A combination of a poor malt barley crop this year and a longer-term downward trend in malt barley acres is leading North American maltsters and brewers to import more barley from Europe. An estimated 70 to 80 percent of the barley crop in Western Canada was hit by rain or snow just prior to harvest,… Read More
Category: Markets
Rumours are building again that Russia may limit their grain exports (specifically wheat) and the government might start increasing the purchasing price from farmers for the government reserve stocks (the government is definitely worried about rising domestic food prices). This would incentivize producers to sell to the government versus grain merchants/exporters. SovEcon said earlier in… Read More
There’s been a general decline in prices for used farm machinery in North America since late summer, with some notable exceptions, including larger equipment here in Canada, says a well-known follower of farm auctions across the continent. Based in Rochester, Minnesota, Greg Peterson (also known as “Machinery Pete”) has been tracking auction prices for 25 years, publishing… Read More
The recovery of the U.S. economy remains critical to Canada’s economic health, says an economist with RBC Financial. “We have growth and a strengthening economy in Canada as a result from strengthening in exports, but a lot of that is riding on the pick-up in growth in the U.S. and facilitated further by a little… Read More
With speculation swirling around the privatization of the Canadian Wheat Board, the chief strategy officer for CWB has published an open letter explaining why much of grain marketer’s commercialization plan is being kept confidential. Although she doesn’t mention Farmers of North America’s offer specifically, Dayna Spiring describes why bids to acquire CWB may have been rejected:… Read More
Grains started the month of December with wheat in the driver’s seat thanks to concerns out of Russia and Australia. In the Land Down Undaa, ABARES, the Aussie version of the USDA, cut its official wheat production estimate by one million tonnes (or about four per cent from its previous estimate) to 23.22 million tonnes,… Read More
Traders and analysts were taken aback by some of the key numbers in the crop production report from Statistics Canada released on Thursday morning. While the market was expecting a higher canola production estimate, it was not anticipating the major increase from the StatsCan estimate of 14.1 million metric tonnes in October to 15.6 million in… Read More
The discovery of avian flu in BC, StatsCan’s latest crop production estimates, Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers and more — get caught up on this week’s farm news by listening to the TWORA podcast with Kelvin Heppner for December 4th, 2014: