Philip Shaw

          It is the best of times and of course it is the worst of times. I’m referring to springtime in farm country.  As we all know, we are going into spring this year with the war affecting our world markets. Of course, as we all look forward to warmer weather it is…

          It is still early but I got my corn planter out the other day and blew the dust off it. Well, not really. My corn planter would take a whole bunch of wind to get the dust blown off it. Needless to say, every spring I go over my corn planter in…

          This is a different type of spring in Ontario. I been out in my fields lately doing my due diligence early in the spring.  The fields are dryer than normal but that really doesn’t mean too much in southwestern Ontario. We spend millions of dollars on our farms putting tile in. The…

          The calendar says that we’re getting close to mid-March and before you know it, we might be seeing real signs of spring. It couldn’t come fast enough for most of us since ensconced in Canadian winter. Thankfully, spring always represents hope, something that we can never have enough of. Unfortunately, the world…

         Canada finds itself in a pretty difficult spot.  We all know what has been going on over the last year with the demise of the Canada United States relationship.  Regardless of what is going on in the political realm its become increasingly obvious that Canadians had to find a different way versus…

        We’ve had a bit of a melt here in southwestern Ontario which is very common for this time year. However, this year it came after more snow than usual in the neighborhood. In fact, we had so much snow that I had one particular farm lot blocked off simply because of plowed…

         One of the more difficult aspects of agricultural economics is connecting between the production side of agriculture and the consumption of what we grow.  It seems every week I talk about the dynamics of pricing and the dynamics of how much production we have in some attempt to explain away how we…

         We’re starting to see a change in the winter weather pattern. At least I think everybody is hoping so.  This past week we had the temperature go above freezing for one day and it had the minions of southwestern Ontario hoping for more.  In fact, the forecast for the next month looks…

        Call it the “Covfefe” effect.  The last couple days have been pretty exciting in the soybean market because we’ve seen just under a $0.50 rise in the price of soybeans in the last two trading sessions. It’s hard to tell why we have such a rise in the price of soybeans because…

          The January USDA report is long in the rear-view mirror.  However, when I visited the local farm show in Chatham Ontario, I took part in a marketing seminar given by a friend of mine. It was interesting to hear a little different perspective on things. However, it was very clear the…