Manitoba Cooperator

Page 1

Risky Business

Fuel focus

Better risk management for forage growers » PG 8

Don’t expect fossil fuels to disappear quickly » PG 3

SERVING MANITOBA FARMERS SINCE 1925 | Vol. 75, No. 47 | $1.75

November 23, 2017

Break the silence on mental health TV personality Michael Landsberg was a guest speaker last week at Grain World

manitobacooperator.ca

Grain commission launches major grain grading system review Views vary within the grain industry about what should stay, what should go and who’ll pay any extra costs

BY LORRAINE STEVENSON BY ALLAN DAWSON

Co-operator staff

Co-operator staff

I

t was the first time he’d spoken to a farm audience and Michael Landsberg did not disappoint. The crowd at Grain World gave the Canadian sports journalist a standing ovation after he’d given his frank talk about his personal struggle with depression, imploring others to speak up too. “The agricultural world is dominated by the concept of See MENTAL HEALTH on page 7 »

T

he Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) is conducting a major review of grain grading. That’s prompting calls by some for specifications to replace grades, while others say they’ll consider changes if they don’t undermine the current system or cost too much. “Our goal with this review is to ensure that grain grades are evaluated using more effective, precise and userfriendly tools where possible,” Remi Gosselin, the CGC’s manager of corporate information services, said in an interview Nov. 14. “It’s about making sure our grain grading system continues to provide consistent and reliable results. “It also needs to make sense from a dollars-and-cents perspective.” The CGC announced the review last month to its grain standards committees, which will assist in the project, Gosselin said.

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Wide representation The committees are made up of representatives from the grain sector, including farmers, grain exporters, processors and grain quality experts. The committees, created in 1930, meet in the spring and fall to discuss grain quality and tweak grades.

Randy Dennis (l), the former chief grain inspector for Canada, demonstrates the ins and outs of grain grading at a workshop. The Canadian Grain Commission is reviewing the grading system. While some groups want to switch to instrument-measured specifications, others warn that could create problems. PHOTO: Cigi

“We are reviewing the purpose and validity of the fusarium damage grading factor, which was established and defined a couple of years ago, as well as all grading factors, which are part of the grading tables, to confirm their relevance,” Gosselin said. The Alberta Wheat Commission and

Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association ( WCWGA), have been calling on the CGC to introduce more objective tests to measure grading factors, including falling number, which assesses bread-making properties in See GRAIN on page 6 »

FARM BANKRUPTCIES: DOWN BUT NOT OUT » PAGE 26

IS YO U R FARM WO RKIN G AS HARD AS YO U DO? FAR M MANAG E M E NT. DATA MANAG E M E NT. VA R I A B L E R AT E T E C H N O LO G Y. S U P P O R T. The results are clear with average yield increases* of: 10.8% in canola / 5.9% in wheat / 6.4% in barley. See the whole picture at echelonag.ca Available exclusively from CPS. BRING IT ON.

09/17-56406 *Results from 2016 data collected from 515,028 acres of canola, 379,336 acres of wheat and 88,360 of barley across a total of 4,227 fields in Western Canada. Echelon is a registered trademark of Crop Production Services (Canada) Inc. CPS CROP PRODUCTION SERVICES and Design is a registered trademark of Crop Production Services, Inc.

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2017-09-08 10:48 AM


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