Campbell Soup wants antibiotic-free chicken

Campbell Soup Co. says it will be transitioning to buying chickens that have been raised without using antibiotics.

It has also said it will eliminate artificial colours and flavours from its products.

It says the changes are to make its products “real food”.

It also says the company’s aim is “to set the standard for transparency in the food industry . . . to engender trust with consumers” and to diversify its product line to include "fresh, organic and healthful foods."

Campbell’s president and chief executive officer Denise Morrison said “we believe real food should be made with recognizable, desirable ingredients from plants or animals.

“It should be responsibly crafted using ethical sourcing and sustainable practices that safeguard natural resources.

“Lastly, it should always be delicious, safe and available at a fair price — all three without compromise.”

It reminds me of Loblaws and its foolish name - "Green Chicken"- that sourced antibiotic-free chickens raised on a farm owned by Maple Leaf Foods. That farm happened to be where I grew up, west of New Dundee.

Maple Leaf used vaccines and tight biosecurity to achieve the antibiotic-free standard.

                           

DuPont, Dow boards approve merger

The boards of directors for DuPont and Dow Chemical have approved a $62-billion merger plan.

It has yet to achieve government approvals from a number of countries where both have significant operations.

The plan is that two years after the merger, there will be a division into three parts – for agriculture, for material science and for specialty products.

The chemical business, including pesticides and seeds, is in turmoil.

Bayer AG has made a bid to buy Monsanto.

ChemChina has bought Syngenta.

Good winter for bees

 

It was a good winter for bee colonies, reports the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists.

Ontario colony losses were 18 per cent, slightly higher than the Canadian average of 17 per cent.

Mark Brock, chairman of the Ontario Grain Growers Association, said the loss rate was less than half the rate the year before.

Losses range from 12 to 30 per cent, depending on the severity of winter weather.

Brock noted that the higher survival rate happened before Ontario’s restrictions on neonicitinoid seed-treatment pesticides came into force.

The Grain Growers of Ontario have lobbied vigorously against the restrictions, saying they are not based on sound science. They lost court challenges, so the restrictions that get tighter each year, remain in force.

One of the restrictions requires farmers to prove they have a threat of insects in their fields before they are approved to buy treated seed.

Unlike overwintering rates, there are no reliable rates of colony losses due to neonicitinoids. But pesticides, even though they are highly valuable to society, are not politically correct.

Feds push beef exports

Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay today announced an investment of up to $6.4 million over three years to help Canadian Beef increase global consumer demand and loyalty for the Canadian Beef brand.

He said “this strategic initiative will support Canadian Beef’s three-year market development and promotion plan targeting key regional hubs in Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America.

“This investment builds on” the opening of expanded trade with “Mexico, Ukraine, South Korea and Taiwan, while the Country of Origin Labelling law was successfully repealed giving Canadian Beef full access to the United States,” he said by way of a news release.

The timing of the export push comes in the midst of the low point in the cycle of beef production and relatively high Canadian supermarket beef prices.

Canada’s beef farmers were hard hit by an export ban because an Alberta cow died of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and then the U.S. Country-of-Origin Labeling law that depressed Canadian cattle prices.

That prompted farmers to sharply cull their herds to near-record-low numbers.

One could wish the Canadian Food Inspection Agency had been more vigilant about what goes into livestock feeds so we had never experienced a case of BSE.

Fire in Kitchener-area wheat field

A fire in a wheat field south-west of Kitchener sent up a white plume of smoke that could be seen throughout Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge Tuesday afternoon.

The fire may have started from sparks from a combine.

It swept across 38 acres before North Dumfries Township fire department put it out.

Chief Robert Shantz said that a spark would be enough to ignite a blaze.

“With these dry conditions, that’s all it takes,” he told CTV News.

The field is near Fischer-Hallman Drive and New Dundee Road, which is the south-western corner of Kitchener.

Russia now world’s biggest wheat exporter

   

Russia has overtaken the United States as the top exporter of the grain and now is the leading supplier of wheat to Egypt.

France is out of the running because heavy flooding has damaged quality.

While it’s normal for countries near the Black Sea, including Ukraine and Romania, to take the lead at the start of the season and French sales to pick up later, Russia has a low-price advantage that is fueling the surge in its market share.

Ontario has often sold wheat to Egypt, trying to get it out of storage before the corn harvest begins.

The weak ruble, prime weather conditions and more investment are accelerating a generation-long rebound of agriculture in Russia and unseating American farmers who were the world’s biggest wheat sellers for more than 50 years.

 “With the harvest delays in France, traders are not even willing to look at French wheat now,” Matt Ammermann, a commodity risk manager at futures and options broker INTL FCStone Inc. in Plymouth, Minnesota, is quoted by Bloomberg News. “Black Sea just has so much to sell right now and the quality too is coming out better than expected.”

Russia will export a record 25.5 million metric tons in the season started in July, the most in the world for a second straight year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.

Global output will rise to a record for a fourth straight season, and stockpiles have never been bigger, USDA data show. Prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, the global benchmark, fell this month to the lowest since 2007.

Wheat for loading at Black Sea ports was $165 a metric ton as of Friday, according to the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies in Moscow. That’s almost $15 cheaper than French wheat with a minimum of 11 percent protein content for loading at the port of Rouen, based on FranceAgriMer data.

In two tenders this month, Egypt agreed to buy 480,000 tons of wheat with half coming from Russia, and Ukraine and Romania supplying the rest. Last season, Russia also led sales for the first time in three years.

                                    

FCC says chicken outlook is rosy

Farm Credit Canada economist Leigh Anderson forecasts a rosy future for Canada’s chicken industry – production increases of 22 per cent over the next 10 years.

He predicts retail prices will increase by 1.7 per cent for the next three years and that per capita chicken consumption will increase by six per cent by 2025.

This will occur within the context of increased competition as international free-trade agreements take effect and as animal welfare measures curb production practices.

I'm not surprised the FCC is so optimistic, given its reckless lending to quota holders.