Alberta Grains Winds Down FarmCash Cash Advance Program

Alberta Grains is winding down FarmCash, the cash advance service it runs under the federal Advance Payments Program, by 2027, according to an Oct. 15 statement.

Producers with an existing FarmCash Spring Advance can apply for an additional advance until Nov. 15, 2026, and active files will be reassigned to a new administrator whose rules will set future approvals and timing.

FarmCash has run since 2018, covered more than 50 commodities with advances up to $1 million (the first $100,000 interest-free), and served producers in Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Source: Farms.com, Alberta Grains ending FarmCash program (Oct. 16, 2026)

💸 Alberta Grains is pulling FarmCash into the pits, permanently.

🇯🇵 Sask's ag minister is in Japan, running laps of the buyer circuit.

🚜 U of S engineers are dragging sleds around a Warman farm, on purpose.

🐮 Cattle are learning to obey a phone, and the Wheat Growers make a driver change.

Alberta Grains is winding down FarmCash, the cash advance program it runs under the federal Advance Payments Program, by 2027.

FarmCash launched in 2018 under the old Alberta Wheat Commission and opened to B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba farmers in 2021.

It covered more than 50 commodities, with advances up to $1 million and the first $100,000 interest-free. The good kind of debt. The rare kind. The kind that is now leaving.

The board says running the program through FarmCash no longer fits Alberta Grains' long-term strategic priorities.

That's it. That's the whole explanation. No numbers, no drama, just the corporate version of "it's not you, it's us," delivered right in the middle of a wet, ugly harvest when a lot of farms are leaning on cash advances harder than usual.

Nov. 15, 2026 is your checkered flag. If you have an existing FarmCash Spring Advance, that's the last day to apply for an additional advance through FarmCash.

Your file is getting a new pit crew. Active producers will get an account-specific transition package once their file is assigned to a new administrator, and future approvals and timing depend on that administrator's rules.

You can pick your own crew. In Alberta, options include the Canadian Canola Growers Association, Potato Growers of Alberta and the Agri-Commodity Management Association.

Our read, not theirs: with plenty of grain sitting in dryers and bins this fall instead of moving, a paperwork handoff is a bad reason to have cash flow stall. Alberta Grains itself says to contact FarmCash promptly about anything urgent. Take them up on it.

Agriculture Minister David Marit is leading a mission to Japan, Oct. 17 to 22, meeting long-term buyers of Saskatchewan agrifood products.

Japan is Saskatchewan's third-largest agricultural export market: $1.2 billion in agrifood exports in 2025, up almost a third from 2024.

Top export to Japan: canola seed, followed by wheat, barley, durum and malt.

Crown Investments Minister Jeremy Harrison is in the Philippines, Oct. 17 to 23, pitching Sask uranium at the World Nuclear Supply Chain Conference. Food and fuel, both on tour.

A Valtra T236 set the record for the fastest tractor lap at Austria's Red Bull Ring, home of the Austrian Grand Prix: 3:36.4.

For context, Oscar Piastri's F1 lap record there is 1:07.924. So the tractor was roughly three times slower than a Formula One car, which still makes it three times faster than your seed rep returns a call in April.

Red Bull verified a top speed of 87 km/h. Street-legal speed is about 56 km/h, so no, you may not try this on Highway 16, and no, "it was a record attempt" will not work on the RCMP.

The part that actually matters: paired with a Väderstad Tempo planter, the same T Series planted at 40 km/h while holding more than 95% accuracy.

The U of S Sled Dogs, the university's quarter-scale tractor team, tested designs on Oct. 3 at Kenny Beauchemin's farm just east of Warman, running light and heavy tractor pulls.

They're prepping for the ASABE International Quarter-Scale Tractor Design Competition, held every summer in the U.S.

The Sled Dogs hold the title of Canada's No. 1 quarter-scale tractor team, with the refreshingly honest footnote that results vary year to year. Most honest sentence in agriculture this month.

University of Missouri researchers have virtual fencing collars on all 60 heifers at the Mizzou Beef Research Farm, strip-grazing cover crops like sunn hemp and sunflowers without anybody moving polywire every week.

The collars track location and beep as an animal nears the boundary, steering it back in. The heifers figured it out fast. Faster than some hired men figure out a gate latch.

Mizzou's virtual fencing projects have pulled in more than $5 million, and the newest one is helping farmers in Missouri and Nebraska try the tech.

The bigger question: can collars make it practical to graze cattle on row-crop and cover-crop acres and squeeze another paycheque out of land that's already in production?

Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel of Mossbank received Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan's Champion Award for years spent explaining modern farming to people who don't farm.

In 2004, she became the first woman president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association. More recently, as a 2025 Nuffield scholar, she visited farmers hosting wind turbines in 16 countries in about 18 months, and her paper is now in peer review.

Bonus: she is openly uninterested in social media and would rather talk to you over coffee. A public-trust champion who doesn't post. Revolutionary stuff.

Same week, same association: the Wheat Growers named Kaitlyn Kitzan executive director, replacing Darcy Pawlik, with her firm Kitzan Strategic Solutions handling day-to-day operations. Kitzan previously served as the board's treasurer and secretary.