Philip Shaw

As surprises go, it was one of the more unusual ones. A farmer neighbour stopped over and told me there was a beaver dam at the back of a farm adjacent to me and I might have noticed more water in the ditch back there. I didn’t think much about it until he left, then…

I have been literally thrown out of banks before. Now, it was a long time ago and its always a stretch to say such a thing, but perspective sometime can grow more vivid with time. Over a career I have seen quite a change in the agricultural credit landscape. In the 1980s when I started,…

The air was cold today, as whiffs of snow and cold winds whipped across southwestern Ontario farm country. I’m in the midst of getting some of my equipment ready, strategically watching the weather so I can do it in some sort of comfort. It would be nice to have a new shop like a friend…

This past week I was part of the US Farm Report. Some of my American readers would surely know who and what that is. I really didn’t know, but it is one of the most watched American farm shows. Last year the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) had planned to have the show produced and…

The land is getting very dry for this time of year. I know a few guys who are working on planters this year and are hoping to test them out in a few days. At least it will get the neighbours talking. Agronomists always say plant early. My shtick is how early? Why don’t we…

It’s been brutal. A year ago, today, the WHO declared a world-wide pandemic and you know the rest of the story. A year later we have over 530,000 people dead from Covid 19 in the United States and over 22,000 dead in Canada. It was certainly foreboding a year ago, At the time the Canadian…

I have often said if you dropped that 20 something farm kid from 35 years ago, who started writing this column, he wouldn’t recognize the farming landscape. Interest rates at 0.25% you say. Man, that head shake would be eternal, just like looking at my no-till drill or using guidance to navigate through my field….

If you looked really hard this week, there actually where signs of spring as warmer temperatures melted a lot of snow in the deep southwest of Ontario. However, even if you didn’t have those temperatures, the month of February end on Sunday. With January and February behind us, there is a lot warmer weather in…

Que the buzz. Canola futures reached to a record high last Thursday as touching $777 per tonne and Canadian media outlets couldn’t get enough of how things were better on western Canadian farms. It happened after Agriculture Canada adjusted their January stocks figure down 42% from their January numbers. My goodness how does that happen,…

One of the biggest decision I make in the spring is deciding when my soils are “fit”. It’s something that all of us do as crop farmers. In the deep SW of Ontario, every April and May, that is decided as we first put equipment in the field. Of course, “fit” might mean different things…