The province on Thursday pledged $450,000 over three years for the program, which will go to help beekeepers buy more bees and upgrade equipment to "accommodate and keep (the bees) healthy."

The funding will also support inspection services and workshops for new beekeepers, the province said.

"Producers of blueberries, apples, grapes, cranberries and other crops in the province can only increase their yields if they have access to sufficient numbers of bees for pollination," Agriculture Minister John MacDonell said in a release.

"By investing in measures to increase the province’s healthy bee population, this program will help both commercial beekeepers and fruit producers to expand their operations."

To get funding through the program, a beekeeper must be a member of the Nova Scotia Commercial Beekeepers Association and have at least 50 colonies available for pollination in 2012.

Any member short of 50 colonies who has provided hives for pollination in 2012, must submit an expansion plan laying out their "timing and resources" to reach 50 colonies or more.

Eligible project costs for this program year must be incurred between May 1 this year and March 1 next year.

Nova Scotia’s beekeeping sector produces honey and beeswax valued at about $1.1 million annually, while the bee industry’s pollination is valued at about $1.9 million a year.

"Many Nova Scotia wild blueberry producers who want to increase the number of pollination units for their crops, and this program will support Nova Scotia beekeepers in helping to meet that demand," David Sangster, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Producers Association of Nova Scotia, said in the province’s release.

Program guidelines and application forms are available online.

Canadian Pacific Railway’s embattled CEO Fred Green announced his resignation Thursday morning, hours ahead of a shareholder vote in Calgary on nominations to the company’s board, put forward by an activist stockholder that wanted Green gone.

Five of CP’s board members also suddenly announced Thursday morning that they would not stand for re-election, clearing the path for the candidates nominated by New York investment firm Pershing Square Capital Management.

Pershing Square in January named its own slate to run for the board and vowed, if successful, to replace Green, a 34-year veteran of CP, with retired Canadian National Railway (CN) CEO Hunter Harrison.

One of the Pershing nominees, Stephen Tobias, the former chief operating officer at U.S. railway Norfolk Southern, was named Thursday as CP’s interim CEO.

The new board said Thursday it has named "a search committee to identify a permanent CEO."

"Should the board determine that I am the best candidate to lead the company, I would be honoured to serve," Harrison said in a Pershing Square release in January.

Calgary-based CP said Thursday that its previous board members John Cleghorn, Tim Faithfull, Edmond Harris, Michael Phelps and Roger Phillips decided not to run again after taking into account the "views expressed by shareholders about the desire for board change."

Along with Tobias, Pershing Square’s other nominees are its own CEO Bill Ackman; one of its partners, Paul Hilal; CRS Inc. president Gary Colter, a former board member at Saskatchewan Wheat Pool; former Alberta Treasury Branches CEO Paul Haggis, now chairman of Alberta Enterprise Corp.; Rebecca MacDonald, a founder of Toronto-based Just Energy Group; and former Onex executive Anthony Melman, now CEO of advisory firm Nevele Inc.

The departure of five expected nominees left 16 nominees for the 16 spots on the board, among whose other members are Hartley Richardson, chairman of Canada’s No. 2 grain handler Richardson International, and former federal finance minister John Manley.

Another incumbent board member, Madeleine Paquin, CEO of Montreal-based cargo-handling firm Logistec, was elected Thursday as the new board’s acting chair.

"Worst managed"

Pershing Square, whose funds own 24.2 million CP shares, now worth about $1.8 billion, has for months ripped both Green and the incumbent board for overseeing what it called "the worst managed and poorest performing Class I railway."

CP’s operating ratio has "deteriorated" from 79.6 per cent to 80.1 per cent during Green’s tenure, Ackman said in a letter to CP shareholders last month. The operating ratio of other Class I railroads "improved, on average," from 77.9 per cent to 71.4 per cent in the meantime, he said.

The new board said in a statement Thursday it is "confident in the depth and breadth of this board and its ability to work with the management and all CP employees to serve our customers and communities. We are looking forward to working together to build value for our shareholders."

"The great majority of Canadian Pacific’s employees are extremely talented and dedicated," Harrison said in January. "With the right board and executive leadership, I believe Canadian Pacific can achieve just as dramatic a turnaround (as CN’s) and enjoy its rightful position as a leader in the North American rail industry."

The new board could hit its first obstacle as early as Wednesday, when the railway’s unionized engineers, conductors, traffic controllers, trainmen and yardmen officially are in strike position.

The workers, who are represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and have been without a labour agreement since Jan. 1, voted last month 95 per cent in favour of authorizing their bargaining committee to launch a strike "if necessary."

Canadian Pacific Railway’s embattled CEO Fred Green announced his resignation Thursday morning, hours ahead of a shareholder vote in Calgary on nominations to the company’s board, put forward by an activist stockholder that wanted Green gone.

Five of CP’s board members also suddenly announced Thursday morning that they would not stand for re-election, clearing the path for the candidates nominated by New York investment firm Pershing Square Capital Management.

Pershing Square in January named its own slate to run for the board and vowed, if successful, to replace Green, a 34-year veteran of CP, with retired Canadian National Railway (CN) CEO Hunter Harrison.

One of the Pershing nominees, Stephen Tobias, the former chief operating officer at U.S. railway Norfolk Southern, was named Thursday as CP’s interim CEO.

The new board said Thursday it has named "a search committee to identify a permanent CEO."

"Should the board determine that I am the best candidate to lead the company, I would be honoured to serve," Harrison said in a Pershing Square release in January.

Calgary-based CP said Thursday that its previous board members John Cleghorn, Tim Faithfull, Edmond Harris, Michael Phelps and Roger Phillips decided not to run again after taking into account the "views expressed by shareholders about the desire for board change."

Along with Tobias, Pershing Square’s other nominees are its own CEO Bill Ackman; one of its partners, Paul Hilal; CRS Inc. president Gary Colter, a former board member at Saskatchewan Wheat Pool; former Alberta Treasury Branches CEO Paul Haggis, now chairman of Alberta Enterprise Corp.; Rebecca MacDonald, a founder of Toronto-based Just Energy Group; and former Onex executive Anthony Melman, now CEO of advisory firm Nevele Inc.

The departure of five expected nominees left 16 nominees for the 16 spots on the board, among whose other members are Hartley Richardson, chairman of Canada’s No. 2 grain handler Richardson International, and former federal finance minister John Manley.

Another incumbent board member, Madeleine Paquin, CEO of Montreal-based cargo-handling firm Logistec, was elected Thursday as the new board’s acting chair.

"Worst managed"

Pershing Square, whose funds own 24.2 million CP shares, now worth about $1.8 billion, has for months ripped both Green and the incumbent board for overseeing what it called "the worst managed and poorest performing Class I railway."

CP’s operating ratio has "deteriorated" from 79.6 per cent to 80.1 per cent during Green’s tenure, Ackman said in a letter to CP shareholders last month. The operating ratio of other Class I railroads "improved, on average," from 77.9 per cent to 71.4 per cent in the meantime, he said.

The new board said in a statement Thursday it is "confident in the depth and breadth of this board and its ability to work with the management and all CP employees to serve our customers and communities. We are looking forward to working together to build value for our shareholders."

"The great majority of Canadian Pacific’s employees are extremely talented and dedicated," Harrison said in January. "With the right board and executive leadership, I believe Canadian Pacific can achieve just as dramatic a turnaround (as CN’s) and enjoy its rightful position as a leader in the North American rail industry."

The new board could hit its first obstacle as early as Wednesday, when the railway’s unionized engineers, conductors, traffic controllers, trainmen and yardmen officially are in strike position.

The workers, who are represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and have been without a labour agreement since Jan. 1, voted last month 95 per cent in favour of authorizing their bargaining committee to launch a strike "if necessary."

The DuPont-owned seed company, which until now had sold soybean seeds by the 50-pound (22.7-kilogram) unit, said Tuesday it will move to a 140,000-seed-per-unit measure in both Canada and the U.S.

Soybean seeds can potentially vary in size, depending on genetics and growing conditions, which in turn could affect the number of seeds in a 50-pound unit, the company said.

"With this change to selling by count, the number of seeds per unit will be consistent for Pioneer customers."

Pioneer’s Chatham, Ont.-based Canadian arm will still sell soybean seed in "traditional" paper bags as well as its PROBOX units, jumbo bags and PROBulk systems.

The Canadian arm’s president, Ian Grant, said the move to the seed count system comes "in direct response to our customers’ wants and needs, providing greater ease and accuracy of field-by-field planting."

Selling by seed count has become the standard in seed corn, and such moves in soybeans are seen as a benefit to growers who are still focused on planting by the pound, according to Ontario provincial soybean specialist Horst Bohner.

"Planting by the pound is not as accurate as it should be," Bohner said in 2009 when Monsanto moved to sell Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans by seed count. "If seed is sold by count and not by the pound it should lead to more accurate seeding rates being used."

Given the "increasing value" of seed, soybean growers sometimes "look to cap those investments by selecting smaller seed varieties," he said.

"However, not all small seed varieties are the best in terms of genetics or yield potential," said Bohner, who’s based at Guelph.
"Seed selection should not be based on seed size."

The good news is that corn across much of the region is all but done. Since the last meeting May 1, growers have made a collective push to get the last 30 to 40 per cent of the crop into the ground.

As a testament to cooler temperatures and improved plant breeding, those fields that were planted within the past two weeks have progressed to almost the same stage as those fields planted in mid- to late-April. That led one advisor to note that heat is the key, and that calendar dates play less of a role.

Another advisor stated that one field just north of London was already side-dressing nitrogen. One other report noted that corn planting in Eastern Ontario is now at roughly 50 per cent complete.

If there’s a downside to the corn picture, it came from several observations by CCAs that many of the emerging corn fields look "dirty." In the push to get the crop planted, growers opted to skip their herbicide applications, and as one advisor noted, in some fields he’s seeing a lot of lamb’s-quarters, and he’s expecting more in the weeks ahead.

On the soybean side, several advisors cited 90 per cent of planting completed in their particular area while most reports fell into the 60 to 80 per cent range.

Despite the fluctuating temperatures, this year’s planting is going well compared to 2011, when some growers were planting their soybeans into late June, with a few planting the first week of July.

Wheat

Much of the concern expressed during the meeting however, pertained to the status of the wheat crop. As noted at the start of the meeting, the crop looks very good. But OMAFRA cereal specialist Peter Johnson cautioned that from the road, most fields appear healthy and lush.

Once in the field, however, closer examination revealed that only the main stem is at its peak. The tillers are not progressing, and in some fields, he said, there’s a lot of brown leaf tissue beside the stem.

As a result, the Ontario crop is unlikely to reach above 100 bushels per acre and of added concern, the poor tillering could shorten the stems, meaning less straw and therefore tightening supplies.

On the plus side, a lot of spray applications were made this past weekend; advisors noted that there were more fields with tire tracks through them after Mother’s Day than before, and much of the spraying that was done was likely a herbicide/fungicide tank mix.

In some areas, the crop is a week to two weeks ahead of normal. Some fields in Lambton County are heading out and one field near Harrow in Essex County was sprayed with Prosaro at day 2.

As for other crop news from the meeting, edible bean growers are set to begin planting this week, weather permitting. But again on the downside, forages are going to be in particularly short supply, partly due to the weed situation with dandelion but also because of cold nights affecting growth in the crop. One advisor suggested taking the first cut, then plowing it down and planting silage corn if feed was needed, or even oats or peas.

Tree fruit

The worst news of the day came from the horticulture sector, where the frost on March 27-28 devastated Ontario’s tree fruit crop, to the tune of 80 to 100 per cent loss. Currently, only the Niagara region is said to have avoided widespread losses.

This actually represents the third consecutive year that there’s been frost damage to the fruit and vegetable crops in the province. As for this year’s production, dollar estimates are being pegged at $100 million, and that hit is to the growers alone. The effect it will have on farm market sales, agri-tourism, food processing and retail is unknown. In some areas, strawberries also suffered marginal frost damage.

Finally, it was reported that onion and celery crops are all but planted, and potato planting is underway in the Lambton and Norfolk County regions and should begin soon in the Alliston area.

– Ralph Pearce is a field editor for Country Guide at St. Marys, Ont.

CORRECTION, May 17, 2012: The previous version of paragraph 12 in this article incorrectly stated wheat crops in some areas of Ontario were a month to two months ahead of normal. We regret the error.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, wrapped up his official visit to Canada on Wednesday with a statement that credits Canadian farmers for their support of a national food strategy.

However, the Belgian human rights expert and university professor said Canada’s "export-led policies in agriculture have resulted in increased concentration, vertical integration and buyer consolidation in the agri-food sector."

Free trade deals, he said, have been "detrimental" to many farmers, whose "net incomes have decreased and whose debt has increased dramatically over the past decades."

Canada’s food safety regulations, De Schutter added, "do not meet the unique needs of less industrial, more seasonal, and alternative production methods."

"A thriving small-scale farming sector is essential to local food systems," he said, noting the work of "food policy councils and localities throughout Canada" to that end.

Such systems can deliver "considerable ecological and health benefits" for schoolchildren, "underserved" urban and northern communities and care home residents, he said.

However, he added, all levels of Canada’s government may be restricted in their use of "institutional sourcing" to encourage such a transition. He cited "legal requirements of non-discrimination" on public procurement and, possibly, the negotiation of free trade deals.

Initiatives to rebuild local food systems, ensuring "adequate incomes" for farmers and consumers’ access to fresh and nutritious foods, "were not sufficiently supported at (the) federal level" and are "currently under threat," he said.

The federal government, he said, had also moved to "gradually dismantle existing orderly marketing systems," such as the Canadian Wheat Board’s single desk for Prairie wheat and barley, and to revise the Canadian Grain Commission’s governance and mandate.

Concentration in the ag sector has also left it "heavily reliant" on temporary foreign farm workers, about 30,000 of whom come to work in Canada under federal programs but are "in an extremely precarious position," De Schutter said.

"Tolerates inequalities"

"What I’ve seen in Canada is a system that presents barriers for the poor to access nutritious diets and that tolerates increased inequalities between rich and poor, and Aboriginal (and) non-Aboriginal peoples," he said in a separate release Wednesday.

The federal government, he said, should convene a national food conference that would clarify allocation of responsibilities between the federal level, the provinces and territories.

All political parties have expressed support for the establishment of a national food policy and the engagement of citizens through food policy councils is "truly impressive," he said, but Canada "must first recognize the reality of the challenges it faces."

Among those, De Schutter said 800,000 Canadian households are “food-insecure” but the government "fails to adapt the levels of social assistance benefits and its minimum wage to the rising costs of basic necessities."

Adequate diets “have become too expensive for poor Canadians,” he said, citing Canada’s obesity rates. The poor “have to pay the most when they live in food deserts and depend on convenience stores that charge higher prices than the main retailers."

De Schutter also called for reform of the Nutrition North Canada program that subsidizes retailers to serve remote communities.

"In particular, he is concerned that the retail subsidy is not being fully passed on to the consumer and that in the absence of adequate monitoring by those it is intended to benefit, the program is not achieving its desired outcome," the end-of-visit statement said.

He also called for "a structural approach to tackling the socioeconomic and cultural barriers to opportunities for those living on reserves."

"Official record"

Responding Wednesday, federal NDP ag critic Malcolm Allen said the rapporteur’s review shows the government is "failing to guarantee" Canadians’ right to safe and nutritious food.

The federal Liberals said last week that De Schutter’s next step will be a formal report to the UN Human Rights Council, "which will become part of Canada’s official human rights record."

"The fact that Canada is now the first developed country to be investigated by (De Schutter) is nothing short of a failure for the Harper Conservatives," interim Liberal leader Bob Rae said.

A spokesperson for federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Wednesday that officials from the ag department were booked to meet with De Schutter during his visit. No "formal request" had been made for De Schutter to meet with Ritz, the spokesperson added.

Related stories:
Canadian food bill holds steady for ‘Food Freedom Day,’ Feb. 11, 2012
CFA calls on politicians for leadership on farm issues, Sept. 22, 2010
Report ties improving farm income to improving foods, Aug. 20, 2009

Areas from Vulcan, about 130 km south of Calgary, past the Canada/U.S. border and down to Montana, experienced freezing temperatures for at least eight hours on the night of May 11. Temperatures reached as low as -4 C to a reported -8 C in some areas.

Troy Prosofsky, the Canola Council’s agronomy specialist at Lethbridge, said the damage could have been worse, but cooler temperatures in the days leading up to the frost hardened canola crops.

"With canola and frost occurrences it’s a function of how hot it was the day before, and then how cold it got, et cetera. So it’s those extreme changes that actually cause more damage.

Prosofsky said he scouted over a half a dozen fields a few days after the frost and saw some fields that lost 60 per cent of their plants.

"There was definitely a lot of high mortality rates in some regions. What I did find was no two fields were exactly the same. It was a difference of what stage the crop was, the topography, what their plant counts were, et cetera. However, despite the damage, there weren’t any fields that I saw that needed to be reseeded."

Neil Whatley, crop specialist with the provincial Ag-Info Centre at Stettler, recommended farmers wait at least four days to check their crops after a frost before taking action.

"If there’s still one or two per square foot, you don’t want to reseed. With canola you never want to reseed unless you’re down to about three plants per square foot," he said.

Prosofsky said at this point in the season it may not be worth it for farmers to reseed.

Research done by Ross McKenzie, agronomy research specialist for the provincial ag ministry, shows that in southern Alberta, 1.8 bushels are lost for every day crop is planted after May 1, Prosofsky said.

"If we’re seeding this late in the game, we’d already be losing 25 bushels of potential yield. So you’ve got to consider if I’m going for 65-bushel yield, and I only get 40 if I reseed. Or, if I lost 10 per cent, maybe I’m down to 55 bushels."

Prosofsky said it is important for growers affected by the frost to protect their crops from insects and disease.

Questioned Monday in the House of Commons by NDP agriculture critic Malcolm Allen, Ritz noted an estimated two-thirds of affected fruit growers, whose trees were pushed into early blossom by warm weather ahead of the frost, will be covered by crop insurance.

"We also have AgriRecovery, which will pick up the slack after that," Ritz was quoted as saying in the Commons. "There are a number of different venues open to farmers who have made use of those management tools."

Fruit growers in the province are "poised to lose tens of millions of dollars" to this spring’s frost, and apple growers alone are expected to lose about 80 per cent of their crop, Allen said.

Apple orchards in the Georgian Bay region and southwestern Ontario are expected to suffer the greatest damage, the provincial agriculture ministry said Thursday. Pear, cherry, peach, nectarine, apricot and plum growers are also reporting "significant damage" to their crops, the province said.

"The full extent of the province-wide impact will be known in coming weeks," the province said in a release.

"I know how much this loss means to the farmers involved, and not just in economic terms," provincial Agriculture Minister Ted McMeekin said in a statement Thursday after touring an orchard at Beamsville, between Hamilton and St. Catharines.

"I will continue to closely monitor the situation as we work to assess the damage and develop strategies that will best support the industry."

Federal ag department officials have also been touring the area and looking over the crops, Ritz noted Monday.

In a typical year, Ontario accounts for 40 per cent of all the apples grown in Canada and the Ontario apple crop has an annual farm gate value of $63 million, with other tender fruits valued at about $40 million, the province said.

Allen, whose Welland riding is in the Niagara region, suggested in the Commons Monday that programs exist to deal with "minor losses" such as when a single farmer is hit with a bad season.

"However, when an entire sector is hit, like it is now in Ontario, special measures should be taken to ensure its future is not put at risk."

The company processes conjugated estrogen from pregnant mares’ urine (PMU) at Brandon to make the hormone replacement therapy Premarin, used to treat menopausal symptoms in women.

Pfizer said Tuesday it plans to cut about 50 of 130 positions at the plant "gradually through to the end of 2013."

The company said it "operates in a very competitive and challenging environment which requires a continual review of its operations to look for efficiencies and cost reductions by using our resources and technology more effectively."

Changes at the Brandon plant "will enhance the site’s competitiveness and best position it for the future," the company said.

However, this decision "will not impact the site’s rancher network who support the plant’s production," Pfizer said. The company sources raw PMU from a network of 26 equine ranchers across Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The Brandon facility was set up in the mid-1960s and became a Pfizer plant when the company bought fellow drugmarker Wyeth in 2009.

Wyeth substantially downsized its PMU ranch network in the first half of the last decade, as hormone therapy study data came forward from the U.S. government-backed Women’s Health Initiative and Premarin use and dosages were reduced.

The plant still distributes conjugated estrogens to markets worldwide including Europe, the Middle East, the Orient and North and South America.

Expectations for a large U.S. corn crop have led to ideas that the resulting decline in feed costs would encourage an expansion in the U.S. hog herd, according to some analysts.

However, "we haven’t experienced the same sustained level of profitability that our American counterparts have," said Tyler Fulton, director of risk management with H@ms Marketing Services in Winnipeg.

As a result, Canada would see a much more muted reaction to any expansion ideas, and likely hold steady overall. "It will take a little bit more to fill the optimism fuel tank, so to speak," he said.

The prospect of lower feed costs in the fall was making the outlook for the hog sector look a little better, but he added that any opportunities for expansion in Western Canada are pretty limited right now.

Fulton said the seasonal rally that would typically be seen at this time of year was not materializing, leaving the market relatively flat over the past month and a half. At this time in a typical year, the hog sector would see a 10 per cent rally.

Slower export sales, and concerns over domestic demand as consumers are not buying as much pork as they have in recent years, were accounting for the lack of a seasonal rise in pork and hog prices, said Fulton.

A larger-than-expected increase in the U.S. hog slaughter was also weighing on values from the supply side, he said.

Overall, Fulton said the western Canadian hog sector was still performing reasonably well, but it was not living up to the higher expectations seen a year ago when China was buying more pork.