Kelvin Heppner

An eight month streak with no new cases of highly-pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in commercial poultry flocks across all of Canada has been broken, as the virus has been confirmed on three poultry farms in B.C.’s Fraser Valley this week. The new cases, confirmed on Oct. 21, are in the Abbotsford and Chilliwack areas. The…

Regular government business has come to a standstill in the House of Commons over the past week, decreasing the likelihood that multiple agriculture-related bills will cross the finish line before Parliament is inevitably dissolved for an election. The impasse over the Liberals’ refusal to yield to a Conservative motion to hand over green tech fund…

Not only is there a valuable crop to bring in, harvest is also the time of year for gleaning plenty of new information and insights into different and new varieties of edible beans — how they yielded and performed in different geographies and conditions. In this new Edible Bean School episode, Dennis Lange, pulse specialist…

Provincial grain grower organizations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario have pledged a total of $13.4 million toward construction of Cereals Canada’s proposed Global Agriculture Technology Exchange (GATE) in downtown Winnipeg, Man. Unveiled earlier this summer, the plan is to build a $102 million facility that would serve as a hub for Canada’s grain industry,…

Soil School: Soil tests show P, K and S levels trending lower as removal rates exceed replacement

More than nine thousand railway workers at both of Canada's main railways — Canadian National Railway (CP) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway (CPKC) — are returning to work after the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) decided to uphold the federal labour minister's order to impose final and binding arbitration to reach new collective bargaining agreements between the railways and the union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC). Both railways are expected to have trains running by Monday, August 26, ending an unprecedented shutdown of the Canadian rail system that saw both CN and CPKC wind down to a complete standstill, while locking out their Teamster employees on Thursday, August 22. The tribunal's decision, issued late Saturday, extends the collective...

The federal government is proposing several tweaks to the capital gains tax changes that were announced in the federal budget in April, that it says are the result of feedback from entrepreneurs, particularly in the tech and farming sectors. The changes, which were detailed in draft legislation released August 12, would make farm property eligible…

New developments in testing are expected to provide soybean growers with valuable information to fend off yield-robbing root rot caused by the water mould known as Phytophthora sojae. Beyond crop rotation and drainage, selecting varieties with genetic resistance, via major genes and overall field tolerance, is the best management tool for mitigating phytophthora infection, but…

Sulphur is a critical nutrient for maximizing yield potential in canola, and since peak sulphur uptake for canola happens later in the growing season than peak nitrogen uptake, applying sulphate as late as early flowering can rescue yield that's at risk to being lost to a sulphur deficiency. Heavy rains can result in canola not accessing the sulphur it needs as it flowers and sets pods, explains Marla Riekman, soil management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, in this Canola School episode, filmed at the 2024 Manitoba Crop Diagnostic School at Carman, Man. "We're talking about it here this year, because of the fact we've had a lot of rain," she notes. "And especially if we're dealing with sandier or lighter soils...

Farmers and ranchers face many pressures to farm and raise animals in certain ways to meet sustainability-related goals of others, including food companies, lenders, and government. Clauses in crop contracts, carbon credits, government payments for rotational grazing or using nitrogen loss inhibitors, the federal fertilizer emissions reduction target, clean fuel standards, codes of practice, and Scope 3 emissions reporting requirements are just some examples of the many policies aimed at driving…