Short Takes

Export and slaughter numbers tell the COOL tale

Beef slaughter numbers in Western Canada were up a whopping 18 per cent in the last week of January compared to the same week a year before. While slaughter was down in Eastern Canada, the overall change across Canada was still 12.4 per cent. The increase in slaughter numbers is matched by an 18.9 per cent decline in live cattle exports.

Market watchers agree that Country-of-Origin Labelling (COOL) in the United States is the reason. Paul Stiles, assistant manager, Ontario Cattlemen’s Association, says that Western Canadian plants were working under capacity previously. Operators of the Better Beef plant in Guelph, Eastern Canada’s largest, can’t get enough cattle to go to a double shift even when they buy from Quebec.

Swimming in milk, drowning in red ink south of border

Ontario’s producers can’t supply enough milk and, unless trends change, won’t meet their targets for matching supply to demand this year. Poor quality feed harvested during last year’s rainy summer gets blamed.

But, on the other side of the border the opposite is true. There’s way more milk than producers can sell and the price has dropped like a stone. According to U.S.Department of Agriculture reports at the end of January, the all-milk price of $13.80 per hundredweight for January was down nearly a third from $20.50 a year before. The ratio of the cost of feed to the price of milk is 1.65 to one, the lowest it has been since recording of this sign of profitability began in 1985, according to Dairy Herd Management magazine.

Name your cow and get more milk

Naming cows and treating them with a personal touch puts more milk in the tank according to research conducted and published in Britain.

Scientists at Newcastle University in England have found that cows which are given names and treated as individuals produce significantly larger annual milk yields. Dr. Catherine Douglas and Dr. Peter Rowlinson questioned 516 U.K. dairy farmers on their beliefs about how farmers are able to influence the productivity, behaviour and welfare of dairy cattle. Almost half of the surveyed farmers said they called their cows by name and cows owned by these farmers were found to give 236 more litres of milk per year than those not given names. 

Chickening out on organic rules

The seemingly worldwide recession has caused a crisis for organic producers. Sales are down and they can’t sell their stuff as consumers tighten their belts and try to make the green stuff in their wallets go further.

British newspapers report that organic food sales slumped by 10 per cent in September, October and November, while overall food sales increased six per cent. Organic certification organizations asked the Rural Affairs Secretary to relax stringent rules on animal feed for an indefinite period. They wanted to be able to feed their organic animals conventional feed at half the cost per tonne of organic grains. Standards on stocking densities, antibiotic and fertilizer use would remain in place.

Clouds over Solar in East Hawkesbury

Solaris Energy Partners Inc. wants to build a 300-acre solar farm which would produce 30 MW of electricity – the equivalent in pollution reduction, the company claims, of removing 10,000 cars from the road. According to the company, the project, proposed for East Hawkesbury, near the Quebec border, would inject $10 million into the local economy and generate 100 jobs (10 permanent) in an area that is all too familiar with layoffs and shutdowns.

Staying green a challenge in blight-prone Ireland

Spray as many as 12 times a year for blight, or plant genetically modified potatoes that are resistant? It’s a choice that agriculturalists in the Emerald Isle may be forced to make as Ireland tries to stay green, one way or another, in the face of a virulent strain of potato blight approaching from Europe.

The blight spread across Europe in about 18 months and then to the United Kingdom. Scientists say it is highly aggressive and hit western Irish counties at the end of 2008. To make things worse, the European Union, which often finds genetically modified crops unacceptable, is also bringing in restrictions on sprays and chemicals which would make life easier for growers of conventional potato crops.

Conservationists want to kill off garlic mustard

Garlic mustard is threatening native plant species in Ontario woodlots and fence rows, even the mighty oak, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada recommends spraying it with Roundup and killing it.

Conservation groups usually want chemical pesticides banned, so what’s with the Nature Conservancy?

It’s not the only conservation group to suggest this, says the Conservancy’s science and stewardship co-ordinator Mhairi McFarlane, based in London, and garlic mustard is indeed that bad. Using Roundup “is the least damaging way to kill it off, believe or not,” she says.

Some attempts to remove garlic mustard may actually help spread it. For example, disturbing earth by uprooting it tends to bring seeds to the surface, where they germinate.   

British and Brazilian wheat feeds American pigs

Talk about taking coal to Newcastle. Late last year, American press reports pointed to Smithfield Foods Inc.’s plans to import wheat from Britain and Brazil to feed pigs on the American eastern seaboard.

The reason? Economics. Plunging ocean freight rates make foreign wheat delivered to the U.S. Southeast more economic than corn or wheat trucked or railed from Midwest states.

Some wheat middlings are also going to be imported from Nigeria. The grain comes into the United States through Wilmington Bulk LLC, a consortium based in – you guessed it – North Carolina, the nation’s second largest pork-producing state.