Canada’s grain sector is celebrating a crucial legislative milestone with the recent passage of bills C-244 and C-294. Focused on equipment repair and interoperability, they remove key copyright barriers that have historically constrained Canadian farmers from repairing and enabling their own equipment.
The annual harvest assessments they conduct give the team a deep understanding of the quality and functionality of a new crop, said Dean Dias, Cereals Canada CEO. With this information in hand, one of the team’s most important tasks is to compile and release the New Wheat Crop Report.
Following China, the United States and Brazil, Mexico is the world’s fourth-largest beer-producing country and the largest beer exporter. Its annual brewing output of 140 million hectolitres (mln hL) and exports of nearly 40 mln hL are extraordinary for a country of 130 million people.
The Canadian Grain Commission’s (CGC) variety designation lists released this past summer include four newly trialled hulless barley varieties. These include two food varieties for human consumption, CDC Valdres and CDC Henrick, as well as two hulless malting varieties, CDC Pristine and CDC Armstrong.
Seasoned Prairie farm journalists Jay Whetter and Toban Dyck team up for an entertaining and informative podcast that draws upon their ag knowledge and considerable conversation skills. Every second week, the duo publishes a new episode of The Extensionists: Conversations with Great Thinkers in Agriculture.
Recent dry years have brought to mind the infamous Dirty Thirties, but this historical disaster was more than the product of drought, said Shannon Stunden Bower, an environmental historian at the University of Calgary.
Five new wheat varieties developed by LimaGrain Cereals Research Canada (LCRC) have been licensed to distributors this year following recommendation by the Prairie Grain Development Committee. Established in 2015, the private wheat breeder is a partnership between two farmer-owned co-operatives, France’s Limagrain and Canada’s Canterra Seeds. The variety recommendations represent a major success for the organization, which has marketed just four wheat varieties since its formation, including CS Accelerate and CS Daybreak.
The 2024 growing season was a rollercoaster for farmers, with significant variations in yield and quality from region to region and even field to field. Drought conditions prevailed across Western Canada in April, but dry weather allowed farmers to seed early.
The recent work stoppages at Canada’s national railways yet again underscore a hard truth that Canadian grain farmers have grappled with for years: our transportation network is fragile and disruptions are all too frequent. This latest example isn’t an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern that has severely tested the resilience of our country’s agricultural supply chains.
From its current facility, located in a federal government-owned highrise in downtown Winnipeg, Cereals Canada focuses on market development, technical support and market access for Canadian cereal grains. While the organization’s current space has served its purpose for over half a century, the time has come to look ahead and envision the next 50 years for Canadian agriculture.
