The Dairy Farmers of Ontario marketing board wants its members to ship more milk so it is adding a day’s worth of quota for May.
It also announced it will not be fining producers for exceeding their quotas during April.
The board’s chairman said the decisions came because demand for milk protein has exceeded production.
The province is pausing its plan to begin fining goat-milk producers for high somatic cell counts in the milk they market and now wants to conduct more research before proceeding.
The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness had planned to levy fines for milk that contains more than 1.5 million somatic cells per mililitre. They would also have faced a ban on selling their milk until somatic cell counts (SCC) came within limits it established.
Ontario Goats’ animal health and research committee presented international research on dairy goat SCC and its impacts on animal health and milk quality. Together with processors and producers, they consulted with OMAFA officials about the unique properties of SCC in goat milk. This informed the pause.
“By penalizing goat milk producers with unsustainable standards, the regulations will stifle a vital and growing sector,” wrote dairy goat producer Marlie Vanderlip in the Change.org petition launched in December.
She wrote that “Ontario, renowned for its progressive agricultural policies, must recognize that the unique characteristics of goat milk require tailored standards.”
A goat veterinarian said goats store 70 per cent of their milk in the gland cistern. This milk contains a mixture of cellular debris such as cytoplasmic particles and epithelial cells. In contrast, cattle store milk in the alveolar tissues, resulting in cleaner milk.
These non-pathological factors account for up to 50 to 90 per cent variance in somatic cell count in an individual doe, one goat veterinarian said.
The United States federal government remains busy investigating price-fixing in the beef industry.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said a deal his officials reached with AgriStats will end information sharing among the companies that enabled them to discover each other’s plans for production volumes and pricing.
He said the ongoing antitrust investigation into the broader meatpacking sector has involved more than three million documents and many interviews and it continues to urge whistleblowers to provide inside information and has said they could pocket “financial rewards.”
Justice Department officials said the four largest beef processors (Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS USA and National Beef Packing) control about 85 per cent of the U.S. fed cattle market. The companies have faced private lawsuits alleging price-fixing through supply restrictions, though they have
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins linked the investigation to broader supply concerns, pointing to historically low cattle inventories and a decline in U.S. ranchers. She also raised concerns about foreign ownership among major processors.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it is planning to conduct a small, carefully-controlled trial of a vaccine to counter higihly-pathogenic avian influenza,
Migrating birds have been responsible for hundreds of outbreaks among commercial and backyard poultry flocks leading to the culling of more than 17 million birds to prevent further spread.
Farms in the lower mainland of British Columbia have been particularly hard hit, but no province has remained untouched.
The agency said it will be co-operating with provincial and industry partners to plan and conduct the trials.
So far Canada has been able to avoid international trading bans because of its aggressive virus control program, but a vaccine could trigger tradeing bans because a vaccinated bird is difficult to distinguish from a diseased one.
The plan is to try vaccines on a poultry farm to assess how they perform while managing potential impacts on animal health, surveillance and trade.
“Findings from this trial may inform future decisions on whether HPAI vaccination should be used in Canada,” said Cynthia Philippe, CFIA acting veterinary program specialist.
Farmers in the United States are getting subsidies to offset rising fertilizer costs and might be in line for more but so far Canadians have been promised nothing.
The United States Department of Agriculture has already committed nearly $10 billion to farmers to help with high fertilizer costs, including: $780 million to Illinois; $805 million to Texas; $773 million to Kansas; and $857 million to Iowa.
Reports also suggest it may utilize Trump administration tariff revenue to help with fertilizer costs, although the Supreme Court’s February ruling on tariff policy has complicated the legality of those funds.
In late March, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said a “super majority” of American farmers had pre-booked fertilizers at lower pre-war costs, and therefore, there “shouldn’t be too much of a disruption” to U.S. planting of critical feed crops for meat processing.
However, an American Farm Bureau Federation survey of farmers questions the truth of her claim.
According to the survey, pre-booking differed “significantly by region”: 67 per cent among Midwest farmers, but 30 per cent in the Northeast, 31 per cent in the West, and 19 per cent in the South.
Even with those pre-bookings, 70 per cent of all farmers reported they were unable to afford fertilizer for 2026’s planting, including 48%per cent in the Midwest, 69 per cent in the Northeast, 78 per cent in the South, and 66 per cent in the West.
Specific to crops, the Farm Bureau found that 68per cent of soybean farmers cannot afford all required fertilizer and neither can 66 per cent of corn farmers.
Bioenteprise has partnered with Agricultural Credit Corporation to offer up-front funding for people trying to launch agriculture technology businesses.
Access to timely capital is often the difference between a project moving forward or being delayed, Bioenterprise said in a news release announcing the partnership.
Many funding programs require matching funds for eligibility. This can create a barrier to moving forward, even for strong projects, it said.
Credit will be available for startup costs, to provide cash flow during the business launch and to provide matching funds required to access some government programs.
Agricultural Credit Corporation is best known for providing cash advances to farmers to cover costs until crops are harvested and sold.
In Middlesex it is at a farrow-to-wean farm and in Huron in a nursery farm.