(Dave Bedard photo)

FCC offers to bend terms for soaked Prairie growers

Canada’s federal farm lender says it will be flexible with qualifying Prairie crop growers facing financial trouble from a rain-soaked harvest season. Areas of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have experienced “significant levels of rain in the last half of the growing season and snow since the beginning of October,” Farm Credit Canada said in a […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

Farmers’ debt seen hitting fresh record high

Reuters — Canadian farmers’ debt will likely reach another record high this year, while land appreciation slows and incomes flatten, but the industry is still in strong financial shape, the country’s biggest agriculture lender, Farm Credit Canada, forecast on Tuesday. FCC, the federal Crown ag lending agency, sounded a note of caution for farmers, who […] Read more


Farmland prices, on average, were up 12.4 per cent and 10.1 per cent in Manitoba and Canada, respectively, says Farm Credit Canada’s chief economist J.P. Gervais. The annual rise in farmland values is slowing, but still expected to be positive in 2016 so long farm cash receipts remain stable.

Manitoba, Canadian farmland values up again in 2015

Farm Credit Canada says the annual percentage increase in farmland values is getting smaller

Manitoba farmland values led the way with the highest average percentage increase in Canada last year, says Farm Credit Canada (FCC). But the pace of increases the last few years here and across Canada is slowing in step with the plateauing of farm cash receipts, and slower drop in interest rates, J.P. Gervais, FCC’s chief […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

Farmland fundamentals potentially bearish: FCC

Having tracked more double-digit percentage increases in Canadian farmland prices through 2015, Canada’s federal farm lender sees factors lining up for those values to retreat. Farm Credit Canada’s latest Farmland Values Report, released Monday, logged a 10.1 per cent increase in average farmland values in Canada in 2015, down from a 14.3 per cent rise in […] Read more



Any delays to seeding due to spring rain aren’t expected to be as prolonged as last year’s, Drew Lerner told farmers in Regina. (Leeann Minogue photo)

Minogue: Optimism reigns at FCC outlook meeting

Regina — Despite commodity prices down off recent highs, resurgent transportation problems and crop disease issues across the Prairies, farmers heard all good news at Farm Credit Canada’s Ag Outlook 2015 conference here Tuesday. “The sky’s not falling,” said J.P. Gervais, chief ag economist for Regina-based FCC. Actually, he said, things are pretty good. If […] Read more