If you’re confused about how much check-off you will be paying the next time you market cattle you are probably not alone. It all depends on where you live. New Brunswick producers started paying the new $2.50 national check-off on February 1, which brings their total to $6.00 per head when the $3.50 provincial levy […] Read more
Comment
Comment: Checked-off
Comment: An opportunity for youth
It’s not often you hear from a pulse processor when you go to a cattle convention, but Murad Al-Katib isn’t any pulse processor. Starting with one pulse processing facility in Saskatchewan he has built AGT Foods today into an operation with plants in Canada, the U.S., Turkey, Australia, China and South Africa and more than […] Read more
Comment: China opens some more
Prime Minister Trudeau’s five-day visit to China last month had a sense of déjà vu about it for cattle producers. The PM was there to keep alive the hope of a free trade agreement with the second-largest economy in the world, but came away with little more than his promise that Canada would continue to […] Read more
Comment: Looking ahead to 2018
I was trying to think of a word to sum up 2017, and the best I could come up with was volatile. We came into 2017 bloodied by a fall slump in prices but seem to be going out on a rising tide. Fat cattle and calf prices have been on the rise since September, […] Read more
Comment: Preparing for the death of NAFTA
After the rumble in Virginia last month it is tempting to rail on about the possible loss of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But to be honest I’m NAFTAed out. President Trump will do what he wants. If he wants to shut down NAFTA the U.S. auto and ag industries will suffer, as […] Read more
Comment: Take the long view on CETA
As our Oct. 23 issue of Canadian Cattlemen arrives in your mailbox the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union will have been in force for about a month. Not much has happened since it came into force on September 21, at least as far as the beef industry is […] Read more
Comment: Quality counts
The final report of the 2017-18 National Beef Quality Audit is due out next March but Mark Klassen, the director of technical services for the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association gave us a sneak peak at some of the preliminary results at this year’s beef industry conference. To call it an audit is a bit of a […] Read more
Comment: Will sustainable beef pay?
[Updated: Sept. 14, 2017] – Finally. After years of discussion and planning and surveying and researching, the Canadian version of Verified Sustainable Beef is about to face its ultimate test in the marketplace. It begins this October with the soft launch of the Canadian Beef Sustainability Acceleration pilot in which Cargill, the Beef InfoXchange System […] Read more
Comment: Trade talk
When the industry gathers in Calgary tomorrow for the Canadian Beef Industry Conference trade will almost certainly be a hot topic of conversation. Of course there will be plenty of discussion about traceability, sustainability, genomics and maybe even beef checkoffs, but it will be hard to escape the immediacy of the trade agenda. It starts […] Read more
Comment: Our cattle inventory numbers seem high
The Census of Agriculture is important. It’s a way of correcting all the estimating we do between censuses about our economy, our industry and even our society. Every five years we take a snapshot to give us a more accurate picture of what is going on in the country so we can refocus and stay […] Read more
Canadian Cattlemen Presents: Depth of Field
