Jack's Crop Report

[Ironhead]

As I travelled in Eastern Canada and sometimes north eastern US, Jack always wanted me to post what I was seeing, so Jack, here is your Crop Report.

In the last week I travelled through "potato" country of new Brunswick (Canada), through "Dairy" country of the Saint Lawrence river watershed (Quebec) to the flatlands of the Ottawa valley.

The potatoes have been pretty well harvested in New Brunswick - looked like a couple of fields left in the Florenceville area (home of the largest French Fry processer in the world).

in Diary country Quebec (along the Saint Lawrence river), there are quite a number of fields with corn still to be harvested and some fields of grain (couldn't tell from 3 or 4 hundred yards at 75-80 MPH).

the Ottawa valley (similar terrain) was much like Quebec - fields of Corn (some several hundred acres in size) to be harvested and a few fields of grain.

Jack, hope you get a chance to read this - RIP.

[john maddock]

Hello Ironhead. I expect Jack will send his reply from on high (), but meantime may I say I appreciate your work.

A few years ago I was lucky enough to tour eastern (mainland) Canada and as best I could, took a keen interest in the landscape and the little farming I could see from the bus window.

I was surprised at how un-agricultural the majority of what I saw was. It reminded me of Sweden - large areas of small trees and glaciated rock and shallow soils and relatively small areas of arable or pasture land. I happened to read a report of the local dairy prices and their future, and it dawned on me why Saputo had bought up big in Aus.: there was little prospect for expansion of the dairy industry in eastern Canada, the US was probably already oversupplied, Fonterra had NZ sewn up - and that left only Australia. Saputo now owns maybe half (my guess) of the milk processing industry in Aus. So far, they are in the dairy farmers' good books; Young Lino is saying all the right things, they are paying acceptable prices - and are neither Chinese nor Japanese!

JV