Stats Canada released its initial planting estimates for Canada this morning, which included several significant surprises such as the following:
Canola acreage is forecast to drop 7 percent from 2017, well below the trade’s pre-report guesses. This is likely the result of last year’s struggles with very dry conditions across the southern Canadian prairies. Canola is an expensive crop to plant, and Saskatchewan farmers say they will cut that acreage 10 percent from last year’s record. Soybean acreage is also expected to drop 11 percent. Spring wheat acreage is projected to increase a whopping 15.4 percent from last year. The surprise isn’t that this acreage will be higher, it’s the magnitude of the increase...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices dropped sharply with traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. There were reports that Iran was behind an attack on a cargo ship near the coast of Oman, which would be a violation of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Pr...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
Can we really expect a bushel of corn to carry an environmental passport throughout the entire food system? One that reliably documents its carbon footprint, biodiversity impacts, water use, soil carbon, and other environmental attributes all the way from the farm field to the consumer? This is...