Summer-time chicken production is allowed to increase by 4.6 per cent in Ontario following a national agency meeting to establish production plans for June 4 to July 29.
Ontario may produce up to 75,629,247 kilograms of the national goal of 217,512,281 kilograms.
The national increase is four per cent above base.
Production goals for the next cycle are to be discussed by the national agency on May 20.
One of the hottest issues to arise at the annual meeting of the Ontario Pork marketing board was the selection of a non-board member to be one of two Ontario delegates to the Canadian Pork
Council.
The board changed its policy from two board directors to fill the positions to one board member and one producer chosen from the membership ranks.
During the debate it emerged that five current board directors expressed an interest in being a delegate.
A few debaters made it clear that they believe James Reesor, a producer from the Niagara area, is a good delegate who is well informed about national pork-industry issues.
But those who wanted the board to revert to choosing only board directors said they want somebody who is well informed about Ontario industry issues and able to brief the Ontario board about developments at the national council.
The Ontario board forwards about $960,000 in annual fees to the Canadian Pork Council.
The vote was 44 to 24 to revert to the policy of choosing only board directors as delegates.
CYBER SECURITY
The vote was 36 to 31 in favour of a Perth County resolution asking the pork board to hire an expert in computer security to determine the degree of risk among producers and to provide advice about protecting against hackers.
Some said that’s something that ought to remain the responsibility of individual producers.
ONTARIO SWINE IMPROVEMENT
There was an Oxford County resolution noting that funds from the former Ontario Stockyards have restrictions on their use that Ontario Swine Improvement may not meet. In the end, the delegates approved an amended resolution that leaves it to the pork board to discuss the issue with Ontario Swine Improvement Inc.
OSI will need to demonstrate that the funding it receives from the sale of the stockyards needs to be used for research to benefit the general population of Ontario hog producers.
SUPPLY MANAGEMENT
A Bloc Quebecois Member of Parliament, in a fight to retain his riding, has introduced a private member’s bill to prevent Canada’s trade negotiations from making any concessions that harm the interests of quota-holding dairy and poultry farmers.
While debaters said they realize this is pure politics, and not likely to become Canadian policy, they want MPs to know that the pork industry wants trade negotiators to improve market access for Canadian pork industry exports.
But some of the debaters also made it clear that their opinions about trade negotiations differ sharply from supply-management farmers.
They said it’s fine for supply management to speak up for its interests, but it should also be fine for pork producers to speak up for theirs.
Stuart Skinner of Perth County threw the cat among the pigeons when he said supply management producers compete with pork producers when a neighbourhood farm comes up for sale.
PRODUCER DEFINITION
Perth County introduced a resolution to narrow the definition of a member of the pork board to exclude those who have no ownership in the industry, such as renting a farm and producing hogs on contract.
While there was general agreement that those eligible to vote and to hold office in the pork board should be committed to the industry and have skin in the game, there were some who noted that retired parents could have 40 years of experience in hog production and time available to serve.
The Ontario Pork marketing board could be on the hook fo $3.6 million to build new research facilities at the University of Guelph’s Elora campus.
But board chairman John DeBruyn said he remains optimistic that the federal government will approve funding of about $2.5 million, much as it did for new facilities at Elora for dairy and beef research.
On the other hand, five applications for funding have so far yielded nothing, prompting Marion Meyers, a former board chair, to ask the board why it hasn’t secured federal government funding and who will be on the hook if the feds don’t come through.
DeBruyn said the agreement the pork board entered with the university and the province called for pork producers to find 20 per cent of the money, which would be $3.6 mllion.
This year’s pork board budget contains $2 million for the project, $1.5 million of it held over as unspent from last year’s budget.
Ontario Agriculture Minister Lisa Thompson lavished praise on the pork board for investing in the swine research centre and said “we are going to attract the very best” researchers.
She also praised the board for its participation in a recent trade mission to Japan and for being on top of issues such as animal welfare, the environment, sustainability and communications with consumers.
She said the province is dedicating $2 billion to agriculture, including a $1.77 billion five-year deal with the federal government, which is a 25 per cent increase from the previous deal.
Another $340 million has recently been announced for provincial funding of research at the University of Guelph.
She said the budget, to be released the day after she was speaking, will include $2 million over two years to invite proposals that will include made-in-Ontario solutions to the demand for fertilizers.
And she said there will be funding to update soils information, some of it dating to the 1920s preparation of Ontario soil maps.
“It is time,” she said. It will include providing data in digital format.
“The future is bright for Ontario agriculture,”she said.”The world is looking to us and our farmers are up for it.”
Veteran politician John Milloy of Kitchener told the annual meeting for the Ontario Pork marketing board that they need to offer more praise and less criticism if they want to influence politicians.
Blasting politicians for perceived mistakes and failures will leave a long-lingering bad taste that will hamper efforts to get what farmers want from their governments, he said.
He was an Ontario Liberal member of the legislature for 11 years, a cabinet minister for seven and served in the Prime Minister’s office under Jean Chretien.
He said farmers should make an effort to inform their politicians, including those representing nearby urban ridings. He praised John Wilkinson of Stratford for inviting him and other city MPPs to tour farms.
Because politicians are overwhelmed with work and lobbyists, he said the pork farmers ought to keep their requests brief and focused on two or three top-priority issues. Leave the rest for the future.
It will be easier to bring them forward after a rapport has been established.
He said farmers who expect politicians to put effort into responding to them need to put effort into communicating with them. For example, if your effort is forwarding a copy of a petition, you will probably get only a canned response.
He said producers ought to take every opportunity to inform people about how they farm and the issues they face because those people will also be engaging directly or indirectly with politicians.
He said MPPs typically do constituency work and meetings on
Fridays and what they hear and learn they will report Mondays at caucus meetings.
If what MPPs from your riding match what MPPS from other parts of the province report, it has multiplied impact, he said.
A number of farmers quizzed their leaders about how well prepared the pork industry is for an outbreak of African Swine Fever when they met at the annual meeting of the Ontario Pork marketing board.
“Are we 100 per cent prepared?” one asked, noting that he has been hearing about the threat for five years.
The threat is that an outbreak could immediately cut off exports which account for 70 per cent of Ontario hog production. It would also burden farms that are hit with monstrous costs to depopulate, clean and disinfect and resume operations.
General manager Ken Ovington answered it’s “not likely” that the industry will ever be 100 per cent prepared, but said it’s in much better shape now than 10 years ago.
He said euthanasia protocols and slaughter-plant plans are well advanced and there is a system in place to keep producers and industry partners informed.
Ovington said Ontario Pork staff are working with peers in other provincial marketing boards and is preparing requests for funding for four projects under the federal government’s recently-announced funding for ASF preparedness.
Rene Roy, chairman of the Canadian Pork Council, said it has taken the lead on the industry-wide committees established to address the challenges.
He said “we’re better prepared than ever,” but much work remains to be done. The work now is focussed on the immediate response to an outbreak. He said this is something new for government officials who are usually responding to crisis and have not been proactive.
Stephen Heckbert, new executive director, said the council’s top priorities are developing a strategic plan, improving communications and advocating around African Swine Fever.
He said a new producer manual on best practices has passed Stage One approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for PigSafe and PigCare.
The deadline retailers had set to have sows out of gestation crates has been delayed from 2025 to 2029.
He said Japanese inspectors recently completed visits in Ontario and Quebec to verify protocols for producing pork that has not been produced with the help of ractopamine growth promotant.
Stacey Ash briefed the meeting on communications and marketing initiatives, including the development of videos featuring farmers. They will soon be aired on a new communications website.
The Bergsma family of Lambton County is building a cabin in a 50-acre woodlot to serve as a respite for farmers and first responders dealing with stress.
It’s their answer to the suicide of 18-year-old Travis Bergsma who had just finished building a hog barn on the farm he purchased as was moving the first hogs into the facility.
His parents had also just finished building a new barn.
Diane Bergsma said they never noticed that Travis was so stressed. They knew he was feeling stress, but considered it normal and short term related to all that was unfolding then.
Since that travesty in 2020, the family of seven children has continued to ponder what could and should be done to help farmers and first responders experiencing mental health issues and stress.
Travis was a member of the local volunteer fire department.
The cabin they decided to build is called Three Oaks Respite Cabin and will be ready by August.
There will be registered therapists from the National Farmers Health Alliance to tend to those taking advantage of the respite.
“We hope that will prompt them to seek ongoing professional therapy,” Diane said.
There will be a tractor parade Aug. 12 to mark the opening of the cabin.
Information about the project is at threeoakscabin.com .
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a Toronto-area Member of Parliament, has caught the attention of farmers because he has introduced a private member’s bill that raises alarm that modern farming could trigger a pandemic.
What’s doubly worrisome is that Erskine-Smith is rumoured to be a candidate to become leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.
Stephen Heckbert, executive director of the Canadian Pork Council, said he has launched an effort to inform MPs about the pork industry’s preparedness to deal with epidemics.
And the council is pointing out that pork farmers’ biosecurity measures kept COVID-19 from devastating the pork industry and the Canadian supply of safe food.
“We were ready,” he said.
“It’s a matter of education,” Heckbert said in a private interview during the annual meeting of the Ontario Pork board in Guelph.
Heckbert some of Erskine-Smith’s proposals indicate he favours converting Canada’s farming and food industry out of meats, dairy and poultry into plant based foods.
The bill says in part that:
“after consultation with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Minister of Industry and provincial governments, provide for measures to
TruHarvest, the venture that took over Toronto beef-packing plant Ryding-Regency, is out of business.
Vice-president Chuck Oulton said in a recent interview with Farms.com that it ran ouf of money to achieve its goal of slaughtering 1,500 head a week.
When it closed it was doing about 700 a week with 140 employees working three days a week.
The plant was put back into business by the Burgin family of Forest, a revival that was much needed in a province short of beef-slaughter capacity.
Oulton said TruHarvest was a supplier to niche markets, such as halal and kosher, and those buyers are left with little or no Canadian supply.
“With a new business, there’s only so much chance you have with the banks to get financing for expansions,” Oulton said. “The Burgin family put a lot out there to try and make this a success. I really do think they gave it their all.”
Viet Nam, for example, has little land or ability to produce feed grains, yet is a major consumer of pork and that’s likely to increase as incomes continue to rise, he said.
India is also experiencing improved incomes and with that comes demand for meat protein, he said.
Nigeria, with 240 million people and a rapidly-increasing population, is another market prospect to which Canada should pay attention, he said.
Canada has the land, water and expertise to continue increasing pork exports, he said.
He praised the pork board for taking the initiative to address consumer concerns about animal welfare, the environment and sustainability and urged them to make sure Canadian consumers get the message.
He said competition is coming from plant-based proteins where the technology and costs are likely to keep improving, led by technology-savvy startups that later will be bought by large-scale producers such as Maple Leaf Foods which has built a large plant in Indiana.
That plant is not going to go away, he said, despite a slump in sales.
He also predicted competition will be coming from “cellular” meats produced in fermentation tanks from stem cells harvested from pigs.
He said much will depend on hog these competitors and pork producers position their products.
He urged the pork industry to join with governments and companies to strategize how to open markets in countries such as Viet Nam, India and Nigeria. Africa is the only continent that will continue to experience population growth, he said.
The rest of the world is in a decline in the population of people younger than 15 years, he said.
Axel Ndayisaba
of Agriculture and AgriFood Canada briefed the meeting on trade negotiations, including current talks with the United Kingdom, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and countries applying to gain entry into that deal, and with India and the ASEAN association (10 countries) for Asia.
He said Canada’s strategy with the United Kingdom is to wait to see what happens to its application to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership and then to seek increased access for Canada to the U.K.’s agriculture and food markets.
When Stewart Cressman challenged him over the European Union’s ongoing demands that have stifled Canadian pork exports, he said Canada presented a report on carcass disinfection procedures and safety and the E.U. has said it will take it five years to evaluate that information.
He said the difficulty is the strong farmer lobby in member countries in the European Union. Stewart countered that the free trade deal that was signed in 2016 seems to be a “worthless piece of paper.”
He said Canadian imports of beef from Ireland surged as soon as the deal was signed.
He said Canada is maintaining a close watch on U.S. proposals to allow country of origin labeling of meat, eggs and poultry products, but so far it is for voluntary labeling which may not impact Canadian exports or prices.
Ottawa is also keeping a close watch on Proposition 12 in California that could force hog producers all across North America to transition out of confinement housing for sows.
Quebec’s powerful hog marketing board continues intense negotiations with Olymel and other smaller pork packers over a deal that would end up reducing hog production rates by 1.2 million hogs per year.
Rene Roy, a director of the Quebec board and president of the Canadian Pork Council, said they have been talking eight hours per day for the last week and said he thinks they are close to a deal.
He said production cuts will be mandated across the board.
He said Olymel will be closing one of its hog-slaughtering plants and it will have to reduce production from its farms the same as all other Quebec hog producers.
Olymel owns some of the largest and most modern hog farms in the province.
Roy said it’s hard to predict the full extent of the fallout from the crisis, but he does expect a large percentage of older farmers with smaller operations to retire from pork production.
The need to convert housing from sow gestation crates to mingling in pens will prompt some to quit rather than invest in renovations, he said.
There are others producing under contract and they may also quit, he said.
He expects there will be a significant increase in the export of weaner pigs to the United States and some movement of market hogs to the U.S.
Economist Steve Meyer of Kerns Associates in Iowa said any surge of Canadian exports from Quebec might prompt producers there to call for countervailing duties to offset any help Canadian governments provide to Quebec producers.
Roy said the federal and Quebec governments are involved in discussions to provide help to the industry.
Meyer also said he has heard no producer concerns about competition from Canadians in meetings he has attended in the U.S.
Ste
There has been a surge is positive tests for African Swine Fever in China’s main hog-producing provinces in the north.
There were as many positives in January as for the entire previous year, reports Reuters news agency.
Jim Long of Genesus Pork, which sells breeding stock to China, said African Swine Fever is the reason marketings of pigs of all sizes and ages have recently increased.
An initial wave during 2018 and 2019 killed millions of pigs and led to a global increase in in meat prices.
Chinese farms have significantly improved hygiene and procedures since then to reduce the impact of the virus, but it still circulates constantly, often spiking in winter, said Reuters,
.
"We guess that the current swine fever infection area in northern production areas may be reaching 50 per cent,” said analysts at Huachuang Securities in a report on Monday.
Reuters quoted an anonymous farm manager saying the outbreak has not yet subsided.
"We continue to believe the low China hog price is due to many pigs going to slaughter at any weight due to ASF [out]breaks,”Long wrote in a report this week.
Ontario Labour Minister Monte McNaughton is increasing fines for employers who abuse migrant workers.
He said the “scumbags” abusing migrant workers will be found, fined and put behind bars.
Farms, businesses and people who are convicted of withholding a foreign national’s passport or work permit could face fines of $100,000 to $200,000 for every worker whose rights are abused.
“While most employers care about their workers, some continue to take advantage of them, including illegally holding their passports and work permits. This obviously leaves workers vulnerable,” said McNaughton.
“Migrant workers are afraid. That’s why every possible chance I get, I tell migrant workers that they’re protected under the labour laws here in Ontario,” he said.
“Please, come forward if there’s injustices out there.”
Under the Working for Workers Act, 2023, individuals convicted of withholding passports would be liable to either a fine of up to $500,000, up to 12 months imprisonment, or both.
Corporations convicted would be liable to a fine of up to $1 million.
Food prices were 10.5 per cent higher this February than a year ago, much higher than the overall inflation rate of 5.2 per cent.
And there is scant expectation that food prices will decline any time soon.
But the overall inflation rate declined by the most it has since April. In January it was 5.9 per cent.
The Bank of Canada aims to keep inflation below two per cent, so there remains a long way to go.
Even though the union contract stretches to 2027, Olymel has opened it to hike wages in an effort to attract and retain workers at its Quebec hog-packing plants.
Starting wages increase from $17 to $19.20 and hour and after a year of employment increase to $21.20.
The company is in financial straits and has been pressuring the pork marketing board to sharply reduce production by 850,000 hogs after two other reductions in the previous year.
It has also stopped buying hogs from Ontario.
The hog board wants the cuts to be across the board, but Olymel said it needs to run its relatively new and large farms at or near capacity.
United States worries that China and Russia are buying up farmland are unfounded according to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Canadians are by far the biggest foreign landowners, most of it forests.
In fact, Canadians account for a third of the land that foreigners own in the U.S. - about 12.8 million acres.
China owns 383,935 and 127,000 of that is by pork producer and packer Smithfield Foods Inc. which is owned by WH Group of China.
Russians own 73 acres.
Four European countries collectively own as much as Canadians - 12.8 million acres held by Dutch, Italian, United Kingdom and German citizens.
Empire Company Ltd., owners of Sobey’s, Freshco and Foodland supermarkets, took a $32-million hit from a cyber attack in November and has reported fourth-quarter profits of $125.7 million compared with the same third-quarter results of $203.4 million last year.
Last year’s profit included a big gain on real estate.
The company said shoppers have shifted to lower-priced items because inflation of about 11 per cent on groceries is pinching budgets.
Windsor Salt and two unions representing 240 Unifor members will be back at the bargaining table Wednesday in hopes of ending a strike that began Feb. 17.
The resumption comes after the union leaders appealed to Premier Doug Ford and Labor Minister Monty McNaughton to get the company back to negotiating.
The union said the company, owned by Stone Canyon in the United States, wanted the right to contract out jobs before it would negotiate financial issues.
“This is not how we conduct business or negotiate contracts,” said national union president Lana Payne.
Two more lawyers have been appointed to two-year terms on the Animal Care Review Board which deals with appeals of inspectors’ rulings on animal welfare.
They are Ziba Heydarian of Ottawa and Emma Rhodes of Toronto, both named vice-chairmen of the board.
Heydarian was also named vice-chair of the Ontario Fire Safety Commission which deals with appeals from orders by the Ontario Fire Marshall.
It was in the news several years ago over crack-downs on barn parties.
You know you're in trouble when lawyers make farming decisions.
A farmers' protest party is the big winner in provincial elections held Wednesday.
The provincial elections
The provincial elections determine the make-up of the Senate.
The BBB or BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement) party rode a wave of protests against the government's environmental policies and looked set to have won more Senate seats than Prime Minister Mark Rutte's conservative VVD party.
A first exit poll projected BBB won 15 of a total of 75 seats in the Senate, which has the power to block legislation agreed in the Lower House of parliament, with the VVD dropping from 12 to 10 seats.
The meteoric rise of BBB is a major blow for Rutte's governing coalition, casting doubt over its aim to drastically cut nitrogen pollution on farms, the single issue upon which BBB was founded in 2019.
"Nobody can ignore us any longer," BBB leader Caroline van der Plas told broadcaster Radio 1.
MASCO has developed artificial intelligence audio sensors to provide continuous wellness monitoring of pigs, specifically focusing on respiratory events, or coughing, and pinpointing the location for treatment.
During a case study in Minnesota, the technology was found to have helped decrease mortality rates by half or up to four times, depending on the surveyed barn, validating that the monitoring system helps create faster detection and treatment to decrease pig and economic losses, the company said.
Additionally, the producer reported the MASCO sensors provided consistent, objective alerts that were accurate.
"There was an instance where I asked my employees how their barn was doing, they said it was doing great,” says one of the herd managers from the study.
“That same day I received a message from MACSO saying that there were coughs in that barn. I drove over to the barn to check it out and MACSO was spot on. These pigs happened to be sick enough that I needed to go in and inject medication to keep them alive."
The company says the system gives producers a “24/7 Herdsman” to help make informed decisions about their herd health management.
The Surface Transportation Board of the United States has approved Canadian Pacific Railway’s $31 billion US deal to buy Kansas City Southern.
Ir creates the first railway company link from Mexico to Canada.
The transportation board imposed a number of environmental and competition conditions, including seven years of oversight requiring reporting of data.
The deal combines the sixth- and seventh-largest railroads operating in the U.S. by revenue, is projected to add 800 new unionized operational jobs in the U.S. and will shorten the average length of trains by just under 20 per cent.
Some farming groups have expressed concerns about declining rail-industry competition.
A national survey of potato farms that planted seed from Prince Edward Island has turned up no evidence of potato wart.
The survey involved about 1,500 fields in British Columbia, the three Prairie provinces, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Prince Edward Island was not directly included in the survey. However, the CFIA targeted farms that had a history of sourcing seed potatoes from the Maritime province.
The disease was first identified in Prince Edward Island in 2000 and in two fields growing potatoes for processing in 2021.
That prompted the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to ban P.E.I. potatoes from the U.S. market, delivering a crippling blow to the potato industry. The federal government promised $28 million in compensation and the province added $12.5 million.
There were more positive tests for the disease in February, July and December.
About 250 Unifor members on strike against Windsor Salt are calling on Premier Doug For to intervene.
They say the American owner, Stone Canyon, is unfairly demanding the union accept the contracting out of union work before negotiating any financial matters.
“This is not how we do business or negotiate contracts in Ontario,” said Lana Payne, Unifor National President in a letter.
“Ontarians respect the collective bargaining process as a fundamental part of workers’ rights, and we do not use the threat of stonewalling as a bargaining tactic to force unacceptable concessions onto our negotiation counterparts before the conversation has even started.”
Payne is calling on the government to reach out to Windsor Salt’s owners to end the dispute and come to the bargaining table.
The strike began Feb. 17.
Toronto zoo has closed its walk-through aviary over concerns about highly-pathogenic avian influenza.
Zoo officials said the closure is “out of an abundance of caution to protect the birds.
There have been two outbreaks in commercial poultry flocks in Ontario this month, one at Chatham-Kent, the other in West Lincoln in the Niagara area.
The zoo staff are now required to use footbaths, footpads and an area dedicated to changing footwear at the entrance to buildings with birds.
Ryan Laarman, 18, has died in a grain bin at Elgin Feeds in Aylmer.
Laarman lost his footing and fell into the shaft. Emergency crews took him to St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital where he died.
The mill remains closed today to honour Laarman who was a student at St. Thomas Community Christian school.
Global Affairs Canada has invested $3 million to help a co-operative of dairy farmers near Lviv set up a milk-processing plant in the Ukraine.
The plant will produce milk, yogurt, sour cream and hard and soft cheeses using milk from the local dairy co-ops.
Those co-ops will also have a stake in the management of the plant, which will employ 30 to 40 people.
The co-operatives were established along the lines of Agropur in Quebec.
Construction was already well under way when war broke out last year and disrupted every aspect of life in the now embattled country.
Investors at first shied away from putting their money into a project in conflict zone, said Camil Cote, the project officer for SOCODEVI, a development agency based in Quebec City that is spearheading the project.
The invasion put a stop to the work for about three months, until Canada offered another $2-million to get it started again.
“Just like the whole of Ukraine, we survived the winter,” Cote said in an interview with the Globe and Mail from Nicaragua.
“We have (had a) few dangerous situations near the plant,” said Andriy Blinovskyy, who manages the project on behalf of a corporation of local dairy co-ops called Nabil.
“We have missile explosion near the plant, when the electricity transformer station was destroyed maybe 10 kilometres from the plant.”
That explosion late last year forced workers to continue building through the winter without heat, using a generator for power.
When it’s up and running, the plant will mainly supply the Lviv region with locally produced products. The equipment and the brand new, gleaming milk tanks in each room carry Canadian flags.
Ontario Agriculture Minister Lisa Thompson has announced that $343 million will be going via the Ontario Agriculture Research Institute to the University of Guelph.
The money is for research into food safety and animal welfare.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has set up a quarantine zone in West Lincoln where a commercial poultry flock tested positive for highly-infectious avian influenza.
It is the second outbreak in Ontario this within less than a week.
In the United States, there have been a recent outbreak in Virginia and six in Pennsylvania that claimed 64,000 birds, 20,000 on a turkey farm and 6,500 ducks on a breeding farm.
Chile reported its first case and officials in Europe a bracing for the wildfowl migration to begin.
.Farmers in Louisianna, Mississippi and Tennessee might plant up to 10 million acres to canola this fall, all of it destined for the diesel fuel market.
Chevron, Bunge and Corteva are working together on the initiative which is backed by federal government subsidies for energy that replaces fossil fuels.
Last year the total U.S. acreage planted to canola was two million.
In the South, canola will be planted after soybeans and cotton are harvested.
That will be attractive because farmers will reap a second crop on land that has traditionally grown only one crop a year.
The main buyer is Bunge Chevron Ag Resources.
Amanda Hammell of Dobbinton has been appointed to a three-year term on the Ontario Livesock Financial Protection Board.
The board gathers fees on cattle sales and makes partial payment if and when a licensed buyer fails to pay farmers.
Hammell is director of agriculture for the Royal Bank of Canada at Arran-Elderslie.
Eight pigs died and the driver has been charged after a truck crash near Goderich Monday afternoon.
Huron detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police is investigating.
Farmland prices increased by 19.4 per cent in Ontario, more than the national increase of 12.8 per cent and much better than expected
J.P Gervais of Farm Credit Canada said he is surprised by the increase; a year ago he anticipated price increases would moderate.
Lots of farmers are shopping to add land and not many are in a mood to sell at a time when receipts for grains, oilseeds and pulses increased 18.3 per cent last year.
That increase in revenues was more than enough to offset rising interest rates and higher costs for fertilizer, machinery and other inputs.
Quebec land prices went up by 11 per cent. Ontario's increase was far more than any other province.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has confirmed an outbreak of highly-infectious avian influenza in a commercial poultry operation in Chatham-Kent.
It will be setting up a quarantine zone and permits will be required to truck anything related to the poultry industry in or out of that zone.