(Dave Bedard photo)

U.S. challenges Chinese wheat, corn, rice price supports at WTO

Washington | Reuters — The United States on Tuesday launched a challenge to China’s price supports for domestic production of rice, wheat and corn at the World Trade Organization, charging that these far exceed limits that China committed to when it joined the WTO in 2001. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said China’s “market price […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

PotashCorp, Agrium make engagement official

The boards of two of the heaviest hitters in Canada’s fertilizer sector have formally agreed to a $47 billion “merger of equals” deal under a new, yet-to-be-named parent company. PotashCorp, the world’s biggest fertilizer company by capacity, and rival Agrium, which is also the world’s biggest crop input retail chain, announced an agreement Monday in […] Read more


Frank Moscone, who founded All Seasons Mushrooms in 1997, is selling the B.C. company to Highline Produce for an undisclosed sum. (AllSeasonsMushrooms.com)

Top Canadian mushroom grower buys westward expansion

Canada’s biggest producer of mushrooms has expanded its reach into Western Canada with the purchase of one of the region’s biggest producers. Highline Produce announced Thursday it has bought Langley, B.C.-based organic mushroom producer All Seasons Mushrooms. According to Irish tropical fruit marketing giant Fyffes, which has owned Highline since April, it will pay $59.1 […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

PotashCorp, Agrium merger would send farmers to regulators

Winnipeg/Chicago | Reuters — North American farmers will pressure regulators to protect their negotiating leverage with fertilizer suppliers if PotashCorp and Agrium agree to merge, major farm groups said on Wednesday. The potential deal revealed on Tuesday would combine the world’s largest fertilizer producer by capacity, with the continent’s biggest network of farm retail dealers, […] Read more


(Dave Bedard photo)

Agrium, PotashCorp in merger talks

Canadian fertilizer giants Agrium and PotashCorp confirmed Tuesday they’re in “preliminary discussions” toward a possible merger-of-equals. Calgary-based Agrium and Saskatoon-based PotashCorp emphasized in separate statements Tuesday that no decision has yet been made on whether to go ahead with such a merger and no agreement has yet been reached. “There can be no assurance that […] Read more

A supercomputer-modeled simulation showing the expected impact of global warming on Earth’s surface temperatures. (Photo courtesy NASA)

Man-made warming dates back almost 200 years, study says

Oslo | Reuters — Man-made greenhouse gases began to nudge up the Earth’s temperatures almost 200 years ago, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, far earlier than previously thought. Greenhouse gas emissions from industry left their first traces in the temperatures of tropical oceans and the Arctic around 1830, researchers wrote in a recent journal […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

Viterra books lower first-half revenues for Glencore

“Average” crops and lower prices on the Prairies in the first half of 2016 led to results “substantially below” those in the year-earlier period for Viterra’s Canadian operations. Viterra’s owner, Swiss commodity mining/marketing firm Glencore, on Wednesday reported a nine per cent drop in revenues across its global agricultural products business, from $10.74 billion in […] Read more


(Dave Bedard photo)

Saskatchewan adds new secretary for farm irrigation

A rookie MLA in the Saskatchewan Party caucus has been promoted to a legislative secretary post with responsibility for expansion of the province’s farm irrigation systems. Premier Brad Wall on Tuesday named Warren Kaeding, the MLA for Melville-Saltcoats since April, as legislative secretary to the minister of agriculture, for irrigation expansion. Kaeding was previously a […] Read more

Canary seed carryout most likely underestimated

CNS Canada — Canary seed could be looking at a carryout 10 times the size at which Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada had pegged it, according to one processor. Ending stocks for the recently finished 2015-16 crop year are currently estimated at only 5,000 tonnes, according to the latest AAFC Outlook for Principal Field Crops report. […] Read more