of life for the world’s most impoverished and marginalized populations, and author of several books on conservation. Buffett also operates a 1,400-acre family farm in central Illinois and oversees research farms in Illinois and South Africa. The conference will end with an address by Dwayne Beck, manager of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm in South Dakota, and well-known speaker on the principles of putting conservation into action to minimize costs and maximize returns. Organizers say that will be an overall theme of WCCA6, and it will be programmed differently than previous conferences, with more emphasis on highlighting innovations and grower success stories. There are three main conference themes:

A little bit of fusarium can affect an entire harvest. Luckily, so can one treatment of Caramba.

• Growing more, more efficiently — sustainable intensification • Weatherproof your crop — climate-resilient systems • Increasing adoption through innovation — knowledge sharing and faster implementation WCCA6 will also include an Exhibit Hall and Resource Centre featuring displays of the latest conservation-related technologies and resources and an opportunity to connect with international researchers and adopters in conservation agriculture. The Great Plains of the U.S. and Canada saw some of the earliest development of tools and techniques for reducing tillage and reducing erosion, and WCCA6 will be followed by a one-day tour of southern Manitoba and a three-day tour of western Manitoba, South and North Dakota. For more information or to register, visitwww.wcca6.org.

For cereal growers with high production goals, Caramba® is the fungicide that best optimizes grade, yield and quality. It defends against fusarium head blight (FHB) and is proven to reduce deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination in grain. Caramba provides unparalled prevention and control of late season leaf diseases. Plus, growers who use Caramba have experienced yield increases of up to 3 to 4 bushels per acre versus untreated wheat. So don’t leave the fate of your harvest up to chance – trust it to Caramba. Prepare now at agsolutions.ca/caramba or call AgSolutions® Customer Care at 1-877-371-BASF (2273). Always read and follow label directions. AgSolutions is a registered trade-mark of BASF Corporation; CARAMBA is a registered trade-mark of BASF Agro B.V., all used with permission by BASF Canada Inc. CARAMBA should be used in a preventative disease control program. © 2014 BASF Canada Inc. 110200960_CARAMBA_AFE_JrPg_v2.indd 1

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ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Beginning farmers must know the five ‘Cs’ of credit

Farm financial specialist says everything from your character to the conditions of farm economy is scrutinized by lenders ALBERTA AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT RELEASE

arming, even at a small scale, is a capital-intensive business, and it’s not getting easier for beginning farmers. “With strong margins in the last five years, we have seen land prices increase over 35 per cent across Alberta,” said Rick Dehod, farm financial specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. “This increase has heightened the barriers to entry for beginning farmers. The greatest hurdle to overcome for most beginning farmers is financing. Accessing the capital to purchase the assets required to generate the income needed to repay the farm’s loans and living costs is difficult.” A U.S. study found that it takes $5 of gross income to produce $1 of living costs — so if a family’s living costs are $45,000, they will need $225,000 of gross farm income. In 2011, an average Alberta farm had gross receipts of $264,518, expenses of $224,607 with a net farm income of $39,911. Average farm capital was $2,210,573. That’s a lot of money, noted Dehod. “It is often assumed that beginning farmers are young, but from 2011 Census data we see that only 7.9 per cent of Alberta farm operators are under 35 years of age,” he said. “The majority of beginning farmers are between 35 and 50 years of age. I consider a beginning farmer being a farmer with less than 10 years in the business. These individuals have waited, saved and prepared for the opportunity to farm. Recent strong commodity prices and one generation retiring is encouraging beginning farmers to return to the farm.” In order to obtain financing and provide a reasonable standard of living while the farm or ranch is getting established, some form of off-farm income is often required to meet the needs of the farm and the family operating it. Beginning farmers also have to develop their credit personality and address the concerns that a lender may have in their business plans. Commercial lenders will undertake a process of loan evaluation for a loan request, said Dehod. This evaluation involves the five Cs of credit — character, capacity (sufficient cash flow to service debt), capital (net worth), collateral (assets to secure the debt), and conditions (of the borrower and the overall economy). “Character of a person is an important factor considered by lenders,” said Dehod. “For consumer loans and small business loans, lenders will use a credit report from Equifax or TransUnion to obtain a credit history on a loan applicant. These credit bureaus collect credit transactions from credit card companies, trade creditors and consumer loans to monitor repayment habits and credit worthiness. “It is important that telephone bills, credit card bills and loan

payments (are made) on time. Delinquency drives down a credit score.” In regard to capacity, Dehod recommends having a welldeveloped and realistic business plan. Renting some land or cattle to show a working knowledge and ability to generate the projected income is helpful to a lender as they will always compare the projections to past performance. Building capital or net worth worth shows how you have managed your finances to create equity and manage risk. When it comes to collateral, lenders look at assets owned by the borrower. Though the family farm may be strong, assets of parents cannot be used for security unless they agree to be co-borrowers or guarantors, Dehod noted.

PHOTO: THINKSTOCK

Conditions refer primarily to interest rates and terms, but it is also the state of the industry and economy. Creditors may not share the applicant’s optimism,

so it’s important to have a riskmanagement plan you can show a lender, said Dehod. “Developing a strong credit personality and a good relation-

ship with your bank manager is important. Knowing what is expected and what is required is the basis for this relationship,” said Dehod.

Help tell the real story of Canadian agriculture

Be an AGvocate Our industry needs more agvocates To reach its full potential, agriculture needs everyone in the industry to speak up and speak positively. Agriculture More Than Ever is an industry-driven cause to improve perceptions and create positive dialogue about Canadian ag. Together we can share the facts and stories about this vibrant and modern industry, and tell the world why we love what we do. It’s up to all of us to be agvocates and it’s easier than you think – visit AgMoreThanEver.ca and find out how you can get involved.

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

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ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

UKRAINE 2014 GRAIN HARVEST TO FALL

WORLD AWASH WITH SUGAR

Ukraine’s grain harvest is likely to fall to 57.3 million tonnes this year from around 63 million tonnes in 2013, an analyst said Mar. 25. Lower lending from banks and their refusal to provide forward funding has led to a smaller sowing area, which will be the main reason for a fall in grain output, APK-Inform analyst Rodion Rybchinsky said. Some analysts say that up to 20 per cent of Ukrainian arable land might not be sown this year, mainly because of financing difficulties arising from the country’s economic and political problems.— Reuters

Exporters are offering deep discounts on centre-south Brazilian raw sugar, with global supplies plentiful and a new harvest in the world’s top producer just weeks away. A senior European trade source said supplies of the old Brazilian crop in the inter-harvest period in centre-south Brazil had exceeded expectations, even before the new harvest gathers pace in coming months. Trade sources also said that the cane crush in Thailand, the world’s No. 2 exporter after Brazil, would reach an all-time high in the 2013-14 season. — Reuters

HEARTLAND Climate change will reduce crop

yields sooner than we thought Despite farm efforts at adaptation, yields are expected to decrease as much as 25 per cent in the second half of this century UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

study led by the University of Leeds has shown that global warming of only 2 C will be detrimental to crops in temperate and tropical regions, with reduced yields from the 2030s onwards. Professor Andy Challinor, from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and lead author of the study, said: “Our research shows that crop yields will be negatively affected by climate change much earlier than expected. “Furthermore, the impact of climate change on crops will vary both from year to year and from place to place — with the variability becoming greater as the weather becomes increasingly erratic.” The study, published today by the journal Nature Climate Change, feeds directly into the Working Group II report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which is due to be published at the end of March 2014. In the study, the researchers created a new data set by combining and comparing results from 1,700 published assessments of the response that climate change will have on the yields of rice, maize and wheat. Due to increased interest in climate change research, the new study was able to create the largest dataset to date on crop responses, with more than double the number of studies that were available for researchers to analyze for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

The carcass of a cow is pictured in the town of Floresta, in Pernambuco State, January 29, 2014. This has been the hottest January on record in parts of Brazil, and the heat plus a severe drought has fanned fears of water shortages, crop damage and higher electricity bills. PHOTO: REUTERS/UESLEI MARCELINO Shift in consensus

In the Fourth Assessment Report, scientists had reported that regions of the world with temperate climates, such as Europe and most of North America, could withstand a couple of degrees of warming without a noticeable effect on harvests, or possibly even benefit from a bumper crop. “As more data have become available, we’ve seen a shift in consensus, telling us that the impacts of climate change in temperate regions will happen sooner rather than later,” said Professor Challinor. The researchers state that we will see,

on average, an increasingly negative impact of climate change on crop yields from the 2030s onwards. The impact will be greatest in the second half of the century, when decreases of over 25 per cent will become increasingly common. These statistics already account for minor adaptation techniques employed by farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change, such as small adjustments in the crop variety and planting date. Later in the century, greater agricultural transformations and innovations will be needed in order to safeguard crop yields for future generations. “Climate change means a less predict-

able harvest, with different countries winning and losing in different years. The overall picture remains negative, and we are now starting to see how research can support adaptation by avoiding the worse impacts,” concludes Professor Challinor. The study was financially supported by the NERC EQUIP program and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), with the financial assistance of the European Union, Canadian International Development Agency, World Bank, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Danida.

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Record prices not encouraging cattle herd expansion Younger farmers not as keen to get into cattle as grain, says Alberta analyst TERRYN SHIELLS

COMMODITY NEWS SERVICE CANADA

igh grain prices, high land prices and a generally older rancher population are among the factors keeping cattle industry expansion at bay in Canada. Cash prices for Canadian feeder cattle may be reaching record highs, but that doesn’t seem to be encouraging herd expansion. Though prices for Canadian cattle are very strong, they could be even better, said Herb Lock of Farm$ense Marketing in Edmonton. “The real story is how far behind the Americans we are this year compared to last year,” he said. “Prices are good, but they could be better.”

Lock said Canadian fat cattle (1,500 pounds) are discounted by about $27 per hundredweight (cwt) compared to delivered values in Nebraska, which is a steeper difference than the average discount of about $10 to $14/cwt. The Canadian market is lagging the U.S. market because of a lack of supply in Canada, and the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) is having a bigger effect on the U.S. hog industry, shifting some demand to beef, he said. High prices are encouraging some expansion in the U.S., but Canadians aren’t as keen on building their herds. Expansion isn’t on Canadian farmers’ minds because if they buy a cow to add to their herd now, they’re buying it at

highest-priced cow in history, you become more vulnerable down the road,” he added.

“If you’re going forward into the next five or 10 years with the highestpriced cow in history, you become more vulnerable down the road.”

Not as glamorous

HERB LOCK

the highest price in history, Lock said. “If you’re going forward into the next five or 10 years with the

Strong grain prices up until recently, land values that are “in the stratosphere for a cowcalf guy” and a generally older population in the industry are also keeping expansion at bay, said Lock. The younger generation “likes the technology of the grain business,” which is steering some of the younger guys away from the cattle industry, he added. “The cow business is made up of everybody from guys with 1,000 cows down to the guy with 50 cows. But, the guy with 50 cows and the part-time cow-calf people are declining,” said Lock. Another reason the cattle

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industry isn’t as “glamorous” as the grain business is because there’s a lot of risk, and producers are often “getting whacked on the head” by a variety of things, said Lock. Over the last 10 years, cattle prices have been hit hard by high grain values, BSE and a strong Canadian dollar. If anything, live cattle supplies in Western Canada this fall will be smaller than a year ago because high prices and a weaker Canadian dollar encouraged selling and exports to the U.S. this winter. “Calf volumes into this fall in Western Canada could be a good five per cent lower than a year ago,” Lock said. “We’re exporting a lot more feeder cattle to the U.S. this year than last year. We’re up 41 per cent.”

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.S. food prices are expected to rise more rapidly this year after a very tame 2013, led by gains in beef, poultry and egg prices, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Mar. 25. The food price inflation outlook assumes normal weather, the USDA said, adding that the California drought poses a risk of bigger increases in many food categories, and that high supermarket prices for beef are “here to stay.” Various measures, including overall food, food-at-home and food-away-from-home prices, are expected to rise by 2.5 to 3.5 per cent in 2014. The consumer price index for all food prices rose by 1.4 per cent in 2013. The ongoing drought in California could have “large and lasting effects on fruit, vegetable, dairy and egg prices” although that impact has not been seen so far, USDA said. California is the No. 1 U.S. farm state, producing roughly half the nation’s fruits and vegetables. The Golden State faces a water crisis after its driest year on record in 2013. Large amounts of farmland are likely to go unplanted this year. In other categories, USDA said farm egg prices have been exceedingly volatile recently, rising by 20 per cent in February after falling by 28 per cent in January. Farm cattle and wholesale beef prices rose in February, by 1.1 per cent and 2.4 per cent respectively. “While not unusually large, these changes indicate that the record-high supermarket beef prices across the country are here to stay for the coming months,” the agency said.

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Critics say transportation crisis boosts grain company profits There’s an extraordinary difference between country and port prices By Allan Dawson

“My members have said, ‘we are bleeding badly.’”

staff

armers unable to move crops this winter have had plenty of time to notice the difference between what grain companies are paying in the country and selling for off the West Coast. “Our calculations demonstrate the grain companies have taken over $1.6 billion in excess profits from wheat alone so far this crop year,” said CWBA spokesman and former Canadian Wheat Board director Kyle Korneychuk. University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist Richard Gray independently reached a similar conclusion after comparing prices in the country, where elevators are plugged, against export sales at West Coast ports where prices are in some cases double. The result is unprecedented grain company margins, despite what is expected to be record demurrage costs. The CWBA estimates grain companies are earning almost $169 a tonne in excess profit from wheat, based on exports of 9.7 million tonnes to date. Gray’s calculations put company profits at $160 per tonne. “These record-high basis levels (gap between futures and elevator prices) are costing farmers $100 to $200 per acre in forgone revenue and several billion dollars in total,” Gray wrote in an op-ed piece submitted to Prairie newspapers. “At the same time, these margins have substantially increased the bottom line of grain companies and pro-

Wade sobkowich

owned by grain companies, enjoy similar margins, he added. “If they crush 10 million tonnes that’s $1.6 billion, so I suspect they’re doing pretty well,” Gray said.

Solutions differ

University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist Richard Gray expects western grain companies to earn record profits this crop year despite record demurrage charges. PHOto: allan dawson cessors (and they) will likely post record profits this year.”

Question the numbers

The Western Grain Elevators Association denies grain companies are profiting from the transportation crisis. “Grain companies don’t make money if they can’t move grain,” executive director Wade Sobkowich said in a statement. “We question the numbers put forward by the CWB Alliance.” With four months left in the crop year grain companies have already paid an estimated $55 million in

El Niño seen bringing mixed weather to Canadian Prairies Forecaster sees more Alberta moisture in the first half of the growing season By Dave Sims

Commodity News Service Canada

armer-than-normal water in the Pacific Ocean this year could have a mixed influence on the Canadian Prairies, according to a weather specialist. Forecasters warn the phenomenon, better known as El Niño, could disrupt weather patterns in many parts of the world. El Niño’s effects are largely determined by the predominating weather pattern at the time of the warm air’s arrival. But Canada is a slightly different case as it’s difficult for the warming pattern to reach so far north without being influenced by traditional weather norms, said meteorologist Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc. in Kansas City. Lerner said he expects the northeastern half of Saskatchewan, along with western parts of Manitoba to be slightly warmer and drier than normal in the spring and early summer, with wetter conditions in Alberta and southwest-

ern Saskatchewan. However, he stressed, this pattern doesn’t mean drought conditions will set in. “Precipitation events will come into the region, but they’ll be lighter than normal,” Lerner added. The situation could then flipflop in the second half of the growing season, with Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan seeing a drier bias, and the southern part of Manitoba becoming wetter. Lerner also thinks Alberta could see a warm finish to the summer season. Signals from El Niño are still weak, he cautioned. “El Niño hasn’t even started to evolve yet, it will evolve rather quickly though as we go from April into May, and by the time we get to June, it will likely be pretty well established,” said Lerner. While El Niño’s effects on Western Canada’s summer pattern might be muted, the same can’t be said if it persists into the winter. “If El Niño is deeply entrenched, you will have a warmer and drierbased winter across the Prairies,” he said.

demurrage, Sobkowich said in an interview. The previous record of $50 million was set in 2010-11, according to Quorum Corporation, Canada’s grain monitor. Demurrage is costing $15,000 to $25,000 per vessel per day, Sobkowich said. At the peak, 53 ships were waiting off the West Coast. “My members have said, ‘we are bleeding badly,’” he said. However Gray said companies can make back their entire demurrage in one week of shipping. “And they will have change left over.” Canola crushing plants, also

Gray and Korneychuk agree getting the railways to move more grain will help, but beyond that their solutions differ. Korneychuk wants the Canadian Wheat Board’s single desk reinstated. “The farmers’ share of the international price of grain has gone down from 84 per cent under our single-desk Canadian Wheat Board to around 40 per cent today,” he said. “It is the grain companies who have taken the lion’s share... because the railways are constrained by legislation from taking much more than 12 per cent.” Wheat board co-ordination and system oversight was more efficient, he said. Gray said the single desk would not have prevented this year’s anomalies in shipping and basis levels. He’s calling for expanded West Coast grain-handling capacity and more competition. “We’ll get our highest net prices

if grain goes west,” Gray said. “But for that to happen we need to nearly double West Coast capacity.” The West’s three biggest grain companies — Richardson International, Viterra (Glencore) and Cargill own most of Vancouver’s terminal space. “It’s not a lot of competition,” Gray said. “Prince Rupert is particularly sinister,” he added, because the same three firms jointly own the grain terminal there. As a result, it gets used as a last resort because companies would rather maximize exports through their own terminals. It would be more competitive with one owner, even if it was one of the big three, Gray said. There’s little room to expand export capacity in Vancouver and even if there was, there is no incentive for existing players to solve the problem, Gray said. Farmers can also expect the basis to remain wide as more grain should be exported from the West Coast than it can handle, Gray said. “This is a really complex thing and it’s going to require some real investment and not just a policy change,” he said. allan@fbcpublishing.com

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Community news and events from across the province

Sisters share their love of agriculture

Reporter’s Notebook

The meeting must go on BY JENNIFER BLAIR AF STAFF / RED DEER

ural folk are pretty resourceful — but never more so than when they want to get out of a meeting on time. When a first-day-of-spring snowfall in Red Deer downed power lines across the city, cutting power at a DuPont corn planter clinic, agronomist Doug Moisey sprang into action. “We’ll go get a generator,” he announced. “There’s a Canadian Tire down the block.” This reporter thought he must be joking. Surely, the meeting would have to wait until the power was back on.

Moisey, however, told everyone they would have to sit tight for 20 minutes. True to his word, Moisey set up a generator in the lobby and strung enough extension cord to run the projector. With only a few hiccups, presenter Bill Lehmkuhl of Precision Ag Services was able to continue his talk about corn planters, with only the glow from his PowerPoint to illuminate the room until the power came back on almost an hour after it had gone out. That allowed Moisey to keep his other promise: That everyone would be back on the road by 3 o’clock. jennifer.blair@fbcpublishing.com

o you think Shelby and Sierra Zmurchyk are excited about farming? The fourth-generation dairy producers are also pretty pumped about being the final winners in Alberta Farmer’s felfie contest. “We would like to say thanks so much,” said Shelby, 18. “This is a great opportunity to share our love of agriculture while giving back to the community with a donation.” Shelby and 13-year-old Sierra (pictured behind her sister) work with their parents on Zmurchyk Dairy near Lethbridge. Their $100 donation will go to the Lethbridge Soup Kitchen. Shelby, who is taking a year off after high school, snapped this pic in the dairy barn while taking a break from milking cows. Sierra, who is still in junior high, also helps out with the dairy but is more involved with the purebred Angus

herd the sisters began together through their involvement in 4-H. “I focus on my herd, but also help Mom and Dad with the genetics and whatnot within the dairy herd,” said Shelby, who tweets at @farmchic_10. Shelby is planning to stay on the farm for a while. “The way we’re raised on the farm is completely different than being raised in a city,” she said. “You just learn a lot of the life skills at a very young age, like driving and how to pitch in. The family farm is what keeps money and food on the table. We learn that we have to pitch in to keep it running.” Being a fourth generation on the farm makes it that much more special, she said. “You just keep thinking about the family that worked so hard to get there,” she said.

Sylvan Lake one step closer to Hockeyville title Alberta town received 1.5 million votes in the penultimate round of voting and has already earned $100,000 in prize money BY JENNIFER BLAIR AF STAFF

Send agriculture-related meeting and event announcements to: glenn.cheater@fbcpublishing.com April 1: Growing faba beans in Alberta, Lacombe Research Centre, Lacombe: Contact: Sydney Vos 780-986-9398 April 2: Verified Beef Production Workshop, Manning. Contact: Nora 780-836-3354

early 800 raucous hockey fans crowded into Sylvan Lake’s community centre on March 22 to learn if their efforts to vote the central Alberta town into the Kraft Hockeyville finals had paid off. They weren’t disappointed. “When the announcement (that Sylvan was in the final two) was made, it was pretty loud,” said Jared Waldo, one of the Sylvan Lakers who nominated the town in January. “It’s validation for the work this community has done — not just Sylvan, but everywhere that’s been supporting us.” And work is the right word for it — in the last round of voting, Sylvan Lake received more than 1.5 million votes in two days, putting it in the lead for the Kraft Hockeyville grand prize of $100,000 in upgrades to the town’s multiplex and the opportunity to host an NHL pre-season game. The roof of the town’s other ice rink — a 40-year-old arena — collapsed under heavy snow earlier this winter, and is a writeoff. That sparked the overwhelming show of support, said Waldo. “You have a hockey-crazed market like Sylvan that depends on having those two sheets of ice,” he said. “When you get down to one, it’s slim pickings. There’s a lot of communities that can relate to that.” Hockey fans from towns from across Canada are throwing their support behind Sylvan Lake to claim the Hockeyville title over their remaining rival Kingston, N.S. “It’s so Canadian of everybody to lend their support,” said Waldo. “Good people do great things for other people, and we’re seeing some of that right now.” The extra support will help, but now that

what’s

April 4: Artificial Insemination for Cattle, Animal Science Building, GPRC-Fairview Campus, Fairview. Contact: Sue Sych 780-835-6601 April 5: Gardeners Day, St Louis Parish Hall, Bonnyville. Contact: Charlene Rachynski 780-826-3240 April 7-9: Grain & Oilseed Marketing Course, Bear Canyon Hall, Bear Canyon. Contact: Neil Blue 780-853-6929

Sylvan Lake town councillors flash the ‘we’re No. 1’ sign. From (l to r): Dale Plante, Matt Prete, Megan Chernoff, Mayor Sean McIntyre, Graham Parsons, Chris Lust, and Jas Payne. PHOTO: JOANNE GAUDET the contest is down to the final two towns, Kraft Hockeyville organizers want to see “the spirit of the community.” “You see that in the voting, but they want to see people coming out and physically supporting this bid and this community.” Sylvan Lake’s Hockeyville organizing committee is planning events leading up to the April 5 grand prize announcement that Waldo hopes will showcase the town’s community spirit. “It’s one thing to sit behind your keyboard and your tablets and your phones voting — it’s another to get out and physically support it,” he said.

A lifelong Sylvan Laker, Waldo has “no doubts” that the community and its supporters will rise to the challenge. “There’s a reason I never want to leave (Sylvan Lake), and part of it is the town itself, but another part of it is the community and the people within it,” he said. “When we have an opportunity like this to bring the community together, it just reinforces why this is home and why it will continue to be home for me and my kids.” Voting for the final round has closed. jennifer.blair@fbcpublishing.com

April 9: Getting Into Farmers’ Markets, Grande Prairie Provincial Building, Grande Prairie. (Also April 16 in Leduc and April 30 in Millarville.) Contact: Eileen Kotowich 780-853-8223 April 9: Women North Conference, Bell Petroleum Centre, Peace River. Contact: Elaine Stenbraaten 780 835-7531 April 11: Agricultural Society Spring Bench Show & Seed Fair, Dave Shaw Memorial Complex, Hines Creek. Contact: Leanne Walmsley 780-835-0605

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

Prices are high, but ginseng not a way to get rich quick At a price $50 per pound and production of 3,500 pounds per acre looks attractive, but costs are and risks are high ALBERTA AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT RELEASE

he Ag-Info Centre has recently experienced an increase in the number of calls about ginseng production. Here’s a look at what makes it so attractive and why more people aren’t growing it. American ginseng, the variety grown commercially in Canada, is a small, fleshy-rooted perennial native to eastern North America. Grown from seed, ginseng is typically harvested three to four years after its initial planting, when it is largely considered mature. It prefers well-drained soils and in the wild is primarily found under the canopies of large forests, with approximately 70 to 80 per cent shade coverage. In commercial production, large shade cloths are used. Ginseng has been grown commercially in Canada since the 1700s, but has been in wide use in Asia for more than 2,000 years. It is commonly thought to be an “adaptogen” herb, meaning that it works in promoting stabilization of the body’s natural rhythms. According to the Ontario Ginseng Growers Association, nearly all the ginseng in Canada is produced in Ontario,

with more than 140 growers producing four million pounds annually. Of this, 90 per cent is exported to Asia for commercial use. There is a small amount of commercial production in B.C., but this has dwindled in previous years due to declines in price and markets. The value of ginseng roots are based on a number of subjective criteria including how “man shaped” they are as well as colour, size and texture. “There are a number of potential reasons for the sudden resurgence of interest in ginseng; however, the majority relate to commodity prices,” says Dustin Morton, commercial horticulture specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. “Field crop prices, which have been very good for the last couple of years, have bottomed out again and producers are looking for potentially more lucrative options. Currently, ginseng prices, which are always incredibly volatile, are at near-record highs.” Currently, prices range from $17 to nearly $200 per pound, with an average in the $40 to $50 range. However, prior to the price rise in recent years, there were a number of years where

Ginseng

PHOTO: THINKSTOCK

producers have received as little as $8 to $10 per pound. At current prices and with an average crop producing up to 3,500 pounds per acre, it is not difficult to see why there is so much interest in growing ginseng. However, establishment costs are high. Ontario estimates these costs to be $57,000 per acre (over three years). This does not include the cost of land rental (ginseng can only be grown on land once) or specialty equipment such as dryers and sprayers. As well, there is no revenue for a minimum of three years. American ginseng has a broad habitat, but is generally con-

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erecting this structure has been factored into the above expense summary, its maintenance through Alberta’s tumultuous summers has not. “While ginseng prices are at all-time highs, Alberta producers looking for ways to diversify their operations may have better luck with other crops,” says Morton. “Market subjectivity, high input costs and less-thanperfect environmental conditions make ginseng a very tough sell on the Prairies. Ginseng is not a quick cash crop. However, as with most things in farming, success is possible with lots of planning, hard work and a little bit of luck.”

FOCUS ON

sidered a Zone 3 plant at best, and better suited to Zone 4. While some areas in Alberta are appropriately zoned, crop survival has historically been low because of harsh winters and drying winds. Producers looking to diversify with ginseng may also be surprised to find that it grows better in a very-welldrained, slightly acidic soil. Alberta soils are typically more basic or alkali and are difficult to buffer without significant application of inputs. Furthermore, the plant’s requirement for shade demands the construction of semi-permanent shade structures to maintain the crop. While the expense of

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

Food manufacturers’ contribution poorly recognized A new report says food manufacturing in Canada needs more attention from government if it is to achieve its potential By Alex Binkley AFE contributor

anada’s food-manufacturing industry shouldn’t be lumped in with agriculture when it comes to this country’s food policy development, a newly released study from the Ivey Business School says. It’s the second-largest manufacturing sector, the leading employer and through the recent recession “proved to be remarkably resilient in both revenue and employment compared to other manufacturing industries,” notes the report by David Sparling and Erin Cheney. “This is an industry that Canada has been able to count on for both GDP and jobs,” it adds. “While it may not be as exciting as high technology and aerospace, in a recession being steady and unexciting is something to get excited about.” Yet it doesn’t get the attention it deserves from government. “Although food manufacturing is important to Canada’s economy and farmers, it has received very little focus from policy-makers,” the Ivey report points out. “Attention needs to come, not only from agriculture and agri-food departments, but also from economic development, trade and industry-focused ministries. Food is intrinsically linked to agriculture, but the business of food is first and foremost a manufacturing and marketing industry.” Government must give the sector the respect its economic position has earned it, the report continues. “Policies and resource allocations for food manufacturing should not be integrated with, and masked by, primary agriculture’s business risk management policies, which continue to be the primary focus of provincial and federal agri-food policy. The report said government policies must encourage exports with trade agreements and assistance to make food companies become more globally competitive and export ready.

“Exports can also be supported through government trade programs and by creating regulatory regimes that are aligned and co-ordinated with those of major trading partners.” The Ivey report was prepared in collaboration with the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute which is studying the state of the sector. In a recent analysis, CAPI pointed out that the food-manufacturing and beverage sector ran up a $6.8-billion trade deficit in 2013 largely led by increased wine and salsa imports and the closure of many foreign-owned food plants. Chris Kyte, president of Food Processors of Canada, praised the efforts of CAPI and the Ivey Business School to shine a spotlight on the food industry. “We look forward to working with policy-makers to grow this industry to higher levels of performance.” The report said food manufacturing could be a powerhouse industry for Canada with its access to farm products, large markets, transportation networks and a consistent track record. Economic conditions are moving in favour of the Canadian food-manufacturing industry, with the world slowly recovering from the recession and the Canadian dollar drifting lower. “If Canada is to continue to reap the economic and employment benefits of a healthy foodmanufacturing industry, government must take notice and act,” the report said. One challenge facing the sector is its inability to improve its productivity in recent years “and that creates concerns over the ability of food manufacturers to compete in the long term,” the report noted. The industry has been trying to reorganize “to be a strong player on the global stage and retain its competitiveness.” Between 2006 and 2014, 143 Canadian food plants closed resulting in projected losses of almost 24,000 jobs. Yet overall net employment in the industry remained the same. Ontario was hardest hit by closings while Quebec’s picture was more positive.

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The report describes the closures as evidence “of an industry in transition rather than one in decline,” says David Sparling, chair of AgriFood Innovation at the Ivey Business School. “Almost 90 per cent of closures occurred in multi-plant companies, largely the result of companies reorganizing and consolidating production in fewer large plants to achieve greater scale and efficiency. The results are leaner operations, higher productivity and stronger companies better equipped to compete.”

PHOTo: thinkstock

Albertafarmexpress.ca • March 31, 2014

CBOC food strategy calls for ending supply management Farm groups weren’t involved in drafting the plan to bolster the agri-food sector in Canada By Alex Binkley af contributor

PHOTo: thinkstock

ELITE WILD OAT CONTROL

he Conference Board of Canada’s newly released Canadian Food Strategy offers 69 proposals for boosting agri-food industry, ranging from expanded sustainability, to improved food safety to obesity prevention and healthy diets. The board’s Centre for Food in Canada, largely financed by large food companies, has produced 19 detailed research reports, but the effort lacks one key ingredient — the involvement of the farm sector. This is most evident in its call for the end of supply management in the dairy and poultry sectors. It took this position at the start of its extensive work on the food industry four years ago. That put it at odds with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the country’s largest farm group, which has been developing its own food policy for much of the last decade. It has released a document, Towards a National Food Strategy: A framework for securing the future of food. “The NFS is meant to help guide policy development and is built around nine strategic objectives that the food system must meet to feed our growing population — domestic and abroad — and to manage our food system sustainably,” the CFA says.

Economists’ view

While the CBOC takes the usual position of economists in arguing in favour of market-based solutions to problems in the food industry, it acknowledges that “governments have a leadership role to play in achieving many of the strategy’s goals and outcomes. This includes creating policies, laws, regulations and programs to improve the food sector’s operating environment. “Governments are particularly important in initiating change in areas where there is a market failure,” it said. “Their efforts are key to promoting economic growth

IS JUST THE BEGINNING.

and expanded domestic and international trade; maintaining efficient and effective oversight of food safety; broadening household food security; promoting healthy diets and choices; safeguarding the environment; and supporting fundamental food research.” The report says the food industry has evolved to provide Canadians with a vast array of food choices at market prices through improved international and domestic trade. CFA said its effort focused on long-term plans because “shortterm, band-aid solutions are not enough for the lasting and evolving challenges we face today.” “The NFS was developed by the agriculture and agri-food industry to ensure a more holistic and strategic approach to food and agriculture to meet the needs of the food system and future generations, as well as the global community.” The CFA notes that in a 2012 comparison of food-at-home budget shares conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Canadians were found to be spending the third-lowest share of their total expenditures on food in the world, behind only the U.S. and Britain. Statistics Canada says Canadians spent 10.6 per cent of their disposable income on food in 2013.

Action oriented

The CBOC described its strategy as “a comprehensive, actionoriented framework to guide and stimulate change in food and the food system. It has been developed from a conviction that changing our nation’s food system is both an opportunity and an imperative. The strategy’s five key elements are industry prosperity, healthy food, food safety, household food security, and environmental sustainability.” It says a food strategy is needed because the challenges facing the industry have not been addressed comprehensively. “At the root of the problem is the lack of a shared national vision for food that promotes collaboration to achieve widely shared economic, social and environmental goals.”

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

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Belarus_ Case/IH_ Caterpillar_ Ford_ John_Deere_ Kubota_ Massey_Ferguson_ New_Holland_ Steiger_ Universal_ Versatile_ White_ Zetor_ Tractors_2WD_ Tractors_4WD_ Tractors_Various_ Farm_Machinery_Miscellaneous_ Farm_Machinery_Wanted_ Fencing_ Firewood_ Fish_Farm_ Forestry/Logging_ Fork_Lifts/Pallets_ Fur_Farming_ Generators_ GPS_ Health_Care_ Heat_&_Air_Conditioning_ Hides/Furs/Leathers_ Hobby_&_Handicrafts_ Household_Items_ lANDSCAPING Greenhouses_ Lawn_&_Garden_ lIVESTOCK Cattle Cattle_Auctions__ Angus_ Black_Angus_ Red_Angus_ Aryshire_ Belgian_Blue_ Blonde_d'Aquitaine_ Brahman_ Brangus_ Braunvieh_ BueLingo_ Charolais_ Dairy_ Dexter_ Excellerator_ Galloway_ Gelbvieh_ Guernsey_ Hereford_ Highland_ Holstein_ Jersey_ Limousin_ Lowline_ Luing_ Maine-Anjou_ Miniature_ Murray_Grey_ Piedmontese_ Pinzgauer_ Red_Poll_ Salers_ Santa_Gertrudis_ Shaver_Beefblend_ Shorthorn_ Simmental

South_Devon Speckle_Park Tarentaise_ Texas_Longhorn_ Wagyu_ Welsh_Black_ Cattle_Composite_ Cattle_Various_ Cattle_Wanted lIVESTOCK horses Horse_Auctions_ American_Saddlebred_ Appaloosa Arabian_ Belgian_ Canadian_ Clydesdale_ Draft_ Donkeys_ Haflinger_ Miniature_ Morgan_ Mules_ Norwegian_Ford_ Paint_ Palomino_ Percheron_ Peruvian_ Pinto_ Ponies_ Quarter_Horse_ Shetland_ Sport_Horses_ Standardbred_ Tennessee_Walker_ Thoroughbred_ Warmblood_ Welsh_ Horses_For_Sale_ Horses_Wanted_ lIVESTOCK Sheep Sheep_Auction_ Arcott_ Columbia_ Dorper_ Dorset_ Katahdin_ Lincoln_ Suffolk_ Texel_Sheep_ Sheep_For_Sale_ Sheep_Wanted_ lIVESTOCK Swine Swine_Auction_ Swine_For_Sale_ Swine_Wanted_ lIVESTOCK Poultry Poultry_For_Sale_ Poultry_Wanted_ lIVESTOCK Specialty Alpacas_ Bison_(Buffalo)_ Deer_ Elk_ Goats_ Llama_ Rabbits_ Emu_Ostrich_Rhea_ Yaks_ Specialty_Livestock_Various_ Livestock_Equipment_ Livestock_Services_&_Vet_Supplies_ Miscellaneous_Articles_

display Classified

• Minimum charge — $15.00 per week for first 25 words or less and an additional 60 cents per word for every word over 25. Additional bolding 75 cents per word. GST is extra. $2.50 billing charge is added to billed ads only. • Terms: Payment due upon receipt of invoice. • 10% discount for prepaid ads. If phoning in your ad you must pay with VISA or MasterCard to qualify for discount. • Ask about our Priority Placement • Prepayment Bonus: Prepay for 3 weeks and get a bonus of 2 weeks; bonus weeks run consecutively and cannot be used separately from original ad; additions and changes accepted only during first 3 weeks. • If you wish to have replies sent to a confidential box number, please add $5.00 per week to your total. Count eight words for your address. Example: Ad XXXX, Alberta Farmer Express , Box 9800, Winnipeg, R3C 3K7. • Your complete name & address must be submitted to our office before publication. (This information will be kept confidential & will not appear in the ad unless requested.)

• Advertising copy deviating in any way from the regular classified style will be considered display and charged at the display rate of $34.30 per column inch ($2.45 per agate line). • Minimum charge $34.30 per week. • Illustrations and logos are allowed with full border. • Advertising rates are flat with no discount for frequency of insertion or volume of space used. • Terms: Payment due upon receipt of invoice. • Price quoted does not include GST.

Published by Farm Business Communications, 1666 Dublin Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1 WINNIPEG OFFICE Alberta Farmer Express 1666 Dublin Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1 Toll-Free in Canada 1-800-665-1362 Phone 403-341-0442 in Winnipeg FAX 403-341-0615 Mailing Address: Box 9800, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 3K7 • •

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AGREEMENT The publisher reserves the right to refuse any or all advertising for any reason stated or unstated. Advertisers requesting publication of either display or classified advertisements agree that should the advertisement be omitted from the issue ordered for whatever reason, the Alberta Farmer Express shall not be held liable. It is also agreed that in the event of an error appearing in the published advertisement, the Alberta Farmer Express accepts no liability beyond the amount paid for that portion of the advertisement in which the error appears or affects. Claims for adjustment are limited to errors appearing in the first insertion only. While every endeavor will be made to forward box number replies as soon as possible, we accept no liability in respect to loss or damage alleged to a rise through either failure or delay in forwarding such replies, however caused, whether by negligence or otherwise.

(2 weeks prior)

REAl ESTATE Vacation_Property_ Commercial_Buildings_ Condos_ Cottages_&_Lots_ Houses_&_Lots_ Mobile_Homes_ Motels_&_Hotels_ Resorts_ Farms & Ranches British_Columbia_ Alberta_ Saskatchewan_ Manitoba_ Pastures_ Farms_Wanted_ Acreages/Hobby_Farms_ Land_For_Sale_ Land_For_Rent_ RECREATIONAl VEhIClES All_Terrain_Vehicles_ Boats_&_Water_ Campers_&_Trailers_ Golf_Carts_ Motor_Homes_ Motorcycles_ Snowmobiles Recycling Refrigeration Restaurant_Supplies Sausage_Equipment_ Sawmills_ Scales_ SEED/FEED/GRAIN Pedigreed Cereal Seeds Barley_ Durum_ Oats_ Rye_ Triticale_ Wheat_ Cereals_Various_ Pedigreed Forage Seeds Alfalfa_ Annual_Forage_ Clover_ Forages_Various_ Grass_Seeds_ Pedigreed Oilseeds Canola_ Flax_ Oilseeds_Various_ Pedigreed Pulse Crops Beans_ Chickpeas_

TRAIlERS Grain_Trailers_ Livestock_Trailers_ Trailers_Miscellaneous_ Travel_ Water_Pumps_ Water_Treatment_ Welding_ Well_Drilling_ Well_&_Cistern__ Winches_ COMMUNITy CAlENDAR British_Columbia_ Alberta_ Saskatchewan_ Manitoba_ CAREERS Career_Training_ Child_Care_ Construction_ Domestic_Services_ Farm/Ranch_ Forestry/Log_ Health_Care_ Help_Wanted_ Management Mining_ Oil_Field_ Professional_ Resume_Services_ Sales/Marketing_ Trades/Tech_ Truck_Drivers_ Employment_Wanted_

MAiL TO: Alberta Farmer Express, Box 9800, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 3K7 FAx TO: 403-341-0615 PhOnE in: Toll-Free in Canada 1-800-665-1362 OR (403) 341-0442 in Alberta

NAME_ ___________________________________________________________ ______PHONE_#_______________________________ ADDRESS_____________________________________________ ______TOWN_____________________________________________ PROVINCE____________________________ _____POSTAL_CODE__________________________

All classified ads are non-commissionable.

advertising deadline Wednesday noon

ORGANIC Organic_Certified_ Organic_Food_ Organic_Grains_ Personal_ Pest_Control Pets_&_Supplies_ Photography_ Propane_ Pumps_ Radio,_TV_&_Satellite_

Lentil_ Peas_ Pulses_Various_ Pedigreed Specialty Crops Canary_Seeds_ Mustard_ Potatoes_ Sunflower_ Specialty_Crops_Various Common Seed_ Cereal_Seeds_ Forage_Seeds_ Grass_Seeds_ Oilseeds_ Pulse_Crops_ Common_Seed_Various_ Feed/Grain Feed_Grain_ Hay_&_Straw_ Hay_&_Feed_Wanted_ Feed_Wanted_ Grain_Wanted_ Seed_Wanted_ Sewing_Machines_ Sharpening_Services_ Silos_ Sporting_Goods_ Outfitters_ Stamps_&_Coins_ Swap_ Tanks_ Tarpaulins_ Tenders_ Tickets_ Tires_ Tools_

AD ORDER FORM

adveRtising Rates & infoRmation

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Miscellaneous_Articles_Wanted_ Musical_ Notices_ On-Line_Services_

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CAUTION The Alberta Farmer Express, while assuming no responsibility for advertisements appearing in its columns, exercises the greatest care in an endeavor to restrict advertising to wholly reliable firms or individuals. However, please do not send money to a Manitoba Co-operator box number. Buyers are advised to request shipment C.O.D. when ordering from an unknown advertiser, thus minimizing the chance of fraud and eliminating the necessity of a refund where the goods have already been sold. At Farm Business Communications we have a firm commitment to protecting your privacy and security as our customer. Farm Business Communications will only collect personal information if it is required for the proper functioning of our business. As part of our commitment to enhance customer service, we may share this personal information with other strategic business partners. For more information regarding our Customer Information Privacy Policy, write to: Information Protection Officer, Farm Business Communications, 1666 Dublin Ave., Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1. Occasionally we make our list of subscribers available to other reputable firms whose products and services might be of interest to you. If you would prefer not to receive such offers, please contact us at the address in the preceding paragraph, or call (204)-954-1456. The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to Alberta Farmer Express and Farm Business Communications attempt to provide accurate and useful opinions, information and analysis. However, the editors, journalists and Alberta Farmer Express and Farm Business Communications, cannot and do not guarantee the accuracy of the information contained in this publication and the editors as well as Alberta Farmer Express and Farm Business Communication assume no responsibility for any actions or decisions taken by any reader for this publication based on any and all information provided.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ CLASSIFICATION__________________________ ❏ I would like to take advantage of the Prepayment Bonus of 2 FREE weeks when I prepay for 3 weeks. _

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ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

SEED/FEED/CROP INPUTS Specialty Crops Various

SEED/FEED MISCELLANEOUS Grain Wanted

BUILDINGS

FARM MACHINERY Tillage & Seeding – Tillage

BUILDINGS

BUYING HEATED/DAMAGED PEAS, FLAX & GRAIN “On Farm Pickup” Westcan Feed & Grain 1-877-250-5252

Bioriginal Food & Science Corp., based in Saskatoon, are looking to contract Borage acres for the upcoming 2014 growing season.

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Great proﬁt potential based on yield, prices and low input costs.

Winter Discounts On NEW & USED Rollers

BUYING SPRING THRASHED CANOLA & GRAIN “On Farm Pickup” Westcan Feed & Grain 1-877-250-5252

BOW VALLEY TRADING LTD.

WE BUY DAMAGED GRAIN

Attractive oil premiums and free seed delivery and on-farm pick-up. Flexible contracting options available as well. For more information, please contact Carl Lynn P.Ag. of Bioriginal at:

306-229-9976 (cell) 306-975-9295 (ofﬁce) crops@bioriginal.com

Wheat, Barley, Oats, Peas, etc. Green or Heated Canola/Flax

HEATED & GREEN CANOLA

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit: W. Buis Holdings Ltd.

Foremost - 403-867-2436

precisionpac.ca MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTS/SERVICES

Crop Consulting

“ON FARM PICK UP”

1-877-250-5252

Buying Tough, Heated, Green, Canola, Freight Options, Prompt Payment Bonded and Insured

CALL 1-866-388-6284 www.milliganbiofuels.com ANNOUNCEMENTS

We also specialize in: Crop Insurance appeals;

issues; Equipment malfunction; Yield comparisons, Plus Private Investigations of any nature. With our assistance the majority of our clients have received compensation previously denied. Back-Track Investigations investigates, documents your loss and assists in settling your claim. Licensed Agrologist on Staff. For more information Please call 1-866-882-4779

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

FARM/CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT

Combines Various

BUILDING & RENOVATIONS

FARM MACHINERY

BUILDING & RENOVATIONS Concrete Repair

FARM MACHINERY Haying & Harvesting – Various

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

Andrukow Group Solutions Inc.

Crop Production Services Inc.

Wainwright -780-842-3306

14-01-10 1:56 PM

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit: Agro Guys Inc.

Galahad - 780-583-2476

precisionpac.ca ANTIQUES ANTIQUES Antique Equipment

We will be joining WDM to celebrate their annual “Those were the days” & join them on the occasion of their 65th birthday. www.nbattleford@wdm.ca All IH machinery, trucks, tractors, household, stationary engines, power units, cub cadets & anything else marketed by IH are welcome. Membership annual meeting w/banquet & guest speaker. More information available from show chairman Gary Algot. (780)741-2115. www.ihc38.com

AUTO & TRANSPORT Vehicles Wanted

COMBINE WORLD located 20 min. E of Saskatoon, SK on Hwy. #16. 1 year warranty on all new, used, and rebuilt parts. Canada’s largest inventory of late model combines & swathers. 1-800-667-4515 www.combineworld.com

Pets & Supplies FOR SALE: REGISTERED BORDER collie stock dogs. Contact Bill Reeder: (403) 653-7661 www.billreederrodeohorses.com FARM/CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT

Baling Equipment WANTED: JD 7810 c/w FEL & 3-PTH; sp or PTO bale wagon; JD or IHC end wheel drills. Small square baler. (403)394-4401

AUTOS/TRUCKS/TRAILERS Trucks WANTED: IHC 404 GAS motor to fit 3-Ton truck. Phone (403)350-4876, Innisfail, AB. If you want to sell it fast, call 1-800-665-1362.

1982 JD 3140, 148 loader bucket w/3-PTH, sale #514292-CD, 18.4x34 rubber, $14,000. Phone (780)675-4784.

Degelman 10 ft. Snow Pusher Blade JD 7210 Complete with 3 pth hitch, loader available JD 2950 Complete with loader JD 7200 FWA, 740 Loader with 3 pth hitch JD 4240 loader available JD 4020 c/w loader & new motor JD 2550, FWA ST 250 Steiger, tires new 20.8 x 38 2012 CAT 272D Skidsteer, 800 Hrs Clamp on Duals, 20.8x38-18.4x38 158, 148, 265, 725, 740, 280, JD loaders

BUILDINGS

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

Memory assistance. Network

precisionpac.ca

Big Tractor Parts, Inc.

FARM MACHINERY Combine – Accessories

RECONDITIONED 14-01-10 1:56 PM31 COMBINE HEADERS. RIGID & 14-01-10 1:56 PM 562 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd flex, most makes & sizes; also header transports. Ed Lorenz, (306)344-4811 or Website: www.straightcutheaders.com Paradise Hill, SK.

RED OR GREEN 1. 10-25% savings on new replacement parts for your Steiger drive train. 2. We rebuild axles, transmissions and dropboxes with ONE YEAR WARRANTY. 3. 50% savings on used parts.

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

precisionpac.ca

NEW WOBBLE BOXES for JD, IH, MacDon headers. Made in Europe, factory quality. Get it direct from Western Canada’s sole distributor starting at $1,095. 1-800-667-4515. www.combineworld.com We know that farming is enough of a gamble so if you want to sell it fast place your ad in the Alberta Farmer Express classifieds. It’s a Sure Thing. Call our toll-free number today. We have friendly staff ready to help. 1-800-665-1362.

FERTILIZER Stretch your ADVERTISING DOLLAR!

14-01-10 1:56 PM

1-800-665-1362

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit: Andrukow Group Solutions Inc.

Mundare - 780-764-2511

precisionpac.ca

Network

FARM MACHINERY Sprayers

JD 9400, 9420, 9520, 8970 JD 9860, 9760, 9750, 9650, 9600 JD 9430, 9530, 9630 Case STX 375, 425, 430, 450, 480, 500, 530 CIH 8010-2388, 2188 combine CIH 435Q, 535Q, 450Q, 550Q, 600Q pto avail. JD 4710, 4720, 4730, 4830, 4920, 4930 SP sprayers JD 9770 & 9870 w/CM & duals CIH 3185, 3230, 3330, 4430, 4420 sprayers

AB.inddnews. 5 Read stories. Find insight. precisionpac.ca562 PPAC Classified 2014Search

14-01-10

Geared For The Future

STEIGER TRACTOR SPECIALIST

FARM MACHINERY Parts & Accessories

Provost - 780-753-3150

Search news. Read stories. Find insight.

Combine ACCessories

STEEL STORAGE CONTAINERS, 20-FT & 40-ft 1-866-517-8335, (403)540-4164, (403)226-1722 magnate@telus.net

Agri-Pro Co-op

Falher - 780-837-2205

FINANCE, TRADES WELCOME 780-696-3527, BRETON, AB

Brooks - 403-362-2626

precisionpac.ca

AUTO & TRANSPORT

LIVESTOCK/POULTRY/PETS

FARM MACHINERY Tractors – Various

herbicides

Stretch your advertising dollars! Place an ad in the classifieds. Our friendly staff is waiting for your call. 1-800-665-1362. 14-01-10 1:56 PM 562 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd 6

2 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd 3

CARBIDE DRILL POINTS & openers for air drills. VW Manufacturing Ltd Dunmore (Medicine Hat) (403)528-3350 US: Loren Hawks Chester, Montana (406)460-3810 www.vwmfg.com

Call toll free 1 (877) 525-2004 or see us online at www.pioneeronesteel.com

Andrukow Group 9 &10, 2014 the Eighth Annual IHCC Ch Agro Source Ltd.562 PPAC Classified AUGUST 2014 AB.indd 2 14-01-10 1:56 PM 38 show will be held on the grounds of the Western Solutions Inc. Dawson Creek - 250-782-4449 Development Museum in North Battleford Sask. precisionpac.ca

TracTors

Pioneer One Steel Buildings

562 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd 4

herbicides

FARM MACHINERY Tillage & Seeding – Various

CANOLA WANTED

FARM CHEMICAL SEED COMPLAINTS

Chemical drift; 40 Residual herbicide; Custom operator 2 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd

D&H EQUIPMENT

machinerydave@yahoo.ca BOW ISLAND, ALBERTA

When you go with steel you get the right deals!

BUYING:

herbicides

Call (403)545-6340 • Cell (403)580-6889

$28,418

1-877-641-2798

• Competitive Prices • Prompt Movement • Spring Thrashed

CALL DAVE

40’ X 60’ X 16’ RIGID FRAME STEEL BUILDING

ALL SIZES

1-800-982-1769 www.bigtractorparts.com

FARM MACHINERY Machinery Miscellaneous 1999 CAT 460 1,400 sep. hrs, rake up $73,000; Road King ground loadstock trailer, 8 x 42.5-ft, will haul 25 cows, $10,000; 2013 Highline 651 Bale Pro, chain floor, twine cutter, big tires, $19,000. Call:(403)665-2341, Craigmyle, AB. ACREAGE EQUIPMENT: CULTIVATORS, DISCS, Plows, Blades, Post pounders, Haying Equipment, Etc. (780)892-3092, Wabamun, Ab. SVEN GRAIN ROLLER ON transport, PTO, 24-in rolls, 13-ft discharge auger, magnets, like new, rolled 7000-Bu. Always shedded, $8000 OBO. (403)333-6410, (403)646-5641.

FARM MACHINERY Sprayers

9280 12 speed with 80% rubber 4720 JD Sprayer w/ boom track autosteer, 4700 90 ft very clean 4955 JD low hrs, 3 pth, very clean S680 JD combine low hrs 936 Versatile GOOD SELECTION OF JD & CASE SP SPRAYERS AND 4WD TRACTORS

“LIKE MANY BEFORE, WE’LL HAVE YOU SAYING THERE’S NO DEAL LIKE A KEN DEAL” • Phone: (403)526-9644 • Cell: (403)504-4929 1:56 PM • Email: kendeal@shaw.ca

MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

FARM MACHINERY Machinery Miscellaneous

LIVESTOCK Cattle – Angus

REAL ESTATE Houses & Lots

REG YEARLING RED & Black Angus bulls, various BWs, born Jan-Feb, quiet, semen tested & delivered, $2,500. Also Unregistered yearling Red Angus heifer bulls, born Apr, light BW, quiet & semen tested, $1,800. Darrell & Lorraine Davidson (780)888-1374 or (780)888-1087 Lougheed, AB.

SPRING SPECIAL PROMOTION, CANADIAN built by moduline, 20x76 Temora, $99,900; 16x76 Oasis, $79,900; 16x60 Tuscan, $69,900. www.affordablehomesales.ca, affordablehomesales@sasktel.net 1-888-699-9280, (306)496-7538

REAL ESTATE Land For Rent

LIVESTOCK Cattle – Red Angus

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

LIVESTOCK Cattle – Hereford HEREFORD BULLS, YEARLINGS AND two year olds, dehorned, and polled, excellent quality, low birth weights suitable for heifers, catalogue online at couleecrest.ca Coulee Crest Herefords, Bowden, AB. (403)227-2259 or (403)588-6160.

precisionpac.ca

LIVESTOCK Sheep For Sale

RON SAUER

MACHINERY LTD.

2 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd(403) 32

540-7691 ronsauer@shaw.ca

846 Versatile 4WD Tractor - new 18.4 x 38 dualled tires, gear drive, like new ............................................ $30,000 555 JD Crawler Loader, 250 hrs. on rebuilt engine, good condition ........................................................... $20,000 Degelman Dozer Frame MF 4000 Series 4WD .$1,000 B 275 IHC Diesel Tractor, 3 pth, pto, runs good ......$4,250 31’ Flexicoil B Chisel Plow Extensions Included, extends to 41’, 3 bar harrows, excellent condition.............. $12,500 Flexicoil 6 Run Seed Treater .............................. $2,000 134’ Flexicoil S68XL Sprayer, 2007, suspended boom, auto rate, joystick, rinse tank, triple quick jets, auto boom height, electric end nozzle & foam marker............. $39,500 100’ 65XL Flexicoil Sprayer, complete with windguards, elec. end nozzles dual tips, markers, auto rate ......... $5,500 30’ 8230 CIH PT Swather, PU reel, nice shape, . $10,000 25’ 8225 CIH PT Swather, PU reel, nice shape .... $9,500 25’ 1200 Hesston PT Swather, bat reel, good .... $5,500 30’ 4600 Prairie Star PT Swather, bat reel, good ....$5,500 30’ 1900 Premier PT Swather, bat reel, good .... $5,500 10 Wheel MATR (Italy) Trailer Type V-Hayrake, hyd. fold, as new.................................................. $5,000 14 Wheel Enorossi V-Hayrake extra contour wheels, as new .............................................................. $11,500 Coming In -1500 JD Haybine and 365 CIH Softcore Round Baler ............................................. Call 10 x 40 Sakundiak Auger, 38 HP Kohler, E-Kay Mover, Power Steering, Belt Tightener, Slim Fit, Lights, Remote Throttle, FAB-TEC spout, only done 3 loads, ............................................**In Stock** CNT $20,000 8 x 1200 Sakundiak Auger, 25 HP Koehler engine, Hawes mover, clutch, nice condition, ................... CNT $9,950 7 x 1200 Sakundiak Auger, 18 HP Koehler engine, looks and runs good, ......................................... CNT $3,500 8 x 1400 Sakundiak Auger, 25 HP Robin engine, Hawes mover, clutch, spout, excellent condition, ............. CNT $9,950 8 x 1400 Sakundiak Auger, 27 HP Koehler engine, E-Kay mover, belt tightener, power steering, light package, as new, ................................................**Coming In** Call 8” Wheatheart Sweep, like new .............................. $650 New E-Kay 7” Bin Sweep .............**In Stock** $1,785 New E-Kay 7”, 8”, 9” Bin Sweeps .........................Call Jiffy Feed Wagon, like new, hardly used, shedded .....$9,250 8” Wheat Heart Transfer Auger, hydraulic drive, as new .................................................................... $1,500 New Outback MAX & STX guidance & mapping ...In Stock New Outback E-Drive, TC’s .................................In Stock New Outback E-Drive X, c/w free E turns ............In Stock New Outback S-Lite guidance ............ **In Stock** $900 New Outback VSI Swather Steering Kit...........In Stock New Outback E-Drive Hyd. kit, JD 40 series ........ $1,000 Used Outback E-Drive Hyd. kits..............................$500

**NuVision (Spray Air) & Meridian-Sakundiak Augers, Outback GPS Systems, EK Auger Movers, Belt Tighteners, Bin Sweeps & Crop Dividers, Kohler, Robin Subaru, Generac Engines, Headsight Harvesting Solutions, Greentronics Sprayer Boom Auto Height, Kello-Bilt Discs**

FARM MACHINERY Machinery Wanted WANTED: NH BALE WAGONS & retrievers, any condition. Farm Equipment Finding Service, P.O. Box 1363, Polson, MT 59860. (406)883-2118

GPS

PLAN TO ATTEND THE 8th Annual Pound Maker Ram Sale, 110 yearling rams sell by auction, Thursday May 22, 2014 at Ford Macleod Alberta. Suffolk, Dorset, Hampshire, Rambouillet, North Country Cheviot and Coloured. For details call Warren (403)625-6519 or check our website poundmakerrams.com 14-01-10 1:56 PM Hit our readers where it counts… in the classifieds. Place your ad in the Alberta Farmer Express classifed section. 1-800-665-1362.

ORGANIC Organic – Grains

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit: Crop Production Services Inc.

Vermilion - 780-853-4711

If interested, please send an 8lb sample* to the following address: Attn: Sandy Jolicoeur Bioriginal Food & Science Corp. 102 Melville Street Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7J 0R1

Advertise in the Alberta Farmer Express Classifieds, it’s a Sure Thing!

*Please state the Variety & Quantity for Sale

1-800-665-1362

For more information, please contact Sandy at:

SCALES

Red Deer - 403-346-2931

Fort Saskatchewan 780-998-2058

precisionpac.ca

We know that farming is enough of a gamble so if you want to sell it fast place your ad in the Alberta Farmer Express classifieds. It’s a Sure Thing. Call our toll-free number today. We have friendly staff ready to help. 1-800-665-1362.

New 30.5L-32 16 ply, $1,995; 20.8-38 12 ply $765; 18.4-38 12 ply; $789; 24.5-32 14 ply, $1,495; 14.9-24 12 ply, $486; 16.9-28 12 ply $558, 18.4-26 10 ply, $890. Factory direct. More sizes available new and used. 1-800-667-4515. www.combineworld.com

50 FLAT-DECK SEMI-TRAILERS, 7 heavy lowbeds, 8 gravel trailers, pictures, prices, www.trailerguy.ca Saskatoon/Aberdeen. Phone (306)222-2413

AGRICULTURAL TOURS

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

*Portion of tours may be Tax Deductible

Select Holidays 1-800-661-4326

www.selectholidays.com

Crop Production Services Inc.

HEAT & AIR CONDITIONING

The Icynene Insulation ® 2 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd 33System

• Sprayed foam insulation • Ideal for shops, barns or homes • Healthier, Quieter, More Energy Efficient®

www.penta.ca

1-800-587-4711

herbicides

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

14-01-10 1:56 PM

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit: Webb’s Crop Services

Vermilion - 780-853-6565

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562 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd 41

precisionpac.ca PEDIGREED SEED Oilseed – Canola

Prairie-Wide Display Classifieds 38

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REAL ESTATE Commercial Buildings

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Fort Saskatchewan 780-998-2808

REAL ESTATE 562 PPAC Classified 2014 AB.indd

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TRAILERS Trailers Miscellaneous

MORE OPTIONS TO SAVE YOU MONEY

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herbicides 562 PPAC Classified ATTENTION: 2014 AB.inddYOU 35 MAY BE looking for a new ad- 14-01-10 1:56 PM venture! Check out propertyguys.com or Phone:(403)782-5696.

Crop Production Services Inc.

HELP WANTED FOR A FARM / CATTLE OPERATION We are a mixed farm / cattle operation that is looking for a hired hand to help with: 1) Seeding, spraying & harvest 2) Sorting, vaccinating, feeding, caring for cattle 3) Baling, swathing, etc... We will supply a house & training. This is a F/T, Year round position. If interested, please call (306)734-7675

14-01-10 1:56 PM

PUMPS

Farming is enough of a gamble, advertise in the Alberta Farmer Express classified section. It’s a sure thing. 1-800-665-1362.

TIRES

CAREERS Farm / Ranch

A MIDDLE-AGED COUPLE RUNNING a 200 head cowherd NE of Edmonton are looking for a young person or couple to assist w/the responsibilities of operating a successful cow-calf operation. An ex562 PPAC Classified 14-01-10 2014 AB.indd 1:56 PM42 14-01-10 1:56 P cellent opportunity to develop your own herd & experience a way of life. To schedule a personal interview, please phone (780)656-5665.

Ireland & Scotland ~ June 2014 Hungary/Romania ~ June 2014 Mid-West USA ~ October 2014 Australia/New Zealand ~ Jan 2015 Kenya/Tanzania ~ Feb 2015 South Africa ~ Feb 2015

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McEwen’s Fuels and Fertilizers Inc.

TRAVEL

306-975-9251 306-975-1166 purchasing@bioriginal.com

Westlock - 780-349-4525

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Crop Production Services Inc.

IS ENOUGH OF

Bioriginal Food & Science Corp., based in Saskatoon, is actively buying Organic Flax from the 2013 crop year.

Crop Production Services Inc.

For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

FARMING A GAMBLE...

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For custom herbicides as unique as your fields, visit:

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41 REGISTERED RED ANGUS BULLS Quiet, Easy Calving, Low to Moderate Birth Weights, Good Growth, E.P.D’s available Guaranteed Breeders (Vet Checked & Semen Tested). Excellent Bulls for Heifers or Cows. Cleveley Cattle Company (780)689-2754.

Crop Production Services Inc.

Trochu - 403-442-2700

TENDERS

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Coronation - 403-578-3302

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Contact Sharon

SEED / FEED / GRAIN SEED/FEED MISCELLANEOUS Feed Grain

Crop Production562 PPAC Classified BUYING ALL TYPES OF feed grain. Also have 14-01-10 2014 AB.indd 37 market for light offgrade or heated, picked up on the Services Inc. farm. Eisses Grain Marketing 1-888-882-7803, LaDelia - 403-364-3735

combe.

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FEED GRAIN WANTED! ALSO buying; Light, tough, or offgrade grains. “On Farm Pickup” Westcan Feed & Grain 1-877-250-5252

Email: sharon.komoski@fbcpublishing.com 1:56 PM

14-01-10 1:56 P

ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA • MARCH 31, 2014

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For more information on WeatherFarm or purchasing a weather station please call:

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info@weatherfarm.ca

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FEATURE A nalyze weather feature allows you to compare temperature, wind speed, precipitation, humidity, pressure and dew point from nearby stations or across a region  RADAR & SATELLITE

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MARCH 31, 2014 • ALBERTAFARMEXPRESS.CA

C ANTE RRA 1990

DOES YOUR YIELD MEASURE UP?

103% of 5440

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ONLY AVAILABLE AT SELECTED RETAILERS.

*2013 YieldWorks and Demonstration Trials Always follow grain marketing and all other stewardship practices and pesticide label directions. Details of these requirements can be found in the Trait Stewardship Responsibilities Notice to Farmers printed in this publication.

It’s all tied up. When it comes to yield supremacy, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other. It’s been talked about, debated, and argued amongst growers across the prairies. When it’s all said and done, according to yield trials, Genuity® Roundup Ready® hybrids yield on par with the competition.* Like all contests this close, the debate rages on... for now. *Source: 2012 Field-Scale Canola Performance Trials Always follow grain marketing and all other stewardship practices and pesticide label directions. Details of these requirements can be found in the Trait Stewardship Responsibilities Notice to Farmers printed in this publication. ©2013 Monsanto Canada, Inc.