Philip Shaw

         It is a rite of spring, at least in my area. I’m talking about replanting soybeans, something that happens on a regular basis on the heavy clay soils of South Lambton County in southwestern Ontario.  The biggest risk to soybean production in this area is always getting the soybeans out of the…

      It has been a pretty good week here. I got planting again last Thursday after an extended layoff.  I pretty well got everything in. Then splat!  Another 1.3 inches of rain is never welcome on freshly planted soybeans and a delayed planting season gets even more delayed. I realize that this is my…

         I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. I’ve only planted one day in May 2025.  Yes, after a very good planting window in late April when I got all my corn planted for whatever reason May has not been quite the same.  Wet weather and cold has been the…

          It is that time of year again. I’m hurrying up and waiting. A week ago, I had rain set in which has continued over the last few days putting a halt to my soybean planting.  It has been made worse by extremely cold temperatures. Oh, in this agricultural game it is so…

  It has been a busy week in southwestern Ontario with both corn and soybeans going into the ground.  In fact, your loyal scribe has corn in that you can row, which is always a good thing. With rain predicted for tonight maybe my luck will change but today I actually got started planting soybeans. …

  This week I’m looking for corn to pop through after quite a successful run over the last couple of weeks.  On my soils you never know whether a crop is going to come up but so far it looks promising. Sometimes a crop is never given a chance to get up and sometimes it’s…

It is that time of year again when most of us get to press that autosteer button. I still haven’t pressed it but I’m hoping to do that within days of writing this column. The weather has broken out very warm across southwestern Ontario and although rain is predicted for tomorrow there’s been a flurry…

It has been a cold week in this part of southwestern Ontario but it’s that time of year when things definitely turn around. Wouldn’t be it be nice if by the end of next week your loyal scribe has some corn in the ground. Add a little bit of good weather to that with some…

It has certainly been a whip saw of a week with the news cycle inundating our grain markets and making the greater equity markets swoon under the pressure of uncertainty.  Markets collapsed on news of ever more tariffs on all the countries in the world only to rebound the next day when the American President…

Well, “liberation day” has come and gone, and the world is a new place.  It is not the place that we have become accustomed to over the last 30 years with free trade between the United States and Canada. As Prime Minister Carney said today the old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United…