Philip Shaw

Every February your loyal scribe winds his way down to Louisville Kentucky.  I go there to work, always looking for another opportunity.  As many of you already know I published a feature on that show this past summer in Country Guide magazine.   However, I like to kick tires too. For a Canadian it is a…

I like to tease a younger farmer in the neighourhood. He’s a very successful organic soybean and wheat farmer. Typically he sells his crops for triple or quadruple what the rest of us do. However, he doesn’t use commercial fertilizer, the whole nine yards. Beating the weeds is his annual challenge. I have often thought…

It is the eve of the big USDA August 11th crop report.  The experts are saying 10.8 billion bushels of corn, 3 plus billion bushels of soybeans and good weather ahead.  It seems with all those triple stacked bt-corn seeds, yields just keep climbing.  However, maybe I’m wrong.  That’s why we have a market and…

If you live in Western Canada you know them well.  If you are in Eastern Canada, you probably don’t know them.  Last week fertilizer producer Agrium reported a record profit of $142 million US in the second quarter of this year.  It was a reminder to me that all is not necessarily doom and gloom…

In my part of Canada it is like a garden.  I’ve farmed for all my life, but rarely have I seen it as lush as it is this year.  There is still time for mother nature to exact her vengence.  However, on the rural concessions of southwestern Ontario, I’ve rarely seen corn and other crops…

A reader from Eastern Ontario contacted me last week regarding the American Loan Deficiency Payments.  Long the scourge of Canadian corn growers, the LDP is a major part of how the American corn farmer can thrive at times when prices go south. Consider this.  According to an AP report published July 19th in DTN News,…

Last April 5th I gazed out into a crowd of 10,000 people in front of me at the Parliament Buildings.  I wouldn’t say everything about that was easy.  I had never spoken to that many people before.  However, as the pitch of the Ottawa Solidarity Farm Rally reached a crescendo everybody on stage felt good. …

I got a call the other day from my good friend and co-author Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque.  I was out on my farm and he was in Kyoto Japan.  It happens often.  In fact with the advance of communications technology he might as well be over the fence.  My cell phone often tones in with…

I’ve never been to “the Rock”.  For my American readers that means our most eastern province Newfoundland and Labrador.  Last week Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial met in St. John’s Newfoundland.  They met to discuss once again the future of Canadian agriculture.  For Canadian farmers, the meeting on the Rock last week holds some clues…

Before the winter of 2006 I never got press releases. However, ever since the “grass roots” farmers came along, I get press releases. They are Canadian patriots, great guys working their own way for a better Canadian agriculture. On July 1st the Ottawa grass roots farmers are taking that message back to Parliament Hill in…