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AgriSuccess Express
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The United States Department of Agriculture has announced the long-awaited Rule 2, which will allow the import of live cattle and other bovines (bison) for any use -- including breeding -- for animals born on or after March 1, 1999. That is considered to be the date of effective enforcement of Canada’s ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban. Importation of meat and meat products from animals of any age will also be allowed. Barring any political or legal problems, the rule is scheduled to become effective on November 19.
“This is good news for our industry,” says Hugh Lynch-Staunton, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association. “We believe that all of our trading partners should be abiding by these science-based guidelines to trade.”
Cattle more than eight years old will remain unable to cross the border. As well, producers will need proof that their animals were born after March 1, 1999. That is likely to limit exports to purebred beef animals and dairy breeding stock. It will also act as an incentive for producers to age verify their cattle.
Since meat from animals of any age will be allowed into the U.S., observers expect some improvement in Canadian cull cow prices. However, the Canadian price for older animals is still expected to lag significantly behind U.S. prices.
A recent article in the Manitoba Co-operator newspaper highlights a problem with the new federal cash advance payment program (APP) for livestock producers, which could limit the cash available.
Under the new APP, livestock cash advances are calculated as the lesser of the eligible advance calculation and the maximum entitlement under a Business Risk Management program. For most producers, the Business Risk Management program is CAIS, the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program.
CAIS margins have tended to decline for cattle producers since the onslaught of BSE in 2003. The CAIS margin calculation uses the Olympic average. This is based on the average production margin for three of the previous five years after eliminating the lowest and highest margin years. The maximum CAIS payment is then calculated as 70 per cent of the reference margin.
So, for example, if a farmer had a CAIS reference margin of $20,000, the maximum cash advance available is 70 per cent of that or $14,000. The APP calculation effectively ignores the value of the cattle. The article notes that the 2008 version of CAIS will address this anomaly.
The new APP merges the previous APP with the Spring Credit Advance Program and is being delivered by a number of producer organizations across Canada. Livestock cash advances are a new addition to the revised APP.
Other changes include an increase in the cash advance maximum to $400,000 from $250,000, an increase in the interest-free portion of the advance from $50,000 to $100,000 and an extension of the repayment period from 12 to 18 months.
For cow-calf producers in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, it was announced this week that the APP is being administered by the Canadian Livestock Advance Association, which was formed by the Canadian Canola Growers Association located in Carman, Man. The association has long administered advances for non-Canadian Wheat Board grains.
For more information on the APP, including a list of participating producer organizations, check out the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada website at www.agr.gc.ca. Look under Programs and Services.
Producers can import Touchdown, Banvel II or Roundup Weathermax from the United States through the new Grower Requested Own Use (GROU) Pesticide Importation Program for use this fall, but they’ll have to act quickly. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency cannot guarantee that applications received after September 21 will be processed.
The program was supposed to be available months ago, but working out the details between regulatory agencies and the farm groups involved has taken longer than expected.
One of the key steps has been a new website launched by a coalition of grower groups to help streamline the container disposal process. Canadian producers can now complete and pay container disposal fees for GROU online.
Disposal fees are calculated based on a rate of 15 cents per litre for containers that are less than 23 litres, and 25 cents per litre for containers that are larger than 23 litres. Producers already pay this fee on domestically produced chemicals, but it is covered within the cost of the chemical.
Step one in the process is to pre-pay container disposal fees by going to www.groucontainerfees.ca. Step two is to go onto the Pest Management Regulatory Agency’s website (www.pmra-arla.gc.ca) for an application form and all the details.
The three products approved for this fall aren’t supposed to be used after a killing frost, so the PMRA will cease processing applications where a killing or damaging frost has occurred. The September 21 deadline is based on estimated provincial frost dates. The expiry date will typically be set as late as November 30 in the most moderate Canadian growing areas.
The GROU program will resume in the spring, although details of the timing are not available. In addition to Touchdown, Banvel II and Roundup Weathermax, the products Reflex and Basagran will be on the spring list.
If any of these products are less expensive in the U.S., Canadian growers will have a clear mechanism for importing the herbicides for their own use.
Pulse Canada, Grain Growers of Canada, Canadian Canola Growers Association, Canadian Horticultural Council and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture continue to work on behalf of producers to have additional products added to the import list.
With the implementation of GROU, Health Canada will no longer consider applications for equivalency for new products under the Own Use Import program. However, the equivalency certificate for ClearOut 41 Plus, a glyphosate herbicide, has been extended to June 28, 2008.
Producers can access this product from the U.S. through the organization Farmers of North America, based in Saskatoon.
New for this year is the use of a lot/batch number system to help identify which ClearOut 41 Plus products may be imported into Canada.
Health Canada says it will reopen the OUI program if pesticide manufacturers are not willing to co-operate with the GROU program.
Ontario’s Auditor General is going to do a value-for-service audit of Agricorp.
Agricorp is the agency of the Ontario government that is responsible for the delivery of government and non-government risk management programs to Ontario’s farmers. This includes the administration and delivery of the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) program in Ontario.
The initial call for an Agricorp audit began last winter during a province-wide series of producer commodity meetings. The producers who helped craft the original resolution said its intent was to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses as opposed to blame.
Ontario’s Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky came under more pressure last March when the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Ontario’s largest general farm organization, joined the list of counties and organizations calling for the audit. Among OFA’s identified concerns were the delay in application processing, poor communications with program participants and an overall lack of customer focus.
The release of Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s critical report on the federal delivery of the CAIS program last spring renewed the calls for an Agricorp audit.
Throughout the spring and summer months, Dombrowsky’s office said they were reviewing the file and considering their options. With a provincial general election scheduled for October, the two leading opposition parties both included the call for an Agricorp audit in their agricultural platforms.
OFA president Geri Kamenz admits they had to put a strong lobby forward to get the Agricorp audit into play. “Whenever someone asks for an audit you immediately jump to the conclusion of a misappropriation of funds and that was never the case,” Kamenz says.
Dombrowsky says she had to put a convincing case forward to her cabinet colleagues to justify the usefulness of the exercise, but adds that she is pleased that getting the Agricorp audit started was one of her last official acts as agriculture minister.
Staff from Dombrowsky's office report that the auditor general hopes to complete the report by February or March 2008.
This spring Canadian beekeepers were on the alert for a potential new threat to their colonies called colony collapse disorder. The mysterious illness, which decimates the worker bee population in the hive, was responsible for the collapse of thousands of colonies across the United States.
Paul Laflamme, unit leader with the pest management systems group at Alberta Agriculture and Food, reports that to date there have been no reported cases of CCD in Canada.
A survey this summer of Alberta beekeepers showed that over-wintering losses, which are normally about 15 per cent, were almost double that amount this past winter. Laflamme says there were a number of factors that combined to produce this result, but CCD was not one of them.
A major factor was a longer than normal winter with early snow and a cool wet spring. This delayed flowering as much as three weeks and limited foraging sources. Another cause of the high losses was the failure of varroa mite treatments that were not as effective as hoped.
Now a consortium of researchers in the U.S. has found a significant connection between the Israeli acute paralysis virus and CCD. Bees imported from Australia are being implicated as a source of the virus.
Laflamme says that Australian bees have been imported into Canada for over twenty years with no serious problems. “Now we know a possible cause (for CCD) we can investigate if the bees have any potential to carry the virus.”
He points out that the Canadian climate is so different from the U.S. that the disease may not manifest itself in the same form. He adds that anecdotal evidence suggests that Australian bees do not over-winter as well in Canadian hives.
This spring, provincial apiculturist Medhat Nasr collected samples from colonies with high over-wintering losses for analysis. His article on best management practices appears in the August issue of Alberta Bee News published by the Alberta Beekeepers Association. Check the website at www.albertabeekeepers.org.
The Canadian Grain Commission is advising Prairie grain producers of a new pest showing up in some stored grain samples this year.
"It's a nasty beast," remarks Blaine Timlick, Entomologist with the CGC, about the lesser grain borer. "It's even more damaging than the rusty grain beetle."
The lesser grain borer is normally found in wheat, corn or rice. It bores into the kernels to feed, leaving behind a fine powder and particles of feces. It typically consumes 17 to 20 per cent of each kernel. The rusty grain beetle, by comparison, consumes only four per cent of the kernel.
"While we've found it in a couple of isolated spots, where we've found it the numbers were larger than we would have liked to have seen."
Timlick says the pest doesn't over-winter in Canada but was probably carried on southerly jet streams or was present in grain deliveries from the United States.
"In the entomological world we talk a lot about the insect demographics and how populations move over time, and no doubt this thing is moving northward and establishing itself northward."
The insect is a dark brown colour with a buffalo back shape. If the insect is present, producers will see holes in the grain as the pest will virtually only leave the bran.
Timlick advises growers to get their grain down to a temperature below 15 degrees. At that point, the insect doesn't reproduce and it doesn't feed on the grain. Reducing grain temperature can be done either through aeration or by taking loads out and putting them back in, which removes the hot spots in the bins.
The other issue that has popped up this year is the presence of the minute scavenger beetle in canola. While they aren’t damaging to the canola itself, they can be a problem when it comes time to deliver the canola.
"There have been deliveries of canola that have been turned away because of the presence of insects," Timlick explains.
The minute scavenger beetle is small and its colouring is similar to the rusty grain beetle. It feeds on fungus, and if found in canola it’s a sign that the crop is too warm and should be cooled down.
A vessel called the Kathryn Spirit loaded grain this week at the Port of Churchill for the first-ever shipment of grain from this northern port destined for a Canadian customer. The 12,500 tonnes of wheat from the Prairies is heading to a mill in Halifax.
The vessel is an Arctic supply ship that sailed from Montreal with a cargo of mobile homes, snowmobiles and other goods to unload for the communities on the Hudson Bay coast. Instead of returning with an empty load, the former Great Lakes freighter will be filled with red spring wheat.
Bill Drew, director of the Churchill Gateway Development Corporation, says there are five or six Arctic supply ships docking at the port each season, which may be able to carry outgoing grain or other cargo.
The Canadian Wheat Board is the primary user of the port, shipping an annual average of 364,000 tonnes of wheat and durum through Churchill to customers in Latin America, Africa and Europe.
Total shipments through Churchill in 2006 were up about 20 per cent over 2004 to over 480,000 tonnes.
The Churchill shipping route is ice-free for about four months a year. OmniTRAX Inc. owns the port facilities and the rail line to Churchill.
This year, the shipping season got off to its second earliest start ever with the first ship of the season arriving on July 25.
Producers in New Brunswick can access assistance to put more of their land into production. Agriculture Minister Ronald Ouellette says the program could expand in the future, but for now, the $200,000 in funding through the Agri-Land Development Program will help producers with fall jobs like land clearing, levelling and consolidation.
By expanding the agricultural land base, crop production can be increased. Ouellette says this helps the province build on its self-sufficiency.
“It will assist in improving the sustainability and competitiveness of agriculture in the province,” he adds.
Where producers want to clear land, assistance is available to help with the removal of trees, stumps and other debris, chipping and spreading or removal of resulting biomass, pulverization of rocks and wood debris and preparation of the newly cleared or re-cleared land for cultivation.
For land consolidation, eligible expenses include removal of rock piles and fences and could include road work. Meanwhile, costs associated with improving land productivity or efficiency through levelling is also eligible for funding. Associated costs include soil movement and possibly adjustments to blueberry fields for easier use of mechanical harvesters.
Up to 35 per cent of eligible expenses can be covered under the program.
Full details are at http://www.gnb.ca/0027/0019-e.asp.
P.E.I. producers will have quantity, but not necessarily quality in this year’s hay crop.
Growing conditions for hay and pastureland were excellent this year, says Les Halliday of the Department of Agriculture. says He estimates production is 15 to 20 per cent above average.
"We got rain, sunshine and heat just when we needed them," Halliday says. "We had a good crop last year too but it was nothing like this."
While it is not unusual for the occasional grower to be able to get a third cut off the crop, Halliday says that was a common occurrence this year. He says there will certainly be no shortage of forages this winter.
However, the quality of much of the crop is less than producers were hoping for. While weather conditions were picture perfect for growing, he says for the most part harvesting weather was "pretty pathetic."
Many growers headed to the field under forecasts of two or three days of sunshine, only to see the skies open up. As a result, Halliday says, some of the crop was too mature when it was cut and this has reduced the protein content. That may result in livestock owners having to use a protein supplement.
“Unfortunately, as so often happens in this industry, the elements have handed us a mixed blessing," he says.
Prince Edward Island’s potato industry now has a dedicated potato support person within the provincial government.
Rachael M. Cheverie is the new potato industry co-ordinator. She will focus on co-ordinating potato sector research and potato-centred events in the department. As well, Cheverie will take part in national industry-related committees on potatoes and pesticide risk reduction.
“I’m looking forward to working more closely with the Prince Edward Island potato industry as we work through the many challenges facing producers today,” Cheverie says.
Previously, Cheverie was the province’s integrated pest management specialist. She has extensive experience in potato pest management and pesticide risk reduction. She is also a certified crop advisor and sits on the governing board of this organization in Atlantic Canada.
I commented on the fertilizer market in this space back in August. At the time, it was my inclination to hold off pricing nitrogen fertilizer. I often use the natural gas market as a proxy for nitrogen fertilizer valuation, as natural gas accounts for about 80 per cent of the input cost of nitrogen. Back in August, natural gas values were still in decline. But since then, we have seen prices post a bottom and appear to be trending higher into September.
It appears there has been some disconnect from the traditional natural gas to nitrogen market relationship this year. Nitrogen prices stayed high despite the move lower in natural gas markets over the summer.
In fact, wholesale cash market prices for urea (46-0-0) on the Prairies have increased about $50 a tonne in the past four weeks and are now trading somewhere around $490 a tonne. Wholesale and retail players expect prices will likely rise further into the fall, and are not going to get any cheaper next spring.
Oddly enough, I have heard reports that liquid nitrogen values have yet to see significant price appreciation. Retailers comment that they are having trouble taking delivery of limited inventory before the start of the new year, but prices have not yet jumped. However, expect upward price movement on this front soon as well.
The continuing high price of nitrogen seems tied to the fact we are now seeing prices reflect international market conditions. Producers here used to see nitrogen prices that reflected almost exclusively a North America market and its supply/demand parameters. That is no longer the case.
Over the past few years we have seen a significant rationalization of North America’s nitrogen production capacity, to the point where we are now dependent on nitrogen imports to meet annual demand. Competition in the market internationally has heated up considerably with China, India and other countries boosting their own nitrogen requirements. Plus, there is the added cost of ocean freight reflected in the market, and that freight cost has ballooned to all-time highs this year for shipping any commodity.
So in the final analysis, given the new international considerations for the nitrogen market and a natural gas market looking to turn higher into the colder months ahead, current costs may be as good as they’ll get. Locking in nitrogen prices, while perhaps unattractive from the grower’s perspective, may in the end be a prudent strategy.
PhosphateHere too, vigorous demand, a static supply and declining imports have combined to drive up sulphuric acid prices for much of this year. And market watchers say these conditions are likely to continue for at least another year.
Not only is sulphuric acid supply tight, but there is a scarcity of railcars to deliver the chemical, prompting concern among some buyers. Agriculture and metals processing are the two hottest markets for sulphuric acid right now. Roughly 60 per cent of production goes into agriculture, primarily in the manufacture of phosphate fertilizers.
As with nitrogen, there is a swelling demand for phosphate in China and India. Traditionally, fertilizer makers in these countries have produced their own sulphuric acid. But their needs have outstripped their production capacity, so they are increasingly importing the acid, further boosting demand.
Mike Jubinville of Pro Farmer Canada offers information on commodity markets and marketing strategies. Call
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