Philip Shaw

The price of gasoline went up about $0.14 a litre last week in Ontario and Quebec.  This had gas prices at about $1.77 a liter in Ontario and up to $1.90 a litre in Quebec. There were several reasons given for this increase, changing over to summer blends of gasoline, the tensions in the Middle…

Last week just happened to be the week where I pulled my corn planter out of the shed and blew the dust off it.  No, I realize that over the last 38 years I’ve repeated that line many times. Your loyal scribe doesn’t have a fancy heated shop to work on machinery in the wintertime…

Over the 38 years that I’ve been writing this column I have often brought up the spectre of sending grain to the moon. When I say this, I have often referred to grain surplus driving down cash prices and we need to get rid of the grain somewhere. If we add a pipeline to the…

We’re into another weather market concerning our crop prices. No, it is not the 10 cm of blowing snow that I’m expecting tomorrow, it’s more so heavy rain that they’re getting in Argentina as well as the benign weather that the Safrinha corn crop in Brazil is currently enjoying.  Something tells me that I’m a…

It seems like a long time ago now that your loyal scribe was hired by Farm Credit Canada to speak on how farmland values were changing across Ontario. In fact, I think it was about 13 or 14 years ago and we’ve seen a world of change since then.  It’s been a few years since…

At this time of year farmers often find themselves at production meetings as local businesses sometimes sponsor customer meetings going over growers concerns for the upcoming year. I expect to go to a few in the next few weeks. I always enjoy hearing from the latest experts on weed control in my local area, something…

Today, we learned of the death of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.  Mr. Mulroney was the Prime Minister when I started writing this column over 38 years ago.  At that time, I was writing about agricultural policy called GRIP and NISA, both great policies at the time, before they were emasculated by later administrations.  Free…

In southwestern Ontario we’re getting a hint of spring as warm weather has swept across farm country.  I even see some wheat producers in Ontario talking on social media that they should be putting some nitrogen on wheat. Who knows maybe in a couple weeks we’ll have two feet of snow.  There will be time…

I listen or read a lot of agricultural commodity commentary every day.  Of course, I really appreciate our guys here at DTN who do a great job, Todd Hultman and Dana Mantini.  Their daily market videos on DTN are a must watch for readers. Then you have your loyal scribe here in southwestern Ontario and…

If you had a good imagination today, you could almost notice signs of spring in the air. The temperature reached about 10°C here in southwestern Ontario and I was out at one of my farms trying to fix an implement shed door.  Needless to say, I suppose it didn’t take much of imagination on the…